What It's Like to Rent an Old Country House in Britain
Where I grew up, an old house meant felt overshoes and a guide leading you from room to room. In Britain you can rent the whole thing for a week, key and all. This is what it is really like.
What to Do With a Cold Saturday
It is a Saturday in November, it has been raining since Thursday, and somebody has just said it would be good to get out. What happens next is the same in a great many houses, and it runs to a fixed order.
Your Christmas Tree Is Not Supposed to Match
A box comes down from the loft and the first thing out of it is a salt-dough star made by a child who is now twenty-four. Every British Christmas tree is an archive rather than a design, and this is what ends up in it.
Holiday Cottages with a Proper Fire, and How to Tell
Every holiday cottage listing has a photograph of a fire in it, already going, glass clean, third log. Reading it properly is the difference between a warm week in February and a memorable disappointment.
How to Read a Cottage Listing
Eleven tabs open in January and every cottage has started to look like the same cottage. What the photographs are not telling you, and how to read them properly.
The Rain Reader's Kit
There's a particular kind of rain that arrives around two on a Saturday afternoon with no plans to leave. Not a shower passing through. The settled, steady sort. The garden goes silver, the windows start to drum and every plan involving shoes quietly dissolves. This is not bad
Jane Austen Gifts That Aren’t Another Copy of Pride and Prejudice
Some links here are affiliate links. Your friend has read Pride and Prejudice eleven times. She remembers where she was each time she read it, she has opinions about every adaptation and she owns enough copies that one more would only start an argument with the bookshelf. So the best
Sunday Afternoon, Properly Done
There is a point on a Sunday, about half past two, when the house sits back. Four hours with nothing in them: the British Sunday afternoon, done properly.
A Love Letter to the Teapot
There are two ways of being given tea in this country. A love letter to the pot that upgrades the visit.
The Autumn Garden, Sat In
All summer the garden issues instructions. Then, somewhere around now, they stop. The best season is the one you sit in.
A Better Class of Tea Gift
Somewhere in every British house there is a tea tin that has not held tea since the nineties. You are really giving the tin.
A Love Letter to the Muck Boot Chore
There is a boot by the back door that has never once been put away. A love letter to the Muck Boot Chore.