You remember how I was lamenting how expensive trousers that don’t really fit me are? I got some for free!
Not blogger-free. My mum’s colleague’s daughter’s hand-me-sideways free.
They’re kind of loose at the waistband, and they ride rather lower at the rear than I’d like when I sit, squat or bend, and they’re tight enough on the thighs that when I put them on (and then periodically, through the day) I have to do the kind of lunges that used to give energetic schoolmasters a bad name.
But they’re mine, and they cost me nothing, and they represent the thoughtfulness and unwillingness to waste of strangers. And they fit inside my boots easily, and I can make them work for me. And they’re a nice colour, a sort of almost-silver. There’s a black pair too, actually, which I should have worn today because I have already got bicycle-chain oil down my right calf. I didn’t notice it happening..
I wore them for my Last! Day! of School! and they stood up to it fine. We are now a team.
The lighting was off, clearly, when I took these. So I fiddled (to no effect) with all the powers of iPhoto, on the one shot where I managed to get my whole foot in frame. A more exaggerated pose too, obviously - I prefer looking a little silly to looking like I’m trying not to look anything but ‘nice’.
Lunges:
And in a moment of colour-normality.. Why couldn’t the balanced photos have happened next to the apple tree? Apple trees are pleasant!
The newly purple stitching about the neck of my sweater matches my boots so well.. I don’t expect anyone noticed, but I did, and it made me feel dandy!
Sweater: 70s Slazenger, via eBay, trousers: People’s Market via (as above), boots: Dr Martens, hat: Tress & Co. London via Debenhams sale, neckerchief (in pocket): VW
Wikipedia says that the claim to ‘care’ is sarcastic, and then it quotes Chuck Mosley as saying Well, ah Roddy wrote all the things that he cared about and I just wrote the part that says, “it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it” ’cause I figured that’s just the feeling I got, which sounds the opposite of sarcastic to me.
But when I listen to this song, I just take it straight because it’s how it always sounded to me. I care a lot. This song is the sound of me, having been in charge of twenty-one four and five year olds who just don’t care to be nice to each other, or to listen to me, or to be safe, or to take turns at needing a grown-up because I CAN’T BE EVERYWHERE AT ONCE - thinking it is fucking hard to set a consistent good example. But since I only have them for an hour and twenty minutes every day there is really no excuse for letting things slide, letting them off from bullying and endangering and exclusion and disrespect and all the worst things about current society’s interpersonal relations.
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it, and I care a lot.
Here’s a Mike Patton-led version, because.. why not? I like them both.
Yesterday (in ‘borrowed’ cowboy boots, thanks sister) I pulled up my first garlic. I planted them last.. October, I think, and yesterday I watched Fear & Loathing on my laptop and made a Thai curry with king prawns and flavoured it: with my garlic. I have to say, it was pretty delicious. Growin’ stuff is neat!
I’ve been quiet this week (have you missed me dreadfully?). Not because I haven’t been writing or drawing or doing, but because I have been doing these things TOO MUCH I guess.
I’m still working on that post about posture, and the Clueless one, and the one about ‘discovering’ Patti Smith. And I’ve been drawing from life and from photographs and from imagination. I’m just about to start editing the short film my sister and I shot last week.
But I’ve also been JUST SO BUSY (for me). Job applications and CV reworking (constant) obviously, and Monday at British Waterways, but my CRB check came through so I’m doing two days a week as a Classroom assistant now too.
IT IS THE MOST TIRING THING IN THE WORLD
Primary School teachers have a job that asks unreasonable amounts of them. That is all I will say.
Mostly what I do is listen to kids read (4-9 years old) and help them do it better when they have trouble. It’s awesome. They call me Mizz Napier. When they’re already fluent I get them to read out loud and coach their vocal delivery. If I were getting paid, this would be very nearly the greatest job I could imagine.
Since I am not getting paid, I will say that I like it enough to bust out the bicycle in order to get to the darn place. Buses have done me wrong on four separate occasions, getting to and from the school, and my patience snapped. I needed to take control of my own destiny. It was time.. to ride!
I can’t actually remember the last time I rode a bike. I mean, I can remember that I had a bike.. probably into high school, I just remember that as a fact, not as an actual using-my-bike memory.
I practiced last night for ten minutes or so after dad and I pumped the types and adjusted the seat of my mum’s old wheels, and I’ve never used a skinny-wheel bike before. You know, the big thin wheels on “grown-up bikes”? The bike that I can’t remember my last uses of had big chunky thick wheels that only came up maybe two thirds of the way. That old bike, which was purple and excellent, also had a comfortable seat. Which is another difference between the two bikes I am talking about.
So anyway, I rode 4.3 miles to get to school today. It took me an hour and I had to stop three times so I didn’t pass out or throw up, because apparently not you can’t forget ‘how to ride a bike’ but you can forget how to sensibly ride a bike. Also, it was hot. When I arrived, I had to go and lie on the floor in the staff room. Everyone was very nice about it.
But the point is: I did it! I became one with the freshest of blogging hipster chix. Bike ridin’ gal. That’s me! No pictures.. yet.
At school, I dug the garden. Took out old sprouted brussels, took out stickyweed and dandelions and thistles and some leeks (which I ate for lunch), trimmed the grass, turned the soil. Then I spent the afternoon teaching nine year olds how to plant a plant (broad beans and sweet peas) in a garden.
I look so elegant, I know. I know! That’s my mum’s hat, I pinched it.
IDENTITIES CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT
I told you it was a great job.
The 4.3 miles home (I repeat because I am PROUD) took me half an hour and I had to stop ZERO times! Well, no, actually, one time. But that is because I forgot to hide my laces and they became caught in my gear chain. That doesn’t count!! Shut up!
I thought I should share a couple of things I learnt in case anyone else is foolish or pigheaded enough to go from no bike riding for many years, to much bike riding in one day:
Take water.
Can you see? Or if you are blind, can others see? You/they can? Then wear suncream.
If your momentum can take you faster than comfortable, even peddling can, LET IT. Or you will die. A lot.
Stop to rest before you are sure you need to stop to rest.
You’re welcome!
And that’s why I have been so quiet this week.
Boots: Dr Martens, Trousers: women’s equestrian gear via ebay, Shirt: Venture Bros limited edition from last year(?), Necker: VW, Mum’s hat: that brand which guarantees your hat for life, I think
If you ever need to make a bonfire (allotment? garden? campfire? very very lost in the huge enormous woods?) and you have a pile of wood and scrub and such, don’t light it until you’ve moved the entire pile from where you found it. Or else you might end up burning hedgehogs to death.
(this isn’t a good fire, because I realised most of the stuff to burn was still damp from yesterday’s rain and stopped stacking.)
If you do have an allotment or a garden , it probably won’t be that long before you gain your very own friend robin. My grandpa’s perches on his spade handle, but I don’t know this one all that well just yet..
If you have brooches or pin badges that you like, or have a penchant for safety pins (me too!), then the turn from cold spring to warm spring can be prettied up like so. If you need underskirts but don’t need ALL the warmth they give you, pin the over-layer and feel somewhere between Belle and a Vermeer subject. Or use two pins, one on either side or your rear, and make the overskirt a gathered bustle! SO SIMPLE.
This is not a bustle
This is what I mean when I say “bustle” here. I turned them red and blue by accident (iPhoto likes to save changes), but that’s ok - they weren’t good pictures anyway.
Final bonus: a properly photographed version of my lino cut from yesterday’s post. Want lino cutting done? I can (probably) do it! I just can’t do the printing for you, as yet.
That’s the garlic. Isn’t it fine? It’s not done yet, as you can see, but when it is.. there will be a lot. And I shall use it ALL!
Irises and crosuses (crocii still sounds better) too, though they’re in or nearing their prime already:
I think this type of iris is so weird looking. Like alien mouths.
I don’t know the names of the individual types of crocus. But I know that they are ridiculously easy to grow; put them in the ground, forget about them, be pleasantly surprised by small flower-cups!
This was an interesting texture - a rose hip that’s shriveled on the plant.
I hope I never stop being amazed at the colours that can be found in wood. This is burburis, which is apparently a very defensive plant. It’s danger-yellow when grazed, I’m told it’s poisonous-bitter, and it’s extremely thorny. Extremely. Ouch.
I spent twelve til four building and tending a bonfire of all the scrubby old dead crud left over at the end of a garden’s winter. It was a job of heaving and smoked eyes, trampling and poking and blowing and propping and coaxing and HEAVING HARDER. Ivy and other scrub tangles as easily as hair if left to its own devices! But I had a big shiny fork to help me, which was nice.
I’ve got no flippin’ clue why or when this went so crap. It was fine and sharp when I finished editing it.. fantastic.
It was a little bit like I had slain a forest spirit-beast; the branches on top of the bonfire were antlers and the weeds were its flankshag. Not the kind of death that makes you a villain, though. The kind that forges respect between the two involved, and makes you responsible for that area of woodland for example.
Poloneck: second hand, Sweater: Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (second hand), Shorts: etsy, Bloomers: Blanc et Neige, Socks: The Pound Shop, Boots: Dr Martens
Yesterday my mum and my sister and I visited my Great Aunt, who lives a fair way away in (my ancestral) Coventry, and took her to Coombe Abbey. Coombe Abbey, if you haven’t been, is awesome.
I haven’t taken any pictures of one reason it was so awesome, because that is probably illegal - there were tons and tons of kids there. Loads. I know it’s half term and all, but it was a joy to see youngins running about yelling at ducks, enjoying forest pathways, climbing banks, shouting “I AM THE TALKING BUSH” and shaking branches from inside evergreens which branch from ground-level, walking dogs, and QUITE CLEARLY being on dates. Too cute. If you are ever thinking, “oh alas children do not like nature any more, only wii, how sad!”, you should go to Coombe Abbey (at half term).
It has buildings, and grounds (lots), and just about every type of country landscape you could ask for. There’s a pond at the front of (what I think is) the hotel that has a sort of aqueduct non-bridge pathway across it; on one side it’s nature free and wobbly and undergrowth, on the other it’s nurture - angular and groomed, statues in the water, box-shaped box hedges.
There are paths to follow in various directions, which managed to turn me completely around and take me by surprise. I thought I’d reached a new building, but it was the one we started at. Cunning! The whole place has a sense of mystery though, the way it’s lain out - there’s always something just visible through or past or behind what you’re looking at.
The grounds were really, really pretty. These don’t do them justice because I am not a good photographer (and the camera I was borrowing is kind of weird and colour-bleaching/non-focusable).
Coombe Abbey also contains the spookiest tree-bourne sculpture I have ever seen. The black dog in this picture was being called forcefully by its owners, but I was willing it to stay in the frame long enough for the darn picture to take..
Seriously, is that supposed to be.. what is that supposed to be??
What’s a day out without a fitting outfit? NOTHING, THAT is what!! In a moment of great serendipity, my super-fantastic dreamskirt from Modelle - via the NASTY GAL sale - arrived that morning..
I was sure I would be able to see my own foot through the trunk’s various holes if only I stretched far enough..
I couldn’t.
If you’ve been here before you know all this.. Anthony Peto hat, Coat from Camden, Undershirt from Laura Ashley via charity shop, burberry sweater from ebay (needs more darning), doc martin boots, belt from gran’s attic, pouches from various sources, scarf from accessorize, Jane Marple socks, skirt from modelle/nasty gal. The skirt is thin and intended/suitable for warmer months; the warmth level is padded by the velvet JMdls skirt I constantly wear underneath.
BONUS: Me totally failing to replicate the awesome height achieved by my first run-up, which my fool sister MISSED CURSE HER.
Has anyone else noticed that all the Valentines-themed window displays this year are red (with silver or black accoutrements)? Red to hot pink, at least. Where is all the marshmallowy pink, the fluffy powder colours, the teddy bears swearing eternal affection? Everwhere I looked, in town yesterday, there were red satin undergarments with the spindliest of garter belts (they won’t work, don’t you want your sexy to be practical too?), and shiny metallic balloons.
I did consider that it was a display of solidarity with China, any British-Chinese or visiting tourists, Chinese New Year falling today also. Red being an important related colour. But there wasn’t any gold involved, and besides - shop windows don’t tend to be that inclusive.
I hope you’re having a fine day, whatever you’re celebrating or whatever you aren’t. I do think it’s a shame when people are vitriolic against Saint Valentine’s Day, because being martyred because you refused to disallow soldiers to marry is pretty bloody admirable if you ask me. And technically, by visiting my blog, you did. Ha-HAH! I think it’s a day to celebrate, unless you prefer to make it a day for activism - St. V died for the cause of marriage for a portion of the population who higher-ups felt shouldn’t be allowed it. Who knows what his views on homosexuality would be, but luckily for us (and the whole point of this is that) he’s dead - so he can’t complain if we use his Day to say “Hey, Governments - Let Your People Marry”.
I was unconsciously mirroring the red red world, when I ventured out into it to search out records with my newly-drivers’-liscenced sister. My reds were deeper though, because straight-up primary colours make me look startled. And besides, I like the mystery of a slightly dirty hue.
I couldn’t physically be with my beloved for Valentine’s Day - actually, we’ve never been together on The Day (don’t worry! It’s never mattered, either) - and I’m not near any New Year celebrations as I thought I would be so I’m here typing.. Able to say that if you are feeling blue (and so quite out of place) then all you need to do is put on some dreamin’ gear and use that in-head laptop we call ‘imagination’ to fly you to where and with whom you really want to be. Look, I’ll show you:
Hat: Jaeger (gift), Skirt: Jane Marple dans le salon, Belt: my Gran’s attic, Pouch on rear: Brazilian craftswoman via Deviantart, Pouch on front (blue): Shoon a year or two ago (who always have interesting leather products by their till), Pouch on front (red heart): Shoon last December, Boots: Dr Martens, Scarf: Accessorize (christmas present)
Oh - and I beg your pardon, happy New Year to China, and anyone who celebrates!
I had a sort of a job interview thing, today. Does it count if it is for a volunteer position? One day a week YES I SAY THAT IT DOES. So I wore my “I’m not asking you to look at me but I am still myself” fallback combo; sweater, wool skirt, dark lace tights. I might still fit in at a WW2 french resistance reenactment, but I don’t look like someone one might be nervous of working with. Hopefully. Well even apparently, because I am now an Assistant Appreciator! Hurrah! I cannot get over that title.
When I bought it this jacket was clearly a fixer-upper. I’ve mentioned I think that it was a third off because two seams had already given - I decided it was worth it, because trading a heck of a lot of patching for the awful, awful, hair-ripping experience that I KNOW sewing this fabric from scratch would be.
But! There are already three more holes to plug! One in the left sleeve in the crook of my elbow, two on the left-back seam. I appreciate the opportunity to finally place the beautiful silky patches I traded with my Japanese peers when I was eleven (Arden ‘98 International Guide Campers, represent!) and like I said I was wearing no rosy lenses when I bought it but honestly, Topshop? Bad form.
Bonus images!!!! Me tipping organic kitchen waste onto our compost heap! Dropping two boxes all over my feet! Pretending a cat did it! Don’t read this, Dad!
P.S. detail from yesterday: I take a joy in buying expensive clothes at discount prices and then wearing them until they get crunky and bobbled and holey like REAL CLOTHES.
We were playing Dynasty Warriors. Hence eyebeam of CONCENTRATION!
Me: Sweater: Burberry (ebay’d), Trousers: Equorian Heritage (ebay’d), Boots: Dr Martens, Scarf: gift, Hat: Anthony Peto
Him: Hat: gift to me from him (army surplus, embroidered by me), jacket: “GR8 BUDDHA” (charity shop’d), Grandad shirt: gift (mine), Trousers: Army surplus, Boots: someplace! Gloves: my mum’s
Pattern-model style, Christmas day, exhibiting one of the presents my sister and I gave our immediate ancestors.
Boxing day, walking; I love the English countryside. I love it. Quotes from Guthrie in Bloomability by Sharon Creech, one of those books that I might describe as “almost perfect” and only almost because calling a thing perfect seems foolish. You should maybe read it, though, especially if you are feeling unhopeful or hopeful.
Post-walk, building a fire before watching Desperately Seeking Susan. Wearing gift-dress (H&M) and gift-tights. Thanks Mum! And gift-slippers, thanks Dad!
I chose this outfit because, well, I like it. I like winter textures, and softness, and sparkles. I like dark colours and clothes that cling warmly and that keep out the cold. I like feeling like if I fell into a fairytale, I would be dressed for it. I like clothes that have history, which these do: the hat had a previous life in Russia, the dress had a previous life in America and before that in Japan (Brand: Victorian Maiden. Though I altered it). The long-sleeve shirt could have been anywhere, that is yet another draw to Charity shopping for me. I like deep reds, and blacks that don’t look harsh. I like not clashing with the colours of nature.
The song, obviously, is one of those “Christmas songs” (though not mentioning the WORD), but is sung by Joan Jett. And that makes it hugely better (though this version has a child playing drums and some talking over it, for some reason). The soup and the honey’d lime are just tasty! And easy to homemake!
Happy Winter, everyone. To my countryfolk and others.
Clickit for shop-link! I like this bag’s illustration because it voices just how I feel about things.
I think that whatshisname, who drew Scary Go Round and now draws Bad Machinery ahaha Ryan and Amy are grown-ups is a really, really good illustrator. He draws well, like the hipster heir to Tove Jansson’s blue house. I don’t keep up with webcomics because day-by-day strip-by-strip irritates me, but every now and then I go back and monster a whole bunch at once. You can try reading from the start, to get the feel for the characters and the history, but it improved dramatically as time went on. The recent stuff is MILES better than the early archives. MILES.
LET'S BE BUDS, BUB IllustratorClaire: Twenty-three year old Illustrator and Englisher, female feminist, interested in being helpful and denouncing things that aren't. Designed and drew the Britsh Style Bloggers logo; available to hire on just about any illustration project. Currently working as a Dinner Lady. For illustration portfolio, click the "tales from the sketchpages" tag or my logo below! Why do I do this? click here. Thank you!
I am not paid - in money or in gifts or favours - to endorse anything here. If I was, I would be bad at it, because lying is ugly.
If you've commented here and it isn't showing up, it's not because I hate you! It's because either wordpress or 1and1 hate me. Give me a shout on claire [at] illustratorclaire.co.uk, or claire [at] britishstylebloggers.org.uk!
Oh, and by the way - I do tend to post on Sundays, so if you find that day a little net-empty.. check back? Great idea!
