New Folksy shop, hurrah

New Folksy shop now up and running ... Check it out!

Lots of lovely vintage remade cake stands handcrafted by the Boy. Perfect for weddings, baby showers and birthday gifts.

Can you finish it?

I have set myself a literary project: to tackle Trollope's Parliamentary Palliser series.

I am talking about Anthony, of course, and not Joanna.

Having started and failed to complete any of the Barsetshire Chronicles time and again, why am I subjecting myself to this? I'm not really sure, except that I have a sneaking suspicion that I am missing out. I didn't get on at all well with the misdemeanours of churchmen - but I read The Way We Live Now for the Masters, and enjoyed the satire on high finance and the inevitable parallels that can be drawn with our very own thoroughly modern banking crisis.

I can't help wondering what Trollope would have made of the tabloid hacking scandal.

So I have turned to the Parliamentary novels, about a weakly bound coalition between the Tories and the liberal Whigs. Sound familiar? I have started at the beginning with Can You Forgive Her? (albeit with misgivings, having read the joke titles Can You Stand Her? and Can You Finish It?).

No politics as yet, but an interesting quandary for the heroine as she holds out against marriage as the only destiny for her sex, asking 'What is a woman's life for?'. Seeing friends juggling marriage, motherhood and full time work, I do sometimes worry we haven't come that far. Free childcare for all working parents! I'd vote for that.

Sheffield, steel city

Or, city of Victorian architectural loveliness, ghosts of a fleeting industrial wealth.

Roar: Vintage at the Red Lion

We'll be there on Saturday March 31.