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!

October Outfits

Hello! I've fallen out of the habit of photographing my daily outfits over the last few months, so here's what I've been wearing recently (and what I've done when wearing them). 

 

For a rainy 7am walk down to the pool this morning I wore a vintage Panache Indian cotton midi dress (£5!! They're still out there!) with a 1970s needlecord waistcoat and a vintage silk screen printed scarf. 

Good things come to those who wait! I fell in love with these Ten Points Pandora boots on a website four years ago but, at £161.95, they remained a distant dream. Last week a pair (new and unworn) popped up on Vinted for £20, I can honestly say that even with my horribly arthritic feet, they are the most comfortable boots I've ever worn! 

On Tuesday, for a day mostly spent gardening, I wore a Naked Generation dress I'd bought from Ebay in 2022 and my recently charity-shopped Adidas Handball Spezial trainers.

On Monday, another swimming day, I wore an All About Audrey kaftan (bought new back in April) with a vintage velvet waistcoat and a 1970s Sheffield Steel choker. This was swapped for a bikini for an afternoon labouring in the garden. Sunshine plays havoc with my photos but it feeds my soul!

On Sunday, to walk down to the Lidl lockers before stripping off and spending the day gardening, I wore a vintage Oasis Trading block printed maxi skirt, a 1970s Falmers denim jacket and an All About Audrey wrap top bought from their website in 2017. 

On Saturday for a trip to buy some Spring bulbs, I dressed in an All About Audrey recycled cotton sari top and a block printed wrap skirt (both bought in 2024) also by All About Audrey - I'm not sponsored, I just love their clothes! 

On Friday I wore an All About Audrey dress (bought in November, 2024) along with a vintage block printed Indian cotton waistcoat and a 1920s Liberty scarf I bought from a car boot sale in 2009. I also wore some Missoni x Converse, bought for a song on Vinted earlier this year.  We went swimming, had breakfast in Spoons and then drove over to the dentist for our bi-annual NHS check-up (all good!) followed by an afternoon reading in the sunshine. 

Thursday was mostly spent at home but we popped out to Argos to pick up a new kitchen bin after the bottom fell out of our old one - so not a frivolous purchase! I wore an Amanda Palmer Y2K tour tee with a vintage Forbidden Fruit cheesecloth maxi skirt. The Mexican leather belt, which is tooled all along the length with the word, charro (cowboy), was a recent charity shop find. 

What have I found in the charity shops this week? At 2 for £1 the bookshelves in the clearance chazza are always worth a browse and of the four I bought I've already read three of them. White Lightning (a man who returns to his native South Africa and embarks on a voyage of self-discovery), White Eagles Over Serbia (Lawrence Durrell's gripping tale of a British spy on a covert mission within Tito's Yugoslavia) and The Litten Path (set in a pit village in 1984, a family fall apart during the dark days of the Miner's Strike). 

Nunslinger sounds mad, the story of a nun who, in 1864, whilst making her way west to the promise of a new life in California, gets falsely accused of murder and goes on the run with a couple of outlaws. I shall crack on with reading it once I've caught up with the blogosphere. 

Whilst there's been nothing of interest in the chazzas vintage-wise, these three modern garments caught my eye, a cotton maxi dress from Urban Outfitters (£2.99), a H&M alpaca and wool jumper with the original tags still attached (£3) and a cotton & linen embroidered blouse from Next (£2). Our charity shops are still great value for money!

Remember me putting my spider plants outside during the first heatwave? Well, I've finally brought them indoors, repotting all of them as they've gone crazy. Some of the spiderlings had even taken root in the borders so I'm leaving them to do their thing. 

For the last eight years we've gone away just after End of the Road so it's been quite odd being at home for most of September, the garden has been tamed, the house is looking reasonably tidy, the Kinky Shed is no longer scary and we've finally got around to putting up a retractable line up outside the kitchen door, making it easier to rescue the washing when it rains. (We bought the washing line from Wilko, our store shut down in 2022!)

Don't worry, we do have a trip coming up very soon. I did intend to pack my bag whilst Jon was out this afternoon but ended up blogging instead...ah well, there's always tomorrow!

Thanks for reading, see you soon!