My mum and sister had half-term last week, so we took an overnighter in Buxton. To walk in nature, and.. look at stuff. We stopped at Chatsworth House (because my sister is a big squealer for Pride and Prejudice), which as you can see above is quite delightful. This is the view from one side of the bridge:
One of several reasons I am proud to volunteer for BW: Waterways are wonderful. So pretty! I drew as much as my freezin’ fingers would let me.
There are links to more pictures (reference/stock) of these gorgeous landscapes in the righthand sidebar.
Also fascinating was the toilet paper, where we stayed. No really, take a gander!
You see??
Nice chairs, too. Evoke Union Jacks without being Union Jacks. An interesting choice, for a place where Mary Queen of Scots stayed pre-chop.
Lots of charming pokey shops, too; antiques and bookshops aplenty. A surprising amount of clothing, in the antiques emporiums in and around Buxton actually - maybe it’s a local thing, but ‘vintage’ seems to be creeping in all over where it was once disdained. I may be being overly romantic.
There was the most excellent bookshop. Second-hand, antique to current, FIVE FLOORS. It had free tea and coffee! That you could make for yourself! It was glorious, and I kick myself for not being in the right sort of mood to really appreciate it. Then again, I really can’t afford to be stocking up on old, old thick books with the sorts of covers that make you want to weep from the perfection of illustration.
Where was my mind? Photographic evidence:
The horrors (and adventures) of my youth.
Truth be told I came out with exactly what I did want - Teacher’s Pet by Caroline B. Cooney, a Point Horror (remember those?) that chilled me so royally that I refused to use the downstairs bathroom for years. I’ve been looking for it for months; I wanted to see if it still had the power.
In the story the heroine finds a rough workmans glove in the woods, which turns out to still have a hand in it. My dad keeps his work gloves in the downstairs loo. I was a nervous and imaginative child!
Today seemed like a ‘first day of Spring’; it was sunny though still cold, and crocuses are coming up. I sat on the front steps and read the first story in The Temple of Death.
The first story in the anthology The Temple of Death happens to be called The Temple of Death. It was written by Arthur Christopher Benson (1862 - 1925(1926?)), a man who seems to have had a rather painful life but who also seems to have been quite dedicated to making the lives of others better, if he could. The introduction to the book mentions he was a teacher, who was of the following opinion:
I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered accutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.
I get a little of the impression that he wasn’t exactly pro-woman, but I also get no impression that he was anti exactly, either, and it was hardly his fault alone that Eton was for boys, so lets allow him the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway, he also (according to the introduction of my volume, by David Stuart Davies) said that he wrote his (horror) stories for the purpose of the following:
..[To] touch with a light romance some of the knightly virtues which are apt to be dulled into the aspect of commonplace and uninteresting duties.
I have to say, I think that’s marvelous - and a darn fine raison d’être. I admire this man.
As far as I can tell, since A. Benson died in 1925 (or 26? wiki says one, intro says another), these stories of his are public domain. So here are the first two pages of The Temple of Death, read by your host (me). There are just over fourteen in all, and if you’d care to give me con-crit I’d be much obliged and attempt to improve my methods before narrating the next two or so. I’m doing voiceover work at both of my places of employ, and as such I rather need the practice. I hope you enjoy the story.. the devil’s yet to come.
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.
As you can see, these trousers are too small. They are definitely too small - I had to pin the zip at the top, and they are not decent to wear in public (I didn’t go out today). But they are thick cord and moss green and properly flared. Of course I still wore them!
THE ZIP BROKE TODAY.
Please, a moment of silence for my oldest pair of trousers. I will miss them, and I have no idea where I can find a new pair. They never fitted properly; the waist was always too wide and the hips always pulled a little snug. But since I bought them, dear Lady Changes done worked her pesky magic. The shop isn’t even there anymore.
Please, anyone got a trooser-shop that caters to the small but wiggly? :/
Well, I finally got to reading Tank Girl: Armadillo. I read it in bed, reading reading reading for a decent couple of hours like I always, always used to. Was it good? Should you buy it (or borrow, or.. loan it)? Let’s start at the start! And finish before the end (of the book), FYI; the second half is short stories and suchlike, and I haven’t read’em yet. You can do THAT for yourself.
There’re two prefaces, from the author, and I want you to read this little bit of one of them and understand why I didn’t read past it, in the common room lunch place at work, because of having “something in my eye”.
That’s kind. Kindness and fiction-appreciation are important. Honestly, I think this book is worth the purchase for that sentiment alone.
When I was reading I started out feeling uncomfortable, to be honest. You may be different and probably are but I really don’t find it easy to come in fresh to a story and start yellin’ WOOO, BLOW HIS HEAD OFF! I mentioned in the Jennifer’s Body SPOILERS how touchy I am about cannon fodder. I don’t need ameri-dubbing on my Dragonball to her “I think I see their parachutes!”, or whatever it was. I only catch six pokemon per game if I can manage it, for goodness sake, because shoving them inside a computer seems mean. I’m a big ole bleeding heart and hearing the idol of the novel say Okay, so we shot down a cop in cold blood. So fuckin’ what? makes me go “eeeeehhh” and squirm a bit. But what felt unusual is that the book (author/protag both) seems to acknowledge that. She say the italicised sentences in a page-chapter devoted to explaining how that’s not as muddy as it seems, how I shouldn’t judge her anyway, and how she doesn’t even care if I do. And not in such a deluded, self-convincing, distancing way as the way I put it makes it sound.
I still wasn’t completely cool with the thing of it, though. Which is why it was a relief when everybody revealed themselves to be such complete stinkers who were just as willing to solve problems with murder and carnage and pain as Tank Girl and her gang, only without being fun and kind and caring the rest of the time. In a world of shooting out brains before breakfast, motivation comes to be very meaningful. It’s an interesting authorial quirk, I think - the mixture of boisterous cartoonery and irredeemable-to-the-point-of-2d villains with the 3d motivation and realistic emotional resonance. Tank Girl really does, after a while, become a vessel for violent revenge/lesson fantasies. I don’t really feel ok thinking about feeding grenades to real world despicable people, or people who have crossed or simply annoyed me - it just feels counter-productive and even in my mental Holodeck I can’t ignore that people have.. well, whole people within themselves. But here? These people whose innards I can see are bad, bad, no-good people through and through. I have it on highest authority.
Tank Girl really was my armour, as I read this book.
It’s not just that though; Armadillo is a novel. It has a story. She and her peeps are making war on this one town full of heinous characters, who’ve ruined or messed with the lives of two (really three, I guess, but Sub Girl’s ex is never relevant as her ex) of the crew. It’s full of backstory, and re-weaving of now-story, and I think that makes it backstory for some of the previously published comics cos there’s no talk of any babies. I have no idea how Tank Girl canon works. I sort of don’t want to.
There’s also (I warned you in the post title here, SPOILERS) time travel. Which I enjoyed as a plot contrivance and a method to get extra emotional facts out there, but also because it was a very, very similar method to the one used in the film Somewhere in Time. I really dig that movie; Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, gorgeous clothing, heart-wrenching plot. Excellent rainy day movie, and the leitmotif is a keeper. Tank Girl yammers on about a movie (and a particular song from it) she accidentally managed to see as a child which no-one else had heard of periodically, too, so I figure this is an extra relevant tangent.
Reading this book made me feel better about things. She’s not “the perfect person” and she’s not, of course, “real”. I’ve said before that reading T.G. comics make me want to dress like myself, not like her, and want to celebrate being myself, not like her. And that’s true, because you know when you read her that if you were to meet her, then she would either think you were rad or disgusting - and thinking that oneself is not rad is not the way to go about encouraging Tank Girls esteem. Plus, she speaks a lot of wisdom:
Buy it.
Wearing today addendum:
Solved the short-skirt-low-neck problem! Knee-length bloomers, bigger necker. Easy.
Some ‘old’ Marples! I pinched this picture from the Telegraph.
News from the Agatha Christie Official Site blog: The Blue Geranium is currently being filmed for tv! Excellent. Marple, as you may have guessed, is in my soul. And I rather like the particular theme of this story - some authors fail and just become snotty or preachy when they and their characters take the “magic seems to be real OH WAIT of course it isn’t, that’s ridiculous! Here’s why” route. But Agatha (Ms Christie, I beg your pardon).. she knew her stuff. She manages to avoid putting the focus of the entire story upon the spooks-or-not reveal like an amazon on a stiletto; it’s what happens that matters, not how.
Midsomer Murders (the TV series) does the same issue with marvelous panache, incidentally. I really dig that show.
In celebration of this news, I want to share this link: The The Blue Geranium episode of Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Marple and Poirot, one of my favourite faaavourite shows. “Great Detectives” is a Japanese show, animated, and believe me I have tried to get DVDs (ones I can watch, even). I’m gonna keep trying! It’s one of the most comfortable shows I know, and I would really, really like to be able to express this to the creators, animators, and all companies involved in its production via monetary exchange. It is such a bane that British Animation is in the dumps, because it means a lot of the shows that make my heart sing aren’t available in Region 2. Venture Bros Season 1 took how long to get here? TOO BLOODY LONG.
Great Detectives has its faults. Miss Lemon is way too young, and Hastings doesn’t bluster quite enough. Poirot is not as irritable as he is in my head (David Suchet, he is perfect) and Miss M doesn’t have quite the bite I feel she should. But I find ‘Maybelle’ perfectly charming: she’s a sixteen or seventeen year old original character, the daughter of Raymond West (mother has no presence; I presume her dead) who takes a job as Poirot’s junior assistant and thereby ties the two detectives’ stories together. They never meet.
I very much enjoy how the opening sequence makes Maybelle’s story. Give it a watch, I think you’ll see what I mean.
And here’s a link I’ll be adding to posts for a while: Craft Hope for Haiti, an etsy store that donates proceeds to Doctors without Borders.
Like a lot of you (probably - still haven’t got enough internet to catch up on my ‘roll..) I got an email about the International day of Swishing. Which is January the 9th, which is tomorrow. I actually have a whole pile of things I’ll be putting up but NOT ONLY is my laptop refusing to provide its services, but the camera is also acting stroppy. Hnnnh.
So for now, all I’ve got to offer is this actually pretty fantastic jacket. Chiffon, byMetamorphose temps de fille, It’s bosom is not quite ample enough for mine, and so we have never become such friends as I hoped, but - perhaps it can be YOUR pal??
Click the picture to have a gander! And maybe sign up at posh-swaps whilst you’re there? It’s a grand idea! “Shop your wardrobe” nothin’ - shop mine, and everybody else’s!
Finished off my Christmas Shopping (in the COLD; two vests, a slip, bloomers, tights, a dress, full wool sweater, still shivered); got home to a fine spot of Ironside. It is SO well-directed, honestly! Those sets. That placing of actors within scenes! Keep checking my Tumblr, if you’re interested, I’ve a bunch of stills to add. And who should I see this time, looking out from the box? I said, “Bruce??”. And do you know, it was.
Just after he finished Green Hornet, I guess, ‘67. Doesn’t he look young? (And no, alas - it is said his character “teaches karate”, which is later replaced with aikido and judo without note. Sigh. Blame it on the characters?)
I just joined tumblr (click any picture) to post a sheaf of stills from the episode of Ironside I watched this morning; it’s all good stuff. The episode itself was a bit of a bummer. Backstreet abortions may have been unsafe, and some of the people performing them may have been mercenary and unqualified, but the fact remains that abortion is a necessary option for a person and the illegality of their availability was what drove women and girls to go to these unsafe operators. Legal abortions means safe abortions. Voters in Ireland and America in particular? LISTENLISTEN
I’ve mentioned a few times the thought processes that go into my “work wardrobe”; I want to feel like myself but appropriate. For me, this has meant diving from the [1960s professional lady] board. There’s a character archetype that the neat, softened-geometric shapes and clear colours that thick work-grade fabric evokes. When we (I) watch professionally-set stories set in the 60s, we (I) know that:
she’s smart
she’s good at her job
she can handle the people she encounters in the line of duty with grace and skill
she’s underestimated
It’s clear why these are aspirational traits, no? The last, in particular, is important, because I do not feel quite comfortable being an “office worker”. This is no slight to those who are - I simply am myself and not them!
Of course it’s no secret that Ms Joan Holloway is the bees knees right now, and it’s certainly true that she is costumed impeccably.
But who is responsible? Who chose the clothes that make the woman? I will tell you know, and you should read these names:
Hannah Jacobs: costume production assistant (5 episodes, 2008)
Thanks IMDB!
But Joan wasn’t the first! Of course she wasn’t. She’s a throwback, she’s created now. She may be a marvelous depiction of a lady of ‘63ish (I don’t actually know.. I can’t watch Mad Men, because I believe I would burst re: injustice, prejudice, social horror) but she’s a product of 2007.
So, who was really there?
I’ll tell you!
Wende Wagner played Lenore “Casey” Case in The Green Hornet, a show I happen to heart. Bruce Lee’s tv break, too. Am I looking forward to the movie? NO.
Casey was Brit Reid’s secretary. Brit Reid was the editor-owner of the Daily Sentinel, a newspaper. He was also by night the Green Hornet, a asked crimefighter who went about his vigilante business by pretending to be a worse criminal than anyone else. I love that. Casey was one of the three people who knew of Brit’s alternate identity, and she was often involved in his cases. There was no romance between them, and he respected her as a professional and a friend. Andrew Pallack is credited in IMDB as the men’s wardrobe master. I will check my dvds to see if there’s any info on the women’s costumier.
Eve Whitfield was costumed by Grady Hunt. She was an Officer on Ironside’s team, an integral member. She was kind of a hardass sometimes, actually. But look how she dressed! So good!
Photobucket wouldnt take the collage whole! I had to chop it, and I was in a bad, tired mood.. :/
The last, smallest wardrobe featured is that worn by Scott Bakula as Sam Beckett as Samantha “Sam” Stormer (yeah, it’s a maze of a show) in the episode “What Price Gloria?” of Quantum Leap. This was probably costumed by Jean-Pierre Dorleac, but Jacqueline Saint Anne also took charge of the wardrobe duties on “unknown episodes”. Produced in the eighties/early nineties, rather than the 60s proper, but OH that episode gives me the envies. Marvelous.
Thanks, costume designers and wardrobe departments. When you do your jobs, you make stories so much better.
Picture taken by my sister, in her room, dancing to Blondie
I talked about house clothes, before. The ones I showed were mostly of the pyjama-y ilk; they were designed to be worn indoors, or under other clothes. This sweater was made to be “real” clothing, it was made to see the light of day. I think it was bought when so-called Geek Chic was big a few years back.
My sister gave me this jumper because it is 80% wool and it made her itch. I’ve had it in a draw for at least six months. I never wanted to wear it because, again: it isn’t me.
But I am wearing it now! Yes. So I must amend my judgement, I can tell you that it is me but it is only a small part of me. Most of my clothes are always-clothes, really, because I have a pretty good handle on what I “am like” and how I feel that translates visually.
This jumper is, specifically, a bra-less weekend jumper.
I’m not this kind of pale melange grey. I am not these synthetic coarse colours in knitted patterns, I’m not so-uncool-it’s-cool-again nerd-sweaters. I don’t like the way it sits on my torso or how it pulls up off my hips if I move a smidgen.
Except for, on bra-less weekends in winter.
When I have nowhere I need to go, and the weather is cold and damp, and I have typing to do and cooking to plan and it gets dark at four o’clock. When I have/had a confrontation to get past, when we have records playing in the room next door, when I showered at lunch time, when I want to feel like I am dressed but not like I need to represent myself or quite come out of gentle hibernation. At these times, this jumper is perfect because I don’t need to waste something that is “really me” on a day when I just feel like private rest. If I put on a bra, I would hate wearing this jumper. It would be all wrong - once the effort begins being made, choices start to matter. It would change the shape and change the image, and I would hate it.
This jumper is one that says to me “if I am forced, if I really need to, of course I can still be me and project myself through anything. If I have to (what if whatever happened to make Mad Max happen happened? What if: Zombie apocalypse whilst I’m away from my wardrobe? What if I’m kidnapped? & so on)”. It’s a statement of self-assurance to myself (and now, to you).
The trousers don’t go at all, but I love these trousers and I wanted the comfort of them. All those times I have read ladymagazines state “fashion isn’t about attracting men” / “women dress for other women” I hae thought “well yes, but that’s a bit of a simplification, isn’t it? “Fashion” is about dressing for yourself: telling you the story you want to hear. Other things too, but that. Everything just depends on how much you’ve thought about it, and what you’ve decided.
My mum decided she needed a video resource for her class - she teaches primary school - and that she wanted my aunt, who was visiting for a couple of days, to play the scientist in it. So I wrote this, and filmed it in a very small time! And then edited it at top speed, because she FORGOT COUGH COUGH to tell me when she needed it by! Also, I hate iMovie.
Very much.
Quite pleased with the script, and the logos, though. Despite the fact that I couldn’t find my tablet stylus and had to make the whole of both of them with the click-and-drag shape-makers and the lasso tool by way of my 5×2 touchpad. I cry!
If you are or know a teacher, you or they may feel free to use this at no cost. Please comment if you want a better quality one, I can do it in my lunch break or something! The lesson/homework was to investigate and compile a report on “an invention”, and the class topic is “keeping warm”, so - this combines the two. Happy watching! >_>
IllustratorClaire: Twenty-two 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. For portfolio, click the logo below!
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.
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