Share your interests, no matter how broad

Why I don't care about categories, and three hobbies that don't 'fit'

Occasionally, I worry that my writing here flits through such a range of topics that I am too difficult to categorise. One day I’ll be writing about my work as an interior designer and other times I’m waffling on about jeffing (read about that here if you missed it!).

Those of you that also write on Substack will know that there are ‘categories’ that you are supposed to select two of in order to help people find your work. I found it very hard to choose when I first started writing, and it has become even more difficult as time as gone on.

The past 7 months of writing here and sharing my thoughts and opinions on a range of subjects has been very enjoyable, but occasionally I catch myself thinking that I must stick to writing about interior design (as design was one of the categories I selected) or that I should not write about France because I didn’t select ‘travel’ or ‘international’.

Hopefully you’ve got to know me well enough by now to understand that I don’t care about categories or pigeonholes and do feel free to write about what I enjoy.

With that in mind, today I am sharing three topics/hobbies that are important to me that I haven’t written much about, but plan to expand upon more over the coming months.

Maybe they will cross over with your own interests and maybe they won’t. Either way, let me know in the comments.

Cocktails

It was lockdown #1 that pushed cocktail making Chez Hanny to a new level. Me and my husband have been into cocktail making since we first moved in together, but back then it was very basic and the results would be odd combinations of strange liqueurs we’d found ourselves with bottles of. Think home made sloe gin given to us by my father in law…

These days it’s taken more seriously and over the years we have acquired a wide range of ingredients with which to make a plethora of delicious drinks with.

There are rules. We only make them at the weekend and tend to have one. Cocktails can be pretty strong and so it’s best to enjoy one really good drink rather than continue to make many of an evening.

Cocktail making, like baking, is all about precision. Ingredients need to be measured out carefully and combined exactly according to the instructions. There are occasional swaps I might make, such as changing a type of bitters indicated in the recipe, but otherwise it has to be the specified ingredients. There’s a part of my personality that loves this exactitude. I thrive on it.

A discovery made some years ago was the fantastic website: www.diffordsguide.com

It’s a treasure trove of recipes, information about ingredients, articles about drinks and much more. You can search by ingredient, order the results by ranking, and even use the cocktail builder to add the drinks you have at home and let the database work out what you can make from those ingredients.

There’s a cocktail of the day, which on the day of writing this was a Cherry Bakewell due to it being National Cherry Pie Day on 20th February. Who knew! You usually get a story about the cocktail’s history (most cocktails have a brilliant backstory) as well as a link to the recipe.

What’s my favourite cocktail, you ask?

It’s a difficult one, but right now I would say it is The Mayflower Martini. It’s a lovely balance of sour and sweet with a gentle hint of apricot, elderflower and apple coming through. Technically this is a sour rather than a martini, but frankly, who cares? It’s tasty.

Here’s a selection of some of our homemade creations over the past few years:

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Photography

Since I started my home renovation Instagram account (visit Chez Hanny on Instagram) in 2017 to document the building and renovation work we were doing, I have become quite addicted to photographing things I see and do (clearly that includes cocktails).

Now that amateur home renovation has morphed into setting up an interior design business, photography has become more important than ever and I really enjoy the challenge of trying to capture spaces well.

I don’t have any training in photography, I simply enjoy taking pictures on my iPhone 14 Pro.

Being outside in nature is becoming more and more important to me as I get older and I love to photograph what I see when I’m outside.

The photo below was taken on a walk last week when I was away in Devon. The light coming through the trees was magical and I was happy to be able to capture this moment.

Photo credit: Hannah Ashe, February 2024

Thanks to

Sarah Best

who wrote about her love of photography recently (read it here), I discovered

Nordic Lens

written by

Patrik L

who runs a photography challenge (monthly, I think). Patrik sets a theme and entries are submitted via notes on the Substack app. The deadline for the most recent challenge was yesterday, but I’m sure that Patrik will be launching another challenge soon.

Do go and check out both Patrik and Sarah’s Substack newsletters as they are great!

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Jazz Music

I’m a saxophonist by trade, so I’ve always been in love with this music that often divides people.

Me playing tenor sax a few years back

I know jazz isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it speaks to me in a way that I find hard to explain. I don’t play as much as I used to, but it’s listening to and watching live shows that I really love.

There are two jazz gigs coming up that I’m planning to go to. The first is at Ronnie Scott’s on 3rd March and will feature the Marcin Wasilewski Trio who I first saw play back in c.2005 in Birmingham when I was a music student there. They are a Polish trio (piano, double bass, drums) and their music is haunting and beautiful and I’m so excited to see and hear them again, this time in the wonderfully intimate setting of Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, London.

If you’ve never been to Ronnie Scott’s, I would highly recommend it. It’s a seriously serious music venue: no chatting or phones are allowed during the performances. It ties in nicely with the cocktail interest too as they have a fabulous bar.

During the periods of lockdown, Ronnie Scott’s presented a series of concerts via livestream on their YouTube channel. They were amazing (and some are still available to watch on the channel). We watched seven or eight of these from the comfort of our sofa and took in some of the finest live-streamed jazz there was at that time. It honestly helped us to get through that grim winter of 2020/21.

Ronnie Scott’s Live Stream Sessions getting us through lockdown #2

An artist I first encountered on one of those live broadcasts was the brilliant saxophonist Trish Clowes. She played an hour long concert of music which was mostly written by her and it was wonderfully evocative. After watching this, I started to follow Trish on Instagram and saw a couple of days ago that she is playing a gig at London’s Wigmore Hall on International Women’s Day (8th March). It’s a Friday and it’s at lunchtime. Once again the stars have aligned for me to be able to go and I plan to book tickets for this.

When on our travels, my husband and I try to check out local live jazz. We’ve seen and heard some breathtaking music in Berlin, Gothenburg and Chicago to name a few places. Jazz is something I could write a lot about, but will save this for another day.

What I will leave you with is a playlist. There are two tracks each by the artists I mentioned, who I will see play live next month, and a few more tracks by jazz artists that I love. Let me know what you think (even if you hate it!).