Whyred bags

So this another post about Swedish stuff. I don't do this intentionally and I am not on the payroll of anyone in Sweden I promise.

The thing is this bag by Whyred is not only brilliant (the picture doesn't do it justice) but excellent quality for an excellent (given that we are talking silly bag prices here) price.

This bag is the in the size and category of your Mulberry Bayswaters et al, it does everything they do and is as well made but is about the price and dare I saw it a little bit cooler? I like a classic as much as the next girl but with a twist is nicer I think?

Then, if you don't need something so classic work/ meeting looking there is this lovely bag (the 'Tilda'), which could be worn over your body, or in the classic over the shoulder way.

Again I am not saying it's cheap but it is beautiful and it is good value in the category it's in. It would look perfect with brogues and a blazer.

Now I just need to make the money to buy all these things don't I?!

Chelsea Flower Show- the menu

Menu

Glass of Joseph Perrier Champagne

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Urban garden salad
Nasturtium, dandelion, summer pea and radish salad,
nettle rolled goat's cheese, borage flowers

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Hay roasted Herdwick lamb, crushed Jersey Royals and nettles,
braised Alexanders, peppermint jus

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English strawberries, rose petal and elderflower Champagne jelly,
ginger beer granita

£36 for three courses / £44 for three courses and a glass of Champagne

 

Available from Chelsea restaurant The botanist from today until the end of the flower show. Looks delicious. 

On being dated

This is not a post about dating men, or boys. It is about being dated, or feeling it.

Chatting in a lovely restaurant to dear D I realised how dated a book like Bridget Jones now feels. Please don't misunderstand, I still find the honesty and humour of Helen Fielding's novels- and their film adaptations (well perhaps not the second) comforting and hilarious (actually the skiing and pregnancy test purchasing are side splittingly funny in the Edge of Reason film).

Bridget arrived in the world when I was first in London- as a student- dreaming of going to sophisticated book parties and having such worries as having to choose between Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver. I could afford the Chardonnay but not the flat in Borough.

I knew Bridget was a bit of a mess but she also has a good job in a publishing house and the previously mentioned seriously intelligent man candy to worry about. I didn't aspire to be her but there were parts of me that were like her and identified with her (the parts that have bad hair days, that want to be slimmer but still drink wine and vodka- you know).

I realised that nowadays eighteen year olds probably wouldn't drive to central London to see the film (yes I did that, with friends, with the soundtrack to the film we awaited blasting out of the car stereo- on CD, we thought we were very cool because my car had a CD player- which was worth more than the car).

It is not just that nowadays a girl in her (gulp) 'thirty second year of being single' would be seen as not just a tiny bit lost (Bridget was always that, in a way) but probably thought of as being silly. I don't entirely hold to that- Bridget had great friends and great fun. I would accept that she was a bit frivolous and a student of chaos theory.

However when I meet people just a bit younger than me- mid to late twenties rather than early thirties- they talk far more about actively getting on the property ladder, they seem to really mean it about moving out of London if they need to which Bridget and her like wouldn't dream of.

They also do sensible things like order soft drinks between proper (i.e. alcoholic) drinks (even I now always have water with all proper drinks). The single ones also don't blow lots of money on shoes they can't afford, they buy them in New Look even though they could afford to buy them somewhere more upmarket. I wonder what they would have thought of the student me whisking around the Student's Union in my Kurt Geiger shoes at eighteen or nineteen when they probably wouldn't go there now. [Note I personally think everyone, girl, should know the joy of buying really leather shoes- though perhaps not quite as many as I have over the years].

Ultimately I think the difference was that Bridget wasn't really a mess. She was actually an attractive size 12- 14 woman, probably more a 12. She had a good job which she must have been reasonable at- an enormous flat which okay was rented but oh well. She had options and a fun life. Things have changed, now it's not really enough to be a normal to plump size, with a good job and a good home. Perhaps now is better and perhaps the recession has played a part in younger people being more sensible. I think they are probably right actually but it does sometimes leaving you feel a bit- dated.

Books: Capuchin classics

So it's no secret to anyone who reads this blog that I am a Nancy Mitford fan, as in fan short for fanatic. I know some people find her work snobby or even (horror!) irrelevant but I don't care, I would give my little toe to have her turn of phrase and I literally find opening her books like getting into the biggest bed with the downiest, most cloud like duvet imaginable.

Some writer's most famous books aren't their best books (clearly Jane Austen can do little wrong but I would argue the lesser known Persuasion is more of a towering great than say Mansfield Park, which many a girl has trudged through for a levels). In Nancy's case I do think the best known Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are her greatest achievements- although Don't Tell Alfred is also a marvel- but I think everything she does is gold.

Happily a great publisher called Capuchin Classics publish some of Nancy's lesser known delights, including Highland Fling, Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. Prior to my discovery of this company I only owned Pigeon Pie of these three- and that copy was a very old Penguin classic that I found on the book stall at Spitalfields market which was falling apart completely.

Capuchin's mandate is to revive 'great works of fiction which have been unjustly forgotten or neglected'. I think they are brilliant. Plus the peppermint cream colours covers look delicious on book shelves, especially next to the similarly chic dove grey spines of Persephone books- of which I am also, obviously, very fond.

Film: films I didn't see the first time around- Infamous

You know when two films with the same (or sameish) story come out and one always wins the VHS betamax battle? It seems to be me that the film that does less well isn't necessarily the inferior film, it can be an accident of timing, or a victory for stars or marketing that one film hits and another doesn't quite. The prime example, although perhaps not very high brow, example is perhaps Armageddon versus Deep Impact.

I'm sure you remember the film Capote, with an oscar winning performance from the excellent Philip Seymour Hoffman. Do you remember a film called Infamous? It too was about Capote, when he was reseraching In Cold Blood. It too features a brilliant performance of the famous writer this time from brilliant Toby Jones. It also features the very good Sandra Bullock- who is always excellent but often in films that are not so excellent. Happily this one is very good and Sandra is just right as Harper Lee, hero writer of a book that even people who don't like books love, To Kill A Mocking Bird.

Infamous is a really good film, the watching equivalent of a book you can't put down. The kind of film you find on at 11.50pm on a Tuesday and know you shouldn't stay up to watch but you do. It's probably not the best film of all time but it really does deserve to be seen- partly for the afore mentioned rare Sandra in good film thing- also because Toby Jones is alway brilliant- and Daniel Craig is very good in a before he was Bond but why he became him performance as the man on death row who isn't what he seems. Infamous is about horrible things that happen and trying very hard to understand them and make sure they don't happen again- and it's about writers and how they behave, the solitude of Lee but her need for her true friend- the insecurity of artists and of people who cannot be themselves. It's just good, if it hadn't come out when it did I'm sure far more people would have seen it. So if your love film (or insert other film rental method) is feeling a bit gappy and you fancy something thoughtful then queue this one- you'll like it- though you won't like Sandra's Harper hair.

Moonstone

Did you watch the documentary about Elizabeth Taylor and her jewellery? I adored every minute of it- and rewatched some of it this weekend. If I had Elizabeth Taylor's intergalactic star quality I would have been just like her- when it came to beauty- though perhaps not marriage. I cannot resist jewellery, it has fascinated me since I was a tiny girl, not in the way it fascinates all women- it's more than that- I can stand entranced in front of a jewellers window- the Burlington Arcade is my idea of a lost paradise and I could walk up and down happily looking at the diamonds, emeralds and sapphires forever.

I suspect if Elizabeth Taylor hadn't been Elizabeth Taylor she would still have cherished the pieces of jewellery she did have- as do I.

I've long been interested in the lesser known stones, the not so valuable but equally fascinating and captivating stones like turquoise and lapis.

Moonstones too can be quite lovely. I found this ring by Monica Vinader and it just said- I am meant for you. Now a lot of rings do say this to me, it's a problem, I am a kind of Dr Doolittle for precious stones. This seems special though, it's not too expensive but it gleams and sparkles and would go with everything. Moonstones are meant to be comforting to nervous souls, like me and I thought it might protect me from some of the less sensitive people I sometimes come across (make of this what you will, I am being deliberately oblique).

So if I can get through the next few days this ring will be mine. I shall have a gold band because I am over that phase of thinking only white metal is sophisticated and I think gold shines like the sun in bad times.

So next time you are jewellery shopping, think about the unusual stones- they are just as prescious, if not just as valueable.

More on moonstones.

And a a brilliant book called Jewels by Victoria Finlay which teaches everything you could want to know about all kinds of jewel stones- the intergalactic and the not so.

Something's Gotta Give interiors- or heaven

Picture the scene, it's a sunny but very cold Saturday afternoon and this blogger's real world life has tired them to the bone.

I know some of you manage sixty hour weeks and then hop up at 7am on Saturdays and do 3 hours of Bikram followed by knitting your own jumpers and cooking a three course lunch but me? This week I'm going to be honest, it's been more wake, drink pot of tea, have a bath, want to go back to bed.

Blogs are aspirational aren't they? They are a five minute escape into how we'd like things to be. Well sometimes this blogger needs to escape.

The television couldn't offer many options but the planner had Something's Gotta Give Something's Gotta Give hiding in a corner. My brain had obviously thought, lovely film the dvd of which you have *somewhere* in storage (many of my possessions are somewhere, somewhere is a very nice chic spot but I can't always find it). So my brain had recorded this for a metaphorical rainy day.

I like this film, it's about older people and love later in life. So it's not anything I know anything about but there is great acting and, if I'm honest, I'm really mostly interested in Diane Keaton's character's house in the film. As many a blogger before me has pointed out this house is the dream house. So chic yet livable that you literally want to jump into the telly box and snap the keys from Keaton's hands.

Here are some stills to feast on, in case you also need a pick me up.

PS. More film interiors so good you will watch the whole movie for them: here (I am also particularly obsessed with Rose cottage in The Holiday).