Weekend Meanderings No. 126 | Saturday Lie-Ins, Home Tours, and a Hermit in Scotland

A cooler Saturday morning, a broken closet bar, a Dublin home tour, and a man who has lived alone in the Scottish Highlands for forty years

It is Saturday morning and I am having a lie in. I had every intention of getting up and walking (it is cooler this morning than it has been, which is lovely), but the book pulled me back to bed.

This afternoon I am off to a women’s health conference. I’ll report back if there is anything worth sharing. After that comes a project I did not exactly volunteer for. Last week one of the wood bars in my closet gave way and every skirt and jacket I own landed on the floor. Bill says I have too much. I say the bar had a flaw. Whatever the case, it has to be fixed, and I may as well get rid of anything I am not wearing while everything is already is disaray.. By the time that is done I expect I will be good for nothing except what I am reading. Which will be the perfect way to end the day.

What about you? What are your plans this weekend?

Home Tours

I will never stop watching home tours. Furniture, wallpaper, collections, the way someone has arranged a room. I find it endlessly interesting, and this tour of Rebecca Roe’s Dublin home is one I keep thinking about. It sits behind a handsome red-brick Victorian facade, and what is inside is both faithful to the period and completely reimagined. A modern extension at the back, rooms full of light. She layers color and pattern and the result is a home that feels personal down to the last detail. Old and new together, done exactly right.

Max Hurd’s West London home is an entirely different thing and just as wonderful. Family heirlooms, one-of-a-kind finds, bold color used without apology. It is the kind of home that tells you everything about the person who lives in it. The film is set around a relaxed lunch, which gives it a warmth most home tours don’t have.

At the Cinema

For anyone who loves Victor Hugo or French history, there is a new version of Les Misérables and I want to see it.

And then there is The Hermit of Treig. For more than forty years, Ken Smith has lived completely off the grid in a handcrafted log cabin beside a remote loch in the Scottish Highlands. No electricity, no phone, no running water. Filmmaker Lizzie MacKenzie followed him there and made a beautiful movie about him. Warmth and humor and reverence for a life lived entirely on its own terms. You can watch the full documentary here.

Wanderlust

St. Kilda sits forty miles off the coast of Scotland, in some of the roughest water in the North Atlantic, and people called it home for at least four thousand years. Then in 1930, the final thirty-six residents asked the government to take them away, and no one permanently moved back. This episode of The Map covers what it actually takes to get there, what it costs to visit, the history behind the evacuation, and the extraordinary number of seabirds that now far outnumber every human visitor combined. I find this kind of story fascinating. A place people loved and left and can never quite reclaim.

For Your Information

English Enjoyed with Thomas French uses a fictional murder mystery to show the difference between however and nevertheless. Two words that seem interchangeable and are not. If you enjoy the finer points of how language actually works, this is a good use of ten minutes.

I hope your Saturday is exactly what you need it to be. See you Monday.

Be sure to visit Kim at Northern California Style and Juliet at Make Mine a Spritzer for everything they are sharing this weekend.

You can find me on Pinterest and Instagram for more of what I am loving this week.

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