Five Days in October

What have I been up to since I last posted?

Thursday, being a non-swimming day, kicked off with a 30 minute yoga & muscle-building workout on the Wii Fit. In the words of Caron Wheeler & Soul II Soul, Keep on Movin'! After breakfast I changed into an early 1970s Ritu Kumar for Monsoon midi dress I bought from eBay eight years ago.

These Clarks nubuck biker boots are a recent Vinted acquisition.

We drove over to the council tip to drop off some garden waste before having a rummage in the on-site tip shop. I rescued this jute lampshade from the "free" bin. Back at home I turned it upside down, wedged a ceramic plant saucer in the bottom and popped my Monstera inside. 

Priced at £2.50 but bearing the original price tag of £22.99, this gorgeous gold and blue jute bag reminded me of the bags you always see for sale for £££s in those chi-chi tourist boutiques in Greece. 

There's a few charity shops around the corner from the tip so we had a wander, picking up a needlecord cowboy shirt with snap fasteners for the stockroom plus this choice piece of vintage vinyl, Rod Stewart's album Every Picture Tells a Story, released in 1971, for the princely sum of 50p.

I spent the afternoon trying to sort out my clothes for our upcoming trip. After tea we continued watching Pierre, the new Channel 4 series about a West London duty solicitor starring one of our favourite actors, the wonderful David Harewood OBE. 

Friday was a swimming day so we left the house at 7am, walked into town and were in the water 20 minutes later. I've recently upped my game and now swim 6km a week (that's 3.75 miles in old money). How's the hip? You know what arthritis is like, it changes from day to day but it's only three more weeks until my appointment with the orthopaedic consultant.

After our Spoons breakfast we did a bit of tree hugging. The council are proposing that these beautiful trees are removed from the town centre to make way for the new Sprint bus which promises to shave 7 minutes off the usual journey time to Birmingham (which will still be slower than the train). Residents have just under a fortnight left to raise objections. The council has printed the incorrect email address on both its website and the official notices, I'd like to think its an accident but the cynic in me says otherwise.

We live in one of the most deprived areas in the UK, trees are not only good for the environment but add some cheer to our increasingly derelict high street.

A rummage in the charity shops gleaned a vintage straw boater, a Betty Barclay Y2K fake Afghan coat and a 1980s alpaca and wool Italian-made jumper.

A rummage in the charity shops gleaned a vintage straw boater, a Betty Barclay fake Afghan style coat and a 1980s alpaca and wool Italian-made jumper.

I wore a vintage Afghan dress (bought from a vintage fair in 2017) with a chazza shopped Baker Boy cap and my Swedish Ten Points boots (photo below for 50 and Counting).

Jon dropped me off at True Beauty to get my nails done. Unusually for me I knew what I wanted before I got there, a teal blue, which will compliment the browns and rusts I'm currently embracing.  

Later we watched Silver Haze, a British film about a nurse who after a traumatic event 15 years previously is bent upon revenge until she falls in love with one of her patients.   

We had a lie-in on Saturday morning and read until 9am. Jon and I walked the long way round to the corner shop and treated ourselves to The Guardian which we read over posh coffees at the kitchen table.

The manager of one of the town centre chazzas thought of me when this Fashion Sketchbook was donated. People always seen to assume I'm good at art when nothing could be further from the truth but I had a go at sketching some of my recent outfits and was quite surprised with the results. It's rather addictive 

After the success of last year's school reunion, we decided to do it all over again.

I wore this vintage Hilary Floyd maxi a friend found for me in a Devon charity shop six years ago.

 

Like last year we shared our Queen Mary's High School for Girls gathering with the boys from Queen Mary's Grammar. We'd got too much to talk about to take many photos but thanks to Ian for snapping all of us together.

See you all in 2027!

It was my turn to make the tea on Sunday morning, which I brought back to bed and continued with my female-led Western, Nunslinger, which is proving to be a cracking read. 

After breakfast I sorted out next year's Glastonbury trader application and then got dressed and spent a couple of hours in the garden with Jon, sweeping up leaves and pruning bushes, dressed in a me-made maxi skirt, a chazza shopped tee-shirt and a secondhand Levi's Type 1 jacket .  

The rest of the day was spent reading and sketching and after tea we watched the final of the Great Celebrity Pottery Throwdown and the last episode of Pierre (fingers crossed Channel 4 commission a second series, we loved it!)

Today (Monday) kicked off with a 2km swim. There's a problem with the heat pumps so the water was a bit cooler but I barely noticed a difference after the first couple of lengths. The showers, on the other hand, were icy! 

We bumped into an old mate in Spoons, had a chat with him and then had a look around the charity shops before walking home. Jon got three 1980s 12" singles, including a white label, and I found a £3 teeshirt with an Eye of Time print which originally came from the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres (which I visited in the 1980s but, being a penniless student, could only afford a postcard from the museum gift shop). 

Although it's supposed to warm up later this week, it was chilly enough to need the jacket Nikki gave me to walk down to the pool, which I wore with this 1960s Indian cotton maxi dress a blogging pal sent me back in 2020.

The rest of the week is looking busy so I'm planning on a lazy afternoon of reading, once I've caught up with Blogland.

See you soon!