After this post, I might have exhausted the mirror selfie blog post concept for a while 🤣

It’s been a while since we went on a proper day trip, so after a bit of googling, we decided to head to Rye.

This medieval town is just an hour from London and turned out to be well worth a visit. Very picturesque and not too crowded, with lots of cute old houses lining small, cobbled streets. It’s fascinating, too, that it used to be a seaside town, but the sea is now 2 miles away!

I particularly enjoyed the view from the tower of the 900-year-old church, a beer in the garden of the Ypres Castle Inn and a nice lunch at The Union Rye.

A very nice day out!

Here’s what’s been going on since my “summer so far” recap at the end of July:

• On an overall level, life has felt a bit in limbo while we’re waiting to complete the purchase and move into our new flat. Living in a temporary place makes everything feel like one big procrastination! 😤
• I kept spending time playing around with my blog and vibe-coded several new features: a photo archive, dark mode, comments on posts (but you’ll have to email me your comments, and I post them 😅), site search, a publishing calendar on the archive page and a custom 404 page.
• I did do a trip, to Sweden, working remotely for a week and taking another week off. I enjoyed nature and my little boat, before it was time to go back.
• Speaking of travel, I spent hours creating a map of the places I’ve been to.
• It was good fun going to see the recording of Live at the Apollo.
• I switched to using Kagi as my search engine, paying a subscription fee to get real search results instead of ads.
• The best meal I had was at Poon’s in Somerset House.
• I did a bit of shopping, getting myself an iPad again, a new bag for my EDC and some dungarees. I also bought not one but two pairs of JNCO jeans, which I consider the start of a little collection, with pairs three and four already planned.
• I rebooted my wardrobe, with the goal of moving from my almost all-black outfits to something more relaxed. It was a fairly thorough process, creating a plan and then a final list, before shopping to plug the gaps and finally doing the switch-over.
• I also posted about my minimal-ish iPhone setup, my wish list, my little projects, and how I budget.

And now I’m really excited that autumn has arrived. It’s always been my favourite season! 🍂

A nice autumn day in photos:

1. Tried Beringer’s, City Island for brunch. Nice food and very convenient, since it’s close to home.
2. We’re hopefully getting close now to exchanging the contract on the new flat now, so we went looking for a new kitchen.
3. We were planning to go to Epping Forest, but there was no Central Line, so we ended up in Greenwich instead
4. I learned that the Prime Meridian by the observatory hasn’t been the actual prime meridian since 1974. The real one is 102 metres from there!
5. From Greenwich, we walked south across the heath to get to Blackheath, where we took the bus back home.

My wardrobe reboot is a project that’s been running for as long as the blog, but yesterday I finally started wearing the new clothes I’ve been buying over the past month or so.

I have posted the target list before, but that didn’t include specific items, so here’s the actual list of items:

Yesterday, we ended up leaving home too late to be in the mood for our usual Saturday brunch routine. Instead, we decided to do lunch at Poon’s, a Hong Kong restaurant in Somerset House.

We chose the 3-course set menu, which changes daily, and were served chicken soup, char siu pork, mushroom salad, and vegetables. It was all very nice, and the quality felt very high. It was also nice to sit at the counter and watch the chefs at work.

We will definitely come back for more.

One thing I enjoy is going to TV recordings, as I find it very interesting to get a behind-the-scenes look. Sometimes, everything is as you expect it would be, and sometimes, it’s quite different. Sometimes you get big celebrities, and sometimes you don’t. Either way, it’s free entertainment.