Urban Camo

I've worn this All About Audrey crushed velvet dress, bought second-hand via Vinted, to the pub but yesterday was the first time I'd worn it charity shopping where it not only got lots of love but brought us some chazza luck, too.

2 x unbranded cotton prairie skirts, a Topshop maxi with the £35 tags still attached, a 1980s English-made fake fur coat and a contemporary faux snow leopard coat for the Kinky Shed and a Frida Kahlo tee-shirt for me. 

 Vintage 1950s souvenir scarf from Paris, 1970s St Michael scarf, 1970s Van Heusen shirt, 1960s patchwork suede handbag & a British-made 1980s Harrington jacket for the Kinky Shed. Jon's keeping the American Apparel tee-shirt (their tee-shirts are USA-made & great quality) and the box of thread is for me.

A Jamaica track top with the tags still attached, a 1970s American-made satin jacket and a Ted Baker wool bomber jacket with the most insane lining which Jon's pinched. 

Autumn Meadow maxi dress from hip Venice Beach label, Raga (currently retails at $120), vintage 1960s tartan wool dressing gown, vintage 1960s Indian cotton maxi dress by Java, Vintage Ben Sherman shirt and a NATO-issue camo jacket.

These English Heritage bone china measuring cups are decorated with a design inspired by 18th Century Chinese wallpaper. They're a bit twee but really useful for Jon as he's always having to ask me to show him the difference between a dessertspoon and a tablespoon when he's cooking!

These bronze souvenirs cost a fortune in the museum gift shops in Greece. Athena with her spear, Athena with her chariot & the Spartan warrior were £1 each and the lady on the counter gave me the tiny Minerva with blue enamel eyes for free! Some chancer on Etsy's got the same Athena with spear listed for £165...utter madness! 

Constance Collier as Athena (1912) by Charles Buchel (1872-1950)

Often referred to as Pallas Athene, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, war and heroic endeavour and is the patron of Athens. She is depicted with a shield and spear and the aigis--a snake-trimmed cape adorned with the monstrous visage of Medusa. Her consort is the owl. 

I blend in with the garden so well I could be in camo!

 

Until yesterday I only owned one tee shirt so Frida makes it two. I was excited to see that it was from the Freida Kahlo Corporation but after I got it home was horrified to discover a Primarni label inside the side seam. No wonder it was only £1! 

The bluebells continue to bloom, the wild garlic has just started to flower and there's frogspawn in the pond. It ain't particularly warm today (12°C) but its starting to look a lot like Spring.

During lockdown we made it our mission to tame the garden, five years on and the wilderness has won the battle. I can't watch Gardeners World any more, it makes me feel inadequate.

All is not lost though, this clematis has bloomed for the first time, I rescued it from the clearance shelf in B&M last year.

Over the last week we've rewatched the wonderful Boys from the Blackstuff (currently on the BBC I-player) and binge-watched the superb Australian Apple Cider Vinegar  & British Toxic Town on Netflix. 

Swords and sandals at the ready...we've just started watching Troy: Fall of a City (originally on the BBC, now on Netflix). I'm not saying I'm a geek or anything but the category for tonight's Pointless prize final was gods and goddesses named in Homer's Iliad & Odyssey. All three of my answers, Demeter, Thetis and Hephaestus were pointless! 

Thanks for reading, see you soon!

Houseplants!

 

On checking my fitness app this morning I discovered that I'd walked almost 9 miles since Saturday. I've not been anywhere noteworthy or done any running, that's just me constantly walking to the lockers and the local parcel shops and back, its been a bumper weekend for Vinted sales! Anyway, with the weather being so grim, it's been a day of pottering and, with it being a Monday, houseplant watering day. 

It was too wet to contemplate outdoor photos earlier (it's now late afternoon and rather lovely) but I rather like the effect of flash on these pictures. Long-time readers will, I'm pretty sure, recognise this embroidered Indian cotton maxi dress which was a gift from a German blogging friend back in 2010, it used to belong to her hippy mother in the 1960s. 

 Lacking in windowsills, we have houseplants anywhere with a bit of light. I try and rotate them every few months so they all get some sunshine although some are getting far too big to move, like the Umbrella plant (or should I call it a tree?) I'm watering in the music room. It was 12" when I bought it during lockdown, now we have to get the ladders out and lop the top off. Fortunately it roots really well and we've managed to grow four substantial plants from the trimmings. 

The Mother-in-Law's Tongue (I think it's known as a Snake Plant elsewhere in the world) started off as one plant and has now become six. Those ceramic head pots were from Poundland last year (although they weren't £1).

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday (Easter Sunday) it was gloriously sunny and warm and we spent most of the day outside - Jon doing some tasks in the garden and me photographing Vinted stock. 

I'm very much drawn to blue at the moment, possibly as there's so much of it blooming the the garden, swatches of bluebells, clouds of forget-me-nots and an annoying amount of green alkanet (which is actually blue). I wore this 1970s Mayur block printed midi dress (bought from a neighbour in 2018) with my chazza-shopped pewter trainers.

 

These Indian dresses can very gauzy and sheer but I hate having to wear an nylon underskirt underneath them as it takes away the joy from wearing cotton. What's the alternative when it's too warm for the usual thermal leggings? My used, abused and worn to death, Levi 501s!

Our amazing charity-shopped tagine's proving to be very useful. We took advantage of the supermarket Easter price war and bought some 8p vegetables from Lidl, using some in yesterday's vegetarian tagine. Jon did a variation of Jack's Not-a-Tagine recipe HERE - highly recommended! 

More blue! On Saturday I wore the Monsoon dress Nikki gave me, with an All About Audrey shirred cotton blouse she'd alerted me to on Vinted and my vintage Anokhi waistcoat worn inside out - that's the beauty of artisan made vintage clothes, the interior is often just as gorgeous as the exterior! 

It was so cold on Saturday that I wore thermals, a jacket, a scarf and gloves to walk to the lockers! Talk about four seasons in a day! 

I spent some of my Vinted earnings on some new Bohemian Bloom reversible cotton bedding, isn't it fabulous? 

Here's the inspiration for my blog title...Squid rock!

Thanks for reading, see you soon.

Good Friday!

It's Good Friday and therefore a public holiday in the UK which, if you're not religious or someone who gets holiday pay, is little more than a minor annoyance. As they're council-run, the swimming baths are closed today so we had to swap our Friday session in the big pool (below) to Thursday. On Fridays the entire pool is open for public swimming but on Thursday its lane swimming only. There's two speed options, medium or fast, and, as everyone keeps telling me what a strong swimmer I am, I opted for the fast lane and to my delight I was able to keep up with the female powerhouse swimming alongside me, clocking up a mile before our Spoons breakfast. This probably means sod all to most of you but to me, who has never in my fifty-eight and a half years on the planet considered themselves in the slightest bit sporty, I feel like I've been reborn!

Anyway, on to the rest of the week. After a warm-ish day on Tuesday, Wednesday was bitterly cold with a cruel east wind. We headed over to Birmingham to visit our regular charity shops and, just like when we'd last visited, came back laden with some fantastic vinyl...vintage and modern. What do you think, Stephanie? 

Like any human in their right mind I already own Back To Black on CD (and had the privilege of seeing Amy Winehouse play live several times) but obviously vinyl is far superior ...and this is the original release, not one of the many later reissues.

It's quite unusual to find contemporary vinyl in the chazzas and Jon soon snapped up 6Music indie favourites, Glass Animals & Bombay Bicycle Club. 

I absolutely love Shawn Mendes' Señorita but as this isn't the later deluxe pressing of this, his third album, it's not on there. However, what we did discover, tucked away inside the sleeve is an official signed photo, maybe the previous owner went off him. Can you see Gordon? He's making himself very comfy.

I couldn't resist these Orla Kiely-inspired earrings. Although I'm all about big earrings I wear studs when I swim.

  These deadstock Disco mugs were £1.50 each. They were made up the road at Royal Stafford in The Potteries which sadly went into administration last month after 180 years of ceramic production.

Jon splashed out £3 on a shirt which matches our bedroom wall beautifully. It was originally from Joe Browns who make some great menswear and homewares but the women's clothing leaves a lot to be desired. 

Yet again I wore my embroidered velvet Naked Generation "Amber" dress, I still can't believe my friend Annie spotted it on Vinted for £12. The wind was playing havoc with the hem when Jon took these photos, I'm amazed I managed to keep my hat on! 

Thursday (swimming day) was thankfully a lot warmer so I wore my Groundies with bare legs (makes stripping off in the changing room a lot easier). I'm wearing a vintage India Imports of Rhode Island maxi skirt, an All About Audrey wrap top (bought in 2017) and a reversible block printed quilted cotton jacket from Kharibu (bought in 2023). The jacket did have a collar but it was forever getting tangled up in my hair so I chopped it off and replaced it with some bias binding. 

The builders brought us gifts, two solar powered garden Buddhas which a house round the corner had left on their garden wall with a free sign attached.

Good to see our billions of bluebells starting to flower. It'll be the Irises next. 

The base is starting to take shape, we're awaiting another delivery of sand for work to continue.

Someone's left their mark in the cement.

Still glowing from my 3.75km run this morning, I went coatless when I walked down the road to drop off my Vinted sales parcels. I wore a vintage Mohanjeet, Paris woven cotton maxi skirt (£5, Vinted) with this embroidered linen Free People jacket (£3, Air Ambulance)...

And another day of bare legs and trainers, this time they're my gold Adidas Continentals, a reissue of the 1980s classics...which Jon found in Age UK a couple of months ago. 

Swimming, running, wearing trainers...whatever next? Brace yourselves, I've been cooking, too. (I haven't been taken over by an alien, honest!)

Tidying the kitchen cupboards earlier in the week I found a tin of golden syrup five years past its use-by date as well as a jar of organic coconut oil reaching the end of its life so when I got back from my swim I decided to have a go at making some vegan flapjacks adapting a recipe I found online. (I'm aware that my American readers concept of a flapjack is completely different to ours, same words, different language!) 

You'll need:

3 and a half cups of porridge oats
1 cup of mixed seeds & dried fruit 
Half a cup of demerara sugar
Three-quarters of a cup of coconut oil (melted)
Half a cup of golden syrup

Method:

1. Line a 8 x 8 baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2. Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir until everything is incorporated.
3. Transfer to the baking tray and level with the back of a spoon.
4. Cook at 180°C for 17 - 20 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown
5. Leave to cool in the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Once cool slice into bars.

Store them in an airtight tin - not necessarily a vintage one like mine which originally held Co-operative biscuits in the late 1950s - but the vintage version IS generally the best version!

Have a fabulous weekend whether or not you do the Easter thing. See you on the other side!