Start the week

is back. My favourite Radio 4 programme of the week- finding out was a lovely present on a dark and rainy Monday evening. You can read and listen here.

Wedding season

This summer has been wedding, wedding, wedding (not mine you understand).

I recently discovered wedding photographer Dan Johnson's blog. It has lots of lovely and wonderfully natural photographs on it but also some very funny observations and insider tips. My favourites being ten ways to spend more time doing group photos and rules for wedding guests- if I ever get married the latter may well find it's way into the bumpf that gets sent out with the invitation...

Photograph from Dan Johnson's blog. I suppose that's obvious isn't it, but it's always nice to be polite.

Last chance to see

This is Sirocco. He is a Kakapo- a flightless parrot.

I watched him on Last chance to see last night and was completely enchanted.

The indescribably wonderful Stephen Fry described Sircocco as looking old- fashioned and he's quite right (of course). He does look like he is from another time- a Victorian gentleman of a bird.

If you have missed this programme I can't recommend it more. These kinds of programmes are why I am glad to pay my licence fee.

You can be friends with Sirocco on Facebook and you can watch the programme on the bbc i-player.

True Grace

For a long time I didn't 'get' scented candles. I don't know why but I just didn't covet them or feel I needed them in my life. Now that's all changed and I want candles all over the house, in various scents for various moods.

The candles I want them to be are from True Grace. I have been spending far too long sniffing their wares in shops lately and so I finally looked up their website- which is delightful. You can select scents from either the Manor, the village or the walled garden; the ones I desire the most are comforting, seashore and meadow- but really I would be happy with any of them- or indeed all of them.

I love to find British companies that are stylish and that take the best things about our traditions but don't live in the past. True Grace seems to be a company like that and I feel I've taken them a little bit into my heart- and want to take them into my house.

Corsages on coats and whiskers on kittens

One of most visited internet shopping outposts is Not on the High Street and I found these corsages by A Alicia there. (There is also an A Alicia etsy shop I have discovered).

Corsages make me smile and definitely fit into 'my favourite things', whether they are made of felt or crochet or even real flowers. Someone said they thought they were a horrid tradition for weddings to me the other day- but I think they are wonderful- obviously only nice ones, none with that strange white filler stuff you get in petrol station bouquets.

Anyway in these times of watching our purse strings and make do and mend I think A Alicia's could give a wonderful lift to coats and even plain and inexpensive t-shirts and dresses and that is how I am going to justify one for myself.

Posterous

I'm rather addicted to India Knight's Posterous blog thing. It has lots of lovely things I WANT and it's just, you know, fun. As she said on her twitter it's a bit like an extension of her book The Shops.

Anthropologie

How did the news that Anthropologie is opening in London pass me by?

Good times.

(This will also slightly alleviate my longing for a New York holiday, only slightly though).