"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us."
Robert Louis Stevenson

...I've been over-eating, over-spending, over-working and keeping my eyes shut.





I wish I could learn to objective like a boy. Hardly any of me is just for me and what there is I am so willing to sacrifice for love.

Trip to Hamburg was exceptional fun and included light-up podium and alsace vasser

Am feeling particularly useless at the moment but I it's nothing I'm not able to do something about. I need to take more action.

"...She sat down vehemently on the arm of Joel's chair. Her riding breeches were the colour of the chairs and Joel saw that the mass of her hair was made up of of some strands of red gold and some of pale gold, so that it could not be dyed and that she had on no make-up. She was that good loking...Sometimes he pretended to listen and instead thought how well she was got up- sleek breeches with a matched set of legs in them, and Italian-coloured sweater with a little high neck, and a short brown chamois coat. He couldn't decide whether she was an imitation of an English lady or whether an English lady was an imitation of her. She hovered somewhere between the realest of realities and the most blatant of impersonations."
Pg. 192-3 'Crazy Sunday' Fitzgerald

Some outfits from the week... (mygodI'veputonatonofweightARGH)

What a nice week in Denmark! And what rubbish weather to come home to in London!

London Wine Fair for the next three days and then off to Denmark.
One week on the weather beaten west coast of Jutland with no Hansard.

Outfit from Saturday night (- tights + make up - coat makes it better)

Had a blifful Sunday with person on the left.

“The sari's radiance, vigor and variety, produced by a single straight length of cloth, should give us in the West pause and make us think twice about the zipper, the dart and the shoulder pad.”

Naveen Patnaik 





Ok, I can't quite pull off a sari but this glittery tunic rubs along well enough with zippers, darts and shoulder pads.

"The handsome youth on the highstool glanced mockingly at me... I went over to the bar and taking a seat near the young man I ordered a whisky. While I drank it I saw his profile... It was Hermine, barely disguised by the makeup of her hair and a little paint. The stylish collar gave an unfammiliar look to the pallor of her intelligent face, the wide black sleeves of her dress coat and the white cuffs mader her hands look curiously small , and the long black trousers gave a curious elegance to her feet in their black and white silk socks... As she was dressed as a boy, I could not dance with her nor allow myself any tender advances and she seemed distant and neutral in her male mask ... Throughout she kept up the part of a young man, smoking cigarettes and talking with a spirited ease that often had a little mockery in it. We sat and talked and drank champagne. How well and thoroughly I thought I knew Hermine and yet what a completely new revealtion of herself she opened up to me that night!"
Der Steppenwolf

"And then of a sudden I saw... a black Pierrette with face painted white. She was fresh and charming, the only masked figure left and bewitching apparition that I had never in the course of the night seen before. While in everyone else the late hour showed itself in flushed and heated faces, crushed dresses, limp collars and crumpled ruffs, the black Pierrette stood there fresh and neat with her white face beneath her mask. her costume had not a crease and not a hair was out of place. Her ruff and pointed cuffs were untouched. I rushed towards her, put my arms around her and drew her into the dance. Her perfumed ruff tickled my chin. Her hair brushed my cheek."

Der Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Pg. 199-200

  
"I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other."

Found my suit:




Hard to see but it had a double breasted jacket and two rows of buttons down the skirt, it reminds me of Clara Bow's sailor outfit... in the board room...

Non work:



Yellow and navy blue. I need natural light and a hair cut.

....
I took the day off on Friday to go look at the crack in the floor of the Tate Modern, and buy Christmas presents. As it's the first Christmas I've had a Proper Job, so unlike last year i actually had a bit of dirt to throw around! I managed to get suitably arty presents for Mark at the Tate Shop, CDs and DVDs on Amazon and then lots of preserves and jams at Fortnum & Mason for my condiment loving parents. Including Brigadier Nicholson's Horrifyingly Hot Fresh Mango Chutney for my dad, who is a chutney enthusiast. Also, Old English Hunt Marmalade which has a fox wearing a crown on the label! Good stuff.
Though, I still wince at the thought that I spent nearly £20 on preserves...
Ow ow ow.


Maggie Smith working the spreadables in Gosford Park



....



Caroline Weeks on myspace
Music is inspired by Edna St Vincent-Millay poetry and very very beautiful 

Recent outfits, trying to look slightly professional/unfrumpy.
 

I've never liked Chanel 2.55s that much, probably because I grew up in the 90s and can only associate it with 80s vulgarity (sorry!) but yet again I'm proving what a fashion sheep I am. I'm loving it in juicy colours with frivolous dresses, just like a bad toddler playing dress up with her mum's finest handbag:



I'm not sure I'll ever manage to like it in the classic black and gold, but at around £1000 (+ price hike in the spring) I don't think it's a problem I'm ever going to have to deal with!

I desperately need a suit for work, but I keep holding off buying one until I find one like this:

I think hope is triumphing over experience!
...
This is from a very frivolous/indulgent book about vintage shopping that I bought while waiting for a train:

"My mother got her sense of what was 'good' from her own mother. She loved to shop and patronised only the nicest stores, even though there was very little extra spending money for a family of five living on a policeman's salary . While my grandfather might be wearing a second hand camel hair coat, his two sons were dressed in Belgian linen suits and his daughter never wore a hand-me-down.

In the thirties, Grandma Neylon's idea of a pleasant day off from her household duties was to take Mom to Marshall Field, which filled a twenty storey granite building covering a whole city block in downtown Chicago. Once inside this elegant store, Grandma would charge a half pound of fancy mixed nuts freshly scooped into a box and still warm. Then, pecans and cashews in hand, she and my mother would munch their way from department to department, admiring all the nicest merchandise.

Her taste refined by all those hours of browsing, my grandmother scrimped and saved- and, sometimes, lived beyond her means- so she could buy sterling flatware (one piece at a time), Dresden compotes, oriental rugs, a nine foot mahogany dining table and other 'good things'. Things that would last beyond her lifetime, things she and her husband could leave to their two sons and daughter."

"Alligators, Old Mink and New Money"- Alison Houtte