Everything

The post title seemed appropriate, considering I seem to be doing - well, everything at the moment.

Joe’s been away this past week in North Wales, a residential school trip, and looking at the updates from his headteacher they’ve had a fantastic time (with the weather to match). He’s home in an hour or so, and we have a big surprise for him - more on that later.

We’ve got the keys to the house and have been up and down there regularly. Jay’s been stripping the walls and I’ve had a few meetings with architects to discuss extending the kitchen and potentially upstairs too. It needs a lot of work - there are some ‘before’ pictures which I’m going to add to the new section ‘House project’ sometime next week.

But we have a house and it’s exciting. Daunting, but exciting - and it feels a whole lot more manageable than Burnbank (our Skye house) did. As in, it doesn’t terrify me.

We’ve had hot weather here lately and my flowers in the current garden are thriving. I’m hoping to get enough strawflowers and craspedia to cut and dry out for a little posy. The craspedia are native to Australia, so to get them blooming in West Yorkshire will be quite an achievement.

My uchiki kuri squash has lots of fruit, with one looking really promising - all I want is for one to succeed and I’ll feel like I’ve broken the Curse of the Failed Squash (and pumpkins, and gourds). I always have the same problem: the fruits get to maybe an inch in diameter then just drop off the plant. So fingers crossed for that…

These photos were all taken around the village last weekend. I took Joe for a little wander while Jay did stuff in the (new) place. It’s difficult to keep him occupied in an empty house but hopefully once we get moved, ideally by the start of the new school year, he’ll be able to play on the green behind the back garden. Lots of his peers live on our street and the one parallel (it’s basically a big oval with the odd tiny cul-de-sac branching off here and there).

Jay finished at his old job today. It was a relief for him, I think - he’d had a really stressful time there. He starts his new one on Monday and will be much closer to home and, fingers crossed, a lot happier.

So: here’s Joe’s surprise.

The story behind this little addition to the family: my brother knows someone whose cat was having kittens and told her we’d been looking for one (well, two ideally). He put us in touch. The mother’s a Bengal, like Mackie was, and although we liked the idea of that - they tend to have big personalities and are very vocal - we’re not really pedigree cat kind of people. So it wasn’t like we were after fancy kittens or anything. It was just coincidence.

Anyhow, the owner sent us photos and a price - which turned out to be way more than we could or would pay - so we said thanks but we’d probably go for rescue cats instead. And that was the end of it.

Or so I thought.

Yesterday she texted me saying they had a kitten left and we could take it for free - it didn’t have Bengal markings (the father’s a standard moggy) but needed a home. So we went to collect it (and picked up some essentials from the pet shop). She was unsure whether it was male or female, but having researched it I’m 99% convinced we have a boy cat. He’s now registered with the vet, shortly to have his first vaccinations, and will be living indoors until we move to a much quieter (and safer) area.

We can’t think of a suitable name yet.

He’s either snoozing in his bed or racing around and being generally crazy. He’s litter trained, likes his food and is very sociable. Joe’s going to be over the moon when he gets home, I can’t wait.

And that’s going to be soon, so I just want to give you a quick update on the magazine.

I’ve been working hard to put together lots of lovely articles and am enjoying every second. The plan is still to launch Issue One (Autumn) in mid August. I’ve included the first in a series on photography and there are going to be plenty of pieces on seasonality as well as lifestyle-type stuff but, as promised, no adverts or sponsored content.

The intention was to start with a digital version and see how things go, but I’ve looked into printing costs anyway. For a printed copy (on quality paper, using a sustainable print company) of around 110-120 pages, the retail cost per issue would be around £10-£12 plus postage. I plan to publish quarterly. I’m unsure just yet as I think I’d have to order a minimum of 50 copies, so lots to consider.

I think it’ll come down to whether people prefer to read on screen or would rather have an actual copy of the magazine to keep on their bookshelf and collect. The digital version will, of course, be cheaper and won’t require posting out.

As ever, your thoughts are really welcome.

And now I have to rush off because Joe and Jay are heading home and I have to orchestrate the surprise (the kitten’s asleep on my desk so I’m going to ask Joe to run and get me something from the workroom). I live for this kind of stuff.

Have a great weekend!