June 2026

I don’t know if it’s a time in life (a big birthday fast approaches) or if it’s a time in the year (season of mellow wistfulness?) but I have found so many inspiring things and people close to home, or close to my emotional home.

Henry Ayling’s beautiful gig at the village church in nearby Easton. Henry, a school friend of my eldest, was always the brilliantly musical kid; the one who would bash out perfect Beatles numbers on our clapped out piano and we’d think Paul McCartney had just popped round for a little noodle. This adult version of Henry is a fully fledged, sublime acoustic guitarist, playing his own songs and classics from the folk repertoire on a clear Spring night with an audience made up of friends, familiar kids all grown up (which always makes me feel hopeful and cheered) and enthusiastic well wishers. Just magical. Catch him if you can.

Other nostalgic highlights have included the exhibition of Paula Rego drawings at the Victoria Miro gallery. The gallery is extraordinary, tucked around the back of Old Street in a beautifully designed, and vast, purpose built space. The drawings are quite wonderful (a sort of mix of Daumier and Ardizzone if that doesn’t sound too flippant, because Rego is most definitely not flippant) and the curation includes lots of previously unseen work from the family’s collection. Paula Rego’s son, a film maker called Nick Willing, was my first crush when I was 11 so there’s the nostalgia.

I hope this isn’t beginning to sound too sentimental but I’ve started to reread novels. This month’s project was Middlemarch, the actual copy I had for A level English with my hilariously unperceptive notes in the margins and the pages, much thumbed, barely clinging to the cover. I had completely forgotten, or completely failed to appreciate, how brilliant this novel is. 17 year old me focussed on Dorothea’s love story but grown up me is more interested in all the other characters and how cleverly and truthfully they are rendered. It’s very long. But it’s very worth it!

Once upon a time I loved a band called Hüsker Dü. Then I loved the lead singer Bob Mould (think this is his actual name and not a punk rock moniker) and then I loved his next band Sugar and Sugar were playing at the Forum in Kentish Town (what I call the T&C) a few weeks ago. It was the single loudest gig I have ever experienced. It was almost torture. But in amongst the decibels was ‘Hoover Dam’ which is one of my all time favourite songs and, in amongst the decibels, was a lovely melody and a voice shrieking from the past.

A trip to Suffolk to stay at my lovely sister’s lovely house near Bury: the sister of the brilliant eyes, the insatiable Ebay habit and the marvellous cut paper projects. This is the home I covet. It’s so very nearly a house I could create myself if I were just a bit better at finding things of wonder in junk shops and car boot sales. Her house makes my heart sing.

And a brilliant retreat day at my other lovely sister’s Dorset studio: the sister who retrained as a yoga teacher and has absolutely found her calling. This was a day of exercise, delicious food, guided meditation (which I call guided sleep as I find it impossible not to drift off) and chit chatting in the sauna.