News from L&F

Well, blame this one on us.  Isobel’s great whinge has long been that we don’t get proper frost here in the bottom left hand corner of Lincolnshire.  Rain, broiling sun, but never really deep, snapping frost. So imagine how unsympathetic we...

Well, ladies and gents.  A very happy new year to you all, and welcome back to the world of L&F.  What a time we had of it at the end of 2024: the Aga had a hissy fit, and we...

Well, the day is almost here.  Tomorrow, dear Reader, is my birthday.  Not just any old birthday – a BIG one.  Huge.  Ends in a zero and starts with a 6, and if one more person tells me ‘it’s just...

Storm Darragh, ladies and gentlemen.  As I write this, safe in rural Lincolnshire on the eastern side of this fair land, I still hear the wind tearing it up outside and the rain rattling onto the windows.  For those on...

‘Why’ we are sometimes asked ‘Lincolnshire?’  Well apart from being a bit rude about a beautiful and largely timeless part of the country, that’s a very good question, and we’re asked it – or a variation on the theme –...

So now that we’ve all gone entirely state-side, and we have learned to embrace our American friends’ version of Halloween with all it’s spookiness and sugar, what to do with the innerds of the pumpkins you’ve assiduously carved?  Simple.  Rinse,...

I’ve been in trouble this week.  My last blog exceeded our self-set limit by almost 100 words.  (Isn’t that the problem with Christmas though?  Excess.)  So, back to the briefer everyday story of rural folk.  It has been a very...

Have you seen our new Vases?  Oh my life.  We’re pairing them with the bang on trendy faux foliage that seems to be all the rage – and we do see why.  We had a great time finding these lovelies...

THANK YOU, to everyone who sundanced last week!  What a cracking afternoon we had: the sun may not have been dangerously hot, but it didn’t pour – which, this year, is a definite win.  Businesses sold stock, people ate and...

No, not to Christmas – to the inaugural Late Summer Fair, here at L&F HQ.  The excitement is definitely building as we prepare to host 15 stalls of local businesses in a final flurry of buying and selling before we...

Well, it has been an epically wet month in Argyll.  We and the land are truly and biblically, spectacularly sodden – from where we are, right on the edge of a sea loch, you see the next belt of rain...

And here we go again.  August: the most expensive and fattening birthday month of the year here at L&F.  Three male birthdays to be squeezed in, all (rather satisfyingly) on multiples of 5.  The fifth, tenth, and twenty-fifth to be...

Well, what a torrid time we all seem to be having.  Bizarre weather, Wimbledon drawing to a close, the little matter of a footie match tomorrow I gather – oh, and there was an election a couple of weeks ago,...

I should tell you, I am an awesome tennis player.  (That simply isn’t true, and never was.  Even before my arthritic shoulders gave up.)  In my heyday however I had a backhand to fear – I certainly did: it was...

It’s nearing the end of June, so of course our thoughts turn to … Christmas.  If you feel that the whole world is Christmas mad, and you think it starts too early, my only words of advice to you would...

‘June just rains and never stops’ – so sang the wonderful Flanders & Swann a million years ago before we knew anything about climate change.  Well, they may have had a point, and I’ve long thought that the wonderful Wimbledon...

Ian the Excellent Painter has been again.  L&F HQ is a bit like the Forth Road Bridge before they invented a self-restoring paint, or whatever they did.  No sooner has he finished than he has to start again – and...

Right.  That’s it.  It’s properly May now, and as believers in the power of positive thought, we are determined that the rain has finished: enough.  And to celebrate?  Well CAKE, obviously.  Or in this instance, cakey muffins – we find...

May in the L&F HQ garden is just about the most beautiful month.  It’s not yet the fully greened-up, thick and heavy garden of June and July ...

And incredibly, it’s that time of year again.  We’re booked in to four HUGE ones this year, and paid up and hugely excited – we’re restocking and planning and all systems are very definitely, officially, ‘Go’.  (As if they weren’t...

We’re trying to be very on point, and are steeling ourselves to make some reels.  To waft about in front of a camera goes right against the grain, but those who know say it must be done, and we have...