X at X

Finishing this early Monday morning. Our heatwave has receded and we’re due rain later.

The flowers have really enjoyed themselves. The village has smelled incredible with all the honeysuckle weaving through hedges. Lots of roses and vast swathes of erigeron (see pic; this is also called fleabane because in the olds people mistakenly believed the dried flowers deterred fleas) all over the place. They grow in these drifts, self seed and form huge clumps hither and thither — in walls, on the edges of roads, between stones on patios.

Only issue is that England doesn’t do heat well. Very little air conditioning in shops, etc, and due to the humidity you usually see two numbers for temperature: the expected temp plus how things feel (eg, 28 degrees Celsius but feels like 33 – 28 is low 80s, 33 is low 90s – bit of a difference). A lot of articles in the news about rising temps and what the country needs to do…

The dog did not enjoy the heat. Understandable when you are wearing a fur jacket. He did not much – spent a lot of time resting in front of the fan and licking chicken ice.

Well, onward. You might be wondering: what does the title of today’s post actually mean because it looks really pointless.

Here we go.

One of the bloggers I follow has this thing going for her paid subscribers that the rest of us can’t see. But, I found the concept intriguing.

She recently turned 40 and this year is doing 40 (items, things, happenings) at 40. I would love to know what those 40 things are but the only website/substack etc I pay for is a very useful (but mostly out of my price point stuff) one called Yolo’s Adventures (£8/month very well spent, IMHO).

But her 40 at 40 made me think very briefly that I might do something like this next year, when I have a significant birthday (ie, one that ends in 0 or 5).

In the end, however, I thought I can’t be bothered. First, I’d have to come up with the items/things/etc and then I’d actually have to pursue them over the course of next year (my birthday is in February so would I do calendar year or fiscal – ie, February to January?).

In any case I thought I’d throw it back to you guys. Is this something you’ve ever done for the birthday year and if yes what sorts of things did you list? If it’s an idea you could see embracing what might you put on your list?

For me, well, things that popped into my head included: start doing horseback riding again, something I did as a teenager and I live in an area with decent riding stables; do afternoon teas (this would be after returning to eating sugar, of course) that look intriguing (mostly in London, meaning day or overnight trips), like the science tea at the Ampersand hotel and a nature tea I noticed plus maybe a fancy tea at one of the 5 star hotels; walk parts of the UK coastal path (I did a very small section during last year’s holiday to south Devon); go fishing in the ocean; visit Lyme Regis in Dorset and look for fossils. Thing is I don’t need a special list to have these things in my head.

On a different note, on the same spaceNK visit where I tried DS & Durga Jazmin Yucatan I also smelled Diptyque’s Café candle and a new lemming was born.

I blind bought a Diptyque’s Thé candle years ago, which was very meh – smelling like soap rather than black tea. Café is much much better. A deep, true coffee fragrance. I have way too many candles at the moment but Café appears to be in the permanent collection so it can go on the list for later.

Happy June. I feel like it was a really long time getting to warmer, lighter, brighter this year.

Pics: mine, pexels