174. Sunday suppertime

Every Monday morning, every alarm set and every packed tube home for weeks had been counting down to this weekend, because this weekend was going to be the first one that me and my boyfriend had spent together in months. As senior management for a fashion house on Bond Street he brings me beautiful shoes, not bunches of flowers, I get to attend private shopping events to fill my wardrobe with incredible clothes and even our towels are designer. But it also means I don't see him more than one Sunday or so a month,  lazy mornings are a solo affair and I spend my weekends chasing around naughty rabbits and trying to fix the kitchen drawers instead of draped over him with a cup of coffee and the Guardian newspaper - not this time though!

We spent the weekend sleeping, sweating (at the gym) and slouching round South Kensington and it was just perfect, completely and utterly perfect (insert smug face here). On Saturday we had walked to the Natural History Museum, one of my favourite spots in London (until the masses of poorly behaved children and their just as poorly behaved parents drove us too mad) we drank ciders in Kensington Gardens and then headed home for supper (I wore a dress with still-damp-from-the-shower hair and drank margaritas at our favourite Mexican haunt in Notting Hill pretending I was in a remote city near Hermosillo and not a restaurant that serves sweets and shots of blue tequila for pudding). 

This morning we groaned awake hours after usual alarms were set, we conquered the gym, the kitchen and a box set of Friends before handsome other half whipped up a supper that left us belly rubbing full and ready to face the match. I'd love to take credit for any of these dishes but instead I flitted round the kitchen topping up our glasses and stealing tastes when he wasn't looking. 

Fresh cucumber with a good slug of olive oil and sliced mozzarella.  

Salty prosciutto with more mozzarella and homemade salsa and tzatziki.  

Baked eggs with a sprinkle of paprika - truly eggs-ellent for dipping. 

And the main event, freshly baked rosemary and tomato bread. Crusty on top but soft as a kitten inside. 

I whipped it all onto the table, lit a candle and filled my plate - promising to do my share of the washing up and nabbing the best pieces of ham at the same time. Now you'll find us both on the sofa, half watching the game and half eying the rabbits who always seem to be plotting another breakout attempt. Happy, full and wearing a vintage Germany football shirt to show willing. 

I hope you've all had just as lovely weekend, I'd love to hear all about them. 

173. Now you see me

I thought long and hard about how I could approach this post, it's been a long time and I knew that I could either tiptoe in to the back without any of you noticing or stand right at the front of the class and hold my hands up. Well, we all know stealth mode was never my strong point so here I am, hello again!

It's been a really busy few weeks and while I can't say it's been particularly life changing I suddenly have a wonderful eyebrow wax, several weekends a month with my boyfriend (never happens) and an actual online grocery ordering timetable. (Ok maybe it has been fairly life changing after all.) The truth is I've been feeling a whole lot of pressure to write here, and then the more I left it the more pressure I felt and then when I sat down to write this post well, you know where this is going.

I had started to feel so guilty for abandoning something I used to work so hard on and then couple of weeks ago I read a post where a blogger scattered her grandfather's ashes (including photos of said ashes), wedged in a link to (last season's) Gucci shoes and followed it up with a restaurant review. Jesus Christ, I mean I missed sharing with you guys but I think there's enough out there to more than make up for it. I decided that a few missed 'Sunday summaries' were not the end of the world, that sometimes it's better to leave things unsaid "Here's pops floating through Instagram filter Valencia" being one of them. 

I am going to be around again, I have a notebook full of post ideas and a scouts honour that I'll write. I'll speak to you soon, I've missed you.  

172. A place to call home

The worry started a few months ago, over dinner with my parents - the talk had turned to property and my mum had said "You should definitely think about buying before you're thirty."
At this point I turned to the wheelbarrow filled with imaginary £50 notes just to the side of me, oh I would think about it. Cushions in the bay window, the antique wooden floors and the claw foot bath would stay firmly in my thoughts. And just my thoughts.

Buy a house before I'm 30? I don't even buy loo roll until the litter box starts to look like the only option.

Without even realising it I have finally reached the age where being on the ladder matters, where a south facing garden and a 125 year leasehold trumps that new Celine every single time. (In case you were wondering I have the Celine, not the garden.) It's not entirely unreasonable to be buying at my age, I always thought that by now I would have.

I do have a small pot of inheritance to play with but I also have a tax bill that keeps me up at night and a sofa to replace that Bunny has well and truly destroyed. It's caused quite a panic if I'm honest, I probably should be thinking about getting a pension and owning a home and really I'm just concerned about even eyebrows and another glass of wine. I know people my age who have already bought (a person, ok I know a person) when I don't even have a duvet set that hasn't come out of Ikea. I still add cheese strings to the shopping list, I use face wipes to clean the sink, I am clearly not mature enough to manage a mortgage.

I was just beginning to think we'd nailed domestic bliss too, we have a beautiful flat, actual vases that we keep actual flowers in and designer towels in the bathroom. It crept up on me, this being an actual adult. Now you'll find me scrolling through another flat in the shitty street in the grottiest parts of London, disappointed because I don't own real estate there. Quarter life crisis? Potentially. Boyfriend says I need to stop worrying, that everyone rents these days and that we don't want to live in Croyden anyway but I now I just keep finding things in our current flat that irritate me. That wonky drawer and the plug that doesn't work, if I owned the place I would just tear them right out. Oh I'll be thinking about buying before 30, every time I have to orientate my way round yet another piece of mdf storage that the landlord couldn't possibly take out before I moved in. I sound a lot grouchier than I am, honestly I am a dream to live with normally and I do love our home. I just can't help feeling like I'm letting the side down, my parents are property developers and I was brought up with floor plans and wallpaper paste.

"Do you rent or do you own?" It's a lot of pressure. It's not airbrushed models giving us unrealistic expectations it's Escape To The Country repeats on BBC 2.

Regardless, in the last few weeks we've decided to move at the end of the year to an equally nice part of town with an equally decent Wholefoods and far fewer tourists than we have to battle through currently. We're going to make a home because isn't that just what's important? We'll be renting but we might just be saving too - and tearing plugs out of my very own wall might not be so far away after all.