Angel Jem's City Cottage

It's my birthday, one of those big birthdays with a 0 at the end. At my last one, 10 years ago, I was teaching, a mother of three aged 10 and under and swept along on a wave of business and busy-ness. My life has altered so much since. I'm no longer teaching, but working as an Office Ninja. I have time to write, and miss it when I'm not writing (I'm between books at the moment, trying to do a proofreading qualification. I miss stringing my own words together, rather than marking up other people's words) so I have the plan in my head for the next book, just gently simmering away at the moment. I'm more confident. I won't take things quietly, and I'm inclined to speak out on the issues that I feel strongly about.  I'm the mother of three young adults. That gives me a degree of freedom and a level of concern that I haven't had for ages. I'm aware that I have lost a degree of control over their lives and decisions even as I have gained back ...

Whatever else you do today (hello! I'm writing this a day late on Thursday: better late than never) go and vote. I don't care who you vote for, just vote. And if there's nobody you want to vote for, go and spoil your ballot. Spoilt ballots get counted as well, and can be a form of protest. On to Wednesday Wind Up. I've had a bit of a slow wake up this week, I think I either have a water infection or a cold, I find it so hard to get out of bed and into work. Or perhaps the sunny mornings just make me wish occasionally I was still a SAHM. Oh, the things I could do with a few days at home now! Never mind, that's not my season. I work 9 to 4 most days, so that's what I do. What am I reading this week? I finished reading Gone Viking by Helen Russell. It was funny, and touching, and all the things I wanted it to be. A good happy read, so that was fun. I also finished Happy by Fearne Cotton. It was interesting: while I was reading it, I could hear Fearne...

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...

There are so many people eager to see the back of this year. I must admit, I am one of them. I just feel trapped under a large boulder at the moment. No one thing, but lots of little things, just getting to me, making me feel on edge, worried, stressed. And i don't do stress well. To the wind up. What am I reading this week? I am back on the Hardy again. It struck me that I only have this novel and then Tess and Jude the Obscure to read and I will be finished with the novels. So, The Woodlanders it is, almost exclusively until I am finished and then... well, probably some light romance or a good old murder for Christmas. What have I watched this week? I watched the first part of Rillington Place with Tim Roth playing Christie earlier this week. we have the last two parts saved up to watch, so later on this week may be a space to watch them. We also have the interview episode of the Apprentice on tomorrow. I love that episode, every year, because it lays the candida...

Last Saturday (Saturday last, to be formal) I attended the Lord Mayor's Parade. Don't get excited. I wasn't like a formal guest or anything, it was just that Peter had his course for becoming a Notary Public on in London and I was going with him to share the driving and freeload, and it was on. I've watched the Lord Mayor's Parade on TV since I was little. It used to be one of my favourite moments of the year, a little like Children In Need it was a signpost that Christmas was coming because... duh.. November leads to December. So it has always had positive associations for me. I didn't look to see if it was on TV this year. It always used to be, cutting Swap Shop or Saturday Morning Superstore short, and cutting to endless shots of drizzling weather and crowds who waved flags and shouted (posh Londoners) Huzzah! And the parade of floats and bands and people walking along. I love pageantry and pomp and circumstance, so when I knew it was on the Saturd...

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...

Oh, if only I could sit and watch the coverage of the US election all night long. I have a friend who lectures on American Studies and she has the perfect excuse to sign off work tomorrow and sit up through the night. It's professional interest. My interest is far more personal and a lot less extrinsic. I just think the US election is such a big thing for the world... after all, the USA is the Top Dog of the Western world at the moment, biggest in size, in self-belief, in bombast... and I like the place! Who ever gets to be POTUS and leader of the Free World is inheriting a world full of woe and sorrow. From what I've seen, if they jump one way we get a leader who will roll up the sleeves, look forward and get to work to build a world that benefits the US but also helps her allies to climb up the ladder as well. Jump the other way and.... well, the Mexico Wall may not be the only barrier built between America and the world, just the most physical one. It woul...

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...

Truthfully, I can watch this movie all year round. I know it's supposed to be a Christmas movie and I know I've probably written about it before on the blog, but I've never done it for Film on Friday and I needed a soft, cosy, warm, cuddling movie this week... yes, you guessed it, I was searching for movie hygge. I can't believe that The Holiday was released in 2006! That makes it 10 years old, crazy! I do watch it every year at least once, probably more often, but it wasn't until recently that I introduced my daughter to it. She had managed to always be at school somehow when I watched it before... back in the days when I could stick a film on in the middle of the day, do my housework while watching it and be finished in time for the happy ending and cookie making before the kids rolled up. Happy days, eh? The Holiday was written and directed by Nancy Meyers , who also directed The Intern, Something's Gotta Give and The Parent Trap.  It's a li...

Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks are two of my favourite actors, and for almost the same reason. They're both ordinary people, and give off the feeling that if you met them in real life they'd be very nice (indeed, Tom Hanks gatecrashed a lady's wedding photos in Central Park while running; he stopped, wished the couple well, asked them their names and had lovely words to say, then posed as they had their official photograph with him before.... and this is the beautifully Him thing.... pulling out his own camera and asking, "Can I have a selfie with you folks? My wife won't believe this!") They also don't over act. They know how to do nuanced, measured performances using every part of their face. And that ability gets used and used well in Bridge of Spies . With Mark Rylance as a Russian spy, Rudolf Abel and Tom Hanks as the civilian American lawyer James B Donovan who is drafted in to act as an independent emissary to negotiate the release of Gary Powers...

Fine, thanks. I had a bit of a busy day on Saturday, racing off to collect a daughter from Badminton (the game, not the place; I'm not that rich, you know?) before going to buy some clothes (for Her) from Asda, have an argument in the doorway because she'd lost the receipt and I thought we were going to be accused of shoplifting, before taking Medium Hairy One to the barbers, where he had about half of what I would have said to cut off cut, and then off to visit Ma who was cooking us tea. I hate watching my parents cook. It's one of the most stressful experiences, especially when my Mum limps in with a hot dish in one hand and the cane she is leaning on in the other. It's just simpler, easier and a lot less stressful to have them over to ours. And Strictly!!!! The one shining moment on a busy Saturday. We watched Strictly with our mouths agog to see what Judge or Ed or Louise would come up with. Are you watching Strictly again this year? We've completely lost...

This weekend Mr Angel Jem (OK, Peter of Peter Kneale Solicitor . Let's not pretend anymore) had a day's training to do in London of all places. Would I like to go to? It would mean I was all alone.... in London... all Saturday. Would I like to go???? I don't think I have said YES!! quite as quickly or enthusiastically as since he proposed, and I'm ashamed to say I may have been a little more emphatic about it. I was absolutely happy about the idea of a day alone in London anyway since my little jaunt for The Chase last June which I very naughtily never blogged about! I was quite happy with the idea of just sauntering around and watching the world when I found out that The Handmade Fair was on just the weekend I was there. I like Kirstie Allsopp anyway. Her programmes are fun to watch, and what she can do with a junk pile is nobody's business. I signed up, dressed up and went. On the advice of my husband, I wore a summer dress. Big mistake. Although on the...

Golly! I haven't had a regular system (again!) for ages. Work, it's the bane of the working classes. Anyhoo, I'm working in an office with a computer and plenty of time between clients to be able to spend some time doing stuff for me. I'm only paid part time at the moment and working full time, so we came to an agreement; rather than me feel ill used, I could work on a side hustle. Don't worry, Angel Jem's City Cottage is not my side hustle, but my retreat. My side hustle is or will be a new blog called How to Hygge The British Way . It'll be a more polished, monetised, affiliate linked blog when it's up and running; and it's specifically about trying to get a lot more hygge and Danish style living into my life. I know I like a lot of Danish things and I may be the only person who looks at the 10th circle of hell that is Ikea with pleasure, so why not spend a year of my life living Danishly... in Britain. Is it possible? Can we really hygge the life...

Has anybody else been addicted to the Olympics? I remember when I was a student and the Olympics were in Seoul that I adjusted my body clock and got up to watch the events I most liked. Back then I loved the Decathlon ( Daley Thompson <3), the showjumping and the 1,500m. I don't remember being as enamoured of the cycling, the Triathlon and the shooting. I watched what was on BBC and made do with just a shout out for events that, in all honesty, would be the ones I'd love to take part in like the pistol shooting or air rifle. And the trap shooting I love now! But then, thinking back, the coverage wasn't as wall to wall and available as it now is. This time if I had a random event that I fastened onto and wanted to watch, the BBC sport app made that possible. Trap shooting? No probs; you could watch Tim Kneale (how I love that we share a surname!) slog it out with Steven Scott online , or watch the highlights on your phone, or any one of a dozen ways to find out how w...

On time for once! What am I reading this week? Claire Tomalin's biography of Hardy. In small bits. And to go with that, The Hand of Ethelberta. It's a lesser-known Hardy, probably because it's not his rural idyll style, but a comedy of manners about a young girl who, having been a governess and married to the son of the house before being widowed and taken care of by her Mother in Law, finds herself without an obvious means of support and has to live with her natural family in a London town house, with her family acting as her servants while she tells stories and decides which titled character she might marry. I am enjoying it; there are some humorous moments. What have I watched this week? Game of Thrones series 1. We only watch this when Mr K is out of the house, because the blood and guts don't suit him (and the sex is very in your face as well. I don't want to go giving him ideas if I can help it). Tonight he's out at a meeting, so we may we...