If you are visiting London and have even a passing interest in art you might like to hop on a bus, leap onto a skateboard or jump on a magic carpet and whizz on down to picture sellers Abbott and Holder. You will find Abbott and Holder in a charming four storey period townhouse in Bloomsbury a stone’s throw away from the British Museum.
London: Abbott and Holder
Coffee in London: Ottolenghi
Ottolenghi is by now a bit of a culinary cliché. I don’t mean that in any bad way – just that it has been so talked and written about that it seems as familiar as soft falling rain. In case you haven’t heard of it, the phenomena that is Ottolenghi is a set of four food shops in central London run by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The shops are in Islington, Belgravia, Notting Hill and Kensington; the Islington branch is also a full restaurant, the Belgravia and Notting Hill branches have small communal eating-in areas at the back of the shops and Kensington which is the smallest shop serves take-out food only.
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, London, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Favourite Things//Six
My magpie mind operates betimes in a strange fashion. An example: when I was thinking about writing this post about eggs, one of my favourite culinary ingredients, I recalled a line from an episode of a soap opera that I saw many years ago. It must have been around the time of a salmonella-in-eggs scare as one of the characters in the soap was bemoaning the temporary loss of what she described ‘as nature’s only convenience food’. How very right she was.
Filed under Musings
An Instagrammed August
Meteorologically speaking August was a wicked month: wickedly good and wickedly bad. The Irish weather flip-flopped in a way that would have shamed your average politician. Some days dark clouds scudded like missiles across the sky discharging their watery cargo hither and thither and on others the sun shone a bright sunflower-yellow in a clear blue sky.
Filed under Musings
Serenity
That preternaturally erudite philosopher, Winne the Pooh, who had such a sound understating of which exactly are the truly important decisions one has to make in life (example ‘What’s for breakfast?’) once said ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits’. So he may also have had a solid grasp of the different mental states at play between totally serenity i.e ‘just sitting’ and sitting and thinking where the brain can become so overloaded that it seems like a bonkers pinball machine as each new thought ratchets around tearing the mind in yet another and often diametrically opposed direction.
Filed under Musings
Tall Ships Festival
I am smitten by the sea and I especially love the way the ever-changing seascape reflects the annual onward inexorably march of the seasons. I also like looking at boats bobbing in the bay and if I am passing Dublin port enjoy spotting the cargo ships and cruise liners docked there. It was therefore a racing certainty that I would go to look at the tall ships which arrived in Dublin recently for the Tall Ships Festival (August 23 to August 26th).
Lucienne Day Tea Towel
I have a tea towel obsession. Yes, you read that correctly I did say a tea towel obsession. However, obsession may be a tad strong – let’s just say I have a thing about tea towels. I am not fascinated with the use of these small rectangular pieces of cloth, as I abhor drying dishes and I would sooner do without most of the other labour-saving devices in my kitchen ahead of that splendid washer and dryer-upper that is the modern-day dishwashing machine.
This and That
My apéritif of choice this weekend past was a glass of Vin d’ Orange. Now, I realize, that saying that might suggest I lead a charmed gilded-glitz sort of life gliding swan-like about the place wondering what on earth I will have as an apéritif on different days. Continue reading
Filed under Musings
American Grown by Michelle Obama
When I heard there was a new, well newish, book out called American Grown by Michelle Obama I was always going to buy it. Michelle Obama is one of my style icons and I much admire the work that she does through her Let’s Move campaign to combat childhood obesity in the USA.
Cambridge Lunch: Hôtel du Vin
The Hôtel du Vin on Cambridge’s Trumpington Street is a stone’s throw from the Fitzwilliam Museum and from the city’s many dizzingly magnificent college buildings. As you may know the Hôtel du Vin is a small boutique hotel chain with hotels in twelve other UK cities (Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Henley-on-Thames, Newcastle, Poole, Tunbridge Wells, Winchester and York)
Filed under Food/Wine, Hotels, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 