But this summer, for the first time, something shifted. We stopped seeing quite so much of what still needed doing and simply started living in it.

There were still jobs, of course. I’m not sure a 200 year old farmhouse like this is ever really finished. But for once they seemed to slip further down the list of priorities. Instead, there were long lunches that rolled into the afternoon, children coming and going and a rate I stopped keeping track of and towels permanently draped over anything that stood still long enough.

We swam. We waterskied. We stayed up too late.

We probably ran the dishwasher more times than is environmentally defensible. There was also considerably more mess than you will ever see in any of my photographs.

But somewhere amongst all of that, I realised that our house, ‘Coumes’, had finally become what we’d spent the last five years trying to make it.

A place to live in.

🤍

And now we’re at the other end of the summer, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll take home with me - and, perhaps more importantly, what I won’t.

Losing my dad at the start of the year has made me realise how little space I sometimes leave for the ordinary moments. Back in London I’m very good at filling the days - somewhere to be, something to do, the school run, work, plans, noise. There isn’t much room to just sit with things. Here, I’ve had a chance to slow down and I think I needed that more than I realised.

So, what am I leaving behind?

The need to have everything finished.

The idea that being busy means I’m doing well.

And, hopefully, leaving behind some of the comparison, the second-guessing - and the idea that, at 42, I should have it all worked out, including what I want the next part of my career to look like.

It’s also taken me five years to finally realise that an old house doesn’t particularly care about deadlines. The unfinished jobs will still be here when we come back and that this house, that was once probably the least calming place in my life, has somehow become the opposite.

And the best bit? None of that needs packing.

This is the kind of morning I wish I could pack.

Of course, when I say I’ve been thinking carefully about what I should and shouldn’t take home, there has been one fairly significant failure of restraint.

France, apparently, had others ideas for me….

Meet ‘Mowgli’

Our rather unexpected passenger home.

A few words worth keeping.

Not everything worth finding is something you were looking for.

Two days before my 40th birthday, I found myself asking the question I hadn’t really expected: am I actually happy?

That opened the floodgates. My life choices. What I’d achieved. Whether I’d done enough.

Why did turning 40 suddenly feel like I was supposed to have it all figured out? Like it was less of a birthday and more of a life audit.

Talking to friends since, I know I wasn’t alone. There’s something about reaching this point in your life that makes you take stock. Maybe it’s the pace of modern life. Maybe it’s having everyone else’s lives constantly playing out in front of us. For me, I think a lot of it came down to comparison - and that nagging feeling that I was somehow being judged (by no one that I’m aware of, I might add).

I realised I’d already had a 15 year career as a jewellery designer. My designs had featured in Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Glamour and been worn by Jessica Szohr, Una Healy and Carrie Fletcher. Looking back, that was pretty cool. I just didn’t realise it at the time. When you're in the thick of life, you don’t always stop to notice what you’ve achieved. Those were big milestones, and I wish I’d appreciated them more. Perhaps that’s why now, in my 40’s, I’m learning to notice the smaller ones.

Note to my younger self: you were doing better than you thought.

Jump forwards 10 years. I’d had my two children and a more flexible way of working, but the creativity was itching its way to come back into my life.

I was 39 and 362 days old, lying on the sofa, procrastinating on life and scrolling through Instagram, as you do, when I came across a photography course for women. It was probably the quickest purchase I have ever made. I dusted down my old camera I’d used from my photography A-Level and started 6 days later.

I had no idea at the time quite how much that one decision would help me become the best version of myself.

And then there was Laura, founder of Lens Eleven.

Laura started out as my photography coach, but two years on, she’s become so much more than that. She has this rare ability to make you believe you’re capable of more than you thought. Endlessly encouraging, completely infectious and now my friend for life. I describe her as my ‘creative caffeine’ - one dose of Laura and you suddenly think you can conquer the world.

If you're feeling anything like I was just before my 40th birthday, check out Lens Eleven - go for the photography, stay for the community of women you’ll meet along the way (proof below).

Lensfest 2026 in Lisbon

I wish this were the part where I told you that two years later I’d completely changed careers.

I haven’t.

But I did start.

My branding is nearly there.

My website is taking shape.

And I’m slowly working out what a career in photography might actually look like.

The photograph I was taking at the beginning of this story.

A few words worth keeping:

Starting matters more than we give it credit for.

And I love all those things too.

But the longer I spend here, the more I realise it’s more than that. It’s the smaller things I notice most. The things that probably wouldn’t make it onto a postcard.

The Shutters

Shutters thrown open in the morning, then closed again an hour later before the heat really arrives. There’s something about the daily ritual of it. After some time here, you start doing it without even thinking about it. We’ve just had ours repainted. I may now be slightly obsessed with them.

Everyone actually stopping for lunch

Not eating something over a laptop or grabbing a sandwich between meetings. Properly stopping. Shops close, tables fill and nobody seems remotely apologetic about it.

Coming from London, it still feels slightly rebellious.

Baguettes. So much tastier out here.

The things nobody has replaced

Faded signs, old doors, peeling paint - things that have been here for years and are simply left as they are.

Even the swings at our house have been hanging from the same tree for more than 30 years. My husband played on them when he was small. Now my children do.

I think I love that most of all. Not everything old has to be made new.

The roads that feel like another decade

When I drive past this farm most days, I wonder which decade I’ve accidentally ended up in. It’s as thought someone has pressed pause.

Growing up as a farmer’s daughter in England, farms were always changing - bigger machinery, newer buildings and a constant push to modernise. Here, I pass old tractors and trailers that look as if they’ve been doing the same job for decades. The same lady is often sitting outside with her dog as I drive past. She gives me a wave.

I love it, the simplicity of it all.

The view I hope I never get used to

The countryside here in Southern France seems to come in layers. Fields give way to rolling hills, one behind another, until eventually the Pyrenees appear in the distance.

I’ve photographed this view more times than I can count and yet every time, it looks different. The seasons change, the light shifts, and the hills seem to take on a completely different palette of colours.

I hope I never get used to it and stop noticing.

The last light of the day

There’s something about the evenings here. Just when you think the day is over, the sky seems to put on one last show.

A few words worth keeping

Perhaps I did know what I love about France. I just hadn’t realised how small most of it was.

I never really set out to photograph any of it. But looking back through my photographs, I realise I’ve been collecting little pieces of our days without really meaning too. Somehow, they’ve become a photographic journal of our summer.

The peace and quiet doesn’t always last.

Home in France is where I tend to slow down, but a lot of our summer is spent at a lake just a 20 minute drive from us, where we are anything but still. As a family we’ve always been happiest doing something - and for us, summer means a lot of time on the water and waterskiing .

When it gets too hot, there’s really only one answer.

And then there are days in Toulouse. La Ville Rose - the pink city - and still one of my favourite places to wander with a camera. The old brick seems to change with the light, from dusty pink to deep terracotta, and no matter how many times we come here, I seem to find something new to photograph.

None of these are particularly extraordinary moments.

And perhaps that’s the point.

When I think back to this summer, I doubt I’ll remember what we had planned or how much we managed to get done. I’ll remember long French lunches that are never rushed, the Pyrenees on the horizon - a view I hope I never take for granted - and the lady from the farm who sits outside her house most days as I drive past on the sleepy roads. I often wonder what she’s thinking about as she sits there, watching the occasional car go by.

It turns out I wasn’t trying to document our summer. I was just paying attention to it.

This summer has been different. Since losing my father, sleep has rarely followed the rules. I’ve found myself waking long before everyone else.

At first I resented it.

Then I realised what those early mornings were quietly giving me.

France · 6:39am

I started taking my camera with me. Not because I was looking for anything in particular, but because the light kept changing. Every few minutes it revealed something different. The simplest of things had been there all along. I had only just started to notice them.

It was the way the light slipped across the field. The warmth of a coffee before anyone else was awake. Tomatoes still warm from the sun. The familiar view from the same bench I’d sat on dozens of times before. Weathered by the seasons, it had quietly become my place of calm.

I used to think the day began when everyone else woke up.

The mountains were exactly where they’d always been.

The light arrived whether I noticed it or not.

Now I know it begins much earlier.

Quietly.

Long before the world asks anything of you.

This house has held other people’s lives for more than 200 years.

There were years where it stood empty, quietly waiting. It was brought back to life once before, and now, decades later, we find ourselves restoring it again. Every room seems to uncover that we are only passing through.

Lately, that reminder has come in the form of books.

Not just any books, but the books that belonged to my husband’s great-grandparents. They’ve travelled through generations of one family before finally finding a place on the shelves of our newly finished library.

Among the century-old French classics now sit the books that shaped my own childhood in England. Alice in Wonderland, Rupert Bear, and Story a Day — the sort of books that instantly transport you somewhere long before you realise they’ve become part of you.

One still carries a pencilled inscription dated 1936 🩶

It made me wonder what stories are quietly waiting on other people’s shelves, too. Is there something that’s been passed down through your family - a book, recipe, a piece of furniture, or something much smaller - that instantly brings someone back to you?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Before the renovations, these books lived on a single side wall.

I walked past them countless times without ever imaging they’d one day become the heart of the house.

We painted the shelves in Bauwerk limewash in "Fir", giving the old reused timber a darker backdrop so the books almost glow in the evening light.

As I dusted each book and placed it in its new home, I couldn’t help wondering how many hands had held it before mine, and who had sat quietly reading it all those years ago.

Perhaps that’s what old houses teach us.

We never really start from scratch.

We inherit pieces from other people’s lives, care for them for a while, then quietly pass them on.

Maybe that’s true of books, too.

For us, it’s more than a room full of shelves.

It’s somewhere to slow down.

Somewhere to remember.

Somewhere new stories can begin.

Tomorrow quietly becomes next week. Then spring arrives, summer follows and before you know it, seven months have passed.

The last time I wrote here I didn’t know it would be my last for a while.

Then January arrived, and with it, a goodbye I will never be ready for.

My wonderful father passed away and suddenly I was about to experience the hardest chapter of my life.

For a while words left me. The only thing that still felt natural was to reach for my camera. I never stopped taking photos. In fact, I’ve taken thousands of them. The quiet beaches in Devon, mountain mornings in France, city streets in Lisbon, the magic of light as it changes, and all the fleeting moments that still make me stop and reach for my camera.

What I stopped doing was finding the words to go with them.

Photography has always been how I’ve learnt to notice the world. Writing has always been how I’ve made sense of it. Since I was a little girl, I’ve always written - diaries I never quite finished and postcards I never quite sent.

From now on, every postcard will carry a little piece of him.

I’m writing this from our 200 year old farmhouse in the South of France, the Pyrenees are just visible beyond the fields, the shutters are open and it’s just me today and the sound of the birds. It’s become my place of calm. A place to slow down, to breathe, and notice the small things.

If these last seven months have taught me anything, it’s that life is made almost entirely of small moments.

That’s what The Unsent Postcard will always be.

A place to collect the moments that are so easily missed.

✨ A photograph.

✨ A conversation.

✨ A place.

✨ A thought that stayed with me a little longer than expected.

Every Sunday morning, while the coffee is still warm, a postcard will find its way to your inbox. I hope each one reminds us all to slow down.

Life isn’t made up of the big moments we remember. It’s made up of the small ones we almost missed.

This is where the postcards begin again.

Grey days might not photograph well… until suddenly they do.

I’m in West London, so getting to Waterloo isn’t exactly an expedition - which is one of the perks of living here. One train and I’m there. Some days I just need to pick up my camera and look at life through a different frame. And one day this week South bank was calling.

The first thing that caught me was a mural of Paddington — blue coat, red hat and full confidence, reminding me that “everyone is different and that means anyone can fit in.” Surprisingly decent advice to bump into before you’ve even had your second coffee of the day.

And maybe that’s the real charm of these walks - heading out with no agenda except to use your lens, and London never disappoints. Suddenly you’re in a better mood for absolutely no reason except some bold colours and Paddington’s cheeky grin. It’s proof that the city can take the edge off a grey day.

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event… and the precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression. Colour adds another voice.” — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Next up was some street art: a lone figure mid-jump between two rooftops, etched in black and white, the kind of image that makes you imagine the rest of the story even though you’ll never know it.

Whoever drew it didn’t leave a name — just a moment. A pause in the middle of a busy walkway. Enough to make me slow down and ask, What happened before this? And after?

London’s good at that — offering half-finished stories and letting you supply the rest. Someone you’ll never meet leaves a fragment of their imagination on a wall, and suddenly it’s part of your day. Just as I’d convinced myself it was time for a drink, I turned a corner and found a glorious big yellow heart wrapped around a mulled-wine sign. The kind of thing that shouldn’t make you smile as much as it does… but it does, especially at this time of year.

On that note, it’s November and I feel this was a sign - the mulled wine is in full flow here on South Bank, so it would be rude not too!

Until next time… cheers! 🍷

Amour,

Tess x

The house changes with the season too. Mornings start slower now — the kind where you wait for the sun to find the windows before tackling any job that counts as work. The dogs and children sleep longer; the kettle works harder. There’s less urgency in everything.

Outside, the vines have turned and the garden’s gone wild, but there’s comfort in that — in letting the undone things be.

One morning, the sunrise was exquisite and my daughter joined me in the stillness, looking out over the Pyrenees. In black and white, the scene took on a different kind of mood — the light felt faintly haunted, all glow and shadow, as if it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A cobweb stretched across the railing beside us — fragile, perfect, and just a little too fitting for Halloween week.

Now in November, the house smells of wood fires and good intentions. Half-finished cups of tea sit beside half-finished lists — but it wouldn’t be us if that weren’t the case. We tell ourselves we’ll start again tomorrow, and sometimes we do. Other times, we just light candles, pour a glass of wine (because it would be rude not too), and simply sit.

It’s the season to remind me to slow down - to stop chasing perfect, and just watch what happens as the days change their mind (and so do I)!

So here I sit, at the other end of my favourite — and finished — room in the house, soaking up the quiet before we trade it in for London chaos. Still, there’s something about Christmas in the city that I love ✨🎄

Until next time…

Amour,

Tess x

The house itself is more than two centuries old and has been in my husband’s family for over thirty years. Four years ago, it became our project. Making sense of its quirks while coaxing it gently into the present — without erasing the past — was always going to be our biggest challenge, but perhaps our greatest achievement if we managed it.

The walls are standing, though not all of them straight — some days, I can’t say I blame them. We’ve had them replastered, but fine cracks are already starting to reappear, as if the house is reminding us that nothing stays smooth for long. The dust returns as quickly as you wipe it away, and the floors complain loudly enough to remind us they were here first.

I always meant to keep a journal of it all, but life — and a little overwhelm — got in the way. The photos have lived on my camera, quietly gathering digital dust. Eventually, I realised that waiting for the perfect moment meant missing all the imperfect ones in between.

Every story needs a first chapter. Mine begins with my favourite room in the house and naturally the one that behaves itself the most ✨

As a child, I always dreamt of having my own library. I loved reading — though I rarely finished a book — but mostly I loved the idea of disappearing into one. I’ve always believed that every house needs a room you can escape to, even if it’s just with your imagination.

Our living room is very long but not especially wide, so we moved the book shelves from along the side wall and rebuilt it at the far end of the room. Using Bauwork limewash colour 'Fir' and carefully layering the lighting, we slowly built our library — filled with my husband’s great-grandparents’ leather-bound books, over a hundred years old, alongside stories from my own childhood.

Some evenings, I sit in the sitting room wrapped in the quiet calm. The light softens over the spines of books that once belonged to other hands, other lives — a collection we hope will keep growing for generations to come.

Somewhere between what we had planned and what actually happened, the house began teaching us its own kind of patience. It doesn’t care for timelines or tidy finishes — it prefers slow mornings, long pauses, and a good layer of dust to settle in.

We’ve learned to live with the imperfections: the uneven beams, the tiles that never quite line up, the paint that looked one shade in our head and another entirely once it dried. It turns out, a house that resists perfection is a very good teacher.

Last week I said to my husband “The longer we stay, the less I want it to be finished” and he nearly choked on his tea!

The cracks are still there, the walls still hold grudges, and there’s always something left to fix. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe this house — like every story, and every person who’s passed through it — was never meant to be finished.

Until next time from the dust and the list we’ll never finish,

Amour,
Tess x

Return to Sender:

For the bits I’d rather not remember — but probably should.

Four years in: a new roof, a second attempt at a bathroom (we don’t talk about the first), and more “almost done”s than I can count.

Add paint fumes, too much coffee, two small humans, and just enough Provence wine to stay optimistic and civil to one another — the house somehow stopped being a project and quietly became part of our story.

Fast forward 20 ish years and here I am again, camera in hand, rediscovering the quiet joy of life while living in the fast lane of chaos.

What began as a quiet curiosity has become a daily practice of noticing: the way light spills across a room, how my children move through it, how life feels different when you pause long enough to frame it.

We live in London but we spend all our holidays in the South of France where we’re now in our fourth year of renovating an old farmhouse - a slow, imperfect project that’s become part of the family story. It’s a life of half packed bags, long drives, muddy paw prints and yet moments of stillness that arrive when the light hits just right. The walls have seen every stage of us: toddlers growing up, nights spent sleeping on sofas, dancing in the moonlight of an empty barn with nothing but simplicity and a bit of music.

“We didn’t wait for perfect - we danced in the dust and called it home”

The dogs wander into every photo, the children rarely stay still, but this is where I’m learning - not just about photography, but about patience, presence, and finding beauty in the unfinished.

As I begin this new chapter, I’m learning that creativity doesn’t always start in perfect moments. Maybe it’s not about getting it right; maybe it’s about noticing what’s already there. Sometimes it begins in the dust, the quiet, and the small flashes of light that find their way in.

This is where mine begins.

Avec amour et lumière,

Tess 💫