I’m away from my graphics tablet; forgive the shitty face-hiding plz, also do not have the saved code for the alternate comments box - if you want to say something and it isn’t working, email! Address on the right of the front page!
A week’s Cornwalling in late July goes something like this:
These are they that spawned me (“my mum and dad”)
Gimpy tortoise! There was a whole array of gimpy moss animals, but this was my favourite. He looks so calm about it.
Hand of my mother! Picture by my mother!
Sister hearts dogz
Then some people came, and we didn’t feel like seeing people, so we ran away across the mud flats (tide was out; creek)..
And for those curious, here is the state of my VW + Melissa rubber shoes after taking all but two days worth of a walking-packed week’s holiday:
Barely scratched at all! I was worried, having heard anecdotes of shoddy VW jewellery for (natch) non-shoddy prices.. but my worries were all for naught. Spiffing!
How does an extremely minimally employed person afford a holiday anywhere? Sometimes they’re lucky enough (and believe me - I appreciate how lucky I am) to have parents who say “we booked a house and it wouldn’t cost any extra for you and your plus-one to come along, it would be lovely to have you!”. THANK YOU PARENTS, again.
Hahaha, I just made you look at holiday snaps! Do you hate me, now?
I told y’all I spent today (off sick) learning to draw Raymond Burr. He has a really particular face! As you can see in that last picture. This for the sake of an Ironside/MST3k comic, which you shall see later. If you tune in.
Needing to save my workshirts for work only, I have taken to wearing these oversized “peasant shirts” in the heat and just tying them up until they stop annoying me with their bigness. It’’s pretty comfy I guess, and disguises my belly button - if you can’t see it, you can’t be sure I’m not a clone. It’s less structured than I am used to or quite comfortable with; good for being in fields or on run-down farms or cooking a la Like Water for Chocolate but not for being in company, really. The skirt, also, is shorter and breezier than usual.. a little less secure than ideal. This is the kind of thing I need to say to myself curse it all, I have no inorganic responsibilities today before I can wear it.
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.
Political satire!
This is my favourite, I think. So Snufkin!
Holy shit
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.
I like these colours. I feel like a stretch of countryside.
The badge is from an Eduardo Paolozzi exhibition which I saw in Scotland a few years ago. It was fantastic. It really opened my mind - the validity of collage as an art form; semi-/abstract colourwork as an intellectual pursuit; how impressive and invigorating modern sculpture can be. I saw one of his small sculptures on Cash in the Attic once (or was it DIckinson’s Real Deals?), an elephant in plastic or rubber all made of angles. Oh, and there was a recreated Artist’s Studio as part of the exhibit - he has a Geordi LaForge figure in there. I am pro TNG.
Look at this - this version of Vulcan/Hephaestus was at the showing I saw. You could look at it from three different levels I think. Photo via nationalgalleries.org!
And how good is this?
Changing subjects, this is my annotated copy of the book I’m preparing a (thorough) review for (two thousand words in..):
Each of those turned-over pages stands for something I have a problem with. Kind of impressive I actually still plan to read the last two books in the series, huh?
Don’t frown at me. It’s a mass-produced paperback.
I’m doing it for the LOVE of books! Come on! Paper isn’t always sacred..
I was in London last Friday to see the Ife bronzes at the British Museum - actually I was planning to see the Renaissance sketches with my Dad, but I’m a sucker for a good sculpture and African history is really interesting and awfully neglected.
But I don’t have any pictures from that (you’ll have to visit for yourself, or google! Of course). I have pictures from the train journey there! My sister and I played the ‘make a picture from a squiggle’ game. It’s fun! Here are some of mine, from her squiggles.
And my favourite: Poopin’ man!
Some of hers:
Yeah I made her watch Pulse, haha
Honesty demands that I mention the crocodile is Mum’s
And here’s her with a shadow-boner, and me being Hilary Swank the Next Karate Kid.
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!
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.
The centre of England! Wow! All fillin’ up with racial disharmony!
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.
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.
Interval - from faqs.org: Britain
Very few of the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of Britain are actually Roma. The majority are of Irish extraction and are known as Travellers. The position of Travellers in Britain is poor and steadily deteriorating. The 1959 Highways Act, which legislated against roadside camping, and the general policy of “moving on” adopted by local authorities has meant that at least 5,000 children are receiving no education and a further 20,000 are receiving inadequate education. In 1984 a report by the Save the Children Fund stated that the infant mortality rate amongst Travellers is 15 times higher than the national average. Under a ruling of the High Court in 1985 county authorities are obliged to provide sites for Travellers but there is much popular opposition to such sites and there have been cases of caravans being removed from official sites. The Department of the Environment has advocated the provision of a chain of 10 stopping places with up to 40 pitches each for some 250 families, and the building of 60 small sites for a further 300 families, but it will be hard to implement these proposals.
But as - I just checked, I missed it the first time whilst chopping onions - it says in the video, the travelers in question areRoma. 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.
Where did you get those trousers Eugene I want some also please
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?
Intermission 2: Romani people aren’t just the same as travelers (wait, should that be Travelers?). Some (..presumably not all?) Roma travel; some travelers are Romani. If you go to “gypsy” on wikipedia you get “The term Gypsy (also ‘gypsy’ and less frequently ‘gipsy’), is a common word sometimes used to indicate Romani people, Tinkers or Travellers”. If you go to “Romani people” you get “The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Greek word Αιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi, whence modern Greek γύφτοι gifti), in the belief that the Romanies, or some other Gypsy groups (such as the Balkan Egyptians), originated in Egypt.” and “The word “Gypsy” in English has become so pervasive that many Romani organizations use it in their own organizational names.”. If you go to “Travellers”, you get “Traveler or traveller (see American and British English spelling differences) commonly refers to one who travels, especially to distant lands. It may also refer to: […] * Irish Travellers or Pavees, traditionally nomadic people of Irish origin living predominantly in Ireland and Great Britain * Romani people, ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who trace their origins to medieval India.
Irish travelers are recognised as an ethnic group here and don’t fare well, either.
Sky West and Crooked: to youngme, the most romantic non-animated film I had ever seen. Can you hate that which teaches you?
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.
Just got back from a flight and a bit of a stint as a Maypole. Chin chin!
Hat: Anthony Peto (gift), shirt and skirt: Jane Marple secondhand, shoes: VW + Melissa post-season
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!
Boots: Dr Martens, trousers: eBay, t-shirt: hand-me-up, scarf: Accessorize (gift), hoodie: Vans, coat: independent leather shop, bag: Scary Go Round
P.S. This guy appeared on the c4 Alternative Election Broadcast. I dubbed him “Jim Cary Elwes”. You see it, right? Right.
Silly Eric, there is nothing wrong with arboretums! In fact, they’re pretty darned excellent. Learn with me:
Witch Hazel!
Judas Tree! (in orange)
Magnolias!
Closeup Magnolias!
MORE Magnolias! Did you know that for a long time, Magnolias were the earliest, most primitive flowering plant on record? That’s pretty cool. Dino-flowers.
Laughing (foo dog? lion?) creature!
Leaf skeletons!
Hellebore. I like these plants SO much. My mum calls them funereal.
Mouse nest!
Camellia
Black flowers: the rockstars of the flora world.
Beech leaves. Don’t they look like chrysalises?
Black Bamboo!
Ladybirds doin’ it. In the grand tradition of That 70s Show, indeed.
I told y’all I’d give you a peek into the give peace a chance exhibition I saw for my birthday; a bunch of photos taken during the Bed-In which were never published back in the day. I think it’s a travelling exhibition, that’s only recently or semi-recently Come To England. The photographer had kept them all (in his attic? It’s usually in the attic, right?) and once he decided to share them, convinced by the curator (his friend), he died. I don’t think the death was related, but, it happened the day after he agreed. That’s interesting, maybe?
Like I mentioned, there was no photography allowed in the ‘gallery’ (Cathedral basement), and I hadn’t taken any paper, so! Here are some approximations of what my beloved and I can remember were in some of the pictures we saw. Some were black and white, some were colour. Enjoy! Catch the proper pictures when you can!
I’ll show you in the order we saw them:
The second arrow has a caption next to it that you can’t see, it says “other gift, possibly a book or a flower”.
These little cartoons were drawn on John’s guitar - they’re probably not that unseen, but all I know of Beatles legend I absorbed through the skin growing up, basically, I have no specific trivia. We went to the show because Yoko Ono.. well, she’s wonderful really, isn’t she? My tutor in Uni had a huge great fancrush on John Lennon, though, and after seeing these pictures I can kind of get the idolatry. He was just kind of cool, wasn’t he?
Sniffin” a flower, takin’ a stretch, in The Bed.
Adorable girl-child! Much cuter in the actual photo than here. I did not mean to make Yoko look so Pocahontas or John so stodgy, either, but what can I do? I was drawing from memory!
Yoko and (I am presuming) the girl who climbed in through the fire escape and was asked to stay, making lifelong friends and getting a, authorial career boost. Lesson: Break and enter! Cool people will admire you for it!
BARE FEET PEACE
This is my favourite picture of John Lennon. The thought bubble caption is “LOL FUNNIEST EVER”, because that was really the air the photo gave off (as well as a bunch of artists and writers and creatives who were down with the bed-in idea, they asked Al Capp (did I mis-remember the K in KRAPP?) because his cartoon strips were vitriolic towards hippies, apparently). There is, as beloved says, a reason that Ringo is regarded as the “funny one”. I looked at this picture and said to him (my gent), “Everybody smoke weed” because I am not as good at misremembering memorable/relevant lines as I am at humorous reintegration. Oh well!
There was a wishing tree, of course. I drew a wishing tree with many wishes on my tag. Are you supposed to keep that secret, like birthday cake wishes? I don’t think so.
I’m a little bit of a bigger girl but no taller - I’m a brand new twenny-three year old young lady! Woo-woo!
I celebrated by visiting Coventry Cathedral’s showing of the John and Yoko give peace a chance exhibition - a number of previously unseen photos of the bed-in. It was pretty excellent. There was no photography allowed and I don;t think they’re online, so I’m gonna have to draw a number of the pictures to my best recollection so as to give y’all an idea of it. It was really nice though, and if you get a chance you should definitely go.
Then we came home, and my beloved and I cooked an excellent (no really) roast duck dinner. A GOOD FINE DAY.
Please enjoy my present to myself; Last year (or 2008?)’s Jane Marple dans le salon Metallic Lace. I do so like a pink skirt.
HEY KIDS! Wanna be like me? Only richer? And more overtly influenced by Jem? El Delgado Buil x Kipling have made it possible!
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!
Well, if that isn’t just the best headline I ever saw (ignoring the fact that there are PERVERTS on the LOOSE). Even beats out this one from Sheffield, I think..
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.
LET'S BE BUDS, BUB IllustratorClaire: Twenty-three year old Illustrator and Englisher, female feminist, interested in being helpful and denouncing things that aren't. Designed and drew the Britsh Style Bloggers logo; available to hire on just about any illustration project. Currently working as a Dinner Lady. For illustration portfolio, click the "tales from the sketchpages" tag or my logo below! Why do I do this? click here. Thank you!
I am not paid - in money or in gifts or favours - to endorse anything here. If I was, I would be bad at it, because lying is ugly.
If you've commented here and it isn't showing up, it's not because I hate you! It's because either wordpress or 1and1 hate me. Give me a shout on claire [at] illustratorclaire.co.uk, or claire [at] britishstylebloggers.org.uk!
Oh, and by the way - I do tend to post on Sundays, so if you find that day a little net-empty.. check back? Great idea!
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