maisonbentleystyle.com

Choice and too much often equals confusion: where once there was just coffee, we now have a list of decision, all meant to supposedly showboat progress and quality. The same is true for jeans: lots of noise and shouting, but most of them have a tang of the emperors new clothes

Iridescent turquoise bricks and art-deco-style cornice are not descriptions you expect from an industrial building in the heart of London. But the fact that the building is going to be the headquarters for Damien Hirst might explain it further… Until you realise that Stiff and Trevillion, the architects, designed the building not knowing who would occupy it

It won’t be this year I get to see this house – visits are limited in numbers and duration and this years slots are already full – but it’s on the bucket list. The house is the work of Khdambi Asalache, a poet and writer of Kenyan descent who also worked for the BBC and the Treasury. He started making fretwork to cover up the damp coming from the next door launderette, beginning a project that would last another twenty years. He would use abandoned wood, doors and boxes first cut to size then carved using a single knife.

It’s going to be some time before my fingers can instinctively do this, but I’m having my first ever crochet lesson today and my eyes can’t wait. They’ve been checking out all the incredible designs a simple hook and a piece of yarn and a little bit of yearn can make. I’m learning from a highly skilled older lady in my neighbourhood courtesy of The Wiser Collective, a group set up by local mums Claire Redway and Sarah Laffey which aims to link up the generations in my area and It works on the idea that there is so much we can learn from a group that all too often find themselves isolated, and there are things that as busy families we can offer – large meals with laughter can be something we take for granted.