Five Highlights From February

There’s something really quite satisfying about the first day of March being a bright and sunny one. Gary noticed this morning that some purple flowers and a daffodil have suddenly popped up in our very-poorly-tended-to garden. Ello ello Spring; is that you babes?

Here’s some highlights from the last month of Winter: 

Kitchen – it’s finally happened! The first week of Feb, the builders descended, our kitchen was completely ripped out and, six days later, we had a shiny new one to replace it. The room looks completely different and it’s made such a difference to how we feel about doing up the house; suddenly it seems there’s not that much left to do! More details on the renovation coming soon. 

Birthday – And that’s 28 years. My birthday was pretty chill; we went for a walk at a beautiful National Trust place nearby (just to truly cement that my early twenties have been and gone), went to the cinema (1917; what a film) and baked these incredible cookies. All in all, a good’un. 

Best man – not only has a fourth wedding been added to the calendar for this summer, my oldest and best pal has asked me to be his best ‘man’. No you cried. What a bloody joy. Stag do and speech prep already in full swing! 

A staycation in London – we’ve had tickets to see Bear’s Den at the Hammersmith Apollo in the diary for ages and, as we wouldn’t have made the last train home, we decided to turn it into a mini staycation in London. We stayed at The Hoxton in Shoreditch which I have wanted to do for a really long time. It’s just as cute as the Instagram pictures make out and the food in their restaurant was good, particularly the padron peppers (I’m a sucker for padron peppers). We had brunch at Clerkenwell Grind the next morning which I would highly recommend (both for food and aesthetics), a nose around Shoreditch and a bit of cute café hopping. It was great to soak it all in without an agenda or schedule.  

Reading – I sense this year is going to have a bit of a theme of me being excited to get back into things that were neglected in the madness of 2019, and reading is definitely one of them. Time really was in short supply last year and it’s been so lovely to be back into my usual habit of reading a couple of books a week. I’d forgotten how much it calms me and keeps me sane. At this rate, I may actually get through my to-read pile which I’m not sure has happened since about 2009.