Creature comforts and home truths

The temperature continued to hover around a balmy 16° C in November's second week, and although we'd left the handful of gloriously sunny days of the first week behind us, it was still unseasonably warm.

Even the mornings weren't chilly enough to qualify as properly Autumnal, so that there was as yet no need for the heavy woollen coats, chunky knit scarves and gloves which are usually par for the course this time of year.

After Monday's uneventful office day, we woke up to a mixture of sunshine and light clouds on Tuesday. 

I'd chalked in a blog catch up as well as making a start on dusting the downstairs rooms while Jos was running errands, but my plans were thwarted by a wardrobe failure. 

Alas, the outfit I'd earmarked, and which was built around one of my recently charity shopped skirts, had looked infinitely better in my mind's eye. It simply didn't work and although initially I decided to persevere with it, I felt so out of sorts that I couldn't possibly concentrate and had to abandon my blog commenting to change into something else entirely.

The rust, burgundy and cream plaid H&M skirt I changed into was another charity shop find, but picked up several years ago, in October 2017. My brown leather belt, teal King Louie cardigan and black and white ceramic beaded necklace were charity shopped as well, while the Paisley print blouse came from Think Twice. 

To compliment my skirt's rusty shades, I pinned an orange felted flower corsage to my cardigan. This is an old retail buy, which has family members in many different colours. The ceramic heart brooch on my blouse is a Welsh holiday souvenir bought from a shop called The Crafters Cwtch in Cardigan.

From my rainbow of opaques, I selected a pair of wine red ones, while my footwear of choice was a pair of snake print ankle boots, a sales bargain from New Look.

I'd barely finished dusting the sitting room when Jos returned with his purchases. Apart from a fortnight's supply of non-alcoholic beers, these included a new mobile, picked up in our phone provider's shop in a nearby town, which had thankfully been allowed to stay open. His old mobile's battery had been playing up for months and as things had recently come to a head, the time had finally come to upgrade to a new one.

After lunch, we attempted to get to grips with the new phone's features. Then, as it looked as if rain was imminent, we grabbed our coats (in my case, my burgundy Tweed jacket with knitted sleeves and yoke) and swiftly walked to the museum garden further up our street for outfit photos. 

We'd only just made it home before the heavens opened and we were treated to heavy rain for the remainder of the day, leaving a drowned and bedraggled garden in its wake.

Wednesday was Armistice Day and as this is a public holiday in Belgium, the week's schedule was a bit different, with me having to go into work on Thursday instead.

It was an utterly grey and damp day and I was in a bit of a maudlin mood so that I couldn't settle to anything. For want of something better to do, I finished the dusting I'd started on Tuesday, giving the hallway and dining room a once-over, while Jos vacuumed the downstairs rooms in my wake.

The day's chores done, I made myself comfortable on the sofa, finishing Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread, and starting the latest installment of Lucinda Riley's The Seven Sisters series. With its 836 pages, The Sun Sister will certainly keep me spellbound for a while.

Presented with a gap in the clouds, Jos wanted to walk to our garage to connect his new mobile to our car enabling him to call hands-free, so I accompanied him for some outfit photos.

It might not have been cold enough for woollens, but berets, now that's a totally different story! 

Although there hasn't really been a need for these either, my drawerful of berets in all colours of the rainbow - painstakingly collected over the years - has been calling my name whenever I walk past the hallway cabinet they live in. I have been known to purposely postpone washing my hair just to have the bad hair days which justify wearing them!

That day, I selected a burnt orange one to go with my opaques, which in their turn picked up the burnt orange swirls in my vintage bottle green polyester and wool-blend Trevira dress. More shades of rust and orange appeared in my vintage woollen plaid jacket and crushed velvet scarf. To accompany the dress, I donned my bottle green wedge heeled ankle boots for the occasion. 

Is that a ray of sunshine I detect up there? Let's bask in it for a minute!

The coral polka dot cardigan I layered my dress with is an old H&M one, to which I pinned yet another one of my flower corsages, in a minty green to compliment the similarly coloured swirls in my dress.

The wooden brooch covered in tiny flowers was a flea market find, while my necklace - which you can just catch a glimpse of - was a gift from one of our favourite flea market traders. Sigh!

Back at home, we awarded ourselves the luxury of a warm waffle sprinkled with icing sugar. 

Together with pancakes, this is a traditional afternoon treat in Belgian tearooms, offering a choice of toppings to go with them. Alas, they are all still closed, although I have to admit I do not really miss eating out.

As mentioned, I had to work on Thursday that week, which felt oddly off-kilter.

Drawing our curtains on Friday morning, we were relieved to see some hazy rays of sunshine lighting up the garden. A light hoar frost made the silky webs of gossamer draped over the red-berried Cotoneaster look like unruly candyfloss.

I keep marvelling at the determination of plants, their efforts to shine one more time often in vain. 

Their petals all blackened and shriveled up, the Echinacea flowers look like ghosts of their former selves, while a lonely Felicia flower (top right) rears its tiny head above the still fresh green foliage. One or two Oxeye daisies are shyly opening their hearts, and there seems to be no stopping the exuberance of the Verbena Rigida (bottom left) we planted in early Summer.

My outfit of the day started with a grey and white wallpaper print dress with a pleated skirt, its monochromes brightened with splashes of fuchsia and turquoise on its collar and hem. And here's the teal King Louie cardie again, this time adorned with a fuchsia flower corsage. 

Other accessories were a pink and black beaded necklace, a pink vinyl belt and a flower embroidered brooch pinned to my dress.

Turquoise opaques and my newly acquired burgundy Fly London ankle boots completed my outfit.

Just a tiny bit envious of Jos's new phone and wanting to make use of the incredible deal he'd got on it, I decided to trade in mine as well. After all, as we'd bought our old phones at the same time back in the Spring of 2017, it would only be a matter of time until mine would be giving up the ghost as well.

The new phone's got an incredible camera, which I spent the rest of the afternoon experimenting with.

Here's a wide angle shot of our tiny sitting room taken from the sofa on which we were sat (the blue is Jos's denim-clad knee), and look who's snoring away on one of the 1950s cocktail chairs! 

Jos often sits in that chair, reading or doing word puzzles. That is, until Phoebe comes along and claims the chair as hers. 

Now that the nights are drawing in, and it gets dark half-way through the afternoon, the time has come to make things cozy by lighting some candles! The one in front of the Gossiping Mary's on top of one of the sitting room cabinets has found a home in an old amber coloured glass flower pot.

Things were definitely looking up on the weather front, the fiery sunset a herald of the bright and sunny day forecasted for Saturday. But that will be for another post.

Until then, friends and readers, I'm urging you once more to stay safe!