I have to confess that while I am finding almost nothing funny in the current political climate – even jokes about David Cameron humming have left me cold – I have been amused by the long, light-hearted articles in The Evening Standard on post-Brexit London behaviour and etiquette. The fact I have recently left London can be no coincidence. A recent piece talked about post-Brexit hedonism going hand in hand with the much-discussed depression. A Brexitential Crisis I think was how they put it. Here, it having been my birthday and all, I feel I am also engaging in an incredible period of hedonism. A hedonism of things.

Darkroom notebook from Jill, potent whisky from Tammy

Since my birthday I have been swanning from room to Haeckel’s Lemon Balm inscence-scented room in my new (slightly too big, they’d run out of smalls in the sale) Toast kimono, stopping to leaf through a book on avant-garde emails, sipping from a rustic enamel mug, and so on. I’m something between Mrs Dalloway and that bloke out of A Rebours who fills his house first with orchids then with fake flowers.

And it’s lovely. Even lovelier is that most of these things are birthday gifts to me from thoughtful friends. Buying a present for me maybe is a bit intimidating. Apparently I have fixed and strident views on things. Things. When I worked with Ellie and Bethan at a homes magazine, themselves both women of excellent and particular taste, they used to joke about how specific and hard to predict my taste was. They invented an imaginary blog (this was the early days of blogging and we were all starting blogs of our own) called Define The Line, where I simply posted each day about what I did or didn’t like in the realm of, say, Danish 3-legged stools or 1950s dandelion prints or whatever.

Anyway, I’m delighted with everything that came my way from thoughtful friends on my birthday. Boe brought me a cactus in a hand-painted (by her) pot. The cat has been ‘tending to it’ so it’s had to move to a high shelf for everybody’s safety. Also in shot it a gorgeous Earl of East Greenhouse candle (3 wicks! class!) that smells of tomato plants – another gift.

Best of all though was collecting a parcel from Japan at the post office. Carefully wrapped in brown paper and covered in exotic stamps, the parcel itself was a thrill to carry home. Inside was this vintage pot – a tea caddy I assume – bought for me from a store in Hanoi by my brother’s girlfriend on a trip to Vietnam. I feel so honoured to have this beautiful object, sent safely all that way. Now it’s living on a high shelf with two other things that have come to Margate from Japan. It’s well out of reach of the cat.

So anyway, here is just some of the lovely things I’ve been surrounded with to soothe the shock of being 40. The news gets ever sadder and more frightening, and so I light another scented candle and read another obscure book. I remember ten years ago, reading about £60 candles in the Evening Standard and thinking we must be in the end times. Then the big recession happened. Scented candles were off the news agenda for a year or so. Brexit, terrorism, getting on a bit… for now I will savour my hedonism of things… who knows where we’ll be in a year.