2007-07-25 - 12:25 a.m.

It was something I found last winter, while looking for UK stockists of Modern Alchemy candles. And then found again a week or two later, searching for information on Sarah Winchester. I read more, kept coming back. Fell for it and fell for it.

There were so many updates – every single one so immaculately conceived, turned, poised – that I even downloaded an rss reader just to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. It seemed to encapsulate the world as I know and feel it. So many marginal passions brought together - with such style and, yes, with such wit. And to see see the things you love (the only things that matter to you) presented side by side, accompanied by such bewitching images, is to be brought in from the cold. To be put, suddenly, at peace. It reminded me, once or twice every single day, of the beauty and mystery and gravity of the universe.

I was, and I am, eternally grateful.

‘It’ was The Wit of the Staircase - the blog of Theresa Duncan, who died last week.