The old lovely deli on my local high street didn’t have the good sense to fill its vast second room with more than a few packets of posh crackers and expensive penne, so sadly it bit the dust despite its well-stocked cheese counter in the first room. It has left behind a nice big empty shop that’s perfect for pop ups and a few weeks ago Anorak and Molly Meg moved in – one in each room. Anorak has taken over the room where the cheese counter used to be, decking the place out with its distinctive printed sleeping bags, blankets, picnic ware and other housey things including new grow bags. Their displays are excellent, with a big central table which seems to have peg board as a table top. Nice.

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My Friend’s House Christmas Gift Guide #1

We don’t normally cover Christmas that much on the blog, but sometimes a product crosses your desk that is just too perfect a present to not let everyone know about it. Readers, we’d be doing you a disservice. So here, for the first instalment of our Christmas Gift Guide, let me present… …the ideal gift for […]

Address book: Wren Kitchens

Kitchens. I’ve got a bit of a dilemma at the moment. Lucky enough to have two kitchens, unlucky in that both of them are pretty rank. I’m psyching myself up to do something about this situation, and have been collecting pictures and ideas on Pinterest. Maybe it’s years working on interiors – and even specialist […]

Freakin’ scary

Keeping your doors and windows locked this Halloween? Hiding behind the sofa when the local rough kids ring your doorbell? Don’t think you’re going to be safe just because you’re at home. Sometimes there is nothing more chilling than a bit of contemporary interior design. Do you dare take our haunted house tour? Exhibit A: […]

Patti Smith and the Chelsea

I’m finishing Patti Smith’s Just Kids just now. It’s brilliant. Her writing style and anecdotes of Manhattan’s art and music scene in the late 60’s and 70’s make it very whip-throughable. She begins with a brief insight into her childhood in South Jersey (pretty poor, pretty literary), before moving onto her meeting Robert Mapplethorpe in Brooklyn, then […]