Seasonal Stuff & Nonsense

Wreathed in smiles...


I bought this delicious festive nonsense in Broadway Market (London) yesterday

from Bernie Malone an old friend of mine. At first I thought, what's she doing selling Christmas wreaths?  until I drew closer and noticed how witty and brilliant they were. That's a pink scouring pad at the top.    

They are made by Bernie and  Madeline Herbert, both notable artists,  so for anything between ten and thirty notes (depending on the size and illuminations)  you are getting rather more than a door decoration I can't help thinking.  

Something more on the traditional side here

And, finally,  another Christmas send-up..

Gorgeous, no?


Find the whole collection here

Swansong

My childhood friend Laura McKechnie says she wants a viking funeral in a swan boat and I wish I had thought of that.  Would our families oblige, I wonder?  This whimsy from Tim Walker in Casa Vogue reminded me of our elegiac fantasy.

Meanwhile here are some more of the beauties, some more serene and some you might feel a bit of a tit in but who doesn't love them?

Boston's majestic fleet here

Ueno Park, Hanami, Japan here

Plaza Swanboat, Disneyworld here

Nestlenook Estate New Hampshire here

 Kawaguchiko Japan here

Hanoi's West Lake here

  at the wonderfully old-fashioned Camden Amusement Park, West Virginia here

Good Works: Me? At Buckingham Palace?

I  have just come across a note I scribbled whilst raising money for the RNLI  a few years back. Lady Somebody-or-Other nobbled me to turn up at 7 am at the Buckingham Palace tradesmen's entrance with a roll of stickers and seduce hapless Palace employees into putting money in my bucket.  Any time before 11 am (that point when I can generally manage to talk) is clearly out of my comfort zone so I accounted this expedition way beyond the call of duty. Besides, I wasn't best pleased to get Below Stairs as my station, fondly hoping to bump into the Queen or at least a brace of corgis.  (At least on this occasion I didn't have to wear yellow oilskins and a comedy red life-vest as I was once did outside Westminster Tube.)

Life Boat Flag Day 7.30 am  B Palace


Looking alert: resting one buttock on maroon baize table rather than settling passively onto  slightly tacky gilt chair with red satin seat.  I feel like a BBC anchor woman at such a positive angle.


I like the men who burrow through layers of mac/overcoat to find a suitable lapel for my sticker.


Always try to establish eye contact.


Strangely unregal and unromantic vestibule.. pipework, lino, fire extinguishers etc.


Someone drops a knob of butter off his toast onto the lino - I point out its presence to a footman and two housemaids but it's ignored.  I clean it up finally with the waxed paper from my stickers.


Yow!   A footman and a groom together  His jodhpurs marked all along the saddle area.

*    *    *

Blimey.

HALLOWEEN SHOCK HORROR

Finding ourselves with but a half-eaten bag of  chocolate raisins in the fruit bowl, the wizard and I had to turn off the porch light and batten down the hatches.

Trick or treating came over from America and continues to take us by surprise. As kids in post-war Britain we might run to apple-bobbing or inviting scaredycats to feel Nelson’s eye in a darkened room. (A peeled grape, if grapes weren’t on rationing).  What we really loved was Guy Fawkes night on 5^th November.

image  © Rosie West