When I got home with two stems of kangaroo paw, a couple of boughs of cherry and a bunch of pink lilies ...
I wondered what Constance Spry would have done. Apart from throwing in a cabbage. (Bought the expensive pink hydrangeas that weren't reduced probably.)
But that's Columbia Road at the bargain basement end of the afternoon.
The arrangement looks .... unusual.
Perhaps Constance Spry had a better selection of vases.

I'm going to Atlanta for that $300 and I've got to go looking like a queen ...

Of all the fabulous costumes in the V&A's Hollywood Costume exhibition, the one I really, really want to see is Scarlett's green curtain dress  (and the chicken feather hat that goes with it).

The Batsuit? Not so much.

I've often thought that it must be great fun being part of that older generation of actors/actresses whose working lives seem to be one Uptown Downstairs Abbey reunion after another.
So of course I loved Maggie Smith's new film Quartet (with Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, a greyed-up Billy Connolly, bit of a shock that last one because I think of him as in his prime.)
The movie (to be released in the New Year) is set in a home for retired opera singers and was filmed in the rather splendid Hedsor House (next door to Cliveden) where I wouldn't mind ending up in my dotage. If I have to have a dotage, that is.

It's not often that Stannah stairlifts get a movie credit.

(No, you don't get to see Dame Maggie on the stairlift ... although I'm sure she could sail down with aplomb and I expect they'll be installing one in Downton Abbey in time for series 5.)

By the end of the film my eyes were damp. My friend let out a loud Bravo.
But I think what moved me most were the closing credits when it turned out that several of the supporting actors, playing other residents of the home, really had been musicians in their day. And we saw snapshots of them when they were young and gorgeous. (And the dates didn't even seem all that long ago.) The most famous was Dame Gwyneth Jones, who was the butt of some of Dame Maggie's best lines, but there were several more whose names I wasn't quick enough to catch.
It seemed all the more poignant as only a couple of weeks ago I was visiting a 92-year-old lady in the kind of home that makes you think, Please, please don't let me end up in a place like this.

If any of you understand Italian - no subtitles, unfortunately - you might enjoy this link to a documentary that was the inspiration for the original stageplay, about the real Casa di Riposo for musicians founded by Verdi in Milan. It looks a real delight although I haven't had time to watch it right through. They speak slowly so I'm hoping my rusty Italian might cope.

I can't claim that I was fulfilling my lifetime's ambition ...
But it was great fun to ride on the footplate of a steam train and have the job of tooting the whistle.
However, train drivers must be more lissom than I am,
Because the only way I could get down again was on my hands and knees in the soot with my bum in the air. There are NO photographs and it is very unkind of you even to think that.
A nice man said, 'Jump, lass, and I'll catch thee.'
But I thought I might flatten him.

With half an hour to wait at Leamington Spa station the other day, I was delighted to come across the unprecedented sight of a bookshelf in the waiting room. The Friends of Leamington Station invite you to borrow, read, return, swap or keep books as you wish ...
I couldn't swap a book as all I had with me was a library book.
But I gratefully helped myself to a Rumer Godden that I hadn't read before and hoped that Simone de Beauvoir and Barbara Pym would soon find good homes. (Didn't want to be greedy.)
I'm not very likely to be in Leamington Spa again any time soon. But what a nice idea - and an interesting selection of books.

On the Beach at Newlyn, Ernest Proctor

I made a detour on the way home yesterday to see this Modern Romantics show; so slight, it's almost anorexic - as most of the best mid-century paintings have disappeared into private collections. (No Piper or Ravilious, which is what I'd been hoping for.)

In a Cottage Garden, Henry Herbert La Thangue

Still, quite a nice thing to do on the way home from work. Though I far preferred the work of earlier Newlyn artists at the back of the ground-floor gallery.

I have no idea why, but this post from a couple of years ago - about what lurks in the depths of my handbag - is actually the second most popular post that I have written since I began blogging. (You can't argue with stats!)
I thought of it on Friday, as I reshuffled my papers for a meeting at work.
A strategically-placed notebook hid a large rabbit pie
And half-a-pound of haslet.
(I haven't changed.)
The pie got slightly bashed on the way home
But it was absolutely delicious.
And I did ask the butcher to wrap it really, really well.
This is not recommended if your handbag has featured in Vogue.
But I suspect that ladies who lunch do not do rabbit pie. And definitely not haslet.