Spring Searching

My work schedule is so peculiar these days that I have to squash my weekend into a Thursday. I do this quite cheerfully: the streets are quiet, the cafes are empty and I can just wander around while everyone else is hard at work. The joke's on me of course when I'm working all day on Saturday and Sunday.

Yesterday Benjamin and I went on a walk, officially to buy some salt, but ended up wandering the grounds of the church turned concert venue, St George's, and finding, to our surprise, the early shoots of spring.

There are a few churches in Bristol which have been taken over by enterprises more profitable than they – lately I've spotted a church now in a hut adjacent to its former premises (now a gymnastics studio), and another turned into a boxing centre. Sport is the new religion, it would seem.

St George's is the nicest of them all - I saw Owen Pallett play here last year, which was quite a magical experience. Inside, the ceilings are high and the acoustics are something special.

So, while spring springs out of miserable February, I'll be working hard on a very large book. When I'm finished, perhaps it will be springtime proper, and time for something different.

Some things

I like the idea of a rolling wardrobe, where everything is of such good quality that you can sell on once you tire of it, and buy something of similar quality with the proceeds. While I am far from that ideal, I am selling three of my best vintage dresses on eBay at the moment, (ending Sunday) and thought you might like to see, just in case you are interested in such things. All three are genuine 1960s, and were bought at an antiques auction last summer.

So, to make way (hopefully) for things of a similar quality that can also be sold on in time, here they are:

1960s Teal Green Beaded Dress


1960s Silver Beaded Cocktail Dress

Secret Admirer

At a loss to understand Valentines, and as a secret admirer of many things, year round, I feel like posting a selection. I can make no attempts to create meaning around this, the strangest of days – I can only post some simple things that I've admired today.

An unexpected cake

The first daffodils

Very delicious gin from Islay/A blackbird ready for a pie

For real old fashioned romance, I suggest Hila's perfectly pitched Valentine's post, complete with sea view, here.

Indian Winter

I've always said that living in a city that I don't love, I can survive quite cheerfully as long as I can hide in my flat every so often – it's just the world as I want it to be, and I can pretend that what's outside the windows is, too.

In early February, that mean old world is even more grey and damp, and the wind whistles through my windows, moving the curtains in a ghostly fashion. So this, in a roundabout way, is why I'm staying indoors, rather than roaming the countryside, although I can't wait until the months when the prospect of that becomes enticing again.

This dress, with its Indian inspired fabric, is handmade 1960s I think. It was my first foray into vintage, actually, years ago, and was probably more expensive than anything I would buy now. I love it, but somehow I've never really worn it anywhere. Perhaps I haven't quite been brave enough, but I think I am now. It fits perfectly (something I only ever really get from vintage) and I like the way it brightens up the greyness outside.

In my current hermit mode, I've been reading To Kill a Mockingbird which I've somehow never read before, and the latest issue of Oh Comely magazine, which just seems to be getting better and better with each issue. I've been enjoying branching out with less established magazines lately, and am so pleased I have - they reward you in a way that Vogue and the other big players never could.

On that note, I must direct anyone who is interested in such things to Ellen Burney of Vagabondiana's beautiful riposte to the traditional fashion press – her words are brilliant, and her point equally so.

Dress: Vintage handmade 1960s
Wool Tights: H&M
Shoes: Topshop

Music Hall

My house is full of instruments that we don't play for fear of the neighbours, so they sit around the place instead, like oversized ornaments not sure what to do with themselves.

The accordion really belongs to my mother, who whimsically bought it when she was about the same age as I am now. She took lessons and learnt Scottish accordion, but I think I'd like to learn how to play it like they do in France, the way Yann Tiersen plays it. It's easy to play around and compose a sea shanty on it though, but it's impossible to remember it the next day.

I bought the mandolin in a very similar whimsical moment, although it was more like madness – the kind of moment when you don't know what to buy for your boyfriend's birthday when you've only been going out for a little while and you want to do something memorable. It was memorable, I suppose, but neither of us have the first idea of what to do with it. I bought a round-backed one because I had read about round-backed mandolins in 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' and was taken by the romance of it all.





Tonight I'm going to watch my friend play in a concert of gypsy baroque music. She's borrowing my mother's 1970s hippy circle skirt to wear – it fits right into the slightly Russian gypsy atmosphere in a way that it doesn't fit into my everyday life. I kind of love the pulled threads.

Watching it all will make me want to learn to play one of my instruments again I'm sure, but I'm always worried that learning properly might take the fun out of it. Perhaps I'm just happy to experiment forever and just appreciating the happy surprises that you get when something works.