Angel Jem's City Cottage

Wednesday is usually a good day in the office. I get in early, after dropping David off at the station at 8 for University at 9.30. I can clean, run backup, get the first cup of tea in and be writing at my desk, all before 9am. I leave by 4, to tutor a child, so the day is even a shorter day than usual. I think my early morning quiet session will be a good time to do my weekly round up. So here I am, only a week later than I thought! What am I reading this week? I had to mostly read Reservoir 13 for bookclub on Monday. It did not go well. I know it's won all sorts of awards and been raved about by people,had prequels on Radio 4 and all the things that meant I should have liked it.... but I just didn't. I don't know whether part of that was I was reading in very short bursts and often late at night in an incredibly busy few weeks, or because the style is deliberately disjointed, with no identifiable main character. I didn'y have sympathy for any of teh character...

Wednesday Wind Up :  How glad am I that I started these posts, a couple of years ago? I have been rereading some old ones and it's such an easy way to keep tabs on life. I'd forgotten buying a watch for playground duty (that watch, like the rest, didn't last). Or how many books I used to read. Any how, I'm back, and this time it's personal. As in, this is my personal blog, my online diary. I'm still hyggering away with How To Hygge The British Way, but that's not a family blog. I can't share things at a whim, I find it more of a thinking space than a chatting place. I need both. I have missed you all, and after I posted on Monday I had two beautiful replies saying welcome back. Thank you. I have been to the Emerald City, and it was all very well, but there's no place like Home. So my plan is, even if only on a Wednesday or Thursday for the Wind Up, to post regularly over here. Just for me. I don't expect people to follow or comment, a...

It's been so long since I posted a wind up!! I can hardly remember the categories. I'll make them up for today. Reading I'm reading ... well, nothing in particular. I was supposed to read Ben Elton's Two Brothers for Book Club on Monday, but I missed it due to the funeral and didn't have to admit that I hadn't actually finished it. I like it so far. Next month's book is The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. Fortunately I read that a few years ago, and it's short, so I might just quickly read it and then finish the other one. Making Apart from a mess, I'm still supposed to be making the hygge shawls from the Scheepjes CAL this year. Time in the evenings seems to have been at a premium, so my CAL sits in a corner, unloved, unwanted and undone. This weekend, I promise, I'll get my mojo back and go for it hell for leather. If I could just catch up with the embroidery part.... Watching On TV we're still watching Game of Throne...

No, not a real baby, of course, but a book baby. I've been absent for the past few weeks because I've been incubating a little project all of my own. It's quite time intensive, this writing business and, I have to say, I think Virginia Woolf had an easy time of it with no children, no guinea pigs and no full time work to get in the way.It took me at least a week to get the first page written, and a few good weeks after that to finish the whole book. Can I introduce you to 50 Ways to Hygge the British Way ? It's a hygge book, of course, but one written specifically from a British rather than a Danish point of view. A book for the hygge-lover who has read Meik Wiking's Little Book of Hygge or Bronte Aurell's Essence of Hygge , loved the idea and is now sitting thinking "Well, that's all very well, but how do I hygge in the UK? We don't have short hours, a good work/life balance or decent Danish pastries in my home town." You know, when...

Bet you never thought I'd make it this week and on a Wednesday? True enough, my Hygge job is taking off. We have a Facebook group, The Hygge Nook , of around 192 members that keeps me busy finding the bits & bobs to post and administering the applications. It's a lovely place, very hyggelig, full of positive and happiness. Just the post-Trump comfort we need. And physical work is fun as well. I write this at my desk, as Mr AJ is out to see a client and the phone lies silent for the moment. I'm enjoying being an Office Ninja, but I have to say I miss my time at home. I don't get a chance just to sit and be. And I was always a great human just being. Then the Big Festival is rearing its head. I am simultaneously full of anticipation and horror at the closeness. Anticipation because I know it will soon be here!!!! (39 days as I write) and horror because my to do list is a page and a half (no, make that two pages long) and my bank balance  is probably not going to...

This is my desktop at work.... no, not the one on the computer, although it could quite well have been, but my real desktop at work. The teapot and cup are from the charity shop, and are marked Royal Spencers, so I don't know where you'd get one. The tea is Spiced Orange from Hoogly Tea and is gorgeous, beautiful light and delicately spiced orange flavoured herbal infusion. I'll link to it, I promise I will. I want you to look beyond, to look behind. Can you see the golden box flickering in the sunlight? See the delicate wisps of tissue sticking out? How I wish we had smelly vision. I would offer it to you to rest your delicate nasal passages along and hear to say, " Mulled wine scented tissues ? Who on Earth thought up those? And who would buy them?" That second question is, alas, redundant. I would. And they do mulled wine scented toilet paper with pretty gold Christmas pattern on as well. I'm going back after payday. Indeed. My payday treat th...

Here's a round up of all my hygge page posts from last week. Please, do, click through and say hiya. I'm finding Wordpress an interesting use, but I'm not as confident about it as I'd like to me. Any and all visitors warmly welcomed in a very hyggely way! Just click on the quotes to go through to the page! Hygge words are cracking to play with. You basically take a concept and add hygge to the front or the back of it; so enjoying shopping is hyggeshopping, time with the family is familyhygge and a list of hygge words is a hyggelist. October 4th is Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden. I baked buns to celebrate, and this was my post the night before. My year of living hyggely officially began on October 4th, with the inaugural Recipe Tuesday as well. A recipe for... guess what?.... cinnamon buns. Contentment at the core... I love this quote. It was a look at whether Hygge is Mindfulness in a Danish wrapper. My book review of Scandinavian Kitchen'...

Oh my Gosh! It feels like I haven't posted a wind up for ages! My little City Cottage is in need of an Autumn tidy up and a clear out of ideas and attitudes. After all, this is where my friends are, not my followers. Here's my wind up; What am I reading this week? I'm reading every hygge book going; I have about 7 so far and another one on order for the end of October. The more I read, the more I like and the more convinced I am that hygge is what we do naturally; that all I need to do as a Hygge Ambassador is send people your way; all the homemaking, caring, crafting, living that you do and share on the interweb; that's hygge. Apart from a mass of Hygge books, I read This House is Haunted by John Boyne. It's a good old-fashioned ghost story in the tradition of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black or Henry James' Turn of the Screw . Eliza Caine loses her Father and takes a job on impulse at a deserted house in Norfolk. You could have told her it wasn...

I can't believe how far behind in Christmas shopping I feel this year! Normally by now I have lists ready and I'm well underway. I think part of the problem is that I haven't been able to get a sensible word from the Lads about what they want, and I am just not prepared to have a go at guessing myself. That, and the money flow is not the best. We are doing well, thank you, but working for oneself as a business, especially one like solicitor, means that you never know whether this month is a feast or a famine. I thought I would be giving up tutoring, but I still need to keep it up for the next year at least, if only to pay for Christmas. Having a small amount of cash every week just gives me the freedom to know that I will have x amount to spend on y day. It helps. Like Tesco says... every little helps. But this weekend I finally sat down, notebook and Evernote to hand, and planned the shopping. I still have no idea what the lads want, but they'll have to mak...