The Month of July

Cooked: Gazpacho a la Hairy Bikers, Cheese and Pickled Onion Tart (Grazia) for Warmth's birthday, Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake (Hummingbird) without the popy seed - damn you Tesco's. Warmth made Delia's Gazpacho - we'll be sticking to that one in future..


Read: That Mad Ache Francoise Sagan, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris Paul Gallico, Vagabond Colette

Summer Exhibition at Royal Academy with dear print making frineds. My favourite artist Farah Sayed had a painting in again.

Discovered two new pubs - The Leather Market - good cocktails and The Garrison - feminine perfection for a pub. I shall be returning...

Porn Star Martinis at The Electric - oh they are wonderful. Two is the perfect number.

Birthday drinks at The Gherkin (Gherkin Fizz not a good choice of cocktail)

A BBQ, visiting dear friends new home, Cricket - again one time too many this year. Celebrating a dear dear friend's birthday with fizz, friendship and flowers.

Toe nails - Essie Watermelon, Opi 'Show down at the ok coral' -a little too much pink and shimmer. Essie Material Girl on toes a little too dark for summer. Trying out 'Flawless' Essie a pink for next Saturday's wedding. Quite like it. Actually wore Opi 'Jade is the new black' which surprisingly went well with my blue dress, and was inspired by walking past the police station and seeing green and blue on a poster and realising it did work.

Holidays

So I am now beautifully in the mood for holidays. Having spent a month in the virtual world of France I am now off for a holiday in the real France. Great wine, great friends, good food, much laughter and hopefully some sunshine. My bags are packed.
@

See you soon x

A Profound Promise

Paris in July is soon to draw to a close and so one final quote is needed. We're off to a wedding at the weekend. Is this not the joy which shines from the bride as she walks towards her groom.....

'She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it towards him, making him a profound promise of herself...' F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night

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From Shadow to Sunlight

I've chosen this quote for today as it links to Friday's quote about believing and hopefully the scars do heal...

'One day you find it' repeated Rodolphe; one day, quite suddenly, just when hope seems lost. And the horizon opens up it's like a voice crying 'Behold'. You feel you must tell this person the secrets of your life, give them everything, sacrifice everything for them. Nothing is actually said, you just know. You have seen each other in your dreams. There it is at last, the treasure you have sought so long, there right in front of you; shining, sparkling. Though you still have doubts, you dare not believe it; you stand there dazed, just as if you stepped from shadow to sunlight.' Gustav Flaubert Madame Bovary

sunlight

I have a little bit of a moral dilema. It happens with Anna Karenina too. Saving quotes about passion and love when the couple are having an affair. Hurting others. Does it decrease their love? Or does it just mean that for us the reader, reading it out of context it's bittersweet. And oh I have so many love quotes that are between lovers should I then not use them? What are your thoughts?

Something is up....

...with the internet in our flat.
I can read and comment on all your lovely blogs but for some reason when I go into mine - either logged on or not it cuts out on me. Hmmm Not sure why. Have I infected my blog? So my posting on here and on your blogs may be a little erratic.
Hoping that by just turning the computer off and not touching it for a while may make it all go away...

Do any of you clever bloggers have any idea? Has this happened to you?

Scars

Life isn't always sunny, rosy, full of love and romance. Sometimes it hurts and we suffer. In those moments I tend to cry but the words in novels have put my feelings into some sort of coherent thought and have helped me.

'One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.' F.Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night

@

First Day of the Holidays

It's Paris in July and the first day of my summer holidays. So this picture seemed perfect.

pain

'After all the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.' Kenneth Grahame Wind in the Willows

Believing

So this time last year I journeyed off by myself to collect my wedding dress. I didn't realise how emotional it would be. Walking out of the shop carrying my dress - I was about to get married. Wow. This was so right. I realised that I'd always hoped to marry but I'm not sure I let myself believe I would. There's a limit to how many times friends can say 'Of course you'll meet someone' and then you don't, and then you do but it doesn't last, and then you don't and then you do - and this time it grows and lasts and you're about to be walking down the aisle to the man you love.

'She had never really believed that it would work out happily; she had hoped, but she had not believed.' Sebastian Faulks Charlotte Gray

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Tomorrow

I leave my job. I leave the best team I've ever worked in. I leave this small area of London that I've taught, learnt and shopped in for the last nine years. It's so so right to move now, personally and professionally.

But yet....

Come to the edge
We might fall
Come to the edge
It's too high!
Come to the edge
And they came
And we pushed
And they flew

Apollonaire

fly
May we all fly x

Flowers for Mrs Harris

Mrs Harris a lady after my own heart. A lover of dresses and flowers...

'As long as she had flowers, Mrs Harris had no serious complaints concerning the life led... These bright flashes of colour satisfied her. They were something to return to in the evening and something to wake up to in the morning.'

@

'Here were streets that were nothing but a mass of azaleas in pots, plants in pink, white, red, purple, mingling with huge bunches of cream, crimson, and yellow carnations. There seemed to be acres of boxes of pansies smiling up into the sun, blue irises, red roses, and huge fronds of gladioli...'

@
'All the beauty that she had ever really known in her life until she saw the Dior dress had been flowers. Now, her nostrils were filled with the scent of lilies and tuberoses. From every quarter came beautiful scents, and through this profusion of colour and scent Mrs Harris wandered as if in a dream.'

@
'dark, deep red roses by the dozen, cream white lilies, bunches of pink and yellow carnations, and sheaves of gladioli ready to burst into every colour from deep mauve to palest lemon. There were azaleas, salmon coloured, white, and crimson, geraniums, bundles of sweet-smelling freesias, and one great bouquet of violets...'

violets