a dress so flowery

'Miss Marriot tying up the clematis and wearing a dress so flowery that many foiled bees buzzed angrily round her for a moment before going on to the less deceiving columbines.' Mollie Panter-Downes It's the real thing this time in Good evening, Mrs Craven

dress

I doubt I'll be wearing a dress like this.

Battle of Flowers

After the dark days earlier in the week some flowers.

'All autumn Mrs. Parmenter had run out between the showers and picked the asters, saying brightly that an old woman must be allowed to do something around the house. Opposition would hardly have been hysterical if she had offered to make the beds, but her tastes appeared to be floral. Now it was January and the snowdrops, and before you knew where you were, Mrs. Ramsay thought morbidly, it would be May and the tulips. Somehow she had never expected to spend the war having a Battle of Flowers with Mrs. Parmenter.' Mollie Panter-Downes Mrs Ramsay's War in Good Evening, Mrs Craven

tulips

Not quite sure what a Battle of Flowers would look like but in some ways I like the sound of it. Which flower would win?

a delightful little Tudor gem

'It was before lunch on a dark January day in the Ramsays' country cottage in Sussex. Just how dark January could be, Mrs Ramsay reflected gloomily, no one would ever know who had not spent it in a delightful little Tudor gem with a wealth of of old oak and several interesting features (such as the beam on which you knocked your head outside the bathroom).' Mollie Panter-Downes Mrs Ramsay's War in Good evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

home

Hoping you have moments of light this January day.

Goodbye, my love

We all travelled home on Sunday for a farewell lunch for Pops. Tomorrow he leaves for three months volunteering in Palestine with EAPPI. 

'Language was inadequate, after all. One used the same words for a parting which might be for years... as one did for an overnight business trip. She put her arms tightly around him and said, 'Goodbye, my love.' Mollie Panter-Downes Goodbye, my love in Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The wartime stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

au revoir

He's only going for three months the words the same as usual when we say goodbye after a family weekend but the tears and the longer, tighter hug spoke of a different au revoir.

scurry along

Having had a glorious rest I'm now back into the commuting. My journey is fine, even better if it could be a little shorter. It's open air, no tunnels, apart from when we go under the Thames at Greenwich, and I tend to get a seat.

'Miss Catherine Birch trotted through the lobby of the ministry where she was employed, automatically waved her pass at the doorman, and joined the hurrying throng of men and women pouring down the London street towards the bus stops and tube stations. Their haste was contagious. she began to scurry along as though a vitally important evening lay before her.' Mollie Panter-Downes It's the Reaction in Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

scurrying

How do you travel home from work?

Tilted saucers filled with flowers

Ah the frippery side of Virago - but yet always surrounded and linked to deeper thoughts and feelings.

'Mrs Blenkinsop at once replies that, for her part, she has never given up all those little feminine touches that make All the Difference. A ribbon here, a flower there.' E.M. Delafield The Diary of a Provincial Lady

feminine

'How sweet of you,' she had said, 'but darling, I don't wear hats any more, except on Sunday. And I've got my -'
'No,' he said firmly, 'I shall buy you a new hat...'
And to-day, on his way to lunch with someone at Boodle's, he had kept a sharp eye open for women wearing pretty hats. Extraordinary things they were, he thought, like tilted saucers filled with flowers...' Mollie Panter-Downes One Fine Day

hats

Hoping you have a 'tilted saucers filled with flowers' day.

Peppermint Cold

Yesterday

"... out for a walk together one late afternoon when the sun was hanging, a dark-red ball, in a sky which seemed hazed with bonfire smoke. The air was peppermint cold.." Mollie Panter-Downes One Fine Day

@

And then home for tea and crumpets.

How was your weekend?

The British Isles

A Bank Holiday quote for today. One of Laura's daydreams in One Fine Day is to take her daughter away for the day to the seaside. To run away from all their responsibilities.
'The cold English sea - she followed it in her imagination, all blue for once to-day, lapping quietly round the coast, sucking the conrete blocks which had been going to play Canute to the invader, drawing a wrinkle of silk over the long sands where pink-toed children ran brandishing starfish by a rough pink ray,

source

washing a deeper, more southern purple and indigo round the black rocks of St. Pol, then up the melancholy gull-haunted estuaries and past the ruined castle on the grey point, round the farthest lonely islands with the names like wild poetry,

source

running up in gentle wavelets on shingle above which the Regency houses in need of paint turned peeling faces towards the great land mass of Europe, sighing against the chalk cliffs, and finally tying it's girdle around the island's green waist with that knot of shining broad ribbon. Mollie Panter-Downes One Fine Day

source

Where's your favourite patch of sea?

Little poems of cakes.

One Fine Day - Laura is having a cup of tea and cake in her local cafe. There is only seed cake left. 'toothsome ghosts of food kept floating back from the past'. She is prompted to reminisce on her honeymoon travels in Europe. She remembers eating 'delicious little poems of cakes'. In the age of austerity she's now in she can all but daydream of that time... So, a delightful line and one written for a sunny Friday afternoon.

Which 'little poem of cake' will you choose?

source, source, source, source

In The Garden

The descriptions of the gardens, the flowers, the countryside in One Fine Day are sown throughout the book. Here are some of my favourite...

'The flowers rampaged and ate each other, red-hot poker devouring lily, aster swallowing bergamot, rose gulping jasmine.'

'...to pick a bunch of flowers... short heads of poppy, anchusa, raspberry-coloured sweet cicelys, a pansy, two pinks. Bunched tightly together they looked charming.'

'The cottage gardens were bright pocket handkerchiefs embroidered with rice-paper crinkled poppy, peppery lupin, stout rose and Canterbury bell.'



'...spires of rose and yellow, patches of blue and velvet maroon with dark eyes from which... the wild convolvulus hung its white trumpet and the thistle thrust a purple rosette four steely feet into the air.'


'The syringa... hung white and gold in the sun's warmth, lolling, showering scent and golden powder...'


'... there a rakish tuft on a slender spray of pink and palerpink dog-rose.'




'seeing Laura in a print dress picking extraordinary blue and flame-pink trumpet shaped flowers from a white picket fence.'
There's a metaphore somewhere about the relationship in how they view their lives and how nature blossoms, grows and quite often it's all out of our control....
source, source, source, source, source, source, source

One Fine Day

After our glorious sunny weekend it seems apt to be posting this today. When reading this novel the English summer seemed a life time away, but I almost felt like re reading it this weekend as the weather so fitted the weather of One fine Day. It's a short and sweet book which I really enjoyed and found uplifting.
The two words which come to mind when thinking about this book are 'daydreaming' and 'escaping'. Laura goes about her daily life reflecting and reminiscing. To a time before marriage and the war, to during the war, on their life today and to where they might go tomorrow. Laura is aware of her part in society and that her 'easier sort of life has come to an end.' She now has to look after their daughter, whom she dearly loves, shop, cook, wash up. These two passages show some of her feelings to her home.

'Now, said the house to Laura, we are alone together. Now I am yours again...She knew all her house's little voices as she had never done in the old days when there had been more people under her roof.'

'...my day is a feeble woman's day following a domestic chalk line, bound to the tyranny of my house with its voices saying, Clean me, polish me, save me from the spider...It is so long since I measured out a day for myself and said, This is mine, I shall be alone.'

As the story unravels the glimpse at the marriage of Laura and Stephen is touching - in the end I felt that they were right for each other. Her fondness for her daughter. At the end I had the feeling that things would be alright. They would manage. And that would because of their tight knit family unit of three.

My favourite sentence in the novel is about half way through. All the strain of the war and now keeping house means Laura feels she's aged and this is summed up so beautifully when Laura describes the handsome young whom she's asking to garden for them looking at her

'He looked at her amiably, as though she was a nice sofa... She had noticed it young men looked at you as though you were a nice sofa, an article of furniture which they would never be desirous of acquiring.'

source

Never mind when I am old I shall wear purple. When I am old I shall be a chaise longue...