while you're ahead...

– 2018/29 – poetry Monday

Monica Dunkley

February 5, 2018

Bluebird Poem (by Charles Bukowski)

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

– 2018/28 yellow Sunday

Monica Dunkley

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February 4, 2018

I know that this year’s colour is lavender but I can’t help by noticing yellow everywhere I look. It seems to me it’s a colour that has been ignored for a long while and now you can’t escape it.

Yellow is the colour of the mind and of the intellect, it’s uplifting, illuminating, it inspires thoughts and inquisitiveness. It’s the colour of the practical thinking, not the dreamer. It is the colour of communication, it can be the clown and bring happiness and joy but it can lead to indecision and anxiety too.

It’s the colour of optimism and sunshine and springs. It’s achievement and fun. It’s the French Yellow Jersey and SpongeBob Squarepants…

But it also represent danger… in the middle ages boats that carried people infected with deadly disease were obliged to fly a yellow flag. In Russia, a colloquial expression for an insane asylum used to be “yellow house.” Those condemned to die during the Inquisition wore yellow as a sign of treason.

In contrast in Japan, yellow often represents courage. In China, adult movies are referred to as yellow movies and in Italy a ‘yellow book or movie’ is a thriller.

So many faces for one colour.

Yellow is the most visible color of the spectrum. The human eye processes yellow first. This explains why it is used for cautionary signs and emergency rescue vehicles and our peripheral vision is 2.5 times higher for yellow than for red.

Vincent Van Gogh called it “a color capable of charming God,” Kandinsky said “a picture painted in yellow always radiates spiritual warmth” whilst Degas on the other hand said “What a horrible thing yellow is.”

Aside from flowers on my table and my gorgeous Tretorn raincoat and a handbag I can’t wait to dig out in spring, there isn’t much yellow in our house. (oh and a couple of cushions on the sofa… but they’re more mustard than yellow)

I just spent a few minutes ‘surfing’ (and I’m saying this totally metaphorically… my back went kaput yesterday morning and I can barely walk at the moment, that’s also why you’re getting such rambling, there’s not much else I can physically do… sorry) and the internet and I found some gorgeous yellow things for you.

Shoes:

yellow-heels-champagne-silver-glitter-jimmy-choo-u0027lana-u0027-twill-sandals-icbqige-

http---d2ob0iztsaxy5v.cloudfront.net-product-342016-3420162050_zm

From top left to bottom right) Jimmi Choo, Next, Adidas, Anthropologie. Yes please one pair of each.

Tops:

M.I.H Jeans, Merlette, H&M, Boden.

I know right…. sigh…

Or how about swimsuit… summer WILL be coming I’m told…

Rochelle Sara, H&M, Solid and Striped, Stella McCartney.

There’s no end to yellow things out there it you’re really that obsessed… including:

Yup, you got it. Yellow toilette paper.

Bonkers. Total and utter madness. I mean you could say why not… of course…. or WHY???

… I know you’re probably all yellowed-out but… going back to ‘lavender’? Looks good with yellow…

(Miu Miu)

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– 2018/27 – banana bread

Monica Dunkley

1 comment

February 3, 2018

I’ve tried quite a few banana bread recipes through the years and this is by far my favourite.

It’s definitively more like a bread than a cake. It’s not too sweet or ‘bananay’ and it tastes incredibly divine smothered in good quality butter (unsalted please!) or with Nutella. But then again what doesn’t taste better covered in Nutella?

It’s delicious still warm and keeps well in an airtight container for 3 or four days… it usually doesn’t last that long.

You can find the recipe in this book, a favourite of mine, by Tessa Kiros. (All her books are great – a feast for the eyes and stomach!)

125gr of butter, 180gr of dark brown sugar, 4 medium ripe bananas, mashed (although if they’re REALLY gone I use two), 2 eggs, 1tsp baking powder, 3/4tsp baking soda, 1tsp vanilla extract, 250gr plain flower, 3tbsp of warm bread.

Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add the bananas then the eggs and the vanilla and lastly the flour/baking powder/baking soda and the milk. Mixing really well ( I use a mixer) after each addition.

Bake in a preheated oven (180C) for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

and voila’…

just delicious….

You’re welcome.

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– 2018/26 – music Friday

Monica Dunkley

3 comments

February 2, 2018

… it’s been an interesting week on the parenting front… so a song about family might just be what we need…

have a good weekend with your family!

– 2018/25 – vintage crockery –

Monica Dunkley

2 comments

February 1, 2018

You know what they say about buses… you wait for ages for one to arrive and then two show up at once. Same with vintage finds.

Last weekend? the one before? who can remember… I popped into a big charity shop (thrift store for you across the pond) on the way back from a super early and wet hockey match to cheer myself up and I found four delicious dessert bowls waiting for me… in the sale section!!

Check that border out! Perfection right?

The reverse had this mark: Royal Art Pottery.

Now researching things is a passion of mine and with a little digging I think I cracked it. The company hails from Stoke on Trent, like many of the great pottery manufacturers, in the area around what used to be called Waterloo Street and was renamed in the 50s Barford Street and is now a Matalan superstore (sadly). I can’t quite decipher when it was established but we know that by 1897 the Waterloo Works had become the Royal Art Pottery Company. To be precise the Waterloo Works had a number of companies working from it through it’s life span (including Alfred Deakin Co etc., you might have come across some its products if you’re a pottery hunter like me!).

From what I understood the company operate as Royal Art Pottery Co from 1897 to 1915 and had a different mark etc (Royal Art Pottery Longton might be from this period too). From at least 1940 to the mid 1960s was operate by Alfred Clough ltd and became Royal Art Pottery with the mark under the plates I found. This is when things got a little confused because Alfred Clough ltd produced a lot of other pottery out of Staffordshire too.

I don’t know. Please help out if you can with more details.

Anyway, back to the buses… a few days later I stumbled on (eBay) onto this little gem of a side place…

and then… two more dessert plates…

Three buses!

Joking aside, I’m getting quite obsessed.

They’re worth swooning over though… don’t you think?

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– 2018/24 – 48 years of books (2012)

Monica Dunkley

3 comments

January 31, 2018

There’s nothing wrong with reading children’s books in fact when the kids were younger I tried reading books before passing them to them so we could talk about it, or I could answer their questions if they had any. That kind of stopped when No 1 went through his Lee Child phase (20 book people… 20… that Jack Reacher is a busy man, let me tell you).

These days two of them don’t read anything that’s not on a cereal box or it’s longer than a hashtag and the third one still does but slightly under duress. He’s extremely fussy and only agrees to read books recommended by Barbara, the children book guru in our local branch of Waterstones (Cheltenham). If Barbara says it’s good… then he reads it.

Hey, he reads, why should I get offended that my baby puts a stranger’s opinion above mine?

Sigh.

Anyway, this is a delightful book and I think every 12yrs old should read it. Big big topics, easy flow language, funny and quite hard hitting, happy and sad. I thought it was good. I’m glad No 3 liked it and thought worth it of reading it waaaaaay past bedtimes.

From an adult point of view it’s a little bit sugary and a little bit kodak, but I’m ok with that. There are a couple of things that make me cringe a little (spoiler alert) like when August gets this award at the end of the school year for being ‘kind’… I’ve read a few review and people seem to be polarised on this: there’s the ‘it’s wrong, he only gets it because he’s disabled’ camp and the ‘it’s the right thing, he’s been through a lot, he’s so brave camp’. I can see both sides… but this is a book for children about children and let’s face it… and children are not too much into shades of grey… they want it black and white, simple and clear messages… all children say silly things, exaggerated things, things they mean one day and not the next… they want to fit in, they want to have friends… there are PLENTY of good messages in this book so let’s not be too critical.

The only line I didn’t like was one when one of the characters says that if were to be ‘like him (the bully) he’d kill himself. Well, it sounds even worse when take out of context but I still think it was a little harsh and unnecessary.

To round things up because I have a mountain of ironing to get through the only thing my son takes out of it is the allegedly sugary ‘be kinder than necessary’… that’s ok with me!

Before you ask… no I haven’t seen the movie. Don’t get me started on that…

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– 2018/23 – winter 10×10 – recap

Monica Dunkley

1 comment

January 30, 2018

I’ve made it through to the end of the 10×10 winter experiment. 10 Items to be worn for 10 days in different combination. 10 only. Including shoes. (Obvs not including underwear, pjs, accessories or working out gear or coats).

You can see what I had selected here. And here are is what I wore; only nine outfits because I repeated one of the days, what can I say, I’m a rebel. A lazy rebel.

The items were:

pair of jeans (Anthropologie)
pair of corduroy trousers (Oska)
black dress, knee length, wool (Hush)
striped dress (Marimekko)
beige cardigan (Toast)
russet jumper (Toast)
navy jumper (Jigsaw)
white button down shirt (Madewell)
brown lace up boots (Cheaney)
black tall boots (Frye) which I swapped from my initial black shoes choice

This was a very interesting experiment and I don’t want to get too deep about it because… well they’re just clothes right? Having said that…

On the plus side it made the last ten days made me realise we don’t really need THAT many clothes. Of course I knew that before, we all know that… but this was an eye opener. It is possible to combine what we have in different ways that make items feel new. Who would have thought… next I’ll discover hot water or sliced bread… geehs… As they say ‘boredom is the greatest spark for creativity’… I would have never thought to wear a white shirt under the black woollen dress but I was bored with wearing it under jumpers that I tried it and loved the way it looks! There you go… a different ‘outfit’ I didn’t know I had. Or why not wear a cardigan over the marimekko dress, a little bit kookie but very comfortable and warm. Or the dress over denim… there isn’t a law against it, right? This also opened my eyes to the myriad of possibilities waiting for me in the wardrobe, I kept thinking ‘oh when this is finished I can try wearing this with that or even with that…’

Another positive was that having only 10 items to choose from made deciding what to wear in the morning a total breeze. Never a moment of ‘uh… what should I wear’ or surprisingly, never a thought of ‘I’ve got nothing to wear’, which is something I would have expected frankly. I’ve been to the theatre and to lunch with friends, I’ve walked on beaches (is it cheating that I wore wellies there?) and went shopping. Less choice made it quicker. Another earth shuttering discovery.

On the negative side I got a little bored towards the end. A capsule wardrobe style is not for me, definitively not. I can see how it make sense, how it would be the right thing to do in this day and age of wastefulness and over-consumption… but it’s not me. I need a little bit more variety, and I like clothes there’s nothing wrong with that right?

Another good consequence of this is that I’ve through my clothes and got rid of quite a few things that just weren’t working. Old things kept ‘just in case’, mistakes clothes, too tight clothes, ‘maybe I’ll get one more wear out of this’ clothes… Out out out… eBay or charity shops. And breathe a little better.

So maybe the trick is not so much a capsule, minimalist wardrobe but a wardrobe filled with things that… don’t make me say… ‘spark joy’… in us… There I said it.

Sigh.

Am I glad I tried this experiment? Yes I am.

Am I glad the ten days are over? Yes I am.

It’s been really interesting to check out what other people (on instagram, #winter10x10) chose to wear, how the mixed and matched. From what I gather most peeps went for simplicity… then added accessories or not… bust simple shape and not too much colour variety seem to be the norm. This brings to the fore the concept of ‘uniform’; quite a few people instead of referring to their own style spoke of ‘uniform’… I dont’ want to have a uniform! I want to have style! Maybe I want to wear yellow one day and russet another… maybe a short dress and then a long dress… I do put things on according to what mood I’m in… don’t you?

Does that negate a ‘style’… ? Oh well if it does… be it.

I just like to be me.

(But now I know that really I don’t need quite so many things to be me. Win win.)

– 2018/22 – poetry Monday

Monica Dunkley

no comments

January 29, 2018

Children (by Khalil Gibran)

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, ‘Speak to us of Children.’

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

– 2018/21 – Tretorn raincoat

Monica Dunkley

4 comments

January 28, 2018

Do you believe love at first sight? I do.

Or let me put it in a different way… you know how sometimes you see something or someone and it’s familiar… like you’ve seen before, or been there before… in another life or something. Not that I believe in reincarnation per se… but you know what I mean, right?

In another life I definitively had this coat. Hey, maybe in another life I was this coat!

I saw it, I tried it on, and that was it. Mine. Forever.

I used to have a rain cape in a similar material as this when I was little, it was a bit like a poncho but with sleeves. It was pale blue (but I remember a yellow one too, so maybe my sister had the yellow? or I had the yellow and she had the blue? who knows) and had a hat to match, one of those hats with a longer brim at the back a little bit like the classic fisherman’s hat. I loved it even if we didn’t wear it often and I used to pair it with a transparent umbrella with a yellow border and yellow ducks on the panels, one of those children’s umbrella that come right down your shoulders like a cocoon…

A little bit of trivia on a Sunday morning for you: waterproof coats are nothing new, in fact samples from 1900BC have been found – bonkers eh? – … Inuits used to make them out of whales and seals intestines which amazingly, are breathable just like the ubiquitous Goretex. In South America people used rubber to make their shoes and garments waterproof for centuries and in China people rubbed vegetable oils into fabric to the same effect.

The first modern waterproof raincoat was created following the patent by Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh in 1824 of new tarpaulin fabric, described by him as “India rubber cloth,” and made by sandwiching a core of rubber softened by naptha in two pieces of fabric. (According to Wikipedia)

Yellow coats are a classic ‘fishermen’ look and their history is very interesting but basically the material used to make fishermen’s garment was soaked with linseed oil to make it waterproof… and linseed oil turns yellow with time and aging. And that’s why they were yellow! Who knew.

If you want to read all about the history of rain jackets go here. It’s fascinating.

And if you don’t like yellow turn away now…

My jacket is manufactured by the iconic Swedish brand “Tretorn” with PVC free PU, has welded seams and it’s totally watertight. I can vouch for that because I wore it yesterday to watch what felt like an underwater hockey match. It’s not lined but I wore it over an ancient light long down jacket and I was toasty. The wind doesn’t get through either.

It’s really soft and comfortable and there’s something totally child-like in wearing something so bright and light in the rain and not get wet. It’s like walking through puddles with rubber boots… don’t tell me that doesn’t bring a secret smile to your face…

It comes in a lot of different colours (but yellow is the best!) and a few different models. This one is called ‘Wings’ and you can find it here.

A perfect item made for imperfect times, after all there is no such thing as bad weather… only wrong clothes…

(by the way this is not a sponsored post!)

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– 2018/20 – random Saturday

Monica Dunkley

no comments

January 27, 2018

when you your son and his awesome hockey team become Under 16 National Indoor Champions 2018.
and you cry of happiness in front of the computer screen you’ve been refreshing every two minutes because you’re not there to see it in person (I was holding the fort at home…)

When people keep hanging lost gloves on your fence
and it’s totally creepy

When you go to the theatre with a friend and laugh till your cheeks hurt. If you get the chance go see “the plays that goes wrong“… it’s genius.
and you really want to see it again because it would be even funnier the second time

when you ask your 12yrs old to put away the toilette paper and this is what you get…
and you obviously need to revise your communication skills (remove-the-rolls-from-the-packaging-and-stack-them-neatly-in-the-cupboard-and-then-close-the-cupboard-door)

also… the yellow rain jacket in the first photo? how awesome is that!!!