Simple Goals & Late Summer Days

The idea for this post came from Dawn and her beautiful blog May All Seasons Be Sweet to Thee

which introduced me to Elsie at A Beautiful Mess

One of my favourite things about the blogging world is the people you meet, and the creativity that is unfolded in front of your eyes by these new talents. So inspiring. Elsie's initial idea was that we post 4 Simple Goals and try and achieve them by 2011...personal, life enhancing things...and reward ourselves when they are accomplished. It's a wonderful plan - one that really made me think. I need some new, small things to work towards, while I'm trying to achieve the big things too like writing my books! Here goes:

1. I want to create a really welcoming space in my writing room. At the moment, it's crowded & cluttered, a little dusty - to be honest,I sometimes have to force myself to go upstairs and start work, leaving the comfortable brightness of the rest of the house behind. The view is so wonderful - the church clock, trees, birds - that I really should organise the rest of the room accordingly. I need a new comfortable chair - perhaps with a cushion to rest in the small of my back - somewhere for flowers...it all needs a good overhaul.

2. Despite the fact (or maybe because of it?) that I've been a professional cook in some capacity for so many years, I find myself falling into the predictable trap of serving the same 5 or 6 meals most evenings - or variations on them, anyway. I need to break out of the rut, stop just reading all those cookbooks and start cooking from them. It's better at weekends for some reason, maybe because we often cook together and the days are more relaxed anyway.

3. I want to write more letters. Years ago, I was always communicating this way but the advent of e-mail and now Twitter has made everything so instant that the joy of receiving something wonderful in the post is getting lost. I'm very lucky that I've made some new friends - the Tweetettes as I call them - who seem to share my view on this (and so much else!) The delight when a card or handwritten note or small gift arrives makes me determined to return the favour more often....and treat some of my older friends & my family. Communication and thoughtfulness is so important to friendships. Another reason too. Yesterday I was looking through some old photographs when I found one of my grandfather, the last of my grandparents, who died almost 17 years ago...it was wrapped in a little letter he'd written me in shaky spider copperplate in 1992. The final words were: 'Keep smiling darling until I see you again, I love you, Grandad xxxx' Finding it again was like receiving a hug from him, all down those long years. Something that would never happen with an e-mail.

4.I want to try and find something new to do each week, something to break the little routines and habits that are so easy & seductive to human beings. Nothing spectacular: find a new place to walk with Alice, wear a different shade of lipstick, go & watch a movie that I don't expect to like, explore a new area of London. Live a life less ordinary. I have a horror of 'settling'...but I'm in danger of doing so. A happy life can be dangerous sometimes,if  it inhibits discovery and challenge.

So that's my four goals. Are you tempted to join me in finding your own?

The week has begun on a decidedly Autumnal note...warm, still, but the fading sepia mops of the hydrangea flowers are telling a story that can't be ignored. The season is changing, slowly but surely. My mother's little dog, Widget, died on Sunday.

a bossy little terrier with chocolate button eyes, saved from a nightmare life churning out litter after litter of puppies. In her 13 years at the farm, she changed from a scared,snappy little thing into a sweet natured companion with a personality much bigger than her small frame. She needed to go - a brain tumour was just too much, after a previous victorious battle against pancreatitis - but she's so missed by the whole family, especially my dad's dear Ivy, her devoted companion through most of her life. Run free, little girl. Every rabbit hole is now yours to explore until we see you again!

Have a happy week xox