If flesh could crawl my skin would fall from off my bones and run away from here

 Dress: vintage. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: made by me

Weird weekend followed by an exasperating day for which I have to confess I wasn’t really in the best of moods.

The weekend saw me catching up with a couple of my oldest friends on a day out with them and their kids at Belton House in Lincolnshire, while the one that now lives down South was on a flying visit to the East Midlands. And to be honest, it was a little bit weird and I didn’t really enjoy it all that much.

It was really, really good to see them, and Belton’s grounds are always a beautiful and strangely instantly calming place to wander round (even if they do always make me want to get hold of a copy of Moondial from somewhere!), especially on a lovely day, so in one sense it was lovely, don’t get me wrong.

But in the other sense… well, I’m not the world’s most maternal person. I don’t dislike kids, but I don’t really have any experience with them and tend to find myself feeling incredibly awkward and uncertain around them. And, well, on a day like that that’s so centred around the children (and rightly so) I do end up feeling rather… out of place. I love my friends, and I love their children, but it’s one of those circumstances in which you feel the differences rather than the similarities in the relationship, if that makes any sense.

I was quite grateful to have the house to myself all weekend in order to recover with the aid of wine, films and those most zen-inducing hobbies, knitting and spinning, but I would have preferred a bit of shared laughter before being plunged into a busy and stressy sort of day at work today!

Still, I’ve thunk myself into a much better mood now, and having the ability and inclination to do that is something for which I’m grateful.

Take my hand, don’t be afraid, I’m gonna prove every word I say

 Cardi: Oasis. Dress: Fever via eBay. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: self-made

When I’m feeling out of place, I talk both more and less. I barely contributed to general office bantery conversations at work today (though I chuckled quietly at my desk over several) for that reason. But on the other hand, I caned Twitter (I do get breaks, yer honour!). Easier to feel I’m among People Like Me when it’s a me-picked crowd, I guess.

By way of example, today’s tweets, lumped together. It probably tells me more than it tells you…

Starting working day with Dusty Springfield. Which is a preferable soundtrack to colleague trying to grok idea of fundamentalist Christians.

Feeling a little withdrawn and inexplicably emotional today. Cheer me up, twitter? Slightly new thing for me, this. The admitting fragility and asking for help thing. Even if it is on fairly small scale, tis a good thing.

Walking Daily Mail colleague now grilling newly-revealed-as-Christian colleague on religion. *stays quietly in corner. giggling a bit.* There has now been a conversation about the burning bush. Room full of people biting their lips on bush jokes.

More notebook-related oddness. List of words: chirrup, lipstick, radioactive, magnet, fleur, antichrist, canoe, room. No explanation. I actually speculated about trying to form a story involving all of those words. Canoeing antichrist with radioactive lippie? Maybe not…

One of those office conversations in which I don’t participate because I seem to be in a different world. But the listening was amusing. Still trying to think of a saddest film I’ve ever seen. Struggling. And I’m the sort of Big Softy that cries at the end of T2.

(Yes, I am now in a completely silly mood. The euphoric opposite of this morning’s fragile state, I spose. Equilibrium this evening, maybe.)

For various reasons, friend is now searching for songs about or involving Robin Reliants. Anyone know of one?

I love the way she bites her lip

 Cardi: White Stuff. Dress: Vintage. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: Monsoon

Today has gone a little something like this: tea politics politics projects projects tea projects phonecall projects projects phonecall tea projects projects projects politics politics.

I am therefore hoping that this evening will go more along the lines of TEA! Blogging! Baked Camembert! Rhubarb crumble! Aaand relax.

This would be the newest of my vintage dresses, which I mentioned in yesterday’s posted. It’s crying out for some yellow accessories, isn’t it? Oh dear, this could be my next habit…

She’s walking through the clouds with a circus mind that’s running around

Top: H&M. Skirt: thrifted. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: Next

Long day today, so I’m afraid I’m all out of words this evening. I’m unlikely to post tomorrow as I’ll be at a funeral and it doesn’t really seem appropriate – but the Feminist Fashion Bloggers will be publishing their monthly topical post, so I strongly recommend you check out what the thoughtful ladies over there have to say.

Open your eyes, close the door and take what’s yours

 Dress: Fever via eBay. Cardi: Oasis. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: made by me

My final day of Dress Your Best week, and I must admit I’m actually quite relieved. It’s been an interesting exercise, but it’s fair to say that singing the praises of aspects of my body has about the same level of comfort for me as one feels when told ‘tell us about yourself’ by a stern-looking panel of five interviewers, one of whom has been frowning disapprovingly at you since you walked through the door (Yes, I have been there. No, I don’t know what it was about my door-0pening procedure that was so offensive.).

I know, really, that that’s the point of it – that we don’t hear or participate in enough body-positive messages. But it’s still completely out of my (sorry) comfort zone to single out bits of myself for active praise rather than simply existing as comfortable in my skin.

Anyway, onto today’s Featured Body Part. Can you tell what it is yet? Here’s a close-up:

My parents and brother are pale-eyed. My sister’s eyes are darker, of similar depth to mine but more of a deep greenish grey, without the hazel accents. She gets them from my father’s side of the family.

As for mine, there are obviously greeny shades in various places in the family tree, since my sister’s grey is deeper than Dad’s and tinged with green, but the hazel? We’ll never know. Mum thinks she remembers her grandmother having eyes this colour, but since there are no colour photographs of the lady in question or anyone of her generation on either side of the family, we can’t really be sure. So I have mystery eyes.

They’re not clear and bright, zingingly striking like blue or clear green eyes.  They’re mid-toned and kind of murky, the hazel and green blending gently into one another, and they can colourshift further towards green if I cry or, when that was the fashion and I was young enough and surrounded by women enough to play around with it, wear lilac eyeshadow.

And I rather like that.

Eyes are fragile things, though. Mine are a little short-sighted – nothing major, but enough to have been wearing contact lenses since my late teens (another thing which points to these being eyes inherited from the distaff side, incidentally). And since the hobbies that I love – the reading, the sewing, the knitting, the film-watching, the spinning – all depend heavily on vision I hope that’s the biggest problem I ever have with them.

But it might not be. It’s unlikely, I hope, that I’ll follow suit if I have my mother’s eyes, but there’s no telling how these things play out and my 70-something father was diagnosed with macular degeneration some time ago. Its progress was frighteningly swift. Within the space of a year he went from normal long-sightedness to being legally blind. He can see, but he can’t make out the faces of his loved ones if they sit a metre or two away from him and he can only really read headlines.

As well as having to adjust to audiobooks and discover a love of music to replace the now-lost hobby of reading, he has had to adjust to being an artist whose eyesight is dramatically reduced. And you know what? He’s done it. He is still painting. I can see the differences between his current works and his older ones, but I can also see that he hasn’t compromised his style. As I said on Father’s Day, an artist may lose his eyesight but he’ll never lose his vision.

I can only hope that if these muddy-looking eyes of mine render my vision muddy too I’ll embrace it with half as awesome an attitude.

–

More about macular degeneration, from an organisation that’s less well known than it should be and yet has been extraordinary supportive of, and helpful to, my father: www.maculardisease.org.

If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?

 Cardi: Gap. Top: New Look. Skirt: Vintage. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: made by me. Belt: M&S via eBay.

My other half has acquired, with a surprising degree of spontaneity and in possible indication of a mid-life crisis, an unexpected convertible.

I guess I need to expand my scarf collection and practice tying elegant hair-coverings, Grace Kelly style! Any recommendations?

It’s an omen…

 Cardigan: thrifted. Top: White Stuff. Skirt: Beignet, made by me Shoes: Faith via eBay. Necklace: made by me

Do you do the music thing when you’re working? I didn’t used to – largely because I’ve not always worked in environments in which it would be approved of, but it’s rare these days that I don’t have something on at least in the background.

I don’t work in the noisiest of offices, but I do have to do a lot of writing and music’s always been helpful for that. Something about the way it displaces me, takes me just a little outside of where my body is makes it easier to get into the world of putting one word after the other for as good an effect as I can muster.

Music and, for some reason, the eternal author cliche that is coffee shops – I had to stop doing the latter as although I was getting loads of writing done I was spending a fortune on coffee and raspberry and white chocolate muffins!

I do miss the fiction writing, though. I like the writing I do for work, I love the writing I do for this blog, but there’s something about crafting a story, generating feelings and sensations in the reader that I need to revisit.

Anyone fancy bringing me some muffins and a latte?

Tell me now, how do I feel?

 Dress: Fever via eBay. Shoes: Faith via eBay. Belt: H&M. Necklace: Kat Cross Jewellery.

No, I don’t know what’s with the Wall Of Hair thing either – I spent half of today fiddling with it in that too-hot-to-wear-it-down, too-freshly-washed-for-it-to-stay-up-without-sliding-out sort of way that probably irritates the heck out of my colleagues, who don’t have to deal with such things, nor indeed That Slightly Achey Head Thing You Get If Your Hair’s Been Pulled Back All Day In A Claw Clip.

They did, though, have to deal with dressing smartly for once today. Normally, there’s no dress code so myself and two of the other three ladies out-smart the men in a decidedly literal sense by wandering about in dresses while they’re almost all giving good slouch in jeans. Today, though, we had Visiting Bigwigs and so everyone was requested to smarten up a little.

Irons were apparently found and shirts, trousers and Actual Shoes were dredged out of wardrobes that I would have sworn contained only slightly crumpled t-shirts, slightly battered trainers and slightly too-short jeans. I’m pretty sure I even smelt aftershave.

Frankly, I saw some of ‘em in a whole new light – but then, I’m a sucker for people in suits and spend my days wafting around in dresses so clearly I’m going to be appreciative of A General Smartening Up. Some people just seem to wear smart better than others despite basically being in the same shirt-and-trousers recipe. You can really see who is and isn’t comfortable in their smartened up selves.

It’s interesting, really. There’s not the faintest need for folk to be dressed smartly – none of us are customer-facing, we’re in an industry where a casual is expected, and I can do my job just as well in jeans and Converse as I can in bargainous Fever dresses and wedges. I know all of this. It shouldn’t matter what people wear (basic decency aside, obviously!), and it doesn’t really. But all the same there’s an ‘and yet…’ hovering at the end of that sentence in my mind.

And yet (oh, all right, it made it to the beginning of the next sentence), I rather enjoyed everyone being smart for the day. I preferred it, in fact. Perhaps it’s because I ignore the dress code and err on the side of smart anyway, because I enjoy the variety it gives me, because I like to present a polished (well, as polished as I ever get – Audrey Hepburn I ain’t!) me to the world, or because I like the separation between work and home that’s emphasised by dressing more smartly for work than I do for home. Perhaps everyone felt a little more businesslike for the day, perhaps they just looked better, or perhaps it just felt that everyone was a little more like me than it can sometimes feel they are. I can’t put my finger on it.

I know, too, that I’m being influenced by my upbringing. My parents were born during WW2 and worked their early careers during stricter sartorial times. My dad, in his 70s, has conceded that jeans and softer shoes are a useful part of a practical retired man’s around-the-house-and-garden wardrobe but he absolutely never wears a t-shirt and you’ll not see him in jeans if they go out for even a pub lunch. I’m too young to remember him in the workshop phase of his career, so I remember the pinstripe suits he used to wear later on instead. His father (From what I remember – he was the last of my grandparents to die, when I was 13 or 14. I slightly envy the people that have adult relationships with their grandparents, but that’s another post.) was always in a suit, whatever the day and long after he’d retired. My mother is a touch more casual in some respects, but she always makes an effort and especially so if she’s leaving the house. I’ve imbibed this, this idea that a sartorial effort is respectful of both yourself and those with whom you interact, without even really noticing, it seems.