Of A Happy Purchase

This lovely lady expresses the feelings of joy I'm experiencing at the moment, thanks to my recent purchase (finally!) of a new camera. At the moment, Rose Dancer is adorning my bedroom wall, as she's the Miss April for my current calendar. This year I decided to go for the Erte calendar by Flame Tree Publishing. I adore Erte's designs, and this one from 1984 shows that he lost none of his talent over the course of his long life (Erte, or Romain de Tirtoff, lived from 1892 to 1990. The pseudonym came from the French pronunciation of his initials). I've been enjoying turning over the page each month to be greeted by another beautiful figure, and a quick glance down the Erte page at Flame Tree shows me that I might just have found a good place to buy my Christmas cards this year (it never hurts to be prepared!):

The only problem would be choosing which design to pick (and these are only a few of the ones on offer!), but at only £4.99 for a pack of twelve (plus postage), I might not be forced to stick at just one...

I am beyond excited to have a camera in my hot little hands once again, and can't wait to get out there and start using it. In fact, I think it will be having its very first outing this evening, as I'm off to London later to spend an evening with friends and particularly to catch up with one friend who is back in the UK on a flying visit from a six month work placement in Athens. My latest purchase is very well timed! I love having pictorial reminders of events -- large and small -- in my life, and although I've enjoyed a bit of retro chic with the odd disposable camera over the past few months, I have really missed having my digital camera constantly at my side. I'm looking forward to once again being able to express myself and share my experiences through photos here on my blog too. For (to quote Sir W in his 1601 essay 'Of Trappes for Fame'), sometimes

'my picture can doe this, better than I'.

Of Being Out With The Old...

...and in with the new. A belated Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful and peaceful Christmas and that 2010 has started well. I had a simply lovely time over the holiday, spending Christmas Day itself with my mum in the heart of a beautifully frosty Gloucestershire. Rather than stay at home for Christmas, we decided to take ourselves off to the Priory Inn in Tetbury, renowned for its excellent, locally sourced food. The restaurant has a 30 mile food policy, meaning that 90% of its ingredients come from nearby farmers. As they are just down the road from Highgrove, we were spoilt with scrumptious Duchy vegetables from the Home Farm there, to accompany the melt-in-the-mouth pigeon I had for a starter, and the truly delicious venison I chose for my main course. After the mock Christmas Day my friends and I had enjoyed in Oxford before the vacation, I felt I'd already had enough turkey to satisfy my seasonal craving! I was also happy to have the chance to show off a new dress I'd bought just before Christmas -- part of the collection designed by Coast only for sale in their outlets inside Debenhams. The meek and mild front...

... makes the pretty draped back a nice surprise, giving it an elegantly mischievous frisson which appealed to me:

I always love the chance to get dressed up, and Christmas is a great excuse as we toasted the season with some local (and surprisingly nice!) bubbly. I was also pleased to toast a particularly successful present haul, as I opened pretty parcels to find jewelry, gloves, a new watch, various other bits and pieces, as well as my current reading material -- Saplings by Noel Streatfeild -- and, some tokens of the best kind: one from the marvellous Persephone Books, to feed my grey cover fetish once Saplings is done with, and also some theatre tokens, which I'll be able to exchange for tickets to one or two of the many productions I want to see this year! Wonderful! Long-term readers might also be interested to know that my presents also included some of the beautiful travel guides from The Little Bookroom I wrote about here, and *all* of the beautiful items from Fey Handmade I lusted after here, courtesy of my lovely grandfather, who has obviously been keeping a weather eye on this blog! Thank you again, Grampa!

Boxing Day was spent with family back in Staffordshire, and so the festive season was a perfect combination of good food, relaxation, and good company. I was only at home for a week, which was just enough to refresh me before returning to Oxford just before the New Year, when an American friend was visiting from Los Angeles. He and I and another friend travelled together to London on New Year's Eve, joined by others to see in 2010 at another friend's flat there. We were all thrilled when it actually started snowing bang on the dot of midnight, as we crowded onto the balcony to watch the fireworks over the dark sky. Sadly my camera broke almost on the stroke of midnight as well, so the snowflakes were lost to posterity (this sad calamity also means my blog might be a little sparse when it comes to pictures while I get a new camera sorted out. Sigh).

I was particularly excited on New Year's Day, as my friends and I were -- as I mentioned in my last post -- off to see the much touted production of The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre that evening.

As I think I mentioned before, I was particularly eager to see Damian Lewis on stage, and I am glad to say I wasn't disappointed. He had tremendous energy and presence, and made a wonderful Alceste. Obviously the main draw for many in the audience was Keira Knightley, in her widely publicised theatre debut. Personally, I thought she was fine, but nothing more, and her American accent was unfortunately terribly distracting, and at times rather wavering (as my American friend, who is a BIG fan of KK, was forced to admit). She did, however, have a couple of very nice outfits! I particularly liked the 1930s-style silky black jumpsuit and black and gold drapey cardigan she wore in the first act, which you can see a detail of here:

The play itself, a modern reworking by Martin Crimp, sped along at a zipping, zinging pace, with the rhyming couplets flowing easily from most of the cast, as it rushed through its slim two hour running time (this included the interval -- it's a while since I've been out of an evening performance by 9.30!). I've never read Moliere's original, and seeing this really made me want to, so at some point I'll have to seek it out (although the sad state of my French means I'll probably be forced to read it in translation, unless I'm feeling very virtuous. And have a lot of spare time).

Since then, I've been back in Oxford, which has looked beautiful under the deepest covering of snow I've ever seen here. I can't believe my camera has died at such an inopportune moment! Still, I must admit I have been spending quite a large proportion of my time tucked up indoors, drinking much hot tea and snuggling under blankets, as (you may not be surprised to hear this) my footwear collection is not really very compatible with the icy conditions! It turns out that the only shoes or boots I have which have any tread on the soles at all (excluding, of course, The Walking Boots, which are huddled at the back of a cupboard at home -- little did I think I might have need of them away from the alpine slopes) are my new knee-high boots. Which have heels. Chunkyish heels, sure, but still heels, which is enough to make many passers-by give me sidelong glances and a wide berth as they wait for what they assume is the inevitable graceless topple. Luckily, this hasn't happened yet, and I am convinced that heels and tread is infinitely safer than flats and smooth sole. In comfort, I also draw upon my demonstrable (and long-honed skill) of walking in Adverse Weather Conditions in surprising footwear, rembering that skirmishofwit and I survived a three day sojourn in Paris last December without any mishap, despite the fact that we were both trotting (well, okay, Very Slowly Edging Our Way Along) over the icy pavements in ankle boots with, shall we say, heels of a height which might make some people question whether I truly do suffer from vertigo. Saying all this, I shall probably leave the library today and fall flat. Well, just as long as I don't damage my laptop!

Although I sincerely hope I don't injure myself before this evening, as tonight I am ... DRUM ROLL ... having my very first Pole Dancing Lesson. Yes, that's right: pole dancing. Two friends and I are going along tonight to be initiated into its wonders, having being reassured by another friend who is already a fan that it is excellent exercise, a great confidence booster, and quite simply a fabulously sexy and fun thing to do. We'll see! If I can move enough tomorrow to drag myself to my laptop, I'll be giving a report on my first experience. Talking of which, I'd better go, as my friend and I are meeting up shortly to buy some hotpants which, for some reason, neither of us happened to have lying around our wardrobes already...

Although my posts have never been entirely regular, I've so much enjoyed having my blog over the tail end of 2009, and I look forward to continuing with it this year. And what better start to 2010's blogging than to find that I've been given A Lovely Blog Award!

Many thanks to Karen at BookBath for this! The idea of the award is that if you receive one, you then give it to others, so I'll be nominating some lovely blogs of my own over the next couple of days, as well as sharing with you tales from snowy Amsterdam, and a few other bits and pieces. I can't wait! Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading and commenting over the last few months -- I never thought that anyone I didn't actually know would ever read what I wrote, and it's added so much to my enjoyment to 'talk' to you all in the comments section!

Rather than leaving you with the usual quotation from Sir W, I thought some of you might like to see this wonderful engraving from the 1632 edition of his Essayes, by Thomas Cecill. There is an old story that the two men are Sir W and his father, Sir Charles, but as they look more like twins than father and son, this hardly seems the case. So sadly it brings us no closer to knowing what Sir W looked like, although that he was wonderfully dashing seems unquestionable. Well, through my rose-tinted eyes, anyway...

Of Wallpaper and Caravans

I recently read this interesting interview on Yell Softly with Lisa Borgnes Giramonti of the entrancing blog A Bloomsbury Life. The entire interview has sent me scurrying to various parts of the internet: to find out more about the books Lisa recommends, or check out particular designers. But I was particularly intrigued to find out more about the 'Genuine Fake Bookcase' wallpaper by Deborah Bowness which Lisa has in her dining room. I'd rather line my walls with real books, but I still couldn't resist a closer look at this, so I hurried off to the Bowness site immediately:

This then sparked another journey, as I clicked to find out where one can buy the wallpaper in the UK (ok, so I haven't got a house to decorate, and won't have for some considerable time, but that doesn't stop my domestic fantasies), and was delighted to find that her London distributer is the quaintly named Caravan, a shop in London's Shoreditch. The reason for my delight was that I had actually stumbled across the shop itself whilst wandering around in East London some time ago, had loved its range of eccentric, lovely homeware and gift ideas, and had then promptly forgotten about. So to be reminded of its existence was a boon indeed, especially as Christmas is coming up and they have an online shop...

The Bowness wallpaper -- both the bookcases and other designs -- they have on offer is beautiful indeed, but at £150 a strip, even if I did have a place of my own, I might have to reign in my temptations...

Happily, though, there are plenty of other, rather more affordable but equally tempting bits and pieces on offer in their online store, so I thought I'd share a few of my favourites here.

As I've mentioned on other occasions, I love a nice cup of tea, and when that tea is of the loose leaf variety, I think this would be a particularly pretty tea strainer to use:

Rose tea strainer, £12.50

To accompany my morning pot of tea, I might decide to have a boiled egg, complete, of course, with soldiers to dip into it, in which case this would a perfect addition to my table:

Egg and soldiers set, £18

Always an accessories girl, my eye was naturally caught by these cute little handbags, which could hold photos or equally function as name settings at a dinner party:

Handbag card holders, £18

Finally, I always love to have candles around, so these angel wing decorations would be a great festive twist for any candlelit meal:

Candle wings, £4.95 - £8.95

These would all, I think, make rather nice Christmas gifts. Once again, however, now I must leave these frivolities behind and betake myself back to the library. I have a wine tasting this evening and some friends and I are meeting for sushi first (yum!), so I must stop thinking of Christmas presents and give Sir W & Co. my full attention for the time being. For as Sir W rather somberly pointed out in his 1600 essay 'Of Behaviour', compared to the purchase of trinkets, however lovely,

'The gifts of the minde are not so easily obtained, these you must purchase with paine, and difficulty; and great reason, for it were pitty such preciousnesse might be had for the taking'.

Of A Grey Christmas

A grey Christmas is not one that I would normally look forward to, but when the particular shade being promised is Persephone Grey, things change rather dramatically! I am excited today as this morning I joined up for the Persephone Secret Santa which is being organised by Book Psmith. I think it's a wonderful idea to spread the Persephone love and bring together more like-minded people from the blogging community. If you're a Persephone fan, and haven't signed up already, do pop across to Book Psmith's site and have a look at the details.

After all, a Christmas guaranteed to bring at least one new Persephone will be a happy one even if the weather is as grey as these covers. (Thanks to Claire at Paperback Reader for bringing this scheme to my attention in the first place).

As Sir W said (albeit on a rather different subject!) in his 1601 essay 'Of Conceit', such a delivery at the start of the festive season

'is a pretty gift to begin with'.