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I like necklaces. I don’t think of myself as a particularly typical jewellery-loving girly-girl, but I love necklaces and have a large collection. I have basically three kinds of jewellery: crafty handmade stuff bought from people in markets and such, some of it quite serious and expensive; the odd bit of department-store tat, although I haven’t bought any of that kind of thing since we left Dubai, and a few pieces of old jewellery bought in antique shops and fairs.

That’s where I got these pearls – at an antiques fair in Lytham St Anne’s. They weren’t nearly as expensive as I expected (or as a similar set at a neighbouring stand), and I’m pretty sure they’re genuine (albeit cultivated). What sold me on them was the clasp, whih is lovely, as you can see. I’m sometimes tempted to wear them the wrong way round, with the clasp showing, but haven’t yet.

You can tell we live in a northern climate because we have a row of coats at the front door. We didn’t originally, but I am slowly training Martin in the ways of the snow and rainbound world, and the importance of a rack of coats at the door is a key part of this. When we first moved in, Martin would carefully go upstairs and hang his coat up in bedroom, like a good South African. There are two problems with doing this – one is that the coat is very likely wet, and putting it in a closet is a bad idea, and the second is that you will spend your life tramping up and down stairs in your coat, a hot, bulky, and unnecessary activity. He has finally come round to convenience of having a coat right there at the front door, especially since our coat hooks are right above a radiator, which means they’re often toasty warm as well when you get into them.

Now if I could get him to adopt the imminently sensible arrangement of changing your shoes when you come inside, I’d be very happy, but I think that may be asking too much. In this he is very English – never unshod except in the bath.

I think I’ve already mentioned that we cook. Well, this is a very small corner of the spice cupboard, featuring two kinds of cardamom, cinnamon and coriander. Behind that is paprika, smoked and plain, raw sesame seeds, ground cinnamon, mustard seeds, asafoetida and what seems to be fenugreek (I don’t want to go downstairs again and check). You can also see food colouring on the right and several citrus oils up top.

The spice section is about a quarter of the food cupboard (and considering that another quarter is cat food, this should give you an idea). It’s a shelf about a foot deep and four feet across, and it’s a bt of a jumble, as you can see.

The jars are also important – an assortment of ball jars collected in thrift shops and junk sales over the years. They go well with the collection of pestles and mortars on top of the food cupboard. We like spices. We like having jars of whole spices and strange ingredients just waiting to be turned into amazing things. I feel rich when I have spices to wallow in, like a mediaeval lady.

Belisha beacons are one of those symbols of England you read about, and don’t really understand until you get here, at least I didn’t really understand what they were. What they are are flashing yellow lamps on stripey poles, set up in pairs on either side of a road, and they signal a pedestrian crossing. Pedestrians have absolute right of way at a Belisha beacon – if you’re even standing near one, all traffic grinds to a halt. This is probably a problem for this one, which is on Adelphi road, one of the main roads through campus, and north-south through Preston. It’s in the middle of campus, and positioned in such a way that if you are walking across campus with someone, but heading to different ultimate destinations, this beacon is exactly the place where you would logically stop and finish the conversation before going your separate ways. It’s not just me, everyone does this, and the bit of pavement on either side of the actual pedestrian crossing is usually crowded with people having awkward conversations. This means that the road, which is very narrow at this point as well, has a constant backlog of annoyed, confused and worried drivers not knowing whether they should stop or not. The one major advantage is that if you are approaching the crossing and see your bus looming on the horizon you have a pretty good chance of catching it, since it will very likely be stalled by just such a gathering.

First of all, let me say that this is an original Bush radio, not one of the replicas you see around these days. It’s also working, a rarity, and Martin’s pride and joy.

He bought it somewhere in South Africa, and it’s come a long way with us, although we seldom play it. Like a lot of original Bush radios, it doesn’t have longwave (FM), so it’s not that useful. It is lovely, though, an object with great presence and history, and I love seeing it on the dresser every day.

Another late night, another day of nothing to photograph but darkness.

This is me playing with a tripod and a long exposure, or as long as I could manage to persuade the camera to do without consulting the manual (which I didn’t have with me). It’s the local intersection, looking down Blackpool road. That’s the Lane Ends Inn on the corner, an utterly generic English chain pub, serving generic beer and food. I think I like the streetlights best: they remind of what lights look like when I take my glasses off.

This is a jersey I knit, in moss stitch. I knit a lot, it’s among my many anachronistic skills. I’d make a good peasant farmwife, or at least I would have before the arthritis hit.

I enjoy knitting – I can do it while doing other things, like watching TV, and it produces a feeling of accomplishment. The problem is that I’m seldom as enthusiastic about the end product as I am about the process. Knitting produces a kind of cook’s syndrome in me: by the time it’s done I’m sick of it and never want to see it again. Last year, however, I knit three baby blankets, and they were all loads of fun to do, and wonderful, because I don’t have to see them again.

For my entire adult life, my glasses have been the single most expensive item of attire or adornment I own. These latest pair cost £400 for the lenses alone, and that was at a relatively cheap optometrist.

My vision is not good, and it’s getting worse: I already find I can’t focus on things too close to me, or too far, and that my eyes get tired from reading too much.

I was cleaning them, and I noticed the droplets, so I decided to play around with the image. Can you tell I really want a macro lens?

Chappies is a brand of South African chewing gum, sold by the piece on the counter of “kaffies” and “spaza shops”, what in the US would be called corner stores. Each piece of chappies is one and a half centimeter square, half a centimeter thick, like a little terracotta tile, and traditonally they are pink, violently fruit-flavoured and wrapped in a yellow wrapper like a little present. They use to be four for a penny, and were the only kind of chewing gum we were allowed. I suspect they’re considerably more expensive now, and they come in different flavours and colours. The inside of the chappies wrapper had trivia ‘did you know’ questions on it.

This is part of a mobile I bought from a shop in Grahamstown that specialises in recycled crafts – it’s a string of five cranes made of chappies wrappers in different colours, and it hangs from a shelf in my study. Yellow is the iconic chappies wrapper colour.

I made creme brulee tonight. We accidentally ordered too much from the delivery people, and are drowning in milk and eggs, so creme brulee made sense. Well, some sense, at least. It only uses a cup of milk for two servings, and although it has four egg yolks that leaves me with the question of what to do with four egg whites.

It didn’t work that well, I’m afraid. I was doing supper as well, and lost track of time. I also didn’t have enough time to chill it properly before doing the brulee. It still tastes lovely, though.

Now, what to do with the whites?