Linen

'I don't really mind where we go, I just like old things.' I said, last Sunday, on the warmest day of the year. We went to Hampton Court Castle, a 15th-century castle within its own gardens – a vista around every corner.

This garden, with its high red brick walls was almost everything a Frances Hodgson Burnett girl might wish for – walls too high to see over and wrought-iron gates – all that was missing was the secrets and the mystery, and a bit of overgrowth. The colossal entrance fee did little to help the mystique along, but old couples sat grumpily drawing on benches, and around every hedge was a different conversation to eavesdrop on.

I came across this dress entirely by surprise in a charity shop a week or so ago. It has been so long since I found anything worthwhile that I'd almost given up trying. It's French linen, and has a very pretty line to it. The wide pleats are perfect.

The label tells me that it comes from Cannes, which conjures film festivals and swishing along promenades and harbours with a little dog and stiletto shoes. As I possess neither, I stick to my gentleman's flats and add a headscarf, and pretend anyway.

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

Country Living

When Ben's parents go on holiday, their house more often than not becomes a little country retreat for him and me. We have roaring fires, bake cakes, make soup, watch films and read books and generally pretend that we're on holiday too, which is what we did this weekend. It's a perfect way to disappear from your own life and gear up for what you have to do when you return to it.

The house is a perfect English seventeenth-century museum piece, with hidden rooms in unexpected places, dark beams, tiny doorways to duck under and mysterious windows. It's not a house for the tall (me) but it is very characterful. When we were taking these photographs, an unwelcome chicken appeared in the garden to root up the lawn, which prompted a strategic chicken chase to coerce it back to its own.

Recently it has been getting slightly warmer, and, as I mentioned in my last post, I've been overly optimistic and started spring clothes hunting already. I justify it by reasoning that I can never find what I want when I'm actually looking, so if I see something I want when I'm not looking, I really ought to buy it. Ridiculous, but there we are.

The dress is a great cut – a wide waistband and just the right amount of flare. The bag is one I have on long term loan from Ben's mother – his dad bought it for her in Florence, and she doesn't use it, so I've been making the most of it. The soup was a very delicious Ben creation.

Tonight we are back in the city, armed with a haggis and a bottle of whisky to celebrate Burn's Night, just as any self-respecting Scottish girl ought to be. I actually really like haggis, so I'm quite looking forward to it.

Dress: Topshop
Bag: Borrowed

Duffle

I've never been a duffle coat girl. 'Too much Paddington Bear, not enough shape' says my inner monologue. Sometimes though (often, actually), my inner monologue needs to be a bit more open minded, and this, to a certain extent, is one of those occasions.

Despite all of that, this is not my duffle coat, borne of a sudden change of heart after years of duffle-aversion, but my mother's, from NW3 at Hobbs (the young trendy Hobbs collection – she's neither old nor serious enough for the Hobbs part yet, she says – I agree).

The coat and I are on the rocks just outside my mother's house on the Isle of Islay. I think every child who has ever grown up in the village grew up mostly clambering and scrambling over them. My sister and I used to decorate carefully-chosen rocks with things we found on the shore, and play house; sending letters to each other via slates and chalk. When it was stormy, we'd go down and marvel at the high tide. On calm days I'd sit and watch the ripples quietly ripple in. I'm quite attached to these rocks, as it happens.

The coat's best feature, in my opinion, is the part that makes it less a typical duffle coat and more of a coat that comes in at the waist (my preference) – the lovely cut at the back. The lining is also very pretty, and the coat itself is probably the cosiest one I've ever worn. All in, I think I like it, although probably not enough to buy one for myself.

I've topped off my largely borrowed outfit with my sister's Christmas present – the vintage looking leather laptop bag, which I'm a big fan of. It's a little bit Mulberry-esque, I suppose. The gloves belong to me (a Cath Kidston Christmas present), as do the riding boots, which I got from Islay's only charity shop.

Every time I go back to Islay, I wonder if I could live there – life always seems so much simpler. Lots of peat fires, long walks on beaches and cosy whisky. I'd like to some day I think, but not soon, and not forever – it's a hard place to live in the winter when the newspapers don't arrive and the mail is cut off because of a fierce storm. On the other hand, fierce storms and stormy seas are kind of exhilarating, and who needs newspapers really?

Duffle coat: NW3 at Hobbs
Jeans: Topshop
Boots: Charity shopped
Gloves: Cath Kidston
Bag: Atwood

Clevedon

An old English Victorian seaside town out of season, Clevedon in December is far more beautiful than it is in July. No tourists with ice cream cones buying expensive lunches in seafront locations and fighting over the outside seats – in December the sea is calm, the anglers are watchful and the sea mist swirls around and makes an atmosphere out of it all.

The pier is Clevedon's jewel. John Betjeman called it 'the most beautiful pier in England' and it must be – its long spindly legs create such delicate arches. The wet beams are recycled railway sleepers, paid for by tiny brass plaques inset into the wood and engraved with the names of the people who bought them. The glorious pavilion at the end is quiet now, but becomes a seaside cafe in the summer. I realised when I was there, that this is the pier that is used in the publicity posters for 'Never Let Me Go', the new Keira Knightley film.

When Ben and I strolled along it, the pier was completely deserted bar the quiet anglers with their bowed heads. It was pouring with rain and the mist was rolling in. I felt like my 1940s coat deserved an attempt at 1940s hair, which I quite like I think – It's nice to have a fringe break now and again. The coat I bought in a charity shop – it's heavy and the cut is perfect for me – it feels very grand.

Coat: Vintage 1940s
Leather gloves: Vintage
Tights: H&M
Shoes: Topshop

A Tourist at Home

Sometimes it's fun to be a tourist in your own city. I'm the kind of tourist who tries to blend in with whatever place I'm visiting in order to see the real place, not the manufactured directed version that you are fed as a slavish tourist. The hardest part about trying to fit in in a place that you have never been before is not getting lost, so being a tourist in the city that you already know is easy.

So, in true Bristol tourism style, here is Clifton Suspension Bridge and its surroundings in the late autumn sunshine. It's an almost impossible structure, built in the mid-nineteenth century across the deep Avon Gorge, which itself has seen more than its fair share of people jumping to their deaths from the bridge above. The best tale of this bridge that I have heard is that of Sarah Ann Henley, who, intent on ending her life in 1885, threw herself off it only to be buoyed up by her many petticoats, which acted as a parachute and saved her life, guiding her down gently. She lived into her eighties.

I was tempted to wear something voluminous in her honour, but settled for this instead, my vintage Betty Barclay autumn dress. Its length would make it a great summer dress, were it not for the long sleeves. They are too warm for summer and too cold for winter, but perfect for sunny autumn evenings like this. I like that it is cut in a classic shape in a classic colour but that the camel is broken up by the flashes of fushia in the wings of the birds. I bought it in Camden Market in London, which happens in fact to be the place most often thought of by Londoners as a horrible tourist nightmare – I do still go, though.

Dress: vintage Betty Barclay
Cardigan: Topshop
Tights: M&S
Shoes: Long Tall Sally

Clifton

When I moved to England, to Bristol, from my little Scottish island, the first place I lived was Clifton village. I thought 'this is what England is like' and was amazed and terrified. Clifton village is a village within a town that feels like a village. The people who live there are the kinds of people whose wives drive Mini Coopers to lunch dates and whose husbands drive Saabs and Audis to offices five minutes' walk away and keep vintage Jaguars in the garage for glorious Sundays. Heroes and darlings of the cultural world can also be found here, playing the piano with the windows wide to see who stops to listen.

This is my favourite part, Royal York Crescent, because you can spy on these lives so effectively from here. The windows, under their humbug-striped canopies, are old and enormously wide and tall – a statement from a time when sheets of glass that size were rare – and resemble shopfronts, displaying the wares inside. There are few net curtains: an assumption that those who live or walk in Clifton are too polite to peer inside? An invitation to do just that? I always look in.

Some are minimalist white and bare inside. Others embrace the architecture and attempt a befitting atmosphere: regency armchairs, dark shiny mahogany sideboards, imperious lamps. A few have been lived in unchanged for decades, and look nicely dated, like old curiosity shops that I might like to have a rummage in, given the chance.

I wandered around it in the early afternoon in my thoroughly modern American Apparel dress, layered over a white skirt and tube top from the same, carrying my grandmother's white gloves (which she once wore to launch a ship, I'm told) and her (and my) prized neckscarf on my head, I suppose contrasting the old and the new in the same way as the buildings do. Then my camera battery ran out.

Dress, Skirt, Top: American Apparel
Scarf, Gloves, Bag: Pinched from my mother, Pinched from my mother, Charity shopped (respectively)

Simple Village Girl

You might have noticed that the title (and url – update your links!) of my blog have changed. Biscotti was a bit of a non-name, chosen rashly when I really had very little idea about blogging, and it has been annoying me for a while.

Simple Village Girl on the other hand is taken from a song by Belle and Sebastian ('If you find yourself caught in love') and sums me up quite well, with a little bit of irony: at heart I'll always just be a village girl, but never a simple one. Belle and Sebastian are Scottish, as I am, and are also the first band I ever saw live. So, you see, it is plenty relevant! What do you think?

As I was saying in a previous post, I'd love to meander down to the south coast of France or Italy. I'd especially like to go by train – my love of train journeys knows no bounds. This is one of my photographs of a holiday I once had in Florence, but I just discovered this post on blog BawkBawkBawk which has the most fantastic photographs of Rome and puts mine to shame! They are very beautiful.

This is what I would wear on my imaginary trip to those south coasts – try and ignore the fact that I am actually on a street in Bristol! Orange and yellowy colours seem to suit that kind of light, as you can see in the editorial I posted here. I think these pictures are of a simple village girl with her basket, so are perfect for this post.

I'm off to Wales this weekend to visit Ben's family, so this is my Friday offering, early. I hope to take a real live analogue (!) camera with me to experiment with on the trip, so we shall see how that turns out. I haven't used a camera with film for such a long time – I'm really quite excited about it.

Dress: H&M
Basket: vintage
Sandals: Toast

Windswept

Islay is extremely windy today. The wind whooshes right off the sea and swirls around the house making the trees look stressed. I worry that they might lose all of their lovely green leaves a little prematurely. They are more used to the wind than I am though, so they seem to be surviving. You don't get wind like this in the city. For some idea of the atmosphere, you can garner a sense of it from this Russian animation. The sun is shining on Islay though, which makes the whole thing very difficult to dress for.

The beach is always windy, and well used to it. The reeds on the sand dunes dig in their roots and wave around in the swirls. This beach is Kilchoman, yesterday, when it wasn't so windy. It is said you can sometimes see a mythical island on the horizon, if you are lucky. I was always convinced I could see one when I was little, although I rather suspect myself of wishful thinking. We walked Jock, the very photogenic Westie, all the way to the end of the shore – he was exhausted afterwards, especially as he has a fear of water – he's very sweet.

I think you have seen this skirt before, but it has been reprised. I like how 1940s rationing this outfit looks. Woollen jumpers and floral skirts – the 1940s are a favourite decade of mine, although I think it has more to do with the can-do attitude and the general atmosphere than the clothes necessarily. The jumper is a Ralph Lauren boys' one that a friend of mine fortuitously (for me) shrunk in the wash. In fact this is probably one of the most high class 'labelled' of any of my outfits, although it is almost exclusively from charity shops.

Skirt: Handmade, thrifted
Shirt: Yves St Laurent, thrifted
Jumper: Ralph Lauren, shrunk in the wash

Gingham, Bowlers and Holidays

We are driving up to the Isle of Islay (where I grew up) next week for a bit of a break from the city, and to visit my mother, sister and hilariously noisy cat. I have lots of good blog plans for the trip, which I'm quite excited about. I hope they work out. There should be lots of good photographs at any rate. The weather is going to be awful though if the forecast is to be believed, so maybe I'll be heading for autumn slightly earlier than anticipated...

St Ives

Yesterday we finally managed to go on a weekday day trip. This was one of the things I was looking forward to most when I decided to quit my knitting magazine job and earn money from home. When I worked in an office the idea of going on a trip on a Monday would have seemed completely idyllic, luxurious and pretty much unimaginable. I just got into the car with Ben and went there yesterday though, and it was just as delicious as I hoped it would be.

Breton top: Zara
Skirt: French Connection
Neckscarf: Vintage
Boat shoes: Topshop
Bag: Vintage

St Ives was quite full of tourists, which I (for some reason) wasn't expecting, although it is still a working harbour, which gives it some legitimacy as a place rather than just being a tourist haven. It's curious what they do to their seaside in England – I always wonder at the locals who perpetuate the throngs of karrimor-clad slow walkers with their Cornish pasty shops and other typecast tourist traps.

I am envious of Virginia Woolf's father, whose discovery of St Ives she writes about in her essay 'A Sketch of the Past'. I forgot to take a look at Talland House, but I'll make sure I go the next time:

Father on one of his walking tours, it must have been in 1881, I think—discovered St Ives. He must have stayed there, and seen Talland House to let. He must have seen the town almost as it had been in the sixteenth century, without hotels, or villas; and the Bay as it had been since time began.

I've read a couple of books set around that area of Cornwall and they have romanticised it for me with their descriptions of beautiful light and quiet, simple days. The light was indeed beautiful, and I have never seen such luminous shadows, but I suspect that the quiet, simple days are something rather unimaginable now, which is why, when you are working away at your desk, in your office, they seem so far away.

Sunny Evenings

My house is lovely but quite dark, almost as if they built it at this angle on purpose so that it would never be sunny inside. Well, happily, if that is true, they failed. In the spring and summer, one room gets bathed in lovely mottled sunshine and becomes my favourite place to sit around and read and listen to things and pretend to work. What makes it better is that the window is excellent for people watching, which I really find quite addictive.

Anyway, I'm wearing a big vintage poofy skirt that I bought by accident on eBay. Everything I buy on eBay is an accident, as usually I just always expect to be outbid eventually, and often am not. It's quite a good system really. The shirt is Comme des Garcons for H&M which I bought a few years ago, starstruck about one of the first designer/high street collaborations, and desperate to own a bit of it. It was quite an anticlimax in the end, as it doesn't really seem any different to any other white shirt, although I'm secretly still quite proud of it.

I'm getting the feeling more and more that poofy clothes are going to be the next fashiony thing. Everywhere I look people are writing and wearing and photographing 'granny length' skirts, radiating outwards from Alexa Chung, just like many things seem to. There really is something about creating an illusion with floaty clothes that is much more alluring than just baring all. It feels more grown up somehow, and that makes you (me, at any rate) feel more assured and happy to just waft and swish around.

Cats!

Lately I've been recalling my 'cats on clothes' phase of a year or two ago, as cats on clothes, and cats on glass tables are just about everywhere at the moment, and really making me want a little cat of my own. Anabela of Fieldguided's new Dreamcats tumblr is just the sweetest – my new favourite waste of time!

I'll just have to settle for this – my yellow cat skirt that I have been inspired to reprise...

I have a psychedelic cat scarf somewhere I think (I think it bridged the gap between my pink hair phase and my cats phase). Miu Miu is so passé.