My Illustrative Life

Today I am wearing “mom jeans”. Ugh, saying “mom” feels so wrong to me. I AM ENGLISH! ENGLIIIISH!

The jeans of my mother, again. I forgot about them! And that they turned out to fit me pretty well! I don’t need to buy new work trousers, after all! I already have the means to teach the new generation about how to dress like a 1970s Tokusatsu secret identity.

The pictures are all effects-ed up because I couldn’t find the camera, so sister took these with the “polaroid” “app” on her magical future-phone.

Plus, as promised: some pictures from the Morris dancing in the town I was in a couple of weeks a go. Gosh I enjoy traditional Britain. We are a culture of tie-on costumes, arcane dancing, effigies and scary masks as much as any other, and (considered as a whole) we have not lost the dance-to-death spirit as much as our more toffish reputations suggest.

The face of the hobby horse:

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

I have a ton of story-seeds using Morris Men like pop culture uses ninjas.

ETA: Video!

Yesterday I was a jailbird, today I am the fuzz. American fuzz, anyway. Highway police? Or something? Do they (you?) say “the fuzz” there? Well I am, because then I get to be the “peach fuzz”. Because of the colour of my shirt. My beloved said, before I doctored the picture, that I looked like I had been raised to kill by Jean Reno. But I only loose my bullets if the crims shoot first, man.

For comparison, please see Nicholas Cage in the beginning of this review. Then watch the rest, because it is funny.

You’re welcome.

(No I didn’t have it tied in a knot when I was at work)

This is the second summer workshirt, salmon chambray, but more importantly - it is a shirt that I can wear and think “Yes, I could be digging something up in the desert in 1922″.

That’s really all I want out of my clothes.

The fold along the center of my panama gives my silhouette a pleasingly pithy air, too. Just imagine that I am standing in from of sand, not bricks, okay?

I stayed in school after dinners were done to help take the five year olds on a walk. A really awesome walk; they all got to take their shoes off and play in a stream. On a school walk! That never happened to me! So cool! The teachers had their feet bare too and were leaping across the banks.. but I thought that, since I’m still pretty new (and ambiguously young), I don’t yet have the authoritah to stand muddy adventures and come out on a different, non-peer level. Major. Bummer.

I like the practical-practical 20s-30s archaeological-style adventure clothes but I also like the “..and here is a version for a lady“. Because, I am a lady, and I like to see if and how ‘lady’ stuff can work for me. So, la! Pretty pretty princess, undead spirit falls for her, she says “no thank you”, kicks sand in his face when he is not dissuaded.

I actually found it trickier than I expected to find example pictures of the kinds of stories my head is digging when I wear this way. I wanted to embed a section of the Appointment With Death Suchet-Poirot with Tim Curry, but youtube has it disabled! So. Here’s Diana Palmer from the 1996 The Phantom (a movie I own and will watch over and over; Billy Zane is a fun actor, and the lady friendship sub-plot is neat), Evie from the 1999 The Mummy (again, a multiple-watch film for me), and an older Diana Palmer, from this article from dailypop.

Peace out, comrades - I got history books to read.

Went shopping. Desperate quest to find things I can comfortably, appropriately work in.

We did the charity shops first, of course - they’re cheapest, obviously, and sister has a list of movies she’s after and, as long as you don’t mind vhs (and we don’t; the quality is far more homely and the price jes’ cain’t be beat) there’ll always be something you’re after. If you share a similar taste, I mean. She was irritated to see three or four titles she bought last week on dvd - price differences of 49p vs £7. Bummer!

Since she was buying, having birthday’d last month, we found a treasure trove! CHECK THESE OUT:

I can remember HANKERING for these when the movie came out. Gosh I did! And then they were - FOUR, all for 49 pence each. Boggling. So we bought them all and re-donated the videos. If you want to own or watch Spice World (and really - why wouldn’t you? No seriously. It’s a flippin’ funny film), shimmy on down to the BHF in your local town and see if it’s the one we went to.

We’re keeping tea in them, by the way. Different varieties of tea. Very Bri’ish. Maybe not quite GIRL POWER, but, I am a girl! And tea gives me power. So, it works.

I did OK, actually. Shopping. In the charity shops I did appallingly, there was nothing. Well, no, actually! There was a really fantastic (baffling) Morris Dancing display, complete with GIANT (fake) MAN and a.. dragon thing? With a white cloth in its mouth, that could bite. And then a hobby horse with a SCARY FACE that did a truly invigorating dance. It was aces. Pictures and film to follow, look forward!

Shop-wise though I was despairing. Despairing so that when I saw a 60% off sale in GAP I went in. I really hope that they haven’t any horrible scandals that I’ve missed, because I found two shirts that look pretty great and lie pretty light, belting though they need. And the sale really softened the financial blow.. unpleasant, but not exruciating. You’ll see them sooner or later. I often forget that an important part of my personal dressing character is “explorer/archaeological adventurer”. Take more care to remember your full inner library, girl!

Also found a summer hat (oh man, I HEART SALES). Haven’t had one of those for.. too long to remember. Probably because this one is a men’s size L (L for LARGE).. small body, giant noggin! I should really look more strange than I do. It must be all the hair. But! Folding Panama! Yay! Why should a man-hat make me look so like a young French orphan girl? Perhaps I just imagine it.

Finally: a £1.99 loan from sister sorted me out with this - the perfect way to ease myself into being a little braver. A little material girl solidarity. Thank you Madonna! Thank you for the many trails you helped blaze!

Stella McCartney + Comic Relief 2009 Madonna vest via Scope, I think. There’s a Morcombe & Wise version going here, if you want it!

Shit, someone employ me once term lets up, please. No-one needs a dinner lady when nobody’s at school!

Fathers Day!

Bikes in car, drive, park in layby, cycle, reach village.

You see, because I am a good and loving daughter, today I allowed my dad to menace and terrify me by exploring a village “Scarecrow Festival” together.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

The worst part is that these weren’t the worst part. Those Morris Dancers that go about covered in rags with their faces painted night-black and feathers on their hats? I don’t care how traditional they are, or that my beloved’s father occasionally partakes - these guys are FLIPPIN’ SCARY.

No pictures, because I am a big wussy.

X_X

June theme: Festivals! Featuring: anecdotes of my teenaged adventures; leather; Noel Fielding. Click the picture to enjoy!

Yeasterday I said:

And today, I DID IT!

Yeahh, I am as “good as my word”.

Actually to be truthful, I have no caught up on Freak Angels BUT - as yet, there has not been time. So I’m still good!

Cycling in skirts is actually surprisingly easy. Even in a big, long, gathered, pannier-pockets skirt -

You just have to take the middle of the hem at the front and the back, and tuck them up under your bum on the seat. You end up with some puffy pantaloons, basically. It’s not guaranteed modesty, though, and they do come down sometimes. I spent a fair portion of one particular country road hitching about my crotch trying to tuck all the fabric back safely. Which really? Is not that admirable or fun. Kind of funny, but not the sort of thing you want to find necessary all of a sudden.

So, bloomers. Wardrobe essentials from my more active days as an egl community member - useful for feelin’ pretty, avoiding flashes, and keeping temperate in slightly breezy/sunny weather. I don’t feel it inappropriate to show them here, because I wore them specifically to be a piece of bicycle-gear rather than Victorian-style underwear. I’m not doing anything more than wearing a visible vest, really. So don’t you go getting ideas!

I love this skirt. It is so always-appropriate and comfortable! It’s not too heavy, it’s not too light, it’s got these MASSIVE STATEMENT POCKETS, and the stripes/apron combo is interesting enough to still be interesting in muted colours. So I can wear it with anything. Even hand-me-down beater sweaters that, if I could, I’d tweak the colour and fabric of.

I was going to ride in my sandals but I think that the pedals would mangle them horribly. And they are precious. When I got home though..!

Mmmhmmm I am going to keep posting pictures of my feet in these shoes, until I have gone through every pair of tights and socks I own. I may not be a compulsive shoe-buyer, but GOSH can I appreciate the heck out of a pair once I ‘ave ‘em.

England is still beautiful, by the way. I might ride out again tomorrow, I passed a pretty great church that was calling out “sketch meeee” and several fields that gave me the picnic-eye.

The beef I ate was chili to this recipe. It’s good, honest!

Now, back to this guy?

Today it rained, and basically all I did was help my sister revise, reward her revision with blueberry-banana fritters and readings of Dracula, and watch Film Brain & MikeJ reviews. It’s half term!

Not wearing anything new, either, though it’s in different formation.

I also drew a really old version of Prince Valiant.

Well, why not?

Some days I just don’t feel like taking a photo, you know?

I hope you can read my writing. If it’s too small, click to zoom!

Just submitted another blog post for Waterscape - it probably won’t get approved until Monday. I don’t think the editors work over the weekend! You cannot fault that, of course. Oh no wait, not until Tuesday! It’s a bank holiday, of course. Anyway - look out for it next week! It’s another illustration; the second in my “good and useful times I have spent by canals” series. Because you know - I have spent a lot of times by canals (I typo’d that as CABALS, quite different!) or other waterways.

But, the picture above! A good way of showing Wot I Wore, or no? A decent way to catch up when the weather’s bad for photography maybe? There’s no colour, obviously.. The skirt’s kelly green and black (it’s featured here before a whole BUNCH of times), the jumper had a whole post to it last year - that was before it shrank, of course! Funny how much change of fit means change of meaning. It’s mostly grey, anyway. The hat’s grey with faintest hints of lime, the boots are purple, the tights black. Belt: brown.

How do you feel about the bracelet? Personally, I feel that it is SMASHING. My mum gave it to me earlier, fair out of nowhere, and it is just the right weight. And it looks like leaves!

Leaf-bracelet and green suede and grey wool, I feel I should start waling over hills and through forests and beside rivers. But instead? I shall be watching the Eurovision song contest.

It’s a day full of things, isn’t it?

I’ll do them in this order.

First of all, my Hankshirt arrived this morning!

And it is a very pretty colour, actually. Like egg yolk, or those white and orange daffodils.

Do you know who Hank Green is? Well if you don’t, I will tell you: he is half of the Vlogbrothers, who are two brothers who started keeping up with each other in video blog form a few years ago, and kind of caught on. Basically they are nice people who do nice things, and their fans (”nerdfighters”) are nice people who help them do nice things. Oh, just go and watch them, there’s more to it than that.

Anyway, the Hankshirt was created for his 30th birthday earlier this month and proceeds went half to giving him presents an half to plating Rainforest. The Hankplants are plants planted in honour of Hank (see video below). Honestly it does feel a little weird having a shirt and some plants all about some real live guy I don’t even know, but it’s an odd mixture of “nothing personal”, and something personal.

But I didn’t wear it. Because you see, today is also a protest day for Take Back Parliament. Which called for purple to be worn. And you know, why refuse when asked?

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

The twenty-fifth of May has quite the full schedule!

It’s time to Wear the Lilac, too. Which is an idea that I cannot consider at length without my eyes getting a little something in them. If you read Night Watch, the Discworld title I mean, this will mean something to you. Probably something that will squeeze your heart a bit (and something nicely relevant to a day also about political reform), but what it’s come to mean in.. the ballworld(ours)?.. is something else. Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer’s, and Wear the Lilac aims to raise money and visibility for research. DONATE if you can.

I know I’m not alone in considering the Watch books my favourites of the Discworld library. I have my problems with world and with the writing (I find that the women adhere too closely to a sensible/silly binary, f’rex) but even so - I love these books. They have seen me through long/boring/sad/sleepless hours. I so enjoy the ‘jaded mentor finds earnest and true vigorousness due to new charges and remembrance of the importance of The Job’ trope, and Vimes fulfills it perfectly and adds in a bit of that-could-be-my-brain-be-careful-but-be-proud. I owe Mr Pratchett’s mind. I’d appreciate you helping me try to pay it back a little. I haven’t donated yet because I literally can’t, but when I can? I will. Remind me, if you like.

And then on top of that it’s towel day. I’m not what I’d call a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, to be honest - I can appreciate it, but it didn’t stir me like it does a lot of you (oh, and, the 2005 movie SUCKED) - but Dirk Gently’s adventures are my kind of fiction. So I’ve got my towel with me, too, and I’m not panicking even though that’s a lot of referencing to fit into one day, one outfit, one post.

Whew. One politics, one environmental and two britlit (hahaha I just thought of that portmanteau and it is SO OBNOXIOUS that I am going to use it) and slacktivisms. NERDFIGHTERS! DFTBA!

I live in England, specifically in Warwickshire. I have done since I was eight, and I love it here. It’s beautiful. Until recently, I hadn’t heard about the ‘controversy’ going on in another part of my county: Meriden. The ‘exact center of England’. Oh, and also the birthplace of Napalm Death! Nice. What’s happening there right now is that a great many of the villagers have “banded together” to protest a local-living man’s use of the land that he owns; he wants to build a permanent travelers’ camp. The land is green belt land.

You can read more about this here, here and here if you would like. There is also a very good report on the Travelers’ Times here.

Full disclosure: Every now and then, I think about movies I have seen that feature people credited as or referred to as “gypsies” and I think, wow, they were dressed in a way I found really cool. I’d like to dress that way. The fashion industry backs me up; ‘gypsy style’ is a periodical summer staple. And then I feel guilty and callous, for culturally objectifying and potentially appropriating the modes of a classification of people who are treated extremely poorly by people I know (please never say “gyppo” to or near me) and by my country (and just about EVERY country, it seems). Then I go online, and try to find out about the factual histories and present times of travelers.

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This time, I went through here, here, here and here as well as here which sent me to the Travelers’ Times Online, linked above.

In case you didn’t follow the TTO link before to the article about the situation in Meriden, here’s the video report:

Noah’s Ark from Travellers Times on Vimeo.

Natural beauty being bulldozed and planning permission laws being flouted are bad, or at least not good. That’s true. But do you know what is worse? RACISM. YOU FUCKS.

People can say “I’m not a racist” all they like. That doesn’t make it true. Even if, as a white person, having an asian dentist were proof that one had no prejudice at all against any kind of asians, that still wouldn’t be the final word on whether or not one was any kind of racist. I’m pretty sure that there are people who are totally great with, say, ethnic Jews and black Caribbeans but make foul remarks based upon their beliefs about, for example, Pakistanis or the Japanese. “Coloured people” (ouch) are not one monolith of unwhiteenglishness. And ‘being able to pass for white’ does not mean that a person is white, in the sense of being ‘not of another race’.

There’s also the arguable difference between racism and xenophobia and cultural prejudice and ethnic-religious prejudice. Personally I am not sure that there’s much use in differentiating, but as a white person raised atheist-Christian in Church of England schools, I may be missing something important in the distinctions. Is there sense in calling a white English geographically settled person racist for being against, say, white Irish travelers? I would say yes; I think that there’s enough of a similarity in the dismissal of a lifestyle and heritage someone is born to to make racism and ethnocentrism effectively synonymous.

But as - I just checked, I missed it the first time whilst chopping onions - it says in the video, the travelers in question are Roma. They are an ethnic minority here. They are an ethnic inority everywhere. They are members of a race that is not in power. So all quibbles here become moot.

Did you note the sentence structure and inflection in the woman’s interview section, in the video? The “them” and “us”? They should have to follow the same laws as we all have to. That’s some hardcore sub-radar othering, lady.

The first man interviewed really stresses the word “pretty”! He’s implicitly saying, with that and the rest of his speech, that these people will bring ugliness. Necessarily.

The old guy straight-up says that if it were he who had an identical planning permission overstep, there would not be this outrage. One of the news articles I linked noted that the villagers themselves were breaking laws with the placement of their protest - so it can’t be simple illegality which has got their goat about this settlement.

A year or so ago, I had discovered Yahoo! answers, and was going crazy with finding questions I could answer. Then I ran across a boy who was dating an Italian girl, and who wanted to meet her parents I think. Or, no, maybe he had met her mother and experienced a poor reception. His question was, he wanted to know, was it because he was Roma - did Italy have bad history with Roma people? Now I cannot resist the opportunity to help along a romance. So I googled, and I found this, where “Italy’s highest appeal court has ruled that it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma on the grounds that they are thieves”. And I found this; “Gypsies in Italy protest prejudice”. And I found out about the fire that was set to Roma settlements in Naples in 2008.

Later in the year I somehow ended up on ONTD reading through this thread. The subject of the original post is Madonna being booed for preaching equality and acceptance at a concert with Gogol Bordello in Bucharest. The subject of a lot, and I mean a lot of the comment threads are more detailed looks at how and why gypsies face prejudice in various parts of the world; a lot of these threads start or build with someone saying “but no you guys THEY LITERALLY ARE ALL THIEVES, so it is OK!”. Then these people get schooled by wiser members of their community, but often? They just keep on keepin’ on, ignoring the fact that blind prejudice makes you a dick, rather than your opponent a(n un)worthy victim. It’s an interesting thread. Horrifying, but interesting.

The point is, that all this information isn’t hard to find. Roma people (if I’m saying this wrong, please forgive me and if you’re willing teach me better) are subjected to widespread racism. They suffered pretty darn badly in the Holocaust too, did you know that?

Irish travelers are recognised as an ethnic group here and don’t fare well, either.

I have never, as far as I know, met anybody who lives either partially or completely nomadically or anyone with immediate Roma heritage - as I mentioned earlier the only reason I started thinking about their (your?) lives at all was because when I was maybe six I saw a movie where the romantic lead was ‘a gypsy’ I’m sorry - I really cannot tell if this is an acceptable word for me to use or not. I’m trying to use it only when referencing where it’s been used already and he, his sisters and ex-girlfriend all wore outfits that I wanted– and because Gogol Bordello seem like the coolest people in maybe the entire world. Nothing rests on my doing this research. I am not in the dilemma of “should I go and protest against people (who want to have somewhere to live) being allowed to have somewhere to live, or not?”. And yet - I found this information. In one afternoon, using one search engine, I found all of these news items about the victimisation of a race and of a lifestyle throughout the whole of Britain and mainland Europe. It was not hard; a non-computer literate person could go to the library and say “I need to find some information” and the librarian could point them towards google.

There is no excuse for these protesters.

You can’t gather a posse, saying “I don’t want these people here”, ignoring the persecution they and their brothers and sisters face in multiple countries (right up to government level!), and then fall back and say - “But I’m not racist. I’ve got nothing against them personally”.

You know what? I’m just going to go there and say it. If you can’t manage to not express this kind of wholesale rejection at adults? Think of the children. Please.

Do you care more about planning rules and a single field and, I don’t know, a slight potential fluctuation in property value (are you planning on moving? To a new home? Oh, lucky you), than in the right of a child to be brought up in a place that doesn’t treat her like an eyesore, a criminal and an unwelcome nuisance before they see her as a person? If you do, reader: I judge you.

“I don’t choose to live like this. I was born to live like this.” Said the man who owns the land in dispute.

This makes me feel like bursting.

I hope you win Meriden, travelers. I really really do.

Thank you for your time, Mr Brown! I wish you well.

As Prime Minister, you really couldn’t ask for much more than time spent with Captain Britain.

Cap & MI:13 written by Paul Cornell, drawn by Leonard Kirk, published my Marvel Comics (digests out from Panini currently, buy them, they’re excellent and I MEAN that.

Just got back from a flight and a bit of a stint as a Maypole. Chin chin!

Today has been bafflingly tiring. Took a bunch of pictures - or should I say, had a photoshoot? - at CorinaCorina (or Corina Corina) for my next BSB column. Taster!

After which, I spent an hour or two in the rain. But I did meet these fine gentlemen!

P.S. This guy appeared on the c4 Alternative Election Broadcast. I dubbed him “Jim Cary Elwes”. You see it, right? Right.

Woo woo, voting day!

All the men (there were no ladies) doing Official Duties at the polling station were wearing red, which made me wonder. But not judge!

Today has been pretty good all in all actually, apart from the nightmare I woke up from. It was about goats. They were eating EVERYTHING. They ate John Green’s head and his body just remained upright. There was soil instead of blood! The goats could jump really high, and climb, and.. blaugh!

On the subject of the illustrated photo above, I have always liked the Romulans. They have hair like mine, and they get mad easily. On the other hand, I like the Vulcans because they have hair like mine, and they like to overanalyse. The Romulan military, though, gets to wear stuff like this:

Pretty fantastic. Quilted fabric giving flexible structure - the extreme boxiness vs the padded stitched pliable material. The Romulan penchant for extreme views on right and wrong and passion, and their weakness that comes from their hotheadedness and the pliability that comes from living only on emotions.

The other way in which today is pleasing: COMICS! Delivery of a package spanning.. what, nearly half a year?.. from my old local comic shop - The first three issues of Joe the Barbarian, all four issues of X-Men Noir v.2, issues two and four of Beasts of Burden, my missing issue of Captain Britain and MI:13! And the Punisher issue featuring Morbius and Werewolf by Night! Score!

And because the shop owner is a) super nice and b) apparently a good businessman, four books from Free Comic Book Day last Saturday!

And the cherry on the sundae, this gift for my beloved:

Yeahhh.

Expect semi-reviewing soon, readers!

Why thanks, Gillette & Venus! I do. I don’t need your product for it, but thanks for the email!

So, I’m just throwing this picture out here again, a) because I can, and b) because it makes me uncomfortable but I think it shouldn’t.

Now, I’m not implying that all ladies should eschew leg shavin’ or whatever; the email very strongly implied that to feel Goddessy and whatnot that I need their product. And whilst I appreciate capitalism and advertising and all that, I also think that companies don’t have tabula rasa on social political issues.

I wore green today. Partly because I’m thinking about Robin Hood a lot recently (not excited to see the new movie; very interested in thinking my own thoughts about the legends) and partly because where I live there are a SHITLOAD of Conservative “FOR CHANGE” (ugh seriously?) banners on just about every road, and a tiiiiiny Green Party rectangle on one single bridge, which I only saw because I get lifts to work in that direction. GREENS GREENS GREENS! Plus, I have been watching through all of the vlogbrothers videos on the youtube. Which star John and Hank GREEN. Oh, and it’s Earth Day!

Mostly though because I really like this shade of green! It’s punchy!