The Return - What I've Been Wearing & Doing Since Santorini

 Hello! Here's another round-up of the clothes I've been wearing and what I've been doing when wearing them plus some (very amateur) outfit sketches, my latest obsession. 

Saturday 24th October, the first full day at home after our week on Santorini. I wore my vintage India Imports of Rhodes Island maxi with an All About Audrey wrap top for an early morning manicure at True Beauty. After tackling the washing pile and watering all 56 of our houseplants I continued reading Paper Cut by Rachel Taft, the story of a woman who, as a teenager, achieved infamy after committing murder to escape a cult. 

 

We spent the evening watching the new series of The Diplomat on the BBC i-player and drinking rum.

Sunday 25th October. A lazy day of reading, sketching and blogging

I wore the linen embroidered blouse, I'd charity shopped for two quid a couple of weeks ago along with a vintage Samuel Sherman knitted maxi skirt. We watched more of The Diplomat after tea.

Monday 27th October. I wore a vintage Afghan dress by Hindu Kush to walk down to the pool. I managed to maintain my 2km swim speed of 55 minutes. After breakfast in Spoons we had a look around the chazzas, finding a TOAST djellaba for £1 (which originally detailed at £140). After a bright start the day became rather wet and miserable so I spent it reading my next book, Nesting, a woman's fight against the system after she flees her abusive husband.

Meanwhile Jon helped our neighbour move a large tree branch which had been damaged by Storm Austen. Later we finished watching The Diplomat.

Tuesday 27th October. The day kicked off with a Wii Fit workout followed by a 2 hour leaf sweeping session. I wore a Naked Generation blouse and a vintage Phool midi skirt. Liz popped round for coffee and I wrote a blog post. After tea we started watching the new series of Slow Horses.  

Wednesday 28th October. I wore a me-made maxi, an Aldo trilby (charity shop, 2016) and a vintage Eastern European blouse (Vinted) to walk down to the pool. Another 2km swim (Jon did 1.25km). We came straight home after our Spoons breakfast. I spent the afternoon in the garden, removing the geraniums from the window boxes and potting them up for Winter. Later we continued Slow Horses as well as the new series of Race across The World.

Thursday 29th October. After my Wii Fit workout I changed into an All About Audrey wrap skirt, a velvet Afghan waistcoat and 1970s Ayesha Davar cheesecloth blouse. I sent off another festival application and removed the Holiday Mode setting from our Vinted listings, selling three items in a matter of minutes, which Jon posted after I'd wrapped them. After some more leaf sweeping, I vacuumed upstairs and did some dusting. After tea we started watching Breaking Bad - talk about late to the party! I started reading The Vanishing Half, a novel about twin sisters growing up in segregated America and living very different lives.

Friday 30th October. I wore a vintage Anokhi quilted blouse with a contemporary Anokhi maxi dress for our third swim of the week. Afterwards we had breakfast in Spoons and went for a look around the chazzas, coming back with a pair of bronze curtain finials and two packs of Portuguese azulejo tile stickers (£5).

I sold a couple more things on Vinted which Jon dropped off at Ajay's, collecting my latest purchases at the same time (2 x All About Audrey tops for the grand total of £6!). Later we drank rum and finished series one of Breaking Bad.

Saturday 1st November. A lazy start to the day, reading in bed till 8.30. I stripped and changed the bed whilst Jon cooked breakfast. I pegged the washing on the line but we had to rescue it when the heavens opened a couple of hours later. I listed some stuff on Vinted and spent the rest of the day reading. I wore one of my vintage block printed kaftans.

 Later we met up with Liz and Al in The Avion, the Aldridge branch of Wetherspoons, before a curry in Laboni. I wore a Seventies Soul co-ord I'd bought from Vinted last year.

Sunday 1st November. I was awake at 5am so made tea and went back to bed, starting and finishing the cult Korean psychological feminist thriller, Plant Lady. We watched Laura Kuenssberg over coffee and toast before getting dressed and heading to the garden centre to buy some plants to replace the geraniums I'd removed from the window boxes earlier in the week, planting them up as soon as we got home. I wore a vintage Adini maxi I'd found for £1 in a charity shop in 2018.

 

I spent the rest of the afternoon writing a blog post. Later I got changed into a secondhand All About Audrey crushed velvet maxi dress and walked to the Wheatsheaf (our nearest pub) to meet up with Liz and Al for Off The Track, a monthly vinyl-only DJ night, playing the finest soul, funk, jazz, rare grooves and disco. What a night, it was like Walsall used to be in the late 1980s, packed to the rafters with cool, stylish like-minded folk some of whom I'd not seen in decades. We loved it!

Monday 2nd November. Although we weren't out late and only had a couple of pints, our early morning swim felt like hard work! After a Spoons breakfast we headed straight home, doing the washing, pegging it outside and packing more Vinted parcels, which Jon deposited at Ajay's. I wore a vintage silk Treacy Lowe dress and 1970s printed velvet blazer by Eclipse. I spent the afternoon reading the book I'd started in bed the previous evening, an epic of love and family, India and America and tradition and modernity. 

To thank Jon for his help with the storm-damaged tree last week, our neighbour cooked us a meal. Her food always smells amazing and, I'm delighted to report, tastes even better. Nothing beats proper homemade Indian food, cooked with love. Enjoying Breaking Bad, we started on season 2 after we'd eaten our feast.

Tuesday 2nd November. Up at 6am (On non-swimming days I set the alarm for 6.30 but am always awake before then), I did a Wii Fit workout and cleaned the lounge before Jon got up and joined me for breakfast. While he was at the dentist, I sanded down the top of the bathroom cabinet, covering it with the tile stickers I'd found in a charity shop last week. Back from the dentist, Jon applied a coat of varnish to (hopefully) prolong their life. 

I wore the All About Audrey tunic I'd bought from Vinted over a vintage David Silverman printed cotton pinafore dress.

My plans to do some afternoon leaf sweeping and photograph stock in the garden for Vinted were thwarted when it started raining so I did a bit more sketching and repaired a dress before catching up with Blogland. We've got more Breaking Bad planned for later. 

Thanks for reading, see you soon!