Overtaking myself...

If I don't get a move on I'm in danger of being overtaken by myself, and will be posting things a year after they happened. There seems to be no time to catch up on everything, so I think a quick run through the last few months is in order. What do you think?

July found me back once again accompanying an old friend to her mother's house to continue the task of clearing it out. Still lots to look at, and to photograph.

The month seemed to melt away in a haze of heat, filled with bees buzzing, flowers blooming and what looked like tropical sunsets. I popped into London and visited an old neighbour, and we sat for an hour or so in her garden eating choc ices. Lovely as it all was, no regrets about leaving London...

Jill's cat, hiding from the sun.

The 'village', looking prettier than ever - and yet, not more than 5 minutes stroll away...

...this part of London just gets busier and busier.

 

Back home, the meadows were the backdrop for ambling, and the garden was the playground for bees and butterflies, birds, snails and miniscule frogs...

 

Festive London...

We had a day in London just before Christmas, to meet up with family, share some champagne and celebrate an engagement! En route we passed a few interesting looking places, like this one. Café society? In London? In December? Brrrr!

For some folk, it looked as if Christmas had been and gone and happened already...

Luckily, there was plenty of Christmas spirit at my nephew and his girlfriend's place - as well as home-made biscuits, sweets, and the most delicious chocolate eclairs ever...

Champagne was drunk, toasts made, and glasses raised - to Christmas, to loved ones, and to the newly engaged couple! Lovely stuff!

*****

We took advantage of being in London to head off and do a little bit of Christmas shopping and to see the lights. Sloane Square was impressive - if only marginally more sparkly than it always is - and Peter Jones with its vertiginous drop was a tiny bit terrifying!

I was reminded just how much I loathe and detest noisy cars...

Peter Jones polar bear made of computery/gamey (technical term) things.

Harvey Nichols windows were, as usual, full of all things bright and beautiful, and unaffordable.

 

 A lovely day, with lovely food and lovely people. Grand!

Victoria, and Albert...

The Victoria and Albert museum in London is possibly my favourite museum. It has such a diverse and extensive collection of all sorts of things, from ceramics to carpets, diamonds to dresses. There is a field nearby and, if I could, I'd love to transport the whole place here, just for my enjoyment. Too greedy?

On Friday I headed into London to meet up with my niece - just back from the Himalayas, where she has been volunteering as a doctor (so pleased for her - she had a wonderful time!) and to see the Masterpieces of Chinese Painting exhibition at the V&A. We ended up spending the whole afternoon there, beginning with lunch with a friend, and then afternoon tea, and then more tea later in the Friends' room - well, we had a lot of catching up to do.

The Chinese exhibition was a little disappointing - the figures so stylized that they became a bit repetitive. Once in a while, however, there would be something amusing, or exceptionally beautiful. There was a long scroll depicting Nine Dragons, which looked like a storyboard for a Pixar film - the dragons sending mischievous (to my eyes) sideways glances as they flew around (the link for the exhibition has a lovely animation of dragons, if you click on the main banner at the top). Another silk scroll of Prosperous Suzhou, which showed a whole town in minute and exquisite detail, and that took the artists three years to complete, really needed hours of scrutiny through a magnifying glass to admire the rigging on the boats, the buildings, the hundreds of people, or the millimetre high birds and animals. Just beautiful...

Later, after more tea, we headed off to see the Club to Catwalk exhibition, of clothes from the 1980s. Of course, as a new art school graduate back then, and living in London, this is exactly how I looked... Uh. Not.

 

Of course we had a few folk around that made the effort, but with not much money, and not having a lycra body, I'm afraid it was jeans, tee shirts, and baggy checked shirts all the way for me...

There are a few items of clothing that I wish I'd held on to, tho', like the bright blue jumpsuit, and the pink, over-sized, Boy George-style cotton coat. Not to wear them, but as relics of a bygone age - and I know a few young things who might have enjoyed trying them on!

The art school fashion shows (straddling the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s) were always fun - I particularly remember a dress made entirely of looped rubber bands, for instance. The best dress ever, tho', was one based on this style of dress from the mid-18thC, but with extraordinarily wide panniers.

The model slowly sidled on (for what seemed an age) until the dress filled the entire width of the stage. No hope of turning, or advancing down the catwalk - all she could do was take a bow (to uproarious applause) and then sidle off again. Brilliant. Hysterical!

A lovely day, with a lovely niece. Great fun. Thank you! xx

40 is so young...

'Significant' birthdays all over the place at the moment - some have happened already, others we're looking forward to celebrating very soon. The most recent one was this Saturday, and we hotfooted it into London for the day. Both C and I, together and independently, had complete brain melt using the tube - all those years of knowing the tube back to front, which end of the platform to get on the train so that you'd be stepping off opposite the exit, cheeky shortcuts, and the quickest interchange stations involving the least amount of walking through endless tunnels, all lost. Not really - I'm sure if we'd been in less of a hurry, and I hadn't questioned C's carefully planned route, right at the last minute, we'd have had no problems. Sigh.

Squirrel hunting.

The party was, thankfully, a gentle low-key affair, with lots of children running around in a great setting - an award-winning garden, with a big, envy-inducing greenhouse, a pond, and an apple tree dotted with delicious red apples. A little oasis in the middle of south London.

The birthday boy man's Piñata was destroyed mercilessly, and fallen on by a pack of children. They all walked off with pockets bulging, or improvised kangaroo pouches straining with the weight, dazed with the mere idea of free sweets, and the promise of the coming sugar rush.

The adults, meanwhile, stood or sat, drinks in hand, having proper adult conversations.  'I'd love a utility room...' - 'We've got one! Yesss' (fist pump). Very grown-up behaviour. More of a futility room ours, as it lurches day to day between being almost, vaguely, semi-respectable and, as now, a dumping ground for muddy wellies, mounds of Crocs, bottles, paint pots, step-ladders, lavender cuttings, and washing dangling from the pulley, just at the right, really annoying height... Still. We've got a utility room. Just need to get a greenhouse next.

As with all of these sorts of things, not enough time to talk to old friends properly, but we'll catch up next time... See you for your 50th!

Birdbox. With petted lip.

As I was saying...

Lots of stuff going on over the last wee while... Bugs and things around the house and in the garden, and bees ending their days amongst the lavender. This one barely moved as I turned it around to get a better look. Poor thing appeared completely exhausted.

It's the time of year to start tidying up, and the rose round the front door has been cut back, showering me with little green caterpillars in the process, and revealing the handsome caterpillar of the Grey Dagger moth.

Tucked in one corner was the abandoned blackbird's nest which, sadly, I don't think ever had eggs - and a Robin's Pincushion Gall which is much less pretty once you know that it's a wasp nursery!

We had some unexpected late summer colour thanks to my chucking a whole load of Californian poppy seeds everywhere, and the happy discovery that I had accidentally dug up and planted some Crocosmia in the front garden. Gorgeous fiery orange popping up all over the place!

In contrast to all this 'country garden' stuff, C went into London where the Gorgeous Girl was part of F.A.D. She designed and made this very chic jumpsuit, which was shown as part of London Fashion week, using proper models in front of proud families and friends, as well as the press, photographers, and a whole load of good-looking industry types. Fancy!

A seriously huge deal for her, and we're all immensely proud of her - even those of us whose fashion sense is an unfortunate product of the 1970s...

C's pictures - the camera still hasn't recovered from all the excitement

(words, pictures, tunes...) part III

From Lambs Conduit Street to South Kensington and the V&A for the Bowie exhibition. 

Perhaps because of the exhibition, the BBC has been showing various documentaries and films about Bowie over the last few months - and my darling C has often abandoned me to the telly, only occasionally rolling his eyes, as I sit there singing along, slightly starry-eyed. So, let's just say I was primed for this exhibition...

You see, I really used to love David Bowie. Granted, I also really loved David Cassidy, and had numerous other crushes throughout the early 1970s (boy in the butcher shop, where are you now?) but I only ever made a scrapbook for David Bowie. I kept newspaper cuttings and pictures from magazines in a ring binder and it survived, stored along with all my teenage diaries, for many, many years. I wish I'd kept it, just like I wish I'd kept all of the diaries - imagine the material there would have been in there for a dull, slightly less angsty, Scottish Catcher in the Rye! An anodyne version of Trainspotting... Bus-stopping!

'My' years are definitely the Hunky Dory/Ziggy Stardust years. One of the girls in school sat me down one lunchtime, so that she could recite the lyrics of the Ziggy Stardust LP in their entirety to me whilst I checked them on the LP cover - and that seemed like a perfectly legitimate way to spend our lunch break...! In the early 1970s I'd gone to see Genesis (my first concert), snuck in with some friends after school to watch Roxy Music rehearse, pored over Jackie magazine every week, watched Top of the Pops religiously, and listened to Radio Luxembourg in bed on an orange plastic, doughnut-shaped radio, but somehow I didn't get to see Bowie live until sometime between 1978 and 1981.

By then, however, I wasn't a true 'fan' anymore - real life (and real boyfriends) took over, and I had neither the time nor the inclination to learn song lyrics. Still, when he came on stage, we stood up, then stood on the seats, then stood on the arms of the seats, all to get a better view, waving madly if he showed any indication that he knew we even existed. Magical! Crazy!

I'd waited a long time for an exhibition like this, but... just like I grew out of wanting to keep a scrapbook about him, I've realised that my appetite for looking at paintings he did, or bits of paper he scribbled on, or even a tissue he used to wipe off his lipstick, is not what it might have been 40 years ago! Nevertheless, the costumes are interesting - not particularly because Bowie wore them (although they do show just how very thin the Thin White Duke was...) but because of the diversity of styles, fabrics, and finish - from the skintight sparkle of Ziggy Stardust to the immaculate tailoring of later years, or the stylised black and white plastic suit showing little relation to the body underneath, to the gorgeous Alexander McQueen Union Flag coat, all demonstrating just how interestingly stylish Bowie has always been. I smiled at the blown-up note from McQueen, apologising for the lateness of delivery, and assuring Bowie that there would be something in the post soon... We've all  made our excuses at some time or another when a deadline has got the better of us...

However, the best bits for me - proving that, really, it's all about the music, the performance - had to be the video screens everywhere showing him in clips from TOTP or The Old Grey Whistle Test, and the headsets playing his songs. One of the last rooms is filled with giant screens playing video footage of concerts, displays of scale models of stage sets, and mannequins dressed in yet more costumes. The atmosphere there reminded me a little of Brixton Academy, with people milling around, all looking upwards at Bowie 'on stage', scary monster size. So, when my headset failed, I felt momentarily at a loss. I could have gone and looked at the rest of the costumes in more detail, but without the music that seemed slightly... pointless. The problem was fixed, and the music came back on after a few minutes, but it didn't feel quite the same as before. Time to leave. I guess it's good to know that Bowie isn't the only one who has moved on - but he'll always have his own special sparkly place in my heart!