Sightseeing #1

As I'm sure everybody knows, when a computer dies, it is a bit of a disaster. My laptop took a bit of a dive this week, selfishly taking with it all of my pictures and two posts in progress. But, every cloud has a silver lining, and as I've been miserably clicking through the internet on Benjamin's work computer over the last few days, I've come across some really cheering posts and bits and pieces that I'd like to share here.

1. Kinfolk Magazine, Issue #1
I'm so delighted that I came across this beautiful e-zine (via Miss Moss on twitter) - I've heard a lot of negative things about e-zines in the past, but I'm fairly certain that Kinfolk skilfully avoids most of the common pitfalls. I'm not even halfway through it yet, but I'm hooked already. The magazine's ethos is that it is:

'a growing community of artists with a shared interest in small gatherings... [kinsfolk is] consistent with the way we feel entertaining should be: simple uncomplicated and less contrived.'

As a long-term enemy of the contrived, and yet still loving little candle-lit dinner parties as I do, I feel quite sure that this is the perfect e-zine for me. So far there have been articles on the artistry of a London cafe, an attempt to appreciate quiet solitude by a man who can't sit still, and two friends' ritual of catching up over a weekly meal. It's understated and calm, and so nicely designed.

2. Love/Neon: Miss Moss/Fieldguided/Wear Colour
Lately, in the midst of the greyest summer I have ever had the misfortune to be involved in, a little bit of neon wouldn't go amiss. Anabela of Fieldguided started my neon curiosity last week with a reminder of the pop of a neon Swatch watch, while Diana's neon colour comparisons, compared to the brightest of paintings by Yago Hortal, properly brightened things up. I don't expect I'll be revisiting my 1990s wardrobe in any great detail, but, with the help of Mallory of Where the Lovely Things Are's 'Wear Colour' tumblr, perhaps I can begin to appreciate the benefits of a bit of bright.

3. Not So Good Times: Where the Lovely Things Are

I really liked this refreshingly unusual post of images of the beautiful melancholic. Melancholy is not something I see on blogs very often, so, conversely, I found this post quite cheering, in a way.

4. The Morning News: Here is Everything I Learned in New York City
Even if you have never been to New York City and have no plans ever to go, you should read this article. Advice such as why it is important to order what you really want in a sandwich shop, instead of what you think people think you should be ordering, is advice I will certainly be taking, given that I am constantly worrying about what my sandwich-order/sentence/email/dress say about me (answer: nothing of any import). If you're pushed for time, the first half is the best half.

A short while in... Glasgow

My long while away from the internet over the last two weeks involved a short while (in the form of a stop-off on the way to Islay, the island I grew up on) in Glasgow, a favourite city of mine.

I complain about Bristol, the city I live in, a lot. So much so in fact that Benjamin is always prepared for the donning of what he refers to as my 'tartan-tinted spectacles' whenever we go to Glasgow. I can go on for hours about how much better it is, how much more is going on, and how much happier I feel when I'm there. It may just be that everyone in restaurants, cafes and buses can understand my accent, but there really is something about Glasgow. It is sometimes said to be the friendliest city in Britain, after all.

I find it to be a city you have to learn the ways of before you can really start appreciating it. There are unwritten rules: Always say thank you to your bus driver, always be prepared for a stranger to start a conversation with you (it's like New York in this respect (and only this respect)), and remember that the best places to go are often hidden away but are always full of people satisfied in the camaraderie of having found them too (Byres Road's back alleys are a good place to start). There are places that you learn to avoid of course, as you would with any other city, but the good places are so good that they don't get boring even after you've visited them a thousand times.

Such a place is the Botanic Gardens, plonked peacefully at the end of the busy bottleneck of Byres Road, with its vintage shops and retro cafes. I'd been there a few years back and was fairly sure that it was free to get into. Unusually for any British public attraction this century, it still is.

The Victorian Kibble Palace was originally built in 1873 and is one of the last remaining of these beautiful iron and glass structures. Its two open spaces are filled with tropical plants, statues, delicate ironwork and towering banana plants. In the summer you can escape the rain and listen to it pelting on the glass roof, but the palace is at its best in the winter, when you can buy a takeaway coffee on Byres Road, walk to the palace and step out of the snow and into the tropics – as a girl who used to read books in her mother's greenhouse at the height of summer, I love it.

Mothers wheel their babies in buggies, students pore over books while sipping lattes, couples cuddle on benches, looking to the sky, while others quietly argue - the atmosphere is like a library in the jungle, if that is imaginable at all. If not, I would say you should just go and visit for yourself.

An unwelcome visitor

Somewhere beautiful does not automatically mean lovely people, it would seem. This at least is my conclusion after a trip to the beautiful village of Bradford on Avon a few days ago.

I've been meaning to pay a visit for months now – it's about an hour away, and fairly well known for being a typically chocolate-box West Country town, and it really is beautiful: stone cottages, thatched roofs, old stone bridges over the river. Despite all of that, the atmosphere was pretty fraught and hostile – especially if you happened to be wandering around with a camera.

Old women pushed past us in the street, muttering audibly, and builders practically chased us off a public side street. There were cars getting in each other's way and clogging up the narrow routes between those high stone walls. To top it all off they were holding a Bradford-on Avon 'Feel Good Festival' in the park, which unfortunately didn't seem to be making much of an impact on the general atmosphere.

All in all, I was an unwelcome visitor, and I was pleased to get home.

Small Town

When I was little I used to go to the shop along the road to buy the newspapers in the morning. Outside it would be blowing a gale, with the waves threatening the road, or the sea would be flat calm, and the sun would be out. The fishing boats would have long come back in, and be bobbing around on their ropes at the pier. In this unusual place, everyone would just be going about their usual business, and I would just wander home with the papers.

It is the usual ways of a Scottish fishing village that King Creosote and Jon Hopkins have sought to capture in their recent album, Diamond Mine. I'm completely taken by it, and, although I have never blogged about music, I am making an exception for this. The album is melancholic and atmospheric, and I find it endlessly fascinating.

It is based on a way of life that exists mainly in fishing villages in the north and east coasts of Scotland, places that don't generally have an easy time of it, and that won't survive in their current form for much longer. As luck would have it, the Guardian are streaming the whole album here. I would thoroughly recommend that you have a listen if you have a chance.

All of the images above are screengrabs from the video for 'Bubble', which, as it happens was directed by a friend of Ben's, Elliot Dear, who does beautiful and amazing things with very little - watching it is a beautiful way to spend 4 minutes, so I have posted it below.

Poppies

Most days I commute backwards – I live in the city and drive to the countryside, while all the more conventional workers speed past me in the opposite direction.

Lately I've been driving past these beautiful corn fields, all overrun with poppies, and have been desperate to stop and take photographs. On Saturday, I went back along my commute route and went for a wander through the fields beside the road. We had summer for a day, and I like to take advantage of these things.

I'm delighted with this dress from Mango – I've mentioned before how much I like their recent change of direction and move into a niche I've been desperate for someone to fill for a long time. Their designs are pretty and practical, with clean classic cuts that are cut for the shapely rather than the pre-twenties, as this New York Times article agrees.

My lovely new Thunder in our Hearts tote officially begins its summer service, and announces what I always try to keep in mind when I'm driving along with the rat race on my way to the office.

Goddesses

Lately, I can't seem to escape news and features on Mario Testino. King of celebrity (and royal) portraits, he has a retrospective entitled 'Kate Who?' opening in London in July, and the columns are sagging with the news.

His work is fairly uninteresting to me, but it did remind me about a set of 1930s portraits I found tucked away in a corner of the Guardian a while ago, promoting the considerably less column-worthy exhibition of the work of 1930s photographer Madame Yevonde, on in London until July.

Mrs Richard Hart Davis as Ariel & Lady Anne Rhys as Flora


Mrs Anthony Eden as Clio & Lady Bridgett Poulett as Arethusa


Mrs Brian Guinness as Venus & Margaret, Duchess of Argyll as Helen of Troy

All photographs taken from the Guardian

This exhibition focuses on a series of 1935 photographs in which 1930s society women (the majority known predominantly by their husbands' names) portray Classical heroines in these experimental colour portraits. Here we have Clio, the muse of history, portrayed by Beatrice Beckett, the wife of the future prime minister Anthony Eden, and Margaret, Duchess of Argyll as Helen of Troy (ironically she is best known for her scandalous divorce from her Duke in 1963 after an affair).

The images are in many ways far more interesting than the results of Mario Testino's famous ability to get his subjects to strip off – Madame Yevonde adds layers, and through the veneer of these otherworldly characters, highlights the contrasts between the independent mythical goddesses of old and the 'goddesses' of the early twentieth century.

Book Guilt

Photograph by marcinéma via Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone

Foyles bookshop came to Bristol, and I was so excited that I wanted to queue outside for the opening. At work instead on opening day, I waited until the weekend, dragging Ben down into town with me for my intended statement of support for the miserable book trade. I knew what I wanted to buy, and I was going to buy it, at cover price, from a brand new book shop. I work in publishing and I was going to set an example.

I got there. It was beautifully laid out, but not very busy. I browsed and flicked pages and pointed things out, and settled on the books I wanted. Wandering around the shop with them in my hand, I realised gradually that I couldn't go through with it.

By apozapox

By Azrasta

I think I'm ruined for bookshops. Spoiled by Amazon, too used to glorious second-hand bookshops and spoiled by internet undercutting. Even my guilt didn't stop me from buying both of my chosen titles (for the price I would have paid for one in the bookshop), from the Amazon machine. I was reminded of my guilt by this New York Times visual of beautiful cover designs that were discarded along the publishing way – it's a perfect illustration of just how much time and energy goes into every book, and puts my miserly attitude to shame.

One day, I tell myself, when I have the means to do it, I'll go back into one of those new bookshops and I'll put all this right – the problem is, by then there might not be any of them left.