Why is it that whenever I get obsessed with even the simplest thing for my home, it turns out to be a can-of-worms, hard to get hold of, very expensive, or all three? In the house in Margate there is so much to do – fixing damp, repairing the windows, sanding the floors and more. Amongst this you wouldn’t think that the interior doors were that important. But they are bugging me. They presumably date to the terrible 1980s conversion – they are dirty gloss white, featureless, heavy and slam shut if you don’t wedge them open with a paint pot/cat basket/stack of books. I really hate them and can’t wait to change them. And so it begins…

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Skate Girls of Kabul

What are the chances you can make it to the Saatchi Gallery today? I just found out about this two-week exhibition on its last day helpfully, but maybe it’ll move on somewhere you can make it to. Skate Girls of Kabul is a collection of portraits by photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson focussing on young girls from […]

Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian’s felt tip art

Remember when I said I wanted to take up painting? Well I’ve yet to figure out the baffling-seeming world of paper and paints* yet alone sit down to do anything. But while I was in New York, I discovered Iranian artist Monir Sharoudy Farmanfarmaian whose work abstracts traditional geometric patterns from her culture in a variety […]

Hermit’s holiday part 2 – the visitors’ book

When I was young, on holiday in a French gite with my family, I remember asking my Dad if he and Mum would be writing in the visitor’s book. I must have been able to write at this time, but unauthorised writing in the visitor’s book by me was obviously unthinkable. ‘No,’ my Dad said. […]

Religion, sexism and an upgrade on an aeroplane

Last week thanks to the generosity of my babysitting parents, I tagged along with my husband on his work trip to New York for three days. Three days just me walking and subwaying around a city I always fancied living in. Until dinner time when the two of us revelled in our together-aloness. It was […]