Home – CHARLOTTE-ANNE FIDLER

April 3, 2018April 3, 2018

Bed Time Story

Charlotte-Anne Fidler, Lifestyle, Countryside, English country, Country house, English Houses, English Home, Gardens, Flowers, Cutting, Gardens, Nature, English, gardens, Roses, Rose garden, Sweet peas, Spring bulbs, Spring gardens, Spring planting, Summer planting, Summer gardens, White, Blooms, Home design, Interior design, Interiors, White interiors, House beautiful, Homes and Gardens, Maine Coons, Cats, Motherhood

I love a beautifully made bed. I also love unmaking it and curling up for eight hours under a cloud of goose down and crisp white bed linen. And the crisp linen part of that is crucial. Don’t talk to me about ‘easy-care’. My bed linen doesn’t have to be easy; but it does have to be Egyptian cotton, a high-ish thread count, and, ideally, a cool and airy Percale (more on this later).

Where did I develop my bed linen high standards? I used to have a job where I travelled a lot and was lucky enough to stay in some pretty snazzy hotels. I slept in real linen, cotton Sateen, high thread count Percale, and, once, a silk mix (great for the skin and hair, I hear). I got to understand the difference between good linen and not-so-good linen. I became an expert on pillow fillings and duvet types (it’s Hungarian Goose Down all the way for me).

I learned that, where bed linen is concerned, you usually get what you pay for. And, like buying good shoes or handbags, when you spend a little more, you will have something that makes you happier and, importantly, last longer. Decades in the case of very good linen. I got clever about where I bought my linen from. I looked for brands that made their linen in Europe (where there is a tradition of great linen making) and used ultra-thin, long yarns (this is far more important than thread counts for softness and quality). I bought in the sales when I couldn’t afford full price.

I know the brands I love (Frette and The White Company’s Savoy and Linen ranges) and I pretty much stick with them. But I’m open to change, which might be why, when my very stylish friend, Charlotte, sent me a box full of beautifully wrapped Draper London linen last week, I was very excited. I hadn’t heard of Draper London, which launched last year, but I had heard of its big sister, Josephine Home (who provide seriously upscale bed linen for the Mandarin Oriental and Soho House hotels). The brilliant idea behind Draper, is to create superior bed linen with all their luxury know-how about yarns, thread counts and European craftsmanship, but sell it at entry level prices. Pretty genius, I’d say.

We’ve been road-testing our sheets for a week and, so far, they’ve proved a winner with me….the girls…and, of course, the cats.

So that you can up your bed linen game, too, I’ve arranged a 20% discount off the Draper London Collection. Simply type in ELFCAT when you checkout at www.draperlondon.com to access the discount until 15 April 2018. Terms and Conditions apply (see their website).

The cats have very refined taste in linen. When I put on good bed linen, like the Draper London Hero Set, here, they like to ‘help’. This means hiding under the sheets (to check the weight….)

….and kneading the duvet covers with their outsize paws to check the softness.

Draper London is a light and airy Percale in 300 thread count Egyptian cotton which they think is a ‘perfect all-rounder’. Poff, agrees…..

I love a well-made bed, but I don’t have hours to spend fluffing and tweaking in the morning. My best bed-making routine: put a quilt or coverlet over the duvet (folding a good foot or so of duvet over the pillow end of the quilt). The quilt covers any wrinkly bed linen and everything looks neater instantly. I then put square ‘continental’ pillows up against our sleeping pillows – again hiding any creased pillowcases. They are outsize and plump, so look particularly inviting. Confession: I carry my own pillow with me when I travel (I hear that the Queen Mother did the same). It’s a way of ensuring that, wherever I’m staying, I’ll have a pillow with the plumpness I need to sleep properly.

We are big sleepers in this house. I have a teen who will sleep 12+ hours if I let her. And three cats who are probably asleep 23 out of every 24 hours. I am in awe of the cats’ sleeping regime. Think about the all cell repair and mental sorting that they get done. No wonder they are always so beautiful and chilled.

Good linen will age beautifully and keep getting better with time. But spending a little time on their care will help. Following Draper London’s advice, I wash mine at 60 degrees and always leave a bit of space in the drum so that the water can circulate properly through the fabric.

Great sheets are greater when they’re crisply ironed. Ideally, iron them while they are still very slightly damp and store them in a linen cupboard, airing cupboard or drawer. Here is my linen cupboard (one of my favourite pieces of furniture in the house). I push lavender bags in between my sheets to make them smell even fresher.

Let’s talk about thread count. Actually, let’s not, because it seems it’s all a big marketing ploy to make us think that thread count equals quality. What you need to look for when you shop for sheets is the quality of the fibre (look for ultra-fine and long) and where it’s made (ideally Europe, where they’ve been weaving high quality fabric for centuries).

What’s the difference between cotton Percale and cotton Sateen? Percale, my favourite, is crisp, matte and cool like a good man’s shirt. Sateen is sensuous and super-soft.

I’m a big believer that good bed linen promotes good sleep. But, if that’s not enough – often the case with my youngest daugher, Bo – we try mindfulness apps. And Epsom Salts baths laced with a couple of drops of Lavender essential oil.

A bit of pre-bed quiet time with Poff helps, too.

Remember to type in ELFCAT when you checkout at www.draperlondon.com to access the 20% discount until 15 April 2018. Terms and Conditions apply (see their website).

March 29, 2018

The Cat in the Window

I’m not sure how other people first start their blogs, but I think it’s important that I spend some time setting the scene. With that in mind, I’m using my first few posts to introduce all the different elements that make up my life – my home, my family, my garden, my animals.

This post is about my view. This is the view from my bedroom window. From my bed, to be more precise. It’s what I wake up to every day and what I see, often by moon- or starlight, just before I go to sleep at night (I always look – except in the winter when I’ve closed the shutters at 5 pm because of the cold!). You might recognise it from my Instagram feed. I’ve spent the last five years recording it. Not every single day, but almost.

It’s a stop-you-in-your-tracks view. The proof: when I first saw it, I didn’t even notice that the room was painted a rather horrid shade of salmon! I just stared and stared. Out past the garden and the slightly wonky rail and post fence; out past the neighbour’s land and the lone Lime tree; out to the fields and farms and hedgerows and the hills rising beyond them in the distance.

I couldn’t work out why it was so extraordinary, at first. Like the backdrop in a film, or, on a good day, a Gainsborough painting. I didn’t realise that the house sits on a 100 metre high Green Sand ridge, so, when you look south, you see for almost ten miles across the edge of the Vale of Pewsey to the start of ancient Salisbury Plain.

I like to think that what I’m looking at hasn’t changed for centuries. That someone in 1710, when this part of the house was built, would have looked down on exactly the same patchwork of fields and trees that I see. But, at the same time, this view is always changing: changing skies, weather, light as the hours and the seasons pass. Every time I look, it’s different. Scroll down and you’ll see what I mean…..

The cats enjoy the view almost as much as I do. When I’m photographing it, they often jump up and become part of it. Convenient, because it makes a better picture. Poff is the main Cat in the Window. Nim sometimes gets a look in; and Mousling, cleverly has her own view, from the back of a chair out of the other bedroom window.

I love the point in March, when after waking up in darkness for months, I’m woken by light through the shutters. And then, when I open them, the view is hazy and pastel like some soft-focus photograph.

When the cows appear at the edge of the field in late April, I know that summer is almost here. They like to follow the sun, so they are there in the morning and when the last rays are hitting the top of the hill in the evening. I enjoy watching them moving slowly through the frame and then disappearing as the sun sets.

We get mist in the valley some summer mornings and most autumn mornings. When it sits in the valley like this, it looks so watery that it turns the view into a beautiful sea-scape.

The other thing I watch is the Horse Chestnut tree that is always in the right hand side of the frame. Watching how that tree changes as the seasons progress is how I map time. Winter with it fat sticky buds; Spring with its silky leaves so much earlier than all the other trees; high summer with its billowing greens; then autumn with the copper leaves and conkers.

In high summer, Poff and I like to do a bit of cloud watching. At least, I watch the clouds and he watches the birds. It’s extraordinary how the clouds change depending on what month it is. In July, it’s all about big, puffy Cumulus Nimbus.

The window that frames the view is in the Georgian part of the house which was added, in around 1710, to the main house. I have a thing about Georgian houses (don’t we all?)! Particularly the windows which are so large and perfectly proportioned…..

….And the beautiful shutters, which we discovered nailed in when we first moved here. The room side of them was painted black. True, I swear! Perhaps an 18^th Century version of black-out blinds?

The light is always extraordinary. My theory is that it’s to do with being on top of a hill, so, when the sun rises and sets, the light is always angled upwards bathing the garden and the landscape in a golden glow.

The window faces south, south-east, so I have a ring-side view of the sunrises most days. Look at this one! (Note how Poff is doing his best Scarlett O’Hara…). I don’t think I ever saw the sun rise in London.

In the winter, the sunrises are riveting pink things over a landscape turned Eau de Nil by the frost.

Fog! I always get excited when this happens, even though it means that there is literally no view. But gradually, the valley begins to appear – one tree at a time. It’s fascinating to watch.

I’ve waited seven years to get a picture of the view with snow. It completed the series for me.

February 13, 2018February 13, 2018

Why did we move to the country?

Why did we move to the country? Lots of reasons. We’d planned our escape from the city for years, scanning property websites for ‘Georgian rectory’ in a 100 mile radius from London. Suffolk, Kent, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire…if it had countryside and pretty houses, it was in the running.

I wanted a bigger house and a bigger garden (having filled our London garden to overflowing). I wanted to look out onto green and not my neighbours’ building work. I wanted to be able to leave our front door unlocked – which in Hackney, where we lived, was definitely not on the cards. And I had fantasies about the girls growing up surrounded by space and fields and knowing the names of wild flowers. We settled on Wiltshire because it was beautiful, commutable and because, to our amazement, we could swap our small-ish London terrace house for a pretty, part-Georgian house with almost an acre of land.

We drove down one Sunday afternoon in June and were instantly smitten. The house sat, tucked behind stone and brick walls in a triangle of land on the western end of the village. It had a stone roof scattered with moss and sedum. It had mullioned windows on its eastern side and big Georgian sash windows on its south side. When we knocked the panelling we could hear evidence of Georgian shutters (yes!). It had room for us all, with some more to spare.

And it had this view. There was no forgetting the view. And nothing could compare to it – even when we looked at houses that were cheaper or more sensible because they were closer to the station where I’d be travelling to London every day. I couldn’t get the view out of my mind. At first, I couldn’t work out why it was so spectacular. I didn’t realise that the house sits on a 100 metre ridge which means that, when you look south, you see for almost ten miles across the edge of the Vale of Pewsey to the start of Salisbury Plain. I knew I wanted that view in my life every day. And so, that was it: I became a country girl.

You can see why it was love at first site. This part of the house was built in 1690 (which makes it William and Mary, rather than Georgian). I don’t know how long after the Wisteria was planted (people are always asking). But, like the house, I can confidently say that it’s very old, too.

This is the view from my bedroom window. It’s a landscape of fields and ancient hedgerows that hasn’t changed for centuries. But, at the same time, it’s always changing: changing skies, weather, light as the hours and the seasons pass. Everytime I look, it’s different.

Beautiful in the summer; beautiful in the winter.
It’s a miracle I can ever drag myself away….

Another thing I love about the country: that I’m surrounded by beauty most of the time. The school run is beautiful, the drive to orchestra, art club, riding….all beautiful. Sometimes I have to stop my car, pull over and take a picture (like I did here).

When we first looked at the house, I only saw the view, the wonderful trees, general greenness and a couple of old roses. I didn’t notice the rampant Bindweed and Ground Elder in the borders. Ugh! It took two years to get on top of them before I could even start planting (and I’m still fighting). Now the garden is finally getting there.

These borders are ones we created (after digging out a couple of tons of hardcore – nothing is easy with an old houses!), around a York Stone terrace that we also put in. They’re full of my absolute favourite flowers: roses, irises, Catmint and Lavender.

Living in the country, you notice the weather in a way you never do in the city. The big skies over Wiltshire change so quickly – I can literally see the next hour’s weather coming towards us across the valley. It’s typical to have a rainy or cloudy day, followed by a beautiful evening and sunset. Or the other way around. When the weather is good, I always try to get outside to enjoy it.

I wanted my girls to grow up being country children. So nothing makes me happier than seeing them outdoors doing the things I did as a child. Climbing trees, cartwheeling across lawns, or just swinging and watching the view.