Passementerie

Navy Baby

In keeping with my passion for navy (the Bugaboo pram, the Storksak changing bag, the Wilkinet corduroy dugarees) and Beatrice's passion for stripes...

Jellycat Skidaddle Zebra from BabyJacks

The Provincial Lady goes to London

After my gloomy post last week where I was lamenting the fact that for the first time I do not live in a proper city, I realised how silly I was being and that apart from the fact that Oxford itself is lovely (it's sunny today, so yes, it's lovely), I am also only a hop skip and a jump from London.  So last Thursday, off I went.

The day was planned with military precision.  Train tickets were bought in advance, exhibition tickets for the V&A (pictured above) reserved, the alarm clock was set and at 7am on Thursday I leapt forth from my bed, energetically but quietly so as not to disturb sleeping babies and husbands.  I showered, dressed, breakfasted and dealt with my email, at 8am woke the baby and by ten to nine was comfortably on the train with a chopped mango, carrot and orange juice and a cup of tea.

The day flew by - I got into Paddington and made my way to the V&A where I was seeing the exhibition Hats, which was wonderful.  Philip Treacy as worn by Isabella Blow, Johnny Depp's hat from Pirates of the Caribbean, Cecil Beaton's hats for My Fair Lady... it went on and blissfully on (I was also pleased to see the feathered hat worn by the Duchess of Cornwall on her wedding day, which I loved at the time).

After the exhibition, the baby still being nice and sleepy in her Baby Bjorn, I wandered through the Rodin and fashion galleries before continuing on my way to New Bond Street, where I owed Smythson a visit for some plain white envelopes (although you must look at the lovely line done for them by Giles Deacon).  Unfortunately, Beatrice took exception to the Jubilee line and decided (loudly) that her lunch was overdue.  Then when I emerged from Bond Street station, the weather was revealed to have deteriorated dramatically and between that and the wailing infant, I was very, very glad to seee a branch of Yo Sushi! down a laneway and lunch was swiftly provided for all concerned.

Fed, be-enveloped and pleased to have a newly-sunny London laid out before me, I took my time as I wandered to Liberty (if Brown Thomas is my mothership in Dublin, surely Liberty occupies that place for me in London - thanks to Oh Joy for the image above) and rather rashly stocked up on Charbonnel et Walker (pink champagne truffles and rose and violet creams) and Aveda hand cream (I lost my last tube in Marrakech and never got around to replacing it, but I have to admit that I prefer it even to my long-beloved L'Occitane).

As these extravangances brought me up to a time approaching my train home, I descended underground again headed for Paddington, and returned to the provinces, feeling much better about everything, if  slightly anxious that my provincial status had been reinforced by the act of making a trip to London..

An Easter Sunday in Oxford

On Sunday we were invited by friends to Easter lunch at their beautiful University College residence in swish North Oxford.  After a tremendous spread and lavish quantities of champagne punch and wine, we spent an hour in the gardens and orchard of the house on an Easter egg hunt.  Although we only found about half of the eggs which had been hidden (the hiders forgot to make a note of where they put their chocolatey treasures), there was much triumph and much sugary overindulgence...

This particular girl, in her enthusiasm, ran out into the garden without her coat and had to be chased by her husband (and then helped into it as she was also holding a baby at the time)...

Success came quickly, with perhaps a little hinting from the chief egg-hider (can you believe how big Beatrice is now?)...

.

Then more success (with a very elegant husband in the background)!

Unfortunately, although she looked and looked, she didn't find any more eggs.  She blames the fact that she was still carrying the baby.

Some of the eggs were hidden in a colour-coordinated manner...

Our charming hostess (affianced to the chief egg-hider mentioned above) found a *deeply* suspicious number of eggs, we think...

...and John found the tiniest egg of all!

Thank you Heather and Dan for a wonderful day (and for these great pictures of the hunt)!

Photos by Heather & Dan with even more thanks.

Richer than Hermes, more beautiful than Chanel

Thank you so much for your encouraging words after my last post - I feel much better about it all now and will throw consistency to the winds and continue to ramble about whatever enters my head, although I will attempt to keep it at least vaguely related to style or at least aesthetics, which is what brings me to this post.

As you know, I am doing a PhD on fifteenth century poetry.  My university being a rather enlightened one, I am on a sort of maternity leave at the moment, but I have a long list of things to read and my supervisor is particularly keen for me to start manuscript work.  This means that I currently spend my days examining stunningly illustrated illuminated manuscripts in wonderfully produced online digital images or facsimile (the real things will come later).  Can you think of any way more pleasing of passing a day in the Bodleian library?

Images with thanks from here,The Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.

Blog Anxiety: has this really become The Diary of a Provincial Lady?

Yesterday I was having lunch in Jericho with a friend, a photographer from New York, who also recently moved here and had a baby.  We were talking about blogs and I told her about Passementerie and she asked what I write about.  I opened my mouth to reply and shut it again as it I realised that I don't really understand what Passementerie *is* about these days.

When we lived in Marrakech, there were so many stimuli, challenges and joys that it was easy to write every day.  Similarly, in Paris there was a lot to say both relating to things I came across in the city and to broader points of style that I came across in my leisured wanderings online and through other blogs.  It was then that I really discovered how much was out there of a design and style nature and learned to navigate through other blogs to find the really beautiful and interesting work which hides out there waiting to be discovered.

Now it is all different.  Romantic as Oxford's image is, it's not Paris.  Or Marrakech.  And style is as rare as hen's teeth here, alas.

Naturally, there much more to style than just fashion, but in a city where the shops are all inferior branches of national chains and (most importantly from the perspective of keep this blog interesting) in a house where a new baby means that I simply haven't got the time to spend idly and happily browsing through blogs over my coffee in the morning, I worry that Passementerie has become dull. 

I don't want it to become a straight diary, you see, and I want to keep the style theme running through it.  I also don't want it to become a baby blog, despite the temptation to post pictures the christening robe or adorable treasures from Bonpoint (and of course of Beatrice herself).  I don't object entirely to Passementerie becoming a modern Diary of a Provincial Lady (and I could do worse than write as well as E. M. Delafield anyway), but that's where it all becomes tangled in with my own personal anxieties about my life disappearing into provincial babydom.

Then on the other hand, a blog is necessarily a public thing.  I have no objection to being guided by what my readers want to read. 

(I like to read this.)

So what would you like me to talk about?

Wish me luck

Mine might have died, you see.  So today we have to go to the big fruit-market in London where they have special people who will examine your fruit for free and tell you if it is beyond repair and whether you have to buy new fruit in order to continue blogging, writing and sending pictures of babies to doting grandparents (any baby will do, I suspect).

Picture with thanks from here.

Where have I been for the last week?

Last Saturday we got in a car and went away to the Lake District for a week.

We brought our baby and wore sunglasses...

We climbed mountains...

Sometimes it was grey...

sometimes it was misty...

but sometimes it was clear and beautiful too.

I stood on top of things...

and I sat on things too, and fed the baby.

Sometimes I stood in front of very dramatic things...

and sometimes beside small things, too.

We explored caves...

and passed bridges.

And sometimes there was cuteness.

But do you recognize this particular double staircase at a house we made a slight detour to visit on the way home...?  Picture a gentleman running down the steps, adjusting his cravat...

Now you must know!