Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
Bury him in advice!
Advice the first:
When you are cycling through fields in summer you DEFINITELY need to wear a face-protecting neckerchief. You see how many bugs are on this sleeve? The black specks. Imagine that many bugs flying into your face. That’s no fun. Only once I forgot my necker, and it.. was pretty terrible. You can feel them hit your lips.
Advice the second:
Even if you buy a second-hand, vintage item that has surely been washed MANY times before - if it is a deep colour.. wash it alone or with (very) like shades. I know, I know! Obvious! But not obvious enough, for me!
Things that used to be white:
The salmon-y pink part, of course, was not white.
Only the stitching here. Hurray for polyester! It’s kind of good-looking, I think, the new contrast.
This shirt - luckily the only non-pants item that wasn’t something of mine - used to be a delicate pink to match the buttons.. I’m sure my dad likes lilac, though. Probably.
There was a pair of pants in this was that went from green to purple. That was a strong purple pill!
Advice the third:
When a nine year old peels off from the pack of nine-ten-eleven year olds who have already sassed you several times and runs across a field apparently expressly for the purpose of telling you you should “get a better hat”, Caesar, I want you to remember this - you should drink down that fine old vinegar-wine of oh yes, that’s how it feels to know that people want to belittle you because they’re uncomfortable with your wardrobe. I remember and savour the fact that it’s a vintage unpleasantness. Not one that can currently spoil your day. In a minute, you’ll catch a glimpse of your reflection in a french window and you’ll think DAMN, I’m looking GOOD.
And you’ll be right!
Oh, and don’t forget to bend down to his or her eye level, give him a Paddington stare, and say “And maybe YOU shouldn’t be so rude“. If you don’t tell them, how will they learn? That is the kind of thing you need to nip in the bud.. before they grow up into full-blown users of “negging“. That would really make the world a poorer place.
I just want you to know that even though having weighed the fact that I’m not belittling anyone, or insulting anyone, or demanding anything and that hearing someone say that they also have these problems would have meant something to me when I was younger (or now, actually) - and the encouragement to bite the bullet from my honey and some of my fine twitter peeps - posting this makes me feel very very guilty. Because.. the stereotype goes, women are supposed to ‘want’ to be ‘thin’? Because being ‘a thin person’ I have, like, the metaphorical official celebrity/body image media seal of potential approval? Because of fucked up insecurity-sells ingrained societal bullshit, basically. I would never, ever, ever post this unsolicited in size acceptance forums. I’m not including demonstrative pictures because I’m wary of becoming ‘thinspiration’. If I sound like a major jackass? Please, tell me. Right. Here goes.
Let’s talk again about how I hate summer clothes, shall we? Because they don’t fit me? Good. That will be fun.
I am never going to try to convince anybody that people individually and ‘the fashion industry’ at large treat thin people (or genetically average short people) worse than fat people*, or people with bodies that otherwise differ from the so-called norm. That would be ridiculous and cruel. I’m not suggesting that my problems are worse than anyone’s. But since this here is my space, I do get to tell you about how it sucks to be too small to find clothes that fit. You can listen or not, as you please. Please beware of triggers if you’re susceptible; female body image stuff can be volatile.
The gist of it is: it sucks to be too small to be able to find clothes that don’t say to your body “Oi oi, fellas, you’re not quite right here. I think I’ll swamp you and drag you, and make you feel like you’re treading water in your own garments.”
Going on clothes alone - the societal judgement aspects can probably wait for another day, I am way to zoned out to dip my toes in that acidic pool just yet - I’m pretty sure we can all relate to not being able to find an item of clothing that fits. You know, that doesn’t restrict or choke you, doesn’t bunch up in uncomfortable places or blouse out where it would feel and look better to cling, doesn’t need to be tugged down or hitched up, doesn’t get in the way of your other clothes, doesn’t ride up/down/around.. clothes that work for your body and your psyche, not against them.
It’s hard for an industry to predict, of course - people are of all different dimensions. And it’s probably hard for most people a lot of the time- truly, I don’t forget that.
But I’m talking about me, and I know for a fact that it’s hard, for me! Very almost ALL of the time! So quit rolling your eyes and let me vent, OK?
No matter how much I like and enjoy and feel lucky and thankful to be in the body that I have - and believe me, I do - the fact remains that mainstream, highstreet clothes (or.. any clothes I have ever found when I say a thing “fits perfectly” I mean “it doesn’t cause me extreme irritation the minute I put it on” aren’t made for me. It’s worst in summer, because nothing is as stretchy and forgiving as a knitted sweater (FUCK T-SHIRTS and their rigid ways!). And that pisses me off! Not that I feel personally slighted, exactly - I know it’s not done specifically to defy me. Nevertheless, it does defy me, and puts me out, and like any thwarted warlord that makes me shout.
When I was in the first few years of high school, it was just that I was littler than the average range of women and teens, so to find clothes that didn’t make people mistake me for an actual nine year old - I also look young in the face, yay you may think this would be flattering or whatever but when you are twenty two and multiple (multiple!) people TELL YOU they mistook you for twelve, well, get back to me on that, and try not to look sour) - I mostly wore tops designed for kids aged four to six, so that they were tight and my belly showed. “Like a teenager”, 1998 - 2001. That just.. didn’t feel good, you know? When all your friends are talking about their bras and buying things from the shops in J17 spreads and saying “I feel so fat” like it’s a badge of grown-up womanhood’s honour.. “Hey, look at me, I’m a tiny stunted juvenile weirdo”. Only I didn’t HAVE to say look at me, because people were already saying “you’re so small, wowww!” and “she’s so thin, look” and “God, you’re so skinny, it’s not fair”, and “whisper whisper whisper *point*”.
No, it isn’t fair - I can’t do anything about it any more than you can. It’s not my fault and it doesn’t get me anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t hear the adverts saying “you could be slimmer!” or that you don’t have to teach yourself not to think “I look bulgy” or “I should be more streamlined” - because literally every healthy body has some skin or fat on it that can form folds no matter how small, and folds, sez lying traitorous ladymedia, R BAD. You get quotes from Gwyneth Paltrow** or Eva Mendez*** about how “even I feel fat sometimes” and people become so scathing - yeah, I am a little too, because that’s a cack-eyed harmful way to say it when you’re in the public eye (and lauded as being so beautiful). But I understand - the current capitalist world is built to make everyone feel like they aren’t good enough, that every bloat is deathfat, that if you fail at meeting these mad stats of perfection for even a second then you fail forever. I remember thinking that way. There’s no haven for thin people in the world of celebrity diet judging; every one of us needs to work honestly at making our own republic of heaven.
The only times I heard about those paragons of thinness, professional models, back then in school, was when people (real people, TV, magazines) talked about what a bad influence they were what with their attractiveness and necessary eating disorders and all - because people can’t naturally be that thin!
Hearing that your natural body essentially enforces the patriarchy and apparently causes your peers to feel inescapably inferior and that you’re unnatural and freakish is, actually, not all that fun. FYI.
Now I am big enough that I can wear clothes designed for average-range adults, by which I mean that they will not actually fall off of me if I put them on (and tall enough that I’m only an inch or so below the upper height requirement for ‘petite’). And that’s pretty nice! But it would be nicer if every shop carried ‘my size’ (they don’t; it’s nice (SARCASM) to know I’m still small enough to be weird), and hey, let’s go crazy - it would be SUPER nice if ‘my size’ fitted my lumpen protrusions in so that I could WEAR ‘my size’ instead of a size up which leaves me swimming and feeling like goblins are grasping my shadow. The back width, the arm circumference, the waist; when these are too wide, the excess fabric gets in the way and grinds. And honestly, to avoid that.. I’d really rather not wear an item that fits in the places I have bones but otherwise makes me look like I’m trying to spill my fleshy privacy all over your desk. Comparatively small stature’d people can have lumps and bumps and shapes of variety too, y’know? Bravissimo’s band sizes go down to twenty-eight, if you get what I’m saying.
Look, I’m not saying that this is the worst problem ever. That there are such things as the concept of “fit” and “clothing sizes” at all tells me I’m not capriciously making a mountain out of a molehill, though - you can feel it when something doesn’t fit you. It irritates all day in little ways.
Here’s some trivia: my Primary School nickname was “Titch”. Being small - but not medically small, because that would be a different matter altogether - is an unremovable part of my public identity nowadays; it goes without saying for me. Still not for other people, natch, but for me. It’s drummed in. I’m normal enough that I really can’t reasonably complain (berate me), but I’m too small for people I don’t know not to remark upon it. And for clothes to fit me! That’s what I’m talking about, right, right.
I guess by this point the being used to it works against me - I bring it (some of it) on myself: being a short person I should be buying from the racks marked “Petite”. My shoulder to waist measurement is fifteen inches. According to the internet, that’s shoulder to underboob on your average lady. Normal-people clothes are too long and shape-moulded in the wrong places, I really can’t deny that. But I have never bought anything from the short-person selection.
You see, even when they’re in evidence I have never taken Petite ranges seriously, because I have never passed a Petite rack or section that didn’t make me think “but I am not a forty-two year old physically graceful life-long academic with shoulder length honey brown hair who was born in Italy and is now married to an English (or, possibly, Welsh) policeman!”.
This lady that I see also wears minimal pink lipstick, and those necklaces made of coloured thread with small rock beads tied in various places; multiple-strand. She’s kind but stern, and speaks softy but with force, wears moccasins, and sometimes a headband. She’s middle-class rich and was a “bohemian” in her university years. I like her fine. She is nothing like me.
That is a trouble. I need to look harder if I want the right to rail against injustice knowledgably. I suppose I need to buckle down and do some in-depth research. It looks like Topshop has a short people range.. that’s made up mostly of tops.. which also feature in the normal-sized people ‘cropped’ range. Nice. Are they cheating by using the same garments for both(cropped for normal people, normal-length for short torsos?), or do they have a version that is petite-cropped too? Of course, either way, the size chart lines up crazy, they charge a minimum £18 for t-shirts embellished with old-t-shirt fake wear&tear, and everything I have bought from Topshop has gotten (non-purposeful) holes in quick smart. I wonder how easy it is to find petite stuff second-hand?
Wull, ’til I win the job lottery, guess I’d better get used to chopping the bottoms off of and sewing elastic into the back of my shirts.
That’ll look nice.
Fuckin’ clothes. What are they good for?
**I use the term “fat people” because that’s favoured by a lot of the pluz-sized size acceptance advocates that I read the most.
**This one from years ago I particularly, clearly remember, because I could see something wrong about it but I wasn’t sure what, and I compared my body to hers in the mirror afterwards
***I am actually not 100% sure on this. I like Eva Mendez, she seems a fun person. She was good in Hitch.
Desperately Seeking Susan is a film about a woman who hasn’t quite realised that her life doesn’t fulfill her finding herself through her idolatry of the romance gathered around a selfish free spirit, and amnesia.
It’s even better than that sounds, though.
When I was twelve or thirteen and staying up late to watch TV was still a relatively new and clandestine operation, I had the luck of being in a part of the country that received Channel Five. Channel Five (as well as showing the Tribe, natch) did (does) pretty great theme nights. I got exposure to Bruce Lee beyond what I’d seen on badly printed Market t-shirts from Five’s Bruce Lee Night (thank you), I was introduced, unironically and without peer judgement, to the Osmonds by their Osmonds Weekend (thank you!), and I spent a lot of happy evenings watching my VCR’d Science Fiction Night tapes. But the particular and relevant Five Night was (obviously?) Madonna Night.
I didn’t really know much about Madonna; this was about 2000 and she was a vague, other-people-like-her metastar. We saw her videos discussed on Live and Kicking by Zoe Ball and Lene from Aqua (”I couldn’t stop staring at her tits!”) and were generally aware that she was “important”. But I didn’t know anyone who was A Madonna Fan and when I asked, the next day, if my friend had watched Madonna Night she said “No, I’m not really into that kind of thing” and gave me a dubious look (Hi Laura!). So I was watching out of a sense of curiosity and out of enjoyment of the wow I am up late factor.
There was a bunch of documentary, talking heads type stuff which I don’t remember but also, as I think you have guessed: Desperately Seeking Susan! I watched it and I didn’t really get it all and I didn’t watch it again until boxing day 2009, but the reason that I did watch it on boxing day 2009 was that I realised when my beloved and I talk fiction and character motivation and costume design, which we do and always have done regularly, Desperately Seeking Susan was a source I repeatedly turned to (in my memory) to illustrate my points and clarify my thoughts.
Don’t you think that’s impressive? One watch, and nine years later I’m still using it as an example par excellence? And I mean various parts of the movie, not just one.
Susan!
Transcription: “Because the film is very much about identity, who somebody is on the outside vs who they wanna be on the inside, we decided to open the movie in a beauty parlor because that’s so much about female identity and appearance and transformation. I think in the original script the opening was actually set in a department store where she and her sister in law were trying on clothes. And ultimately it, in one of the many re-writes, it was changed to a beauty salon because i think that the idea of being remade - which is what beauty salons are about, you go in being one person and you hopefully come out having been transformed into somebody else - is really the essence of what the whole movie is about.”
Susan is more of a straight-up Makeover Movie than Billie Jean - the above clip from the commentary track (commentary tracks by writers and directors are basically the only sort of DVD extra that mean anything to me; they can be so fascinating and educational and inspiring. I recommend Larry Cohen’s commentary on the Q: The Winged Serpent DVD release if you’re into hearing about creative budget film shoots) says in as many words that this is a film about identity. Billie Jean, I rekkin, is a film about integrity rather than identity. They’re very closely related concepts, but they’re not identical.
You should watch this movie. I’m not going to detail everything that’s good about it, because that would take too long and rob you of the discoveries. But artistically and entertainment..ly.. it’s a really, really satisfying and enthusing film. And it’s written, directed and
double-starred in by women! And the main character starts the film by turning thirty, which I love. It’s never referred to again, and she has her coming-of-age teenage self-awakening plot and it’s positive, all the way along.
Left: Roberta! Right: Susan!
Anyway. I do have one element of this fantastic story that I’ve picked to epitomise the make-overyness and the pivotal themes and the wonderful, WONDERFUL AMAZING EXCELLENT work done by the costume designer / production designer (Santo Loquasto: your work was brilliant here. Looking up Mr Loquasto’s name in imdb, I just noticed that Richard Hell is in this movie. I missed that!). There’s a scene half an hour or so in, that goes like this:
(Actually first there are some scenes like this, skip the next two centered paragraphs if you haven’t seen the film:)
Roberta (the woman whose story this is (who by this point has been the canape server at her own birthday party, who was then ignored for her husband’s new tv advert (which features him being pulled into water by bikini babes)) has gone into New York (away from the suburbs where she lives with her hot-tub salesman husband (who she never finds out is cheating on her, and who undermines her identity and choices at every opportunity) to spy on one of the meetings that she has romanticised so much: “Susan” is meeting her touring band-member lover, who leaves her messages in the personals pages about which town he’s in and when they should meet. “Desperately Seeking Susan”, they say. Roberta reads all his adds and dreams about how dreamy their lives must be. Roberta follows Susan after her rendezvous and watches her trade a jacket for a pair of boots in a vintage clothes shop, and once Susan’s left Roberta buys the jacket for herself. At home, douchey husband - who wears what I assume are ’slacks’, and pale turquoise polo shirts - undermines her purchase (”[used to belong to Hendrix?] Second-hand clothes? What, are we poor?” and her exploration of non-suburby aesthetics, and generally is a massive ass - which leads Roberta to throw the jacket onto a chair in self-disgust.
A key falls out of the jacket at the end of that scene, which leads Roberta to hatch a plan: she can leave a “Desperately Seeking Susan” ad offering to return to the key, and she can make contact with her idol. We see Roberta dressing for the meeting, and we see.. she’s dressing up as Susan. At this point, as far as she’s processed, she just wants to be Susan. Desperately Seeking, right? Or try being her, I should say. Then we get the scene that is the scene. The turning point, for the film, in every. single. way. It’s so complete!
Roberta goes to meet Susan in her Susan drag and Susan gets held up, which means that the Very Bad Man currently looking for Susan mistakes Roberta for Susan. Which means that the Very Nice Man currently looking for Susan to offer her shelter against the VBM also mistakes Roberta for Susan. And Roberta falls over and hits her head - which means that by the end of the scene, Roberta mistakes Roberta for Susan.
Left: Susan-Roberta! Right: Jim (the Very Nice Man)!
This is the outfit that Roberta wears for this scene.
Please forgive my dodgy pictures - digital camera + lapop + DVD
Oh my GOODNESS, it is so spot-on!
It’s so patently an ita-loli approximation of Susan-clothes I could choke. It’s someone so keen to get the look (and you can’t be that keen without wanting something of what the look means, on the inside) but lacking the tools, someone uncomfortable with who they are and where they’ve been going but not completely au fait with where they think they want to go now, either. It’s so vulnerable and unconscious-self-conscious, it makes my heart squeeze for her. I get that; that’s probably what I did get from this movie when I watched the first time around. This outfit tells the whole story of the film! People say that the clothes don’t make the woman, but mortar doesn’t make a wall. It just really helps to hold a lot of them together.
First of all, don’t even ask me what’s up with that little acorn-bag thing. Gosh that looks annoying. It can’t relax into you, it’s just going to be hitting you awkwardly whenever you walk (like Roberta’s current constructed identify?). It’s non-identifiable (like Roberta’s current self?). I kind of hate it. No, I hate it a lot. I guess that the reason it’s round and rigid is so that it can roll away into the water when she hits her head (taking ID with it), so there’s that. Beyond that I’m not going to touch it, because I would just be mean about it.
This picture is used twice! On purpose!
The colours aren’t strong or pure. Lilac is a powder colour, it’s decorative and passive. That weird red-peach on the sweater is vague and indefinable. But red and purple clash, and that’s a bold confrontational mix. That’s the Susan. That and the jacket, which actually belongs to Susan.
The sweater has the collar cut off, which is a little bit tough and rebellious, in a studied sort of way (yeah, I do it too and it makes me feel better), but.. I think she’s wearing it over a lady-collar shirt. The kind which you get to wear at school during summer if you choose not to wear a tie. Or I did, anyway. You know the style I mean? Even if it’s a normal collar, it’s a soft purple and raspberry-striped shirt in that 80s-weight cotton, which is the least rebellious fabric I can imagine. Florals worked for grunge, because you can subvert something so veryvery delicate and girlish (flowers!), but you can’t subvert innocuousness. Innocuous things have, like, magical negative power. They’re the antimatter of cool.
This picture is used twice! On purpose!
Having noted the shirt, even the punch of the purple/red combo is lessened. If you’re co-ordinating your aesthetic break-out with your existing sensible-person shirts, you’re not really breaking so far, huh?
The trousers aren’t wide-legged, or flared, and they aren’t tight. They’re just.. there. They aren’t baggy but they aren’t slim-fitting. They’re just crinkly and probably let air circulate a bit. They’re high-waisted but they’re worn with a baggy, airy sweater that hits at the hip-bones which blocks any flattering or enhancing they might have done. They aren’t even actively ugly or frumpy. They’re just there! They don’t tuck into the boots with an interesting pouf over the ankle, or fit neatly! THEY ARE JUST THERE, plopped there. They go loose at the knees. They have no aggression, just an air of sitting obediently, waiting for someone to say “..Yes?”. These trousers are Roberta, as she was in her life before and during the start of this film.
It’s all in the body language too, you can’t ignore body language when you’re character designing or costuming. The Fug Girls are always complaining that people have ruined their great dresses with slouching and people like Grace Jones pull of the wackiest stuff because they wear it so fiercely - this outfit could work, if the person inside of it was comfortable with their/its awkwardness. There is no dearth of bloggers who have run with waif-chic and granny-chic and make their pigeon toes and rounded shoulders a matter of personal trademark. But Roberta has fear in her physicality, and the fear that’s written in her wardrobe bounces it back complimentarily.
The mass of scarf in her hair is arranged so precisely, and the curls she’s done herself are so soft and arranged so softly. Here’s the real Susan in this same scene:
Difference, right? One’s Done, one’s just done. The difference between constructing a persona and living one again, yeah? Susan wakes up, gives herself a blast of supercool just by looking at herself in a mirror or shiny surface, and leaves to hang about town or maybe do petty crimes. Roberta prepares herself, practices before the (full-length bedroom) mirror, arranges everything just-so, and steps in. Then she leaves, for the purpose of learning-by-voyeurism ad waiting to be told if she’s doing it right.
The Susan jacket isn’t even a match for Roberta’s Susan outfit; amongst the fit and the colours it floats and hangs. Every shape from Roberta’s wardrobe is soft and giving (as in, it gives in if you oppose it, not that it is a gift) and the jacket doesn’t have a harsh enough presence to make a real statement against them. It would have been simple to make The Jacket be one that’s worn by Susan but wears Roberta, but instead Loquasto (I think) designed this one that is worn by Susan, and doesn’t even bother to wear pre-amnesia Roberta. Because: which rock star cares about wannabees?
The whole thing works just as well if you consider that she’s also wearing this immediately after she bangs her head, and the amnesia and complete identity crisis sets in. She literally doesn’t know who she is, but thinks/is helped to think that she might be (and then is convinced that she is) Susan. She doesn’t know how to be Susan, and she’s nothing like the image of dangerous flightly Susan that Jim has been told to expect. She’s not-Susan, just like her clothes are telling us-her-him!
Would it be going too far to draw comparison between unconscious-Roberta and primordial ooze? These clothes and the curled hair pool about her shapelessly, ready to form.. a new life! The Pokemon Ditto is a pink blob, which can take on the identity of any Pokemon it faces. Hmmm. Maybe this is overthinking? I mean, it works, but maybe I have just made it work and am being unscientific.
There’s a lot more to say about this movie. But I’ma let you watch it and say it for yourself now. This was the real “Makeover” nucleus of the film, in my opinion, because this was the outfit that was designed (both meta-wise and in-movie) for the specific purpose of transition. Roberta’s continued evolution was organic and intuitive - not “A Make-Over”.
I don’t credit bloggers and street style photo culture with my current level of inner confidence and self-pleasure. I do credit them, large-partly, with my confidence about where I stand in the public, every-day world. Bloggers, online alt-fashion communities and street style photo culture are why I could not keep up my teenage idea of the whole world is against me and nobody wants me to look how I want.
Seeing people dressed outside of the highstreet (and even outside of the known sub-culture) norm(s), happily, at various ages, all over the world, being themselves, made it impossible for me not to know that no matter where I am, there is someone who understands a bit, who doesn’t resent my self-expression and personal visual comfort, who is pleased by my constructed image and who, if we met directly, would give the metaphorical fist-bump of solidarity.
This is all I wish to provide here.
My main memory of highschool peer wardrobe approval was when my friend said to me “Why did you buy that?” about a skirt.. that I was wearing. Whilst we were out. Gee that made me feel comfortable!
I’m sure that I was as much of an ass as anyone.
I feel it like a duty, frankly (pompously?), to honestly present my thoughts and some e-semblance of my philosophy/personality so that people who are similar to me and who haven’t yet found any or many allies don’t have to feel alone in the world.
I’m not asking anyone to make a connection, or cruising for buddies - I just want to be visible as a subject of comparison. Just in case.
It’s not that I don’t do it for the plain satisfaction of self-expression, “activism”, to show off, for mental exercise, to keep me busy, etc etc as well. I like writing this blog! But I probably wouldn’t, because I am lazy, if I didn’t have the blog-related life experience that I do.
I am not sure if this counts as a manifesto, because I find the concept of “a manifesto” hard to grasp. Do you have to use particular language conventions? But it’s a “why I do this”, which I think is basically the same? Right?
When I was younger the idea of people participating in BDSM or violence-related sexual roleplay kind of upset me. Not in an “arrest them!” sort of way, I just didn’t understand why people would want to be what i understood as ‘mean to each other’ in their intimate relations.
BUT THEN, I read the first issue in the “Kissing Mister Quimper” volume of Grant Morisson’s Invisibles - pencilled by Chris Weston, Inked by John Stokes, coloured by Daniel Vozzo. This issue has this scene in it (the last page is separated from the first by a section of a different scene):
The back of this volume hold this quote from Spin: “A timeless battle between the forces of psychic liberation and their dark counterparts, sleazy insectoid gents of control and repression… Basically, it’s about everything.” Robin and Mob, seen below, are the leaders of a cel of psychic magical armed freedom fighters combatting the combined forces of aliens from another dimension (which might be more understandably one-sentence described as chaos gods?) and human malevolence and cant-be-bothered. Does that help, if you haven’t read any of it?
And then I was like, ohhhhh right! No I can see that, sure Because for these characters, that makes sense.
So thanks for helping me become a more enlightened person, Grant and Chris!
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
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.
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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!
