A Thing Of Beauty...

Well, it seems very apt that I share this book today on Valentine's Day. A romantic treasure that I found a few months ago, at the bottom of a pile of books on a shelf, going for a song... how could it have been overlooked?



An 1895 edition of the collected works of John Keats that I love for so so many reasons.



Its beautiful bronze leather covers embossed with gilt lettering. The golden branch with bird (a Nightingale perhaps?).



The tissue paper that protects the photograph of John Keats at the front of the book.



Its foxed, browning pages illustrated with beautiful Pre-Raphaelite pictures.
The smell, the weight and age of the book.
And then there's the words



The beautiful words, the achingly sad poems to his love Fanny Brawne - it's better than any black and white weepie that I know!

Turning over a new leaf...

Hello! I'm still here. After weeks of frantic busyness, sewing, restocking the Emporium, visits to schools, old and new, applications to Sixth Form Colleges and new Secondary Schools, endless tumbleweed moments in the post office queue and neverending cups of tea, I cleared the decks and decided that I would sit down today and write a new blog post, apologise for my absence, tell you what I've been up to and get back into the swing of blogging and visiting you all again.
Well, hey ho, perhaps I was being a little optimistic. Last Monday morning in November and there was I expecting sunshine to take some lovely rosy photos in!!! Ha ha! That'll teach me. So forgive me if I change my mind about the subject of today's post but I'm unable to accompany it with the photos I wanted. For weeks now I have been giving myself a very hard time about neglecting this blog, and more importantly, not having the time to visit any of you. I have been walking round composing blog posts in my head (and believe me there are quite a few stored up there). I haven't even had the time to visit your blogs, have a quick read and leave without a comment, how bad is that, when I haven't even found the time to lurk. As the weeks have past the thought of writing a new blog became something akin to that dreaded piece of homework, the essay that you know has to be written, the one that makes you sit down and get on with it, and the one, ultimately, that will leave you feeling oh so much better for having finally written it.
Well this is it. I'm really sorry. Please excuse my absence. I owe this blog and my blog readers so much and feel very bad about having temporarily turned my back. So I promise, when the sunshine returns, however temporarily, I will snap those photos and tell those tales...



In the meantime, here are some photos of some of my favourite books that I have recently been able to hunt down and add to our Library at the Emporium (we've also been busy decorating the front of our Emporium, my goodness it was hard not using up all the snow from the roof in our snowball fights, a rather wet and soggy Dottie and I returned to the stockroom much later!).



Back to the books - I do try to find my favourite titles to add to our library. Books I have read myself, and can recommend. Old, original editions that smell like books should smell! Of course, my all time favourite would be "I Capture The Castle" and I have been lucky enough to find an old edition with dustjacket.



Recently, Mr Roses, Big Sister and I have been rewatching the BBC DVD of "Love in A Cold Climate". I can't tell you how happy I was to stumble across a first edition of this book to add to our shelves. "The Pursuit of Love" and "Love in a cold climate" were written for wet, rainy days like this, I'm sure of it!



At the beginning of this year I read "A Game of Hide and Seek" by Elizabeth Taylor, when it was republished by Virago. I must admit I knew very little about the author and had not heard of the story before, I was, I have to admit, attracted by the book cover! Having read the Virago edition and fallen in love with it, I set out to find an early edition with book jacket. Oh the thrill of the hunt! Nothing lovelier than finding a book unexpectedly when you've almost given up the search! What a scrumptious jacket too!



And there's more! The icing on the cake - not one book, not two, but four lovely stories in one book with original dustjacket too! The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield is one of the most amusing books I read last year. After reading it, I found an original copy of another in the title "The Provincial Lady in Wartime" and want to write more about this in another post. But here, in this edition of "The Provincial Lady" are four of her books. A real treasure that I am finding it hard to part with.
If you fancy a good read, or want to give a book at Christmas they're all on the library shelves.
I shall be back as soon as the sun appears with some photos and tales of 1940s Christmases, Horlicks, dried egg and woolly knickers!
x

A Room of One's Own

Eighty years ago, on October 24th 1929, this book by Virginia Woolf was published. This copy of "A Room of One's Own" is one of my most treasured possessions. Old and tatty, but incredibly hard to find, it has sat on our shelves for many years now and will continue to do so, I hope. for many more. I wonder if Virginia Woolf, all those years ago, had any idea that the book she was writing would become so iconic? Would mean so much to so many people. If you haven't read the book , you know the title and all that it implies.



Reading all our blogs we all want our own space, workspace don't we. I've seen beautiful studios and workrooms that I've drooled over. I'm still to possess a room of my very own in which to sit and think and do. I share my room with my family. In my mind I have my room planned out, decorated, redecorated and furnished.... But I do have my own space really, my own "room". Maybe not a physical room, but the opportunity to do what I want, which is what I think the book is all about, having the chance to gain the independence and space that I want, something that was so lacking for women all those years ago.



Last week I listened to this wonderful piece of radio. If you get the chance listen to it, it's good. Very good. I listened intently to the piece about Virginia Woolf's home at Monks House. You may know that I love this place. I've written about it here before. Caroline Zoob, the incredibly lucky and talented Caroline Zoob, lives above Monk's House and was interviewed for the programme. She talked of Virginia Woolf's rooms of her own - her beautiful work room in the garden.



A room that was built for her, beautiful in its simplicity. Removed from the house, sitting in the middle of their gorgeous garden, she would walk here to her work and write her books. Simple and undistracting, I just love it.



Interestingly enough the other room in which she worked was her bedroom which is also physically separated from the main house, having to be accessed via a separate doorway. This is another beautiful, calm room that is simple and without too many distractions.




I listened enthralled as Caroline Zoob talked of regularly changing the flowers in the summerhouse where Virginia Woolf once sat and wrote her books. Sometimes you listen to something or read something and feel utterly transported and for a few minutes last week that happened to me.

September Days...

Golden Days...



Birthday blooms...



Days on the Downs...



Seeing red days ...



Pretty pink days...



High Summer Days...



Purple Days...



Green Days...



Violet Days...



Multi coloured Days...



Perfect days for sitting on the garden bench and rereading the perfect September book...

A sense of time and place

Our Friday evenings have been the same for years - a bottle of wine, bar or two of chocolate, curled up on the sofa watching TV, relaxing into the weekend. Recently this little routine has been interrupted by a game of pass the remote control. It doesn't matter how many channels we have, the hunt for something good to watch has been fruitless.



Just as were giving up hope, we spotted this -
featuring Richard Wilson driving around Britain in a Morris Traveller using routes from favourite 1950s travel guides - I was sold. This episode took us across the Yorkshire Moors from Scarborough to Whitby, had the most beautiful scenery and gave the kind of snippets of social history that I love. Nostalgic holidays by the sea sitting beside modern day goths living in Whitby. It was lovely TV, gentle and entertaining, just the kind of thing to welcome in the weekend. (Oh dear am I sounding like a bit of a Victor Meldrew)?



I love to find out more about places, how they were, what they looked like, what people got up to - everyday things really. I love piecing together information and building up a picture. A few weeks ago I was able to find some treasure. Not pretty, pretty, sparkly treasure, something much more personal. An old copy of one of my favourite books The Fortnight in September with a gorgeous dust jacket. I wrote about it here and haven't stopped recommending it to friends to read.



A little while back I found some vintage fabric featuring the very same pier that's mentioned in the story. Another little piece for me to add to my story. I made it into a little pillow to put in my etsy shop. I can almost see the family from the book walking along the seafront together...



I have just finished reading the last of the Mapp and Lucia books. I laughed all the way through them. Having visited Rye, the village in the stories, Tilling, is based on Rye, I had lots of images in my head already of what the streets, shops and houses would look like. E F Benson paints the scenes so vividly that there is no need to visit the place to enjoy the stories.



A few weeks ago I found this little vintage guide to water colour painting. I bought it, not because I wanted to learn how to paint (I know my limitations!), but because the cover reminded me so much of Lucia and George on one of their painting excursions. Daft I know, but my bookshelves are full of little stories like that, pictures that I like to group together to pad out the stories I've read. If you click on the photo you will notice in one of the postcards, a lady walking along with her basket just as they do every morning in the Mapp and Lucia stories - she's on her way to the grocer's for a chat I think ...



I would love one day to take a car journey around Britain in a Morris Traveller with a tartan travel blanket, flask of tea and homemade fruit cake. But of course the roads would have to be completely empty, the shops vintage and the sun always shining! I guess I'm going to have to make do with making up little pictures in my head ...

Hankies, hyacinths and whodunnits

Hello! Is it a week already? I did intend to post yesterday but the computer was having a tantrum and when it had finally decided to calm down and play nicely, I was feeling too ill to do anything about it! Just when I thought I'd got through the winter without too many hiccups I find myself with the sorest throat I can remember and virtually no energy, so today finds me reacquainting myself with the echinacea bottle ....



Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on my birthday post. I hope you all got your share of jelly and custard and weren't too hyper by the time you got home. Lots of your comments reminded me of all the party food we used to have when we were little - one of the things that I always remembered having were bridge rolls?! We never had them any other time but come my birthday, my mum would go straight to the baker's to order the bridge rolls ... You see I'm rambling maybe I now have a temperature, best make this post short. There's always a winner at party games and the name drawn out of the party hat this time is Yvonne. I wish I could have had one of those games of pass the parcel with a pressie in it for everyone, but could you imagine the size of the parcel and the amount of paper ... I'm rambling again. Big 'Thank you" again to everybody.



Back to yesterday - the first bright sunny Monday morning in a long while. What a difference it made to the start of the week. After walking back from school I went straight to the garden and picked these - the first little posy of flowers from the garden this year. Instant Spring, the beautiful sweet smell of hyacinths and the fresh smell of flowering rosemary with the chalky colours of delicious primroses, nothing better to lift the spirits and brighten the kitchen windowsill.



Taking advantage of the sunshine I took some photos of some bits and bobs to show you. A gorgeous little pile of vintage children's mystery books. I would have devoured these when I was younger, they remind me of the Nancy Drew books I used to love. Wonderful titles too - I'm desperate to find out what the "Lovelace Luck" is and, of course, the mystery attached to it.



As for "The Mysterious Mr Fairweather" I wonder what he's been up to and whether Edith and Peggy find out, I expect they do somehow. As for "Nicolette goes guiding" well that sounds like "Jolly good fun" to me and maybe I'll spend this evening, cuddled up on the sofa with my lemsip finding out...



Oh the pleasure of having new books to read. Stumbling across new ones, rereading old ones and unexpectedly being given a book as a present by somebody. Love is a new book. A new book that you have heard so much about and have failed to find a copy that you can afford. Love is Mr Roses tracking down this book on the other side of the Atlantic and presenting it to me as a complete surprise...



Life here at the Roses' household is not always as rosy as you might think. At the moment, when life is not as easy as it might appear, I can't tell you how heartening it is to know that a simple jar of flowers and a pile of books can make me smile.
See you soon, I'll try not to leave it so long this time.

An open book

Just before Christmas Mr Roses and I made a deal; we agreed not to buy each other pressies and just spend some money on presents for the girls. A week before Christmas driving home from a Carol Service, I caved in - the thought of M not opening any presents from me was weighing too much on my mind. "It's no use I'm going to have to buy you a present, I just can't bear you not to have a pressie from me.' Mr Roses smiled (whilst Little Sister giggled knowingly in the back seat) and replied "That's okay, I've already got you something!". Three days later, after a trip to the shops I smile triumphantly and with a sigh of relief tell him, "I'm feeling better now, I've bought you some presents." To which Mr Roses replied. "SOME presents, I thought we would only be ONE present!" So it continued until on Christmas morning we both opened our presents, equal in number, and beamed at each other. This little ritual is nothing new. Every year we try and get each other to agree to no presents, we try hard to be responsible and sensible and each year we fail miserably! Living with Mr Roses is like living with the Master of Double Bluff - you have to think hard before believing him when he promises and i hate to admit it I have in the past resorted to asking the girls if Daddy has got me a present this year ...



He reads me like an open book. He must have known I was getting twitchy as the number of books beside the bed were dwindling and so my pressies were a pile of books to keep me happy. You probably all know just how much I love reading. I devour books and my love for books is only equalled by love of accumulating them. I sleep soundly knowing that it doesn't matter if I've just read the last line of a book if I've got a stash of new books ready and waiting.



Just before Christmas I found in a charity shop two books that I wanted to reread again for a very long time - Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia by E F Benson. I spent the holidays giggling and laughing and being transported to 1930s England, to the small village of Tilling, mixing with genteel society and the comings and goings of Mapp and Lucia. These are two of the funniest books I have read, and have left me yearning to revisit Rye (the town on which Tilling is based) again as soon as the sun starts shining again. One critic compared the books to a modern "Cranford", i think I would agree. So much so, that M and I have been watching the Mapp and Lucia TV series again on DVD - ooooh the costumes are delicious.



The book I am reading at the moment is "They were Sisters" by Dorothy Whipple. It is so very different to the Mapp and Lucia books and yet just as addictive. I can't wait to finish it and I have been staying up later and later each night to read more. It is gripping and harrowing and I will certainly read some more of her novels.



My other two Persephone books are The Runaway and The Children who lived in a barn - I'm looking forward to reading both of them. I haven't read a dud Persephone book yet.



When we were in Bath last year I saw this book in a bookshop there. Madresfield is the story of the country house and its family thought to be the inspiration behind Brideshead Revisited (another TV series we're wading through on DVD). I can't wait to read the history of Sissinghurst but think I will save it for the spring and hopefully tie it in with another visit to the house and gardens as they are wonderful.



And if that wasn't enough, Big Sister bought me the Nigella Christmas book which resulted in the best pavlova being devoured over the holidays and M bought me the fantastic Leon cookbook. Both of them have the most wonderful recipes and are jam packed with gorgeous photos.
So that's my pile of goodies. I can go to bed a happy girl, knowing that, thanks to the duplicitous Mr Roses, there are enough unread words just feet away to keep me going till Spring! What are you reading at the moment?