The Final Countdown

 

Wearing: All About Audrey block printed maxi skirt, charity shopped denim waistcoat, Teva flatforms, prescription sunnies. 

It's the final countdown...this time next week we'll be in a field in Somerset, decked out in our Hi-Viz vests, sweaty, bickering and hopefully halfway through the build. 

South American pendant (second hand find) , brass earrings (bought in India, 2001)

Now we've added a Sunday morning swim to our fitness regime, I've designated Saturday my official day of rest, with no Wii Fit workout or running and nothing too strenuous. After a bit more festival prep and a walk to Lidl, I spent the rest of the day in the garden reading, finishing Jess Kidd's The Night Ship and making a start on Tracy Chevalier's, At The Edge of the Orchard.

Mum's brass and copper bangles plus a wooden ring she made in the 1960s, everything else charity shopped. 

Teva flatforms, bought with my Glastonbury money in July 2023. 

After watching guilty pleasure, The Hit List, on the BBC we found the uber-cool Western, The Harder They Fall on Netflix, which we'd wanted to see at the cinema when it was released but the timings didn't work out.

What a film! The styling, the soundtrack, Idris Elba...it's brutal but brilliant! 

Wearing: Vintage silk kaftan (eBay, 2018)

The baths are busy first thing on a Sunday morning but by 8.30am the roast dinner brigade have left and the pool is virtually empty. I get up at my usual crack-of-dawn time, bring mugs of tea back to bed and read for an hour or so before chucking on a kaftan and walking into town, often passing pissed-up clubbers staggering home.

After tea, toast and Laura Kuenssburg on catch-up, it was a day spent outside in the sunshine. After filling the garden waste bin ready for our fabulous cat lady to wheel out whilst we're away, I finished Tracy Chevalier and moved on to Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers and those if you who said you'd read it and loved it, I couldn't agree more. It's spellbinding.

That's the other pendant I bought from Walsall's newest charity shop last week, threaded onto a vintage dowry necklace

We started watching Adam Curtis's new documentary series, Shifty, on the i-player, charting the decline of Britain's democracy, a kaleidoscopic mix of news footage, vox pops, home videos, pop videos and archive footage of celebrities and political profiles - a grim reminder of just how shit things were under Thatcher. 

   

This morning, after my usual Monday morning routine of yoga, a run and watering the houseplants we headed off to the council tip. I normally let Jon go on his own but he lured me with the promise of charity shopping.

As usual, our journey involved a soundtrack and today it was this charity shopped treasure, which we sang along to with our hands in the air and the windows wound down, recalling work nights out spent in tacky city centre nightclubs and sweaty summer nights in Greece.

Wearing: Anokhi maxi dress (bought from their Chowpatti Beach store in Mumbai in 2020), Bhanuni by Jyoti blouse Anthropology via Vinted, 2022), Corral cowboy boots, prescription sunnies.

 

Although it's sandal weather I needed to test out my new to me cowboy boots just in case I take them to Glasto. I can verify that after an hour of wandering around the chazzas my feet felt great.

The tooled leather bag came from a charity shop, Jon added the vintage Hindu metal signs to it.

Is it just me or are you also attracted to the colours of the outfit you're wearing when you're charity shopping? This morning it was all about the muted earth tones, snaffling a 1980s cord jacket, a vintage woven leather & studwork Western belt, a 1980s Inspirations satin waistcoat, a silver and sequin embellished oversized knit top from posh label, James Lakeland and a cotton and filet crochet jacket.

We also picked up this crazy fake fur jacket and a 1980s bloke's silk waistcoat with a rather cool Versace style print. 

I'm keeping this! A super groovy retro inspired swimsuit with the labels still attached, snaffled from the £1 basket. 

Jon scored some vintage vinyl including school disco faves Imagination and Five Star, the Pearson family were UK's answer to The Jacksons (RIP Stedman).

Madchester band, Airhead (formerly Jefferson Airhead until Jefferson Airplane took legal action), Birmingham band Birdland, Indie stalwarts, echo belly and Johnny Panic and The Bible of Dreams (aka Tears for Fears).

My next task is figuring out what I'm going to wear next week.. the festival suitcase awaits!

See you soon!