ROSE C'EST LA VIE

What I'd like for Christmas ..

2011-12-16T12:55:00.000-05:00

A plaster cast from the Parthenon Frieze

to go with the hand I bought in a specialist Paris art shop

and the foot from the Sir John Soane Museum

All images © Rosie West

Skiing for Adults

2011-12-14T07:54:00.000-05:00

All images courtesy Christie's catalogue 'The Ski Sale' 2006

Nature Morte

2011-12-07T11:56:00.000-05:00

Please look away now if you don't like ex-animals (below). I painted them at The Prince's Drawing School in Shoreditch under the tutelage of Henry Gibbons Guy who gave them a poignant Chardin style setting in the changing light of our fourth-floor studio.

The artists' prey was contributed by the wonderful Delia, one of our fellow students, who brought it from Norfolk via her London deep freeze. Where a squirrel or a rabbit needed post mortem first aid, as it were, she would gently bathe it and then blow dry the fur with her hairdryer. As a gesture towards students who might be squeamish, it was a fine one.Nobody could say that our models didn't look pristine and peaceful.

All images © Rosie West

Oh No - Back In the Saddle Again!

2011-12-06T10:02:00.000-05:00

How embarrassing is this? but my daughter Polly, mother of Lucien (aka Lucky) seemed to think the little chap might enjoy a strangely jolting ride with the odd swerve on the chicanes. Sad to report, this was the most enthusiasm he mustered; more interested in the fragment of cheese pretzel in my hand when not mystified or alarmed by the experience. Oh well, looks as though I was enjoying myself and thoroughly relieved that we didn't have to call the AA (that's the automobile breakdown service where I come from).

We were at Winter Wonder~~hell~~Land in London's Hyde Park on Sunday, jostling pushchairs with a thousand others, high on the aroma of roasting chestnuts, fresh-fried donuts and hot Bavarian sausage. Oh it was good, really, but not for too long. Lucky and I escaped to the Serpentine lake to feed the water birds and marvel at the way seagulls will take morsels of pink iced bun on the wing. (Not a good day for my diet or theirs for that matter.) Polly braved the swelling crowd and took her five-year old Storm on various attractions. Three quid to go down a slide the height of Mont Blanc (not) proves the Eurozone economic crisis hasn't quite hit home yet. Her pictures of the day at her blog A Caged Bird Sings here.

Great Colour Combos : Vermillion/Cerulean

2011-12-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

One of my favourite colour combinations, always connected in my mind to Tri-ang Toys and anything tin really...

Cerulean (sir-roo-le-on) is a handy word for something that's not quite turquoise, not quite sky blue despite its probable derivation from the Latin caelum = sky.

Vermillion - something deliciously bright that's not quite scarlet, not really orange. (I might be stretching it sometimes, I know.)

Other Great Colour Combos here

[Images are leaves from my scrapbook. Forgive me not attributing them.]

Pony on a Pedestal

2011-11-30T16:56:00.000-05:00

My friend Skuggi here learns a circus trick

Tallyho! The Adventures of Little Miss Jodhpurs

2011-11-23T19:35:00.000-05:00

My virtual world of horsewomanship ..

All images © Rosie West

Back In The Saddle

2011-11-13T16:17:00.000-05:00

.. for the first time this century. But I should not misrepresent myself as a horsewoman, having been on one barely a dozen times in my rather long life. The last time was in Australia when a sedate ride on a sweet old nag blind in one eye with shaggy hooves (does that not say cart-horse to you too?) proved more exciting than I anticipated. If it wasn't the fact we were at a 45 degree angle up and down a flipping escarpment, it was the ragdoll moment when she broke into a trot that caused me to smoke two cigarettes at once when I dismounted.

See here, I promise this isn't cruelty to animals. This adorable non-judgmental Icelandic pony is terrifically sturdy and able and willing to field twice his body weight of novice. I am sure he would have let me potter about the Land of the Midnight Sun on him if I'd asked. Skuggi belongs to my cousin Philippa and whilst somebody lent me a pair of gumboots, she lent me a hat and a lot of expert confidence-building advice. Can't say I'm not proud of this picture.

Thrust the bust! I don't know.. probably a bit keen to have a 'good seat'. I really hate being under-dressed and always wanted a proper pair of jodhpurs, boots, hacking jacket, stock, velvet hat. Hairnet. String-backed leather gloves. Whip or more properly, riding crop.

courtesy http://booksandmud.blogspot.com

This is the way to do it

Keen sportswoman, champion United States skier and best-dressed all round good egg Ann Bonfoey Taylor

Her hacking jackets had matching riding hats ohh

These images taken from Fashion Independent : The Original Style of Ann Bonfoey Taylor published by the Phoenix Art Museum to which her exquisite wardrobe has been donated.

PS I don't know if anybody is going to read this because I disappeared off the radar so long that I've have fallen off the plot.

What Are They Looking At?

2011-07-30T18:45:00.001-04:00

In Edinburgh today...

Miss Zara Phillips, the Queen's granddaughter, thirteenth in line to the throne and champion equestrian arriving at Canongate Kirk for her marriage to Mike Tindall, captain of the English Rugby team.

Princesses Eugenie & Beatrice

Now, hands up if you own a pair of 'nude' patent leather heels !

After being so rude about milliner Philip Treacy the other day, I do rather love

The Duchess of Cornwall's hat.

The mother of the bride Princess Anne who has a very individual style. I have always suspected she's dressed by an upholsterer. I also happen to think she's a fantastic no-nonsense role model.

The Earl and Countess of Wessex. Sophie's normally discreet style has been attacked

by aliens.

Amy Williams, apparently a champion skeleton racer. A what ..? Has she just been in an argument with a chicken coop?

A soap star called Katherine Kelly looking just ever so slightly too good to be true

Nathalie Pinkham - scroll down so you can't see that hat because the dress is lovely

Kirsty Gallagher sporting a little green Martian number with her man who has forgotten to put his photo ID away. Yes, you even have to prove you're not a terrorist at royal weddings.

Her Majesty in her chaussures de nos jours

Sir Jackie and Lady Stewart. I am bored with the shoe gag now but who'd notice hers

next to those cheeky tartan hose?

The Bride and Groom. Their kids won't necessarily get that nose - unless they play rugby too.

Top image courtesy The Guardian and the rest courtesy The Daily Mail

Giddy UP

2011-06-12T08:54:00.000-04:00

In haste before pushing off for a week's holiday. It's that horsey thing again. Fascinated by them but still pretty scared of them. I did the first four sketches at one of London's greatest inner city patches of countryside, Mudchute Farm on the Isle of Dogs. It's attractive, clean and lacks officiousness - great atmosphere.

Marvellous stableyard with over a dozen horses sticking their heads out to be drawn, nicely framed by the darkness of their boxes.

And some were patiently being groomed

Others a little impatient to be out

There were young women and little girls were busying themselves in the way that always fascinates me: that slightly self-important way of pushing wheelbarrows, bossing noble creatures around as if they were toddlers and negotiating the hierarchy between themselves.

Finally, my tribute to Stubbs and Ucello from drawing at the National Gallery the other day. It's free! I recommend it.

Back In The Day

2011-06-06T19:36:00.000-04:00

Feeling red-faced for stranding my blog back at the Royal Wedding and leaving that unfortunate image of Princess Beatrice hanging around. The good news, on the off chance you haven't heard, is that she sold the damn hat on e-bay for £81,100.01 with the proceeds going to Unicef and Children in Crisis. That's a genuinely happy ending to a bit of a nightmare.

But I had my own Kafkaesque nightmare on Saturday. Having offered to meet the glorious Diane Torr, who never travels light, from London's Charing Cross station and help with one of her rucksacks, I awoke to find that someone had hit me over the head with a sledgehammer.

I just managed to call and give her an alternative travel plan then fell back to sleep. Next time I woke she was leaning on my door bell around lunchtime, poor thing. We were so looking forward to seeing each other and going to Broadway Market, the Tracey Emin show at the Hayward Gallery and more. So at this point I just managed a cup of tea and to suggest she get in touch with some other chums before I was feverishly back in bed with another whack from the hammer. The arms of Morpheus didn't feel so sweet any more.

Next I am aware that Radio 4's been blaring into my locked-in syndrome for bloody hours and I fumble beside the bed to turn it down. It must be dawn and how on earth has Diane managed to sleep through this din? It's horrible. It's so complicated the news, everything's happening at once, it's complicated, it's loud, it's complicated, it's horrible.. aarrrrrrggggggh. I claw myself out of bed, stagger on to the landing. Diane's bedroom is empty oh my god! Why didn't she come back last night? Jesus is she OK? I'm shaky but I go downstairs for a drink. It's 7 o'clock and I slump into a chair staring vacantly at the clock. Then I feel a lurking sense of terror. The sky isn't getting any lighter.

It's getting darker.

And darker. I don't understand!

Well yes, it finally dawns on me that I haven't even had a good night's shuteye. I call D and she's on her way home. 'I tried to rouse you from your sleeping beautyhood but you just wouldn't wake up. After a while I decided to go out. Do you need any supper?'

* * *

One good thing. I seem to have got rid of my writer's block but who knows? I at least hope I'm back soon.

A Bit of a Mystery..

2011-04-29T19:02:00.000-04:00

Why was Princess Beatrice looking like a Cretan fertility goddess at the Royal Wedding?

Mais quel dommage! because her really beautiful Valentino couture dress and coat were daftly eclipsed by the headpiece.

Personally, I'd shoot a few milliners pour encourager les autres starting with the massively over-rated Philip Treacy. This is what he did to Princess Eugenie (wearing a curious blue historicist number by Vivien Westwood)

and to the Duchess of Cornwall. (Where is she?) Once again, the ensemble is overwhelmed/cancelled out by the hat. But I tell you what, she makes a fantastic Farrow & Ball paint chart.

Uh oh, socialite Tara Palmer Tomkinson also falls for a Treacy art installation. As this is a family publication I probably won't go any further.

Call me old fashioned... or call me something worse.

Revealing Aspects of War from a Woman's Perspective

2011-04-07T21:57:00.000-04:00

Evelyn Dunbar A Land Girl and the Bail Bull 1945

I had a memorable time today at the private view of London's Imperial War Museum's new exhibition Women War Artists here because it's a stunning show and I met up again with two of the contributors. Linda Kitson was the official war artist in the Falklands Conflict (1982) in which my husband was involved and Rozanne Hawksley and I both grew up amongst the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. More about both of them later.

Funny, except it isn't, how so many women artists get written out of art history or are simply undervalued. Naturally I had heard of Laura Knight whom I wrote about here last year. But others who documented both world wars were unknown to me. Not only were they highly competent painters and illustrators but they had an unflinching and compassionate eye for what was going on in the margins of a nation at war - the hospitals, the factories, the aftermath of bombing raids and the plight of the elderly, the children, the wounded and the prisoners.

Norah Neilson-Gray The Scottish Women's Hospital: In The Cloister of the Abbaye at Royaumont. Dr Frances Ivens inspecting a French patient 1920

Doris Zinkeisen Human Laundry, Belsen: April 1945 1945 Each stall in the stable had a table on which the patients were washed by German prisoners before being treated in hospital

Stella Schmolle The Dough Room: Aldershot Command Bakery 1943

Ethel Gabain Sandbag Filling, Islington Borough Council 1941

Anna Airy A Shell Forge at a National projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London 1918

Priscilla Thornycroft Runaway Horse in an Air Raid Alarm 1939 - painted in 1955 it was an image that had stayed in the artist's mind

As you can see, the work in this exhibition is poignant, wry, shocking, resonant, relevant.
Also featured are contemporary artists like Mona Hatoum whose mother was caught up in the conflict in Palestine and Frauke Eigen who deals with ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. There is just too much powerful commentary and eye-witness for me to include, alas. Curated by Kathleen Palmer, her accompanying book is outstanding in the quality of the illustrations, the documentation and the analysis.

In 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands Linda Kitson was commissioned to accompany the Task Force that sailed to regain them. Although she was originally intended to disembark at Ascension Island she became the first woman artist to accompany troops throughout the campaign. Having met her, one can imagine her response to any man ordering her to pack up and retreat to a safer place. She produced many drawings like this which may appear provisional but exactly capture the immediacy, the drama and the detail of the moment.

Linda Kitson 2nd Battalion Scots Guards in the Sheep Sheds at Fitzroy, 17 June 1982

Linda Kitson Sir Galahad Moored at Fitzroy. She continued to burn until she was towed out to sea and sunk as a war grave. 16 June 1982

Linda Kitson 'The only important thing is to save is this portfolio of drawings please..' 1982

Incidentally, whilst at the Imperial War Museum today I was told this true story. When Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister during the Falklands War, was introduced to an Argentinian general many years later, she simply said to him 'Don't do it again!' and walked away.

Finally, it was a treat to see Rozanne Hawksley whom I had met on board HMS Belfast. The cruiser that had served in the Arctic convoys in World War II is moored in the Thames as an annex of the Imperial War Museum. Hawksley's installation on the theme of memento mori with references to her grandmother's stitching of blue jean collars resonated with me because like her I had grown up in the major naval port of Portsmouth and vividly remember the Guildhall Square packed with servicemen on Remembrance Sunday in the postwar era.

Rozanne Hawksley For Alice Hunter (her grandmother who sewed them)

Rozanne Hawksley Memorial Wreath featuring the skull of a seagull, the traditional black Macclesfield silk square that was rolled into a tie round the sailor's collar and the cap tally

Her iconic Pale Armistice 1991 in the collection of the Imperial War Museum and part of the Women War Artists exhibition.

Although Rozanne confessed to being 80 she is the most lively and engaging company. We somehow found ourselves drinking more wine than was really good for us at lunchtime. I staggered home on the no. 388 with three new books, some postcards and, unaccountably,

a not terribly small toy rabbit. My old man told me I was worse than one of his sailors on a typical run ashore ..

Acknowledgment: the Imperial War Museum for all the illustrations.

Strawberry blues

2011-04-01T06:43:00.001-04:00

Latest: April Fool Alert!!!

Now here's an interesting thing. If you stick out your tongue and say 'Blue' at the same time you can taste strawberries. For the science behind this neuro-linquistic discovery at the Flora Poli Research Institute click here.

Thanks to Alex West Friday 1 April 2011

Apocalypse Now

2011-03-13T07:02:00.000-04:00

At the end of last year I found myself predicting that 2011 would somehow be 'apocalyptic' but never thought I'd witness it so graphically on my television screen. It's almost impossible to imagine what it means in terms of human life, love, livelihood to the Japanese people but this is my insignificant message of condolence. I have huge respect and affection for that Nation.

GUSOV - The Gestalt

2011-03-03T21:25:00.000-05:00

The interest I declare in these images is that the photographer Sasha Gusov happens to be an acquaintance of mine and kindly sent me his two books Belarus - Terra Incognita and Locusts *. But also that I love the way he juxtaposes them on facing pages. The sum becomes even greater than the parts.

I suppose that like any great photographer he finds the remarkable in the every day.

He is playful

without being cynical

always witty

often trenchant

Any diminution in the quality of the image is definitely my fault in the scanning. Gusov will be wincing - he will have to forgive me.

*The black + white photographs are from Locusts pub. Thames & Hudson 2008; the coloured from Belarus pub. by Sasha Gusov in association with Hurtwood Press.

Teddy Boys Original & Revisited

2011-02-20T10:03:00.000-05:00

image from Covert Candy Blog here

Growing up the in the 1950s I was fairly terrified of Teddy Boys since news reached me that they all carried flick knives and were spoiling for a fight. I was listening to The Laughing Policeman and Little White Bull on Uncle Mac's Children's Favourites and didn't have much notion of giving them the benefit of the doubt. Me and my sister would give any Teds a wide berth as we walked up to Woolworths to spend our sixpence pocket money.

Truth be known, most of the working lads in this notorious post-war subculture were more likely to be carrying a comb in their back pocket.

Mr Rose the hairdresser who claimed to have cut the first 'quiff' © Getty Images

I have an image of them slouching against a wall running that comb through a bow wave of Brylcreamed hair, carefully past the ears and then, with a flourish round the back of the head, achieving what was graphically known as a DA (Duck's Arse).

Tomas Maier for Bottega Veneta

In the Elephant & Castle area of South London 1955 © Getty Images

At a street corner in London 1955 © Getty Images

Tomas Maier for Bottega Veneta

The drape suits with the velvet collar based on Edwardian styling, the string ties 1954. Drainpipe trousers and big crepe-soled 'brothel creepers' were also favoured. © Corbis Images

Tomas Maier for Bottega Veneta

Bottega Veneta photography by Terry Tsiolis

Thanks to Mr Toby Worthington for alerting me to the new breed of Teddy Boy.

Below is a video which can only be watched on You Tube. Just click on the link.

Where Was I?

2011-02-13T19:19:00.000-05:00

I just realised I haven't written a post since I had my last cigarette. Ohhhhhhh..

image from Vanity Fair's Bifurcated Girls Special Issue, June 6, 1903

Rolling Around with Emily Evans Eerdmans

2011-01-23T18:02:00.000-05:00

Just to make you envious, I can now reveal that I met up with fellow blogette, the gloriously attractive, funny, talented Emily Evans Eerdmans in London recently. She has been famous for writing 'the book I got for Christmas' a couple ago, the gorgeous, magisterial Regency Redux so I was excited.

To celebrate their first 'paper' wedding anniversary, her husband Andrew bought her a plane ticket to accompany him on his visit to conduct a major seminar. That's enough to recommend anybody but I am still tempted to tell you that he's a charming, gentle and thoughtful man with a dry sense of humour and a mission to persuade companies about sustainable economics, about reassessing the value of commerce beyond the notion of the bottom line. I probably haven't got that exactly right but I found it all most reassuring.

Emily has written about what we all got up to here and I make no apologies for introducing them to an almost forbidden pleasure..

I know, I know. It will induce apoplexy in many, the cry of Hallelujah! in some.

The Bearable Lightness of Being

2011-01-21T22:00:00.000-05:00

Mindfulness Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, me? Well oddly enough, yes. I signed up for the course only because I like and admire Steve Wasserman who takes it. (Try anything once

except folk dancing and incest, I agree with Woody Allen.) Steve is the author of the comic strip Prozacville here which is wickedly funny, neurotic, obscene and brilliant. All the things I love. Disappointingly, but understandably, he has a much gentler persona as a therapist. Who could fault him for that? Anyway he's still clever, amusing and articulate.

I'm afraid I told him I could think of nothing more ghastly than achieving serenity in a group but they turned out to be a very agreeable bunch and I'm now majoring on the serenity in my daily homework - or 'practice' as I think it should be called. It involves listening to another gentle chap giving instructions through my computer. So this is what happened on my first attempt. I tried to imagine breathing out through the top of my head amongst other things and when I woke up I felt refreshed and determined to be 'mindful'.

Next day, the bell went ding and my computer launched into 'Sit Down, Sit Down, Sit Down,

Sit down! Sit down you're rocking the boat!' I suddenly thought 'But I WANT to rock the boat!' Clearly it's all doing me a lot of good.

Find out more about London-based Steve Wasserman and MCBT here

As if anyone cares what I think.

2011-01-06T19:46:00.000-05:00

image from Reuters

I have just been made aware of GQ's best-dressed list for 2011 by Toby Worthington who knew I couldn't resist another exercise in the pot calling the kettle black. I am depressed by any number of images of the internationally best-dressed Javier Bardem in an open-neck shirt and stubbly chin plumbing the depths of originality. I note he's got a big chin so one might forgive the facial hair but I really don't know what they're on about. Here are some of the supposedly best dressed men in Britain..

Daniel Day Lewis No 50. We know this one. Naughty subversive chap wears brown shoes with black suit just because he can. Works well with the brown piping on the lapels and perhaps signifies something more than a minor act of rebellion now. (Who put the flowers there? Looks like a funeral parlour.)

Alasdhair Willis No 42 who happens to be married to Stella McCartney. So if you're going to axe the tie, this is a good solution. Great tailoring if you ignore something awry at the neck. He always was a sharp dresser when we were at art school.

Charles Finch No 46 I adore a blue dinner jacket and I bet he's wearing blue suede shoes which always make me wince with a mixture of pleasure and discomfort. What's going on with the lapel? Oddly crafted bow tie's quite sweet and I'm for a good white handkerchief in the breast pocket. Well done, old thing!

King of the talent show dark empire Simon Cowell No 43. I' ve seen him on his shows looking a saddo in v-neck t-shirts but this is casually authoritative and chic. Fabulously textured suit and a plain knitted tie does it for me. Particularly this shade with the hint of light taupe silk kerchief.

Benedict Cumberbatch No 41. The scarf looks like a calligraphic stroke on this very agreeable red carpet suit. Really not keen on arranging scarves in this metropolitan way but he gets away with it.

Frankie Francis No39. Endearingly considered scruffiness. Tres Johnny Halliday.

Stephen Webster No38. No, please! As style fascist Peter York observed, if you're going tieless you've got to have a shirt designed for the purpose. The collar's too big. Silly statement buttons and hint of primitivism in the necklace make this attempt to recapture youth just all too predictable.

Christopher Bailey No 33. I thought I didn't like this minimal mess at first but rather love the Ariel/Vietnam grunt duality.

Plan B No 32 No idea who this is. Anyone who has the balls to look like a building society clerk who moonlights as a bouncer has to be congratulated. Cute.

Jude Law No.29 Cockney gigolo - I don't think so, Jude. And there's no growing room in that.

Ray Winstone No 28. Managing to look like the crook and his barrister in one. Magnificent.

William Gilchrist No 25. Always hard to keep focused when talking to someone so studiedly attired as this. But what a glorious colour palette when you include his suit lining.
Raffish hair, beard and hat combo n'est ce pas.

Tom Hardy No 24 A successful midnight serenade.

David Cameron, Prime Minister No 20. Quintessential boring English dresser. And I am surprised to see him in the Best Dressed list on account of his collars. Certainly before he entered No.10 Downing St, his laundress used to do that annoying thing of massing the fabric into the seam instead of smoothing it out and away. How can you vote for that??

Dominic Cooper No 13. He pulls it off with the hipster/toff look I'd say.

David Walliams No 11. Yet another great blue suit with winning combination of white shirt and black tie. The white socks (a no-no in my father's day) are just this side of sensationally spivvy. I think this is my favourite.

Billy Nighy No 10. Now here's a thing: London Transport operatives used to wear light grey suits and pale blue shirts and to me it was never a good look.

Jenson Button No 9. I'm not really the person to ask about this as I'm sick to death of smart jackets and jeans. The ash can effect gives it a touch of originality but he still doesn't deserve his 9th place on the grid.

Aaron Johnson at Numero Uno. Bad boy in his dad's DJ trying to remember how he was taught to do his bow tie. What can one usefully say? Romantic curls of course.

Grateful thanks to GQ.com here

Funny where things lead you.

2011-01-05T10:06:00.001-05:00

My last post showed me up for someone who's not au courant with the current music scene or even courant with old films. Just call me a currant bun why don't you. The Best Coast video had been concocted on you-tube from an indie pop band who've been going a couple of years with a scene from Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, a charming vehicle for Catherine Deneuve and her sister Francois Dorleac who was killed in a motor accident shortly afterwards.

Do do watch another scene with Gene Kelly dancing dans la rue. I also chose it for the art direction which is more delicious than a box of fondant fancies.

And if you loved that, watch here the scrumptious sister act in a post I did a long time ago

Something for Everyone?

2011-01-04T20:23:00.000-05:00

I am happy to present this ludicrously wonderful Best Coast video on the recommendation of a friend, rather more au courant than me.

Why I'm not sure I like satin anymore

2011-01-03T20:10:00.000-05:00

When I flicked through Pauline E Metcalfe's Syrie Maugham (pub. Acanthus Press 2010) there was something about its glamour that reminded me of my mother's bridge friends in the English provinces when I was growing up in the 50s. I particularly loved Dorothy, Beryl, Gay, Mary and Heather who left their scented fur coats and Jacqmar scarves on the banisters and played cards with manicured hands in deathly silence, save for the the murmur of the bidding. Nobody lived in particularly recherché houses but something about their well-groomed silkiness and face-powder, their nail polish, their patent leather or crocodile shoes chimed with the high-gloss effects of some of Syrie's rooms. I was nostalgic too for my mother's pale blue satin dressing gown on the back of the bathroom door. On the strength of that, I bought the book.

Then I looked again. Oh dear. The curtains above were made for her daughter Lisa Paravicini but not sure if I could have lived with this hemming that puts one in mind of pair of lounging pajamas that have come into contact with the bathroom floor.

Who was Syrie Maugham's upholsterer, I can't help wondering. It's tricky stuff but they made a pig's ear of this valance n'est ce pas?

Just because these rooms [above and below] were created for wondrously camp old Stephen Tennant at the fabled Wilsford Manor, there's no excuse to dress the occasional chairs in bargain rail party frocks.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was a Nevada chicken ranch.. The taste is not even amusingly execrable and one might spend one's spare time twitching the corners of the bed cover to align the corners. I'm not even an obsessive person.

Now what's going on here? I love the organdie curtains but the pelmet treatment is nothing short of a tragic stab at things. Sort of thing your teenage daughter might do with a staple gun on a night when her boyfriend was playing football.

Another bout of juvenilia. Sorry Syrie, but that stool just won't do.

If anyone needed reminding, this is what Syrie Maugham was capable of and rightly celebrated for. It's all a bit of a puzzle.

Does any of this chime at christmas time?

2010-12-26T20:14:00.000-05:00

No apologies for another poignant episode of Misery Bear. Either you love him or you think I've gone soft in the head. Warning: he'll make you laugh but he might make you cry when you think about it..

Happy Christmas from a Domestic Goddess not

2010-12-21T06:50:00.000-05:00

I don't know what it is about the festive season that make me go into hibernation. Very much hoping for an adrenalin rush sometime in the next 48 hours.

Secret Desires

2010-12-05T07:03:00.000-05:00

Now that London's Royal College of Art's Secret Sale (in aid of student bursaries and support) is over, I can reveal my contribution. Over 2,800 postcards are illustrated by artists and students and exhibited anonymously. Each costs £45 and the game is to pick one by an expensive artist like Damien Hirst or Grayson Perry and not get landed with a Rosie West.

Artists generally don't like to pin down the meaning of their work. I suppose mine are supposed to be seductive as little pictures in themselves and then remind one of the gross price of property; they glibly juxtapose the tradition of painting with nasty material values; or simply stand as a painterly documentation of a common phenomenon like the property ads blah blah blah..

They are possibly rather sketchy but you have to take a run at them since you only get given
three postcards and there's no room to mess up even more.

I have no idea how many of them sold but I know that my son pointed out one of mine to his girlfriend not realising his old ma had done it. Needless to say he didn't buy it.

All illustrations © Rosie West

The Triumph of Hope over Experience II : Jamie Oliver's Naked Cheek?

2010-12-01T13:45:00.000-05:00

Thank God I didn't attempt Jamie Oliver's three-course 'Thirty Minute Meal' before an audience of guests, laughing-charfing and moving confidently around my domain. This is what happened in the privacy of my own chaos.

6.30: Read recipe. Strange step-by-step instructions swim before my eyes.

6.32: Throw contents of shopping trolley around work surfaces

6.33 Unwrap new frying pan

6.34 Wash new baking dish.

6.35 Scrabble in cupboards for slicing attachments for my magimix.

6.37 Realise they went to the charity shop. Start slicing 2lbs of potatoes and red onion by hand.

6.38 Decide to empty washing machine onto ironing board. Why?

6.39 Cut my finger and search kitchen drawer for blue plaster. Wind it up in kitchen roll.

6.40 Start chucking ingredients for Dauphinoise potatoes in pan. Seems from book that pan's too small so I wash up new bigger baking dish. Transfer the slop of cream, olive oil, grated parmesan and stuff into that. Occurs to me bigger pan only necessary to save a vital five minutes' cooking time but what the hell, I'm still in the game.

6.43 'Tear' oily anchovy fillets limb from limb. Would have preferred to use a knife, frankly.

6.44 Scrub and sniff hands. Notice oil on floor and make a mental note to avoid.

6.45 Put pan covered in tin foil on a medium gas flame. Narrow tin foil doesn't fit big pan. Will vital steam escape through the join of two pieces? Oh dear.

6.46 Faff about with slimy chicken breasts and mustard powder. Help, I won't beat the clock if I don't cut 'em up! Realise I should have bought ones with skin on for crispy aesthetic reasons. Try to crush garlic cloves 'without peeling'. Takes twice as long. Run out of olive oil.

6.48 Do the math on producing three 'baby leeks' out of two jumbo ones. Slice finely and hold knife with one finger sticking out at right angles.

7.00 Oh quick, shake the potato pan!

7.01 Start frying chicken and leeks together. It looks all milky.

7.05 Shouts from upstairs "Is there something burning darling?" Shout back "NO, the recipe doesn't say it will burn. It's the anchovy you can smell." Shake the pan again.

7.10 Realise the chicken's never going to get crispy like the picture. Check the stopwatch and axe the idea of whipping up a snappy Black Forest Affogato

7.15 Burn my finger rattling the the sodding potato pan again. Can't find any indication how long it's supposed to be there other than how long the chicken is taking me.

7.20 Open up tin foil. So when is an anchovy not an anchovy? When it's your pan burnt to buggery.

7.21 Scrape potato gunge into yet another oven dish, grate on more parmesan, put in oven which I failed to light at the thirty second stage.

7.22 Imbibe wine and notice husband has polished off whole tin of smoked oysters. He announces that he's 'off to watch some mindless telly'.

7.24 Address recipe again. F*** this for a skylark.

7.25 Go fetch camera and start shooting the mess. Feel vaguely embarrassed about promoting my new strategy for a three-course meal every night to anyone who would listen.

7.40 Chop up purple sprouting broccoli at 90mph

7.41 Scrabble to open tub of double cream and a bottle of wine.

7.42 Glug it madly into chicken.

7.43 Haven't got time to wash the spinach. Axe that idea.

7.45 Turn off chicken and weep with exhaustion. Skid on anchovy oil.

7.46 Remember to cook broccoli and turn off oven.

7.47 Totally lose interest in the whole project. Sit down in front of the telly with a glass of wine.

8.30 Rechauffé and serve. Apologise for delay in advertised time and discrepancy between picture and finished product. Laugh bitterly. Eat in 5 mins flat. (Okay, it was moderately tasty.)

9 - 9.45 Clean Up

Hmm rather than Mmm

Next day: Go back to Jamie Oliver and read this: 'These recipes are carefully choreographed so that no single minute is wasted. If at first you run a little over time and your kitchen is a bit messy don't worry... [it's] all about orgainizing your kitchen and your equipment.' I should coco!

Only Jamie does it better

Seasonal Stuff & Nonsense

2010-11-28T05:51:00.000-05:00

Wreathed in smiles...

I bought this delicious festive nonsense in Broadway Market (London) yesterday

from Bernie Malone an old friend of mine. At first I thought, what's she doing selling Christmas wreaths? until I drew closer and noticed how witty and brilliant they were. That's a pink scouring pad at the top.

They are made by Bernie and Madeline Herbert, both notable artists, so for anything between ten and thirty notes (depending on the size and illuminations) you are getting rather more than a door decoration I can't help thinking.

Something more on the traditional side here

And, finally, another Christmas send-up..

Gorgeous, no?

Find the whole collection here

Swansong

2010-11-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

My childhood friend Laura McKechnie says she wants a viking funeral in a swan boat and I wish I had thought of that. Would our families oblige, I wonder? This whimsy from Tim Walker in Casa Vogue reminded me of our elegiac fantasy.

Meanwhile here are some more of the beauties, some more serene and some you might feel a bit of a tit in but who doesn't love them?

Boston's majestic fleet here

Ueno Park, Hanami, Japan here

Plaza Swanboat, Disneyworld here

Nestlenook Estate New Hampshire here

Kawaguchiko Japan here

Hanoi's West Lake here

at the wonderfully old-fashioned Camden Amusement Park, West Virginia here

Good Works: Me? At Buckingham Palace?

2010-11-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

I have just come across a note I scribbled whilst raising money for the RNLI a few years back. Lady Somebody-or-Other nobbled me to turn up at 7 am at the Buckingham Palace tradesmen's entrance with a roll of stickers and seduce hapless Palace employees into putting money in my bucket. Any time before 11 am (that point when I can generally manage to talk) is clearly out of my comfort zone so I accounted this expedition way beyond the call of duty. Besides, I wasn't best pleased to get Below Stairs as my station, fondly hoping to bump into the Queen or at least a brace of corgis. (At least on this occasion I didn't have to wear yellow oilskins and a comedy red life-vest as I was once did outside Westminster Tube.)

Life Boat Flag Day 7.30 am B Palace

Looking alert: resting one buttock on maroon baize table rather than settling passively onto slightly tacky gilt chair with red satin seat. I feel like a BBC anchor woman at such a positive angle.

I like the men who burrow through layers of mac/overcoat to find a suitable lapel for my sticker.

Always try to establish eye contact.

Strangely unregal and unromantic vestibule.. pipework, lino, fire extinguishers etc.

Someone drops a knob of butter off his toast onto the lino - I point out its presence to a footman and two housemaids but it's ignored. I clean it up finally with the waxed paper from my stickers.

Yow! A footman and a groom together His jodhpurs marked all along the saddle area.

* * *

Blimey.

HALLOWEEN SHOCK HORROR

2010-11-01T07:15:00.000-04:00

Finding ourselves with but a half-eaten bag of chocolate raisins in the fruit bowl, the wizard and I had to turn off the porch light and batten down the hatches.

Trick or treating came over from America and continues to take us by surprise. As kids in post-war Britain we might run to apple-bobbing or inviting scaredycats to feel Nelson’s eye in a darkened room. (A peeled grape, if grapes weren’t on rationing). What we really loved was Guy Fawkes night on 5^th November.

image © Rosie West

Why I've been Away

2010-10-24T14:16:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in my last post that I was expecting a grandchild and here is the proof. He's called Lucien and Lucky for short born 11 October. I spent a few days with Olivia, bossing her and her husband about and pretending to be a nursery nurse - something our mothers had perhaps. I rather wanted a crisp uniform and some white lace-up shoes and a thermometer in my top pocket but just felt a bit scruffy and in need of a hair appointment (which is why I have cropped as much of myself as possible in this picture). A manicure too, I see.

So that accounts for a week or more of my blogging absence and I can't remember where the rest went.

More baby stuff at Lucien's mother's blog here

It's All Go In the Women's Auxiliary Balloon Corps

2010-10-08T21:23:00.001-04:00

A Balloon Site, Coventry, 1943 by Dame Laura Knight (RA). Women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service work the mooring ropes on a barrage balloon. Image courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

'It's all go in the women's auxiliary balloon corps', a phrase borrowed from the sublime Blackadder television series, has become a bit of a mantra in our family when things get busy. And it's beautifully illustrated here by one of my favourite English artists Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970).

It's all go for me now because my daughter Olivia is about to give birth to her second child and I am off tomorrow to help her prepare, hold the fort and do what needs to be done. In haste right now but here is some more of Laura Knight's work:

Ruby Loftus screwing a breech-ring

Gypsies at Epsom Down

Lamorna Cove

Self Portrait

Zebras

Clowns and Acrobat

The Artist

Read a brief biography of her here

English painter and designer. She studied at Nottingham College of Art from 1889. In 1894 the deaths of her mother and grandmother left her dependent on her own earnings, and she taught art from a studio in the Castle Rooms, Nottingham. From 1903 she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, London, and in the same year married the painter Harold Knight (1874–1961); they lived in an artists' community in Staithes, north Yorkshire, until 1907, also spending time in another community in Laren, Netherlands. They then moved to Newlyn, Cornwall, attracted by the presence of a number of prominent artists. Although Knight painted various subjects, her reputation was founded on paintings of the ballet and the circus, which became predominant after she moved to London. Technically of a high standard, her narrative realist works were painted in bright colours and have limited depth of expression (e.g. Ballet, 1936; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.). She painted backstage during the Diaghilev ballet's seasons in London and took lessons at Tillers Dancing Academy in St Martin's Lane in order to draw there; she also travelled with the Mills and Carmos Circus. In the 1930s she started painting horses and gypsies at the races, as in Gypsy (1938–9; London, Tate). An accomplished portrait painter, she painted wartime commissions and was the official artist at the Nuremberg War-Crime Trials. She also did etchings (e.g. Some Holiday, aquatint, 1925; see Fox, p. 60) and executed designs for stained-glass windows.Exhibited first at the RA in 1903, first exhibition with Harold at Leicester Galleries in 1906. Elected RA in 1936, became Dame in 1939. Retrospective exhitibion at Upper Grovesnor Galleries in 1969. Her work is represented in major public art collections, including the Tate Gallery and Imperial War Museum.

Attention to Detail

2010-10-03T20:22:00.000-04:00

If you haven't caught this sweet viral video yet, trust me you'll like it. It comes from the studios of Aardmann, creators of Wallace and Grommit. Dot is the world's smallest stop-motion animation and it's shot on the Nokia N8. Dot really is that tiny. Marvel at how it was all achieved in the second film below.

Another for the Marble Halls of Embarrassment: the woman who loved Tommy Steele

2010-09-23T20:14:00.000-04:00

At a supper party last night, instead of trying to suss out the lay of the land as I normally do, I just asked the man on my right 'What do you do?' He said he was a musician and my heart sank because I can never find anything intelligent to say to musicians. I lament the fact I'm an unmusical, elderly Radio 4 addict with embarrassingly middle of the road tastes. You only have to look at my blog profile:

I sighed a little, apologised and asked if he could kind of put himself 'in a musical context' for me.

He replied 'I play in a band called Pink Floyd'.

And he really does, has done since the beginning. Hard to describe how I felt at that moment.. basically the flight option of the so-called fight or flight response to a situation that is none too comfortable. But I need not have panicked because Nick Mason, the band's drummer, was utterly charming and far from offended. I suggested I lost interest in pop music in 1965 and he teased me for liking Tommy Steele (spot on) and sang me a couple of bars of 'Green Door' by Frankie Vaughan - both British names, lost in the mists of time to everyone else I suspect. We were virtually quits by now and the conversation moved to everything but music. Well, that's not quite true because I found out that Nick Mason loves working with youngsters and encouraging their musical ambitions.

Had he been to art school as many musicians had? No, but he had a degree in architecture.

I was beginning to realise that this was no ordinary world famous rock star. He's clearly addicted to adventure and admitted - somewhat affectingly - that he loves collecting certificates. 'I got my helicopter's pilot licence but not content with that I became a helicopter instructor. I did scuba diving but had to become a diving instructor. And then I had to qualify as a rescue diver!' This didn't strike me as boasting, just the natural enthusiasm of a terrifically talented and intelligent man. It was only when I looked him up on Wikipedia that I found he has a phenomenal collection of cars, has taken part in the 24-hour Le Mans race and lives in the house formerly owned by Camilla Park Bowles. Oh, and he has a gorgeous wife called Nettie who is also a helicopter pilot. (I didn't bother to tell them that I have got a million plus score at a computer game called Bejeweled.)

By the way, I am labelling this post 'name-dropping'.

Here is Nick Mason as I confess I never remember him:

And here is Tommy Steele. Can you spot me in the audience? Well, it could have been
me.

ABRACADABRA! The mess in my house disappears

2010-09-09T20:07:00.000-04:00

A new dawn breaks in my kitchen

The work surface used to look like this on a bad day (out of focus, the way I prefer to remember it)

Where I used to blog

Where I would paint on the dining table which gave me an excuse to eat standing up at the fridge

Bingo! The reason it's all changed

I took over a spare bedroom and all this was beautifully made for me by Colin Failes, a multi-talented man who worked on the massive Armada paintings for the House of Lords [here]. I had a bit of a flouncey moment when the pinboard stuff arrived and it was a cold slatey blue. Colin looked perplexed but set about giving it the subtle trompe l'oeil effect you can just see here. I should have got him to sign it, dammit. I can only describe him as a class act, suggesting the wide plan-chest drawers and a fold down table to the right of the picture.

This isn't quite the end of the story. For a number of regrettable reasons, I have just decided to give up my studio in Bermondsey and that's full of canvases, paint, books, drawings, a mountain of paint-spattered old clothes, a glorious easel on wheels, my virgin's couch (a Vono 1950s studio bed that's past redemption) and a pommel horse I upholstered at art school. I stood there last night and practically wept. Where the hell will I put it all?

My MA (Textiles) show at Goldsmiths College, London 2003. The series of paintings entitled 'Calamity Fixes Her Makeup' are in the Ernst & Young Collection but I am stuck with the pommel horse entitled 'Last Chance for Horseplay'. It's conceptual innit.

I produced the screen-printed fabric myself which contains illustrations of how to sit in a ladylike manner from a 50's beauty book. Someone else did the upholstery, which is beyond my pay-grade, in an attempt to morph the horse into a dressing table like the one I had growing up. I am still kicking myself for not making it pale lilac instead of pink to match the ground in the paintings. I am proud to say that it was recommended for the Warden's prize but the poor man said he didn't think he could live with it in his office. I could hardly blame him. Shall I put it in my bedroom and use it as a clothes horse?

The Holiday Wardrobe

2010-09-02T06:43:00.000-04:00

'There's no such thing as bad weather only bad clothing.' (Trust the Norwegians to coin such a phrase.) Most of us got it right for a pre-breakfast walk in the drizzle along the cliff path. But someone decided that to save on washing (eight days in our delightful rural siberia sans electricity, sans water even that didn't have to be pumped out of the rainwater tank by hand) he'd dispense with one of his precious pairs of trousers. We decided later that it was just as well that my small grandson hadn't gone out alone with his grandfather, yikes. (I've illustrated his shorts just to prove he was wearing some.)

Young Storm, appropriately named for the abysmal weather that luckily didn't coincide with our arrival but kept us housebound playing SNAP the second day, became the most elegant person on this stretch of National Trust coastline. Being a bit chesty, we fashioned a blue and white silk spotted scarf of mine into a cravat for him and he was quite oblivious of looking like Cary Grant.

The next day I set off for a little painting en plein air.

Ah but the next day dawned fine and clear and Olivia woke early. This was partly because she had retired at nine fed up with listening to Radio 4 in the guttering candlelight, partly because she had to share the other double bed with a restless Storm who was kicking her tummy. Dressed casually for the weather then, she wandered out onto the cliff with her large Canon to capture the dawn. Imagine the surprise of a keep-fit fanatic on his wordless encounter with a tousle-haired seven-month pregnant woman in a nightdress apparently waiting to take his picture at 6 am. I suppose it gave him something to think about on his long run home.

Actually, we had a spiffing time all in all.

Outward Bound

2010-08-22T20:18:00.000-04:00

I am not sure if anyone's terribly interested, but I am off on holiday here till the beginning of September. As the the old coastguard house, part of a row of seven (the big dark smudge on top of this Dorset cliff) has no electricity, I shall be in radio silence. Unable then, to answer any comments were you to be kind enough to think of making any. There's a tempest and torrential rain forecast for tomorrow as we drive there across the fields ( who's going to open the damn gates? You guessed it) and unload food, water, foul weather gear, torch batteries, gas mantles and rather a lot of booze.
I think I might be getting too old for this game. I'll tell you later.

My son Will made a little film about the place . He introduces it like this "We shot this at one of my favorite places in the world, in Dorset. Exact location to remain a secret. Its an adaptation of a joke my dad used to tell; any excuse for a film. And this was real micro- budget. 75 pounds for radio mics, and 25 for sandwiches and petrol!

The Generation Game: The Distaff Side

2010-08-21T21:19:00.001-04:00

For the distaff side of my family, I recently came across this crumpled photo of me with my daughter Olivia, as embellished by her. I was presented with it by way of a birthday card a few years ago. As she has become a photographer herself (with her own blog) I hope she will now treat other people's work with more respect! This and the one below were taken by artist Peter Glover, an old friend of ours.

We looked rather more like this at the time.

My mother Mitzi with me. I remember that dress. I wrote about her here.

My grandmother Ethel with my mother. I could only find this image of her superimposed with a fragment of a sort of poem I wrote about her once. Like my maternal grandfather I never knew her or very much about her but nothing ill was spoken of her. She ended her life in London but had once run a club for gentlemen in Durban, South Africa or possibly in Laurenco Marques, now called Maputo in Mozambique. My mother said that this probably accounted for smart chaps in London's St. James tipping their hat to her. Funny the things you remember. She was married to my raffish grandfather here.

And finally, I have a granddaughter of my own.

Arabella India Rose born in May this year with my daughter-in-law Joan (neé Gibbons)

The Scruffy Gene

2010-08-17T20:21:00.000-04:00

My paternal grandparents with the incredibly scruffy next generation. The Childs family. They would become two lawyers, two doctors and an almoner (social worker). My father is on the far left. I don't remember any of them being that threadbare and woolly but clearly it was in the family somewhere..

I think my great grandmother had a Beatrix Potter thing going on with her Benjamin Bunny
tam o shanter and Mr Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise's string bag. You will remember that he went to dinner with Mr Jeremy Fisher, taking his own lettuce with him in one.

The little girl, Joyce, was the younger sister of Grandfather's wife Mabel, standing next to him. Joyce, unencumbered by the Childs aesthetic became a fashion illustrator in Paris! Alas, I never knew her because she died in childbirth.

THE GENERATION GAME: A Tale of Two Grandfathers

2010-08-17T11:18:00.000-04:00

No wonder the Right and Left sides of my brain are constantly at war. I like to think they are personified by my two grandfathers. My mother's father Frank Gillam (above) was a dandy, gambler, a raffish character by all accounts. He was a good artist too and I have some marvellous characatures he did of army officers in World War I. Born in India, he spent most of his life in South Africa, doing what I have know idea, but he owned a Bugatti and was, my mama hastened to tell me, a 'gentleman' jockey. He's reading 'Sporting Sketches' in this picture. He survived the war but died young and I would love to have met him.

By contrast, this is Philip Childs JP channelling Van Gogh. He wasn't an artist, he was a provincial solicitor, magistrate and HM Coroner for Portsmouth and he was probably on holiday here. (I hope so!) His father was a pharmacist and his grandfather a 'tide-watcher' (port customs officer). My grandmother, Mabel (not in the picture) would take her four sons and one daughter to the Isle of Wight and set up camp for the summer, hiring Pickfords removals to take all the canvas and kit by water and then horse and cart to Compton Bay. Coming from a non-Conformist religious tradition, Grandfather was a teetotaller, but full of fun and occasional mischief. He was judicious and kind and never took himself too seriously. The story goes that he was late back from the office for lunch one day. Granny went out into the road and saw the coalman's cart approaching with her husband sitting up alongside the driver, a client of his.

I suppose another way I always sum up the difference between these two men is that in The English Civil War, Philip Childs would have been a Roundhead and Frank Gillam a Cavalier. Definitely. Meanwhile I permanently feel conflicted between these two opposing inherited strands of my character. Creative tension, I guess.

When The Postman Knocked Twice

2010-08-13T21:44:00.000-04:00

OK, it's not so bad but I had a dispiriting day. My new all-singing all-adjusting ergonomic office chair finally arrived, in pieces with no instructions, which brought my other half out in hives. " I hate these sodding things, they always effing say they're easy and they never effing are." Followed by the IKEA flat-pack rant. The situation did look menacing but once we'd calmed down, it was easy. A piece of cake. So I sit on it, apply my tortoiseshell specs, smooth my skirt, thrust the bust and .. realise they've sent me the wrong flaming chair. My work surface is draughtsman's height and I know I ordered the tall version. Instead of feeling like that secretary in Mad Men, I'm like an old lady driving a rather large motor car. When I press a lever, I'm a child driving a motor car. That's crap isn't it?

But cheer is on its way because a parcel lands on the doormat. I've waited a long time for it to arrive from The USA courtesy of a firm called Alibris via Amazon. Recommended by Peak of Chic, it's 'Only the Best: a Celebration of Gift Giving in America'. . Except it's not. It's just what I've always wanted:

I trust I can be justified in saying that's crap too.

Image top by Magda Archer for POLITE cards here

Great Colour Combos II : Red & Green China Style

2010-08-12T21:08:00.000-04:00

Mao by Andy Warhol

From one of my all-time favourite fashion shoots Vogue in China October 1979.Why don't they still dress like this? I know, but still..

The fibreglass version by Sui Jianguo here

Conveniently dressed Beijing cyclists

Red lacquer and green leather does it for me

Red Lacquer and Nature not bad either

Me as Mao

Images 4,5& 6 from China Style Photos Reto Gunti ed. Taschen

What a Pill

2010-08-10T17:16:00.000-04:00

The artist Grayson Perry in his motorcycle leathers.

I can't say I'm not always pleased and flattered to get a comment on my blog. The latest was in response to an old post entitled The Transvestite Artist and the Harley Salesman and I read it with mounting pleasure: 'I liked this blog, is very interesting and wonderful.It catched my attention since the first time that i saw it,that because it´s very entertainment.I feel happy when i reache what i am looking for,like...

when i buy viagra the result is really great.' (Linked to a site selling the stuff)

Oh f*** off, do.

Wondering if anyone else has received stealth merchandising like this? I am constantly bombarded with offers of penis enhancement but they go straight into my, erm, spam.

PET

2010-07-30T19:26:00.000-04:00

If I offend dog lovers by dressing pooches up in frocks, I am only using these sad little confections as a metaphor for what we tend to do with our human pets.

That Pinking Feeling

Pink is a delicious colour but little girls, particularly the ‘tween’ market, are bombarded with pink merchandising opportunities that dominate their wardrobes, their accessories, their worlds. This seems to pose no other narrative, no other gender choice than a ‘girliness’ that is becoming commodified and toxic: contaminated with sentimentality, anxiety and a sophistication that only accelerates the loss of childhood innocence.

Most of these paintings were made for an exhibition at Southampton Solent University in 2008. The horrible phenomenon of the beauty pageant was an insistent idea behind this somewhat uncomfortable project.

Caged Bird

Candy Lamb

Are You Sure You Really Love Me?

Bunny Cuddles

Play Time

Pure Allure

2010-07-20T17:35:00.000-04:00

Oh what a treat last night! We were invited to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden for the Bolshoi Ballet’s ‘Spartacus’ with the music of Khachaturian. Excited by the prospect the fabled Bolshoi, I was unsure about the choice of Spartacus imagining it to be visually spare, ascetic and just hard work, frankly. I was wrong and had to eat my uninformed hat: it was thrilling, beguiling and a magnificent spectacle.

The background to Spartacus’s rebellion of the slaves was the dissolute behaviour at the heart of the Roman Empire. With sly wit, choreographer Yuri Grigovich juxtaposed the military aggression with a bacchanal of the effete Roman elite, of satyrs and dancing girls; and later amongst half the followers of Spartacus who turned against their leader when seduced into lustful abandon by the Roman general’s courtesan Aegina. Maria Allash in that role was sexy and capricious, a real handful. Her tiny toga was draped to expose a bare breast cleverly conceived by a little circle of red sequins on flesh-coloured net. Her General (Alexander Volchkov) had the finest legs below his leather tunic that I’ve ever had the privilege to dwell upon and, boyishly glamorous, he evinced a camp kind of menace. (On a fashion note, here were the most fitting gladiator sandals of the season.)

Dominating the production was the overwhelmingly virile, saturnine presence of Ivan Vasiliev as Spartacus. At only twenty-one, he is being hailed as a once-in-a-generation icon, the next Barishnikov? Stocky, athletic and savage he seemed to demonstrate the limits of human strength and agility as well as the gift of flight. And yet he was most tenderly passionate towards his lover Phrygia (Nina Kaptsova) who bent and wavered and wafted like a willow in the breeze.

In the midst of my first attempt as ballet critic, a curious thought struck me. I don't suppose the T*l*b*n would be too happy with this physicality, this intimacy, this state of undress. I pondered the matter from a socio-religio-political angle on the way to the pub and suddenly heard myself asking my other half ‘By the way, did you find anything untoward happening in the trouser department tonight?’ Choking on his Guinness the answer was an emphatic NO. ‘Okay, okay, just checking out the corrupting power of dance on the average British male.’

Great Colour Combinations: Red & Pink

2010-07-18T06:30:00.000-04:00

One of the most depressing aspects of the landscape of bringing up children is the cacophony of crude colours or sickly pastels. (Luckily my small grandson prefers a more muted palette: any kind of hose pipe, mobile phones, tools, car steering wheels.. ) I turn to Hollywood musical ensembles or ballet on You Tube to find the World's unsung colourist heroes - costume designers. The gift of creating a moving tableau that is gorgeous but subtle, I always find miraculous.

Well here, the bold juxtaposition of pink and red, or pink and vermillion is not exactly subtle but they really pull it off in these two films. As a child with red hair, my mother would never let me wear pink. As much as I loved her, I never forgave her then and still don't.

Here is Rosemary Clooney in Red Garters (1954) directed by George Marshall. Costumes by Edith Head. (No surprise there for genius.)

And Dorothy Jeakins created these shockingly wonderful petticoats in The Music Man (1962) dir. Morton DaCosta.

Scenes From The Mess In My House

2010-07-08T15:38:00.000-04:00

Uh oh, I'm panicking again because I need to do another post in a hurry. Here is a selection of my artwork interspersed with my mess. That's it, really.

Toot Toot! Back Soon

That Time of Year

2010-07-04T03:58:00.000-04:00

The Stars and Stripes on the River Thames at Henley Royal Regatta

For all my lovely American friends
on the Fourth of July

Mallards settle on Brian Flattery's slipper launch moored outside his fine house which overlooks the Regatta's finishing line. He has lived there for over ten years. Mr Flattery, a former state energy official in North Carolina, looked unmistakably American when we met him on Friday in his blue and white striped seersucker suit and preppy rounded collar with pink braces (suspenders, I think you call them.) His blue tie bore the emblem of the famous Leander Rowing Club, pink hippos. Pink is the colour at Henley: it is Leander.

Famously hospitable, whenever possible he hosts an Independence Day party, inviting American crews to participate. “We read the Declaration of Independence and throw tea into the Thames at 1:30 p.m. on July 4th…. it’s all done in good sport. We always have an Englishman read the Declaration so we have the proper accent” he laughs. [quoted from The Henley Standard July 2008]

River Legends

2010-06-27T17:54:00.001-04:00

Two members of the Cossey Family : lightermen on The Thames by George Owen Cossey who died this year.

On the hottest day of an English summer (so not that hot then) what better than to wrestle with a 20 ft oar or ‘sweep’ and help power a very heavy steel barge seven miles up the River Thames. The tide is with you but it’s still a Herculean task over a couple of hours.

Racing barges today. Two men run up a small ramp and take less than a dozen strokes before handing over to the other pair. The fifth man steers with a sweep.

Yesterday’s Annual Barge Driving race from Greenwich to The Palace of Westminster that I watched from The Port of London Authority’s beautiful launch ‘The Royal Nore’, celebrates the strength and adroit handling of all kinds of river craft for which The Company of Watermen and Lightermen are famous. Well, in my opinion not famous enough.

The Race starts at Greenwich Naval Hospital, designed by Christopher Wren completed in 1712.

One of the 'diamond geezers' at the prize-giving. The Freemen and Apprentices of the Company of Watermen & Lightermen are a tough breed.

A few years ago I worked for Alan Lee Williams who had completed his seven year apprenticeship as a waterman and lighterman before becoming a Member of Parliament and going on to other great things. The watermen are concerned with passenger transport and the lightermen with the carriage of goods but whichever way you work the river, it seems to get into the bloodstream. There are several redoubtable London families who have been involved with The Thames over generations.

Alan L W couldn’t get it out of his blood either and would annually renew his towing licence. I jumped at the opportunity to accompany him and asked naively ‘So what will be towing?’ The answer came ‘Well, rubbish of course.’ Oh well, I thought, it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it and that means me. Apparently there’s very little waterborne trade left these days.

The stuff Londoners would rather not think about in yellow containers

The next bolter was that I had to get up at 4am to drive down to Gravesend and catch the tide on the Cory tug ‘Retainer’. I wouldn’t get up at such a daft hour for anything else; and this, it emerged, was to be my finest hour.

You can call me Tugboat Rosie now. I took the helm as a string of several barges slewed round a river bend behind me and then I was jumping between them like a gazelle. Actually I lie about that bit. I was shaking with horizontal vertigo as I gingerly unclipped the bindings on one container and took slow motion steps along the concrete gunnels. I felt sick as the skipper brilliantly judged the fast ebbing tide in the process of berthing alongside the depot at Mucking Flats. What seemed like two minutes later, an evil expanse of mud appeared which always gives me the most ghastly feeling of claustrophobia.

Lucky bargee. Feeling proprietorial about the rubbish in my lifejacket with Alan looking on. If I told you I have this picture in a silver frame...

You see, I am not talking about my heroics (I had all the bravado of a whelk) but those of the lightermen who do this work in all weathers and in in the dark. On an icy morning, the ropes have to be bashed into life with a length of two-by-four. I watched in awe as the men deftly juggled their juggernaut barges into changing formations. And I appreciated their rough charm and patience towards the honorary apprentice. (Little did they know I already had a degree in lower-deck language.) And what was great was our fat boys’ breakfast and a rest on the bunk waiting for the tide. There are bursts of activity and then everyone can settle down to do the crossword. We disembarked at 9 pm – a pretty long day. Meanwhile London was completely unaware that all its landfill was being quietly and efficiently disposed of. (Don’t ask me about the recycling implications, this was about ten years ago..)

Reunited yesterday with Jack Faram MBE, my fellow crew member on that voyage. A former much respected trade unionist, he spends much of his retirement taking the disabled and disadvantaged on narrowboat excursions on the River Lea. He also works with Alan Lee Williams on Transport on Water, an organisation which aims to reinvigorate the river's working culture.

Many thanks to The Company of Watermen & Lightermen, The Port of London Authority and Transport on Water for fabulous hospitality in The Royal Nore yesterday.

Top two images from the Barge Driving Race Official Programme; Greenwich Naval Hospital courtesy Wikipedia

The Triumph of Hope over Experience II

2010-06-27T12:48:00.000-04:00

Germany 4 : England 1

And the man who painted the front of his cottage in Bray white with a red cross over it will be opening a new tin of Farrow & Ball tomorrow.

The South African sun sets over England's World Cup hopes.

We was horribly robbed of our second goal. But we shouldn't have played 4 - 4 -2 . But what does that mean?

"We have to go back to factory settings."

Oh dearie dear, as the commentator on my radio kept saying. "We might as well bring David Beckham on in his suit." There's apoplexy breaking out in every pub in the land. I feel the pain of our supporters but truth to tell I can't really care.

In Berkeley Square...

2010-06-25T11:15:00.001-04:00

A nightingale sang...

And in Moscow. I always wondered how a nightingale really sang. Wait for its sublime little voice to
develop..

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

2010-06-15T13:05:00.000-04:00

FREE with Tatler July issue!!!! Never buy the July or August edition of anything. Half the staff are on holiday, it'll be thin and disappointing. No wonder you get the tacky gift. When will I learn to resist?

You know you're old when you absolutely hate shoes like this :

Shoe crimes perpetrated by Giuseppe Zanotti and Gina (no. 3)
Photos courtesy of Tatler