How can it be …

… with all the time in the world, I cannot write as often as I would like? –  is a question I often asked myself and until a couple of days ago had few ideas about how to solve my problem. It then occurred to me to ask another question: if I can Instagram as often I do, could I write shorter posts for the blog with similar frequency as I post on Instagram. Not that the two media are comparable, really, but … why not give it a go?

As the parent of any eight-month-old whippet will attest "time for oneself" is a much-cherished delusion – a fantasy as hard to relinquish as is the idea that living rooms are anything other than canine playrooms  …

… that whippets allow one time for breakfast 

… do not sulk if you tidy away their toys and do not complain vociferously if one looks at them 

…or even that privacy any longer is an option. My clever, beloved Barnaby Warboys has learned to open doors and I have photographs to prove it. Publish and be damned, he says. 

Barny is the reason I have little time and there is no-one more amazed at it than I: to a great degree our life is changing in ways we hadn't thought of before he became our family. For example, neither of us want to leave him for weeks on end whilst we go to Europe so we have decided that vacations in this country are going to be more the norm and we are looking either to build or buy a second place where he can run and explore like the whippet he is and we can spend weekends as a family together and with friends.

Our taste runs more to the contemporary and something as starkly rectilinear as above and below from Rocio Romero in a wooded setting seems perfection to both of us, especially if more softly nestled in grasses and shrubs. 

Inside, I would like to see something as comfortable and contemporary as the room below by Thomas Hamel. There would be nothing by Eames, nothing mid-century-modern, none of the so-called "design classics" and certainly nothing from IKEA (how the hell it became so popular in blogland beats me). In other words, the formulaic way of furnishing modern architecture as boring as a trawl through a DWR showroom, is not for us. 

A cabin in the woods? Possible, but without any rural references in the decor – neither of us are farmers, cowpokes, or blacksmiths and take the lead from Henrietta-Lucy Dillon de la Tour du Pin Governed who, in her Memoirs of Madame de la Tour du Pin: Laughing and Dancing Our Way to the Precipice I am sure does not mention furnishing her log cabin during her exile in America with any reference to the forest or its denizens surrounding her.  I know, I know, a complete non sequitur.

I want to mention again how we both feel that after all these our living room – in fact, the whole place – needs refreshing and seeing how our floors look without the carpets and rugs which are at the cleaners having whippet tracks removed, I'm leaning very strongly towards the idea of having our wooden floor stenciled. The one advantage of bare floors in warm months is that they are cool to bare feet but, if plain wood, they are visually boring. The stenciled floors in The Parish-Hadley Tree of Life: An Intimate History of the Legendary Design Firm have examples that awoke my interest anew. 

So, my attempt at writing quickly was interrupted by nibbled toes, nibbled fingers, outraged barking when I refused to play, but as persistent as my pup is, I have my Instagram-ish post for the day. 

Maybe, till tomorrow? 

Photograph of Thomas Hamel's room by Matt Lowden 

Photograph of Bunny Williams's room by Scott Frances

Both photographs from The Parish-Hadley Tree of Life: An Intimate History of the Legendary Design Firm