Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

After almost a month of using Darlaston baths, on Wednesday the Gala pool was finally up and running and I was beside myself with excitement. 

Expecting my mile swim to be followed by a Spoons breakfast and a look around the charity shops, I wore this 1970s maxi in celebration, only to discover that the kitchen was closed for refurbishment so we went straight back home. The dress didn't go unnoticed, it got lots of love on TikTok.

I've got a bit of a thing about chokers at the moment so I raided Mrs Kaur's shop for braid and made a few of my own. I'm wearing the purple one with my dress. 

After Monday morning's frost and Tuesday's bitter chill, Wednesday afternoon brought a hailstorm of biblical proportions. Thursday felt a little more Spring-like so I thought I'd give this 1970s printed cotton pinafore dress by David Silverman an outing.

A 50-plus influencer recently claimed that floral dresses worn with denim jackets were a no-no for older women and loads of her followers promised never to dress like that ever again. Don't people have minds of their own? Would you change your style on the word of a stranger on the internet? I'm the opposite, as soon as I read a comment like that, I develop a desperate urge to dress in that way and immediately pulled on the Levi's Type 1 denim jacket I'd scored from Vinted last month. 

I needed to collect a Vinted parcel so Jon and I had a leisurely stroll down to the pickup point, a former vetinary clinic but now a Kurdish-run convenience store. It's an amazingly well-stocked shop, the array of artisan chocolate and European savoury snacks is astonishing and I counted seven varieties of cheese in the fridge (Gouda, Edam, Cheddar, Feta, Paneer, Haloumi and Stilton). One of the young men who works there told me he'd seen me on the internet so, if he's reading this, hello!!

Check out the groovy label on my Vinted purchase! Anthea Proud was best known for her high-end girl's dresses, often made from Liberty fabric, in the 1960s and 1970s. This grown-up sized dress was listed as being damaged and priced accordingly. I love a bit of mending and soon repaired the damaged area.

As wel as being a talented designer, Anthea Proud also had a well-known husband, Ian Davidson. As well as being an acclaimed screen writer (TV credits included Sorry, The Two Ronnies and The Brittas Empire), he also appeared in my Dad's favourite programme, Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

And here's the dress in all its glory, worn to walk down to the swimming pool at 7am this morning. 

Disclaimer...I changed my boots when I got home, the ones I wore to town crippled me!

After our swim we walked to Wetherspoons only to discover that the kitchen wasn't reopening until lunchtime so, with time to kill before the shops opened, we popped into the Co-op and had coffee and toasted teacakes in Coffee Republic. We were surprised when the server asked if we wanted jam with our teacakes, is that normal? Surely there's only one thing you spread on teacakes...butter! 

The calm before the storm...it was rammed by the time we left. 

I've not posted about our film/TV viewing for a while so this is what we've been watching lately.

The two films we've seen were uber-stylish heist movie Crime 101 with man of the moment, Barry Keoghan and Gus Van Sant's Dead Man's Wire, based on the true story of a botched kidnapping in 1977. In real time, we've been gripped to The Capture, Race Across The World (Jo & Kush for the win!) and loved the fourth series of Dark Winds. We've binge-watched the second and third series of the tense Irish crime thriller, Hidden Assets and finally got around the watching Fargo, I've no idea why its taken us so long as we absolutely loved the film and adore anything by the Coen Brothers. 

Not name dropping or anything but Fargo's Martin Freeman (and his mate, Jason Watkins) visited our stall when we used to trade at London's Classic Car Boot and is so lovely - he actually came over and introduced himself to us...like we didn't know who he was! I've even got a photo to prove it....

Will it be season 3 of Fargo or a film tonight? The bar opens at 7pm, so I'd better go and slice the limes for out rum & cola. 

Have a fabulous weekend and see you on the other side! 

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!