The Cosy Comfort of Old Clothes

I spent the morning introducing a Chinese lady to the mysteries of charity shopping, and ended up buying more than her.  The thing with charity shops is, you never know what you will find.  You may start the day with the determination to buy a sensible winter skirt, and end up with half a dozen T-shirts instead.  Or, like me today, I was looking for a decent cardigan for my friend and ended up buying several light weight spring style waistcoats, and a needle-cord Laura Ashley/Victorian type dress.  I had eyeballed one very similar on Evil-bay recently, but the price-tag of £95 repelled me – the one I bought today needs a bit of work (the hem needs re-sewing) but for £9 I am not complaining!

The great thing about charity shop bought clothes, aside from the obvious advantage of them being cheap, is that they are USED.  To be honest, brand new clothes are uncomfortable and, well, a bit too shiny and innocent for me.  They are rather like a haircut & blow-dry at the hairdressers – you look like a different person afterwards, and more often than not go straight home to wash your hair again and dry it in the slightly inept way which results in your personal inimitable borderline kooky style.

New clothes need to be broken in.  Until they have been washed a few times, and acquired a few imperfections, and a certain patina, they feel like they don’t quite belong to me.  New clothes show one up, like a perfectly decorated hotel room – being surrounded by perfection, one looks out of place, being imperfect oneself.  For the same reason I resist the occasional urge to wallpaper the rooms of my house; once the walls are perfect the imperfection of the floors will irritate me, and once the floor has been done the old furniture, with their nicks and scratches, will look shabby.

New clothes are also often stiff and scratchy.  It is not an accident that the favourite sweaters or cardigans or pair of trousers which we use as a sort of security blanket, the garments we wear when we feel lonely or sick or vulnerable, are invariably ancient.  The clothes we wear at home, when no one is looking, when the need to be comfortable is more important than the need to look good, are always tried and trusted friends – because, as we all know, the more we wash and wear a garment, the softer it will become!

The tragedy is that a lot of clothes become not just softer and more comfortable over time, but also seedier and more disreputable, and there lurks in everyone’s life a certain Other who takes a dim view of the beloved garment.  ‘Why don’t you just throw the ugly thing away?’ you hear them intone, or ‘Aren’t you ashamed to look like that?’  Sometimes they even take it upon themselves to resolve the issue by throwing the offending item into the trash, leaving you to frantically rummage through the communal garbage can to find your long-loved cardy before the bin-men arrive!  I cannot advise strongly enough against taking this course of action.  I have seen marriages dissolve and friendships broken by it, and quite rightly so – if you think it acceptable to invade someone’s emotional comfort zone by tossing out their favourite clothes you are not a fit friend or lover!

The only acceptable course of action is to gift an alternative garment to the disreputable dresser, one that ages gracefully and will look good even after forty years of doughty service – Scottish cashmere comes to mind again, obviously.  Then sit back and hope that your gift will be taken into the heart of the recipient and achieve Favourite Garment status, while the previous Most Loved Item will quietly disappear.

Shopping in charity shops goes a long way towards owning long lasting clothes that continue to look reputable, of course.  Previous owners will have worn and washed their clothes before they are given to a charity shop, so by the time they end up in your wardrobe they will be well worn and comfortable and perfect for use.  Also, while most of us are quite capable of wearing disreputably looking clothes that we ourselves have worn into such a state, we are unlikely to buy clothes that already look like that when we buy them.  Whatever we buy in a charity shop will be Worn & Good Looking which equals good quality, long lasting, clothes.

One hears a lot about young people complaining about their lot in life and the hardships they have to bear, which are reputedly much greater than those of previous generations.  But do they ever consider the debt of gratitude they owe to their forebears who broke-in all those second-hand clothes they now pick up for a pittance at the charity shops?  If it wasn’t for the wrinklies the young’uns would have to buy and wear brand new clothes, itchy and shiny and ridiculously expensive!  Be grateful, I say! 

PS  A friend of mine applied a similar logic when he finally decided to get married, following many years of hesitation.  After much searching he decided to romance a lady who had been divorced three times already, explaining to me that she would be perfect for him.  ‘Her previous three husbands will have smothered her spouse-altering predilections and taken off the rough edges of her character,’ he explained to me.  ‘She will know that she can’t change me, and that she must allow me to have my little foibles!’  Hm.  Yes.  Well.  They have been married these last twenty years, quite happily it seems.  Still.  I mean – is one supposed to be quite that practical? Hm.  Gotta think about that one….

London Again - Questing for a Cardy, Dinosaurs and Benches

Dino with handbag - how cool is that?

Yesterday I went to London again, in pursuit of The Perfect Cardigan.  I already have any number of cardies, but have been lusting for a leaf green number for any amount of time now.  The colour I was after is the colour of new beech leaves in Spring, with the sun shining on them.  The most beautiful colour in the world, arguably.  My efforts were finally crowned with success in the Burlington Arcade, much to the chagrin of my wallet.  I tried to photograph the cardigan, but colours are difficult to capture and the result is unsatisfactory.  Suffice it to say that it is pretty close to the colour of new leaves, the shape is the basic boyfriend cardy, and it is single ply cashmere, perfect for Spring and Summer. 

 

I wore it this morning to my favourite café while having coffee & the newspapers and received several compliments on it.  Afterwards I went to a nearby cashmere store to check out the competition, and an excited Chinese tourist pointed at me and shouted to the shop assistant, ‘This is what I want, exactly this style and colour!’  The shop assistant gave an apologetic shrug; she was surrounded by numerous items of knitwear in a state of dishevelment, it looked as though the Chinese visitor had tried and rejected a great many pulls and cardies before spotting mine.  I left swiftly; I was not going to tell her where I cornered this elusive garment, after two years of research.  Hah!

 

Lest you think all I ever do is shopping and drinking coffee, let me tell you I also walked all over central London during my quest, snapping photos whenever I discovered anything interesting.

First and foremost, it must be said, were the dinosaurs in the Louis Vuitton shop display in New Bond Street.  Absolutely amazing!  I went in and had a long chat with them about the dinosaurs, sadly they couldn’t tell me much about the cause for this sudden takeover by fossils of their flagship store.

 

Another interesting sight, and of particular interest to MDL, who loves benches, is Berkeley Square – I have never seen so many benches in one park.  There are more benches than trees, more benches almost than grass.  I stood there flabbergasted for ten minutes, mutely staring at the plethora of seating accommodation, until I finally pulled myself together and took a few pictures.  Notice the benches in the background?

 

 

 

I also came across a few interesting green spots in the area.  One day I shall do a special on window boxes, they have some absolutely stunning ones downtown London.

 

Yes they still exist!  Tradesmen's Entrance ....

 

After all these exertions I spent a good few hours drinking coffee, eating twiglets, and reading six different newspapers at my Club.  Happy days!  To finish off the day I met a friend at a Pain Quotidian and ate two different types of cake, after which feat I was completely exhausted.  In my younger days I thought nothing of eating four or five pieces of cake in one sitting, and now just two pieces leave me stuffed to the gills and feeling guiltily gluttonous.  Hic transit gloria mundi!



Taking Archibald to a Garden Party

This afternoon I went to a Garden Party!  The weather was perfect for it, dry and sunny with a light breeze, enough to keep everyone cool but not enough to blow away the ladies’ hats. Well, truth be told, there were only five hats at the party, and three belonged to gentlemen …

Anyway, this morning I jumped out of bed in a good mood and decided to wear my green blazer to the party.  It has some unhappy memories for me, so I thought a garden party would be the perfect occasion to override them with good ones.  On the way there I strolled through the Covered Market, and dropped by the Hatbox, a very alluring little shop that sells, you guessed it, boiled sweets.  Just kidding.  I found a very fetching summer hat, in an orangey red sort of colour, which goes very well with the green blazer.

Pleased with myself I checked out my new hat – I was wearing it, obviously! – in every shop window I passed.  But somehow I was not quite satisfied, a little something was missing.  A papier-mâché flower, perhaps?  I headed for another little specialty store, where I found, not a flower, but a darling little green bird (probably made of papier-mâché) in a colour very similar to the blazer.  I attached it to the headband of my new hat, called the bird Archibald, and sauntered off to the party.

The resulting outfit, and particularly Archibald, was much admired by all.  Green blazer, orange hat, green bird, orange scarf – it all worked very well together.  Unfortunately I had forgotten my camera, yet again, so you have to make do with photos of Anke wearing my ensemble.

 

 

Today my French version of Once Upon a Time arrived, so I shall spend the evening watching it while knitting another waistcoat.  And tomorrow I am off to the Strawberry Fields to pick enough strawberries to either make enough jam for the rest of the year or to make myself sick by eating them all.  It is anyone’s guess what will happen.  But I bought some fresh cream, just in case ….

Two Ladies Come to Stay - Tante Ju and Anke Sütterlin

Anke wearing a scarf gifted to me by my dear friend A - lovely colours!

I have been extremely busy lately.  The office is transferring to a new database and there is all sorts of preparation required, including training, data cleaning, and data mapping, on top of the usual work, of course!  So I come home every evening decidedly knackered.

Tante Ju making friends with Anke

However, today was a brilliant day!  First of all Tante Ju arrived!!!!  Ever since I first gave refuge to the Tiny Visitors my fame has spread among the tinier of scale model gliders, and I have received numerous requests to take some of them in (faithful readers of these musings will recall the arrival of Fatty Messerschmitt and Willibald Waco).  I try to limit my airspace to gliders, but occasionally I make an exception.  Heini Heinkel, the He111, for example, is one of the original Tiny Visitors who helped the glider models escape all those years ago and stuck with them ever since.  The He111s were used to tow gliders, so it is fitting and proper for Heini to live in the Nostalgia Studio together with the littler gliders.

Tante Ju in position above my bed

Tante Ju, who arrived this morning, is another non-glider.  She, too, used to tow gliders, especially the DFS 230 which were instrumental in the taking of Eban Emael, but she had lots of other tasks besides.  I am pleased and proud to welcome her to the fold, and who knows, perhaps one day a DFS 230 will also make its way into my abode.  I will describe her more fully in another post.  For now let it suffice that Tante Ju was called Iron Annie in English speaking countries and Junker 52 by the more prosaically inclined.

The airspace above my bed is getting a wee bit crowded!

Later that day, in my lunch break, I encountered another lovely lady.  She lacks a head and arms, it is true, but swiftly stole my heart all the same.  I was just propelling myself to a local Café when I spotted her through the window of a charity shop (where else?!?!).  She was exactly what I had been looking for and reduced in price, so I purchased her immediately.  The shop assistants who had to put her through the till argued whether she was ‘furniture’ or ‘bric-a-brac’ – I mean, honestly, of all the insults!  I am glad I came to take her away.

We went to the Café for a Latte and attracted a lot of attention.  Then I took her back to the office, where she elicited several uncomplimentary comments from colleagues (someone called her ‘creepy’!).  After work I took her to another Café, to meet my friend A for our usual Friday after work tryst – again, my lady caused quite a stir.  It is fair to say that her sort does not go unnoticed, especially when carried by someone smaller than herself (me!) down the road!

Enough said.  I shall call her Anke Sütterlin, and she will be my scarf model.  Finally I can experiment with different knots and take pictures of them!  Self portraits in mirrors are all very well, but Anke will help me to illustrate the various ways of wearing a scarf much better.  So you can look forward to lots more posts about scarves!

You probably think I am mad ....

..... and you know what, you are probably right!  I have been sitting bent over this scarf for an hour now, in silent adoration, experiencing innocent, unadulterated joy.  No one does flowers like Accornero ...  And the butterflies are lovely, too!  I love love love this scarf!

Doing the Headington Charity Shop Shuffle on a Rainy Saturday

The weather has been quite miserable for days, overcast and dominated by a misty insistently rainy atmosphere – not enough to use an umbrella but plenty to get wet.  I assume this sort of weather is appreciated by mosses, lichens, and other creeping fungi, but yours truly prefers a bit of sunshine!  Just to make my cup runneth over, the weatherpeople predict snow for tomorrow.  And as usual, the frogs, who never listen to the news, have arrived in the pond, ready for spawning.  It never fails; a cool period in spring is followed by a few milder days, and the feckless amphibians pile into my garden pond with amorous intentions.  Then, as soon as they have laid their eggs, the weather turns cold and half the eggs freeze.  I used to run out and rescue a few clumps of frogspawn and keep them in a glass bowl in the Mouserleum (lean-to conservatory), but I got fed up with their fecklessness and now they are on their own.

Days like these make me feel vaguely depressed, so I decided to cheer myself up by visiting Headington, the Oxford suburb just up the hill from where I live.  It boasts an impressibe number of charity/thrift shops, and thus constitutes a massive attraction for a thriftshop queen like myself.  Besides, I needed to buy some moth killer strips – I killed two of the little monsters yesterday, and that always means WAR!!!!!

To this end I wended my way to the Headington Homeware Shop of the Ford family.  They have run the shop since 1964, it is the sort of shop featured in old fashioned children’s books, and whenever I need anything in their line of business I go there first – I’d hate for them to go under.  The shop is located in Windmill Road, quite central, and has anything from paint to baskets to cooking implements to garden bulbs to, you guessed it, moth-terminating supplies.

‘Thou shalt not suffer a clothes moth to live’ is the foremost principle of housekeeping in the Home of DB, and every four months or so I purchase paper strips impregnated with moth poison to hang in my wardrobes, and sticky-sided pheromone traps to distribute around the house.  More than ten years ago I had an infestation, courtesy of Liberty and it has taken all these years of dilligent murder to reduce their numbers to negligible.  But the little monsters are incredibly fecund – relax your vigilance for just one season, and you are back to square one.  Not for nothing are there entire chapters in old house-keeping books on ‘The Moth Menace!’

Anyway, I buy what I need, get permission to shoot a few pictures, and move on to the main purpose of my visit:  “The Headington Charity Shop Shuffle!”  It basically consists of going from one charity/thrift/second hand shop to the next searching for high quality, yet dirt-cheap, items of apparel.  This is one of my all time favourate past times, ever since my friend Marybeth inducted me into its secrets back in Portland, Oregon.  After decades of Doing the Shuffle I have a wardrobe full of wonderful cheaply bought clothes. 

Way too many, actually, I frequently feel the need to declutter things a bit.  Which is wasteful and futile and very very stupid, and really I should stop.  The thing is, I am a Hunter & Gatherer at heart, and in winter, when I can’t pick flowers or blackberries, I feel the need to funnel my gathering instincts into other channels, and shopping in charity shops is perfect.  For those of you who don’t indulge in this particular past time, let me explain.

A charity/thrift shop is a shop that gets all its merchandise for free from people who donate them – when you pass these shops early in the morning you quite often find bags of things propped up against the shop’s door, left there by donors on their way to work (I do this myself quite a lot).  The people who work in these shops are volunteers who work for free.  All the goods they sell are fairly cheap, which is great for poor students and frustrated Hunter Gatherers like me.  And all the profits go to a good cause.  So whatever money I spend in these shops, I always have the excuse that I am helping a good cause.  And when I am tired of the things I have bought, I put them in a bag and give them back to the shop – who sell them again.

Because these shops are so cheap, it is actually not a bad way of spending one’s time.  It is cheaper than most other entertainments, like going to the movies or to London to visit a museum.  Also, the clothes they sell are a lot more varied than the ones one can buy in the shops.  If someone’s grandmother dies, all the old lady's clothes are given to a charity shop.  If her daughter decides, after years of trying to lose weight, that she will never fit into that gorgeous dress she bought five years ago in the hope of slimming down into it, she sends it to the same shop.  And her daughter, who refuses to wear anything for longer than a season, routinely sends her entire wardrobe to the shop as well.  As a result the shop can sell clothes from the last thirty or forty years!  If I want a pencil skirt, or anything high waisted, I don’t even try buying it in a regular shop, because they are currently unfashionable – but the charity shops usually yield up one or two.

These shops are also good when one wants to try out another style or colour.  Buying a new item just for an experiment is prohibitively expensive, but for a few pounds one can usually get something useful in a charity shop to try out.  This week’s haul consisted of one long woolen red cardigan (made in Germany about fifty years ago, I think), one red silk & linen pencil skirt (brand new Hobbs), and one mad green scarf – I probably will not wear it often, but could not resist those greens!  All for £12.  Not bad, eh?

PS  It is called the ‘Shuffle’ because one has to shuffle/rummage through an awful lot of clothes to find the ones one wants – that’s the fun of it!

How not to see an art exhibition – DB does London, yet again!

The Woman in Red

Yesterday I was in London again.  The plan had been to see the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum, with my good friend S.  I had plenty of time before and after meeting her, and managed to do all my favourite things in London in addition to seeing the exhibition.

First off, I indulged in an opulent breakfast at Pain Quotidian opposite Selfridges.  Next door used to be a little Italian restaurant called The Lucky Spot which I adored, but they closed a few years ago and now there is some other restaurant there which I have not tried yet.  Anyway, PQ has my favourite breakfast, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and toasted bread (very nice bread!) and café latte (served in a huge bowl, which I dislike – you need both hands to lift it to your mouth, how am I supposed to do that while holding my newspaper steady?).  But aside from that it is good coffee.  The restaurant is quite large, so even when I am late I can find a nice table.  The décor is very pleasant, and I am particularly attracted by the large wall-hanging, a sort of tapestry made up of many coloured squares.  One day when no one else is around I shall photograph it.  The music in the background is cheerful and unobtrusive, and there are several large windows.  The toilets are clean, and the toilet paper is soft and absorbent.  Next door is a newspaper vendor, where I can buy an International Harold Tribune, so I have found the perfect location for a successful breakfast experience.

 Hermes Ecuries

Having lingered over my breakfast, and chased my scrambled eggs with a Danish pastry (an unusual extravagance, usually I go for either the cooked breakfast or the pastry), I meandered over to Selfridges for a quick look at the Hermes scarf counter.  I should have known better, there is no such thing as ‘Just having a look’.  Before I knew it I was demonstrating all my favourite ways of wearing a scarf to an admiring audience of two sales assistants and several other customers, and ended up selling several scarves to the latter, to much acclaim by the former.  It would have been churlish not to buy one myself ….  I escaped lightly, with a small orange scarf depicting horses in their boxes, Ecuries.  I don’t yet have an orange scarf in that size, so don’t blame myself too much.  If I had bought the tomato-red scarf I used to demonstrate my scarf tying techniques I would have kicked myself all the way to the British Museum, because I already have a very nice collection of red scarves and one must draw the line somewhere.  But it was a close call, I have such a weakness for red!

This is amply illustrated by some of the photos on this post!  A year ago I bought an amazing red swing coat, with black buttons.  It is by Jaeger, excellent quality, but sadly about three sizes too big for me, and all the sales ladies in the charity shop tried to talk me out of buying it since it makes me look twice my size.  I bought it anyway, it was cheap and I love red, and it is always good to have something to grow into, as my mother used to say when I was a small child.  The coat goes well with my purple hat, and also with the red one I am wearing in these photos.  The red hat clings to my head more than the purple one, and it was a cold and windy day.  Also the red one can be folded and put into my handbag, which is handy when one visits a museum.

It really was an unconscionably cold day, and I was cold despite my cardigan and coat and hat and three scarves.  S was already waiting under the Great Cuppola near the Egyptian Rooms and raring to see the exhibition on Ice Age Art, but was cruelly disappointed – the exhibition was sold out!!!!  Apparently one had to reserve a place on the internet.  We slithered off to the museum coffee shop, to have some coffee and decide what other part of the museum we should patronise.  Knowing me you will already know how this story will end ….  We chatted over coffee for three and a half hours and got kicked out of the museum because it was closing time and didn’t see a single thing!  We shall see the exhibition some other time.  Hopefully K and R will also have time to come and we can make it a foursome.

Having released S to rejoin her family I went back to my club to warm up a bit.  I took the occasion to take some photos of me in my amazing red coat & hat, and spend a few happy hours reading the papers and drinking more coffee.  Then I walked to Marble Arch, and took the coach back to Oxford.  On route to Marble Arch I discovered another piece of roadside art and photographed it for your delectation – it is rather different, isn’t it?