Beyond a lunch reservation, we’d made no plans the whole weekend. Barely knew where we were staying, really, beyond “Sussex”. And this, I think, was why it was so relaxing: the four of us had met a year earlier in the structured setting of antenatal classes. Since then our lives had become both more chaotic and more ordered. Sleep and feeding routines - or not. Naps and pick-ups and drop-offs and little meals and pumping and making endless tiny decisions in every waking hour (which had increased, dramatically and erratically) to try and make some sense of the absence of it, in the small bodies we had made and now carried around in our arms. All we’d registered was the date in a diary and a postcode to be looked at later. And so we got in the car with the giddiness of a road trip and the nervous taste of childfree freedom with no plans apart from not to make any.

We woke up earlier than we wanted but we stayed in bed, quietly. I laid out napkins and put the breakfast things on white scalloped crockery, simply because I wanted things to look nice, knowing that they would stay that way. I made fires and we sat by them and stayed up later than we’d anticipated talking. We found antiques shops and National Trust properties and sprayed mud up our ankles in the woods.

The house we stayed in was named after its diminutive size, but there was so much room here. I later joked that it’s amazing how efficiently four mothers of toddlers could feed and clean up after a household; but it was more than this. Space and quiet, as much to think as to occupy with our words. I opened the windows to let in the birdsong and the crisp late winter air. I sat on a sofa, printed with auriculas, and watched the sky blush into the day.

(The four of us were given a weekend’s stay at The Little House with Kip Hideaways. I heartily recommend it for a restful getaway).

More good things this month:

tasty morsels

banning phone

We were on the train back from Edinburgh, recording the Why Women Grow podcast, when I told my producer that February looked chill, actually. This is now laughable to me, writing my newsletter a day late on a Saturday morning with stolen time. It has been a month of small adventures, late night emails, work overwhelm and domino deadlines. Last week I started to leave my phone in the house when I went to The Hut to work and it felt like something popped: suddenly I had focus. Suddenly I could lean into and engage with my work, rather than seeing it as a mass of things to do.

chip baby no nap

I’m one of those mothers that has always been neurotic about napping, and for the most part it’s worked for my routine-happy little brain very well. At the start of the month, though, the planned pram-nap-during-birthday-lunch went awry; the toddler was woken up before we’d even had starters delivered. And so he sat on M’s lap and worked his way through my chips and it was lovely, actually. A valuable lesson for me in making the most of things going awry.

first book launch

Back to Daunt’s Marylebone (one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world, surely) for the first book launch of the year: that of Pollyanna Wilkinson’s instant Number Three Sunday Times Bestseller, How to Design a Garden. The place was rammed with horticultural types and the sense that nobody had been let out for a month. A sort of jolly wintery Chelsea Flower Show. This week I chaired Pol’s Dulwich event and there is no other designer who will respond to the pragmatism of a garden in quite the same way. You can buy the book here.

colleagues of sorts

Hut Life (working from a shed in my garden, alone, for my own tiny business) is, in many ways, the introverted, creative existence I never needed. But I am, nevertheless, a massive extrovert. Goblin-mode sets in quickly, and is accompanied by work obsession. The cure, then, is to go for walks and coffees and brunches that may or may not involve tarot readings, often with women that I don’t know that well but do similar weird jobs and offer useful insights on them. There have been good weeks of these - some of which have simply been a phone call version of the chat you might have once had around a water cooler - and bad weeks without them. File under: making new friends.

bus toddler singalong

As I wrote recently for a forthcoming commission about the chorus of motherhood, I sing a lot on the bus to keep my child vaguely polite in public. Flailing toddler, or an adult woman quietly singing nursery rhymes: that is the choice. On one particularly manky, overtired, bus-stop-tea rainy day, we were joined in the buggy bit of the bus by another, older child, who joined my solo singalong and, in the best way, actively took over it. Rare, unexpected delight.

light at 5pm

I knew it was coming, but still: isn’t it marvellous?

to read

what professional organizers know about our lives

I’m fairly sure I read this before February but during one of the aforementioned sanity coffees a friend brought it up and it reminded me of how great it is. I promise it won’t make you feel bad for not decluttering.

happy all the time

It’s been a good month for books, all told, but quite a lot of fairly heavy non-fiction. Laurie Colwin’s Happy All The Time couldn’t have been a better palette-cleanser. Fun, irreverent, basted in 1970s Manhattan chic and wit, it was recommended by an editor who I trust on all matters literary, sartorial and epicurean and provided all three. I intend to spend at least one season this year only reading Colwin.

to watch and listen to

the why women grow podcast

We launched a new season this week! It was all about the underrated mysterious and magical world beneath our feet! We hit Top 5 in the Apple lifestyle charts! You can download it here, and you can read about its creation here.

big boys

Jack Rooke’s gorgeous, chompable autobiographical comedy is no stranger to savour but I devoured the final season this week and it has left me with all the feels. Watch here.

to eat and drink

olive oil ice cream

Once a year my siblings and I go for lunch, without our parents, partners or kids. This year we wangled a lunch booking at Oma, the modern Greek restaurant in London Bridge, and then felt equally smug and bereft when it won a Michelin star 48 hours later: I will now never be able to return; it was hard enough to get a booking as it was and the prices will be hiked up. Nevertheless, we ordered the olive oil ice cream, which was dusted with fennel pollen and carried a little well of olive oil and my god I’ll think about that pudding for a long time.

blood oranges

‘tis the season. I craved them during my pregnancy and now I find little bite marks in their skin.

last week on savour

library

Alice Vincent · Feb 21

Surprise! Some helpful posts I thought decided some time in the scant February sun we enjoyed a little of this week. savour members get full access to my archive, which contains some 300 (!) essays, lists and other things, but I appreciate that it’s not always easy to go wading through it. So, a digest for you. Happy Friday!

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