Shopping in London

To be honest, I'm not a very good shopper. I like looking at things rather than buying them.

When I go to London, I always visit Liberty's to look at all the things I can't afford and admire the architecture.  I worked in their bookshop in the summer of 1972!

Such a splendid staircase

and such wonderful flowers!

I did buy four books at the Persephone bookshop which is exactly where I would like to work now - if I lived in London. Actually, I want to buy all the books - first for the content  and second for their looks. I recommend The Village by Margarita Laski  - a very clear-eyed look at a small village post World War Two.

This is a bookshop in Lewes which was fortunately closed - thus saving me the trouble of carting assorted  tempting retro books across the Atlantic.

This is the gift shop at Charleston farmhouse where one can stock up on Bloomsbury related reading matter  -  of which there is a great deal. I bought a very small coaster as a present for a friend.

This alarming shop in Berwick Street, Soho, was barred to prevent the clothes escaping to threaten us with the 1960's and the horrid odor of patchouli. 

Ah, Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street. Yes, I went in and had a croissant and a lovely hot chocolate.

How I admire the Queen for her resolve and endurance. Here she is on a biscuit tin. Lots of Queen's 90th birthday memorabilia.

Claudia and I made the awful mistake of going to Harrods where I hadn't been in many many years. (I worked in their bookshop in the summer of 1970). The lovely tiles were still there in the food halls. The rest of the shop was much altered. Bought some Charbonel & Walker chocolates as a present for a friend from a very sweet girl who gave us free samples of other choices. 

Total haul of London shopping: children's clothing and four books.... 

Winter Reading

When not rushing around taking photos, writing, walking the dog,  gardening in a very confined space and, occasionally, cooking, you will find me with my nose stuck in a book. It was ever thus. I think I like books better than real life...they take most of the really boring bits out except poor Tess laboring in the fields in the opening of Hardy's novel and, of course, the even more wretched Ivan Denisovich...
One reads to explore other worlds, other lives.
However, a super book rather close to home - though written almost a century ago - is

The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in which a woman is perfectly miserable at home - though a meticulous housekeeper - and manages to make her family perfectly miserable too and then...well...things change.

I hate knowing all about a book's themes before I begin it.  (I'd read the preface afterwards!) This book should have felt a bit schematic and predictable but the author breathes such life into her characters that one really wants good things for them.

I read it in two days.

I also recently loved Margarita Laski's Little Boy Lost - a most moving but brisk and uncloying account of a father's search for his son in post-World War II France. It was originally published in 1949 and captures the gloom and poverty of Europe immediately after the war. 

My third recommendation is not a novel but a family history, A World Elsewhere,  is beautifully written and utterly gripping. In brief, Sigrid's mother, a young American abroad in Europe in the twenties of the last century, meets and marries a most charming, handsome, romantic - and impoverished - aristocrat. This all sounds wonderful - but this idyll turns into a nightmare when Germany goes to war.

So, happy reading in these long dark evenings!

American Mother's Day in London

 Most mothers would enjoy an astounding cake from Patisserie Valerie  on Old Compton Street.

I'm not sure that anyone needs marzipan animals, but they are certainly fun to look at.....

Upstairs an attentive waitress brings our tea.

(Most mothers need tea.)

Real tea, the kind you need a strainer for......

Flowers from Liberty would be a great treat too, of course.

My present was three new Persephone books to be gobbled up gleefully.

Creativity

The moon has been visible in the early mornings

but it seems to have vanished in my photo. If you strain

 your eyes horribly, you can see it just above the

 'V' of the buildings.

I have been finishing a project before going away from

 the city for two weeks.

Herewith three city things:

1. A street fair

 23rd Street.

2. A behind the scenes look at the fabrication of a sculpture.

If you blow the picture up you can see all the little pieces of wood

that undulate in the sculpture.

  22nd Street

3. The lighting crew organizing things for a shoot.

20th Street

On a quite different topic, I have just finished reading a book I loved so much I had to ration myself from gobbling it all up at once and neglecting the rest of my life.

The Priory by Dorothy Whipple (Persephone Books) originally published in 1939,

 concerns the fate and fortunes of all the inhabitants of a large, decaying English country house.

Promising already! 

One quote: The electricity plant was old and out of date. It was on its last legs, but it must be made to do, because, as the major frequently pointed out, he could not afford to replace it. It must be spared, he decreed, as much as possible. Since he was very economical in everything that did not directly affect his own comfort, the household had to wait for light until he wanted light himself.

I think many of us have met Major Marwood.

Anyway, it is a terrific read, with wonderful insight into the human heart.