…lo, water flowed from the garden taps and I was able to wash up. Obviously this still needs tiling and all the rest of it, but honestly, the feeling of water coming out of those taps was almost as good as turning on the tea urn tap in our off-grid cottage.

Taps truly are the mark of civilisation. Thanks to everyone who posted comments about brass taps and garden taps – I’ll be back next week, possibly even with a post that’s NOT about my flipping’ kitchen.

Trend: John Booth things

Remember Ros got that brilliant Battenberg-Ikea Monkey art for her birthday? It was by the lovely John Booth who has recently started selling some of his fashion illustrations at new shop They Made This. Each print contains a boy or boys, named after him or them and each one is a splendid vision of pattern […]

Brass taps… boom!

Thank you to all the readers who posted helpful comments in reply to my wail about why-they-not-sell-brass-taps-that-i-can-afford? All the advice was really helpful, but, as is the way with these things, the final answer came from an unexpected source. As you can see progress on the kitchen creeps onwards – yes, we’ve built the units […]

If you designed a bed with your husband…

…why on earth wouldn’t you design it to look like this? Husband-and-wife design duos are fascinating, and most definitely a thing, but I have to admit I’d never heard of Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne before seeing this picture on AnOther magazine’s Instagram today. This brilliant picture of their bird bed however left me with no […]

Friday cushion fact

Lenny Kravitz designed a range and shocker, it’s quite nice. It’s part of a whole furniture collection in fact and I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, the man had his house in Elle Deco once upon a time. I think that was what you’d describe as groovy if you were too polite to say shag-pad. […]