Caravans, Cornwall and lovely marbled notebooks

Plus it's my birthday

As you all know, I am always on the lookout for new stationery to add to my ever increasing collection and this is top of my list at the moment. A new notebook collaboration by London-based paper marbling studio Marmor Paperie for Mark+Fold. Each notebook cover is individually hand-marbled in a series of three water-themed patterns in shades of blue and neon orange. As with all Mark+Fold notebooks and diaries, these lay perfectly flat thanks to thread-sewn binding. This is done by master bookbinder Vicki in Suffolk, on a Singer sewing machine built specially for book-binding which I think is brilliant.

The inside pages are super-smooth 120gsm cream paper, suitable for fountain pen thanks to its excellent opacity, smoothness and resistance to feathering. Made sustainably in Munkedal, Sweden. The story of the collaboration responsible for these lovely notebooks is fascinating so do have a read and take a look at the designs. I love that the colours are inspired by summer travels and playing in water, with the neon orange flashes reminiscent of orange armbands and fluorescent bikinis.

And talking of travels I am in Cornwall and Brighton this week with Mr A, visiting children, grandchildren and celebrating my birthday.

Look at this beautiful beach - it has a fab cafe too called the Shallikabooky Beach Hut

This is also a great cafe and a brilliant alternative to dreadful motorway services with their samey, over priced, boring nonsense. Woodleigh Coach House and Cafe is just off the A30 near Cheriton Bishop and well worth a stop. Excellent coffee and breakfasts and really friendly people. Well worth a quick diversion off the holiday route and a million times better than any services’ offering.

We wanted to find this labyrinth but failed! We were scuppered by bank holiday parking stress but will definitely look for it next time. It looks amazing and the story behind its creation is fascinating.

So we found this cafe instead and it’s really lovely. I urge you to seek out indie coffee shops and businesses whether you are close to home or not because every pound you spend with them has such a huge impact on local communities, economies and families. In a world flooded with Costa it is so much nicer and more interesting to support local and support small.

Now… caravanning! We bought our caravan just after lockdown having endured (and I mean endured) years of camping. Yes we upgraded to an air tent and even bought the most expensive inflatable beds out there but it was still just too much in the end so we bought our ‘van. We now have the luxury of a fixed French bed, a bathroom and shower, hot water, heating, a kitchen - deep joy! BUT! Our holidays still have challenges and sometimes it does feel that we only get the reward of relaxation once we have successfully accomplished a series of tricky tasks.

On this trip we discovered some mouldy toast that was abandoned under the grill after our last hols (we left in a rush) and both bashed our heads on the overhead lockers within seconds of our arrival. Then there was the relentless and futile lawn mowing on the camp site and no free wifi which is ridiculous. I know we should all switch off from our digitally connected lives when we are away but I am freelance so I never really stop.

Holidays should, I feel, be better than being at home for numerous reasons, so having the absolute faff of emptying our own toilet, fetching water and removing waste doesn’t exactly work when we don’t have to do any of those things when we are at home!

However, having spent the last two years filming a TV series about people who live on narrowboats I do have total respect for anyone who has to do this every day even when they are not on their holidays.

Here are lovely Adam and Lauren on their boat - you can meet them in the first week of series 2 of Narrow Escapes which starts on May 5 4pm on Channel 4 - yes that was a shameless plug!

But despite all my venting we did have a lovely time in Cornwall - the weather was with us and we saw some beautiful beaches and ate some delicious food.

The second part of our trip took in a birthday lunch at The Crab House Cafe in Weymouth

This fantastic, rustic eatery is perched on the edge of the water and uses local produce, home grown kitchen garden fruit and vegetables and hand foraged ingredients collected by the kitchen team from the shoreline over looking the cafe. Oysters are grown a few feet away and crab and lobsters are caught fresh off the Isle of Portland. The people who work all this magic are marvellous humans - do visit.

We ate Tamarisk Farm radishes with whipped butter and Dorset smoked sea salt, shellfish bisque, red mullet, New Forest asparagus, crab remoulade and an absolutely mind blowingly good souffle made of crab with a whiting sauce - it was the perfect balance of creamy and salty and crispy - delicious. Now I am hungry!

After Weymouth it was off to Brighton to see my eldest son and his lovely girl Dannie and Spicy Margs were the order of the day.

I will be back later this week with a paid subscriber post about writing and all its benefits and an extract from my book to help anyone who wants to start a daily writing routine to try and make sense of life.

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Thank you and lots of love,