all this useless beauty.

New Blog

New blog over here. Feel free to come over!

Song for Nick Clegg

Never mind, Nick.

Partial recovery/ flouncy top

Well, I’m pleased to report that I’m starting to feel better. Finally! Thank God! Because yesterday I had convinced myself that I did not have what I actually do have, which is a stomach bug/ flu thing, but an actual Disease, which would probably necessitate an operation. So I convinced myself I had appendicitis and googled it, but unfortunately the place you get pain with appendicitis was the one place in my body that didn’t hurt, so that was no good. And then I thought perhaps my immune system had disappeared and I would need a bone marrow transplant to get a new one (this is the technical term). So then I started thinking about who might want to give me their bone marrow, and whether it would be a lot of trouble. Then I realised I had made a mistake with my lunch choice for a person with a stomach bug (prunes) and that took my mind off my imminent death for a while, and then I spent the evening watching Wagner and crocheting a skirt and this morning I felt a bit better. So I will spend next week rushing round doing things which involve actually leaving the house and even possibly interacting with people while I feel well enough, until I’m struck down by the next plague. I don’t believe I’ve had leprosy yet, or indeed any other dramatic skin condition, although I do feel I’ve cornered the market this year in upper respiratory/ gastrointestinal disorders.

I have made this while I’ve been ill:

It needs trimming and finishing but I’m rather pleased with it, although it has been soundly ridiculed by someone who I happen to know couldn’t set in a sleeve even if his life depended on it.

Seeing the world in quite the wrong way

This year I have been conducting an [unwilling] experiment to see how many viruses one person can get without getting really irritated. So far:

One cold
One follow-up sinus infection
Various smaller colds
Another bad cold
Sinus infection
Stomach flu, which went away and then came back again

So, since I am getting over Stomach Flu mark 2 and am well enough to sew but not well enough to go into town, Partner has had to be sent to the John Lewis Haberdashery section to buy machine needles suitable for fine cotton and light blue sewing thread. I have learnt that a man who is very colourblind will not understand that he is taking grey thread as a sample of the brand of thread to buy, but is buying light blue. Because it is light blue for all he knows. But this is fine. I will sew my light blue blouse with grey thread and I will no longer listen to protestations of ‘not very colourblind just a bit of trouble with green and brown.’ Thank goodness he doesn’t drive although I have to say that if Partner drove the traffic lights might be the least of our mutual worries.

I wonder where the birdies is.

Well, it has pretty much been a winter in which I have wilted about like Tennyson’s May Queen (don’t try and take the comparison too far. I am retaining a shred of self-knowledge):

There’s not a flower on all the hills; the frost is on the pane.
I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again;
I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high;
I long to see a flower so before the day I die.*

But, I’m pleased to announce that Spring is now here, although we are a week from the Equinox/ Oestara. There are snowdrops in Cambridge
And there are crocuses. And my daffodils have got buds on. That is good enough for me. (And the birdies is all in my garden, nibbling my nuts.)

* It strikes me now that this is actually a pagan poem about the Goddess (on one level). Would Tennyson have heard of the Goddess? Surely not.

Sewing for Absolute Beginners, Part 1: Cutting Out

As you may have gathered, I am trying to teach myself to sew. It has not been an easy journey, and it has been one which so far has produced items such as this tasteful symphony of colour:

So do feel free to take what I say with a pinch of salt. However, one of the things that I found difficult to start with is that all sewing books assume you have got an ounce of common sense and will understand instinctively things like, how to transfer a pattern, how not to get overwhelmed with fabric and die under a big pile of it, things like that. I don’t have any common sense, and it has taken me until now to work out things which are really, really obvious. I’m sure there are other people like me, though, so I thought I would pass on my hard-won knowledge. To start with: cutting out.

Amy Butler Gum Drop pillow - pattern review.

I do sometimes wonder if I have criminally bad taste. Then I think, no, someone would tell me. Then I think again, actually people do often say to me things like, that is an interesting thing you are wearing. Is it from a shop?, in quite a pointed fashion. Anyway taste is very personal and normally I am happy with my strange combinations of colours, but I do look at the colours in this Amy Butler Gum Drop Pillow


and think, what was I on? Even though I know I was not on anything stronger than Strepsils. Poor ugly pillow which I don’t quite know what to do with but is competently made and will probably last a good long time (great). It was quick to sew and I didn’t mod anything. The thing that took me longest was getting over the terrible realisation half way through that I had picked colours which would disgrace a parrot with a migraine. If I made another one I would probably make an inner cushion and then make a cover with a long zip down one of the seams, as I don’t think you could really take the polythene bead filling out to wash it. Anyway: you live, you learn, as Alanis told us, although I leave it up to you how much life advice you take from someone who doesn't understand the concept of irony.

Bored of winter now, thanx

I have now been very, very cold for all of this year and most of last. I try not to complain but I fear my eyes say it all. My hands are so cold that last night I stroked a cat and it nearly jumped out of its skin, despite having considerable padding, poor thing. I am sitting here with the central heating on wearing a scarf. O when O when will it be spring? I do remember at least one day last year being hot. This is a photo I took on that one day:

Isn’t it cheerful? It is a cemetery in Montparnasse. There was some reason we couldn’t stay in the air conditioned hotel which I can’t remember now but which was entirely compelling at the time, so we spent the afternoon sitting exhaustedly on a bench in this cemetery, failing to find Baudelaire, drinking water and marvelling at how popular Simone de Beauvoir’s tomb was. Because I have read The Second Sex, and I think on balance I am giving that book the coveted title of Worst Book I Have Ever Read. Many of us are awkward adolescents, but fortunately few of us work it up into a long boring book and a theory. It was even worse than Walden. I actually think someone should have stopped her half way through. Never mind, Simone, they could have said, don’t you go worrying about your barely repressed longings for Zizi or whatever her name was and your mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion towards the petit bourgeoisie, let’s go out and get hammered on Pernot and dance round our handbags in an emotionally uncomplicated fashion. But sadly Simone seems to have been allowed to brood. I hope I am not just internalising sexism, because I have also read a book by Jean-Paul Sartre and I thought it was a work of genius, although not enough so for me to be able to remember the title or to have read any more.

Since we are doing boring holiday photos, this was the window of a vintage shop in the Marais. The shop was closed (disaster) which meant I was unable to go in and ascertain the price in Euros of that metal-disc Paco Rabanne (yes!) minidress in the window. This is a good thing because I had my credit card and I would have bought it, if only because there is a scene in one of the early Jilly Cooper books where the heroine has just such a dress. I am entirely 50-50 at the moment as to whether I need to wean myself off inappropriate vintage and buy some functional jersey separates, or whether I can get away with wearing directional maxidresses to Budgens.

I am pretty sure this grumpy lion was in the Picasso museum. We were having an argument because I wanted to buy felafel and partner didn’t, so we compromised on a baguette. It turned out that I enjoyed the baguette very much because I remember it more than I remember the Picasso museum.

And this was a glove shop (Excuse the flash). Tant de Gants! (That was not its name but it should have been).

I don’t know if pictures of summer make spring come quicker, but at least I have had a good try.

They’d need to give me more than a $300 grab bag

These are the Board of Directors of American Apparel. These are the people in management roles. You notice how well women are represented. The point at which I see them all posing, in thongs, with that curiously quiescent arched-back posture, will be the point at which I no longer think American Apparel is a grubby little company attempting to benefit from old-fashioned sexism and exploitation by giving it a veneer of irony.

Boycott!

Attention canines. Attention canines

When you see a runner striding our city landscape like an urban Colossus, do you think, honestly, that person looks cool in their fleece and tight trousers? You do not. You think, hur hur hur. And do you think I am a person who is overly concerned about looking stupid, in a slightly adolescent fashion? Of course I am. And that is why I am not venturing out onto the mean streets until I am able to run for more than 200 metres, and look at the end of it as if there is a reasonable prospect of me escaping cardiac arrest in the following half hour. And I can assure you that that is not the case at the moment. So, I am still running in Milton Country Park, and as the weather is miserable, it is me, hardcore runners with the right clothes, and various dogs who are being walked.

I would therefore like to put out a public service announcement to all dogs who are walked in Milton Country park in the mid-mornings: dogs. When you see me in my blue fleece thundering towards you looking as if I am about to expire, there is no need to panic. Repeat: there is no need to panic. You will not be chased: you will not be molested in any way. Not only do I like dogs, I can’t run fast enough to do any chasing. If I ever look as if I am moving with sufficient rapidity that I could conceivably be a threat, that is because I am running downhill, and to be honest this is normally in error. There is no need to be scared. On the other hand, for those of our canine friends who bound up to me and crouch, tails wagging: I am sorry I do not have the energy to throw your ball for you. In fact, if I stop suddenly or break my stride I am likely to fall over, and that would be difficult for both of us. But I very much appreciate the gesture, and I am glad that you retain your playfulness, for I know that it is difficult, in this cruel world.

I hope that has helped to clarify things.