Many years ago, my Father was transferred to California for work. He took with him his wife and three daughters who were 6, 3 & 1. We moved from our home in the Home Counties of England to just south-east of San Francisco. There were many cultural differences between the USA and the UK, not least the celebration of Halloween.

To go to school in one’s Halloween costume was not something that I had ever encountered in England. In fact, costumes were more for school discos or parties rather than school events. I had not even *heard* of trick or treating, let alone experienced it. And as for school Principals who dressed up as Big Bird and then led a school costume parade around the football field, well, let’s just say I was a little surprised.

Fast forward over 20 years, for it is, I realised 21 years since we moved to California {and 20 since the earthquake I was able to write about first hand in a school Geography lesson a decade later back in England} and Halloween is far more widely celebrated in England than ever before. Traditionally, UK autumnal celebrations centre around Bonfire Night/5th November/Guy Fawkes night {which I will tell you all about next week} but in recent years we have celebrated Halloween ourselves as well.

So, on Saturday afternoon I carved our pumpkin (turning the fleshy part into puree which I froze to use as part of the food for our bonfire night party) and hung the decorations I made last year up with some fairy lights in our kitchen window. Turns out paper pumpkins, witches hats and bats illuminated in the window at about 6.30pm declares that you “are open” for trick or treaters. Who knew?!

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…(whilst still remaining in London)…

This afternoon there were lots of things I should have been doing: applying for jobs, de-cluttering the flat, making the cinnamon whirls I have had the recipe for on the kitchen counter for over a week. In fact, the list is endless. But the autumnal light was too much, was too orange, too hard to resist and so I decided to take the afternoon off. To go for a walk & to find some peace and quiet. Which in London, is not always the easiest thing to find.

In fact, despite the fact that we have so many parks, there is really only one place which I want to go in the autumn when the light is like today. And that is Hampstead Heath. The park next to the parkland of a country home, it is one of the highest points in London and has a view over the city which is protected from development.

I went with a teaching friend who is on holiday from school this week on half-term. We walked in the orangey light of the late afternoon, across the grassy field full of people walking dogs, past the swimming lakes and up onto Parliament Hill. We walked side by side but in near silence, drinking in the light and the silence, broken only by the occasional chatter of tiny children and the barking of all the dogs being walked. We stood for a while looking over London and watching the sun creep lower in the sky before turning and returning to the bustle of the city, refreshed and relaxed.

One of the best Monday afternoons I have had in a long time.

How do you get away from it all?

{Image by me}

I am not sure whether fascinators are purely an English thing but they are often worn to weddings by guests in lieu of a more traditional hat. In addition to our own wedding we attended 3 others this summer, with another to come in December and 3 more so far next year. Apart from the usual issues relating to rotating dresses and accessories so one doesn’t appear to have one ‘wedding outfit’ for all occasions, it is also useful to have a number of hats and fascinators to call upon to change one’s look.

Top {Image by Elegant & Wild} - at a traditional English church & marquee wedding. Bottom {Image by Husband} - at a more low key hotel wedding with civil ceremony.

It was therefore a pleasure to attend the monthly meeting of my local Women’s Institute and be taught by a milliner how to make a fascinator of my own.

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Darling readers, so sorry for my prolonged absence from EAD Living recently. Things have been mighty busy Chez Rachel & Husband but I hope things are settling down now. Some of the things I have been busy with include but are not limited to:

* London Fashion Week. Miele (or, the washing machine people, as like to refer to them) invited me, along with a few other bloggers, to attend the Jasper Garvida show and these are some of the photographs I have time to download and edit from the camera that Canon were kind enough to lend me:

* As some of you may know, I was made redundant just before our wedding in June. Since then I have been for many interviews but am still not in full time employment. I am however boosting my CV with various unpaid freelance projects including learning the PR ropes in a friend’s new PR business. I also spend every Sunday helping out in a beautiful vintage shop.

* Attending weddings. Aside from our own we have been to a further 4 weddings this summer with another still to come this year and another two at least next year. I do so love weddings and at some point will be writing further about this.

* Watching Gossip Girl. Series 2 suddenly appeared on our TV choice thing and I have to admit, Husband and I have spent a fair few evenings enjoying our new Sunday evening routine: roast dinner and a film/TV evening, together. Turns out GG is a good compromise.

* Cooking. We have started having our vegetables delivered from a local organic farm delivery service and have very much enjoyed the process of cooking more local and seasonal food, together, in the evenings. Turns out that I do a good line in veggie lasagne.

* Hosting birthday parties. With cupcakes and bunting and homemade pizza and pasta. It’s a fun way to host a party: make pizza dough, tomato sauce and plain homemade pasta and ask the guests to bring the toppings.

When written down like that it doesn’t seem too bad but combined with all the usual things one must fit into a week, it’s felt like I’ve barely had time to sleep recently.

I hope you are all enjoying the onset of Autumn/Fall. More to come on that note soon.

xoxo

My favourite six months of the year start in June and end up round about my birthday at the start of January. I love early summer and the excitement of the end of term, even though I don’t work in terms any more. I love summer drinks parties & balls & weddings. I love how it is usually hot in June and this year was no exception: a heat wave started on the day of our wedding and lasted for three whole weeks. I love the long drawn out evenings when swallows and bats start swooping around in the bluing sky. I love weekends sat in pub gardens, or the park, or lately, our own garden. Of the air ringing with conversation, with laughter. The taste of salt in the air, and on your face, of sand in the eyebrows and sun warmed skin after a day spent surfing, sailing or merely sunbathing. Of shorts, of flat leather sandals, of cold beer and cold Riesling and pimms and champagne and ginger beer.

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So this summer our neighbours (and good friends) went to France for a month with their kids. Husband and I therefore became the proud pseudo parents of two cats: an elderly black one we call Pushkin & a skittish, skinny ginger one we call Harry-Cat (maybe he reminds us of a certain member of the Royal family?) Pushkin came to live with us; we put food outside for Harry-Cat because his home situation is a little more complicated. Let’s just say that he wants to live with our neighbours but technically belongs somewhere else.

We have learnt some new skills this summer, not least that we are not ready financially or otherwise to become parents. Other new found talents include ignoring a batting to the shoulder every few minutes from 5am; cleaning up vomit; persuading something to eat when it really doesn’t want to; catching kitties who don’t want to take their medicine & administering 3 separate tablets with the aid of a tool which looks suspiciously like a pea shooter. We have also learnt that emergency trips to the vets in a taxi with a cat cost more than a normal trip, despite what our neighbours told us; that an ill cat usually but not always has the decency to get off the sofa before he is sick but will not make it outside & will favour the same part of the hallway each time; that raw chicken is yummed up every time & food in jelly is preferable to that in gravy.

We have also realised how much we enjoy the company of a cat & how working at home is less lonely with a furry friend curled up beside me on the sofa (although working is harder if he insists on poking me until I let him sit on my lap & then refuses to remove his tail from my keyboard).

His owners return home at the end of this week: summer is over & the children are returning to school. Our summer of pseudo parenthood is coming to a close, and we shall miss him when he leaves us.

Top photos: in bed.

Bottom photos: Preventing me from working & then preventing Husband from eating his yoghurt (please excuse the mess in the background: my sister was staying & that chair became a dumping ground. On top is the bear Husband won by guessing that his name was Trevor. We don’t know what to do with him now though, and he is bigger than the cat).

{All photos by me & Husband. Please excuse the quality as they were snapped on our BlackBerrys}

In our flat, we have an ongoing debate about cushions. I am a big fan of cushions, aesthetically & practically. Husband on the other hand really doesn’t like them. Prior to the arrival of our sewing machine as a wedding present, I could almost see why. When I went to university my Mum and I bought me some new cushions & covers: black velvet & deep red velvet with embroidery and mirrors. If you knew that I was a heavy metal fan who liked black eyeliner and incense and ‘ethnic decoration’ when I was 18 and started university, you would not be surprised about the cushions. Those cushions moved from student halls to student house at Exeter, then they came with me to London via a flat with a girlfriend, a random shared house, & 2 flats with the (now) Husband. So, a little tired and on their sixth house, I decided that it was time to upgrade. With no real money this summer all decorating has been attempted on a diy, recycle, remake basis so in order to keep the cushions a little structured I recovered them, old covers and all.

I bought the red & white striped ticking in a charity shop for £2.50 last summer but never got around to using it. When measuring the cushions I discovered that if I cut it into 3 pieces, hemmed the top & bottom of each bit and sewed them into pillowcase style covers, I could have 3 new cushions in about an hour. So I did. And while Husband doesn’t exactly love cushions yet, even he admits that they are a vast improvement. Not with the brown sofa maybe, but that’s another project…

{All images by me}

One of my favourite things to do is foraging in the hedgerows for blackberries and then turning them into pies and other delicious things. This activity is usually associated with early autumn walks. Last September we spent a wonderful weekend in the far west of Wales exploring in the wind and rain. And then on the Sunday, the sun came out and we went for a long walk along the estury, where we found hedgerows laden with blackberries. I spent the afternoon in the cottage reducing the berries into a state suitable to take back to London.

Blackberries actually start ripening in July and the recent weather {heatwave in June - from our wedding day until a week after we returned from honeymoon - followed by alternate monsoon style rain showers and hot sunshine for the next month} seems to have been perfect for them. I don’t usually associate blackberries with central London but a chance walking through some scrubland near my house last week revealed that in fact there are plenty of berries in London, you just have to know where to look. This particular piece of land is bordered by railway lines on two sides and houses and tube stations on the other two. It doesn’t always feel the safest of places, but in the middle of the afternoon accompanied by my friend Liz, it seemed rather pleasant.

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