Green Light at the end of the dock...

Now I'm the first to admit that I've been crap at this blogging malarkey of late... It's been bloody ages since my last post, and I haven't even been checking in on other people! Naughty huh.

I've been working at my internship since the end of June and I think that I just needed to separate work and play a bit. Inspiration has been oddly lacking, and I've been madly dashing from one "London thing" to the next, so updating online hasn't exactly been a priority!

My life of late has been hectic to say the least, filled with lots of time with friends, theatre, film, art and yummy food. Claire from The View From Here is teaching me how to bake, and life's really rather satisfactory.

Work's fun as I work with lovely people, but I have come to realise that as much as I love fashion and clothes and making visual statements through my wardrobe; creating a character, I don't want to make it my career... Which I guess is why I haven't been online. I need a bit of separation between work and play.

However, with fashion week coming up, and work being frenetic, I thought now would be an *ideal* time to start blogging again (see the slight sarcasm?)!!! ;-D I won't be around commenting too much, but I'm going to try to post content more often.

So. Where to start?

Well, first up, I have a couple of reviews and an update on my current addictions:

1) my name necklace

Okay, so Sex and the City is a looooong way gone, but I got sent a Cassiopeia name necklace by the lovely people at mynamenecklace.co.uk! Exciting times. I shall put up a photo as soon as I can, but my camera is currently not exactly working. It's silver and I wear it several times a week. It makes me smile! It's good quality and came in a lovely purple gift box too. I'm a sucker for pretty presentation... The only reason I don't wear it every day is that as far as jewellery goes I usually prefer gold, and I wish I'd asked for an 18" not a 16" chain, but overall I'd really recommend this website if you are going to get one! I certainly love mine, and if I weren't completely broke I'd get myself another one!!! I rather like the acrylic necklaces like this one. So thanks to Steve for getting me involved!

2) borders and frontiers teeshirts

Again, everyone's got one of the Tavi tees by now, and the Igor and Andre blog ones are doing the rounds too - and you all look GORGEOUS! But since I haven't been online much lately, I thought I'd just spare a moment to wax lyrical about these tees. These are my favourite basic wear-with-anything-anytime tops. I wear them to work with skirts and belts and on the weekends in city or country with jeans or dresses. The cotton is so thick and yummy and though they blatantly don't exactly make me look stick thin, I love them anyway... The adorable Drew even sent me this lovely specimen new one that, bad me, I'm not sure which blog it belongs to, but I adore, which again I will have to wait to put pictures of up as camera = dimwitted. I am also *loving* Rumi's one and have had a long term crush on the one by Bonjour Girl... Wish (as usual) I wasn't so darn broke!!!

3) lots and lots and lots of theatre

My life of late has revolved around shows... I love that the calibre of things being put on in and around London this summer has been so high. As I had saved up to enjoy my time at home, I've done a tonne, and loved every minute of it.

A few highlights:

Dominic Cooper in Phedre. Love Racine. Love his arms. Sigh.

Ian McKellen in Waiting For Godot. Perfect. Bumbling through Beckett. A Class Act.

Arcadia... Just a lovely play.

The Mariinsky Ballet at the Royal Opera House - not technically theatre... The Homage to Balanchine was amazingness personified, and their Sleeping Beauty was breathtaking.

Jerusalem at the Royal Court. I've loved Mark Rylance since he was artistic director at the Globe, and he's just AMAZING. Such stage presence. Such a beautiful voice. Such a great play.

I've also been to a lot of Proms - managed 5 concerts in one day on the bank holiday!!! And a lot of film... Anyone who gets a chance to see Mid-August Lunch SHOULD!!!

Okay, enough rambling now. I should sleep. I'm off to the Tate in the morning bright and early to see the Futurism exhibition with one of my closest friends who has been away in Edinburgh for a month... Woop!

Night. I promise there'll be more pictures next time!

Xxxc

Break Over.

Wow. It's been far too long since that last post...

And such a lot's happened!

I've had balls, garden parties, birthday celebrations, homecomings, reunions, and I've started work! The 3 week (ish) break was unintended, but probably needed. Last term was a bit of a rollercoaster, and I needed to take a bit of a breather, get time to myself, and readjust to being a) a Londoner again and b) free of exam fear!

I suppose I should also tell those of you who've been so supportive these past couple of months, I got through it... And I got a high 2.1 including the highest mark in the year on one of my papers. (Same one I came top in last year... Woop! CV heaven! ;-D) My dissertation, as I knew it would be, was my lowest mark, but it was still respectable. Thank gawd. Panic over!

I still don't know for sure if I'm going to be in Cambridge or London next year as the business school are extreeeeeeemely disorganised, and I'm amidst plans to turn my house into a building site for 5 months, so our home is being cleared of 20 years of hoarding. Clothes are amongst the victims of the mass-clearout, as are board games, books, and bin bag after bin bag of paper... (All sent to charity or recycled of course! ;-D)

So all in all, it's a little stressy around here, but the clear-out's actually really cathartic, and it's all nothing compared to Cam in exam term haha.

The job, as a press assistant with an extremely lovely bunch of people is going really well 1.5 weeks into a long haul. I'm slowly but surely learning the ropes (I think) and am loving every minute of it. I've fallen in love with quite a lot of our pre-Fall stock (including a darling little mint Acne jumper), and am absolutely knackered at the end of every very full day. I'll try to talk a bit about it in future posts, but I'm not sure at the mo how much I want to keep the blog and the job separate, so will be treading quite lightly for a while.

Woah, that's a hell of a lot of writing, so I'll sign off now... I'm also going to zero my Google Reader so I can just start again commenting on people's blogs as at the mo, the thousands of unread posts are just a tad daunting!

Photos to come tomorrow.

Love Xxxc

Theatricalities Past...

Since I'm attempting to string out the boat-race pictures for as long as possible, today's post is a wander down memory lane to my days as a costume wench at Cambridge's ADC theatre...

This performance of Mozart and Salieri (February 2007) was my first foray into costume design, after initially doing lighting as it's what I'd done at school, and really set in stone my love for creating a character and for working in theatre in general... 

The production was brilliant, selling out a lateshow slot (absolutely impossible to do!) and the people made my entry into the horrendously cliquey world of cam-theatre extremely easy. 

Theatre is no longer a part of my life in a meaningful sense, as to be involved, you basically have to sacrifice degree / college life / friends / sleep / health - if you're me... It's actually in the CUADC constitution that if you get more than a 2.2 then you're not doing enough theatre! Totally true. Hehe. But I don't regret a single second of it. 

There were many other productions I was involved with, and each one makes me feel proud to have been involved and to have produced such professional quality work. It's a real team effort and Cam does produce some outstanding actors and directors and technical people, but I don't regret leaving it behind. I still have great friends from doing it, learnt loads of skills I'd never have had another opportunity to develop, and still occasionally work on the theatre box office. But not doing shows has given me and my health a bit of breathing room.

Heart-to-heart aside, this production was hella-fun. Despite breaking up with my long-term boyfriend the weekend before the show went up, it remains in my mind as one of the most positive experiences Cambridge has offered me (as well as providing a great rebound boy lol). And there have been many. (Not rebound boys ;-D honest!)

It is probably the darkest show I costumed, but its small scale and period costume coupled with freaky scary make up really made it fun... I'd been briefed with descriptions of Japanese theatre - particularly Kabuki, Kyogen (there were masks involved...) and Bunraku. 

The director had also expressed a wish for the types of coats for Mozart and Salieri to wear and the general colour schemes. For make up, I had Edward-Scissorhands meets child-playing-with-facepaint on Halloween with a bit of climbing vines, mould and rot thrown in... Haha.

And working with actors does make you open your mind to the ridiculous in life a little more...

And sitting in dressing rooms gossiping for hours with some of my closest friends, playing with green face paint isn't exactly the biggest chore in the world!

Ah... Here comes the "costume wench" photo! Don't I look so nervous! Ah to be a first year again. Sigh. Got to love all the costume repairs I did for that show, though it wasn't as bad as the show I'm going to show you next time when I had to fix the entire inseams of one of the boys' trousers with gaffa tape for the whole second half of the opening night as he'd been dancing so enthusiastically!

***Please excuse the crappy quality of the photos - the originals are on my removable hard drive which is currently at home, so these were copied off facebook, with resultant reduced number of pixels. I did my best!!!

I hope you enjoyed that little foray into my theatrical past... I'll show you some more shows and chatter about theatricalities in general in upcoming posts!

Xxxc

Eeeeeek re. Summer

Yikes.

I think I just agreed to work for Browns at the press office from 22nd June to 2nd October...

I've just given up the Ghana plan until Christmas, as it seems to fit better with my travelling partner and I's plans. This meant that when I was asked to change from 10 to 15 weeks interning, this afternoon, I Could Not say No!

OMFG!!! - I'll be working during London Fashion Week! (And through some of the others...)

Hugely hectic and high pressure, but I have to admit... I JUST CAN'T WAIT!

Too excited to do my essay reading.

8-D

Xxxc

Apparently, I'm a canary...

Well, so the BBC says of my chosen (well, if one counts a degree as choosing) profession...

"Professor Mark Horton of Bristol University has predicted about a quarter (of archaeologists) will find themselves unemployed before the recession is over. It has been dubbed a "canary" trade, one which - like the canaries warning of dangerous gas in mining history - die at the first sign of trouble in the air.

"It's catastrophic," said the professor. "Most of those people will have to find jobs somewhere else. There will be a real skills shortage, and a real problem when excavations begin again."

Bugger.

Oh well. A job in Fashion is my only hope. 

Wait a second...

;-D

Although, all depression aside, I do actually rather like canaries and canary yellow... Hmmmmmmm.

Recession-Love-Xxxc

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Ok, so it's been uber-uber-long since I posted properly, and there's probably noone left reading my inane ramblings, but hey... I am going try to start posting a bit more regularly as a) I need procrastination as 3rd years builds up the pressure and b) I need to get in the habit so I'm raring to go for my summer job, which is... 

*miniature fanfare*

WORKING AS A PRESS INTERN AT BROWNS!!! Yeek! The stores on S.Molton Street are AMAZING, and I love everything they stock, so here's to 10 weeks of excitement, working in Fashion PR! No idea yet what I'll wear, what I'll get to do etc. It's at the height of summer, so it'll probably be slow compared to fashion week season, but I think that might be good... Take it slow, be really enthusiastic and build up contacts! 

I don't really know if I want to work in fashion or arts when I graduate (2010 cross fingers) or if I want to go back to the archaeology post-management studies to do a masters and PhD... The latter is definitely what my DoS (Director of Studies) wants me to do, and I'm tempted, but this summer is definitely going to get me used to the idea of work, so I suppose we'll just have to wait and see!

My numero uno concern at the mo is having clothes suitable for my uber-stylish environment. I have no idea if I'll get any kind of store discount or what kind of price-point is going to be expected of me, but I'm thinking about slowly but surely building up my wardrobe which has gotten a little stale of late. Recession may be hanging over us all but I'm in a relatively good savings-position at the mo, and maybe I'll be able to do a bit of work over the coming months to prop my intern-expenses-only-salary up a bit... I've got a couple of shifts lined up at the theatre over the Easter break, and am stage managing a MAJOR May Ball in June for a hundred quid, so that's a start anyway. However, I'm also going on a chapel retreat in March and to Ghana for a couple of weeks in September, so I have to prepare for that too. Oh the joys of recession gloominess and no summer holiday payment prospects... I gave up my summer camp job for this internship, so bye bye easy money!

I am relatively happy, however, to just go slowly slowly. Ish. I have my Toy Watch that was bought last summer (though it needs a teeny repair if I can find the warranty...) and the Sonia Rykiel cardie I bought in the Browns sale shop on my way to interview. Those two items, I reckon, got me the job hehe. I got asked why I wanted to do the job and I explained about doing theatre costume, and the importance of clothing in building up any character that you want to present yourself as... The interview was quick, but I enjoyed it far more than my one other - politico - interview for summer stuff. Sigh. I suppose only time will tell where I end up, but hopefully this summer will be Fantabulous.

Today's naughtiness involved the buying of shoes from net-a-porter, which was BAD but OH SO GOOD... I couldn't bring myself to get them delivered in the black boxes. I'd be too embarrassed! I will post a pic when they arrive. I never know what size to go for, but I went for 39.5 which is my best guess. Knowing my luck, they'll be too small and when I try to exchange they won't have any 40s left. I will say that these shoes are flat, and therefore EXTREMELY naughty for me, little miss physio-tells-me-off-for-wearing-flats-as-my-ankles-are-wierd... Oh well. Time will tell if they're keepers!

Xxxc

P.s. I have some new topshop items - sale purchases of a ruffly light denim skirt and a "DANCE" Rainbow Brite blue tshirt... Love! Here I'm wearing them with my shell pink gap cardigan, generic gray tights and two tone converse. Don't I look happy!

Oh, and AA came up trumps for the first time ever with an orchid purple tri-blend tee. So wanting more tri-blend, and almost gave in today after seeing the black jumper on the stylish wanderer ... 

Woah. Uber-long post. Oops!