My Own Private India

'People have been drawn to India for centuries for reasons that still excite travellers today; for legacy, for colour, for the opportunity to stand before something that is bigger than yourself.  When EM Forster wrote that India is “not a promise, only an appeal,” he summed up something that Hunt herself acknowledges implicitly. “Be brave,” she says, “but be careful.” The beauty is in exploration but also in reserve. Fresh from her latest trip to the country, Hunt spoke to us about India’s siren-song appeal and its particular relationship with Jac+ Jack.' 

I interviewed Jac + Jack designer Jac Hunt about her own private India for Brace magazine. You can read the whole article here. One of my oldest friends is in India now, having the time of her life. I want to go, I want to go, I want to go. 

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team nigella

I'm so team nigella it's not even funny. If we can forgive Kate Moss for years of drug use I'm not sure what's stopping us from doing the same for Nigella. Maybe because she's up on a pedestal, and we take some of perverted pleasure in watching heroes - but in particular, heroines - fall. But we have to remember, it was us that put her up there. Us that made her the Domestic Goddess par excellence. She gave us the term, but we applied it to her, she who from the start just wanted women not to be afraid of the kitchen, not to be afraid of being domestic, not to label ourselves or let ourselves be labelled un-feminist because we enjoyed such a simple, traditional thing as cooking. There are so many women who owe their love of food and cooking to Nigella, but I just want to talk about one - me. It was to Nigella that I turned when I made my first home-baked birthday cake all on my own. I banished my mother from the kitchen and fuddled my way through a recipe with the most deliciously written introduction I have ever seen. It was Nigella that I ripped open the wrapping paper to on Christmas, and spent whole nights with the light on low, devouring recipe after luscious, effortless recipe (linguine with pancetta and lemon oil! if only it could always be this good!) long into the night. It is Nigella that I have to credit for my greatest culinary successes; to this day I am renowned amongst my friends for Cloud Cake, a flourless chocolate torte that is so gloriously balanced it gives 'intensity, and then relief, in every bite'.

Time passed and Nigella, domestic goddess that she is, was relegated to just that. Goddess status. My mum and I found new foodie crushes, who seemed to speak to the simple, casual way we had grown to eat (nigel, hugh, sophie, I am speaking of you). We took out her books to consult recipes that we adored and those alone. But we never stopped loving her. How could we? How could I? When she taught us not to feel ashamed at sneaking a spoonful of clotted cream from the fridge at 3 in the morning, when she insisted we not be afraid to take short cuts in the kitchen, when she showed us just how much pleasure - is there a better word for nigella than that? - we could get from cooking.

As I finish writing this I can see so many Nigella books in my mum and I's groaning cookbook shelf. Without pausing to get one down and check I would be able to tell you where all my favourite recipes are (Cloud Cake, page 110 in Nigella Bites, covered in flecks of chocolate and with the page slightly ripped, not that I need the recipe anymore though, the devils on horseback from Nigella's Christmas, the one pan cherry chocolate cupcakes from domestic goddess, the easiest, simplest, BEST TASTING cupcakes I have ever had). I could even tell you the occasions we had all her food, too. Because, as she says in Feast, she makes food that celebrates life. That's why all of her books have sections for the festive season, for parties, for entertaining, for sharing. Her food is about love. It's not really about expedience, or restraint and it's certainly not about health. Just plain old love. That's worth something, in my eyes.

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to pack and wear; v2.0

 

Whoever said it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive surely knew a thing or two about packing lists. I live for them. I scribble them down on everything to hand - the end papers of books, napkins, the backs of receipts - and find them weeks, months later, only to scribble them out and start again. A list I wrote last week could be completely, hopelessly wrong by today. For me, the joy of travel has always been partially shrouded by the inane thrill of planning. I gather tips and recommendations, I buy a map and plot walking routes out with green pen, I email everyone I know who lives even remotely near where I am going and beg them to meet me for tea/cake/talks, and I write tens/hundreds/thousands of packing lists, just like joan (always like joan). Writing packing lists makes me giddy. It makes me light-headed with excitement the way that, say, mundane tasks like applying for travel money cards and buying thermal underwear doesn't.

Like last time, this trip is going to be different. It's a trip to travel light on, for sure. I travelled light last year - well, light for me - and then was confronted with the horror of completely exceeding the confines of my suitcase in London (I coudn't close it for love or money, even with me and my friend sitting on the lid) that I had to buy a new suitcase from a greasy-fingered man behind Leicester Square for the price of a weeks worth of meals at Ottolenghi. Never again. Everyone laughed at me and said I brought a too-small suitcase but I knew the truth. I didn't pack truly light. But I am going to this year. This trip - to Denver and New York and Vancouver! Still taking any tips and recommendations if you have them, comment or email me - is going to be a bit of everything. A bit of work, a bit of snow, a bit of fun, a bit of new, a bit of old, a bit of all that good stuff that makes travel so intoxicating, so enthralling; that glorious mish-mash of the familiar and the foreign that makes you go, yes, I could do this, everyday for the rest of my life. I'm taking one coat (the BEST coat). I'm taking my trusty Benah pouch. I'm taking porsellis (even in New York winters I'm a slave to ballet flats. There will be boots too, don't worry). I'm taking lip balm and hand cream. And, at this stage, I'm taking one sweater. That will probably change, but oh, this sweater is a good one. Hope, grand, so grand, with a turtleneck you want to hide your face in and a long, thigh-skimming hemline and a thick, stocking-stitch knit that your mum sniffs at ('I could have knitted that for you,' I imagine her saying), from My Chameleon, where all the good, grand stuff comes from, and just begging to be taken to some proper cold weather.

Chances are by next week I will have rethought my whole 'Merica Winter 2K14 wardrobe, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't. I'm taking the sweater to Tasmania this weekend for a road test (summer in the city means 18 degrees, my dream) and I'm pretty sure that it's going to pass with flying colours. The best bit? It's so versatile and so much of a cosy, multi-tasking hero piece all you need to go with it is a few pieces of delicate jewellery and rosy lips. Packing light is going to be a cinch this time. I swear.

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wild prairie

source

I want this for christmas so bad that I'm tempted to just get it myself and wrap it up in red and green with a big velvet ribbon and stick it under the tree. That's how much I want it. I've been getting out my Slim Aarons print almost twice weekly because I just can't stop looking at it. There's something about the home and homewares that's getting me excited at the moment, more excited than clothes, or beauty, or books, or movies. I've got new sheets, new pictures, and dreaming of enough coffee table books that my house just looks like this. Time to move out, maybe??

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life in a tiny room

Today a package arrived containing a set of sheets so fresh, so clean, so light and bright, I had to put them on straight away. Of course they were from IN BED store (thank you, thank you, thank you!), that delicious purveyor of dreams, and it was such a treat I almost crawled straight back into bed again (on a Monday morning, very bad). One of my favourite blogs to actually read is Read My Tea Leaves, and she has a lovely section where she shares the trials and tribulations of her life in a tiny new yawk city apartment. Well, those who have seen my room know that I live in a tiny room. It's not even a real room, it's like a sunroom annexe to my house, and though that means that while it is gloriously light-filled the whole year round, it is also very, very small. One of her tips? Use white sheets. Because it makes the room seem bigger and they're also a dream to sleep in. Well, Consider this suggestion well and truly observed. Now to get some low-maintenance house plants and actually start to take proper care of them...

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saturdays are for love

Who would have thought that we could have pulled it together, after cancellation after cancellation, and all of it a SURPRISE? Only for you, RKB. A kitchen tea for the ladies, at our favourite place, with our favourite people, just before you get a(nother) ring put on you. Who would have thought we could have done it - betterthanchiswick lamb, nigel's mistress chicken, a coconut dream cake, and pavlova with all the trimmings, just the way it should be - and all with maximal minimal stress. We pull out the stops when we do it for love. Afternoons like this are the ones that make the working week worthwhile, the ones that you get up every morning at 6.45 for. They're the ones that never end, even when the rain starts to drizzle down mere metres away and the staff start to get out the mops and clean up around you. Lucky we have friends in high places that let us linger, eh? If only it could always be just like this.

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something new

I hate to get all consumerist on you guys but... I've got some new stuff and at the moment it's ruling my world. New candle, new throw, new moisturiser, new book, new glasses. Just let me laze about all day, please!

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I just don't know

'I wrote my first novel because I just got married and I was living in Stratford-upon-Avon and there was nothing else to do. I was very bored. I had no particular friends there. I'd been very busy up until then—at university, passing examinations—I very nearly took a job that summer and if I had taken a job, I probably wouldn't have written the book. So in a sense it was accidental. Whether I would have written a novel later, I just don't know.'

Margaret Drabble, The Paris Review The Art of Fiction No. 70

kinfolk 

Just thinking.

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uniform

At the moment I can't seem to stop wearing this. It's comfy and a little off kilter - the cropped sweater and xxlong tee make for an odd partnership, and let's not get started on the stocks - but there's something about it that I'm finding strangely compelling. I'm glad that I've got one more week of sweater weather ahead of me so I can enjoy the simplicity of this, five days in a row. 

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on the end

the new yorker

This post has been in the works for a while. You could even say it's been in the works for five years. Five long-but-oh-so-short years of my degree. Five years of sore shoulders, five years of smudged nail polish, five years of bad coffee and burnt noses. Five years of studying in the nooks and crannies of old forgotten buildings on campus, five years of running for the bus, five years of making friends with girls who had designer handbags in lectures (there are worse things, right?). When I sat back to think about it, and I mean really think about it, recently, I worked out that this is the first time since I was four (four!!!!) that I haven't been studying. I started school at four, I moved through junior to high until I was eighteen, I went straight into university without a gap year. The result has been eighteen continuous years of education. So really, you could say this post has been in the works for eighteen years. Eighteen long-but-oh-so-short years.

Saying that my education is over would not be strictly true, it would be like saying that no-one could possibly learn outside the classroom, and we all know that to be false. But this is the end of formal education, or at least it is from where I stand right now, and even if I start studying later (I feel like my life is peppered with 'even ifs' at the moment) it's going to be different. Right now I feel this odd sensation of rudderlessness, combined with the lingering thrill of the adrenaline rush I was running on all of last week after handing in my thesis, the ever-present fear of the future only compounded by the dreaded 'and what are you going to do next?' question, and the dull thud of exhaustion pulsating in the background. I spent all of last week catching up on my sleep debt, cooking lunch for my mum and reading. Unsurprisingly, I still feel like a student. I wonder when that feeling goes away? When you get a job? When your life starts to come together? And when is that going to happen, hmmm?

What can I say. I have just finished five years of university and come out on the other side unscathed, but also resolutely unemployed. I studied journalism and spent most of my degree sure in the knowledge that that was what I wanted to do, but now I'm not so sure, or at least I'm not so sure that the traditional, tried-and-tested way I wanted to go about it is the best way. I'm going away to America for a bit and that will take care of some of my anxiety and idleness, but there is still that worry, that nagging fear, that concern about what is going to happen when I come back, and after that after that, every day for the rest of your life. It's not supposed to be easy, I know that. It wouldn't be called 'life' if it was supposed to be a walk in the park. So yes, I am scared. Or to be more correct, I'm nervous. But, for me, nervousness has always walked hand in hand with excitement. How do you know if the butterflies in your stomach are floundering or flying? I wish I had an answer for people - and for myself - better than 'I have no idea' but I've always thought honesty was the best policy. I don't have a grand master plan. Sometimes I wish that I did. But the rest of the time I realise that not having a grand master plan is actually a blessing in disguise. I didn't go through eighteen long-but-oh-so-short years of education to jump headfirst into the next long-but-oh-so-short phase of the rest of my life. So here's to the future - my future! - in whatever form it takes, and no matter how long it takes for me to get there. I've got time. In fact, I've got a lot of it. I've got every day for the rest of my life. And that's scary, yes, but my god, isn't that exciting!

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soon

vanessa jackman

Thesis is due on Friday. I might be a bit MIA this week, only because it's crunch time and I'm starting to feel the stress. The stress but also the impending, almost-there, just-not-yet feeling of elation mixed with exhaustion of finishing uni. It's finally here. In just four days I'll be sitting outside in the sun, hopefully nursing a really, really, really big alcoholic drink, laughing about how tired I am. Wish me luck!!!

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left alone

'How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills you by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)'

Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica

vogue

Some people found the Stella McCartney show boring. A letdown. Not me. And maybe this quote doesn't quite work but I thought it summed up well how I feel about fashion at the moment and how I feel about Stella McCartney. That sometimes it's nice to be left alone. And that these beliefs of yours - to wear baggy clothes, and simple things, and no make up, as well as to wash the cups and work hard - are yours, habits and convictions formed over years of knowing yourself and becoming comfortable in your skin. It is something of Zoe's letting it settle, of taking a breather. I remember when I used to do Public Speaking the coach used to say how important the pauses were. 'They're almost more important than the speech itself,' he would say. 'Because a pause lets the speech sink in.' Stella McCartney is like one big pause for the whole industry. She doesn't always get it right, but there's something about her conviction that makes up for the mistakes. Left alone, this is the kind of stuff that I would wear all the time. So simple, so clean. So fresh, yes, fresh even in its simplicity. The problem with fashion lies in this innate, ingrained search for the new. How tired that phrase seems, now.

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ps. don't forget to enter my Gatsby giveaway!

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start spreading the news

8 rue cafarelli

If you follow me on instagram this isn't going to be a surprise but... I'm going to New York! And Vancouver, and Denver and hopefully Portland and San Francisco too but... first things most definitely, undoubtedly first. New York. All that longing finally achieved something. It's not going to be purely a holiday, some of the trip I will be working, but oh! I could hardly think of a better way to celebrate the end of my thesis, the end of my degree, the start of something. New York has a magnetic pull for some people, the big apple, the conrete jungle where dreams are made. But for me it's the city where I met my best friend. Going back is always like a complex dance between what it was like the first time and what it is like now, and what it was like all those times in between. I never quite know how I feel about New York until I'm there, and when I'm there I never want to leave. And that's the point isn't it? 

Please, please, please send me any tips that you have. It's been almost two years since I was last there and I would love to hear your suggestions! Leave a comment, tweet me or send me an email at hryee1@hotmail.com . Thank you!

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much too hot for me

It's much too hot for jeans today but I literally cannot stop wearing blue denim and black birkenstocks. It's just easy. I handed in my full draft to my supervisor yesterday and now I have a day of grace before I get the comments back and have to hit the ground running. So, naturally, instead of doing any of the million things I have stacked up in my mental to-do list, I read in bed all morning and drank ice-cold water through a straw. I'm not great in the heat, but on days like this I don't mind it, not at all.

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all of it

'All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in afternoon thunderstorms. That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and ever procrastination, every word, all of it.' 

Joan Didion, 'Goodbye to All That', Slouching to Bethlehem 

 miss little lime

The first time I read this chapter all I paid attention to was being twenty two in new york and feeling extraordinary and eating peaches. Now I am drawn to this bit. What is this called again? Growing up? 

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ps. my friend Belle wrote a little piece on my 'love love love' series, which brought a smile to my face today. Thank you B!

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the top shelf

I opened up about my beauty routine to the lovely Australian beauty website Walter Osborne. It's slightly haphazard and I don't always follow it, but it was fun to think about all the products I own (so many! I'm product obsessed even if I don't use half of them) and the stories behind them. You can read my little interview here.

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things I'm going to do this summer - #16-18

spruced // garance dore // freunde von freunden

sixteen. buy a hat and actually wear it. you can start laughing at me now, g.

seventeen. paint my nails white and wear just one first knuckle ring.

eighteen. look up. 

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the future

freunde von freunden - always

I know the kind of life I want I just don't know how to get it. Whenever I have a nothing day - like today, sorry thesis - I tend to think about the future. People have been asking me a lot and I don't have a sensible answer for them. I wish I could just show them the pictures from this series and leave it at that.

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things I'm going to do this summer - #16-20

ringo have a banana // jeanne damas // a still life // jessica stanley

sixteen. row a canoe along still waters.

seventeen. jump for joy at a beach. 

eighteen. take a boat ride to somewhere where the water is so clear you can see straight to the bottom.

nineteen. float. 

twenty. just be around water as much as possible.

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things I'm going to do this summer - #4-6

kinfolk // desserts for breakfast // tumblr

four. Buy a crab and take it home and actually cook it myself and eat it.

five. make popsicles. everyday. 

six. find a drive in cinema in the tri-state area and spend a night there, watching movies the way they ought to be watched; from the comfort of your own car, with ice cream.

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