My ‘Small Things’ posts are about the little things that have made me smile during the week. This week, I’ve been:

Listening to: Robbie Williams’ Swing When You’re Winning – I’m waiting for his next Swing album which is out this month! I really like the orchestral accompaniment to I Will Talk and Hollywood will Listen, the rhythm of Beyond the Sea and the harmonies on Somethin’ Stupid, and Mr Bojangles and Have you Met Miss Jones? have always been favourites of mine. Very good cooking music 🙂

Reading: My friend Jo’s blog here. Jo writes so honestly, particularly about living with depression. She is a funny, gifted writer and these posts are always refreshingly ‘real’. She has also written several books, which you can find out about on her website.

Visiting: London, again! I’m afraid I didn’t do anything very original, but I did enjoy myself! I paid a little visit to the Oxford Street Topshop’s accessories floor, and then my brother and I had a nice pub meal in a Nicholson’s around the corner from Oxford Circus. It turns out there’s a restaurant upstairs which not many people know about – we were the first ones in there and had it to ourselves for a while! We rounded off the evening with a cocktail at All Bar One, which is always a reliable place to get a good drink 🙂

Eating: Covent Garden soups. They have some lovely new flavours out, and are so good in this miserable grey weather.

Wearing: More charity shop finds. I’m getting quite into this charity shop lark! (And for those who are assuming me terribly virtuous for shopping in charity shops all the time – it is really because I promised I wouldn’t buy clothes until after Christmas to raise money for charity, and I simply couldn’t do it! Hence the charity shop loophole…)

Other things that have been fun this week are:

Our Alternatives to Halloween at church: We had a ‘Light Party’ for the 9-15’s on Sunday evening and it was so funny watching them do the apple bobbing and retrieving smarties from plates full of flour! On Halloween itself, we set up lights and pumpkins outside church and gave out sweets. We wanted people to be able to come and get sweets in a safe and positive way, and also to celebrate the joy of light at this dark time of year, and the hope that good overcomes evil.

Finding a New Pub: We found a great new pub which is dog friendly, in a really beautiful location, and it even serves Thai food! It felt like The Green Dragon in Flaunden was made just for us!

Black Park: Around the lake area there are hundreds of children and dogs, but I like to walk out further among the Pine trees, which were beautiful on a crisp Autumn day. There were lots of lovely yellows and oranges as well, and a fairy tale castle for a film set!

Planning for Christmas: I have a rather long Christmas list forming, and I have also started thinking about what to get other people, and of course about Christmas FOOD. Andrew and I are on our own for Christmas Day, so we’re going to plan something a bit different – so far it’s either a posh BBQ, or whitebait to start followed by various curry dishes, and I want to make some baklava… We also joked about getting ourselves a cheap campervan for Christmas and decorating it up, eating our dinner in it etc… Would be soooo much fun, but I think it may remain a dream for another year or two!

Hope you’ve all had lots of ‘small things’ of your own to make this week chirpier 🙂