Days.

The first thing I did at 6.47am this morning was read The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies after it was unceremoniously shoved in my face to wake me up. Luckily, I love Beatrix Potter books, they are an island of calm constancy this world that hurtles along at full tilt. This particular volume was inscribed for Felix's 4th birthday.....I was gobsmacked when I woke up enough to remember that he is now nine and a half and about to go on a three day school camp. Where has the time gone.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives......

Yet, way back when I was at uni for the first time I really wasn't interested in Days of Our Lives, Hope and Beau left me cold. The Bold and the Beautiful and the bizarre love triangle between Brooke, Ridge and Taylor was more my thing. I may have been responsible for addicting my Nana who then couldn't help herself and watched it every single day. She would then routinely fill me in so I was always up to speed.

When I was at uni for the second time doing postgrad work, I had the opportunity to tune back into Bold which I took full advantage of. Then, in an attempt to thwart my vice my husband used to take the TV remote controls to work with him......thinking that it would force me to write my thesis. Of course, there were means other than The Bold and the Beautiful with which to feed my procrastination. This may have been the period in my life when I was addicted to, of all things......Elizabeth Bradley cross stitch, however that's a story for another day.

When I was in the delivery suite, in labour with our first child, my husband, obviously feeling very sorry for me, sanctioned putting on the TV to watch that day's episode of Bold and I'm here to tell you that I did. But it was for the last time as when I tried to watch it again it was ruined forever by association. I am all astonishment that it still continues.

Anyway, not only is our nine year old about to go to camp....if I ever manage to tick off every single item on the two page list, there is also a fifth birthday in our house tomorrow and the school fair on Friday. Two words.......housewife stress.

So, on Saturday, I took advantage and went to a Bikram Yoga class on the lawns at Salamanca:

It was so relaxing with the dappled sunlight, the damp grass and the wind rustling the leaves until a rugby club turned up and joined in very vocally just in time for camel pose. They were soon scared off.

I had already been giving some thought to what I was going to send along as a contribution to the school fair. Having a bumper crop of lemons, I was thinking lemon curd:

So, after yoga, I got down Stephanie Alexander's orange tome and set to work.....times three. Of course it was never going to work as, at the same time as grating, squeezing and stirring, I was also drinking cups of green tea with a twenty two year old friend. She was asking me about dating etiquette. I had to point out to her that I might not be the best person to ask as my last date was way, way back when I was twenty four......seventeen long years ago. Mobile phones, texting and emails were to be a phenomenon of the future and not in the world as we knew it. Needless to say, I turned the lemon curd into scrambled eggs.

Undaunted I spent an hour carefully snipping 2 kilos of cumquats off my trees.....because Stephanie says that you can damage the fruit if you just pick them. Cumquat compote it was to be.....ta da:

The Brunschwig & Fils toile on the left is the remnants from my bed head and the fabric on the right was the Kelly Wearstler left over from the library cushions. The striped canvas in the middle I bought when I was last in Paris yet haven't found the perfect chair for it.....yet.

I got a bit caught up in a theme over the weekend involving zebras and leopards:

And then I decided to accessorise with my sofa:

For about two seconds.....until I remembered that there was a camp to be packed for and birthday cake to be made along with the zillion another chores that make up the days of my life. Fingers crossed I don't forget the beanie.

Rx