I’m a homeowner now as you know, and my head is sometimes filled with homeowner things. Like houseplants, and where should they go, and am I watering too much or too little and WHAT ARE THESE GNATS THAT SEEM TO LIVE IN THE SOIL OF THE HOUSEPLANTS? It turns out that they don’t just seem to live in the soil, but actually do. Not just live in the soil but are thriving there, making some sort of massive breeding commune with the sole purpose to just fly out of the soil when we are trying to enjoy watching tv or reading the Sunday papers and head straight into our faces and around our eyes. They are mysteriously immune to the clap-kill. No amount of clapping makes any difference. They are maybe too small or too fast to get caught between our admittedly quite slow claps. But clap we do. Claps echo throughout the house. Slow claps. Useless claps.

So we went to the garden centre which I really hate doing because it makes me feel very trapped and very bored and we asked about the gnats and it turns out that we are using the wrong soil for the house plants. We had to buy houseplant soil and take out the gnat-riddled outside soil and replace with inside soil and in the doing of this of course we got really gnatted and tried to clap ourselves out of it but it didn’t work. Those fucking gnats won.

Then, for book club, we are reading Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs and the story begins in a church hall that is overwhelmed by gnats due to an orchid plant being brought in which happened to be hosting fungal gnats in the soil and I was like….this world is too much for me sometimes. Also the book does this funny but ever-so triggering thing of writing the word ‘gnat’ in normal words to kind of replicate the way gnats are just like THERE in your face when you least expect it. So, ‘dognating’ and ‘extermignation’. Funny, but also making me feel like clapping the air pointlessly, uselessly.

So, book club. We had this at my place in September and we got drunk and forgot to order food (well, forgot to get to the last ‘order now’ button on Deliveroo – it’s actually happened quite a few times to be fair) and everyone was really really hungry but a little too drunk to manage doing much about it so I just produced a whole lot of tomato-related snacks because we have an overwhelming amount of home grown tomatoes thanks to Mark’s amazing gardening because he, unlike me, likes the garden shop. He has produced a glut of tomatoes. Green ones and the beefy ones and small ones and rich ones and watery ones and he is still turning up at the back door every few days with a delicious overflowing bowl of tomato offerings for me to figure out what to do with. So far we have relied heavily on Bee Wilson’s ratatouille and of course everything Ottolenghi and Honey & Co-ish, and slow roasting with garlicky yoghurt and freshly sliced with mascapone and pomegranate molasses and sea salt. Tomatoes on toast. Fried with eggs. Frozen and grated over buffalo mozzarella. Stirred through pasta. Drained in a colander and saladed up with basil and fried pitta chunks, even.

Here we are at book club being hungry and also bleary-eyed. I am not sure this photo accurately demonstrates how desperately in need of food we were. Carby-food, rather than tomato-food:

Anyway. More on the house. We have recently inherited a huge old Persian rug which I am very much liking but wondering if it is just too Persian rug-ish. You know? Should we keep working with inherited things or should I sometimes grab the interior design steering wheel back and like, reroute to something more mid century? Also, who have I become to bather on like this?

A few shots with Persian rug and rest of house. Fast becoming a hoarder’s paradise, just like the last place:

We had some birthdays – Otis turned 13 and I turned 49. Mostly I feel fine about being that old, but I did spy these photographs of me taken at a work thing and I had to go lie down with a stiff gin. I mean look:

I mean, it’s not just the turkey neck but the slipping face and the FLUFFY HAIR! My hair man is this really cool guy who keeps making me go more and more 80s while my hair gets greyer and fluffier and thinner and sometimes I see it like this and I am like ‘I cannot ever leave the house again’.

Time to remedy with some actual nice/less face-slippy photos of me on my birthday holiday in Turin last weekend. Palate cleanse coming right up:

And, while in Turin, one must not only stop every 45 minutes for a negroni and crisps, but also go flea market shopping and take a solo trip to the vintage boutiques and buy things like these:

That blue middle number is indeed a blouson leather jacket which might well be the most difficult thing I have ever tried to pull off, but try I will. It also smells appallingly.

In other news

Two of my kids aren’t here right now – the biggest is back in Nottingham, the third is travelling through Kyrgyzstan with what seems to be a jolly bunch of gap year kids and antipodeans, the second kid is frequently off in Nottingham or Croydon. The only one regularly here is little Remi who keeps losing teeth. The house is feeling bigger, the huge meals I used to make go uneaten, the milk doesn’t get drunk, the washing routine no longer works, and I have to walk the dog again as chief dog walker is living his best life in central Asian hostels. It is a weird glimpse into empty-nesting and I don’t think I am going to like it.

There is scaffolding up because the outside is getting painted and so we haven’t had any filming done here in ages which kills me because I would really like to have some free money again. Mark keeps bringing home tiles for me to look at and he brought the curtain guy around and so there are changes afoot, but slowly slowly.

We have mice as well as the still occasional gnat.

I continue to remain employed.

Wegovy has given me a smaller silhouette.

We got the record player to work and now everyone has to listen to Chappell Roan on vinyl.

My real life is perhaps supposed to be just here, doing this: