Viva la Friday

I know, it's Saturday, so my title is a day behind the times.  Never mind.  This didn't get posted yesterday as I was held up on set of the film I spent the afternoon shooting.  (True story! Watch out for me gracing your cinema screens in 2012/13 - ok, you might have to squint to spot me in the crowd behind Vanessa Redgrave and Gemma Arterton, but I was there!)

Anyway.  Boring Outfit Post ahoy.  End of term/housewarming/leaving party, and my new frock.

Dress: Miss Selfridge, shoes: vintage, bag: Primark

Also I bought a pretty something for Catherine to wear:

A lovely oilcloth pannier bag from Viva la Frida!

Cherry lips and oily fingers

 

As you probably already know, Revlon recently relaunched some of their classic nail and lip shades, the iconic Cherries in the Snow and Fire and Ice.

Being a sucker for anything with vintage appeal or retro charm, I obviously bought myself a KER-POW PINK Cherries in the Snow lipstick.

Hazard of riding a pretentious girly bicycle:  Your chain slipping off mid-journey, going KER-PLUNK and leaving your feet spinning frantically, forcing you to kneel in the ditch for several minutes, vainly trying to hook it back on with increasingly blackened fingers, before giving up, wheeling the machine back home and engaging your long-suffering flatmate to unscrew the chain guard and pedal to sort it out before he'd even got in through the door.

According to Simon; "This is what you deserve for wearing ridiculous sock/shoe combinations."

In other hilarious news...

Simon and I went to a party, where we proceeded to carry on text conversations with each other, whilst in the same room, about various other people in the same room, who were all probably clearly aware of this, since my lit-up phone could easily be seen through my chiffon pockets, and whenever I sent Simon a message I would alert him to this by yelling "PING PING!" in imitation of his i-Telephone message tone.  Then we realised we couldn't text accurately anymore so we moved on to speaking aloud in code.  Simon's German is much better when he's drunk; he could manage accusative and dative agreements.  Also, how DO you spell "tashing on"? 

Over and out, beautiful people.

Slime on the Tyne is All Mine, All Mine

Gloomy day today.  Gloomy enough for trousers and long sleeves. (Also gloves and raincoats, but I didn't discover that until it was too late to turn back)  I went down to the Quayside market to look at the stalls.

There were stalls of things I didn't want, like pet toys and dreamcatchers and cupcakes made of soap. 
There were stalls of things I did want, like retro metal signs and second-hand books and cupcakes made of cake and icing and edible glitter.

I didn't buy a thing, and soon I got to the end of the market and thought "Well, since I'm here I might as well go for ride along the river, since it's flat."  It put me in mind of another day, last summer, just as gloomy as today, when I went to the Quayside market with my friend Alice, and after we'd bought some cupcakes to take home to Simon and Ruth, we walked miles and miles up the river, and the landscape got gloomier and grimmer the further we walked, and I took lots of gloomy pictures of the grimness.

  This derelict building makes me giggle.  It's a lubricants factory, of all the greasy, smelly, dismal things, but it's painted bright 1950s turquoise and pink, with snazzy stripes and cheerful bubble lettering for its logo. 

Anyway, I didn't get as far as Elswick, Grimness Capital of the North East (I don't think the sun ever shines there, based on my experience) because it began to rain, and also adventuring wasn't as much fun without Alice to talk to, so I came home, chilly and slightly damp, with achy legs.  I think a nice vintage film is called for for the rest of today.  Hmm, black-and-white to match the grey tones of the river, or kitschy '50s in honour of the Ovoline factory?!

Queen Catherine enjoys half term

I've got to kill some time, so while I wait here are some photographs of this morning, when I tried to take advantage of the sun and take some portraits of my beautiful bicycle.  (Also pictured, my amazing bicycle-and-handbag co-ordinating skills.)  (Lengthy effort to get me in the picture as well proved disastrous, but nobody wants to see my face anyhow.)

Black, cream and brown Dutch bike:  Capital Cycles

Black, cream and brown handbag:  Primark

Catherine capsized during the taking of these pics, due to the sloping nature of the front garden.  After that we pootled off to the supermarket, but that also turned disastrous when I got to Morrisons and found that my bike lock was still in the flowerbed, post-capsizing.  So we pootled back again, and the front garden was full of ladders and workmen measuring Mrs Upstairs' windows (either that or they were burglars), and I feared they would laugh at me if I just picked up a bike lock out of the grass and cycled away again, so I came inside the house as though I had meant to do that all along, and here I must hide until they go away again.  I hope they buzz off soon, I'm extremely hungry.

The end.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Not dead, just been as busy as a bee, doing festive Easter things, spending far too much time and money on trains, buying a bicycle, having a virus-ridden, non-working computer and rehearsing more or less every night.  I'm so tired my legs and eyes have felt like they're vibrating all day!  It's SHOW WEEK!!  If you don't know how exciting that is... well, you probably never will, so don't bother your head about it, but it's bloody brilliant, anyway.

I have been a cyclist for exactly one day, and have already formulated my list of Things I am Never Doing.

Things I am Never Doing:

- Leaving my nice safe bike lane to go around a stopped bus
- Taking my hands off the handlebars to indicate
- Cycling up a steep hill, i.e. the one my house is at the bottom of
- Turning right.  Ever.
- Cycling in rush hour
- Cycling in the rain

Nighty night.  It's 8.39 and I genuinely think I'll go to bed in the next half hour!

Oh, and since there haven't been any Boring Outfit Posts for a while (I have been wearing clothes, honest!)...

... a little sneaky hint at my Pinafore costume!

"For I am the Captain of the Pin-a-fore, and- LINE ONE, LINE TWO, LINE THREE!"