Some happy advice for the weekend

Found via Black Eiffel

xxx elle

Flowers for Mr Nielson!

Mr Nielson is taking me to Jhb to share in a friends happy celebrations. Mr Nielson is going to wine and dine me, and treat me like we have only just met. This is what couples who have been married for thirty years need to do!

Treat each other, as if it's all brand new.

Treat each other, as if you fancy the other like crazy.

You do, after all, it's why you got married in the first place...

If I could, I would buy Mr Nielson a beautiful bouquet, just like this one made of begonia's in front of The Grand Palace in Brussels.

Here's to you, Mr Nielson!

xxx elle

On the road again

As a little girl, one of my favourite daydreams was designing a truck house.

I would do endless sketches in my mind of its capacious interior. There seemed to me at that age, to be no greater earthly treasure, then the idea of a small house on wheels that would take you wherever you needed to go.

It seemed like a very sensible plan; to take a nice big, roomy 'lorry', put in a pair of lovely windows, a pair of barn-like doors, some retractable steps and start decorating!

Mr Nielson better known as Sid, did give me a taste of my childhood dream by taking me to the transkei one summer in a camper van, but it was a very pale version of my family lorry!

I can't help loving these romantic homes on wheels, although these two look a little too rustic, to be parked anywhere but the bottom of the garden.

xxx elle

Of goats and other edibles

For almost twenty three years Mr Nielson better known as Sid, and I were vegetarians. We ate no animals. Not even an egg passed our saintly mouths, although we did partake of dairy products, despite understanding their contributory place in the great meat industry.

Then change came. Mr Nielson found himself 'ayearning' for a manly meal. He struggled with this new need, consulting friendly experts, and expertly friends and even his neighbourhood rabbi.

Eventually one mild summer's day Mr Nielson better known as Sid, settled himself down on a park bench, and like a well heeled vagrant he feasted on a succulent chicken, courtesy of Nando's.

The Rabbi would not have liked Mr Nielson's choice of an unkosher bird, but he did approve of the need and apparently biblical right to eat it.

The rest of the family fell like nine-pins and soon all of the family, even our son Steele ( vegetarian from birth ) was enthusiastically omnivorous.

Still, it did not sit well with me. I have always known that at some time, I would need to return to that state of grace.

I have just started reading Jonathan Saffran Foer's 'Eating Animals'. Luckily for the cows, sheep and chickens that would come a cropper on my plate, that time has come!

Don't you just love these goat paintings!

xxx elle

All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey...

Driving along the Eastern Boulevard today, I looked back at the autumn leaves swept up by wind and momentum behind my car.

They seemed alive to me, like fragile butterflies playing on the asphalt. I felt my whole being brace itself ; feeling my own aliveness in the bridal train of earthy leaf, fluttering in the early morning light.


Everyday somewhere, there is something beautiful hoping even in its ordinariness to be seen, and loved, and honoured...

xxx elle

Advice for the ugly noo noo!

I love these sentiments expressed by the red haired one.

Let's take them into the week with us and see good things unfold...

Here's hoping!

xxx elle

The space we leave behind.

What is it about old houses that is so deeply moving?

The ones left untouched.

Allowed to fade like blooms past their prime. Something in their textured, glorious weariness speaks to the human condition. And that which is beautiful, is somehow enriched by age instead of depleted.

Like the rooms in this gracious 18th century home photographed by Andrew Bush.

They tell us so much about the life that has unfolded within them. Read quietly and slowly, they are as dense as the pages of a book, allowing us to see the people who have inhabited them for so long.

I love this attic room, mellowed by time. The perfect space in which to write, reflect and create.

Change one thing, refresh even a bit and some secret, lovely thing will be lost forever...

xxx elle

Found via beach bungalow 8

The ugly noo noo

This evening Mr Nielson better known as Sid, and I took our son Steele to the theatre to see Andrew Buckland in his iconic one man show, 'The ugly noo noo'.

En route to the theatre where our friends were waiting for us, I suddenly remembered the pot of soup I had left boiling briskly on the stove. Mr Nielson calmly took the quickest road home, reassuring me that we had enough time to return with the tickets and attend the performance as scheduled.

Having informed our friends to wait for us (and the tickets!) at the theatre door, I rushed into the house, turned off the stove and raced back to the car. I did a quick cross check before Mr Nielson reversed out the driveway, and discovered that the tickets which I had placed on the panel between the seats was gone! O the Horror!

I cannot even begin to convey to you the scene which unfolded. The mad dash into the kitchen. Checking inside the fridge for the tickets. Emptying of entire contents of handbag onto the kitchen table. The wailing. The Hysteria!!!

In the meantime, Mr Nielson and Steele assured me that they had searched the car and could find no trace of the dreaded tickets.

More hysteria. Another run around the kitchen. Madness and delirium!

By now Mr Nielson and Steele had entered the family homestead and found the deranged woman in the kitchen. Said woman then raced like a maniac to the car, only to immediately find les tickets wedged down behind the metal slider on Mr Nielson's side of the car!

Oh Dear...

I am the ugly noo noo.

I am the nicest girl, really I am. You could not hope to find a more charming, affable lass. But put me in a stressful situation and I very quickly lose my bearings! I need help I tell you! A school for the panic stricken? An academy for the stressfully challenged. Mr Nielson better known as Sid, says for sure now we will need some family therapy!

Of course, I very soon transformed back into the nicest girl, but who can forget( even if she only emerges occasionally) the mad woman in the kitchen!

Like Andrew Bucklands 'parktown prawn' there is an ugly noo noo in me that really needs to go...

Thankfully, we did make it to the theatre in time to see Andrew perform his extraordinary physical theatre, and our friends had already convinced the doorman to allow them to enter.

Andrew and his son Daniel recently did a stint with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas in a show called Love. When people asked Daniel what he was doing in Vegas, he told them, " I'm in 'Love' with my father."

And who can blame him!

xxx elle