Popping in...

I had planned to post a tag-catch-up before now, but that's on the back burner 'til I can find my camera in the mess that is my room... 

Anyway, I was having a quick escape from dissertation pain to play on LookBook - my favourite of the Chictopia / Modepass etc type of site... And since my brain is too dead to do anything other than say... "I like." "Pretty." "Want dress." etc - in manner akin to Me Tarzan, You Jane / McQueen dress / Louboutin heels / vintage scarf etc, here is a quick stream of images that have made me smile and feel a tiny jolt of inspiration through my otherwise dead-brain:

- Can I please *be* this girl? She's so cute! And that skirt is calling out to me!

- Not exactly my style, but she looks so great, I'd think about rocking it... LOOK AT THOSE SHOES!!!

- Adorable yet naughty with those tights! Love the skinny belt over denim shirt... Wish I could ever find ones long enough to do that without revealing my arse to the world lol.

- LOVE this! Illustration as well as cute pic! Those tights are adorable, and I so want to read a kids book drawn like that... Now. Please. Thank you.

- Looks like such fun! I miss fun. I also NEED those shorts... I'm a sucker for red at the moment!

So there you have it... I popped in... Splurged my tiny little bit of current inspiration... Now I should go drink more red bull, and try to kick my brain into gear over my dissertation case studies... 

61.5 hours 'til IT'S ALL OVER! This makes me want to cry and laugh hysterically at the same time! ;-D Can't wait for the freedom to lie around on the backs, reading Murakami / Dante / Golding, procrastinating from revision, and laughing at my mates looking like complete idiots playing frisbee / croquet / strange made-up games that make no sense...

Xxxc

P.s. I'm trying to keep up with my Google Reader, but am epically behind on comments... Please forgive me, and I promise I'll be back and replying and generally being my usual hyperactive-blogging self! Honest!

P.p.s. Say hello on twitter! I'm constantly updating at the mo. Keeps me a tiny bit sane...

Apologies

Dear all,

Just a quick post to say sorry for absence this week. For anyone who ever notices me on Twitter, I'm currently in the midst of crazy dissertation-related-rush-breakdown-whatever and can be found, most days, in a sleep deprived me shaped puddle of brain-seeped-out-of-ears-goo in the same library chair. Lovely image huh.

Hopefully, if I get anything resembling a good night's sleep tonight, inspiration will strike / I'll catch up on a few tags / change out of jack wills trackies and old h&m strappies and into something more normal-functioning-me for photos, but for now, I just ask you to bear with me, keep checking back for posts and saying cheery hellos via comments and twitter. I need all the encouragement in the world at the mo...

Xxxc

P.s. Anyone in Cambridge or nearby... This Sunday is the CU Amnesty Fashion Show at the Cambridge Union. Lily Cole and Sam Roddick of Coco de Mer are speaking, T-B and I will be there as press, and there'll be lots of amaaaaazing clothes on show including Katherine Hamnett and Noir... Tickets are £15-£30 and goody bags can be purchased toooooooooooo! Go to www.cuamnestyfashionshow.com for more info!!! And, of course, I'll be blogging about it post-the-event!

P.p.s. Thanks everyone for the amazing comments on the last post, and support after I got my first hate-comment... I think I'm too brain dead at the moment to even register the "you need to lose 200 stones" and "replace your wardrobe" comment. It actually made me laugh. Isn't that just WIERD! :-D

Red Legged Exhibition Exhibitionist

So today was the last day of *this* exhibition of Sarah Wilson's work...

I'd been meaning to go all holiday - there are many examples like this where I wait and wait and wait 'til the last minute and almost (or do) miss great stuff.

Basically, this is going to be a two-part post... This is about my clothes today... Because I am impatient and can't wait to put them up... And part 2 - next week - will be about the artist, collection and exhibition itself! 

So. Here goes.

Shocked. Bright legs. Art. Light.

Wearing - Red M&S tights, ubiquitous ToyWatch, ASOS.com horse print shorts, Motel lace back dress (wrong way around) over Tavi / Borders and Frontiers teeshirt and Hush Puppy black sheer-lace-up heeled Oxfords. Oh, and in the first two pics, I'm also covering up with the ever-useful Tibetan shawl and carrying the UBER-CHIC (not) laptop bag!

The exhibition was at New Hall (now Murray Edwards, but we still call it the old name...) College, which is what's called a 'hill college' - i.e. out of town by about 15 minutes or so - FAR in Cambridge terms, AND it's all girls... Eek. I like my 70:30 boys to girls ratio thank you very much! ;-D (More about New Hall's art collection in Part 2!)

It was the first properly sunny day we've had (in Cambridge - I'm excepting my sunny Hampshire Easter Monday here...) in ages. Bliss. Not quite warm enough for uncovered legs, but certainly teeshirt weather!

Sorry for the short-ish post. I've got several hundred more dissertation words to do before bed. Sigh.

Xxxc

Photos, as ever, by Alex Tatton-Brown

Sorry for being away!!!

Hello everybody!

It's been far too many days since I last posted, and I've been missing the blogosphere like mad! The dissertation draft is on its way to completion - not quite there yet, but hopefully by the end of the weekend! *Crosses fingers*

Anyway, I'm back (ish) - posting's going to be less frequent than usual for a while, but I have a few posts up my sleeve and some PHOTOSHOOTS!!! Woop! T-B is back in Cam-land, and we're raring to go!

So... The first of much Easter-term procrastination-shoots:

Wonderland: circa.1628

Wearing - French Connection long grey jersey skirt, TopShop realitees concession twist back t-shirt, Paul Smith mustard blazer, Jocasi belt, ToyWatch, Jaeger brown leather court shoes, brown macrame flower necklace bought from a tiny craft shop in Florence...

- Here I'm looking at one of the indexes... Each large book case has a hand written index inside a little fold out wooden window... Mostly in Latin, but occassionally understandable, they're almost as fascinating as the books themselves!

It was lovely to get out of the main library today for a wander around the "Old Library" in college... Built in 1628 from a donation of £1400 (haha), it houses some of the most precious books in the world - books, manuscripts, journals, paintings, medals, field notes etc - ranging from the 15th century to the present day... 

Some of my favourite things (aside from endless keyword searches of the medieval manuscripts collection) are the works of Ovid that belonged to Lorenzo de Medici (1474 - arms of the Medici - illuminated - and Marsuppini - sketched marginalia - here) , the first complete translation of the Bible into English (photos of pages from 1535 and 1537 here) and the 1808 book on the abolition of the slave trade by Thomas Clarkson, one of our alumni who was instrumental in the abolition along with other almuni including William Wilberforce (photos of illustrations of conditions on slave ships here). 

In the more modern section of the library (- by more modern I mean it holds more recent books), there are vast archives of the works of fellows and alumni including the field notebooks of Jack Goody (anthropologist) and the conference journals, mystery novel manuscripts and neanderthal cartoons of Glyn Daniel - ex Disney-prof of archaeology (- Janus entry for the papers here). 

I love each and every one of those things with a passion, and every time the adorable college special collections librarian (J) lets me into the old library, sometimes for hours at a time, I breathe in the air of musty old books and really think about how lucky I am that they're here... And I'm trusted with their safety! It's quite scary to think about sometimes! You can't really take them out of the bookcases, unless J is with you - well, practically, one could, but morally... If you actually want to study any of it, one should get it out with J and look at it in the reading room. Some of the medieval manuscripts (like this one) are breathtaking to study in person...

Saying that, especially downstairs, you do tend to just rummage... I love all the pastel sketches of fellows done for their portraits, and there is one particular archive that I have been allowed huge free reign with, that I won't tell you about just yet, as it's going to form the basis of a project that I'll be publishing on the blog in a couple of months time! Let's just say, it's awesome... Well worth the suspense... Honest! :-D 

Sigh... So much for today's work ethic! I should probably go and get on with my case studies now. Must stop thinking about old books with no relavence to dissertation and start thinking about the ones in front of me!!! ;-D

Xxxc

P.s. Please bear with me while I catch up on my several hundred googlereader posts and everyone's lovely comments! And, as ever, photos by Alex Tatton-Brown, and thanks to JH.

Happy Easter Everybody!

Hope you have all had an extremely lovely day filled with chocolate and feelings of rebirth ;-D 

I got girly bath stuff, which is better than chocolate for me considering I'm allergic to it lol. And lunch also included dark chocolate mousse with no unfriendly allergens in! Woop! Made my month! 

Will's house is lovely and peaceful and I'm getting lots of work done. Wahey! And I get horses walking past my window every morning! :-D

This evening, Will's not been here,  and the family's just been relaxing, watching golf. I know nothing of the rules, but it's so easy and relaxing to watch... and laugh at some of the players' ridiculous outfits!

Otherwise, tomorrow's all set to be an amusing day, with Will's girlfriend coming down for lunch... Not sure how she feels about me being here for here "meet-the-parents-lunch". Think I might busy myself helping set up for lunch and ignore everything but Will's parents lol. 

I've got one of two dresses lined up, both of which have been seen on the blog before, but I promise I'll post them tomorrow... Slightly more interesting than what I've been donning the past couple of days, which is standard study wear. (Max C cardigan, ebay tuxedo t-shirt, Acne jeans, Debenhams fluffy slippers...)

And then home-time. Not looking forward to that. Sigh. I'm going to miss the dogs...

Right... I should do some work before the golf finishes and we go for a walk with the dogs before sleeeeeeeep-time!

Xxxc

Trying to find a new watch...

Don't get me wrong... I adore my ToyWatch. I wear it day-in-day-out, regardless of whether or not it goes with my outfit. The 'Atomic Orange' colour makes me smile every morning when the satifying click into place occurs, and in honesty, I wouldn't trade this beauty for anything...

But.

In the interests of propriety, and with a number of black tie events coming up, I'm not sure I can always get away with wearing a neon orange, massive, plasteramic watch with silky swishy cocktail or full-length dresses - as much as I'd like to.

So began the search for the perfect dress watch...

My ideal watch has always been my mother's. Slim, metal, discrete. Classic and classy. It's beautiful. Steel and gold band, champagne face, late 1970s Rolex. 

*Basically like this one but with a smaller face and slimmer band*

*Think this is the men's version*

And it has an ace story. Basically, it was thrown at her head by her partner at the time - a Brazilian diplomat - in the middle of an argument... (That's cutting a long, very scandalous story very short... It was the 70s. 'Nuff said.)

Anyway. That's not exactly attainable any time in the near future... Or ever really. And I'm not going to wish for mother to pop her clogs just so I can get her watch lol.

So the search goes on.

First, I tried a gold-chain-with-silver-clock-charm watch, from Bex Rox... But it was far too annoying to have the charm slinging around my arm on far too big, far too tangly, far too tacky (considering the price - £79 and massively reduced in a sample sale) to be a feasible option.

I had also been debating getting a small, pink, version of the watch I already have...

But that would've been cheating... 

And then I was emailed by some lovely ToyWatch people, about their new range... Looking at these "mini-metals" I might just have found a new, exciting alternative!

They apparently aren't stocked in the UK at the moment, but we should be able to get them from the ToyWatch USA site. They're otherwise stocked all over the world - look on the website here.

I'm rather partial to the gold and rose gold ones myself... The silver isn't really me. They're so very pretty, and despite the clear-acrylic bit of the band, which is probably an aqcuired taste, these are rather beautiful, classic watches from a brand that prides itself on bringing classic designs with a twist in materials to a mid(ish)-range, price-point-wise, market. I'm not sure what I think of the diamante-y bits on the watch-face - I don't do bling really - and I'd probably have to see them on to make a final decision... But these are looking like a very attractive watch option.

What do you think?

Woop! Short post! ;-D Don't forget to enter the caption competition from yesterday's post!!!  

Xxxc

Kidnap / Escape, Countryside, Theatre... Oh, and a GIVEAWAY!!!

Yesterday evening, I went out to dinner with my best friend, Will.

In honesty, I have four people in the world who I might genuinely refer to in such a way... To me, the term is one I personally don't attribute to the people I've known the longest, or neccessarily to the people who know Absolutely Everything - friendship is a voyage of discovery after all! To me, a best friend is someone I feel completely myself with and trust to be able to deal with all my crap if I need someone to be there for me, without worrying they won't be there the next time. (And it goes the other way, as the million-and-one conversations on the kitchen floor with room-mate attest.)

Will is basically my adopted-big-brother. His mother does actually describe me as "the daughter I never had", so that's pretty much correct... These two photos pretty much sum us up - one was taken at a May Week (in June) garden party last summer, and the other was at a friend's birthday party about the beginning of my 2nd year.

Anyway... Carrying on with my ramble...

Will, being the dashing gent he is, recognised, over dinner, the distress I've been in, and immediately decided that I could not spend Easter weekend in Cambridge, but that I was going home with him to his parents' house in the Hampshire countryside. Let me just point out, that I know his parents very well, and this is not an irregular hide-out for me...

So, at 4am this morning/yesterday, after racing each other down the motorway, we arrived at his. Since then, it's been pouring down with rain, but it's warm and cosy and quiet... Well, note exactly true, as they have a dog and a puppy! (I'll try to post pictures of them before the weekend is out, as they're JUST ADORABLE.) Not managed to do work yet, but that's partly due to exhaustion. And yet I do feel inspired. It may be grey, but the colours of the landscape around are so comforting. The greens and browns and occassional flashes of red and yellow from hedgerows and gardens make me smile...

I was also the happy recipient of benefits of someone else's misfortune. Will's younger brother, who came home from Oxford today, was ill and unable to attend the performance of Merchant of Venice that was on at the Watermill Theatre tonight with Will and his mother, so I was roped into attending too.

Oh yes. Such a hardship. I hate Shakespeare I do. Oh wait. I love Shakespeare. I lied. Very Badly.

The production was directed by Edward Hall (Sir Peter Hall's son), and had an all-male cast. They are doing Merchant in rep with Midsummer Night's Dream, which Sally (Will's mum) went to on Monday and proclaimed as hugely successful. Well, tonight's performance was equally successful. Though the women really annoyed me - partly from inconsistencies and partly because the guy who played Jessica was Just Weak! Basically, it was really well staged, in a prison, with a great set of leads and some really strong acting and direction. Merch can be incomprehensible at times, but this interpretation was affecting and clear in direction and speech from the word go. Brilliant. I just hated that Portia was played like a Tranny, while Jessica seemed to be supposed to be a girly actual-girl which were portrayals neither consistent with each other, nor with the prison-setting, in the case of Jessica. But that's small fry really, considering it was a throughly engaging production of a play I've never before liked. Even the gory scenes like the eye-removal were done well! And the choosing of the box for Portia's hand in marriage - pick which of the gold, silver and lead boxes have Portia's picture in, get the clue right, or otherwise get a skull or a mirror with mean verse attached - was extremely well done. Especially considering the last Merchant of Venice I saw, my mother and I almost shouted "sack the hatter" at bows... They did have silly ones.

So anyway. In the spirit of this week's outfit posts, I do have a few, though please accept my apologies for the wearing of the same dress I wore last weekend! This time, with different stuff, but essentially, not Massively interesting...

- "slaving" at the computer...
- poseeeeer! that fire is so so toasty! this is the annexe downstairs, that is basically a self-contained flat, where I'm working / sleeping for the weekend.

- this weird lavender thing makes me happy!

- reading Conrad by the fire...

I wasn't massively dressed up for the theatre... It being a provincial one, there's no need to think more than country-smart and warmth. So I'm wearing my Acne Jeans, Topshop dress, mother's old charcoal cardigan, Kate Kuba heels and Tiffany tear drop necklace, bracelet and earring set. Relatively standard in a countryfied, comfy way.

Hmmmmm. This was supposed to be a short post... So I might stop there. And go to bed. Lol.

But before I go... Lazy Oaf have a SALE on til Monday... 20% off at the checkout with the code youareggshellent until Midnight, Easter Monday! Check it out! I'm thinking of getting one of these... Maybe...

Night night!

Xxxc