Details

As I sat on the floor scrubbing the skirting boards, about an hour or so after Ben had looked at me pityingly to say that on his list of things to clean, the skirting boards were quite far down, I realised that I'm definitely quite obsessed by the little details.

I've mentioned my appreciation of clean lines and subtle detailing before, but I hadn't realised the extent to which it ran. Lately, I've been chasing these geometrics and little details around with my camera, and these pictures are the result. I took them in Ben's parents' house a weekend or so ago (an early seventeenth-century house is full of fine details – beams, uneven walls, tiny doors – it has them all).

Aside from my recent detail fanaticism, a few other things I have been enjoying this past week are this man's skill at photographing people (found via his photographs of a riot that happened nearby this weekend) and this website's free stream of the new Fleet Foxes album, which I find a little too much at times, but perfect at others.

Linen

'I don't really mind where we go, I just like old things.' I said, last Sunday, on the warmest day of the year. We went to Hampton Court Castle, a 15th-century castle within its own gardens – a vista around every corner.

This garden, with its high red brick walls was almost everything a Frances Hodgson Burnett girl might wish for – walls too high to see over and wrought-iron gates – all that was missing was the secrets and the mystery, and a bit of overgrowth. The colossal entrance fee did little to help the mystique along, but old couples sat grumpily drawing on benches, and around every hedge was a different conversation to eavesdrop on.

I came across this dress entirely by surprise in a charity shop a week or so ago. It has been so long since I found anything worthwhile that I'd almost given up trying. It's French linen, and has a very pretty line to it. The wide pleats are perfect.

The label tells me that it comes from Cannes, which conjures film festivals and swishing along promenades and harbours with a little dog and stiletto shoes. As I possess neither, I stick to my gentleman's flats and add a headscarf, and pretend anyway.

Year

Last week marked the year anniversary of the beginnings of this blog. I, after a year of trying to be a freelancer and occupying my sudden unusually large amounts of free time with blogging, was up to my elbows in work, and didn't notice. Or rather, I did notice, I was just too busy to do anything to celebrate it.

When I started writing this blog, I had just quit two jobs in two months. The former I had done for nearly three years, the latter, three weeks. I cried both times I gave notice - I'm not awfully good at quitting..

The day after I quit my second job, I spent a whole day reading blogs, being amazed at the ingenuity of them, and poring through their archives like a person obsessed, (Fieldguided, Lulu Letty & Liebemarlene in particular, I recall). I felt terribly guilty about not having achieved anything that day, and decided that the only way to legitimately spend my time reading blogs was to write one myself. Then I'd feel like I was achieving something.

I kind of think, after a year of blog post induced galavants around the countryside, obsessive photograph taking, and time spent finding ever more inspiring blogs to pore through, that I have.