What's Another Year

So here we are: January 2025, and the start of a spanking new year. If the 60-odd years I've been spending on this planet have taught me one thing, it's that absolutely nothing changes as we yet again hang a fresh calendar on our walls or gingerly crack open a new diary, its pages still virginally blank. 

Well, I got news for you: time doesn't give a damn that it's supposed to be another year, it just keeps marching on relentlessly from one day to the next. There's no wielding of magic wands or sprinkling of clouds of fairy dust to make things different or - god forbid - better than they were in December.

I've given up on New Year's resolutions a long time ago, as they usually die an untimely death before the first weeks of January are over. So I just continue to live my life, adapting and making changes as I go along. 

Meanwhile, the tale of those final December weeks is still begging to be told, so I'll be starting where I bade you goodbye in my final post, which was on Sunday 15 December.

Yet another gloomy and drizzly day, we were both feeling a bit morose so, after a morning of aimless pottering, we hit upon the idea of driving down to the garden centre to buy a new (fake) tree. But I already told you all about that ...

The day's highs of 8°C might have been a bit too warm for the dress I was wearing that day. It was love at first sight for this wool and acrylic blend vintage C&A dress found at Think Twice in February 2022.

The beads and beret - which once again I wore to hide that day's less than perfect hairdo - were charity shopped as well, while both the belt and the flower corsage worn in lieu of a brooch were picked up on the high street.

The weather continued along the same vein in the working week that followed, the mercury flirting with the low double digits, the drizzle often almost horizontal as a result of a quite unpleasant wind.

Sales at Think Twice's had reached the € 2 mark on Monday At this stage I wasn't really expecting to find anything, but then this groovily patterned 1970s frock was winking at me from its hiding place among a rail of coats.

Then a surprise was waiting for me when I got home on Wednesday. My friend Inneke had found these two brooches among the contents of a deceased neighbour's flat which she and Maurice are helping to clear. Obviously, I was happy to give them a home, which I hope they don't mind sharing with 800-plus brothers and sisters.

I'd taken Thursday 19 December off to accompany Jos to the hospital where he was due to have another batch of tests. To cut a long story short, we were told that he would need surgery as part of his prostate is blocking his urethra. No date has been set yet as I type, so we continue playing a waiting game while Jos is still having to deal with the unpleasantness of a bladder catheter.

Needless to say, we were both feeling quite low and overwhelmed after being the recipients of yet another piece of bad news ...

Having taken Thursday off, I'd promised my bosses to come in for a couple of hours on Friday, which as a bonus did manage to take my mind off things for a while. 

When Jos picked me up from the tram at around 1 pm, he told me he was a bit worried about the car, as it kept showing a message that the battery was almost empty. When the message appeared again after we'd driven off, I asked him why it mentioned the word "key" in front of the word "battery". Then the penny dropped that it was the car key battery which needed replacing :-) We drove straight to the garage where the matter was fixed in minutes ... Phew!

Back at home, I walked into town to pick up some Christmas cards from the bookshop, finding a book which I thought would cheer up Jos in the process. It's about how daily life in Belgium changed in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and I'm currently waiting for my turn to read it.

Reading my journal for that weekend doesn't make for much fun. For fear of sounding like a broken record, the weather was simply atrocious. Although on both days the thermometer insisted on temperatures of around 6°C, rain, hail and wind, culminating in a thunderstorm on Sunday morning, made it feel quite a bit colder.

The list of household and other chores which occupied me would make for a yawn-inducing read, so I'll limit myself to the outfits I was wearing.

On Saturday, I wore this groovily patterned vintage wool-blend dress found at Think Twice back in the mists of time. With so many colours to choose from, accessorizing it is a doddle, this time picking up the tiny bits of orange in its pattern with my suede belt, fluffy cardigan, necklace, ring and brooch. The only non-second-hand items were the belt - and my ancient tan boots.

On Sunday, this handmade vintage dress came out to play. It was a charity shop find at our most local shop once upon a time, but due to its - in my eyes, at least - Christmassy print, I only seem to wear it this time of year. 

I can't remember whether the faux-ivory carved beads were a charity shop or a flea market find, but my tall red boots definitely were the latter. The eagle-eyed among you may recognize the brooch as one of those I got from my friend Inneke earlier that week.

 

Monday 23 December was my last working day of the year. For some reason, my bosses had insisted that we come in, although the office turned out to be dead. This prompted both my colleague and me to  cheekily run a couple of errands during office hours in order to beat the hordes of Christmas zombies which would descend upon Antwerp's shopping streets by lunch time.

The day started and ended with rain with a couple of sunny spells in between. On the left is the sight that greeted me when I stepped off the metro's escalator that morning. By late morning, the sight of the sun bathing the cathedral's tower in an eerie white light while dark clouds were gathering behind it, prompted me to whip out my phone. The heavens opened just a I was waiting at the tram stop in front of my office, and had become quite torrential while it was taking me home.

Grey and mizzly, with highs of around 8°C, Christmas Eve was spent doing nothing much at all, our only outing being a trip to a small local supermarket for some last-minute shopping, where things were much quieter than we'd thought it would be.

One of the perks of not having to go into work is the time I can spend playing around with the contents of my wardrobe, which that day resulted in a happy mix of old and new items.

Both the blue cord skirt and the tan mock-croc belt were retail buys which have more than earned their keep in my wardrobe. My vintage blouse is actually a jumper and blouse in one, with a knitted bodice and cuffs and flower patterned collar and sleeves. I picked it up from Think Twice for just € 1 in the Autumn of 2019.

The tank top recently came home with me from the charity shops while the brooch I pinned to it was found at Shrewsbury Antiques Centre in June 2019. The blingy perspex ring was, again, a retail buy.

Apart from editing photos and making a couple of collages for my next post, most of the day was spent on the sofa, totally engrossed in my latest read, The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, and the only one of her novels which was still in my reading pile.

That night, we had the first part of our traditional Xmas gourmet for dinner. For those who are not familiar with the concept, gourmet is kind of a thing in the Low Countries, involving a variety of tiny pieces of meat one fries individually in tiny frying pans on a raclette-like device. As we are currently without a proper dining table and it would be too fiddly on our small-ish kitchen table, Jos just fried up all the pieces in a large frying pan, and we enjoyed them with potato salad, a selection of veggies and home-made cocktail sauce. There was enough for two meals, so we'd be eating the remainder on Christmas Day.

We were treated to the same un-Christmassy weather on the day itself. 

After sleeping in and enjoying a leisurely breakfast while still in my pyjamas, I stood in front of my wardrobe and assembled this outfit, which might very well be a contender for favourite outfit of the year.

The vintage, flower patterned velvet skirt was yet another old Think Twice find, which I combined with a vintage 1980s jumper I rescued from being sold at our flea market stall by my friend Inez. What was she thinking?

The massive orange suede belt was last Summer's sale bargain, the ring was a flea market find and the brooch with its blingy threesome of cats came from a Shrewsbury charity shop last June.

My outfit was bookended in purple with my bargainous Western-style ankle boots and mohair beret from Think Twice. It might have been Christmas, but I wasn't in the mood for washing my hair!

As a Christmas treat, we'd picked up these mini Yule logs from the supermarket the other day. Yummy!

Another tradition we are trying to keep up is going for a walk at Middelheim on Boxing Day. Unfortunately the weather gods weren't being supportive of our plans and sent us another grey and rainy day.

As we were champing at the bit to escape the house after those two days of inactivity, there was nothing for it but to go for another rummage at the charity shops.

These two wicker handbags jumped into my trolley mere minutes after entering the shop in the nearby town of Mortsel.

I also couldn't resist these glittery gold-tone ankle boots by Schmoove, a French brand founded in 2001. With boots on their website retailing at well over € 200, the € 5,90 I paid for these are nothing short of a steal.

Flush with our success, we then tried our luck at our most local shop, where I found these two almost matching items.

The unlined cotton jacket (it's not a shirt, as I first thought) with its turquoise and purple Paisley-esque pattern will have to wait until the weather's warmed up, but I've already worn the wooden necklace with its row of pansies and leaves.

I'll be back with more Twixmas tales and other news in my next post. 

See you soon!

Twixmas tales - Part 1

Christmas, Twixmas and New Year have all come and gone, but as usual I've still got a lot of catching up to do. 

Meanwhile, it's been back to the grind for me since Tuesday. The long and short of it is that by the end of my first week my one and only resolution - to try and be more positive in 2024 - has already gone out of the window. Oh well, enough said.

On top of all that, I'm being plagued by Blogger issues, as lately I'm getting failed to publish errors when commenting while logged in. I lodged my problem with the Blogger community and was told it might be an issue with cookies. Apparently, third party cookies need to be enabled. For some reason, they were disabled - nothing to do with me! - and when I put it right yesterday I was able to comment normally again. Fast forward to this morning, and I'm getting the error again, and this while the bloody third party whatevers were enabled ... 

I wonder if there's anyone else out there who has been having similar problems? Anyway, I will be commenting anonymously where possible, which I can do when I'm not logged in, for the time being.

But now let's retrace our steps to December once more, starting with Saturday the 23rd which for all intents and purposes was the first day of my longed-for Christmas break.

My journal tells me that it was mostly dry but cloudy accompanied by a blustery wind. At a more than reasonable 12°C, it was much too warm for the Nordic style jumper I originally had in mind to wear with the patterned velvet maxi skirt I snapped up for € 6 at Think Twice at end of September.

Instead, the skirt's companion was a thin knit green jumper with diamond patterned yoke, to which I pinned a vintage lacquered wooden brooch, both of which were charity shop finds.

My beads were charity shopped too, but the half-elasticated belt with its massive square buckle as well as my tomato red plastic ring were high street bargains.

I just love that giddy feeling one gets on the first day of the holidays, with a seemingly endless string of days to be filled with unknown pleasures stretching out in front of you. 

We'd slept in a little, then had a leisurely breakfast, after which Jos and I went our separate ways: while he did a last minute food shop I spent a joyful hour or so pottering and playing around with my wardrobe, thinking up possible outfits for the days ahead.

Then, after a lunch of Jos's homemade minestrone with crusty bread, we contemplated going for a walk.

In spite of the temperature, the world outside our windows wasn't looking very inviting. However, with yet another batch of wet weather days forecasted, we decided to go ahead and brave the elements. If nothing else, the strong gusts of wind would make short shrift of the lingering cobwebs in our heads. 

Not being close to a town or shopping centre, there's always plenty of parking space at Boom park, which was our chosen destination for the afternoon. Obviously, our aim was to steer clear of the Christmas shopping extravaganza, which was still in full swing.

Apart from the odd like-minded Scrooges and the ubiquitous dog-walkers, we only had to share the park with the resident ducks and a white cat who was contemplating life from a fallen tree.

The paths were quite muddy in places so, as I'd been foolhardy enough not to change out of my as yet still pristine green suede boots, we took a shortcut through the layer of leaves carpeting the park's naturel playground.

In honour of Christmas - nah, not really - I was wearing red and green outerwear. This consisted of my my recently found red embroidered Kangol beret and all-time favourite green fur-collared woollen jacket. One of my best-ever Think Twice finds, the latter has been living with me since November 2017.

My Italian made red leather crossbody bag has been my weekend and holiday companion ever since I picked it up in a charity shop back in May.

Jos had been nursing a persistent head cold for a couple of days and, sure enough, he was kind enough to give it to me as a Christmas present.

By Christmas Eve we were having a sniffling and sneezing competition and were going through our stash of cotton hankies at the rate of knots.

Still, as a dedicated blogger, I was determined to step outside between showers to show you what I was wearing.

Last worn back in March, I thought it was time to give my vintage Venetia frock, with its pattern of tiny white dots and garlands of frothy pink flowers, another outing. 

I only briefly wore it on its own, just to show you the burgundy belt I'd added at my waist.

As in spite of the rain we were still blessed with highs of 12°C, I only needed a sleeveless knitted vest on top, the perfect opportunity to show you one of my latest Think Twice finds.

From Think Twice's most recent collection, this Austrian made olive cable knit beauty with its rows of tiny white rosebuds caught my eye during a lunch break cappuccino catch-up with Inez earlier that week. I thought the vintage celluloid deer brooch - picked up from the indoor flea market in December 2022 - matched it perfectly.

The pearly pink brooch I pinned to my dress came from Think Twice while the faux-pearl choker was a fast fashion buy. 

The sleeveless vest wasn't the only thing I was tempted by when perusing Think Twice's latest offerings, as I fell head over heels with this vintage wing-collared orange jumper.

Nursing my worsening cold, I spent the afternoon sprawled out on the sofa, finishing Mary Webb's Gone to Earth and listening to a selection of big band records from our collection. 

Then we tried our hand at making waffles, using one of the recipes which came with our waffle and toasted sandwich maker. They weren't half bad, particularly for a first attempt, although admittedly the first two ended up being a bit overdone ...

Unfortunately, my cold hadn't disappeared overnight on Christmas Day. I had, in fact, slept quite fitfully, waking up several times with an alternately blocked and runny nose. It's a good thing we didn't have any plans for the day.

I still insisted on getting dressed though, so this is my Christmas outfit for 2023, which actually includes two fairly recent acquisitions to my wardrobe.

The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted the vintage Diolen C&A blouse which followed me home from Think Twice during a sun-drenched lunch break at the end of November.

When I brought it home, I had this cord skirt - a naughty retail buy earlier that month - hanging outside my wardrobe, and instantly thought they would make a fabulous combo. The skirt was last seen during our November getaway.

Another one of my deer brooches adorned the blouse's collar. I found this particular one in a long-gone vintage shop shortly before the advent of my blog. I've got a penchant for vintage deer brooches and ornaments and I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise that we sipped our alcohol free pre-dinner drinks from vintage Babycham glasses!

Speaking of brooches, I'd promised myself to tidy my drawers of brooches during my break so, in spite of the brain fog, I made a start with the first one, containing my so-called lady brooches.

As you can see, they come in all shapes and sizes and while some of them are of the cheap 'n cheerful variety, there are more than just a few treasures in there as well. I've only found out recently that one of them is quite sought after and commands a much higher price than the single digit one I paid for it. 

I can't resist a cliffhanger, so all will be revealed in my next post. In the meantime, I'm inviting you to take a guess ...

The rest of the day was spent completely engrossed in my latest read, which I'd started that morning and which transpired to be quite the page-turner! I would finish all of its 628 pages in less than a week, although I don't think it was as good as any of her previous novels.

See you next time!

Escaping the rain

It quite boggles my mind that we're almost half-way through January by now. Like it or not, I'm back to the same old working week routines and the benefits gained by the no-schedule pace of life in the in between days are slowly but surely wearing off. Secretly, I am glad that the silly season is over for another year, but I could definitely have done with an extra week of semi-hibernation.

My blog schedule, of course, is as topsy-turvy as it always is, as I've only just arrived at December's penultimate day. To make things even more complicated, these photos were taken a day later as the weather on Thursday, which had started out with a handful of sunny spells, soon deteriorated, reverting to the usual menu of granite grey skies and lashings of rain. By the time we made it to our garage, the dregs of the daylight would have made for poor photos, so I wore it all again the next day.

The fit and flare dress with its pleated skirt was yet another Think Twice find from way back. I fell for its purplish blue colour and sprinkling of pink flowers, but didn't care for its original buttons. Luckily, my stash of vintage buttons came up with these pink square ones which turned out to be a perfect match.

I added a fuchsia textured cardigan for warmth, although the mercury would climb to 15°C on the year's final days. Matching tights and a pair of greyish blue Western style boots completed my outfit.

Now, let's have a look at my accessories which are, of course, an integral part of my outfit.

The starring role was played by the bubblegum pink textured belt with its white metal and pink gemstone trim. It has the 1980s written all over it but I can't for the life of me remember whether it was a Think Twice or a charity shop find. It isn't the first time I paired it with this particular dress.

The beads of my necklace, which are wearing woolly jumpers, added a bit of extra colour to my dress's profusion of pink flowers. My wooden brooch with its painted landscape was picked up in a charity shop in Middelburg while on holiday in Zeeland in November 2019.

While Jos was out doing the year's final supermarket run on Thursday morning, I thought I'd made myself useful and continue with the gargantuan kitchenalia cleaning job I'd started on Tuesday.  

I'm not sure if Bess was meant to help, but it is more likely that she was just supervising her staff. Whatever the case, although she might look very awake here, she was fast asleep by the time Jos came back with the shopping.

The shallow shelves on the top left and bottom right are by Tomado, a Dutch kitchenware company. Dating from the 1950s, they are collector's items in their own right.  

Their contents are a jumble of heirlooms and collectibles as diverse as a Tala measuring cup and egg wedger, a set of 1930s canisters decorated with swallows, a range of Melitta coffee filter holders, a Devon Blue ware jug and teapot, a Lurpak toast rack and some metal chocolate moulds.

More chocolate moulds, in Bakelite this time, adorn the mantelpiece (top right), where they share space with a wooden flour sieve, butter pats, potato masher and bread board.

The 1970s St. Michael's serving tray, early 1900s scales, weights and enamel bread bin on the bottom left are displayed on top of a doll's wardrobe made for me by my Dad in the early 1960s. I was just in time to rescue it from the skip. 

Proceeding to the glass-fronted cupboard which holds my collection of late 1960s Boch crockery. Although we set out to collect the iconic Rambouillet design -  the leaf patterned ones on the left of the top shelf - issued in 1966 for the pottery's 125th anniversary, we gathered some of their other designs along the way. They are in regular use and we tend the alternate the different patterns.

The cupboard itself was a € 8 charity shop find!  The contraption which lives on top of it is a 1950s Goblin Teasmade and was a flea market find back in April 2017. The slightly battered tray advertising Wright's Biscuits Ginger Nuts and featuring their mascot, Mischief, was a flea market find as well, predating my blog with many years. Having my blog has proved to be a useful tool for dating our finds but my memory often draws a blank for things we found before March 2016.

After lunch, the lure of the charity shops once again proved to be too strong, so we grabbed our coats and went off. Again, we visited two shops, starting with the one in Mechelen. 

Here, the bookshelves came up trumps with no less than six books, although in hindsight I suspect I have already read one of them before.

While Jos was taking a coffee break at our second shop, the one in Duffel near the park, I browsed the rails of clothing, falling hard for this jumper with its rows of cheeky knitted owls. There's no label whatsoever, but the remains of a care label in a side seam indicates that it wasn't somebody's handiwork as I'd originally suspected. 

We're having a bit of a cold snap right now, so I've already worn it to work this week. Now that the worst of the hot flushes have subsided, I can wear jumpers again without having a sweat fest. 

Before joining Jos, I plucked this heart patterned cardigan from a rail of plain black ones - the clothing is colour coded in this shop - and did a double take when I saw its label. I guess nobody'd heard of Diane von Furstenberg here, as it wasn't even on the more expensive luxury label rail.

Back at home, we had one more task to tick off our list before calling it a day. For the last day or two, Bess's tree antics didn't confine themselves to merely dislodging the ornaments. No, she'd started chewing the fairy light and the faux fur branches with their dangerously prickly needles. She'd also managed to worm her way onto the lower branches of the tree. Therefore, there was nothing for it but to prematurely dismantle it. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. 

The sun had decided to grace us with her presence on Friday the 31st of December which, together with the forecasted 15°C, offered the perfect conditions for a walk.

Soon after our fruit & yoghurt breakfast, however, clouds had gathered once again, darkening the day as if with imminent rain. We dithered, and when we got a text from the shop we'd visited on Tuesday telling us the coffee machine we'd ordered was ready for collection, we decided to go and pick it up instead.

The sun came out again while we were having lunch, so without further hesitation, we donned our coats - in my case my old favourite cream, blue and fudge plaid one - and drove off.  

In spite of this only being in the next village to ours, we'd never been to the 15 hectares landscape park called Frijthout, which is only a stone's throw from the village's centre.

The word "park" is a bit of a misnomer here, as it's not really a park in the exact sense of the word. The emphasis clearly is on the landscape part of its name. The open space, where villagers used to be allowed to harvest logs, has been bought by the council and nature preservation as recent as 2007 and has been developed into a semi nature reserve.

The Koude Beek (transl. Cold Brook) runs through the area and when I saw a man walking his dog cross the brook by way of this rather primitive bridge, I was adamant to follow his example.

At that exact moment the sun, tired of her game of tag with the clouds, decided to honour the occasion by spotlighting my clumsy attempts at keeping my balance.

The weather gods kept taunting us and after a couple of attempts at clearing up the sun gave up altogether, transforming the landscape into a bleak midwinter one.

We wandered at will, getting the feel of the area, and vowing to return to see the changes forged by the seasons.

The dying sunshine threw eerie shadows making the pollarded willows look like unearthly creatures and the leafless trees mighty giants reaching for the sky.

We'll have to return too to walk across the boardwalk which bridges the marshland, but it was getting later and darkness would soon descend on the final day of the year.

We spent New Year's Eve just like any other Saturday night and didn't even toast the new year as we'd forgotten to buy bubbles. We just stayed up until the midnight fireworks had run their course, making sure that Bess didn't take fright. In the end, she didn't even prick up her ears, taking it all in her stride.

I'll be back with our New Year's Day shenanigans in a couple of days. Until then, do stay safe my friends and don't let the virus catch you unawares!

In between days

The high hopes we'd had for going on some outdoor adventures during the Christmas break were soon dashed by the weather forecast. Things were looking pretty dire for the week ahead but we kept hoping, quite possibly against hope, that they got it wrong. After all, it wouldn't be the first time, would it? One can only dream and I, for one, am a pro at living with my head in the clouds!

They didn't get it wrong on Monday the 27th of December, though. There was nothing for it but to grin and bear it and spend the day inside. 

As I still had a whole week of freedom ahead of me, I wasn't too bothered about the uncooperative weather gods. I don't get bored easily and there's always a list of chores to be ticked off if needs must. First on my list, however, was getting dressed, indulging in the luxury of time to do so.

I'd had my eye on this jumper for a while, thinking it was time it got another outing. Although it's from Zara - by way of a charity shop - it has a definite Mid-Century look.

Trawling my blog, as I wanted to make sure I wore it differently, I noticed that funnily enough its last wears dated from December 2020 and December 2019 respectively. I'm such a creature of habit!

The skirt I went for this time was this recently charity shopped bouclé one, its colours harmonizing with those of the jumper. 

Same as in its two previous incarnations, I wore it belted on top of my skirt, although I did have the presence of mind of wearing a different belt each time. Funnily enough, I've only just noticed that I pinned the same brooch to it as I did two years ago, a small wooden plaque painted with a lady wearing a red and white polka dot frock. It was a flea market find, if my memory serves me right.

Both my beaded necklace, which is made of painted wood too, and my chunky short-sleeved cardigan, are recent charity shop finds. The boots are the ones I succumbed to after spotting them at a local shop back in November. They've been one of my most worn pairs so far this season.

After Jos dropped off his supermarket purchases that afternoon, I accompanied him back to the garage so that we could make use of its white painted brick wall for outfit photos. We found a spot where the natural light - or what little there was of it - streaming in through the skylights was even much better.

Having finished my previous read on Sunday evening, I selected Judith Lennox's The Dark-Eyed Girls from my reading pile. Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, it tells the story of three friends and their changing relationships over the years. An absorbing and very enjoyable read, which I've all but finished by now.

Waking up to a pink sunrise just after eight on Tuesday morning, we started getting our hopes up. 

Needless to say, it didn't last, as a blanket of clouds soon moved in and it started drizzling while we were getting ready.

The weather forecast having promised a mild 11°C, I plucked this Swedish made vintage frock from my wardrobe, in a metallic polyester mix called Asplene + Sildorex. The latter, I guess, is a relative of  Lurex, as the dark olive green dress with its off-white, pink and lilac print and dropped waist, has quite a bit of sparkle in it.

I took the lead from the pink in its print for my opaques, ring and dragonfly brooch as well as the flower corsage pinned to my cardigan, and wore an off-white beaded necklace.

One of my favourite pairs of boots, the green ones I charity shopped about two years ago, came out to play again.  The mustard cardigan with its pale pink buttons is by retro label Zoë Loveborn and was a charity shop find back in August.

We had an errand to run in a nearby town where, due to new shopping restrictions, we had to queue outside a telecom shop for at least half an hour. In spite of the supposedly mild temperature, there was an icy wind, so that I was half frozen by the time we were finally let into the shop. I won't mention the altercation we'd had in the meantime with an aggressive woman with a walker who was trying to jump the queue. Now, if only she'd asked nicely ... 

Before returning home, we nipped into an electricals shop as I needed a new hairdryer and we were looking for a replacement for our coffee machine which was on the blink.

Again, we made use of our garage's facilities to make outfit photos when returning our car after lunch. 

On the way back, it started bucketing down so that we were soaked by the time we eventually made it home, having to hang up our dripping wet coats in the shower.

The couch was calling for another afternoon of reading, but I decided to ignore this for now and start ticking off at least one of the chores on my list. 

I'm the first to admit that, apart from the odd cursory dusting, our kitchen shelves and their kitchenalia treasures hadn't seen a cleaning cloth for a while. I probably won't have to tell you that taking everything off the shelves, cleaning both the shelves and their contents and putting everything back approximately the way it was is quite a time-consuming task.

The fun thing is having a chance to look at everything as if with fresh eyes and indulge in the memories which are part and parcel of collecting. The Smiths crisps tin, for instance, takes me back to a delightful shop called Utter Clutter in Leominster, Herefordshire.

The packets of soaps and washing powders were picked up at various flea markets, while the 1930s ceramic coffee grinder was a present from my friend Inez.

The Tala jelly moulds came from an antique centre in Newcastle Emlyn in Carmarthenshire, Wales, a favourite wet weather option when holidaying in nearby Pembrokeshire.

There are tins galore, including the ice cream wafers one from the Dutch Verkade brand, which was a charity shop find.  There's lots of enamelware too. The orange utensils rack and some of the ladles and strainers came from a vintage shop. 

What were the odds of finding the Grimwades Quick Cooker pudding bowl, previously only seen in the kitchens of National Trust properties, on a local flea market here in Belgium?

The framed ad for the famous Belgian Lu biscuits is a reproduction found in the decoration aisles of a garden centre.

There was still no improvement in the weather on Wednesday, which was dark and rainy, and generally miserable, even if the mercury had climbed to 13°C by then.

With no obligations penned into our diaries for the day, we decided to do a round of the charity shops. 

In spite of the mild temperature, I wasn't to be fooled again, so I wore my green with a bit of red tweed skirt and green fur collared vintage jacket. My scarf of many colours has featured here countless times before, but it has been a while since I wore the pink and white speckled knit beret.

While searching through my flea market boxes for something which I've probably sold on a long time ago, I came across this vintage lilac Diolen pussy-bow blouse. And no, I haven't got the faintest idea why I decided to part with it, but it must have been in a moment of madness. With its pattern of purple and orange flowers, I thought it was just perfect with the skirt.

I tamed the bow with a flower infused vintage scarf clip and added a tan belt at my waist. A green cardigan added extra warmth layered over the rather flimsy blouse. To tie in with the purple bits in the blouse's pattern, I wore a pair of purple opaques.

As usual, we visited two shops that day, starting with the Oxfam one in Wilrijk. Although pickings weren't plentiful, finding this tailor made vintage skirt suit more than made up for this. Both Angelica and me are doing the honours of modelling it for you.

There was also a vintage coffee tin, from the Belgian coffee brand Rombouts, which was founded in Antwerp in 1896. It dates from the late 1950s, and this one has some iconic Bruges scenes on it, with the belfry on one side and the city hall on the other..

Our shopping trip ended at our most local charity shop. Here, I was in luck again, as I found a vintage C&A jumper in a lilac and silver cable knit with an asymmetrical collar. 

A mustard yellow knit beret and a chevron striped Summer skirt by Belgian retro label Who's That Girl were my final finds.

I'll be back with the rest of the in between days later this week.

With the Omicron virus rampaging out there, please do take care to stay safe!