This time last year I would have many photographs to edit after a weekend stalking the streets. This weekend I have nothing, I barely left the house. I spent all of Saturday painting a small box room in a house we are letting to new tenants next week, the room has to be finished by Friday, and as money speaks louder than my desire to frolic in the sun. I was there Sunday morning too, before my sister whisked me away to her house to help her pack for her immanent move on Friday.
My reward from my sister will be a celebratory birthday city break next year. I am surrounded by family that will not throw me any surprises for my half century, so my sister is determined to spoil me instead.

Other events hotly anticipated in October?

• Ralph (wouldn't push him out of bed) Fiennes in The Tempest


• Frieze Art Fair, sadly I can only make Saturday (damn this job).


• Istanbul, unless it snows, don't laugh it has been forecast!


• A day gallery hopping ( OK with 12 sixth formers, but hey its a day out)

Did a spend money on the new COS web site. No I just could not justify to stupid system of paying in Euros when it is cheaper to visit the shop. Any cash saved was sadly swallowed up with putting petrol in the car, but I did polish my halo anyway.

Something Stripy for the Weekend

Nearly all my stripes seem to have arrived serendipitously this one was no exception. I invariably buy clothes from Zara on impulse, they are always displayed very seductively (a lesson GAP could learn from) I had originally bought trousers and a top, neither I really wanted or needed and so I took them back, standing in line I saw this top, which looks very unprepossessing in the photograph below but is actually a lovely glazed cotton. I wear over a pair of Full Circle dropped crotch trousers I picked up online from ASOS in the sale, I love them, they are much cooler than normal trousers.
The top is a lovely coffee and black stripe in glazed cotton and I guess it will be a keeper.

Talking of keeping cool, hells bloody bells it's hot round here, I was scrabbling on my hands and knees last night to find some linen to wear as I was dripping with sweat. The day starts and finishes coolish but midway it's roasting. Most women are now back in sleeveless dresses and bare legs, yet they say we will have snow by October!! Yeah right.

The very best thing about the weather is there is a wonderful continental feel when walking the dog, you know that smell you get in the South of France? Well it's here too. I love walking the dog when it's like this.

The other day walking through the park as dusk fell, I reflected that despite my petty moans life can be good. As I walked I became very tuned into the sounds around me, the thwack of a tennis ball, the shrieks of pleasure from the playground, people eating the remains of a treat on a park bench and dogs yapping. It was one of those cinema moments, a classic panning shot that captured a tiny fragment of time that will be stored away and revisited when the temperatures drop and the sleet rain is horizontal.


Oh and just in case you haven't heard from the other bloguettes, bloody COS have an online store, just bloody great, 2 ways to break me in one fell swoop, I currently have 2 things sitting in checkout le sigh, what is stopping me is the exchange rate. Not my self control, sad to say.

Does it get much better than this?

Dries van Noten, one of the very few designers whose clothes I would love to afford, any high street translation of these would just be a travesty.

images from style.com

Fianlly getting back to what really matters

Obviously teaching matters, well ish, but it's an undervalued profession and I refuse to be bowed into think it is my career, it will forever be a stop gap and now finally I'm moving on. Not financially, but I am working on my art again,
I have been helped by a heavy room schedule which essentially ejects me from this seat and all the distractions you bloggers put out there. My home life too is currently volatile and I find this can also help me focus as there is little worth rushing home for other than domestic drudgery and recrimination.

To avoid painting I'm revisiting a project that must be at least 3 years old using oil bars, they're very messy but eliminate that dangerous design streak I have which makes everything look like a design for a tea towel. I blame my tutors for that.

So I'm blurring the boundaries.

Just in time for college!

Less is more

Despite quite a complex show this year the lady herself walked out virtually unadorned. Very lovely she looks to.

I would love to see what she could do with just bales of black cloth!

I just wish I could wear a white blouse without feeling like a waitress!

Something stripy for the weekend

I have very clear boundaries between the clothes I wear at weekends and the clothes I wear for work. I also have dog walking clothes, they are the clothes I wear in the house to cook in and then walk the dog, I even have a dog walking mac! These clothes are the style free flotsam and jetsam that I can muddy up and splash with food and grease to my hearts content. They are clothes that machine wash and blur the boundaries between dressing down and dressing gown.
The problem is and it was a big problem this summer is that they are not too good when showing a public face. I needed something to bridge the gap and so relegated these two stripy tops from the premier league of my work wardrobe to the second division. I must say very successfully they played too.
First up my grey stripe from COS It is very light and so good when the weather climbed into double figures for an hour this summer, I liked it with a very, very old faded pair of trousers. They were once a deep blue but are now nearly white. I do like this look though.

Second up this lose and floppy number from Ghost in York. Bought on impulse, I never felt it worked, I always felt under dressed and then I decided that the stripy combination of grey and black did not work. The fabric however is wonderfully heavy, so it drapes really well.

But then I paired it with jeans and suddenly it rocked. Well for me anyway. So I guess the message today bloguettes is...if at first it does not work team it up with jeans instead.

I have taught Kitty a sartorial lesson, if in doubt when undecided if something works when trying on clothes in the shop changing room, photograph yourself then walk away, and in the cold light of day decide. She did it last week and told me it worked to perfection. It is impossible to really see in such a small space and the camera gives you a much better idea of proportion and shape. Having completed over a year of doing just this with my daily outfits I now make far, far less expensive mistakes and dressing for work is now a breeze because if I have learnt one thing it is to pare down and refine. I have not made one mistake so far this term , and nor have I shopped for a month...YEAH

Bellapais for Mater

As promised some photographs taken well over 10 years ago in Bellapais, (the village where Lawrence Durrell wrote Bitter Lemons.) the Greeks would have tourists believe this monastery has been desecrated by the so called Muslim heathens, yet as you can see it is primped within an inch of its life and very well maintained, as are all the vacated monasteries.
In fact much of Northern Cyprus was better off without the drunken tourist hoards that annually invade the south, including the turtles, and so instead of fighting to see the many architectural sites with the coach loads of tourists you can meander in relative peace.
Memo to self, we must go back when we are there this Christmas, for the day.