Wonderful Wednesday 46

Hello and happy Wednesday to you. How have you been?! We begin today's broadcast with the sad news that unfortunately, I'm not able to put yoga on my list for the third week in a row because I hurt my back over the weekend - and not even in a triumphant yoga-based injury. I've actually got to the stage in my life when cold weather can make me pull a muscle :) Thank goodness for hot water bottles and cosy beds, and a sprinkling of the other highlights set out below...

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♥ Moments of kindness… With everything going on in the world at the moment, it can be so easy to despair of humanity and living in a city, particularly one as busy as London, it seems like rudeness, rushing and busyness just takes precedence. This is why looking for the good in a week makes such a difference because when you do stop and look, there are always snippets of happiness to be found.

My husband and I were in Norfolk at the weekend visiting his mum for her birthday. We had tickets booked for the 8pm train out of London on Friday and had treated ourselves to seats in first class because we’d booked the tickets a little way in advance. The guard stopped to chat to us after checking our tickets when a lady walked up to him looking very distressed - she had thought it was a train to Romford, not one making its merry way to Norwich. You hear such dreadful stories about those moments and being forced to pay expensive penalty fares on top of the fact that you’re already heading in the wrong direction, which adds an age to your journey. This man could not have been nicer to her – he helped her plan the route she needed to take to get her to her destination as quickly as possible from one of the timetabled stops and told her that she could stay sitting in first class until she got off the train. There was an old man sitting at a table-seat across the aisle from her and he insisted on fetching her a cup of tea from the buffet car too as she looked so upset. They were probably wondering why there was an eejit grinning in their general direction from a few rows back but still, it made me feel happy to see and I’m sure made a stressful situation infinitely better.

Back pain aside, the weekend was wonderful and it was lovely to escape London for a few days. A particular highlight was our Saturday morning brunch at Frank's Bar in Norwich - a cafe/bar on one of Norwich's cute little lanes. The food is always amazing and we stayed there for a few hours nursing hot drinks to begin with, ordering extra to give us an excuse to stay longer. I can wholeheartedly recommend the spicy edges with chipotle mayo, particularly on a chilly day!

♥ Birdwatching… I know I’ve mentioned my mother in law’s gorgeous garden on previous Wonderful Wednesdays. It’s not a riot of colour in January, unsurprisingly, as everything is cut back ready for spring, although there are daffodils beginning to pop up and snowdrops adding little glimmering patches of white if you look hard enough. But my mother in law has feeders full of seeds and nuts hung around the garden for the birds all year round and there’s something so calming about sitting beside the window with a steaming mug of tea, just watching them. There were blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons and bluetits, but the highlight of all highlights – a beautiful male pheasant strutting around the garden with his harem of wives, three of them!

♥ Radio silence… The Internet wasn’t working all weekend while we were away and, in deepest darkest Norfolk, there was no phone signal either (apart from when we popped into Norwich for a few hours on the Saturday). It was the oddest feeling and made me really notice how often I pick up my phone to mindlessly browse the Internet – Instagram usually! I don’t think I’d like it for a lengthy period of time but it made me focus more on whatever else I was doing at the time – watching a movie, reading a book or slowly working my way through my mother in law’s pile of Country Living magazines (bliss!)

Saturday morning brunch

♥ Pizza... Totally shamelessly including this because I'm munching it on Tuesday evening as I write this post. It's an excellent example of the gluten free genre (thank you Schar!) made slightly more exciting by the addition of olives, chillis and extra cheese. In fact, it was so delicious that I'm slightly jealous of past-me as I hit 'post' on Wednesday morning - cornflakes just aren't the same.

Short and sweet this week, and I'll be away with friends next week - they're arriving on Friday and I can't wait!

♥ Do let me know what's made your week a little rosier by leaving me a comment below or dropping me a tweet (I'm @happygoluckycat) or better yet, why not join the fabulous bunch of #WonderfulWednesday bloggers? Pop over to their blogs for a dose of mid-week happiness - Sally, Michelle, Helen, Kate, Jo, Sam, Kerri, Laura, Sarah, Peta, El, Laura, Mimmi, Martina, Lynsey, Katie and Em (I think that's everyone - shout at me if you're not on the list!) - and then join me in counting down the days until the weekend. It's in sight! ♥

Wonderful Wednesday 45

And just like that, Wednesday's here again! Somehow they seem to come around a lot quicker when you're noticing the good things in between!

This was a Sunday snap but is also remarkably similar to what's happening on Tuesday night as I put the finishing touches to my happy snippets. There has been notebook planning, a cup of tea or two and as soon as I finish this, I'm heading to bed with my new book - it's the first Dorothy Sayers book I've read and I'm loving it so far. I do love to cosy up with an old fashioned murder mystery. What are you reading at the moment? Let me know in the comments below, as well as what has been particularly delightful over the course of the last week. Mine are below! Happy Wednesday all :)

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♥ Snowdrops... I spotted my first snowdrops of the year on Saturday morning. Snowdrops were my Nanny's favourite flower and so every time I see them, I think of her and wonder if she's looking down on me. Saturday's were a particular highlight and I'm taking them as a good sign of things to come....not just the first sign of spring and slightly lighter mornings!

♥ Quiet Sundays... While I did my yoga on Sunday morning, my husband went for a run and came back with a newspaper, which we sat and enjoyed over a leisurely brunch and big mugs of coffee. The rest of the day was spent pottering at home, catching up on laundry and plans for the week to come, reading and blogging. It was so well-needed and I started the week feeling refreshed and on top of things (with an empty laundry basket - woo!)

♥ Trip planning... Two of my dearest friends are coming to stay at the end of the month and we've been excitedly trip planning for a little while now. As they've been to London on a few different occasions, we've decided to spend a few days of their visit in Brighton. We've booked an airbnb, which I'm really excited about as it looks like a lovely flat which we'll have all to ourselves in a good location, and we're currently looking at all the different things to do - mostly food-related because that's how we roll. How many afternoon teas in one short trip are too many? Asking for a friend.

♥ Daylight... It's happened! As we were walking to the station yesterday morning, I suddenly noticed that I could see a short way in front of me and the flashing collars on the dogs being walked ahead of us weren't the first sign of a dog in the distance. The mornings are officially a little brighter already - spring is on its way!

♥ Yoga... Can I really have this on my list twice in two weeks?! Well, it's my blog so I'm going to. This week's #YWAtrue has got quite a bit tougher but in return, so much more satisfying. Those 30 or so minutes that are truly all my own each day leave me feeling so positive and energised. It stretches away any hint of tension in my back and shoulders, and I feel ever so slightly taller each day.

♥ Do let me know what's made your week a little rosier by leaving me a comment below or dropping me a tweet (I'm @happygoluckycat) or better yet, why not join the fabulous bunch of #WonderfulWednesday bloggers? Pop over to their blogs for a dose of mid-week happiness - Sally, Michelle, Helen, Kate, Jo, Sam, Kerri, Laura, Sarah, Peta, El, Laura, Mimmi, Martina, Lynsey, Katie and Em (I think that's everyone - shout at me if you're not on the list!) - and then join me in counting down the days until the weekend. It's in sight! ♥

A poem.

I've never been someone who has really appreciated poetry. I remember liking some of the poetry we studied at school and enjoying some of the poems that my husband has shown me over the years we've been together but I've never felt the urge to pick up a poetry book and just lose myself in it, as I would with a novel.

But last weekend I was listening to Cerys Matthews' show on BBC 6 Music while I was getting ready to go out and she was talking to William Sieghart, who founded the Forward Poetry Prize. He said that people turn to poetry in times of need and often the challenge is finding the right poem for the right difficulty. This made perfect sense to me, that sometimes you discover things and they stay with you when you need them most. 

He then read out a poem which gripped me so completely that I forgot what I was doing for those few moments and just listened. 

It felt like the perfect poem to read at the beginning of a new year, with all its new adventures to come, because how dull would life be if you planned every moment and knew what was to come around every corner? I'm sharing it here because I thought you might like to read it too - who knows, perhaps this is the right poem for your difficulty too?

What If This Road by Sheenah Pugh

What if this road, that has held no surprises

these many years, decided not to go

home after all; what if it could turn

left or right with no more ado

than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin

were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,

that is shaken and rolled out, and takes

a new shape from the contours beneath?

And if it chose to lay itself down

in a new way; around a blind corner,

across hills you must climb without knowing

what’s on the other side; who would not hanker

to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know

a story’s end, or where a road will go?

Wonderful Wednesday 44

This was my post-yoga breakfast on Saturday morning and what a treat it was! The first Saturday morning of the year after the first week back at work - the sun was streaming through the windows and the radio was tuned to Huey Morgan on 6 Music. Now that's the way to start a day! Here are some more of this week's highlights...

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♥ A New Year's tidy... I'm not a person who tidies away Christmas as soon as the clock strikes midnight on 31st December. I need the cosy twinkling of the Christmas tree to ease me into the first few days of a new year and the first few days back in the office. By the time Friday evening came around though, the branches on our tree were drooping sadly and it felt like the right time to pack everything away. I feel as if the house hasn't looked this tidy in weeks, full of space and light (when it hasn't been blowing a gale outside), and I feel very happy and positive about the year ahead.

♥ Studio Ghibli season at the Prince Charles Cinema... Non-London folk, have you heard of the Prince Charles Cinema? It's a fantastic cinema in Leicester Square (usually an area to be avoided at all costs), which as well as showing some current releases mostly shows classic and cult movies. Fancy singing along to the Sound of Music or bitching along to Mean Girls? You can do that there! At the moment there's a Studio Ghibli season on and on Sunday we went to watch Nausicaa, which is one of my husband's favourites and it was wooonderful. Hoping for Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Whisper of the Heart, which holds a special place in my heart as it's the first manga I read entirely in Japanese! (Years ago, doubt I could do that now.)

♥ Yoga... As part of the whole, being a bit kinder to myself plan this year, I signed up to Yoga with Adriene's True 30 day yoga programme for January. I thought that it would encourage me to take some time for myself each day when I'm not doing something else at the same time or dwelling on things I should be doing. 8 days in and I'm absolutely loving it. I'm not going to lie, coming home from work on Monday evening and the thought of getting onto the mat before having dinner was almost too much to bear but I did it and felt so good for having done it. And at the weekend, when I did the day's routine first thing in the morning, I think I realised for the very first time why people actually enjoy exercise (ha!) and the happiness lasted all day. Sam, Kelly and I are cheering each other on on Twitter and I owe it to those ladies for keeping me motivated during the week. Is anyone else taking part?

♥ Veggie meal planning...My husband and I have talked about trying to cut down on the amount of meat we eat for a while now. We've slowly been working our way through the stockpile in the freezer over the last few weeks and when I ordered our food shop last night, it was entirely meat-free and we've lined up some new veggie recipes to try over the course of the weeks to come, which I'm really excited about. If you have any favourite vegetarian recipes, please send them this way.

♥ Friends on Netflix... Could I be any happier? I think it says a lot about today's day and age (or perhaps just me?!) that I'm excited about this despite already having the boxset on DVD but it's just so much easier to marathon-watch them on Netflix than to have to keep switching the discs over. Oh God, I've just read that back to myself. I'm so ashamed. Not really. How you doin'?

And just like that, a sprinkling of wonderful on this fine Wednesday. It's been a while but it's good to look for the snippets of light, particularly in dark January - when are the mornings going to get lighter again?!

♥ Do let me know what's made your week a little rosier by leaving me a comment below or dropping me a tweet (I'm @happygoluckycat) or better yet, why not join the fabulous bunch of #WonderfulWednesday bloggers? Pop over to their blogs for a dose of mid-week happiness - Sally, Michelle, Helen, Kate, Jo, Sam, Kerri, Laura, Sarah, Peta, El, Laura, Mimmi, Martina, Lynsey, Katie and Em (I think that's everyone - shout at me if you're not on the list!) - and then join me in counting down the days until the weekend. It's in sight! ♥

Hello 2018.

Hello hello and happy New Year to you!

It feels like forever since I last sat down at my computer, loaded up this page and tapped out a post...about 4 months ago. There was no sinister reason for my absence, or even an exciting one. It was just that little thing called life getting in the way as usual.

Over Christmas I stumbled across a link to Susannah Conway's Unravel your Year workbooks. I downloaded this year's and sat down on New Year's Eve to start working my way through it, unravelling 2017's highs and lows, and noting down my dreams and plans for the year to come. It's a really lovely idea and something I think I'll try to come back to year after year. It made me take some time to take stock and, what I think was most important for 2017, to look for the good times in a year that I've really struggled to see the good in. It has monthly reflection posts for 2018 too so I have no excuse not to check in and do the exercise on a smaller scale each month.

As I was completing my workbook and thinking back to January 2017, all those months ago, when I wrote this post about my chosen word for 2017 - 'balance' - I came to realise that despite my best intentions it's something that I'm just not very good at! When things get stressful (and 2017 really had its moments!), I often lose sight of what's important to me - the little important things that I need to keep me going and retain a sense of self. For a while there I couldn't even focus on reading and hello to the 4 months hiatus on this little space! In fact, looking back at last year's post, I said exactly the same thing at the end of 2016 (perhaps the lead-up to Christmas is particularly stressful?!) which in turn made me feel even more stressed because I hadn't achieved enough/done enough/ticked enough off my to do list. I think the quest for balance in my life is something that will take time and I don't think I'm alone in that.

It took me a while to decide what to choose for this year's word but I eventually landed on 'kindness' - kindness to others is something I think I'm ok at (right, people who know me in real life?!) although that's also not something to ever stop doing, but to be a bit kinder to myself and to try not to heap so much pressure on these shoulders. Practising self-kindness will involve reading, yoga, blogging, more adventures with my love and saying no more. As a dear dear (half Danish) friend said to me, "you need to find more time for hygge!" and that's particularly pertinent on this chilly January evening. So instead of listing 801 things that I should be doing tomorrow, I'm curled up by candlelight with a big mug of tea, a chocolate egg (because yes, they're already in the supermarkets!) and catching up on some of my favourite blogs. 2018's off to a good start.

What are your plans for the year ahead?