tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24166138012762873452024-03-13T16:48:17.908-07:00Naked FlameScrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-91058761295064695822011-11-09T06:40:00.000-08:002011-11-09T06:40:03.584-08:00Guerlain, The Myth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://logosdatabase.com/logoimages/77647527.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://logosdatabase.com/logoimages/77647527.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<i>Recently Elle Magazine ran a competition to become an intern (Paid!) for a year, working at both The Elle Beauty Deparment and Cussons PR. To enter you had to write 500 words about a beauty brand (not a product, a brand) which you love.</i><br />
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<i>As readers of this blog know, I love fashion, beauty, myth and all things pretty with an edge, The 'Look Closer' element of something, initially pleasing, but which conveys a darkness, sexuality, even seediness when you look up close.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4148fnRsruL._SL500_SX300_SY390_CR,0,0,300,390_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4148fnRsruL._SL500_SX300_SY390_CR,0,0,300,390_.jpg" width="307" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Iconic American Beauty poster, very pretty, but 'Look Closer'</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><i><br />
</i><br />
<i>I like the twisted sensual beauty of Nabokov's Lolita, the vulnerable adolescent beauty of the Lisbon Sisters in The Virgin Suicides, the desperate manic beauty of mad women in Literature, such as Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea.</i><br />
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<i>Due to this I couldn't choose a straight forward beauty brand, one which specialies in prettyfying, and little else. Yes, Benefit makeup is very lovely, Lancome have a nice range of colours, Chanel is very chic, but none of them compare to Guerlain, the brand who created the packaging of their most innocently named lipstick 'kiss kiss' in the shape of a totem pole. Even with colours, such as pushy pink and Rouge Taffeta, evocative of parties attended by sweetly coquettish young women in their lovliest clothes, there is an underlying darkness to this lipstick. Totem poles were traditionally a symbol or mortuary structures, so the young girl applying her lipstick in the mirror, might give a shudder when the coolth of the lipstick touches begins to melt into her lips</i><br />
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<i>Very pretty, very bubbly, the lipsticks seem to say, but this is temporary, and beauty is stronger for the fact that it must die. A classic 'look closer' piece of design, transforming prettiness into something deeper, darker, something which deserves the name of beauty.</i><br />
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<i>The 'Precious Colours' are not just prescious in a gift wrapped, ribbons curled with the blade of a knife way, they are actually precious as they are so fleeting.</i><br />
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<i>As my Elle/Cussons piece was only 500 words long I couldn't include this, I did however write about the many reasons why Guerlain is more than just a beauty brand</i><br />
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<i>See what I did write here</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://rlv.zcache.com/scheherazade_sticker-p217239578075252080qjcl_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://rlv.zcache.com/scheherazade_sticker-p217239578075252080qjcl_400.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scheherazade weaving her magic, which is with us even now, in the perfumes and makeup you wear</td></tr>
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<i> </i><br />
As a child I was entranced by an illustrated copy of 1001 Arabian Nights, which I would pull from my parents' bookcase long before I was able to read. The midnight blues and golds of the palaces, Sceherazade with her khol-rimmed eyes and corageous nature, the Sultan, genies and<br />
flying carpets, were all bound in this deep blue book, where an unjustly condemned wife tells nightly tales of love, heroism, revenge and desire, to pique her husband's interest so he will spare her life.<br />
In one of these tales the heroine is Nahema, a spirited beauty with long dark hair and a silk dress the colour of fire.<br />
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I was sixteen a grungy teenager, all oversized sweaters and limp hair, when my Mother bought a bottle of of Nahema, by Guerlain, but when I lifted the pale gold bottle and sprayed it on my wrist and<br />
throat I felt something startling, potent, heady. Suddenly I remembered the sumptuous illustations and the girl with a dress like fire. This was the moment I realised the potency of cosmetics, the way<br />
they could transport you, transform you, and make you part of a legend.<br />
<br />
I love Guerlain for the way in which it evokes myth. All their lipsticks, like their perfumes, have a story attached. Mitsouko is the name of a sweet Japanese girl who had a tragic affair with a soldier<br />
in Claude Farrere's novel La bataille, Shalimar, that of an Emporer's beloved wife, who died young, and still haunts the gardens near the Taj Mahal. Apres L'Ondee, a pop-art pink, translates as 'after the<br />
rain shower' and is evocative of spring, of kisses in bandstands, of the beginning of love.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/p/a/r/parapluies-de-cherbourg-02-g.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/p/a/r/parapluies-de-cherbourg-02-g.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castlenuovo in <i>Les Parapluies Des Cherboug</i>, a pop art masterpiece of a film, about first love and umbrellas. The film instantly came into my mind when I saw the lipstick <i>Apres L'ondee.</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mybeautyblackbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/guerlain_rougeautomatique_shalimar_feature-e1315363668954.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.mybeautyblackbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/guerlain_rougeautomatique_shalimar_feature-e1315363668954.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shalimar Pink, deeper and bolder than you could ever imagine, but still playfuly pink </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jojoaponte.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/09-natalia-vodianova-guerlain-ss-2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.jojoaponte.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/09-natalia-vodianova-guerlain-ss-2011.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Shalimar girl</td></tr>
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Guerlain, founded in 1828, understands the continuing power of mythology, of evocation, of stirring memory, of creating desire.<br />
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The packaging too is reminiscent of how Guerlain's long history is interwoven with stories, both real and fairytale. Rouge Automatique, a lipstick you can open with one hand, was created in the art deco<br />
style, it's symmetrical functional lines reflecting those of the Empire State Building,, while the bottle containing Samsara is modelled on an sillouhette of a Khmer Dancer, seen in The Musee Guimet<br />
in Paris.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.escentual.com/images/catalog/1000101/0002/1000101_0002-original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.escentual.com/images/catalog/1000101/0002/1000101_0002-original.jpg" width="224" /></a></div><br />
Just as the audacious pink of Shalimar lipstick avoids being Barbie-dollesque through the tragedy which surrounds it, making the pink suddenly dark, intense and not at all fluffy, so the Golds and<br />
silvers of the Guerlain packaging do not say bling, but speak of austerity, of a tradition rooted in history and fantasy. They have been written about by Jean Rhys, Colette and Bulgakov. Their muses<br />
have included mythological heroines alongside real women, such as Catherine Deneuve, and their current model, Natalia Vodianova, who stares out from their adverts, beautiful as any mythical heroine, and continuing the tradition of the Shalimar girl, who will have many<br />
faces, all beuatiful, bold and dreamy.<br />
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I imagine her walking through an exotic garden of luscious greens and pinks, before glancing over her shoulder one last time, then turning to go.<br />
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</i>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-2564780406412901782011-10-17T06:06:00.000-07:002011-10-17T06:06:16.462-07:00Summer Palace Duck Egg, or how I came to hate my ugly curtains<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mto.lauraashley.com/media/fabrics/medium/3354576.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://mto.lauraashley.com/media/fabrics/medium/3354576.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Summer Palace Duck Egg Material by Laura Ashley, which I am planning on having curtains made out of</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table>I have always been a sucker for beauty, motorway road bridges which are just the perfect shape and give you the feeling that you're on a massively exciting journey, beautifully cut dresses which hit you in all the right places, walking behind someone with beautiful hair, all these are things I love. I guess the reason I read Vogue is for aesthetic beauty, as well as the strength of some of the prose (the last issue has a piece written by Freida Hughes, daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, which is fascinating as well as gorgeously written.)<br />
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I guess my love of poetry, of writing, of Nabokov, also stems from a love of beauty. Who cannot fall for the cadence of a perfectly cut sentence, the rhythm of a book of these, gripping you, whilst telling you a story? Who cannot love T.S Eliot? I really need to devote a whole blog post to these people, but anyway, my point is, I love beauty in everything, pretentious as that may sound.<br />
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Until recently however I have not got into interiors. Beautiful pans, lamps, curtains simply didn't interest me, they were there to servr a purpose, that's all. My Mother always said 'one day you will love interiors like you love fashion' and I was just like 'nah.' Yet recently something has happened to me, something has changed, I suddenly need to make my flat as beautiful as possible and fill my room with lovely interiors, and the kitchen with gorgeous pans (on a very limited budget.)<br />
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Maybe this is because this is the first flat where I have felt properly settled, happy, safe. Unlike previous bedsits and university accomadation it doesn't feel like a stop-gap home. Also, I think that recently my nesting instinct has kicked in. Although I have no children and no intention of having any til I have a decent living wage and all that which will probably be when I'm thirty, I find that as I hve got older I have wanted to created a nest, a safe haven, for myself, and my friends. I have a desire to feed people, to look after people, to nurture people, and also to nurture myself, and I think that my desire to make a perfect home is linked to this, although I am still messy I am lessy messy than I was.<br />
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I guess all this has led to the desire for new curtains in my room. My curtains are ugly, they are a pale green colour reminiscent of those disgusting mints you can suck in the back of the car on rainy days when you're a kid and you're bored, and they have chaotic white spirals on them, drawn as though a token design, a scribble done in a warehouse <i>'can we sell this as curtain material?' 'Just do a doodle on it and it'll be fine.'</i><br />
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In short. I hate my curtains, and this hatred is pretty intense, so intese that I'm thinking of taking them down and living without curtains until I can find a new pair. They seem to scowl at me every time I see them. an insult to my crispy cotton bedsheets, my lovely mirror with the lace scarf draped over it, my wardrobe full of somewhat tatty but beautiful vintage dresses which |I love. It's sort of like having a spot, a massive one you can't stop thinking about or picking at because it's somewhere stupid, like right under your eye.<br />
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With this in mind I started looking for new curtains, at first I looked in Argos, which was a mistake (argos mighthave okay pans and bedsheets but curtains: nope.) I considered other places which do ready made curtains but none of them seemed right, plus there's the issue of them fitting, then, browsing the internet I came across the Laura Ashely made to measure curtain service.<br />
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I know, Laura Ashley are expensive, almost expensive enough to warrant an exclamtion mark, if I didn't hate the things. Yet, the fabrics they offer are so beautiful, and they also take the exact measurements and make them to fit perfectly, offering you a choice of trim as well as heading, the name for the top bit of curtains where they attach to the rail (there's a name for that?)<br />
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Suddenly I was fascinated by which material and which heading I wanted for these fantasy curtains, these curtains which would complete my den, my lare, my nest, whatever you wish to call it, these curtains which would blow gently in the spring breeze next year and smile upon me as all my dreams come true.<br />
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I browsed through the fabric swatches on the website for an indecent amount of time, focusing mainly on the blues...my bedroom has a bit of a blue thing going on, not through my choice but because like a woman has colours which suit her, which flatter her and show her complexion in the best light, so do rooms, and my room is happiest in blues and creams, perhaps due to it's proximity to the shore, and the gulls which can be heard constantly from the window. <br />
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Eventually I found a fabric swatch with which I fell in love. It's called <i>Summer Palace Duck Egg</i>, and I found myself loving the name, reminiscent of fairytale splendour and T.S Eliot's <i>Journey of The Magi -</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>'There were times when we regretted the summer palaces on the slopes, the terraces</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>and the silken girls bringing sherbert' </i><i> </i></div><br />
Who would not wish their room to be thus adorned? The imagery. The thoughts. Could I be silken girl, in the summer palace of my room?<br />
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Yet also I love the design, the pink parrots with the golden necks, the butterflies and flowers and branches, reminiscent of a fairytale world, as well as being similar to material, my Mother made into dresses for she and I, when I was a child of perhaps five. This material was pale blue and was covered in fairytale castles on clouds, and exotic creatures, associated with travel. Like these light summer dresses, which I associate with seaside holidays and bare feet, this material is evocative of travel, of possibility, of magic.Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-41559001734412095682011-10-09T09:56:00.000-07:002011-10-09T10:10:26.002-07:00The Snow-Queen within every girl<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BDLwjM9G9Yw/TQ6C7gX9NmI/AAAAAAAADfA/40IsNpRm7oE/s1600/nataliabeauty5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BDLwjM9G9Yw/TQ6C7gX9NmI/AAAAAAAADfA/40IsNpRm7oE/s320/nataliabeauty5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, <br />
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, <br />
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, <br />
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">T.S Eliot<br />
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It's not snowing yet, and it's only a week since we had gorgeous weather, with people lying in the meadows, with bare arms. Still, those days have passed,a final air kiss blown to us from the hand of summer,an <i>adieu, a bientot, I will see you next year Darling.</i><br />
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Yet already I am dreaming of snow. Last year it started snowing in late November. A friend and I got cheap tickets to <i>The Marriage of Figaro</i> for under 26-year-olds, on a freezing cold day, when we came out of the Festival theatre the ground was covered in a gentle dusting of snow, reflected by the lamps. It didn't stop snowing until January, by which time everyone was thoroughly sick of it, and the sludge had none of the romance of early winter, yet still I cannot hate snow when it is an abstract concept. I still associate it with childhood, with christmas markets, sledging, thick gloves, cocoa, the diamond panes of the windows in the cottage where I grew up catching the fine white dust.<br />
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I also think of Raymond Briggs snowman, which I had from early childhood, of the old collie dog we had who used to love chasing snowballs only to bite into them and find them crumble, icy in her mouth.<br />
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Yet I also always find myself thinking of '<i>The Snow-Queen' </i>a fairytale I remember for it's icy magic, as opposed to the finer details of the plot, so much so that I had to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snow_Queen">wikipedia </a>it for this article, but as I read the entry the story came back to me. You can read it by clicking above, but the one thing which surprised me was that in the story Kai gets a shard of glass in the eye, as opposed to a shard of ice in the heart, which I had always believed, perhaps due to my Mother always telling me that to be objective a writer had to 'keep a shard of ice in their heart at all times'<br />
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I think I was always enchanted by the frozen beauty of snowqueens, from the original one in the Hans Christian Anderson story to the terrifying opponent of Aslan in <i>The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. </i>I always longed to be somehow similar to these women, with their coolth and ability to make people follow, and wished that I could somehow mould my puppyish <i>please-like-me</i> nature into pure Ice.<br />
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Yet as I grew up I learned from films that Ice queens are not always evil, not always cruel, but that they are beautiful women dressed perfectly for cold weather, battling the elements bravely and somehow managing not to get pink faced from the cold.<br />
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Iciness is all very well, but the counteracting force to this is warmth, so now I think of snowqueens as women of great warmth, beauty, tenderness and perhaps a single invisible shard of ice in their heart, because afterall, a girl needs to protect herself somehow.Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-1579072043179287562011-09-20T05:18:00.000-07:002011-09-20T05:18:07.616-07:00Breakfast in Autumn<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I have a lot planned for today so we're going to need a good breakfast, you wander into the kitchen bleary eyed to see the striking colour of fresh orange juice in a wine glass, and a steaming pot of coffee, with two cups, please feel free to help yourself, while I stand by the cooker making the porridge.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">My parents have a lot of books at home, so many there's not room for them on our six (I just had to count then) bookshelves so a lot of them are still in boxes, cases, dusty yet appealing. In these books they keep drawing by my siblings and I as children, letters from friends, an old photograph, an obituary of a writer or musician they admired, and when you open these books these neglected yet treasured pieces of paper tumble out, sometimes so old they crumble in your fingers as you seek to unfold them. It was in one such book that I found the following magically wintery recipe for porridge.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It is by a food writer called Lesley Wild, who apparently wrote a book called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Family-Recipes-Lesley-Wild/dp/0955091411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316519726&sr=8-1">A Year of Family Recipes</a> </i>a book I might actually get in spite of it's wholesome title</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The following recipe serves two hungry people and sets you up for a long autumnal walk</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>100g porridge oats each</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, </i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>half a teaspoon of allspice</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>600ml full fat milk</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>2 Handfuls of dried fruit (Lesley suggests raisins, apricots and currants, however I would like to try this with fresh bramley apples)</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>2 Handfuls of unsalted nuts (almonds, cashews brazils) broken but not completely crushed (I'd just put them in a bag and hit it with a rolling pin, but just because I'm not advanced enough to own a pestle and mortar)</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The recipe is simple, you place the oats in the pan with the cinnamon and spices, pour over the milk and a pinch of salt and stir. Bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and allow to gently simmer for five - seven minutes, stirring constantly to ensure it doesn't stick. Add the dried fruits (or chopped fresh apple if you want to play with the recipe) and the crushed nuts, mix it all together and serve with demera sugar</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">While I stand by the hob stirring <i>(NO, I don't want any help, I find it therapeutic) </i>we chat about our plan for the day, and our conversation continues as we sit down and eat our steaming porridge.</div>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-77887140605728667992011-09-20T05:16:00.000-07:002011-09-20T05:16:50.086-07:00Season of mists....and my Mother's Biba frock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>It is always with a sense of sadness that I welcome Autumn. Yes, I do love the way the trees change colour, the crispy blue September skies, the dappled shadows on the pavements, but there's also the sense of something winding up, coming to an end. The slight chilliness is not like that of early spring evenings, when you wrap your light bolero a little tighter round your shoulders and bravely stride forward, there is none of the sense of promise, of being on the cusp of something, of waiting for the year to come to life. No the coldness of autumn has to be tackled with thick tights, cashmere jumpers, winter coats, hardy boots (and if you live in Edinburgh you better use a suede protecter too.)<br />
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Yet there is also something comforting about Autumn, just as it doesn't have the edginess of spring or the headiness of summer, it does have something more relaxed, more chilled out. Autumn whispers to you, <i>why go out tonight if you don't want to? </i>The Autumn skies are beautiful, and if you lie stay in you can wacth them as they change colour, also as the leaves become crisper your bed suddenly seems more appealing in the evenings.<br />
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There is also the soft magic of autumnal walks, the desire that everyone knows from childhood to kick up leaves, and crunch them underfoot. I also still feel a childish thrill at seeing a large conker, shiny like a perfect chocolate, nestled amid a sea of yellow and orange, and I still feel the desire to pick it up, to feel it cold in my hand and to know that I am the finder.<br />
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Yet in Autumn I miss summer and spring, I miss daylight, I long for the days to stay long, to stay bright, for it not to be necessary to put on hat and scarf, even a hat and scarf from Topshop.<br />
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I don't know how many people feel the same as me about Autumn but below I have written about a perfect Autumn day in Edinburgh, from morning to night..this day will appear in anstallations on my blog, because it's kind of long, and some of you may want to pick and choose which parts of this fantastical journey you accompany me on<br />
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Firstly we get up at eight, or I do anyway, you can lie in bed a little longer whilst I prepare the breakfast in the lovely light kitchen my flat has, overlooking the water of LeithScrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-32532167403830562972011-07-30T11:23:00.000-07:002011-07-30T11:23:45.016-07:00Food<i>A celebration of one of life's greatest sensual pleasures</i><br />
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I love food, love the smells which come from the kitchen when something is cooking, the exotic (to me) aroma of the herbs in thai curry paste, the scent of a lemon sorbet - so slight you have to put your nose right down into the icy crystals to smell it, the garlic and thyme and basil you smell in home made pasta sauces...a leg of lamb slowcooking in the oven on a sunny day. Did I mention I love food?<br />
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Yet, like a lot of women (and even men) I have been known to have a slightly screwed up relationship with this delicious pleasure. Food is beautiful, wonderous, amazing, associated with banquets for kings, the queen of Sheba reclining on her golden couch and reaching a lazy hand for another grape, yet it is also the stuff of sin, of evil, it gives us cancer, we are told, it makes us fat, it stops us being attractive, it gives us spots...and so forth?<br />
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Remember the apple in Eve's Eden? In some versions it is a pomegranate, which I find far more convincing a tempation, remember Persephone who ate six pomegrante seeds in Hades and was consigned to spend six months of the year there? Six months in Hades, an expulsion from Eden...look girls, that's what you get from eating!<br />
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Magazines are also full of 'lose a stone in three weeks' and 'get bikini ready' features, which don't really help, while skinniness is held up as something to aspire to. A slim woman is attractive, we are told, she is in control, she has power, she deserves the world's approval and approbition. I am ashamed to say that this is an idea I buy into, and whilst I would never consciously judge another person for being overweight (dear God, I've been there) I am still supercritical of my own figure, and sometimes the figures of others (and then I have to force myself to snap the hell out of it.)<br />
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I'm fairly typical, uk size eight to ten, yet I torture myself about food, about eating. I look in mirrors and imagine I am fat...I know logically this is not the case, but I see the flesh on the top of my arms, my round face, my chubby cheeks. My BMI is 21, I know that this is healthy, so why do I long to be the low end of healthy. Why do I think -'if only I was eight and a half stone' instead of almost nine? And why do I, like a lot of women I know, use one of life's greatest pleasures to torture myself?<br />
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So many of my friends do the same thing...depriving themselves when they are hungry, denying their natural appetite and making rules about when they can and can't eat - I know women who eat very little during the day and then let themselves go at night, this isn't cool as it leads to them thinking 'Shit, this is the only time I'm allowing myself to eat' and therefore shovelling food down with complete disregard to appetite. I think that our fucked up relationship with food is one of the main reasons for weight gain, and that if food was something we accepted, enjoyed, cherished, and never apologised for, then food would reward us, not only with intense pleasure but also with the body we should have naturally. Any man will tell you that the female body is a beautiful thing, and yes, some people are programmed to be skinny and some less so.<br />
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Sophie Dahl, the beautiful beautiful supermodel who wrote a cook book said 'sexy is having the energy to romp with you beloved.' I completely agree, sexy is also however enjoying food, enjoying life and enjoying your body. Taste buds are practivally an erogoneous zone.<br />
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I am therefore deciding here and now to become a self-confessed gourmet....a gourmet is not greedy, a gourmet doesn't binge on crap (something I have been horribly guilty of), a gourmet doesn't binge on anything, but eats beautiful foods, explores ingredients, reads cooks books as sensually as one would read the kama sutra, and cooks things which are in season as oftenas they can.<br />
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Therefore I am teaching myself to cook beautiful flavoursome things. I'm currently addicted to <a href="http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/recipes/">The BBC's Good Food Website</a> which has over 7000 recipes, as well as features about seasonal ingredients...fresh pea and runner bean risotto is only one of the mouthwatering things on the list. I am already saving recipes into a file, and dreaming about the circumstances in which I will make these beautiful dishes....<br />
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In summer I will revel in fresh vegetables. I will cook with oranges, lemons, basil, rocket (God, I love the bitter taste it has.) I will cook with Fennel - I've never cooked with Fennel before - but I will make the <a href="http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1089640/fennel-and-lemon-risotto">following luscious recipe</a> for a friend and I, and we shall relish every bite, as we sit drenched in the summer sunlight.<br />
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I have already composed fantasies about so many of the recipes I have read. The slow cooked stews I will make in winter, before I leave the house for a three hour walk up Arthur's Seat, Blackford hill and along the beach from Portobello, before coming back, freeing, to smell the juices coaguling, and to know that I will be warm.<br />
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Of course, I am never alone in these fantasies. Food is something which should be shared...it's a way in which you can give pleasure and recieve it, without any of the weirdness which comes with sex. Although, saying that, cooking for someone you lust after would be one of the best things ever.<br />
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Have any of you seen 'Like Water for Chocolate' where the girl, not allowed to marry her true love, pours all her emotions and frustrations into the food she makes, causing everyone to weep uncontrollably when they taste the cake she has made for the wedding of her beloved to her sister?<br />
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I imagine filling a thai curry with love, with desire, with longing, which an invisible he will taste and feel with every bite. I am therefore looing up how to make a genuine Thai Curry paste, so I can say to him, when we meet 'why not swing round for supper sometime'Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-75857958878468055532011-02-09T05:32:00.000-08:002011-02-09T05:32:24.280-08:00In Memory of Geoffrey Holloway (1918 -1997) - Poet and Friend<div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="il"></span> He wrote me poems when I was born, phrases of which I remember sporadically: ‘Tiny hijacker, ’ ‘Learn me, my gentle name,’ with a tender rush of gratitude that someone wrote those beautiful words for me.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He and his silver-haired girlfriend were friends of my parents from way back, too far back for them to remember how they met and became friends, as though the two couples had always known one another and always would. They would always, it seemed, sit around and chat and sip red wine, she curled up like a silver cat on our sofa, his hand touching the cashmere shoulder of her jumper every now and then as if to say: ‘I’m still here, just checking you’re still real’.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span> They would talk about poetry and life and people they all knew, and they would laugh and their faces would pinken from the food and wine and flicker in the shadows cast by the tea lights my mother always lit, and when I floated downstairs in my nighty he would shout - ‘a little ghost!’ - as I ran across the carpet to his embrace.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>As I remember he was a very tall man with silver and black stubble on his face and when he lifted me up I was high enough to look straight into the face of my great great grandmother’s wall clock which was pinned high up on the wall above the fire place. My Father recently told me that his friend was of average height, however from my small child’s three foot something recollections, he will always be tall.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>They came to look after me several times, once when I was being kept off school with a cold. I would have been about six-years-old, and with his help I wrote my first poem, it was about winter being all pretty and frosty but making you sneeze and cough a lot. I knew he was a professional poet, but I did not at that time find it at all remarkable that he took my poem seriously, writing it out for me with all the words spelled correctly so I could copy it and present it to my Mother when she burst through the door with snow on her nose.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>I soon got to an age where it was okay for me to stay up for dinner parties and be given a small glass of wine often mixed with water to make it look like a full glass. I used to love it when they came over, she with her beautiful hair, soft clothes and the way she smelt when she bent to kiss me, he with his warmth and the books he presented me with. They would always talk to me as though I was another adult even at seven and eight. If they were talking about a book he would turn to me and ask what I was reading and whether or not I was liking it, and it was often the case that the entire table would enter into a discussion of children’s literature, which eventually turned into a debate which went beyond my understanding, although I still enjoyed just sitting back and listening to the rising and falling of their voices, as it fell into a steady lilting rhythm, almost like a poem, I thought.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Then there were the self-involved years of early adolescence when my parents friends didn’t seem to matter. I have no recollections of seeing either of them between the ages of eleven and thirteen, although I suppose I must have done at some point.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My last memory of him is of visiting a too brightly lit hospital ward where he lay in bed, thin and frail, the veins on his arms sticking up like jutting blue pathways. My father did most of the talking and my mother some, but I didn’t know what to say, rendered awkard by the strangely clinical atmosphere and the proximity to death. I regret that now, I would have liked to have spoken to him more. As we left my Father said to one of the nurses: ‘You know, that man you are looking after is a brilliant poet.’ She was totally disinterested and my Father left hurt by her attitude. </span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>I didn’t come to his poetry until several years later, and then it was with a sense of revelation and loss. I did not know before how brilliant he was, and I, like the ward nurse, was too busy with my own concerns, too disinterested to find out. Yet I feel he would have understood, he would have known that I would come to his words later.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span> ‘Words were foreign, message clear,’ he wrote in his first poem to me, perhaps knowing how long it would take before I could truly grasp his poetry.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">You can read <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-geoffrey-holloway-1287940.html">Geoffrey's obituary</a> in the Independent here. You can also find the full text of his heartbreakingly beautiful poem <a href="http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/authors/geoffrey.holloway.html">The Lovers</a> here.</span></div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-48616265094413568112011-01-27T07:16:00.000-08:002011-01-27T07:17:41.523-08:00The Girl on The Stair<div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a piece I wrote several years ago and only just rediscovered, thanks to my Dad, who e-mailed me a file of all my old writing from the computer at home. It's very short, and at the time of writing I think it was meant to be the introduction to a longer piece, however it never got completed, and strangely I like some things more in their uncompleted state. I haven't got any pictures to go with this post, but if someone lovely would like to do illustations or photographs then that would make me very happy.</span></i></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He dropped his tattered art portfolio all down the stairs in the library because he was looking at her. She felt that she would like to walk on and ignore him, but being the only person on the stairs she could not do this. As they bent to pick up the rough paper sketches and mosaics of crumpled ribbon portraying the sea he noticed that her hair was catching the light like a pearl on a sea-lapped shore. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She noticed he had sand in his fingernails and grains of it trickled out on the papers he struggled to retrieve from the floor. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He noticed she was slim and wearing a tight fitting red coat. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She noticed that his grey string croquet jumper smelt of the sea. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He noticed that her fingernails were like tiny pink shells with cuticles pushed back and wondered how long this miracle had taken to achieve. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She noticed he had ‘Ring Dad’ scrawled on his hand, the ink soaking and fading into individual particles of skin,and suddenly she couldn’t not like him. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span> Later he remembered the pleasant, smooth coolness of the linoleum against his fingers on the stairs and this memory was forever entangled with the first time he properly saw her face. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She remembered that a wooden framed window above them had been open and little drops of rain flew in and made her worry it would frizz her hair. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He remembered the hugeness of her sand brown eyes and the way her blonde hair cascaded triumphantly out of its pale blue band.</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She may have noticed the grainy, youthful roughness of his skin, but to be honest she can’t really remember. She was, after all, in a hurry to get to a violin lesson, and at that poin in her life their meeting seemed of minor importance. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He couldn’t stop thinking about her for days, referring to her in his mind and his dreams as the girl on the stairs. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She never mentioned him, and thought very little of it. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>When he passed her in the street, outside the subway, where her hair seemed to light up the grey cobbles, it was a major occurrence, and he burst in on me beaming and announced he had just seen the girl on the stairs and she had smiled at him. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>When she passed him on the street she wondered where she knew this person from and returned his smile out of politeness, because she was sure she must know him from somewhere. She didn’t mention these incidents to me, and although I knew him, and I knew her, I never connected his description of the vibrant alive Girl On The Stairs with Eleanor, nor did I think she would have any reason to know Leo. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>I introduced them at a concert. She was brushing imagined dust off her violin while idly chatting to me. He was on the other side of the room staring at the grand candelabra and making it multiply into numerous candelabra by glazing his eyes in different ways. She was asking if her hair was OK to go onstage. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He thought the room was wonderful and marbly and was entranced by it, as it reminded him of something he’d seen in a dream. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She thought the room was too large and the space made her shiver, although the evening was warm. Then I did the stupidest thing in my life. I said, “You’ll have to meet my friend Leo before you go onto stage.”. She thought this would be a good distraction to kill the few minutes before she had to return to the orchestra. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He didn’t see us coming across the room and jumped when I tapped his shoulder. She laughed and he almost jumped again. She vaguely recognised him and smiled and he smiled wider. So I introduced them. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span> “It’s OK, I think we met once didn’t we?” he said. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>“Yes, I have a vague recollection,” she said with a smile. “Now where</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;">was it?” </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He pursed his lips as though in thought. “You know, I really can’t remember,” he said. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>And then I realised she must be the girl on the stair, there’s no way he would ever forget meeting someone, unless he wanted them to think they didn’t matter. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She badly wanted to remember where she knew him from. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He wanted to let her hair loose and spread it out on a white pillow and kiss every strand one by one. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She wanted to know what he was studying, and which year he was in. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He wanted to know what she dreamed about. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She wanted to know if he liked classical music and was he looking forward to the concert? </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He wanted to know whether the music would say something about her soul, her thoughts, her feelings. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She wanted to know whether he liked Mozart, Schubert, Mahler, Brahms, Trad Jazz? </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>He wanted to know how she liked to be kissed. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>She asked more questions than he did, and returned to the stage thinking he must be shy. </div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><br />
</div>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-64849030261866628682010-11-30T10:09:00.000-08:002010-12-01T04:21:27.941-08:00Carina and the Advent Calender<i>This post is for my three-year-old God-Daughter, Carina, and to mark the beginning of advent. In this post I aim to recapture some of the magic I felt as a child in the run up to Christmas.</i><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGlkGZJGl0odnT7oXCdtUMm92EsZmccKK3hrj4Rw5O5ImBX5YEZ5xVNf6FzHEddrOh_M6Q4aW6d1Cd6J3rGoDOAaGgEDaAO2GktqgoRRFVWyu2hHJXjgKwngt_KUl92b7KK9sylAUvc3I/s1600/strictly-christmas-joyous-noel-advent-calendar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGlkGZJGl0odnT7oXCdtUMm92EsZmccKK3hrj4Rw5O5ImBX5YEZ5xVNf6FzHEddrOh_M6Q4aW6d1Cd6J3rGoDOAaGgEDaAO2GktqgoRRFVWyu2hHJXjgKwngt_KUl92b7KK9sylAUvc3I/s320/strictly-christmas-joyous-noel-advent-calendar.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I remember a lot about Decembers as a child. I remember the diamond-paned windows in my bedroom frosting over with patterns of stars of ice which looked so beautiful yet as though they would cut you if you touched them. I breathed on the inside of my window and traced the shapes in the mist of my breath and when I returned after school they had evaporated. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I remember looking out of our bathroom window over the fields a pale greenish white under a layer of frost. I remember how crunchy that frost was underfoot and I remember the anticipation of ice and cold as I stood in our dining room, being bundled up in scarves and hats and mittens, staring out at our garden path, ready to dash out in a second once I was deemed well enough protected from the elements.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/1887270.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/1887270.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I remember porridge with cream and brown sugar, and how I saw the daylight begin as I was eating my breakfast. Mainly, however, December was the month when I got to open my advent <span class="il">calendar</span>. When did I first have an advent <span class="il">calendar</span>? I don’t remember, yet it seems it was always there, as inevitable a sign of the changing seasons as the darker days and longer nights. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The first advent <span class="il">calendar</span> I remember was a large picture of a gorgeous redbrick town house set against a night time blue sky, cloudless and starry. As I opened the windows I revealed more stars, one of them a shooting star, so iridescent I still thrill at the memory. Years later as an A level student studying Blake I remembered that comet with clarity on reading the lines – </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">‘<i>when the stars threw down their spears, </i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>and watered heaven with their tears.’</i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> To me, the beauty and grandeur and awe of the advent <span class="il">calendar</span> was captured in those two lines. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/images/uploads/may2008late/Shooting%20Star.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/images/uploads/may2008late/Shooting%20Star.jpg" width="215" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>I remember how sometimes I longed to open the next day’s window just to see what it would bring. Some windows excited me more than others, for inexplicable reasons. I would fix on a date….December 19</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; vertical-align: 5px;">th</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> say, and stare at that window every day, desperate to open it, perhaps because it was one of the more obvious ones and directly in front of me. Other windows were hidden, and I had to comb the whole page with my eyes, sometimes several times before the number would jump out and I would exclaim at my idiocy at not seeing it before. Every day I would open my advent <span class="il">calendar</span> as soon as I came downstairs, to reveal bells, baubles, fairies, reindeer, wise men, and any other number of wonderful things, as the contents of the magical red brick town house were slowly revealed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>My father, a playwright, wrote a Christmas radio play for children one year, entitled <i>Carol and the Advent <span class="il">Calendar</span>.</i> In this play, Carol, waking late one night alone and cold, is tempted into the wooden advent <span class="il">calendar</span> which her father has made and her venture inside causes time to stand still. She fights an evil clock master who wishes to ban Christmas and helps Father Christmas to ensure the magic day does dawn after all. I listened to a recording of this play every year…and I longed to climb into my advent <span class="il">calendar</span>, however briefly, and explore the land and rooms within. In <i>Carol and the Advent <span class="il">Calendar</span> </i>Carol sings –</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> ‘<i>In those little windows, </i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i> all is warm and bright,</i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><i>I’d be safe within those</i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>tiny, little rooms tonight’ </i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Unlike the motherless Carol, I had nothing to run away from, no reason to long to disappear into the advent <span class="il">calendar</span> except curiosity. Yet this did not stop me from peering through those little windows and wondering about the world beyond.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/2/polar-bear-dancing-on-snow_2928.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/2/polar-bear-dancing-on-snow_2928.jpg" width="215" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This year, my beautiful God Daughter. Carina, is turning three at the beginning of December. I think she is just old enough to be excited by an advent <span class="il">calendar</span>, even if her fingers are too childlike to prise open the windows. She can still try and she can still watch the windows being opened by her mother, Kirsty. She is possibly old enough to begin to grasp the sense of anticipation which comes with an advent <span class="il">calendar</span> too, the build up to Christmas and the way its closeness is marked every day with an image. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvVtztUuo9GcerOZoEnBXH5Edg_Xnpigh1uiDCK7jeSCOpPSgiv8KdhUWI-8FAf3v7fRyEUMZSfflovMqovS5dxdpb-vMPyQhOmLoVXaB-yHfbhaI5ZzYVNUnL4NgvNdLoWShsHJ8AHhj/s1600/christmas-tree-main_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvVtztUuo9GcerOZoEnBXH5Edg_Xnpigh1uiDCK7jeSCOpPSgiv8KdhUWI-8FAf3v7fRyEUMZSfflovMqovS5dxdpb-vMPyQhOmLoVXaB-yHfbhaI5ZzYVNUnL4NgvNdLoWShsHJ8AHhj/s320/christmas-tree-main_full.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This afternoon I am going out to buy Carina’s first advent <span class="il">calendar</span> at Jenners, Edinburgh’s oldest, grandest, most beautiful department store. It is a golden sandstone building, strikingly similar in style to my old advent <span class="il">calendar</span>, and at the moment, it too is filled with stars, paper cutout snowflakes and sparkly things (especially clothes and shoes, which are desperately tempting but sadly out of my reach). </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/postcard-chicago-marshall-field-dolls-in-toy-department-nice-b-and-w-1930.jpg?w=510&h=327" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/postcard-chicago-marshall-field-dolls-in-toy-department-nice-b-and-w-1930.jpg?w=510&h=327" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Found on google images, as all pictures in this article; This is the window of a toyshop in Chicago in the 1930s. I found it at once beautiful and slightly sinister, as all the best toys are. You have to believe they will come to life.</td></tr>
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</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/c/l/diormakeupcounter.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/c/l/diormakeupcounter.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grown up toys...I try not to linger too long in the make-up department</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The toy department is magical and I can still imagine the toys waiting until they are sure that the security guard has locked the front door for the night, before they come out to play at the designer makeup counters on the first floor.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I hope Carina loves her advent <span class="il">calendar</span> and can imagine the world beyond the windows, one she can enter in her dreams, which causes her to long for next morning, when she can open the next window, which she has already probably traced and learnt the shape of with her fingers, guessing desperately at what could be behind it. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.turnbacktogod.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/night-before-christmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.turnbacktogod.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/night-before-christmas.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A child's imagination makes the magic of Christmas real once again</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">On Boxing Day my <span class="il">calendar</span> would be taken down from the wall and my mother would iron it under a towel, closing all the windows for another year. My red brick <span class="il">calendar</span> lasted three years before disintegrating, and every year I would discover the windows anew. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcb7Q7TUOHbeWZd-CJgpiZbbsu_jUBACmcbpKA2aTdK_vkS4ux_tLW0d4-feu7B7DmVkgUiR-olXUpSUilk_V2yPFJboPlCh8ujHyiDFbbJXdgW03HJ3KNcd1A3mP-uAAEWRmb6cPKPBUn/s1600/2008jenners.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcb7Q7TUOHbeWZd-CJgpiZbbsu_jUBACmcbpKA2aTdK_vkS4ux_tLW0d4-feu7B7DmVkgUiR-olXUpSUilk_V2yPFJboPlCh8ujHyiDFbbJXdgW03HJ3KNcd1A3mP-uAAEWRmb6cPKPBUn/s320/2008jenners.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wonderfully vintage looking advert for Jenners...it is in fact from 2008, but I love imagining that it is from the 1950s.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Now I'm off to Jenners to find the most beautiful advent <span class="il">calendar</span> I can. Today is so clear that the sky above Jenners will be inky blue and starry by early evening, also we’ve had one or two meteorites lately. Maybe I am finally going through those little windows.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><i></i>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-53213031862814780122010-11-27T03:20:00.000-08:002010-11-27T03:21:50.160-08:00The Flaws of Perfection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://www.omfragrances.com/images/Miss-Dior-Cherie-L-Eau2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></i></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I like imperfection, the beauty that lies in a fallen eyelash on a dewy cheek, an escaped wisp of hair below a rigid ballerina bun, a vest strap which falls down in the summer to reveal a strip of lighter skin which the sun has not yet seen. I like these things because they are real, human and utterly lovely in their candidness, endearing as a child who says the wrong thing and in doing so reveals some deep truth which adults have long forgotten. </span></i></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.omfragrances.com/images/Miss-Dior-Cherie-L-Eau2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.omfragrances.com/images/Miss-Dior-Cherie-L-Eau2.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>The poets knew the power of imperfection, Shakespeare famously writing to his mistress whose eyes were ‘nothing like the sun,’ a sonnet which was later taken by Lorenz Hart as the template for his song <i>Funny Valentine </i>in which he asks: ‘Is your figure less than Greek? Is your mouth a little weak?’</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Yet many advertisers in the world of cosmetics seem to have forgotten the potency of the less than ideal; the way it stirs within us a feeling of tenderness and recognition. </span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvwypapRfmEaMu7X2um0hZ_jdoRLK_cRQDzqG88FEC6pBZsj0wvKvl5Vpf2Wilo_6_2vxlP3XWvehzDL70xcbPi-HBSs41N7yTph9Njv8i8KuJofjgw8c94ElyE_FAY953DWbNrShfwFN/s1600/2pq731e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvwypapRfmEaMu7X2um0hZ_jdoRLK_cRQDzqG88FEC6pBZsj0wvKvl5Vpf2Wilo_6_2vxlP3XWvehzDL70xcbPi-HBSs41N7yTph9Njv8i8KuJofjgw8c94ElyE_FAY953DWbNrShfwFN/s320/2pq731e.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actress and Model Natalia Vodianova looking human, a little flawed, slightly shiny round the forehead, yet absolutely gorgeous. Her imperfection and quixotic personal style add to her beauty.</td></tr>
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</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>The beautiful but flawed face which arrests the vision and forces one to look again is becoming rarer in the pages of glossy magazines. Instead we have the airbrushed perfection of L’Oreal ads, where the most exquisite of models are stripped of their human beauty and made to look strangely robotic in the case of Linda Evangelista, or doll-like in the case of Doutzen Kroes. Even the beautiful Frieda Pinto is rendered ordinary by the perfecting mechanisms of L’Oreal, while Penelope Cruz, sensual and feisty on screen, is so hardened by the L’Oreal polish that even her tumbling dark mane doesn’t soften her. </span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2157/3627540559_94c99f0283.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2157/3627540559_94c99f0283.jpg" width="233" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Supermodel Linda Evangelista airbrushed to the point where she barely looks human. Is this really what the makeup companies think we want to look like? Does any woman truly want to look like this?</td></tr>
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</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Rimmel adverts can also be terrible, managing, by some remarkable feat of aesthetic bludgeoning, to make both Lily Cole and Kate Moss look ordinary. How on earth do they do it?</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Do these companies think that women aspire to look bland, perfected, flawless beyond the limits of their mortality? Or do they think that by making these beautiful models and actresses so bland they are bringing them nearer to the average, something which women can at once aspire to and not feel threatened by?</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://bellakoola.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/8804-500w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://bellakoola.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/8804-500w.jpg" width="233" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lily Cole by Rimell...and below Lily as herself, embracing her own pre-raphaelite beauty. Which one do you prefer?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b266/Aya_James/lily_cole_h_st_1159572610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b266/Aya_James/lily_cole_h_st_1159572610.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Whatever the reason is for this dull advertising, I call on cosmetics companies to stop it. It is at once ubiquitous and patronising. It is selling a lie which women not only disbelieve but no longer wish to hear.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Yes, airbrushing is okay and is to be expected, even demanded of fashion, that realm of fantasy and dreams. What I also demand from adverts is some individuality, something whimsical and different and unique. I like the Miss Dior Cherie Advert, where Maryna Linchuk floats away holding onto a bunch of balloons. If you look closely at this and other adverts in the same series you will see that her hair is wind-blown and the dark shadows cast by her heavy brows are still visible, adding to her reality, her loveliness, her youth, her beauty.</span></div><div style="font: 14px Verdana; margin: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O6sDvG_62D8/SjkayJFd0DI/AAAAAAAABto/_x9HfxcRBN0/s400/Maryna+Linchuk+-+Miss+dior+ch%C3%A9rie+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="187" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O6sDvG_62D8/SjkayJFd0DI/AAAAAAAABto/_x9HfxcRBN0/s320/Maryna+Linchuk+-+Miss+dior+ch%C3%A9rie+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like the top image this is taken from the Miss Dior Cherie advert, directed by the wonderful Sofia Coppola. I love the sense of fun and frivolity this whole campaign. To me it encapsulates what fashion and makeup should really be...an extension of your identity and individual beauty, as opposed to the bland cover-all look, advocated by too many beauty companies.</td></tr>
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</div>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-76692721161340716142010-11-25T15:57:00.000-08:002010-11-25T15:57:04.582-08:00Twenty Four Hours In Edinburgh<i>This post is part of the 'Twenty Four Hours in Your City' Blog project, which involves bloggers from all over the world writing about what they would do with a guest in twenty four hours in their city. Please don't read my post for accuracy...the aim of this is to be fantastical, a dream twenty four hours in this city, rather than one grounded by the limitations of reality. I was told about this project by Siobhan,a freelance writer, fashionista and animal lover who has a wonderful blog here ... </i> <a href="http://www.facetsofthefabulous.blogspot.com/">http://www.facetsofthefabulous.blogspot.com/</a><br />
<br />
We begin at six o clock in the morning, I am not usually up at this<br />
time, but today I’m awake long before counting the minutes as my<br />
friend is borne towards me by a large yellow Megabus moving<br />
soundlessly through the night.<br />
<br />
I am out of my back door at 5.30, even though it takes less than<br />
twenty minutes to walk to the bus station, I am eager not to be late,<br />
and wide awake. I am able to run to the bus station in my flip flops,<br />
as it is a miraculously warm morning towards the end of April, and as<br />
the sky gradually pales from inky to chalky blue, the moon, still<br />
visible begins to fade.<br />
<br />
At the bus station I pace up and down, edgy as hell, constantly<br />
glancing at my phone, until the man at the information stand says ‘All<br />
right Hen?’ Something I like about Edinburgh is that people are nice.<br />
They genuinely give a damn about you.<br />
<br />
However, that moment my friend’s bus rolls in on time. And I watch by<br />
the entrance as he gets off the bus, his rucksack over one arm, his<br />
clothes just so in their slight scruffiness. We greet one another,<br />
stiffly with a hug, then I ask him if he is tired after his night time<br />
journey. He tells me he isn’t tired in the least, so we go back to my<br />
flat, where we quickly dump his stuff, and then we are straight out<br />
again.<br />
<br />
I live right by Holyrood Park, and my flat is overlooked by the<br />
magnificent Arthur’s seat, the highest point in Edinburgh. Climbing to<br />
the top is remarkably easy if the weather is being lovely, as it is<br />
today, and you can choose whether you want to take a gentle or<br />
ramblacious route. We decided to climb the steps, then scramble over<br />
the rocks to the top. On a good day, like this, the visibility is<br />
amazing, meaning it is possible to see right across the Firth of Forth<br />
and all of Fife, and then even further away, to make out the shapes of<br />
the often Snow-Capped Highlands. At the highest point there is an engraved <br />
circular steel disc, reminiscent of a sundial, which if you look closely it<br />
tells you exactly what you are looking at, every direction you face.<br />
<br />
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We stand at the top of Arthur’s seat, exhilarated by the view and the<br />
walk, before scrambling down from the top, then taking the gentle path<br />
down which takes us to Dunsapie Loch, which we walk around the<br />
perimeter off, looking at the baby ducklings and the swans.<br />
<br />
By the time we are back from the park it is almost 8pm, and as my<br />
friend wants breakfast I take him to Ollie Bongo’s, a red fronted<br />
café, with a bistro feel, close to Bristo Square where the University<br />
mixes old buildings with new. In the café I drink coffee, I am rubbish<br />
in the mornings and am incapable of being a breakfast person, in spite<br />
of knowing the importance of waking up your body however, I order my<br />
friend a smoked salmon bagel with salad and cream cheese (something I<br />
have had at lunchtime, and one of the most delicious things ever.)<br />
Here we lie back against the plush red cushions and watch people out<br />
of the window, including the throng of students running to be on time<br />
for their nine o'clock class.<br />
<br />
Yet something is unusual about the day. The light is changing in a way<br />
you would not normally expect, and as we step out the temperature is a<br />
couple of degrees higher, meaning I have to shed my cardigan and tie it<br />
around my waist. As we wander back through town, I am amazed that the<br />
flowers and trees have changed, the leaves are thicker and the birches<br />
have lost their sapling beauty, replacing it with something more<br />
flirtatious and knowing. We walk past the Islamic green grocers near<br />
Nicholson Square, and outside there are luscious displays of<br />
strawberries, raspberries and juicy ripe tomatoes. I stop and look at<br />
my phone….we have been catapulted into June.<br />
<br />
We wander round town, walking slowly along the Royal Mile, and smiling<br />
at all the people in their summer clothes. It is by now a full blown<br />
heat wave, and although the city centre is a wonderful place to be, we<br />
are craving the sea side. One of the magnificent things about<br />
Edinburgh, so often overlooked, is the fact that it is surrounded be<br />
beautiful beaches. We run back to my flat….it’s now eleven and I feel<br />
like the day is escaping…and we grab my bike, and my flatmates bike<br />
(somehow it is the perfect size for my friend) and we head off once<br />
more towards the Park.<br />
<br />
Just within the park is a red gravel lane, which weaves through trees<br />
and sunlight and shadows, before turning into the Innocent Railway<br />
cycle path. Once a twelve mile steam railway which transported coal to<br />
Edinburgh, the Innocent Railway is now a beautiful cycle path, with<br />
beautiful wild shrubbery on either side. If you continue along the<br />
path you pass through Duddingston, the Jewel and then finally you are<br />
in Musselburgh, spinning down the hill at top speed towards the long<br />
dusty golden beach. We run into the sea, our bikes chained to the<br />
railings and then after about half an hour we run out, our hair salty,<br />
and our bodies goose pimpled. We throw soft white towels around<br />
ourselves and sit and eat our sandwiches. The day is getting warmer,<br />
even though it is now two in the afternoon, and as we shiver the day<br />
warms us, and we lie back on the beach, until three when we cycle back<br />
to Edinburgh.<br />
<br />
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<br />
It is less the five hours since we left the city, but when we get<br />
back, once again something imperceptible has changed. We put the bikes<br />
away and rush into town. The streets are strangely crowded, and there<br />
are pieces of paper on the ground every where. A young student stops<br />
us and asks if we want to go and see his company’s play. It’s only on<br />
until August 14th, he tells us. Once again I glance at my phone, and<br />
discover that time has leapt forward. We are in the midst of the<br />
headiest, most feverish, awesome theatre festival in the world.<br />
<br />
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<br />
We wander along the Royal Mile slowly and stop and watch street<br />
performers. One of them, a peripatetic magician decided to grab my<br />
friend from the audience. He makes him eat fire. I wince, but my<br />
friend laughs. Suddenly I feel heady and dizzy and mad from all the<br />
crowds. We rush to a pub but can’t find anywhere to sit, so we dash<br />
down to Princes Street, and then along to George Street, where we sit<br />
in All Bar One, the one bar which is quiet during the festival,<br />
perhaps due to it looking far grander and pricier than it really is.<br />
There we sit and sip on pints on Amstel as we peruse our Fringe<br />
programmes, and decide what show we are going to see. We can only see<br />
one, so I opt for a play by renowned theatre company Belt Up.<br />
<br />
<br />
We go to C-Soco and rush in to see the show, just before the door closes.<br />
I love Belt Up, I love their quirkiness, the way they include the<br />
audience in their work, the intimacy of the venues they choose. I love<br />
the way some of their plays are off beat interpretations of well known<br />
myths, and I love the heartbreaking combination of comedy and<i> pathos</i><br />
with which they perform.<br />
<br />
When we leave it is 8pm, and although it is still clear, the daylight<br />
has already gone to be replaced by numerous stars. This is unusual for<br />
August; more unusual however is the drop in temperature, which leaves<br />
me shivering into my friend’s jacket. My instinct is to go back to my<br />
flat, to stay warm, but glancing at my phone I notice it is the 24th<br />
of November, the day when the Christmas Market opens. We run to<br />
Princes Street, anything better that staying still in this weather,<br />
and then we dash along to Princes’ street Gardens to join the skaters<br />
on the ice rink.<br />
<br />
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<br />
I cannot skate well and often fall over, but this time a kind of magic<br />
descends, and we skate together seamlessly, along with the other<br />
skaters. All of us elegant and agile and beautiful. Afterwards, we go<br />
to one of the food stands for Gluhwein, and Stollen, and then it is<br />
time to go back to my flat and collapse.Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-58770149368356637002010-10-30T12:09:00.000-07:002010-11-03T04:53:06.593-07:00Wearable Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQx4ofy1hyphenhyphenjyfQDdTYfDUbLjtjuGVJMPcH1yOMzDrie6cPo7llsH1NNfoxP5vGwht4uqu68nJEP4_YHsGJ970A6G0xCq9qcyleDMSROALw3PzF6hm431ujajcph_JBNSiaPpIDqssoYawS/s1600/perelandra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQx4ofy1hyphenhyphenjyfQDdTYfDUbLjtjuGVJMPcH1yOMzDrie6cPo7llsH1NNfoxP5vGwht4uqu68nJEP4_YHsGJ970A6G0xCq9qcyleDMSROALw3PzF6hm431ujajcph_JBNSiaPpIDqssoYawS/s400/perelandra.jpg"></img></a></div><br />
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<br />
<p>'You'll always find people who say art is only on canvas,' says Mitch Philips, textile designer, 'however I would say that fashion is in fact one of the most beautiful and inclusive art forms out there'</p><p>We are sitting in the square on a gloriously sunny day in Carcassonne and watching the skirts and dresses float by and Mitch is showing me photos of a kimono she has designed and made.</p><p>She has given me a sample of the material; finest silk, dip-dyed and scrunch-dryed in a wide array of pinks and oranges, with a beautiful gold and red leaf pattern. 'I used real chestnut leaves to make the template,' she says, describing the process of screen printing used to make the kimono.</p><p>She then points to the arms, off which there dangle red strands of silken thread sparkling with pearl drop beads. 'They're tears,' she explains. 'I wanted to create a piece of clothing which told the story of Madame Butterfly. The delicacy of the fabric represents the heroine and the tear drops on the arms show her heartbreak.'</p><p>Looking more closely at the kimono I see that the arms of the robe hang off the model like butterfly wings. It is only the heaviness of the beads, her tears, which are stopping her taking flight, Suddenly the emotional impact of the kimono hits me and I am amazed by the garment's pathos and tragedy. </p><p>People dismiss fashion so easily as a pretty fluffy frivolity, yet like great literature, great music, great paintings and sculptures, fashion can tell stories, can express emotion, can have depths not at once apparent. As in a piece of music, the silk of the kimono becomes the soft lilting background melody while the leaf pattern is a leitmotif. At parts the motif is busy, many leaves overlap noisily and chaotically in shimmering gold and blood red, while in other parts the pattern is barely there and the gorgeous material is all that is visible, catching the light in the same way as a clear lake reflecting the trees in autumn.</P><p>'Wearable art is amazing,' continues Mitch, 'as it allows people not only to see art but also to become it.' I instantly understand what she means. As a young teenager I used to wander round galleries and flick through art books longing not only to see but also to become the art. I wanted to be Boticelli's Venus swathed in golden hair, Dali's Leda seduced by the swan or Bernini's Daphne throwing back her pale marble neck as she sprouted leaves from her fingers and roots from her toes. </p><p>When I studied Ovid's Metamorphoses at school I was fascinated by the transformations the characters underwent and wished that I too was able to morph into different shapes, to sprout wings and fly too close to the sun like Icarus or to become a glitteringly tragic constellation like the nymph Calisto. Somehow these magical transformations seemed to make the pain experienced by the characters worthwhile, desirable even. Talking to Mitch I realise that wearable art makes these adolescent fantasies realisable.</p><p>When I get home I type 'Wearable art' into Google and find the site of designer, Claire Prebble, whose wearable art work, Perelandra, is strikingly reminiscent of Daphne's metamorphosis. The model wears a skirt like the roots of a tree falling from the top of her legs to the ground, on one of her shoulders perches a large pink dragon fly and her head dress is elaborately crafted in the shape of branches and tiny leaves. The entire design is made of recycled copper, glass beads and tissue paper, and the result is magnificent. It is one of the most incredible sculptures I have ever seen and it is even more fantastic because at the centre of it stands a living woman. </p><p>Another work by Claire Prebble is entitled, Hot With Gossip, a sizzling pink creation of recycled clothing and curtains, decorated with fine beads and accesorised with an elaborate black fan. The vivacity of the costume perfectly captures the bubbly sense of excitement which comes with youth while the fan shows the yearning for adult sophistication felt by the artist who models the outfit. Remarkably Prebble created this costume when only eleven years old.</p><p>Yet even more amazingly, Prebble's first creation Peach Blossom was made out of handed down fabrics and clothes given by friends when the artist was only nine. On Prebble's website the artist says that her inspiration for the piece was, 'being a nine year old girl with a love of dressing up.' Thankfully Prebble's love of dressing up has never died, it has only become more complex, intricate and sophisticated. Her art is a way of realising childhood fantasies of remarkable transformations, of making Ovid's Metamorphoses come true. </p><br />
<p><i> Thanks to The World of Wearable Art, New Zealand, for permission to use the image of Claire Prebble's creation. </p></i><br />
<a href="http://www.worldofwearableart.com/home"> World of Wearable Art</a><br />
<a href="http://www.virtualbay.co.nz/claireprebble/"> Claire Prebble</a>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-69672673992726088142010-10-30T11:42:00.000-07:002010-10-30T12:18:10.587-07:00Hidden Song<i>Hey people, here's my first post, it's an interview with singer, pianist and composer Vanessa Knight....</i><br />
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<p>Vanessa Knight is as yet relatively unknown singer and songwriter, yet she hopes this will soon change. Her Edinburgh run, two nights in the Rat Pack, was a sell-out success and on the second night she performed her own songs, for the first time in front of a live audience. She admits that this was 'scary' but it added 'I've loved it, absolutely loved it, everyone [in Edinburgh] has been so welcoming.'</p><p>I arranged to meet her to do this interview after being blown away by her live performance 'Hidden Song,' where she debuted such tracks as the beautifully impassioned 'Lay Down Your Devils On Me' and the heart-rending yet mathematically precise love song 'Circles'. Reminiscent in style to Camille O'Sullivan she performed with a pair of pale stiletto heels propped on top of the shiny grand piano. 'Oh that's because I can't play the piano in high heels,' she explains 'it's so important to be able to feel the pedals, but they're such beautiful shoes, it feels sad not to have them on display.'</p><p>As we sit over a table in Biblos, one of the few none crowded bars we could find, she tells me about her life as a musician and her ambitions for the future. She's been writing songs since she was a tiny child, and she laughs as she tells me that she won a Blue Peter badge aged six for a song she sent in. She is a classically trained musician, with a degree in Music and Drama from Birmingham University, but she never really thought she'd make it as a musician until she graduated and was offered a job singing in nightclubs in Scandinavia- 'I never knew that singing was a real job until that point,' she says, 'that this was something which I could do full time and make a living from.' Since then she has travelled round Europe playing and singing in different clubs. </p><p>I find Vanessa surprisingly easy to talk to, possibly as we are the same age and both recent graduates, so I know what she's getting at when she says 'I was going to go into advertising or some other graduate job, not because I wanted to, just because, well, you know, you think that's what you've got to do.'</p><p>When talking about what she does, she admits that she doesn't like to stick to one category 'Every genre has something incredible in it, Ilike to mix it up a bit,' - hence why she mixes bits of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Radiohead in with her own music.'Genre doesn't matter,' she says, waving a porcelain hand dismissively over the table ' the most important thing in music is that it's sincere'.</p><p>She's also interested in bringing mathematics to to music 'there was a movement called serialism around the beginning of the twentieth century, all about using mathematical codes and sequences to generate music...it's very interesting, but it doesn't always sounds fantastic, however one day I would love to write a piece that is perfectly mathematical but at the same time sounds good and means something.'</p><p>The idea of music having meaning is a subject which Vanessa returns to again and again, 'I try to write about things other than love...it makes for fantastic songs but it's too easy to write <i>oh-my-heart-is-breaking-and-I-think-I'll-die</i> sort of things.' This perhaps explains her wide repertoire of song which touch on s subjects such as supporting an unstable but lovely friend (Lay Down Your Devils On Me) to a song about the wonder of a big city (London Lights). At present she is trying to choose which song to make the lead single on the full length album, which she hopes to bring out early next year. She asks my advice and I tell her that my favourite is Lay Down Your Devils. She thanks me and then tells me that she hopes to have her music on spotify within the next couple of months. 'It's always difficult to finish anything as an artist though,' she says 'you know how it is, you always think you can tweak it a little, make it that little bit better..'</p><p>I know what she means, however I think her music is great as it is, and she certainly deserves recognition.</p><br />
<i> </i><i>And here is a link to Vanessa's website for those who wish to know more - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Vanessa-Knight/323819526810 </i>Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2416613801276287345.post-65875029052834297462010-10-30T11:19:00.000-07:002010-10-30T11:43:20.730-07:00Scrapbookyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13736108551628114375noreply@blogger.com0