Simone Reddington

It’s now officially Autumn and I couldn’t be happier about it. Although I do love summer and the sunshine, it gets to a point where I am ready for cozy afternoons wrapped up in blankets, roast dinners and seeing the beautiful autumnal colours as the trees shed their leaves for another year. This September has not felt like Autumn, as we’ve enjoyed more sunshine and higher temperatures than the summer months, but it has definitely cooled down over the last week. Here’s what I’ve been enjoying this month.

• Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror– This September marked the 20th anniversary of the tragic 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Centre where 2996 Americans lost their lives on what prompted the international conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. I watched this 5 part documentary series on Netflix as I was too young to remember seeing it on the news and didn’t properly understand what was happening in the war in the Middle East while I was growing up in the mid-late noughties. It’s very powerful and I would recommend it to anyone as it examines the aftermath of that horrendous day really did change the world, for people in both Western society and the Middle East.
• I don’t often visit art galleries as I am not very knowledgeable at all about the art world. However, I recently visited the ‘Where We Are Now’ exhibition at Sunderland Winter Gardens which portrayed various artists’ perceptions of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. It was very interesting and I found that I much preferred the pieces by the normal every day people, such as the residents of a care home, to those that were created by more well known artists. It certainly proved that art can be made by anyone, and it certainly should be accessible to everyone.

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  H&M Mom jeans- I’ve been on the hunt for a pair of good quality mom jeans for ages so I was over the moon when I finally found what I was looking for in H&M. I love the style of high-waisted mom jeans as they are so flattering on everyone, and so much more comfortable than skinnies, but they still feel so sexy, like you could be 90s grunge music video. I think we can all agree how difficult it has been to buy jeans while the fitting rooms in shops have been closed due to the pandemic so finding a pair that fits just right has never felt so good.

• THIS Isn’t bacon lardons- Over the last couple of years I have made a conscious effort to cut down on my meat consumption to reduce my own personal carbon footprint. Plant based food has become a lot more accessible than it used to be as the vast majority of UK supermarket and restaurants now provide a variety of vegetarian and vegan options that taste as good as meat. I came across the brand ‘THIS Isn’t’ while food shopping and tried their meat-free bacon lardons. They honestly have the same smoky taste of bacon and I wouldn’t have been able to taste the difference from real meat. I fried them in oil with tomatoes and mushrooms, which I served on top of avocado on toast. Perfect for a Sunday morning home-made brunch.