The Month of June

The month started with the last day of half term and a fish and chip supper with Mother and Pops before a very early start the next day for our family holiday in Mallorca.
Celebrating our birthday there with lovely gifts, two cakes, being twins there has to be two cakes, being transported out there and easy to pack gifts. Swimming in the pool and then Twin and I took everyone out for supper at Stay restaurant.
The rest of the week was glorious. Swimming, reading, sunbathing, a daily cafe con leche, a mooch in a town, a return to the villa for more swimming and sunbathing. Ending the day with beers, rose wine, communal meals, Scrabble and days filled with happy memories.
Returning to work but made more pleasurable by meeting a friend for Monday evening cocktails at Lounge Lover and then supper at Boundary.
Catching up with dear printmaking friends at Waterstones and deciding that our IRL bookclub has come to an end but long live meeting up for friendship.
Meeting a dear friend who is about to leave for Singapore for Friday night drinks at Dalla Terra  and then supper at Dishoom.
A much needed weekend around the house - somehow being in the garden doesn't feel like a chore. Is this how some people view house work
Party weekend... Pink lanterns hanging in the tree, fizz chilling, amazing cakes, home made lasagne, dear friends, including one friend coming over from New York for it. How wonderful friends are. Re wearing my wedding dress - red nails, barefoot. 
Wandering to Tudor Barn Art weekend on the Sunday, eating cake, left over lasagne, toast and crisps.
Cakes baked started off with ones to take into work for my birthday. Nigella's Lemon Drizzle, Bill Granger's Chocolate Brownie, though I forgot to add the chocolate but it was still delicious, Eat Me! Farmhouse biscuits and Hummingbird Orange and Almond cake.
Books read finally finished Jane Eyre, I'm back in love it on this third read. The Paris Wife a perfect holiday book, Florence Finds Book Club book this month. Cheerful weather for a Wedding in the most uncheerful weather. Starting to try and read some of Warmth's books - Evelyn Waugh Vile Bodies.
Book giftings Persephone Cheerful weather for a wedding by Julia Strachey, a gift voucher to be spent on Daunt Books Ilyrian Spring and a delightful book of photographs of me from birth to now from Mother and Pops. A delightful book London A History in Verse, a bibliotherapy session at Mr B's Emporium.

Tomorrow we're off to a wedding at The Horniman Museum. June has been a truly wonderful month.

Italian Days

A Victorian Celebration was just what was needed to prompt me re read Jane Eyre. Even though midsummer was last week I'm hoping that this quote perks our weather up a little, or actually a lot.


'A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour, even singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come over from the South like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest on the cliffs of Albion...' Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

midsummer

How's your summer been this week?

toast-drinking

Whilst away I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain about Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. It's made me look out my copy of Fiesta:The Sun Also Rises to see which pages are turned down.

'I say that is wine,' Brett held up her glass. 'We ought to toast something. "Here's to royalty".'
'This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with wine like that. You lose the taste.' Ernest Hemingway Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises

toast

Do you like emotions with your drink? I know I want to mix memories with my drink, so I think that means I want emotions with it? 

Yellow Cocktail Music

I'll not be blogging this week as I'm preparing for birthday celebration party at the weekend. A Jay Gatsby party to get me in the mood.

"There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars...

fizz 

... enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

lights

... already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, 


...the bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter...

chatter

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music...


Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.


....The party has begun." F.Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

The June Roses

We've come back from holiday to find the roses resplendent, not just in our garden but in neighbours as we along the pavements.


"The June roses over the porch were awake bright and early on that morning, rejoicing with all their hearts in the cloudless sunshine, and like friendly little neighbours, as they were. Quite flushed with excitement were their ruddy faces as they swung in the wind, whispering to one another what they had seen; for some peeped in at the dining-room windows, where the feast was spread, some climbed up to nod and smile at the sisters, as they dressed the bride, others waved a welcome to those who came and went on various errands in garden, porch and hall, and all, from the rosiest full-blown flower to the palest baby-bud, offered their tribute of beauty and fragrance to the gentle mistress who had loved and tended them so long." Louisa May Alcott Good Wives

Absolute Bliss

Even though we are no longer in our thirties I hope to still have moments like these...

"Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at - nothing - at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss! - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and burned it in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?..." Katherine Mansfield Bliss in Something childish but very natural

unknown

In fact I hope they continue forever...

Love my age

Whilst on holiday Twin and I celebrated our fortieth birthday. Here's what Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire thought about turning forty.

"I was 40 years old last June and at that age one must use oneself to personal disasters. I have learnt however to love my age, and not be ashamed of it..." Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire letter to Mary Grey circa 1798 in Georgiana by Amanda Foreman

holding

How do you feel about your age?

Lazy Holidays

Today is the last day before the half term holidays and tomorrow we fly to Mallorca for a family holiday. Mother, Pops, Twin & husband, The Blessings and of course Warmth. We are hoping for sunshine, rest and creating more wonderful family memories.

holiday

See you soon x