1) I had some time off this week and with my family down in London we decided to have a day out at Strawberry Hill House. This gothic mansion is out Twickenham way and was home to Horace Walpole in the 1700s. I’m not mad about gothic architecture (surprisingly, for a wannabe goth) but Strawberry Hill is utterly amazing with spectacular interiors and comes highly recommended. Can you believe my phone battery ran out? Me neither, otherwise there’d be a million pictures.

We got the train to Richmond and strolled along the river all the way there – it’s an hour or so dawdling but you pass Eel Pie Island and all sorts of riverside mansions. It’s also worth checking the special events – the Moonglight Tour sounds pretty bad-ass.

Highlight of the day: Learning two new words; gloomth and sharawadgi.

2) The New York Times has bought out a beautiful travel guide called 36 Hours: 150 Weekends in the USA & Canada. Published by Thames and Hudson, it is full of neat-o illustrations and inspiring photos. I can’t afford a weekend away in America but I’d still like to have it to dream. Buy it (for me) here.

3) Sticking with the NY Times, here they attempt to explain Jimmy Savile to a US audience in an obituary which feels slightly unsympathetic (“the name rhymes with ‘gravel’.”) but does which does feature some interesting nuggets of information.

4) I never tire of looking at pictures of a young Henry Rollins skateboarding.

5) Predictably, I’ve had my eye on Topshop’s studded Vectra slippers ever since I first saw them and, equally predictably, they have been consistently sold out for weeks. It hadn’t even occurred to me to consider the ruby ones but after seeing them IRL I realised the error of my ways; red velvet is way more slipper-y than black… right?

6) Oh, another thing. I know not everyone is loving the latest episodes of Downton Abbey but from the visual side of things, how exciting to hear that series three will be set in the 1920s.