Behind Every Smile There's Teeth

Hailstorms, Baltic temperatures and galeforce wind aside, at least we're enjoying a little sporadic sunshine this week.

With the weekend mostly being spent paperhanging (I can't really call it wallpapering as its the ceiling we're tackling) I've been dressed in dungarees for most of the time. It was quite exciting to slip on my Naked Generation dress (eBay, 2020) and a vintage suede jacket to pop to B&Q for more DIY supplies on Monday morning. I did wear the vintage tan leather boots I'd bought from the charity shop on Friday but they pinch my big toes so off to the Kinky Shed they go. 

This midi looks remarkably like a Naked Generation dress but its labelled Mono and was a fraction of the price (new with tags via Vinted). This - with my Anokhi riding jacket over the top - was this morning's choice for swimming, Spoons and a trip to the dentist. My second trip in a week. 

The toothache I'd been plagued with at the beginning of last week turned out to be a gum infection but luckily the antibiotics worked their magic and I've been given a clean bill of dental health. I'm aware of how incredibly fortunate we are to have an NHS dentist, something a quarter of all British adults can't access. Most of our friends have no choice but to pay monthly subscriptions for private dentistry. The bill today cost just us over £80 - this included my emergency appointment (examination, X-Rays and prescription), both Jon & I's biannual check-up and two scale and polishes. 

By the way, it appears I tempted fate when last week I mentioned how I'd not being bothered by the menopause, apparently the teeth and gums are extremely susceptible to any hormonal changes that can take place around the time of the menopause...gah!  

As promised in my last post, here's our recently acquired charity shopped vinyl. (The emboldened acts are those we've seen live.)

The first four collages are the latest 7" purchases - Melanie, Sham 69, The Banned, The Mission, George McCrae, Holly & The Italians, Bow Wow Bow, The Regents, The Alarm, The Reverse Cowgirls, The Late Show, The Real Thing, Gary Numan, Japan, Nick Lowe, a compilation comprising The Jesus & Mary Chain, Redskins, Simply Red and The Style Council, Electribe 101 and Elvis Costello & The Attractions. There's some odd choices but when the assistant insists you take 5 for £1 you'll grab anything that isn't scratched to buggery.

Here's the albums: The Osmonds, Fat Boy Slim, Twenty Flight Rockers, Phoneys & The Freaks (featuring Bonehead from Oasis), a 1976 compilation featuring acts that include Candi Staton, Gordon Lightfoot, Fleetwood Mac and Todd Rundgren and Twiggy (still sealed in the original cellophane).

How many of these artists have you seen live?

My beautiful friend Betty took this book with her to Morocco recently (read her blog HERE) and kindly sent it my way when she'd finished it. It tells the story of the year the author, Tahir Shah and his family spent in Casablanca and is a fascinating tale of the Morrocan mafia, dodgy workmen, superstition and jinns (evil spirits). 

We've been to Morocco a couple of times. The engraved metal Hand of Fatima which still hangs on our bathroom wall was a gift from a shopkeeper we got chatting to in the Petit Socco in Tangier when we first visited in 1992.

Here I am on my first trip as a fresh-faced 25-year-old. With my serial killer fringe, Levi's ribbed tee shirt, a Wonderbra and my Adidas Gazelles I couldn't be more 1990s! 

We stayed at The Hotel Continental in the heart of the souk in Tangier where, two years previously, John Malkovich had stayed and filmed The Sheltering Sky, Bernardo Bertolucci's magnificent film based on the Paul Bowles novel. Abdul, the fez wearing head waiter, had worked there since the Second World War, during breakfast he'd wind up the gramophone and play big band tunes. We visited the Bond baddie's Tangier villa in The Living Daylights, dodged a legion of touts who'd line up outside the hotel each morning and attach themselves firmly to our sides as we walked around le petit socco pointing out the obvious and demanding cash for the privilege. 

We sat in cafes bedecked with graffiti supposedly daubed by The Rolling Stones, paid homage to the Marrakesh rooftop where Talitha Getty posed for that photo, marveled at Yves St Laurent's beautiful blue garden, trekked the Riff Valley, swam in icy cold mountain streams, crossed the country on the overnight Marrakesh Express train where we shared a couchette with the locals and accidentally ended up in an illegal strip joint in downtown Marrakesh with the chief of police (as you do!)

Obviously back in 1992, cameras were analogue and all the pictures we took are stashed away in an album in one of our sheds. I made this little slideshow of our thirty-two year old adventure for my blog a few years ago. Jon's got hair and everything! 

 

I can't talk about books without mentioning my most recent read, The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock. Set in 1917, the book tells the tale of three dirt poor brothers who, after the death of their deranged father and inspired by a cheap dimestore novel, decide to become outlaws, murdering and pillaging their way across the American Midwest. It's darkly comic, Tarantino-esque in its violence and reminds me of one of my favourite films, O Brother, Where Art Thou? It goes straight to the top of Vix's Best Reads of 2024 followed very closely by Matthew Kneale's English Passengers, a biting satire on the evils of Colonialism.

I had to do a double take as I was writing today's blog post, I looked out of the window and spotted one of our handsome urban foxes sunning himself on the lawn. Despite them having dug up my stumpery to make themselves a den I still have a soft spot for Reynard the Fox (although not enough to cough up £8000 for this rare 1701 publication!)

Up until a few months ago, most evenings Mr Fox would wait on the doorstep for William and they'd trot off up the garden together. Being a street cat no longer, William prefers human company. He can't even be bothered chasing Kitty from next door any more, even when she sits on the windowsill snarling at him.

Due to the antibiotics, I've not touched a drop of alcohol for over a week. I'm almost giddy with excitement at the thought of having a glass of Rioja with my tea tonight! Cheers!

Meet Me In Morocco - The Decorating Continues

Finally we've redecorated our bedroom, all that's missing is a kilim or an old oriental rug which I'll hunt for when we're back from our travels. 

Who Killed Bambi? rug (£1, car boot sale), 1930s bentwood armchair (£2, jumble sale), Victorian French mannequin (rescued from a friend who was chucking it out)

There wasn't much wrong with it before but, after painting the lounge a magnificently moody shade of teal, we decided to take the bedroom over to the dark side, too. Inspired by our shabby bentwood chair which, you may remember, we recently reupholstered with a vintage pair of Jonelle "Marrakesh" screen printed curtains, we painted the walls a spicy colour Valspar call Meet Me In Morocco.

I'm wearing a modern mustard bodysuit I bought new (!) from a sale in a proper shop in 2016, a vintage plaited leather belt from a charity shop and an acetate 1970s maxi skirt by Country Casuals which I swapped for a scarf with another trader at the last fair we worked. Country Casuals were known for their prim and proper Maggie Thatcher-esque tailored suits and smart blouses - I had no idea they'd ever ventured into psychedelia. You may notice that my skirt is a mixture of reds, oranges and browns, when it comes to interior design you wont go far wrong if you decorate your home in colours you love to wear.

Like the poor old bedroom chair, both our vintage French Corbeille bed (a ridiculously cheap eBay find back in 2006) and our charity shopped Lloyd Loom blanket box, had been ragged to buggery by the cats so we recovered them using a pair of red cotton velvet curtains Melanie, a lovely blog reader, had given me when she and her husband Ray came to see us when we were trading in London a couple of years ago. Forget diamonds, a staple gun is a girl's best friend.

You can see our previous wallpaper on my blog header, a rather posh, hand-printed Cole and Son metallic pink design. We'd enjoyed it for ten years but as it had only cost £7 for two rolls (RRP £95 a roll) we didn't feel too guilty about covering it up. The replacement is a reissue of an original Art Nouveau wallpaper design by Crown from 1910. It was love at first sight when I spotted it - I can't resist a metallic finish as it's perfect for deflecting the attention away from our lumpy & bumpy two-hundred-and-seventy year old walls. The design reminds me of the end papers in antique books only on a larger scale.

Here's the Lundby Stockholm house all lit up and looking much prettier against the darker backdrop. The mahogany chest of drawers is Victorian and has stood in this corner since the dawn of time. Neither of us are particularly keen on it but it's a whopping great lump of furniture and I've no idea how we'd ever get it out of the house - I think it was in there when my Grandparents moved into Stonecroft back in 1952.

The vintage block printed bed cover was made in Iran, I found it in a £1 linen bin in the charity clearance shop. I considered chopping it up and making it into a caftan but was scared to in case I buggered it up. I did made the bolster cushions and the pom-pom trimmed patchwork covers.

You've already seen my me-made curtains - sewn from scrappy secondhand curtains, vintage dresses too tatty to sell and any pretty fabric remnants I could lay my hands on. The curtain rail was one of those horrid 1970s orange-y pine things but a coat of white paint soon sorted it out.

Jon made this lamp from a 1960s Lady Schick hairdryer we found at a car boot sale for £1. I love how it throws circle-shaped light on the ceiling, a bit like being in a disco.

The Trechikoff-era plaster lamp was 50p at a car boot sale back in 2010 - I couldn't hand my cash over fast enough! The vintage granny lampshade was liberated from a skip.

We bought these modern Colonial-style white wicker wardrobes from a catalogue clearance shop in Walsall when we moved to Stonecroft in 2005 and I'm amazed that they're still intact. Jon keeps his clothes in them (and a few of his guitars on the top!)

Kingdom Come by JC Ballard is my current bedtime read, a dystopian tale of flag-waving patriotism and rampant consumerism in middle England.

Art on our walls -  Trechikoff's Hindu Dancer and The Rose in the Workshop, Louis Shabner's Gail, three typically bucolic prints by Vernon Ward, a painting of Jon & I at Glastonbury in 2014 (a 50th birthday present from Liz) and another of me by my friend Clare.

I treated myself to these cacti from B&Q last week.

The handmade 1950s rose print quilt was £2 from a charity shop a few weeks ago, the cats love it.

We've been to Morocco a couple of times. Here I am on my first trip as a fresh-faced 25-year-old back in 1992. We stayed at The Hotel Continental in the heart of the souk in Tangier where, two years previously, John Malkovich had stayed and filmed The Sheltering Sky. Abdul, the fez wearing head waiter, had worked there since the Second World War, during breakfast he'd wind up the gramophone and play big band tunes. We visited the Bond baddie's Tangier villa in The Living Daylights, dodged a legion of touts who'd line up outside the hotel each morning and attach themselves firmly to our sides as we walked around le petit socco pointing out the obvious and demanding cash for the privilege. We sat in cafes bedecked with graffiti supposedly daubed by The Rolling Stones, payed homage to the Marrakesh rooftop where Talitha Getty posed for that photo, marveled at Yves St Laurent's beautiful blue garden, trekked the Rif Valley, swam in icy cold mountain streams, crossed the country on the overnight Marrakesh Express where we shared a couchette with the locals and accidentally ended up in an illegal strip joint in downtown Marrakesh with the chief of police (as you do!)

Here's a little slideshow of our twenty-seven year old adventures. Jon's got hair and everything! I know I'm going to sound like like a moaning old bat but travel was so different a quarter of a century ago. There weren't the cheap flights you get today and you'd often had to save up all year to travel,  none of those tedious bucket list types either, ticking stuff off and blocking your view of the sights with selfie sticks, instead travellers thoroughly immersed themselves in the culture of the country they were in. Pre-internet, we interacted with one another, exchanged tips, loaned out well-thumbed guidebooks and shared meals and taxis. These days the majority of your fellow tourists have their faces stuck to their phones, updating their Facebook statuses and constantly checking how many likes their latest selfie gets on Instagram. The only downside was that, pre-internet, you'd often end up losing the paper napkin on which you'd scrawled your new friends' phone number upon so you never managed to keep in touch with the couple you'd spent that night in a strip joint in Marrakesh with - Facebook does have its advantages.

Anyway, enough of that! Not only have we finished decorating the bedroom but I've finally managed to pack my India travel bag (despite Idris Elba doing his best to distract me with the new series of Luther). I'll be back soon!

Rocking The Casbah!

Wearing these Palazzo pants ended in disaster for Rosemary who fell arse over tit (as we Brits so charmingly say) rushing to catch the train to Liverpool. 

Monochrome pants worn with leather waistcoat (courtesy of Helga), lace body stocking (75p, lingerie stall on market), crochet beret (from Elizabeth) with an antique silver & turquoise brooch (50p, League of Friends back in 2003)

After that unfortunate outing she kindly sent them my way, which, bearing in mind that I'm the clumsiest woman on the planet, could prove to be a huge mistake. I'm currently sporting an ankle support (from an epic platform shoe fail), a broken tooth (from a delicious vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognaise, lovingly prepared by Jon) & just 9 toenails after severing the tenth off at the nail bed after a particularly wild party.

This could be the last time you see me intact!

Barry M's Blueberry Ice Cream nail paint, turquoise rings on index fingers from Valerie & stud bracelet made by Krista, everything else haggled over in India or bought second-hand.

If Rosemary had offered me these pants back in the Nineties I'd have run a mile.

In my early 20s I used to be one of those annoying women who shriek "Oh, I couldn't wear that...I'm too short/skinny/it wouldn't suit me" at anything that was a slight deviation from my usual way of dress. After booking a flight to Morocco in 1992 I discovered from various travel guides that revealing clothes for females were a strict no-no which could result in anything from groping to full scale public abuse. I had to beg, borrow and jumble sale buy some modest attire as my usual uniform of 1960s leather mini dresses, bras as outer wear and lurex hot pants were likely to cause a national outrage.

Me as a 25 year-old natural blonde in Tangier

 After a few weeks of maxi dresses, cheesecloth blouses and wide legged pants I came to realise that less is more wasn't always a maxim to live by and that covering up can be more attractive that letting it all hang out (a defining Ta-Dah moment in my life). I even got presents from random strangers, including my Hand of Fatima pendant I'm still wearing 20 years later.

Being as you asked so nicely Jon braved one of the sheds of shame to dig out our Moroccan travel pictures and I've spent this afternoon scanning some photos. If you can stand over two minutes of old photographs the eagle-eyed amongst you'll notice I was still wearing the very same denim waistcoat way back then, some things never change.

Hope you enjoyed the show.

See you soon!