Stars on 45

Hola! Our garden might be a bewildering wilderness but it does make a great backdrop for outfit photos. 

On Saturday I messed around with some side plaits and wore a Kharibu block printed maxi skirt with a Monsoon cotton blouse for a day mostly spent reading and doing stuff around the house.

On Sunday I wore my hair in milkmaid braids and donned a Kharibu block printed maxi dress for  a trip  to the clearance charity shop and coffee round at my brother's. On Monday I wore my hair in side twists accompanied with a Dilli Grey midi dress and Dilli Grey quilted jacket (worn inside out) for an exciting coffee date. With who? Well, seeing as you asked......

On the 10:10, bound for Birmingham International back in December, a beautiful woman boarded the train carrying a travel bag. I bet she's not off to Tenerife, I whispered to Jon but, lo and behold, she ended up on the same flight and even more surprisingly, on the way home we were seated next to each other. She told me that she'd pointed me out to her friend and said, I bet that beautiful woman isn't going to Tenerife and we spent the four hour flight chatting. Upon landing and reunited with Jon, I couldn't stop talking about my new friend. Did you swap numbers? He asked, and of course, me being me, it hadn't occurred to ask. Fast forward ten days later and would you believe it, we bumped into each other in town. As soon as I left the airport I was kicking myself for not getting your number, she told me. On Monday we finally met up and spent almost three hours chatting. It's crazy to think that we've lived a couple of streets away from each other for almost a quarter of a century and never met before! 

On Tuesday (today!) it was the turn of a Naked Generation block printed midi dress and pigtails for swimming, 'Spoons and some charity shopping. 

And, talking of which, here's a few recent finds....

A job lot of vintage 1980s mohair hand knit jumpers with the original shop tags which had been donated by the owner of a Birmingham boutique which had closed down several decades ago. I'm saving these for the festivals.

Two pairs of earrings (£1.25 and £1.50 respectively). The green glass ones (they look more turquoise in this photo) are in my ears right now.

I was mad about Art Deco as a kid but these days lean towards the more fluid lines of Art Nouveau. I couldn't resist this 1930s English-made beehive plant pot I found lurking in the 50p bin. I've no idea where Etsy sellers get their daft prices from, there's an identical one listed on there for £60!  

This vintage ceramic pinch jug (£2) is the perfect match with our 1960s Secla, Portugal "owl" mugs  found in a charity shop a couple of years ago. 

I love a wash bag especially when it features the divine Hera print by Liberty and costs less than a £1!

Now taking pride of place in the utility room, these framed 19th Century advertisements were £2 from the clearance charity shop on Sunday. I studied Russian at school & was absolutely useless at it. Mr Köpke's assessment in my end of year report read Victoria does not understand this language. The only word I can recognise on those prints is Moscow! 

Fellow vinyl enthusiast & lifelong collector, Stephanie asked for a peek at our most recently acquired 45s. As I've mentioned before, we still own almost every record we've ever bought but, as loads of them are tucked away in one of the sheds, sometimes it's easier to repurchase a single rather than risk life and limb rummaging for an existing copy. Several of our local chazzas sell 3 singles for £1 so you can't really say no, can you? 

I was obsessed with Haysi Fantayzee back in the day, I've got their one and only album Battle Hymns for Children Singing (1983) somewhere and bumped into Kate Garner (now a photographer) in downtown Mumbai many years ago. Kid Creole & The Coconuts takes me back to our girls' school discos and The Housemartins remind me of my college years.

Booker T, Mobiles and Haircut One Hundred...more teenage disco memories. 

Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack, choon!

 

I'm pretty sure we've got at least three other copies of Up Town Top Ranking buried in the sheds!

Silly Games, another duplicate (or possibly triplicate!) We both loved it even more after watching Steve McQueen's award winning anthology series Small Axe, where it played continually in the Lovers Rock episode. 

Four weeks into 2024 and I'm on to my 9th & 10th reads of this year. I'm had Jan Marsh's Pre-Raphaelite Women for ages but have only gazed upon the beautiful images so far. Like almost everyone I know, I loved the Inspector Montalbano series on BBC4 and the Andrea Camilleri books are true to the show, with intriguing plots and plenty of witty observations.

This afternoon I completed the fifth and final module of The History of Royal Fashion, a free course run by the University of Glasgow. 

Next week I've enrolled on one of the Open University's free courses, Janis Joplin and The Sexual Revolution. My love of learning makes me a philomath (I'm slightly better with Greek than I was with Russian).

Never mind meerkats, meet our beercat! I know we're biased but isn't William a handsome boy?

I'm off on a girls' day out tomorrow, stay tuned for some tales from the city very soon!