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 Rhode Island maxi skirt 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 sold for £140), perfect for lounging around the house. After a bright start the day became rather wet and miserable so I spent it reading my next book, Nesting, an Irishwoman'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 she'd left. 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 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, trimming and potting them up for Winter. Later we continued Slow Horses as well as the first episode of 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 up. 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 bronzed 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 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, with Jon, walked to the Wheatsheaf (our nearest pub) to meet  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, tasted 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 I'm 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 home, 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 for leaf sweeping and photographing Vinted stock in the garden 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!

Everyday Life Continued...

Hello! Here's another three days of everyday life.

Tuesday morning started, as it usually does, with a 30 minute workout which invariably takes much longer as, being the only human up. I'm at the beck and call of the cats.

Not Gordon, so-named after we discovered he wasn't the Gordon our neighbours, who used to look after the residents of the neighbourhood cat colony, has reverted back to being just Gordon. AWOL for days during the Summer, he's recently moved back into the catio and demands food on, what almost seems like, an hourly basis. If the door's open, he'll lounge around indoors - until William gets fed up with him taking liberties and chases him away. He loves catnip Trump and the other day ran away with him and buried him in the garden.... give that cat a Nobel Peace prize! 

Hopefully we'll be able to get to the vet soon and get those pompoms removed. 

After breakfast we drove over to Birmingham as the dentist needed a 3D scan of Jon's head for his implants. It was a gorgeous morning, making our drive through the leafy suburbs of Harborne and Edgbaston even more beautiful.

I wore my hand-printed 1970s Kate Beaver maxi dress, bought from a charity shop 11 years ago for 99p (HERE).  

Liz called round after lunch and we drove over to Bilston to stock up on larder supplies at Rogers (HERE). It's brilliant if you're not fussy about best before dates and have plenty of storage space as you can only buy by the case or in catering sizes.

We bought two cases of passata, a case of tinned white beans; couscous with Lebanese herbs and Korean spicy noodles. An industrial sized tub of vegetarian bouillon, cases of 100% durum wheat pasta, basmati rice, stir fry sauces, vegan jelly crystals and Mangalore and Goan curry sauce packs (fabulous for festivals). Jon was very good, not swayed by the cases of chocolate or crisps but did cave in when he spotted Hubba Bubba bubblegum..I'm not sure if you still get the Bazooka Joe tattoos inside, I'll have to let you know! 

Back at home I had more time for some fashion sketching...

Saturday night's school reunion dress.

Last Tuesday's outfit (above) and what I wore on Monday.

Wednesday was a swimming day and, happily for those less hardy than me, the boiler had been fixed and the water was back to the normal temperature. Again I swam 2km. We didn't bother with the charity shops after our Wetherspoons breakfast, just popping into B&M for a tin of coffee before walking back home.  Of course, we didn't leave the shop with just the coffee, I couldn't resist this pack of coloured pencils.

Jon did another tip run, depositing another couple of sacks of garden waste and dropping off the books we'd recently finished at the on-site charity shop. Meanwhile I watered the houseplants and pegged the washing out.

I'm wearing a 1970s St Michael embroidered wool blouse, a charity shopped Moroccan leather belt and my vintage India Imports of Rhode Island maxi skirt. 

 Using my new coloured pencils, I did a bit more doodling in my fashion sketchbook. 

 I finally sorted out my travel wardrobe for our upcoming trip! As my friend Betty correctly guessed, we're off to Greek island. Its the latest in the season we've been before and I've been following the weather apps like a woman posessed to get my packing just right (there's no margin for error when you only travel with carry-on). Anyway, the average daytime temperature is currently around 21°C dropping to 16°C at night with the sea at a delicious 23°C! We've visited this island before and there's loads to do (and an excellent bus service) should it not be beach weather. 

Clothing (clockwise from left): Art silk maxi dress (Mrs Kaur's £5 rail), Sari silk kaftan (Vinted), velvet wrap top (Vinted), silk tunic (Vinted), 2 x Anokhi cotton maxi dresses (one bought new in Mumbai, the other from Vinted), silky wrap top (All About Audrey) and a kantha riding jacket (which used to be Nikki's)

Jewellery: 2 x leather wrap bracelets, my turquoise & silver pendant, six rings, my turquoise earrings,  and my Shilpa Silver fishtail earrings. 

Fringed leather bag (charity shop), Teva platform sandals, FatFace reversible bikini (Vinted), 2 x vintage scarves (charity shop), Accessorize cord cap (Vinted), Adidas Superstar 90s (charity shop), Accessorize metallic jute bag (charity shop).

And here's what I'm wearing to travel in, in art form!

We saw Uprising on Wednesday night, Paul "Bourne Identity" Greengrass's film about the real-life Peasant Revolt of 1381. With half of England's population dead from the Black Death, the corrupt oligarths who have the ear of boy king, Richard II, use their positions to enrich themselves whilst oppressing the peasantry. Inspired by the actions of a bereaved ploughman, the peasants rise up and march to London to confront the king. It's a brutal and well-acted watch with a startling contemporary resonance. During the pandemic I researched our family trees, whereas my family line is mostly peasant stock, Lord Jon's is far more illustrious including much of the Plantagenet family (of which Richard II belonged). If we'd been around in Mediaeval England, we'd have been on opposing sides! 

Woody Norman, the actor who plays 14 year old Richard II and looking like the love child of Jack White & Harry Styles! 

Thursday started with a thirty minute Wii fit workout, which was interrupted by me dashing outside to capture the stunning sunrise. After breakfast I dusted and vacuumed downstairs whilst Jon scrubbed the shower and did some washing.

I wore a vintage block printed Indian cotton midi dress I bought from the flea market in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife for 4 Euros along with a 1970s Chelsea Girl waistcoat. I added boots to go outside and do some more leaf sweeping. 

  

I spent the afternoon reading. Never let it be said that my taste in books isn't varied. This week I've followed the exploits of a 19th Century nun shooting her way across America and now it's a friendship between a widow and a Giant Pacific Octopus (passed on from Josy, a friend from swimming). It's a very usual and rather lovely read! (Also, according to the cover, a film on Netflix).

Thanks for reading....see you soon!