AWOL

I have been AWOL for a little while, unfortunately not because I've been busy photographing ducks in the park, but I will be back in full force in the new year. I only just caught up with Christmas yesterday and my rent will bounce tomorrow morning and so my New Year's resolution will be to get my life in order (and learn to knit and sew properly.) I hope you all have wonderful new years and I shall be posting pictures of my Christmas pressies in between revision. I got some lovely things including a 1940s magazine, original Cornishware plates, the entire Faber poetry 2010 collection and a million other goodies I really didn't deserve!

Recent Purchases

Sometimes it feels like all I do is spend vast quantities of money on utterly depressing things - printer ink, rent, electricity bills, train tickets - which is why treating myself to something I've fallen in love with, when it only costs a few pennies, is one of the greatest pleasures in my life. Here are some things I've thrifted recently...

Hand embroidered cotton top from The Dead Shop for only a pound. The detail in the embroidery is just incredible and I particularly love the bluebells. I'm not quite sure what to wear it with yet but when the summer months arrive I'm sure I'll feel very inspired.

I got this set of six Modernist coffee cups and saucers in the Barnardo's charity shop just before our university branch shut down. I got all of them for £2 and think they'll look so chic on the dark wood 1960s coffee table with splayed legs Jian Wei and I went half-and-half when we went home for reading week. We only paid £5 so it wasn't a huge financial investment but the first piece of furniture we've bought together for our 'one day' home!


I also got these velvet bow ties for a pound each and they're so cute and festive I had to snap them all up immediately. I ordered some barettes from eBay and now the green and orange ones are hair slides and the navy one is a pretty addition to any blouse.

A surprisingly optimistic looking 1960s edition of Macbeth.

These suede desert boots were not thrifted but I bought them from a generally unyielding shop: British Home Stores. They were reduced from £40 to £20 and, as BHS have recently been snapped up by Arcadia, I could use my Topshop discount and got an extra £4 off! Not a bad price for a pair of leather shoes. I'm going to wait 'til the spring to wear them though as the soles would be treacherous on the ice and I don't want them getting rained on.

Blackberry Picking September 2010

Incident

When you were lying on the white sand,
a rock under your head, and smiling,
(circled by dead shells), I came to you
and you said, reaching to take my hand,
'Lie down.' So for a time we lay
warm on the sand, talking and smoking,
easy; while the grovelling sea behind
sucked at the rocks and measured the day.
Lightly I fell asleep then, and fell
into a cavernous dream of falling.
It was all the cave-myths, it was all
the myths of tunnel or tower or well -
Alice's rabbit-hole into the ground
or the path of Orpheus: a spiral staircase
to hell, furnished with danger and doubt.
Stumbling, I suddenly woke; and found
water about me. My hair was wet,
and you were lying on the grey sand
waiting for the lapping tide to take me:
watching, and lighting a cigarette.

***

Today I am having a lazy day. Tomorrow I have my final seminars and shift at Topshop and then I will be picked up on Friday by my sister and her boyfriend and driven home for the Christmas holidays. So, today I am organising my revision materials, printing useful articles, folding clothes and reading stray bits of things in bed while eating advent calendar chocolates.

I fancied reading some Fleur Adcock this morning and, remembering her pointed request to me 'not to read her juvenilia' when I had met her during Manchester Literature Festival, was pretty blown away by Incident, one of her earliest published poems. It's a remarkable poem that left me feeling very unsettled. What do you make of it? I wholly recommend everything by Adcock, she has a really sharp,witty, vaguely anecdotal style and when you read her poems you feel as though you're being allowed access to diary entries written over a lifetime by a highly observant and catty woman.

Photograph by me.

Literary Look #8

A slightly festive Sylvia Plath inspired outfit. I hope you'll all be good this Christmas and ask for real books over kindles!

A 'Sweetest' Outfit

PEGGY Cream Cotton Mix Blouse - Medium to Large

OLIVE Grunge Era Corduroy A-Line Mini Skirt - Small

Both available in my Etsy shop which will be closing on Friday for Christmas and reopening in January.

A Day of Mourning for British Education

Here are some pictures I've taken over the last few weeks documenting my experience of the anti-cuts protests in Manchester and London.

Tuition fees are now set to triple in 2012 in addition to teaching budgets being cut by 80-100%. Education Maintenance Allowance is also to be scrapped along with schemes Aim Higher and Connexions which encourage kids from low income backgrounds into further education.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

I'm really enjoying this, slightly sinister, video by Topshop at the moment, showcasing their dazzling Christmas collection. I love the macabre fairytale decadence, I love the excessive seventies makeup, glitter streaked cheeks and sequined eyes combined with a soundtrack I find eerie and alluring at the same time. It's a really unusual take on, what so easily could be, glossy girls bouncing around in red velvet and earmuffs to All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey. The video leaves me feeling like the willing voyeur of some iridescent and narcissistic 1970s witch.

And say hello to my new shoes!

I bought them from the Oxford Street Topshop on Friday night, as I spent the weekend in London with Jian Wei, and got to use my extremely generous extra 5% discount Sir Phil benevolently doled out for his beloved staff this Yuletide. Anyway, I saved myself 30% in total and so they cost £38.50 instead of £55 and to my glee, just discovered that they've sold out in nearly every size on the website. I feel now that my treat was totally justified as I am clearly now in possession of a highly covetable piece! I also bought some dark navy denim flares to complete my seventies' hysteria and some leather effect high-waisted skinny leggins/trousery things so clearly I'm in the midst of an identity crisis. No more shopping for a while now I feel while my bank balance resuscitates.

Snow in Manchester

The UK has recently had the earliest snowfall since the start of the nineties and Manchester has certainly had its fair share. Although it's a challenge to find a true winter wonderland in the midst of the concrete metropolis, I tried to capture the magic as best I could among the wheelie bins and chainlink fencing.

'Walking in a winter wonderland...'



This is my neighbourhood. It's just like Coronation Street except populated by students instead of hardened Mancunions, though actually I do live with one: Lizzie. You can also see the Polish shop on the right, despite its proximity I never really seem to pop by. I feel as though you have to have a very clear idea of what to buy and a firm, visible sense of intent otherwise you just look very silly as all the labels are in Polish and they instantly ask you exactly what you're after as soon as you set foot through the door.

And here's my extremely gothic looking university in the midst of a snow storm...
I won't be betting any money on the chance of a white Christmas, however.