Domestic details - Breakfast with book

Somehow I've become enmeshed in a five-volume family saga, the sort of thing (family sagas) I've always shied away from. No excuses need to be made - it's by an esteemed "literary" author, and it's a cracking good read. Tentatively mentioning this, I find that a surprising number of my friends have read these books and even reread them. 

What better time than a leisurely weekend breakfast for reading? And for second cups of coffee while reading. So I made some apple pancakes, to use up a slightly-withered apple ("waste not want not") and got another of the five-a-day via a nectarine (they seem particularly luscious this year, ripened in the bowl) garnished not just with the usual yogurt (source of calcium) but with a meringue from a box found at the back of the cupboard and still - just - within its sell-by date ("waste not" etc). 

The maple syrup is used sparingly, and I found the meringue very sweet. The tablecloth is a charity-shop find, one of those cloths with a message in Swahili - mungo ndiye mtoaji tumshukuru (mungo thank the giver, says google ... hmm ...)

It's Open House weekend in London, many places to go see, for the nosy parkers among us, and isn't that all of us. Some are domestic places - conversions that architects are proud of, or live in (or both); others are commercial buildings with a few areas open, a few barriers that can be bypassed just this weekend. 

I'm in two minds about wonderful events like Open House weekend, or the Thames Festival, or the BFI London Film Festival that's coming up - there is so much to do (and there are so many people wanting to do it) that it's hard to choose, and what are the chances of getting a ticket to the desired event unless you book early? Sometimes it seems like Too Much Effort. But in the absence of a structured life (or absorbing project), it's as well to get out, and in London there are so many things to do - use it or lose it, as they say.

Bits of domesticity, therefore, fall by the wayside. They'll still be there when you get back - the dusting, the ironing, the alphabeticisation of the bookshelves, the cupboards and drawers that need clearing out.

Another domestic detail, part of the slow process of "straightening things out", is the way pictures are gradually finding their way onto the walls. 

Before

After

The addition, between the windows, is a screen print called Evanescence, by Sara Muzira. It represents an old sugar factory (in Norfolk or Suffolk) and the smoke emanating from its chimneys. And while the picture-hanging tools were out, "Dan Hays", over the desk, got lifted a little higher, which looks better on the wall but removes it from my sight line ... I look at it quite often and find fresh things in it, even though it's just a bunch of dots  ...