What would you save?

Looking for blog inspiration today I read this piece on the Guardian about what objects the writer would save from a house fire. She chooses two much-mauled and mended toy lions that belong to her autistic son, and writes about the meaning that has accumulated in them over the years. Loving anything that can be turned into a quiz, I asked myself the same question.

knitted teddy bear

It’s a familiar game isn’t it, and my answers have changed over time, but the one constant answer is Mumphy. I’m a bit embarrassed, as it’s desperately sentimental and a bit girlie. But Mumphy it is. Like Whatsit’s typewriter, almost every bit of his knitted body has been darned and replaced over the years – I keep a ball of Mumphy wool specifically for this. He lives on top of the wardrobe. I suspect him of being a bit of a moth magnet. But he was made by my mum when she was 13, and was something both she and Grandma had a strange revernce for. So I do too.

What what you save…? Please tell.



Toilet talk is cheap

This just in: Success in Hollywood is currently measured in bathrooms, a fact underlined by news that Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi installed 18 bathrooms in their new mansion. Sources close to Oprah Winfrey, rival chatshow host in posession of 14 baths – though the actual number of bathrooms in her home has not been confirmed in the original report – have been speculating that she […]

Japan tsunami poster

Japan memorial

My brother in Tokyo posted on Facebook (a rare event) asking everyone he knew to remember in their own way the devastating earthquake and tsunami that affected so much of Japan last year. So here is our post today, featuring the poster made by Daniel Freytag during the appeal that followed. Tokyo blogger HelloSandwich has […]

Tiny town

When I was about 10 I bought a row of pastel coloured ceramic buildings while on holiday on Cornwall. A weird, twee gift to myself that ended up at the charity shop a few years later. But what if those buildings had been The Whitechapel Gallery? This miniature building is by archtiectural model-makers Chisel & Mouse, whose collection […]