Chez Hanny

A couple of years ago I had the idea to offer regular online gatherings for the Chez Hanny community. What started as an experiment became a monthly occurrence in the form of Create Ensemble - an hour on a Monday evening to come together for the purpose of doing something to nourish our creativity - be it writing, sewing, drawing, reading… or something else. These sessions have been so enjoyable and I love chatting to you and learning about your creative projects.

Photo by Othman Alghanmi on Unsplash Something surprising happened today. I said no to working with a potential interior design client which on paper looked like exactly the sort of job I would have dreamed of six months ago. But the conditions weren’t quite right and there was a slightly anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. That was until I said no, and then everything made sense.

I’m back in London after two weeks away in France. It was a holiday, but I’ve come to realise that our holidays are quite different to what some would consider a holiday to be. We didn’t eat any meals out. We didn’t go on a plane. We didn’t go to the sea. And we came back with a lot more ‘stuff’ than we left with. Despite the above, it was a wonderfully relaxing break.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -51:40 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Series 4 is finally here! This time round I’m handpicking guests rather than putting a call out, and my attention was peaked when Becky and I crossed paths on Instagram. She spotted my giant monstera plant, I looked at her profile and was instantly interested as soon as I saw that she hadn’t always been an artist.

New photos by Ami Robertson! I’ve set myself a challenge to become a Substack bestseller. It’s a bit audacious for someone who isn’t famous, didn’t bring an already established list here and essentially just writes honestly about life and work and the joys, challenges and everything in between that come with it. But I’m saying it out loud and therefore I mean it. Being a ‘bestseller’ means to have over 100 paid subscribers. I’m not so far away from that and I believe that it is possible for me.

not the house I’m staying in, but from a village I visited today with a courtyard which looked perfect for writing and reading in! I’m writing today from the south of France. We’re back in the house we stayed in for a month during the summer of 2024. Sadly not for so long this time, but it’s good to be back. And the first holiday in June for me since after my finals in 2006 when I visited my friend in Madrid. Since then I’ve been fully institutionalised in the school system.

A postcard of Huvin Anderson’s ‘Audition’ It’s a slightly anxious space I’m inhabiting at the moment. In three days’ time we will go away for two weeks on holiday. I simultaneously cannot wait, and yet am filled with anxiety around whether this is a good idea as a self-employed person. Will I be able to simply not work for two weeks and still be able to make ends meet?

What I actually did today (turns out, quite a lot) I’m a morning person. I do my best, focused work in the morning between the hours of 6am and 11am. I know this through tried and tested methods and so now that my work schedule is organised solely by me, I try to plan everything around this knowledge. But sometimes unexpected plans come up and I have to adapt. It was my birthday on Saturday and my amazing husband planned a whole host of things to do over the weekend.

Colour, line, and my creative practice that won't stay in lane ‘Inca’ by Nimrod Messeg It’s so easy to forget that cups need to be refilled, creative ideas replenished and ‘output’ needs to pause occasionally in order for the above to take place. This weekend is a bank holiday weekend in the UK, meaning that those with salaried jobs get an extra paid day off on Monday. That used to be me.

Write with me I only found my love of writing three years ago in August 2023 when something inside me, a feeling I can’t quite explain, wouldn’t go away. It was summer and I was spending a lot of time sitting in my garden wondering what the hell I’d just done giving up a well-paid, stable teaching job that I’d worked my entire career for. But I was also excited about what the future held and somewhere amongst all of that there was a desire to write it down.