Photos: V&A courtyard; Netherlandish Painted Glass 1500-1530AD; St. Matthias, Fairford Church 1500-1515AD; Necklace, Wally Gilbert; Element from a necklace, Max Frohlich; Coral tiara, Phillips Brothers
Hello, dear readers. Sorry that there was no post last week, I kept meaning to write one but the week got away from me. It was a pretty dreadful week anyway; I’ve called it septimana horribilis in cod latin. Inflicting my sorrows on your good graces would have been awful. It started with a bereavement – a very dear friend passed away, and even worse, I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye and thank you. She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever had the privilege to know and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know how highly I prize that particular virtue, rare as it is. She and her husband really helped me out during one of my years-from-hell and I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it. So, here’s to you Maggie May, hope you’re living it up in heaven, hanging with the angels and doing some serious designing. She made the best handmade greeting cards.
Quite frankly, compared to that, the other problems of the week paled into insignificance but it was all topped by my card getting cloned and used on Friday. Read more
The Road To Nowhere In Fabulous Shoes
Septimana Horribilis
Photos: V&A courtyard; Netherlandish Painted Glass 1500-1530AD; St. Matthias, Fairford Church 1500-1515AD; Necklace, Wally Gilbert; Element from a necklace, Max Frohlich; Coral tiara, Phillips Brothers
Hello, dear readers. Sorry that there was no post last week, I kept meaning to write one but the week got away from me. It was a pretty dreadful week anyway; I’ve called it septimana horribilis in cod latin. Inflicting my sorrows on your good graces would have been awful. It started with a bereavement – a very dear friend passed away, and even worse, I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye and thank you. She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever had the privilege to know and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know how highly I prize that particular virtue, rare as it is. She and her husband really helped me out during one of my years-from-hell and I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it. So, here’s to you Maggie May, hope you’re living it up in heaven, hanging with the angels and doing some serious designing. She made the best handmade greeting cards.
Quite frankly, compared to that, the other problems of the week paled into insignificance but it was all topped by my card getting cloned and used on Friday. Read more
Rus In Urbe
My staycation in London was excellent, apart from finding that pretty much everyone I know is moving to one part of Somerset or the other. What’s that about? It’s completely bizarre. OK, not quite everyone but more than you’d expect. The West Country is ridiculously beautiful; I was lucky enough to drive from there to London via the A303, passing through Somerset, Wiltshire, Hampshire etc. Seriously, even on an overcast day, it was one gorgeous vista after another. Fields of poppies, fields of lavender, rolling hillocks, cows, sheep, it was absurdly picturesque. We also had the obligatory hold-up at Stonehenge when all the cars slow right down and we gawp at the site. If you are not in a hurry, nix the M4/M5 corridor and go M3/A303. You can thank me later. I had one of my fey turns as I was approaching Stonehenge; I must have been crossing a leyline or summat. Or maybe I ate a dodgy prawn, for the more prosaic among you 🙂 Read more
Holiday 😃 😃 😃
Zhongshuge bookshop, Guiyang, China. Be still my beating heart. I’ll just put a little camp bed in one aisle and I’m all set. What a beautiful space; Li Xiang, architectural genius, I salute you.
Le Mistral gift shop, Tokyo. If I could have my own store……….
Hello, pop pickers. Now, there’s a retro greeting for y’all. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while – it has been an absolutely mental couple of weeks but things have finally settled down. I’m a woman of leisure at the moment, apart from finishing the blasted photo images for this site. Tablets, perfect. Smartphones, perfect. Laptops, not so much. I had to stop because I lost the will to live. If any of you are expert at getting Woocommerce product images to stop being blurry, for the love of God, please get in touch. I have the week off and I was considering going away but 1) I’m too cheap to pay the £400 for a couple of days and 2) I can’t face the airport hullaballo. I don’t know why the eco-warriors bother with demos; just get the government (whoever they may be this week…) to make travelling even more unpleasant and we’ll all stay at home. I’ll mostly be staycationing in London. I may even get on one of those tourist buses and pretend I’m a tourist. Read more
What Is Truth?
Ta-dah! The re-jig of this lovely website continues. We finally had the photos done properly but the ongoing saga with that is such that the wretched pictures which are crystal-clear in other contexts are coimg out blurred on the products pages. Aaarrrghhh! Anyway, that can be fixed (surely?) but they are really nice pics. More about them when they are in properly.
So, what a fortnight. The limpet PM finally got dislodged although she’s still in residence , refusing to take the hint as usual. What a shower! I’m not a fan but I think I’ll go easy on the invective as this is after all a company blog, not that you’d notice from all the other rants I’ve gone on. Theresa May is an irrelevance, it’s just a shame she was allowed enough latitude to do such harm to the country. She didn’t do it alone though, equal shame goes to all the MPs and civil servants who sought to subvert a democratic vote and help turn the UK into a laughing stock. For the first time I actually heard people speculating about the government fixing votes and ballot boxes going missing, such is the mistrust of the populace. How did things get so bad without us noticing? Bread and circuses of course – we were all busy watching Love Island or BGT or following some pathetic Royal non-drama, we assumed our democracy was rock-solid and took our eyes off the ball. Read more