If Barbara Cartland Had Been Reincarnated...

...wouldn't it have been as one of these?

oh alright then, here's one where her make-up

doesn't look quite so ridiculous

girls, shop that wardrobe!

just one of her many, many millions of titles.

I think this one was written between breakfast and elevenses...

Another Fine Use Of Vintage...

....too quick for me to grab the camera, Wilbur had just been sitting on these old imperial scales. I popped him back on, out of curiosity: he weighs 2 pounds. Don't ask me what that is in funny kg language... I can't/won't do metric, but its the same as a large bag of sugar;)

The gerbera plant next to the scales is Being Very Good and has 2 bee-yoo-ti-ful candy pink flahs now. Strange that, as when I bought it 6 or so weeks ago the flowers were cream'n'purple, the way passion fruit flowers are.  When I get my act together I'll put it in a bigger pot... who knows how big it could get or how many flahs we might get...?

In the Rest Of My Life, chaos reigns; the 14 year old has sort-of dropped out again, after 3 clashes with authority at school, each one sensationally mismanaged.... With that, and the long days off I have now that I'm not at the World of Work til after the summer holidays, I'm regularly dipping into The Bad Place that is inertia far too frequently. I've acquired more hauls of vintage frockery, which remain in bags until I can be arsed to to take photos.... I think I need a Plan Of Action...

***************

And now for the bit where I'm Not A Film Blogger But.... some lovely films I've seen recently:

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) - when Liz Taylor died I realised to my shame I'd never seen any of her films, like Butterfield 8, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Giant... This is the one with the iconic still of Liz wearing that white slip, great portrayal of family dynamics, especially if you're a daughter-in law...

A Very Long Engagement (2004, Audrey Tautou) - caught this accidentally late the other night and stayed up til stupid o'clock watching it as it was so lovely...

The Graduate (1967) - one I'd somehow never seen, more screamingly funny than I'd expected, and the frocks! The excellent hair! The chairs! The cigarettes! See it if you haven't... And obviously it has a dark undertow of tight morals, jealousies, and why getting married just because you're pregnant, like they had to do back In Them Times was So Wrong...

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson) - lurved this, very very sweet and beautifully shot. Reminded me of Tim Burton's Big Fish...

Cosmopolis (2012) - I'll say nothing as this is new so don't want to risk a spoiler..... go see it and make your own minds up about this. Will it become seminal? Who can tell...

Tulip Decay

... playing with the camera in the kitchen on a sunny afternoon!

Trashsparkle Is Not Leaving The Building

Having difficulty with this morning. No, not that itv programme (tho' I would probably find that difficult)... a timetable adjustment this week means I have a 3 day weekend. Which gives me 6 hours of I-Can-Do-Anything-I-Want for the next 6 hours... Apart from drink myself senseless, or go on a city break, or anything else that would render me highly visible, through my inebriation or absence, to social services.

Am having those 6 hours at home, to recharge a bit. Which narrows things down to catching up with form-filling, finishing painting the fence, dusting, bagging up unwanted clothes, listing on ebay.... or perhaps just sitting outside in the sun with coffee and reading the weekend papers, or watching mindless drivel snippets of sardonic design gold spouted by the likes of Laurence et al.

Definitely deflated by the way the world's going mad(der) at the moment; the scenes in Japan are worse everytime I watch the news. Saw a local fire chief who'd seen 45 of his guys lost trying to close the harbour gates against the tsunami, and now struggling himself to carry on in his role. And Libya..... oh, crazy, ugly, times.

As I've learned over the years, sometimes you just have to blank a lot out, and feel lucky that you've got a blue sky and hundreds of clematis buds about to burst into pink flowers on the hedge just outside your little window on the world.

It's Gonna Be A Bright, Bright, Bright, Sunshiney Day

It is so definitely spring! Blogland is alive with it, and I took a shortcut yesterday from the World of Work and walked past The Posh Houses... buds, and catkins, and shoots galore in the gardens. I have a hankering to buy some freesias today; tulips are gorgeous but they don't have a scent. Freesias, which we always used to buy on the way to my grandma's, are deliciously scented. Hell, I might even buy a tiny car-type hoover so I can keep the floors Properly Clean. (Don't tell anyone, but the henry's been up on the top floor since the christmas tree nicked its spot...)

Of course, I am already overjoyed by this morning's news that Jedward will be doing eurovision for Ireland. And that Colin and Justin are going to be on Let's Dance for comic relief. Oh, the aching sides I can feel coming on in the weeks to come, and the finger poised on the button to dial-a-vote for them all...

Some more sunny-colourification came our way yesterday in the form of itv's May The Best House Win. A former male model, now head to foot in yellow in Margate, with not only his own nude photos  splashed over every wall in his kitchen but with permanent christmas decorations everywhere. He was quite endearing, but couldn't stop himself bitching at the magnolia clunch walls in the minimalist's house.

Moving a notch up the colour spectrum, Mary Portas of the Tangerine Hair was on the back of some norf london estate agents this week. She mocked the bed-head look of their star salesman and got him to realise that while west may be the new south in terms of house-orientation, taking a good look at a property before trying to flog it was a better way to do these things. There are probably many fashionista blogs, from which we may learn how to source Ms P's exotically-patterned hosiery, but in the meantime here's some stripey legs:

We also liked the way a few notes of Bela Lugosi's Dead were slipped into the Andrew Graham-Dixon piece on Westminster Abbey on Thursday's eye candy that was the Culture Show. That'll be 17p in royalties then....

Doolittle. Again

Now that we are in February we'll have a bit of colour here. These are the tulips from last week.  

This week's flowers are as kitsch-as-hell. Coasters, in perfect nick. They smell just like they've been at the back of someone's sideboard for 50 years....

I think the parenting skills inspection went well. If that's how you can describe a psychologist clutching at straws. I'd hidden all the Tizer leftover from Christmas, and the empty pot noodle cartons anyway. They basically think he'll go back into a school somewhere, but not the current one, in his own sweet time. So, no problem there then. Apparently.

Last night's online grocery shop was a fail, as I was drawn instead to checking out a blog of old film and tv stills. This meant The Supermarket. Again. So, I put the blinkers on, got myself banned from the jewellery aisle, and managed a well-disciplined haul. Although the super-sized, stubby 720g jar of Branston was chosen for vase-potential so a swift decanting will need to be actioned.

Swift and action are words that are going to have to enter my vocabulary, replacing sofa-time and laissez-faire. Slapdash and slack are not getting me anywhere fast. In fact, I would like my life to be wireless, streamlined, less messy. But in the meantime I can't stop playing the Pixies....

...and uploading the odd photo of glorious buildings.