Clothes horse or fashion victim?

Seasons like fashions come and go. Two weeks ago, here in the UK, saw the end of British Summer Time, as we put our clocks back one hour. Winter does not officially start until after the shortest day on December 21. Consequently, it must now be Autumn. Our first really cold day of this Autumn/Winter was two days before the clocks went back.  So I was rather surprised that afternoon,  to receive an e-mail offering me a preview of the Spring collection from a mail order catalogue whose clothes I sometimes purchase. Especially as earlier in the day a copy of their Winter catalogue had come through the letterbox. I know that fashion always has to work a season or two ahead but I have never bought my clothes much in advance of the current season. Now I find that I have to buy clothes earlier than I used to or I am left with very little choice. My initial reaction to viewing next Spring’s clothes was that I was not going to look. However, I did sneak a peek and even worse I saw some things that I liked, but I shall not be buying any Spring clothes until next year. We have Winter to get through before we even begin to think about next Spring.

Since retiring I have found deciding what to wear to be a bit of a headache. When I was working I had a ‘uniform’ of blouses, jumpers, cardigans and trousers that I wore for work. Those clothes were not usually worn when I was not at work. At home I would invariably be gardening, decorating or doing housework which meant wearing old clothes, that did not matter if they got dirty. Looking at my wardrobe, a year ago, I probably had more old clothes than anything else. I soon realised that I needed to smarten myself up. I noticed that many of those in my flower arranging class dressed themselves better than I did. It was not that I did not know how, it was more that I had got out of the habit. I have always had an interest in fashion and the challenge now is to dress fashionably without looking like mutton dressed as lamb. When I was a student my dress sense could be quite Bohemian and I could get away with anything such as purple velvet loons, home made smocks and a multi-coloured waistcoat made from oddments of wool.  Those days are now long gone and even if the clothes fit, they are better on someone else.

Fashion today is a mine field. There are so many different styles and looks, whereas in years gone by there would only be one.  When we were on holiday in Bordeaux, a few weeks ago, I noticed the young French women  wearing anything from shorts with boots to  scarves with  flip flops. So how does the mature woman dress herself? I am not sure that I know the answer. However, I do know that I am not yet ready to embrace polyester blouses, crimplene trousers and elasticated waist bands. I try to avoid anything that is too tight, too thin, too short or too cheap. Even if it does fit, it will not look good for long. I do buy a few bits and pieces from Primark, but I would never buy anything overtly trendy from there. The chances of seeing the item walking around on another are too great.  My aim is to buy well made and fashionable clothes at a reasonable price. Recently I have started to buy some of my clothes via the Internet. This actually came about when I needed some clothes to take on holiday and did not have the time to go shopping. It is easier than I thought, but I have to say that returning items that are unsuitable is a hassle, but then so is returning unwanted clothes to a shop. I do not end up cold and wet, hot and bothered, or worn out from walking around endless shops. I can do it all from the comfort of my own home. I understand that the Duchess of Cambridge is a fan of Internet shopping, but I suspect that she has a more generous clothing allowance than I do. I like to see what is in the shops and I do not think that you can beat feeling the quality and seeing the width. I am sure that most women get a buzz from shopping and we all have that impulse buy in the wardrobe that we never wear.

Years ago I was colour analysed. The concept of colour analysis was developed in the US.  At that time the colour palette was divided into the four seasons. Winter and Summer for the cool colours. Autumn and Spring for the warm colours. The concept of colour analysis has been further refined and is now categorised slightly differently, but the original principals must still apply. The analysis is based on skin tone and hair and eye colour. As it happened I was already wearing the colours from the correct season, but it is another aspect of fashion that we need to be aware of when we go shopping for clothes, as the wrong colours can be as bad as clothes that do not fit or a style that does not suit.

Then there is the thorny issue of make up. I am amazed by the number of women who do not wear any. The woman who looks good bare faced, has not been born. I need a bit of help to feel human. Hair is another dilemma, which is as much in the lap of the gods, and your hairdresser, as anything. It is a matter of what you are given and you have to make the best of it. However, we owe it to ourselves to look our best at all times.

I believe that some of you know that I have been having problems with my laptop, especially after I have been blogging. I wrote this post a week ago. I had intended to put the finishing touches to it and publish it last Friday but my laptop had other ideas and would not to work. Husband kindly sorted out my laptop and in doing so lost most of my settings which meant that I was unable to access my blog. It has taken a bit of time to find it and complete the post. I wonder if the laptop is trying to tell me something, but for now I will soldier on and hope that things work as they should.

Time for a change

It is out of our hands. There are three houses in the lane where we live. Two of those houses are for sale.

The one that is not, is our cottage, which is the second house in the lane or the middle house. So sooner or later we shall have new neighbours on either side. We live on the outskirts of a rural village about four miles from Chester. Despite being so close to a city we are almost living in the country and are surrounded by farms. The lane where we live is unadopted which means that it is unmade. Our cottage is over one hundred years old and is actually two farm workers cottages knocked into one, but the other two house are modern and fairly recently built. We are biased, but to us our cottage is the most desirable property in the lane, as we prefer something older with character. There is a fourth house at the end of the lane, which fronts onto the made up lane that our lane is off and then on either side of our unmade lane there is a farm. Either you think that this setting is idyllic or you don’t. You are probably wondering what have we done to upset the neighbours? Nothing, we have just been minding our own business. We do not have pets, play loud music, have wild parties or wander around in the nude. The cottage is well maintained and we keep the garden tidy. I would like to think that we are the ideal neighbours. As we see things the present neighbours are the architects of their own downfall.

The first house  is owned by a couple and the wife’s very active seventy something  mother. When I first met them I thought that the husband must be a saint to have his mother-in-law living with him. A few years ago the halo slipped and he had an affair. Now he has gone, the couple are divorced and the house has been for sale for nearly two years. They are on their third estate agent, the price has been drastically reduced and they have, to our knowledge, had one very low offer that they refused. We shall be sad to see them go as they have been good neighbours.

The house on the other side is a totally different story. When we first moved to the cottage the couple that owned the other house both worked away from home and were hardly ever there. Then quite suddenly they disappeared and the house was for sale. It took over 18 months for a buyer to turn up. In that time we got used to the peace and quiet of an empty house next door. I was working in our back garden when our new neighbour-to-be took his architect round to discuss an extension on the back of the house. My sixth sense told me that they were going to be trouble and  it was correct, they have been. From picking a fight with the dairy farmer to leaving their dog 'home alone' to bark until the early hours of the morning. They do not fit here and have been trying to sell their house on and off for some time. More off than on actually and I do not think that they have had even one viewing. We are desperate for them to move. The sooner they go the better.

I do not envy either neighbour the stress of moving. However, if they are to go we are looking forward to some nice new neighbours. On one side at least. Who knows what we shall get. The devil that you know is often better than the devil you don't.

Off with her head

Ironically last week I was lent this mannequin’s head, by the flower arranging teacher, for this week’s flower arranging assignment. And I know that I have been absent again, for a goodish reason. Firstly, I had never done anything like a floral hat and I had to give some thought to what I was going to do. For a run of the mill arrangement I need to chose a container from my cupboard. Then buy some flowers and cut some foliage from the garden. That does not take long. However, a hat was going to be quite a challenge. It would be as much art, as flower arranging. By Thursday I had had an idea or two about what I might create, when fate or something stepped in, in the form of a bug which as it turned out  was all in my head. Sore throat, woolly head, blocked nose and soon a tickly cough. I was fine from the neck down. If someone had wanted to try out their guillotine on me I probably would have let them. Consequently their seemed to be a certain amount of irony in the mannequin’s head sitting in our utility room. I hope that I have had the worst of the bug and I have returned the mannequin's head. She never did get her hat.

Escapades Francaises

The date is Friday 14 September. The British media is in a frenzy over topless photographs of out future queen that have been published in a French magazine and ten days ago three tourists from the UK were found shot dead near Lake Annecy in the French Alps. I am wondering what the France  of President Hollande will be like. Will we be safe and anonymous?

Two days later we drove to Portsmouth on the south coast. The hotel that we normally book for the night before our ferry crossing was full. So we had booked a nearby alternative, which was dowdy, depressing and musty smelling. The quiet room that we had requested had equipment running outside, that we did not notice until we went to bed and the curtains did not fit the window. I eventually fell asleep about 12.30 after stuffing ear plugs into my ears. We were booked on the 9 am ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. For the first time in six years, security stopped and searched our car. This involved looking under the bonnet, which husband did not know how to open, as he has only had the car a few weeks and looking under the car with mirrors. As the car is new to us I did wonder if anything had been planted on it, but they found nothing. The crossing was uneventful and we arrived in a grey and cloudy Cherbourg from, for a change, a sunny Portsmouth. That evening we stayed in an hotel, in the sleepy little town of Saulges near Le Mans, that we had previously stayed in and liked. Everything was fine until 7 am on Tuesday morning, which to us, on our first day in France, was 6 am, when we were awoken by loud French voices which went on non stop for two hours. Do the French ever stop talking? Why do they use ten words when on will do? It was not the ideal start to our holiday.

Later that morning we set off into the Loire Valley heading for Tours. We stopped for lunch at Angers, famous for its' timber framed houses. The best of which is Maison d'Adam - pictured below.

As we sat down for lunch at a pavement cafe, I started to sneeze and continued to do so for the next 24 hours – a French cold maybe? From Anger we went to Saumur then on to Tours. But before we arrived there, husband had wanted to fill up the car with fuel. However, the fuel pump twice refused his credit card and he decided not to try a third time. By the time that we arrived in Tours, in the rush hour, the car’s dashboard display showed that we were on ‘reserve fuel’ whatever that meant. As a result of work to install a tramway, the centre of Tours was a sea of white and orange barriers.

There was nowhere to park outside our hotel except in a bus stop which husband did, leaving me  in the car while he went to the hotel to ask for directions to their garage. He had just gone when a gendarme knocked on the car window. I knew perfectly well what the problem was but pretended not to understand, reasoning that it was better to say nothing than, in the heat of the moment, select the wrong French words. I was in the passenger seat. They asked for my driving licence. I replied that I was not driving and pointed to the empty driving seat. By the time that husband returned a second gendarme was about to write a parking ticket. Husband quickly got into the car and we drove off. I have never been so glad to see the inside of a hotel bedroom. The alternative could have been a cell in Tours goal.

The following day was less eventful and was spent sight seeing in Tours, a cathedral and university city on the River Loire.

The next morning found us on the road to Chinon, after enjoying a bottle of Chinon vin rouge the previous evening. We were off to buy some at a vineyard. Chinon is a small old town with some lovely old buildings

and it was market day which is something that I always enjoy browsing. This was not without incident as an old lady tried to trip husband up with her shopping bag on wheels. Luckily she did not succeed.

In the afternoon we went to see the chateau at Cheverny stopping en route at Vouvray.

Cheverny is  a small privately owned chateau in which the current owner's family still live, but we did not see their apartments. Despite the splendour of the place, life before the days of electricity and running water etc. must have been uncomfortable. The above photograph is of the rear of the chateau which looks pretty much the same as the front. Flash photography was not allowed inside the chateau.

The next morning found us heading south to Bordeaux. A drive which was scheduled to take us around four hours on the toll road. Early afternoon we stopped at St.Emilion to stretch our legs and buy some wine. The heat hit us as we got out of the car. It was about 15C when we left Tours. Now the temperature had climbed to about 30C. Then it was back into the car and fight with Bordeaux's Friday afternoon traffic. That evening we had a pleasant meal at a pavement cafe. When we came to pay once gain husband's credit card was refused by the card machine. So I offered the waitress my credit card. She scrutinised it as if we were a pair of criminals. Anyway it worked.

We spent Saturday sight seeing. The residents of Bordeaux are not early risers and it was lunchtime before the streets became busy. Bordeaux's architecture is magnificent and really reminded me of the English city of Bath. Here is the Grand Theatre or Opera House which is reminiscent of Bath's Roman Baths with the figures at roof level. I do not have time here to do justice to Bordeaux and all of its sights and one day was certainly not enough time to take it all in.

Sunday we had ear marked to drive up into the vineyards to the west of Bordeaux, which produce some of the areas most celebrated wines. It was a fine and sunny day but being Sunday nothing much was open. So our plans to visit a vineyard were thawted. However, we did manage to take some photographs of the vineyards

 

and the grapes.

 

Back in Bordeaux on Sunday afternoon we joined the locals promenading by the River Garonne and took our lives into our hands amongst the cyclists, scooters, roller bladers and skate boarders. Or those that were simply walking on the water.

Later, showered and changed for the evening we decided to take the healthy option and walk down the four flights of stairs from our room to the ground floor. Husband was in front of me. After three and a half flights he lost his footing and rolled down the last flight of stairs. Luckily the stairs were wide and shallow and he was picked up at the bottom by an elderly English lady and the hotel's English/American receptionist with nothing more than a bruised forehead and scrubbed knuckles. He got little sympathy from me. This accident happened because he was looking at his mobile phone as he walked down the stairs. I think that watching it happen shook me up more than it did him.

The next morning as we were about to leave Bordeaux husband had a text and a phone call, on his mobile phone, from Brittany Ferries to say that our ferry crossing from Cherbourg to Portsmouth, the following day had been cancelled, due to industrial action by the ferry staff. Our ticket could be used on the P&O Calais to Dover crossing and any extra cost incurred could be claimed back from Brittany Ferries. Calais is a much longer drive than Cherbourg and we had an hotel booked in Portsmouth for the evening of the crossing, which we needed to cancel. That was the easy part. Then we had to find somewhere to stay for the night near Dover. How did we manage before the days of mobile phones, tablet computers and satellite navigation systems?

The ferry crossing from Calais to Dover was choppy but only one and a half hours as opposed to the three hours from Cherbourg to Dover and we were soon back in a very wet and windy England. That night we were kept awake by a thunder storm and the following day we had a very wet drive home. As  turned into the road at our end of the village we were met by a 'road closed due to flooding' sign meaning that we had to take a detour around the village to reach the cottage. It was good to be home. Once again the UK media are in a frenzy over an male English school teacher who has run off to France with a young female pupil from his school.

I must apologise to any bloggers based in France for not making contact. We unintentionally gave ourselves a very tight schedule with no room for flexibility.