My shopping habits have changed quite dramatically recently. While I was always a once a week kinda gal, for a while I found myself wandering around the shops most mornings after dropping Finn at nursery, because it was just a stones throw from a walk into town and a cinnamon latte with Kath and Diane.

But now those days are gone and I can practically lean over the garden fence and catapult Finn into the "Big School" five doors down the lane, I find myself running out of essentials like milk and sugar on a regular basis and feeling cross with my own inefficiency. (Though coffee deficiency may have something to do with my general mood!) 

Now that everything I need is within walking distance, (school down the road, post office around the corner) and I am committed to keeping a running shopping list for the following weeks whizz round the supermarkets and deli's of the region, while I busy about running BrocanteHome, keeping the house to a standard that doesn't make me shake and getting Finn into school with tie, gym kit and required permission slip of the moment, I don't really want to be making impromptu visits into town if only because it eats both time and money, though to this day it sticks in my mind that Nigel Slater once said that the only truly efficient, frugal way to cook was to always have an empty fridge at the end of the day and buy what it is you need to cobble together your next meal the following day ...

So help please! How do you organise your shopping? Do you buy in bulk? Do you shop online? Do you go daily, weekly or monthly? Do you wait for the farmers market, have a box delivered or drive to the local farm? Do you take a basket and wander round the local purveyors of all things yummy or sell your soul in the hallowed halls of Tesco? Do you remember to chuck in a weekly treat for yourself my lovely Vintage Housekeeper? Which supermarket do you prefer and why? Do you live for Bogoffs or only ever buy organic?

Do share your wisdom, if not your routines  Ladies. Apart from the fact that I am interminably nosey, I suspect we could all learn something from each other...

I was busy looking through my latest stumbles when it struck me that the last three images I have saved have all featured the same tealy green I would have once thrown scorn upon in favour of a much earthier olive.

Isn't it odd how your taste changes subtly over time?

Today is the day you are planning to plant hyacinth bulbs. The counter of the laundry room is covered in newspaper and there is a pile of papery bulbs and assorted pretty vessels waiting to be paired. You swoosh the iron over vintage monogrammed napkins and remember being in Sophie Shoes house once, a hyacinth in the bathroom scenting the entire house. Remember wanting to bottle up the fragrance and take it home, but of course you couldn't, because the scent of hyacinth cannot be extracted, let alone bottled...

You cannot eat today. Funny how hunger ebbs and flows so very hormonally. The house is quiet. Perhaps quiet enough to hear the swoosh of Victorian skirts in and out of the village store that your little mid terraced cottage used to be. Perhaps a little too quiet. You play Serge Gainsborg and because you don't speak French, feel released from the constant urge to apply the meaning of all lyrics to your own experience.You sometimes think life would be easier if you didn't read. If words didn't mean so much. If you could sit in nothingness and just be still. But you can't. Your head churns with the need to know. Ravenous for the truth.

The scent of hyacinths is said to open the door to creativity. To stimulate right-brain activity and to inspire and motivate you with it's heady scent. They should, you once read, be placed, anywhere you have to write, whatever it is you write, whether it be a cheque, a blog or a novel. You want to fill the house with them. Bulbs forced to motivate you on every surface in this cold house. Bulbs that say "write now Alison, write...".

You sway as you iron. The air scented by a rose candle burning on the windowsill, its sweet fragrance masking smoky bacon that will not go away. A draught dancing around your slippered toes. Why, when it is cold, does the house feel darker? Smell staler?

You will not be cold this Winter. Will not shuffle off to bed every evening the minute the last mouth full of food is in your throat in order to seek refuge in musky lavender. You will not sleep through another Winter. You will instead sacrifice whatever it takes to keep the house warm. To make the days longer.

Now you carry laundry up the stairs, pressed tight against breasts tender with nature's reminder that this is another month on your journey as a Mommy to just one precious child. Though you are glad he isn't here, you miss him when he's at school. Hear his sleepy bed time questions bouncing around the sheets of the bed he made himself. Mum, when the doctor knows someone is going to die, does he ring God to say he's on his way? Register the bewilderment on his face when you tell him even Doctors haven't got God's telephone number.

You hope there is time to bake cookies to be served warm the minute he drags his exhausted, curious little self in through the door. But you can't make out why you feel like crying when all is well. And then you open the door in to the garden and carry your bulbs and your worn handled tools to the table and plant little promises into vintage tea cups.

All is well. Soon there will be hyacinths.

It has happened before and you can bet your bottom dollar it will happen again. It certainly isn't rational and is perhaps the kind of thing you shouldn't admit to but once in a while I fall a little bit in like with a man and head over heels in love with his house.

The first time it happened, I fell in love with a roll top bath. It was gorgeous. Original to the house and sitting in a huge room I had in my mind's eye, already re-painted. Mr Bangers and Mash (remember him??) and I spent a huge amount of time in his house because Andy was registered blind and thus negotiating the dark corners and steep stairwells of my little cottage was somewhat of a challenge- and so,  it quickly came to pass that every time I popped over for tea and cake I fell a little bit more in love. With his cat. And his log fire. And the Victorian cornice so gorgeous I wanted to climb a ladder and lick it.

And we were terribly happy in our mutual admiration of his interiors and all was well, and cosy and he was lovely and I was content and then God spoke him on the 8.45 train and told him I was leading him down an immoral path (!) and must be quickly disposed of and so he showed me a relevant passage in the Bible that explained why he had to trust his feelings and not feel obliged to explain himself to me, then promptly disposed of me over takeout pizza, neatly and rather shockingly avoiding feeling obliged to tell me that he would from then on be showing his best friends girlfriend the delights of his roll top bath.

Fancy getting God to do your dirty work! I was outraged and thus should have learned my lesson, but sadly being dumped by God didn't stop me falling for the delights of another mans house...

Jonathan, yes, let's call him Jonathan for want of the truth, invited me over and feeling a tiny bit enthralled by both the muscles in his arms and his charming take on all things Alison, I agreed to provide red wine and a song and duly set out to travel into the middle of nowhere to go a calling.

And a calling I a went. At the most perfect double fronted rose sprinkled cottage I have ever seen. And there he was all enthusiasm, chilled Rose, and warnings to be careful in the loo because the flush wasn't working properly. And there was me positively giggly with house lust, parading around the cottage in a business like manner as if I had called around to assess it's potential with a view to buy. And he was saying oh what lovely eyes you have and I was thinking that fireplace must be two hundred years old and he was saying I can't stop thinking about you and I was thinking Must go to the toilet so I can see if the bedrooms are beamed, and before I know it I have broken the flush and I am stood in the bathroom wailing for him to come up stairs and inspect the damage.

And then the pair of us are bent over the toilet. And he is so close I can see the fillings in his teeth. And he is muttering about a broken chain and hooking a finger through my necklace and planting a kiss on my surprised lips.

"Jonathan!", I say, in mock horror.

"Alison?", he says, all comic raised eyebrows.

"You have your hand in the toilet!!" I screech.

And he says "Oops so I have!" and duly takes it out and plants it on my bum.

And it is a kiss and half and before I know it he is in the kitchen doing something with chocolate pudding and I have accepted his invitation to go look at the gardens and have a peek in the orchard, and in my mind we are walking down the aisle, because here is a man who knows how to kiss (albeit with his hand in the cistern) and owns all the acres the eye can see, an orchard full of  damson, quince and apple trees  and oh be still my beating heart, a dilapidated shed full of the kind of architectural salvage grown men sell their Mothers for.

Life doesn't get any better and so I am adjusting my rose tinted glasses and turning on the charm in bucket loads when I turn the corner and there he is, leaning over a set of manky cages with two ferrets nipping in and out of his jumper.

Ferrets.

In my book a deal breaker if ever there was one.

Back to the drawing board Sweetie, and next time do hold out for a man of no fixed abode won't you?

One mustn't make the kind of compromises that make our skin crawl.

Even God would agree with me there.

At the risk of sounding like I've got wellies on the brain (and veering completely off topic) I want to put in a complaint to the powers that be.

Here's the thing: this morning I dragged my son to school and then armed with a mid-week emergency shopping list, I headed into town for a quick swoosh around the shops before coffee at Kath's and a glorious afternoon of baking in a candlelit kitchen.

Sadly I have never been one of those frugal women with an internal index of supermarket prices permanently buzzing around my brain. I don't know how much milk costs, (I only know we seem to get through gallons of the stuff), and driving from one supermarket to the next to save 75p has always struck me as nothing short of nuts, but regardless of my ignorance (and laziness) I somehow manage to pull off the amazing feat of always spending much the same amount from week to week no matter what delights I've added to my shopping list...presumably because a stable economy has always meant that guessing a ball-park figure for one item or another has always held me in good stead.

Until today. Today I went shopping for a new pair of very ordinary green school wellies. Wellies, I will have you know that were £3.99 last year and have now jumped up to the quite shocking figure of £5.99. I tutted and bought them and walked towards Morrisons in search of own brand, coeliac safe tomato puree. And there it was on the shelf, beaming happily at me and showing off it's new price tag of 45p which in the whole scheme of things is buttons, but buttons that cost a whole 20p more than they did last week and rang bells of outrage in the distant corners of my mind.

Readers I am scandalised. Carry on like this and we'll all be living on dripping butties and sending the kid's to school in their (darned) stocking feet. Trouble is of course that we are spoilt and the thought of tightening our belts when banks go bust and the credit crunch starts to bite makes even grown women wanna throw toddler style tantrums in the dairy aisle.

And so I came home feeling cheated. And poorer. And in need of frugal sustenance in the form of cling film wrapped cake made from old bananas and the kind of soup made of leftovers that is luckily delicious and costs next to nothing. Get used to it: we might be living on it soon...

Poverty Soup

2 tblps olive oil

2 chopped onions,

1 chopped garlic clove

3 Large potatoes, peeled and cubed.

6-8 florets of cauliflower,

Stock,

Salt and pepper to taste

*

Sweat the onions and garlic in the olive oil. Add the potatoes, cauliflower and a mug-full of stock. Allow to simmer gently until the potatoes are soft then add a little more stock till the consistency is soup-like and serve with a sprinkling of watercress and a few shavings of parmesan. (Or a chunk or six of chorizo, a handful of wilted green cabbage or a spoonful of pickled red cabbage.)

Just perfect for a quick lunch on badly done to days...

Have you seen the Vintage Ladybird site? A delicious romp through our seventies childhoods, where you can play vintage pairs, make a snake the Ladybird way, read the history of these oh so covetable books and finally hop over to Ladybird Prints and decorate your babbas nursery with all our yesterdays...

Oh happy days.

I cannot ride a bike. I failed my cycling proficiency test because the lady in charge hit me when I refused to take my hand of the handle bar to signal and since then I haven't got back on a bicycle. Or a tricycle. Or even a little scooter. In fact I've got to the point where I can't even begin to imagine how it is possible to take my feet of the floor, balance my big bum on a little seat and sail off into the wind...

And now I'm a grown up I just think stabilisers would make me look silly...

But I'm so in love with the idea of riding a bike, though shamefully I have to tell you that this has got nothing at all to do with getting from A to B in an eco friendly fashion and absolutely everything to do with harbouring fantasies of myself swooshing down a hill, pink welly-clad legs in the air and a spotty skirt flying around my hips like a parachute. it is about visualising myself cycling to the flower farm and filling my floral lined basket with roses and arriving at the bakers, leaving my lovely little bike leaning against a canopied window and popping a french stick still warm from the oven into the basket with the flowers and no doubt, a string of onions.   

Don't worry I find myself as ridiculous as you do. Let's face it I haven't worn a skirt since I was six and even if I did own a bike as glorious as the ones the Electra Bike company make, by the time I'd made it to the flower farm in my dreams you'd probably have to call the paramedics to monitor my horrified heart.

Dear me. Must I harbour these ridiculously romantic fantasies? Well yes, I really think I must. Especially seen as the clutch in my car has died and it's World Car-Free Day today.

Perhaps I could get me a second hand bike, pretty it up (ideas please!) and accost a handsome stranger to teach me how to ride it?

Holly from Pink Grapefruit has got quite the quirkiest collection of lovelies for sale in her Etsy Store, Pink Grapefruit Style...

Go see, go see, go see. This is a girl with a great eye for all the frippery little nonsense that makes a puttery day that little bit more scrumptious...

Knitting is a bore but Elizabeth nods and smiles and clicks to herself, as if it were more than just useful. 

She goes happily about the task, moving in and out of it without haste, perfecting tension, cabling, ribs.

She looks forward to the sewing up, but not too much, knowing how to mesh the pleasure of the final thing,

All sensuality and wholeness, with the independent life of every stitch.

Where does it come from, this compulsion to call her a whole list of things, other than what she is?

The string winder, the long fingered, the sitting clock, the fur maker and on and on and on.

From shanks by sharp shears, to Shape Shoulders, she is what she is, my shank shifter, the one who weaves and stitches up wool.

The needles click in a rhythm I can't get at: part and whole, part and whole:

Two heartbeats, a breath, two heartbeats.

Her lips silently move to mark the four or five last stitches in the line.

Elizabeth's pattern is cut small and pasted in her diary: a book of days, a book of stitches; lunch dates and meetings, Right Border and Neckband, Left Front.

There is no picture, only the long strings of phonemes - purls and plains made unpronounceable by the feminine science of the knitting pattern.

She bows her head to translate the printed page

    Into this odd manipulation of sticks and string.

I can't get my mind around knitting.

It starts to have everything when you come down to it- rhythm, colour and slow but perceptible change.

The meaning is all in the gaps: a pattern of holes marked out by wooly colour, a jumper made of space, division and relations.

Strange to see these youngish hands with no puffiness and no obvious veins

repeat the banal and tiny motions, over days, over weeks, over months.

I ask too much and am too hasty;

This knitting is an exercise in trust.

By Jo Shapcott

Yes please, Father Christmas. I need all the help I can get you see. I have  been writing a letter to a dear (pregnant!) friend in Scotland for over a month now and will no doubt discuss my most heartfelt procrastination in my journal three years next Monday.

I used to think disappointing my parents was the worst thing I could do. But now I know that disappointing myself is a far more serious matter.