bits and bants vol. 11

the best of British country houses to relieve your stress

Still May. Still crazy. And again, my life is not crazy. I very intentionally eschew most activities and yet May still becomes busy. I am very much tittering at the edge of losing it/throwing my hands up in the air and declaring school done forever. I can feel that creeping homeschool burnout. I find myself daydreaming of an empty hotel room where no one asks me any questions. I am grumpy and a lot of fun to be around. My poor kids.

I’m still planting in the hour or two a day I can find some time, and I still have made very little progress! The weather report around here this week included +30 degree days and -2 degree nights so basically zero plants are happy and I’m annoyed by every variation. The tulips are up and the daffs keep pumping, so basically my remaining sanity is thanks to them.

bits:

• This piece from The Guardian felt so much like In This House of Brede! I so appreciate that some investigative journalism still involves trying out a convent. Some things never change.

• As someone who has basically live their entire life in the country I find people who live in the city so far removed from nature that it sorta shocks me. Please, please, garden. Grow something! Please, please, please. This post says all that much better.

• In English country house design news: I am now committing my next house to be done in celadons and raspberries and flounced bedskirts. I basically think this Cotswold house is perfect.

• In crazier English country house news the house where Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice was recently back on the market and for an easy, breezy 8.5 million pounds. It’s the wisteria tunnel for me. And the kitchen. And the formal gardens. And the view…

• The history of blogging and content creation is something I find fascinating and I was genuinely saddened to hear of Heather Armstrong’s death because I vividly remember reading her posts back in the aughts. But over the course of however million of years it’s been since blogging was in it’s infancy I’ve seen so many weird and destructive things it does to people that unfortunately her story doesn’t seem shocking. I thought this was a good piece on the whole thing.

reading, watching, what have you:

• Remember when I was listening to the first Granchester book? I finished it and was infuriated and needed to read some Father Brown stories to regain my calm.

• Been watching the latest season of The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and although the experience of watching it is so pleasurable, as soon as I stop to think about any aspect of the actual storyline or character development I am blown over with how little sense it makes. I can’t even go into how many storylines this season just abandons. Or how everything that’s happening has already happened at least three times in the show already. But the dialogue, the costumes, the set design, and spotting Gilmore Girls actors makes it all worth it. If Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel don’t have walk on appearances at some point I will be outraged! They could even walk through a scene in the background like Alfred Hitchcock!

And that’s all I’ve got because I need to pull myself together and be out of here for the rest of the day in the next 20 minutes! Hope you all have a great long weekend! That’s right because it’s VICTORIA DAY WEEKEND, where we celebrate the longest reigning queen of the nineteenth century and I will hang out my Union Jack bunting again!

• Christy