"Du disturbest mein Life!"

At the end of her blog post today, the lovely Harriet instructed us all, "If you are seeing your best friends this week make sure you tell them how awesome they are!"  Well, I must confess, I have been missing my own pain in the backside best pal of late, so I thought I would give it a go.

But being nice to Simon doesn't come easily to me (don't scoff, readers, if you met him you'd understand.), and I simply can't condone feeding his gigantic ego any further, so instead I'm going to say:

Du bist ein Tvat. 

I miss you disturbing my life. 

"Oh, July!" day on the 21st?

Späters!

Frau

x

Queen for a Day

"Why Hamlet, dear, you've written us a play..."

"Nothing lasts forever in the theatre.  Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot - and then it's gone."


Another production has been and gone.  Or rather, has chugged along unassumingly for months, has sputtered and fizzled a bit, has exploded into glory, and has suddenly, unbelievably, ceased to exist.

I've said it before, I know, but putting on a show is an emotional bloody rollercoaster.  Nowhere else do you experience such completely consuming glee and glumness within such a short space of time.  No flippin' wonder we're all tired, cast-mates!

Truthfully, the Post-Show Bereavement isn't too strong right now.  (There's a lot to be said for a full-time job - I get the after-show blues far less devastatingly now than I did in my student days!)  Everyone is a little sad it's over, and Facebook is comfortingly flooded with photos and reminiscences.  I think the saddest thing is actually the knowledge that the glumness will quickly fade, because with it goes the excitement, too.  I'll always have my memories of this brilliant week, but how much will they mean to me, three weeks, three months, or a year from now? 

In February, you remember, I was in two big-scale shows within two weeks.  I had two scores, two librettos, two costumes, two casts, two opening nights and two final ever nights, and two consecutive Sunday mornings brought fresh show-hangovers.  It was a double whammy, a rollover, of everything I love and hate about performing, and how many times a week does that crazy, exhilerating, exhausting fortnight cross my mind now, four months later?  Hardly ever.  Two months from now I shall be home from Buxton and bitterly mourning Iolanthe, while A Tale of Two Hamlets will be a dusty old has-been of a memory.  Every show is the best one there ever was; every, every time.  Each new one pushes the previous ones further back and knocks off a bit more of their ancient sparkle.  Show-business, my friends, is fickle and heartless! 

In the grand scheme of all the shows in my past, and all the shows I hope will be in my future, it was small fry.  But while it was here it was a cracker, and worth celebrating.  Commemorating, if you like, since we're on a royal theme.  The best one there ever was, for now at least.  Queen for a Day.

Hmm.  Introspective eloquence an unexpected side-effect of post-show blues?  This lengthy blog post has been maudlin and self-indulgent, but I quite like it!  Makes a change from the wittering you get when I talk about dresses and lipstick, at any rate!

Dress rehearsal photographs of A Tale of Two Hamlets taken by my candy-floss-haired chum Liffy Wood.

Cool Brittania

Hello viewers, here is the one thousandth Jubilee-themed blog post you will have seen this week.

We kicked off the jubilations on Friday with a red, white and blue non-uniform day at school.  I'm usually wearing some patriotic combination of those colours on any given day, so I tried to think of something to give my outfit a little extra something to bring it from everyday clothes to dressing-up-at-work funtimes.  My accessory of choice turned out to be...

...white tights!

I swear, each time I have to grudgingly pay good money for a show-costume accessory, adamant that I will never wear said item again, it always ends up coming in useful at the most surprising of moments!

All day I was compared to either Snow White or Alice in Wonderland, which was rather flattering!

Red shoes: Charity frock swap

Red belt: Christmas present a hundred million years ago

Red lipstick:  Jemma Kidd

White tights: Can't 'member.

White blousey thing: Jumble sale

White pearls: Market stall in Bulgaria

White hair flower: No idea.

Blue dress:  Dorothy Perkins.

Blue eyes: model's own!

I think I looked swell, but all day I had dress jealousy.  Imagine being surrounded by hundreds of small girls, all in full-skirted, polka-dotted, striped or Union-Jack-ed red, white and blue dresses, cardis, socks and shoes!  We have some very well-turned-out children at our place!  I must say though, it made me very sad that almost all the little boys' contribution to the theme was an England football kit.  Words can not describe how much I hate, loathe and despise football.

Anyway, after one of those brilliant work days where by morning playtime you're already able to say that the amount of cake eaten has far surpassed the amount of work done, I turned my back on school for a whole week. (Which is almost over already!)

On Saturday I journeyed down to the capital to see Alexa's new house, celebrate her birthday and, of course, to see the Queen!

There she is!

It was chilly and drizzly down at the Thames river pageant, but we had a jolly good time.  We saw all of the action on a big screen, and when the flotilla finally reached our bit of the river the crowd got really excited.  It was all very infectious.  When her Majesty's barge went by, everybody got the giggles!  Here are a couple more snaps:

And then I came home and dressed up like the Queen.

(disclaimer: there was an actual good reason behind this!)

My Glamorous Showbiz Life

Viewers, I don't underbloodystand Instagram.

So, most of these photographs are uplopaded from my new telephone the old-fashioned way, with a USB cable.  I lose at the future.

1. Self, in coral.  I like coral these days.  If I were a proper fashion blogger I might do a Polyvore-heavy post about coral, but in reality I'm useless and lazy so I won't.
2. An E-NOR-MOUS apple cake.  The heaviest thing I've ever baked!
3.  Bicycle sporting this season's on-trend florals.
4.  Simon beat me at Scrabble, and I wasn't pleased.

5. The view from my chair in the staff room. First photo on new telephone.
6. A little plastic swallow swooping in my hair.
7. Actual arty-farty hipster Instagram picture!!
8. Gin and tonic inna can.

 
Maybe by my next boring, information-less blog post I will have learned how to use instagram, and then my snapshots will be prettier.  Here are some more scenic photos, showing my fun weekend in York.  I went down on the Friday night train with Matt, Laura and Phil, to catch the opening night of The Merry Wives of Windsor, performed al fresco in the park, and starring our very own Kayleigh. 

Ok, I've just checked, and I didn't actually take any nice photos.  Instead, here are a pair of snaps of us in the audience (bonus Pimms-in-shoes, if you look hard enough), followed by an arty-farty blogger picture of some spices in a spices shop the following day.

Here are three questions that have been plaguing me lately.  All to do with high-street brands, as it happens - perhaps I should post them on Twitter instead and get sent e-vouchers and freebies in return...?

1.  Why are my two different shades of @MaxFactor Colour Adapt foundation such completely different textures?  One is thick liquid, the other a mousse...

2.  My pretty @Clarksshoes Henderson Sky brogues are beginning to fade.  Where can one obtain hyacinth blue shoe polish??

3.  Are @Aussie_Hair_UK shampoos notorious for stripping colour?  I noticed the bubbles coming off my head were grey (shamp is yellowy out of the bottle), and it's a good few weeks since I last dyed my hair...

Get in touch if you know any of the answers!

Style Stalker: Kerry of Yours Truly, x

Evening all!  This is a Toast Post in celebration of a blog that I have been following quite obsessively for several months.   The blog is Yours Truly, x, and this is its astonishingly well-dressed owner, Kerry:

I like Kerry's chatty, snapshots-of-my-life posts and her colourful photography.  I admire her eclectic mix of post topics, and I love the way she looks like she's having a whale of a time in all of her outfit posts.  But of course, the outfit posts themselves are my favourite thing!  I am in awe of Kerry's ability to magic up unique yet wearable, vintage-inspired without being a slave to period-correctness, cute and cheerful outfits.  I am particularly impressed by her fondness for teeny vintage suitcases as handbags!

The outfit posts on Yours Truly are the bestest because they're so diverse.  Kerry never looks the same two posts in a row!

Sometimes Kerry's clothes remind me of things the Bright Young Twins wear, but, to be honest, although undoubtedly style geniuses, the BYT sometimes strike me as a bit far-fetched, a bit too ethereal and other-worldly.  Yours Truly is a happier, cheekier, more accessible version!

Mildly funny story:  I also follow Yours Truly's Facebook page (I'm good at stalking, me!), and today Kerry uploaded an album of outfit pics from the past couple of years, which made finding these photographs to illustrate this post very easy.  That is, it would have, had I not trawled through YT's archive last night to find them manually!  Ah well!

That's probably enough stalking for one day.  It was very hard to keep the photos down to an acceptable number! 

Three cheers Kerry for having brilliant clothes.  Definite style inspiration!

In the curtains, in the silver, in the buttons, in the bread.

Do you know what I'm going to do?  I'm going to buy a new smartelephone (Old phone missing, presumed pinched.  Some inebriated moron (me) left it in the back of a taxi back in Feb.  Telephoning needs currently being met by an old phone, which is perfectly pleasant but doesn't do apps, and I miss my angry little bird friends.), and then I'm going to download instagram and take square little retro-filtered photographs of all the jolly things I see in my splendid life, so I can put them on my blog and have something to talk about.  I enjoy other bloggers' 'snapshots' posts (cos nosy), and I also seem to have fallen out of lurve with Boring Outfit Posts of late (Ahem.  Cos LAZY.), so I'm going to resort to replacing quality blog content with pictures of food, dresses and particularly high-scoring/hilarious Words With Friends words.

Here is an example of the useless things you will have to look forward to, lucky, lucky readers.  Simon and I frequently find little kitchen notes left for us by visitors, the appliances, each other or 'Mo', our imaginary resident junk food stealer.  Here's one penned by a lasagne.

P.S.  Isn't my new background pretty?

Boring Outfit Post: Old Black and Blue Eyes

On Monday, which happened to be the first day of the new term, I wore a royal blue dress with a navy blue cardigan, light blue shoes, and tights, t-shirt and belt in three different shades of purple.  (This is the kind of foolish thing I would have done during the winter months when it was too dark and gloomy in the mornings to distinguish colour shades and tones.  These days, even on rainy mornings, it's beautifully light at 6.15 when my alarm sounds, but, unfortunately, I'm still an idiot.)

I like bright colours, but in Monday's outfit I felt a bit clownish, a bit childish.  (Not helped by the fact I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt under my sleeveless dress.  Essential for warmth in my chilly school, but a tricky look to pull off - very easy to miss the mark and look like a kiddie in a pinafore.)

On Tuesday morning, then, as usual gazing blankly at my vast wardrobe, wrapped in my towel, whilst declaring "I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!", I found myself pulling this black dress from its hanger.  I seldom wear it - in fact, I can't remember the last time I did - but this time something told me to dress like a grown-up for once!

Grown-ups can wear blue tights, right??

(Pardon the face. No point putting lipstick on before breakfast!)

This dress and I began our acquaintance in the summer of 2008, when I had a) a student loan burning a hole in my pocket, b) lots of time on my hands, and c) two gorgeous, fashion-plate flatmates, beside whom I felt like a fugly frump.  Between us, we spent a lot of time and money in Topshop!

(Funny how things change - I can't bear to go into Topshop these days.  I think it eats my soul.)

I bought this frock the morning that Heather and Natasha and I got our degree results, (I was actually buying it at the exact moment when my anxious mum phoned me - "Yeah,IgotaFirst,I'llringyoubackin5mins,bye.") and wore it for that night's celebratory night out. (Which I remember as one of the boringest nights out we had, but that wasn't the dress' fault.) 

I am the dimwit with the upside-down hood.

End of reminiscing.  I'm going out for pizza tonight, and I'm going to wear Monday's blue dress again (miraculously, it survived a day in Key Stage One without getting smeared with either play-doh OR snot!), and maybe try and style it a little better this time!

(P.S.  Dress' fault?  Dress's fault? Dresses' fault?  I neither care nor know.)

Kate and Lucy

Hello all!

Today's post will NOT contain ankle socks of any kind.  In fact, probably even no pictures of me posing in the garden at all!  Instead, I've come to pay homage (I despise that word.  You sound a bit thick if you pronounce it like porridge, but dropping into a French accent mid-sentence for just one word sounds so incredibly pretentious, like something Simon or Mama Golden would do...) to two blogger-ladies far more stylish than I.

A long time ago (The 20th of February, in fact), I received a comment from Lucy Nation letting me know that she had bestowed a blog award upon me!  Shamefully and inexcusably, I never quite got round to thanking Lucy, or passing on the award, and may possibly have forgotten about it - until today, that is!

According to the rules of the Versatile Blogger award, I have to post a list of seven random facts about myself.  (This is actually far harder than you would think, and I am going to do it at the end of this post!)  

The next step is that I am to nominate fifteen other versatile bloggers to receive the award.  Well, I'm not going to.  I'm only going to do one, so there!  The blogger I have chosen is  Kate Gabrielle of Scathingly Brilliant, and she has pink hair.  If, like me, you're fond of dresses, rainbow tights and flapper girls, go immediately to http://www.scathingly-brilliant.blogspot.co.uk/ and enjoy!  I really like Kate's blog, her perfect-pastel outfit photos, her etsy shop and her general happy outlook.  (Brilliant, she is, but Scathing, she is not.) 

I could go on about this blog for some time,  but I don't need to, because it turns out that my benefactress Lucy Nation has done it already.  When I popped onto Lucy's excellent blog Tales From The Faraway Tree (check out her brilliant Enid Blyton header - I love it!) today to remind myself of the Versatile Blogger rules, already mentally planning my tribute to Kate, what did I find but a whole post dedicated to Kate's blog, style and general loveliness?!

Here it is in its entirity: http://talesfromthefarawaytree.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/i-like-your-style.html  Do read it, and you're sure to understand why I wanted to nominate Kate for the Versatile Blogger award. :o)

While you're at it, have a browse through the rest of Tales From the Faraway Tree.  Lucy's blog is also well worth a read.  Giggle at her posts, admire her outfits and flaming red hair, and above all, go and find the post about her kitsch kitchen - it's awesome! 

Perfection!

To end, here are my seven random facts.  They took yonks to think up, and they're not very interesting.

1. I have a dreadful habit of putting drinks on the floor by my feet, because I'm too lazy to get up and lunge towards the coffee table whenever I want a sip. When sitting back on a sofa with a laptop on your knee, you can't really see the floor by your feet, and I am rather clumsy... There are more tea stains on the floor by my sofa than anywhere else! I thought of this as a random fact because I just now nearly kicked over my glass of water.

2. Speaking of sofas, on the wall behind my sofa there is a large picture of Greta Garbo, and on the wall behind Simon's sofa there is a large picture of... something modern. I frequently insist that we ought to swap so that I don't have to look at modern art and Simon doesn't have to look at Greta - however, one can see the television better (and reach the coffee table far more easily, come to think of it...) from Simon's sofa, so there's nee chance he'll swap!

3. I am terribly fussy about what I wear, and I love nothing more than new clothes, but I bloody hate shopping.

4. I have three little weaknesses, and they are gin, chocolate and singing men.

5. Two of the above I have [had!] given up for Lent, except a small slip-up involving Kayleigh's delicious chocolate biscuit cake (it was nearly Sunday!) resulted in me awarding myself two weeks off Lent...  Starting from this Monday, I intend to put myself back on the wagon and be especially virtuous for the final week of Lent.  NO CHOCOLATE, HAMER!  (I have been flawlessly successful on the gin front, all except for one instance, but Satan drove me to it through death metal music, and I didn't enjoy it anyway.)

6. I don't really like going on holiday.

7. I look like a zebra. You know how everybody looks like an animal? Mine is a zebra. I don't see it myself, but everybody says so, so it must be true.

So there you have it.  I am extremely chuffed to be chosen for a blog award, and I hope you will all enjoy reading Kate's and Lucy's posts as much as I do.  Thanks ever so much for thinking of me, Lucy!

Sing that old song, how does it go? Look out sunshine, here's the punchline.

Hello, this is the second Boring Outfit Post of the week.  Also the second Boring Outfit built around ridiculous ankle socks.  I think I've found my summertime replacement for my ridiculous rainbow tights obsession!  (Dear sunshine and highs of 21 degrees, please stick around until Autumn.  This is bliss. Love, Bette)

(Dear Self, pasty legs are not terribly attractive. Break out the fake tan before School Picture Day tomorrow!)

My evacuee shoes proved to be just as effective for posing on the garden wall as they were for posing on the front steps in Monday's post!

Darn runaway straps!

Shoesies: Primark

Socks: Topshop

(Sale, obviously.  As if I'm paying Topshop prices for socks.)

Skirt: No idea.  It's been in my possession since I was at school, I'm sure.

Blouse: Quiz, almost as long ago.

Dammit, I really need to get rid of this pink background - my pictures look atrocious!

Goodnight, Mr Tom

March, instead of going out like a lion, is behaving like August, and so today, to the intense scorn of Simon, who threatened to only take Boring Outfit Pictures for me from the knee upwards, I shunned tights in favour of my first ridiculous-ankle-socks-moment of the year.

My feet look like an evacuee!

There's no point in dressing like a 1940s urchin unless you're going to do it properly, so I dressed the rest of me in a cotton print dress and very school-uniformy grey cardigan.  I may also have got carried away and joined in with the kiddies' games of rolling down the hill during playtime duty...

I can't help but suspect that my photographer's 'artistic' angles were specifically designed to make his presence felt in all of my photographs.  Hi Simon's shadow!

Frock: Dorothy Perkins sale

Socks and shoes: Primark

Cardi:  Charity shop