XVIII

Sunday, August 31, 2008
Virgo (Aug 23 - Sep 22)
This is a great day to plant the seeds of your intentions, for yesterday's New Moon rendered your imagination into fertile ground for singing and talking about new ideas. But don't worry if your friends think you are crazy, for you don't feel constrained by the same rules as everyone else. Give yourself permission to dance to the beat of a different drummer.

vintage nightdress worn as top, ankle skirt and petticoat made into a puffball skirt, ryan vintage belt, dorothy perkins shoes and satchel from a charity shop.


LOOKBOOK birthday look


POSTSECRET birthday secret

metro station got it right - i won't be seventeen forever!
another year older....yikes.

Current Affairs

colour coding buttons; accompaniment - Empire Records

playing with the ever obedient doug

and naughty old max

seeing fountains abbey

and tennis playing pig scarecrows

attending perverted park-after-dark picnics

giving gifts to my fellow picnicker and beloved boozehound

it's my 18th party in less than 24 hours. the dj has been notified of my ever-changing music taste. recently, i've had sickos and K on the brain. but they aren't really party material. and, worst of all, i still don't know what to wear!

Fly Away Home

i love birds. new H&M t-shirt as testimony.
so do iron and wine, and gregory and the hawk (i love how she messes up in that video)
my sister makes fun of me because whenever i see a bird, i shout it out.
"sparrow! duck! blue tit! moorhen! canada geese!"

ashes of roses

All I know is something like a bird within her sang,
All I know she sang a little while and then flew on,
Tell me all that you know, I'll show you snow and rain.

If you hear that same sweet song again, will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passin' by,
Laugh in the sunshine, sing, cry in the dark, fly through the night.

Don't cry now, don't you cry, don't you cry anymore.
Sleep in the stars, don't you cry, dry your eyes on the wind.

All I know is something like a bird within her sang,
All I know she sang a little while and then flew off,
Tell me all that you know, I'll show you snow and rain.
- The Grateful Dead

RIP bird.

p.s. metronomy.

Happy Birthday, You Octogenarian Hag

today was my grandma's 80th, so my family and i went to yorkshire. my big sister sophie drove me across and we ate our weight in skittles whilst belting out fleetwood mac and singing along at antisocial volumes.
we had an amazing three course meal, did presents (i got an early one - i can't believe i'll be 18 a week today!) and cake, and my gran "enjoyed it from the tip of her toes to the top of her head". i love her to pieces, so that's always nice to hear. we went to chatsworth house afterwards, to walk off the roast beef and creme brulee with darcey the miniature daschund.
now i'm staying with my aunt, uncle and cousin for the bank holiday weekend.
the grey bag and yellow jumper are new buys from saturday. ella and i went to manchester, only to find it was the end of gay pride. we missed the parade because we were too busy chowing down on some sushi, but saw a pair of the most fabulous drag queens in selfridges when we were browsing through mac make-up. if we ever meet again, i'll demand style tips.

Cakes:

a mini adventure into the realm of baking, featuring the housewifery skills of fi and rhi...

we did it by the book

weighed and measured

mixed and creamed and stirred

put them in the oven as gently as we would put children to bed

some of them were just too h-o-t-t

so we gave them the bob marley treatment - jammin'

time for icing, icing baby





like an art form

check out those mad icing skillz.
THE END.

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

- Sylvia Plath
isn't she fantastic? if she'd been born a few decades later, she could have been a female Kurt Cobain. a woman from the 1950s, writing as if she were in The Grateful Dead...it fascinates me.
i hope someone buys me The Bell Jar for my birthday.

Hair Raising

i completely forgot that i actually have an account on LOOKBOOK.nu and only realised after stumbling across the website looking for hair inspiration last week. how stupid of me!
ironic that i now have hair of a similar length of the beauteous Celeste Cerro, (only mine tends to stand on end, reminiscient of unruly schoolboys rather than sit smooth and sleek on my head) and she's clearly pegged to be a firm favourite of mine.

"I also have no idea what in the hell I'm doing." - although in theory i heartily agree with her, after yesterday it has to be said i have some inkling...
i got my a level results and with my A in english language and B,B for drama and theatre studies, and medieval history, i will be off to Edinburgh in less than a month. everyone on the college carpark probably knows this by now, due to my embarrassing outburst of excitement.
what with all my university prep on it's way as well at my 18th birthday at the end of the month, you can imagine that the summer is coming to a very volatile end.

Fly?

my sister went back to london today.
she brought me a present.

fly brooch - karen walker
denim dress - H&M

Sourwood Mountain

Chickens a-crowin' on Sourwood Mountain,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day,
So many pretty girls I can't count 'em,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day.

My true love, she's a blue-eyed dandy,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day,
A kiss from her is sweeter than candy,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day.

My true love lives over the river,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day,
A hop and a skip and I'll be with her,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day.

My true love is a blue-eyed daisy,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day,
If she don't marry me I'll go crazy,
Ho-dee-ing-dong-doodle allay day.


my grandparents are here until tuesday. my grandpa likes to recite poetry to me, and to be silly. so silly poetry is pretty much his forte. i found Sourwood Mountain in his "Faber Book of Popular Verse". my gran likes to teach me how to cook and speak a little welsh, and to tell me about our family, like my great grandfather who fixed watches after he came home from france in the first world war. he used to travel to all the farms around and fix their clocks and watches - all the farmhouses had grandfather clocks, and many were so old that they only had one hand because the folk who lived there were only interested in the hour and not the seconds or minutes.


it's come to my attention why i read blogs and why i write one myself. because of wonderful quietly intense posts like this one on Prick Your Finger, appreciative of small moments and detailing things that aren't necessarily of desperate importance, nor about incredibly exciting events, photographs of the prettiest people or brash moments of self gratification. the post led me to discover fleur oakes, some kind habadashery heroine like a character you would expect to find only in stories. i'd like to think that somewhere in all my own self indulgent ramblings, someone saw me as having a little depth and thought of me a little like i thought of fleur.

Bon Vacance

lucky girl that i am, i'm just back from another holiday. i've been in portugal with vic and her family for the last week - sun, sea, sand and sambuca. good times!
here are some photographs from france, the family holiday a few weeks ago.