Every day is like Sunday

After a three-day working week, it was with a sigh of relief that I closed the office door behind me last Wednesday. Knowing that I would only have to go back on Monday felt a bit strange yet strangely comforting at the same time. It was such a reassuring thought to know that we wouldn't have to leave Dove Cottage's cozy confines unless strictly necessary, locking out this perilous world we are currently inhabiting.

Sleeping just that little bit longer on Thursday, and taking our time over breakfast, were a luxury and in total contrast to our normal weekday regime.

As was not having to plan my outfit the night before, being able to stand in front of my wardrobe in the morning and letting inspiration flow instead. 

This vintage navy long-sleeved and empire waisted dress was begging me for an outing, and I knew resisting its joyful multi-coloured flower print was futile.

Piling on even more flowers seemed like the obvious thing to do so, instead of a brooch, I added three different coloured flower corsages. I also wore both an orange and a blue moulded plastic flower ring. Plastic rings seem to be the better option, what with all the hand washing, but I have to admit that nowadays I often do not wear any rings at all.

I tried many different necklaces, but none of them looked right, until I hit upon this 1960s style white metal one, a retail buy from at least ten years ago.

Sky blue opaques and an orange long cardigan, as it was sunny but rather chilly, completed my outfit. I also exchanged my indoor slippers for my burgundy boots for going out into the garden.

Positioning myself in the central, paved sunken area of our garden again, I had another attempt at trying to catch the attention of any passing spaceships. I'm here! Look, I'm wearing my brightest clothes, you idiots! Oh well, I'll trample that bloody virus to death instead!

My first day of relative freedom didn't exactly go to plan, to be honest. I had oodles of plans and endless imaginary lists of things to do, but I seemed to have mislaid my energy. These past few weeks have been quite traumatic, to say the least, and having to go to the office 5 days a week was getting more and more exhausting with each passing day.

I was feeling tired which made me a bit restless at first, but then I just gave in and just did what I felt like doing, which wasn't very much at all. In fact, I spent most of the day on the sofa reading my latest book.

From our backdoor, I watched some great tits rehearsing acrobatics in the garden, once in a while taking a breather on our garden wall. We've got a resident robin too, but he or she mainly presides over the "villa", which is our nickname for the wall mounted bird feeder house at the end of our garden.

Our potting shed (top left), decorated with rusty gardening tools, could probably do with a lick of paint, but I actually quite like its cracked and peeling paint, showing patches of an ancient green coat of paint underneath.

The angel bird bath bidding you welcome at our back door has been there forever. We probably picked it up at our local garden centre's bargain corner not long after we moved to Dove Cottage.

I felt a lot more energized on Friday, which we started by having fresh fruit and yoghurt for breakfast. Normally this is a hasty affair, with the fruit eaten straight from the plastic tub Jos has prepared the night before. The downside is that now I am the fruit peeler and cutter ... 

The dishes are Rambouillet by the Belgian Boch pottery, a very popular 1960s pattern and now selling like hot cakes in vintage shops.

After breakfast, Jos mopped the kitchen floor, but not before using our vintage washing equipment as musical instruments while singing along with the nostalgic tunes on the radio.

Meanwhile, I gave the bathroom a good clean, although I drew the line at taking everything off the top of our € 8 vintage bathroom cabinet for a dusting and deep clean. That'll be for another day.

Our tiny bathroom leads off the kitchen - you can just catch a glimpse of the door's cornice on the right in the above photo - and this is what's on the wall between the bathroom door and back door.

There are repro advertising signs for Cadbury's Cocoa and Sunlight Soap, then next to the latter is a slate Ty Bach sign. This is Welsh for toilet - it literally means "little house". 

Below that is our vintage 1970s kitchen roll holder from the German Emsa brand. 

The Cream Teas sign is modern and its row of wooden hooks holds kitchen towels and oven gloves.

The tiny shelf unit on its left, another Emsa product of the same design, is actually a spice rack. However, it was redundant, as we weren't using it as a spice rack at all. So, I had the brainwave of converting it into a display cabinet for small treasures. This was something I'd been planning to do for a while, but never had time for until now. 

There are vintage snuff tins, a figure from a popular Belgian comic, a tacky plastic Lourdes souvenir, egg cups, chocolate moulds, a tiny OXO tin, a set of miniature kitchen utensils, a small plastic M&M's figurine and a set of vintage weights.

Friday's outfit was all pinks and purples with a dash of black and white.

The pink dress, with lashings of purple and off-white flowers, came from a vintage per kilo shop in Antwerp. I accessorized it with a purple woven belt, a black and white beaded necklace and a brooch picked up at our last flea market, which has a tiny piece of lace on a black background.

To tie in with the black and white, I wore black opaques sprinkled with white polka dots.

Still a tiny bit too chilly to go it alone, I wore a mustard yellow cardigan on top. This has a lacy yoke, in its turn tying in with the lace on my brooch. It's from Vero Moda, but was charity shopped in April 2017 and it's so pretty I wonder why I'm not wearing it more. No, do not answer that. I know it's because I have too many clothes. No, scrap that, there's no such thing! And I'm actually grateful for my huge wardrobe, especially now.

Not having been outside at all, except for our handkerchief sized garden, I needed to stretch my legs so, armed with hand sanitizer, I donned coat, scarf and beret, and went for a brisk walk along the block, running an errand at the chemist at the same time.

The weather was definitely getting a spring in its step, but it felt very weird being out on the streets, even our reasonably quiet village ones.

Being at home all the time for days on end really does feel as if every day is like Sunday!

I will be back with last weekend's non-adventurous soon!

The world moves in slow-mo

I'm still finding it hard to get my head around the fact that the world keeps moving - in slow-mo perhaps, but moving nonetheless - in spite of the fact that chaos is reigning all around us.

At times, even my preferred la la la approach isn't working and, whether I like it or not, I have to face facts which are beyond my control. Enter Friday before last, when I was told that my working hours were being reduced to a mere two days a week for the foreseeable future. Work had been slowly but surely grinding to a halt when one by one countries the world over went into variations of lockdown and international flights, which are a mainstay of our line of business, were becoming a rare or even non-existent commodity.

At first, I cried hot tears at finding myself, albeit only partially and temporarily, unemployed: another blow to my already battered and bent-out-of-shape psyche. But then I had some sort of epiphany and actually started looking forward to my days off.  

Hadn't I been moaning for years that I would love to work less and have some more time for myself? Okay, I wouldn't be able to go outside much, but now was my chance to do all the things I never seemed to have time for!

The situation wouldn't leave us as poor as church mice either, especially with no flea markets, charity shops and my beloved Think Twice to go and spend my hard earned money in.

Waking up on Saturday morning, it was as if I'd flipped a switch and, although my head seemed to be filled with cotton wool, I hadn't felt as good in weeks. That was over a week ago, and I haven't had another anxiety attack since. Result!

That morning, I happily played around with my wardrobe, digging out a black vintage skirt printed with a yellow, red, green and blue flower and leaf design. To keep it company, I chose a teal based blouse with one of my favourite prints ever. It's from a retro label called Zoe Loveborn, and I have a dress in exactly the same print but with red trim and buttons (see here). The dress was a retail buy many years ago, but I picked up the blouse at a flea market in October 2016.

I added a green cameo brooch, a red and white vintage necklace and a red woven belt, throwing over my yellow batwing cardigan - H&M by way of a charity shop - when we went out into the garden.

I've got Sunday's outfit for you as well, but first I urge you to fasten your seatbelts, as I'll be whizzing you back to Friday to take you on that promised lunch break walk. 

As it was set to be another glorious blue-skied day, I even took my proper camera to work.

Leaving the office at 12.30, I skirted our office building, arriving at the concrete jungle beyond.

That's my office building on the top right. I'm on the 5th floor. The half open window with the half pulled up blind in the detail on the bottom right: that's the floor where I'm spending my working days.

From my lofty windows, I look out on an ever-changing cityscape, which since almost two years includes the ornate lettering spelling Antwerpen (top and bottom left) created for an event titled Antwerp Baroque 2018. Rubens Inspires. Notice the #Staysafe banner immediately below. 

I can see its gracefully tiered 123 metres high spire - now covered in scaffolding - from my office window, but my walk took me past the cathedral's main portal, with its sculptures depicting the Last Judgment.

There were only handful of people passing through the triangular square in front of the cathedral. Lined with a row of souvenir shops at its other end, it is usually teeming with tourists, making photography almost impossible.

On the bottom right is part of the gracious wrought iron construction crowning the so-called Quentin Matsijs well, named after its creator, a blacksmith and painter, who lived from 1466 to 1530. 

Another tourist honey pot is the Grote Markt (Market Square), which is bordered on two sides by a series of magnificent Guild Houses. These, however, aren't as old as they might appear at first glance. As the original houses were destroyed in a fire in 1576, they were rebuilt in Flemish Renaissance style, but revamped again in the nineteenth century, resulting in the current, lavishly decorated, houses. 

On this fine sunny day, with its azure blue sky, the gilded statues topping the houses were positively sparkling.

Another prominent feature of the square is the Brabo fountain and sculpture in front of the town hall. This bronze sculpture dating from the 1880s tells the story of Silvius Brabo and Antigoon. The latter was an evil giant who, as legend has it, cut off the hands of all those who refused to pay tolls to cross the River Scheldt. After the heroic Brabo finally managed to slay him, he returned the favour by severing the giant's hand and throwing it into the river.

Before retracing my steps, I walked towards the river to admire the row of rusty gabled hangars with their decorative ironwork pediments. The ornaments they are topped with include typical maritime attributes like anchors and ship's helms.

On the top right is one of the stone lions guarding the cobbled slope up to the waterfront promenade, which also contains a bronze sculpture of the goddess Minerva (bottom left), created by the Italian artist Marcello Mascherini, and dating from the 1950s.

On my way back to the office, I randomly photographed some of Antwerp's street corner and other Madonnas. I do confess to having a weakness for them, in particular the street corner ones, which I think are one of Antwerp's most charming features. There must be about 200 of them!

Freshly back from my short time travelling trip, here's what I was wearing on Sunday.

Although I found this dress with its giant flower print in Think Twice's sales back in December, this was actually its first wear. I definitely needed all the colours that day!

It's from the Finnish Vinetta label and I think its purplish blue is the perfect backdrop for the riot of colour provided by the flowers.

The print is really amazing, with hardly any repeat in the floral pattern.

I picked random colours from it for my accessories, wearing a bright pink belt and ditto opaques and  a green butterfly brooch.

As for my necklace, there was only one likely candidate: my chain of multi-coloured wooden discs, bought from Accessorize many years ago, and still a firm favourite.

And even though we weren't leaving the house that day, I didn't want to leave the side down, and put on make-up like I do on any other day, I only skipped the mascara, but not the lippy. After all, even in these trying times, life simply looks a whole lot better when one's wearing lipstick!

I'll be returning soon with tales of my exciting life as a semi-unemployed in Corona times!

Stay safe!

Nothing rhymes

We were blessed with a string of bright sunny days last week. Still a wee bit too chilly, courtesy of a persistent, at times frosty wind, it nevertheless made the world outside our windows look a little less hostile.

In spite of this, I had quite a wobbly week, choking up and getting all teary-eyed at the oddest of  moments and usually at the most inconsequential of things.

Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of the glorious weather with what is slowly but surely being considered as our new normal that hit me in the solar plexus? I mean, how can it be Spring when everything else is awry and nothing rhymes? Things are so surreal that I keep expecting to wake up from this nightmare any moment.

But wobbles are just that, brief moments in time when our hearts can no longer cope with all the pent-up emotions, and we have to let off steam. Then we pick ourselves up and carry on. Never did the famous Keep Calm and Carry On slogan ring so true.

So, I tried to keep calm and carried on wearing my most colourful outfits. And while the first bit wasn't always a success, I'd like to think I nailed the second with my choice of outfits!

If I remember correctly - sorry, head's a bit of a jumble too - this is what I was wearing on Monday before last.

The outfit was built around the exuberantly dotted aubergine blouse, which I was determined to wear as a pick-me up. From its print, I picked orange for my cardigan, and yellow for the flower corsage pinned to it, as well as my belt and tights. Both orange and yellow were combined in my vintage beaded necklace. The one that always reminds me of bubble gum balls!

My skirt is vintage St. Michael, and is part of a suit, with a short-sleeved belted jacket. See here.

Picking a final colour from the blouse's dots, I added a white poodle brooch. Isn't he the cutest?

I hadn't been out of the office during my lunch breaks for over a week but, after feeling particularly wretched on Wednesday morning, I needed to clear my head and thus walked to Antwerp's botanical garden again.

The sky was an almost surreal blue, contrasting most picturesquely with the sunlit buildings, with Antwerp's famous Art Deco skyscraper (top left) dwarfing my office building, which you can just catch a glimpse of in the bottom right corner.

Making a slight detour through some traffic free shopping streets spacious enough for social distancing, I passed a covered gallery of shops (bottom right) where weirdly enough music is gently tinkling from the sound system all day even though all the shops are closed.

Where the traffic free streets end, I happened to look up and spot an umbrella hanging from a branch of a tree.  

Dodging the traffic on the busy street I'd arrived at, I briefly retraced my steps, then walked past the magnificent neoclassical Bourla theatre (top right), completed in 1834 and topped with statues of Apollo and the nine muses.

Then, after rounding a corner, the decorative stone balustrade bordering the botanical garden soon came into view. Topped by a series of ornate lampposts, it offers a bird's eye view of the sunken garden, a haven of serenity away from the chaos.

Dating back from 1825, the botanical garden was used for medical purposes for the adjacent St.Elisabeth hospital. Legend has it that its little pond was used to keep bloodsuckers which they used at the hospital. 

The garden, affectionately known as Den Botaniek, has been managed by the city of Antwerp since 1926 and in 1950 it was listed as a valuable landscape for the city of Antwerp and its inhabitants.

There was no sign of the tulip with my name on it, but at least the label made me smile!

Not that you'd notice, as I was wearing my scarf doubling as a makeshift face mask.

Despite its small size, the botanical garden still houses an incredible 2000 plant species, with some artwork dotted among them. 

Feeling refreshed and in a galaxy of my own, courtesy of the starry night print of my dress, we did some outfit photos in the garden after work.

Thanks to our heavy duty pruning, I was able to stand in the small paved sunken area in the middle of our garden, where even Phoebe had trouble getting into before, as it had become completely overgrown.

I was actually waiting for a spaceship to pick me up and zoom me over to a virus free planet, but none came so I gave up in the end.

The dress is vintage and once again it's one that's been in my wardrobe forever but hadn't been worn for a silly amount of time. It is made of a swishy rayon fabric, made even more swishier because of its lining.

I wore Monday's orange cardigan on top to which I clipped another one of my flower corsages.

While we were out in the garden, I had the opportunity to take a rare portrait of Her Majesty in which she isn't a blur or has just closed her eyes. You can see the little chink in her right ear, made when she was picked up and neutered as a one-year-old stray, before she was adopted by us.

Another view of my dress, without the cardigan this time. The squishy blue belt with its rectangular buckle is an old retail buy, as is the turquoise birds-in-flight brooch. The mottled blue beaded necklace is one of a plethora picked up in a long-gone vintage shop.

Putting on my Smiling Princess act here, but this can change in the blink of an eye.

When I went for a little walk during next day's lunch break and came across this heartbreaking scene in front of a cavalry group sculpture around the corner from my office, tears once again blurred my eyes, making me cut my walk short and flee back inside.

Today was my last working day of the week, so I'll probably have a bit more time for blogging now.

I promise to return shortly with photos of another, more successful, lunch break walk. 

Until then, stay safe my friends xxx

Everything depends upon how near you stand to me

Like a virus, fear is contagious. Perhaps even more so. It spreads like wildfire, as neither social distancing nor quarantine can stop it. It worms its way inside your head until the outside world feels like an alien country full of potential predators. It eats you up and then spits you out in tiny little pieces: a jigsaw of what once upon a time was you. Several pieces seem to be missing so that you cannot make yourself whole again. Fear makes you want to flee - which is virtually impossible in this current crisis - or fight. But it seems you're fighting against giants. Only when you realize they are actually windmills will your heartbeat finally slow down.

So I'm giving the middle finger to all those who are kindling fear with gloating gusto. I'll be banishing their black-hearted messages by wearing colour. Lots and lots of it, so there! I do hope this will make them crawl back under their rocks! And as for those at the other end of the scale, who still haven't got the message and keep putting others at risk with wanton abandon: may you all be turned into pillars of salt.

But even if things are looking bleaker than ever, and if I certainly do not always feel like practising what I'm preaching: we mustn't give up, and keep on aiming for that light at the end of the tunnel.

The 16th of March was the start of our first week of semi-lockdown and the day of my last journey by public transport. Schools had closed, so that I was absolutely fine in the morning, having an unprecedented amount of space on the tram. 

I was wearing a seldom worn red vintage dress liberally sprinkled with blue and white crescents. There are blue and white stripes at its yoke as well, which has three buttons proudly bearing an R. The R is short for Romy, as that's the name mentioned on the dress's label, which is also bearing a picture of the Eiffel Tower, giving it a certain je ne sais quoi.

The dress's classic red, blue and white colour scheme was reflected in my choice of accessories, as well as my cardigan and tights. Even my blue ankle boots came out to play!

Back to that fateful Monday. Non-essential shops were still open - they would be forced to close for the duration on the 18th - and by midday it was fairly crowded in the city centre. I fled back to the office in disgust when, out for a breath of fresh air, I was almost overrun by people carrying Primark shopping bags. People who obviously had to go home when I did. That evening, Jos and I made the wise decision that he would take me to work and pick me up again by car, which went a long way in reducing the fear factor.

Our car journey to work takes us past Antwerp's botanical garden. In spite of this being a less than ten minute walk from my office, I hadn't been there in years, so on Tuesday I took advantage of the gorgeous springlike weather to head there during lunch break.

There were only a handful of people about, all keeping the appropriate distance and, after walking around to see what was in bloom, I sat on a empty bench luxuriating in the sunshine and indulging in a couple of minutes of normality.

Apart from plants, there's some art dotted around the garden. These are by sculptor Monique Donckers, and called "Greening II". When I was looking it up on the Internet, I came across some photos taken in Summer, when grass was allowed to grow around them, almost obscuring the last one. I'll have to go and photograph them again in a few months' time, hoping that by then all of this is only a bad memory.

This is another of that week's outfits. Now that the days are getting longer there is once again opportunity to take outfit photos after work.

This classically shaped, box pleated frock, with its green flowers on a white and mottled green background, was another one which was long overdue an outing. I chose a medley of red and burgundy to accompany it. 

I didn't feel like venturing out again during lunch break that week. To be honest, I was finding the routine utterly exhausting: putting on latex gloves to take the elevator to the ground floor and opening the building's front door, then getting rid of the gloves and get out the hand sanitizer, and then having to do it all again coming back in. As I was once again putting on gloves, I started humming the song Hand in Glove by The Smiths, stopping short when I came to the line which became the title of this post. How very, very apt. Never mind that it is preceded by the line "we can go wherever we please"! 

Saturday dawned bright and sunny, even if a stinging wind did its best to throw a spanner in the works.  I was feeling surprisingly chipper that day, which was greatly helped by wearing one of my favourite ever frocks. The green 1940s style dress with its blowsy flower print originally had cheap looking plain white buttons which once again I replaced with more likely candidates from my stash.

In my opinion, blue and green should certainly be seen, so I added a sky blue cardigan, squirrel brooch and ring to accompany the blue flowers in the dress's print.

Further accessories were a tan belt and translucent beaded necklace, and I pinned a Welsh daffodil brooch to my cardigan in honour of the first day of Spring.

Teal opaques and my snake print ankle boots completed my outfit. The latter were only worn for the photos, though. 

When the rays of the sun started pouring into our little walled garden, I exchanged my outfit for an old pair of jeans, pale yellow top and denim gardening apron for a spot of heavy duty pruning.

We cleared an area of some of the rampant ivy and the dried remains of last year's ferns, and pruned our winter jasmine within an inch of its life. 

Having lost our winter flowering Clematis armandii, as well as its host plant, our long suffering lilac, there's not much in flower yet, apart from the yellow flowers of our ineradicable Ranunculus bush and the frothy sprays of white Spirea flowers.

Our cast iron weather vane appeared from under a mound of ivy, and I accidentally knocked our stone sun plaque from our garden wall. No harm done, though, and she, as well as the weather vane, are currently awaiting new spots.

Meanwhile, Jos had been tackling the remains of the dead lilac, so that we can now see the shed at the back of our garden from our kitchen window. I'd almost forgotten the makeshift gingham curtain and the row of wooden tulips I put up many years ago to cheer things up.

Still in a good and productive mood, I then put away my warmest Winter coats and dresses, exchanging them for the first batch of Spring stuff, a task made much lighter with the help of you know who!

We'd intended to continue in the garden on Sunday but, although it was looking gorgeously sunny, the wind had turned decidedly icy and unpleasant, which kind of put paid to our plans.

In the end, we only stepped into the garden to show you my outfit, which was based around another dress I hadn't worn in years. 

It's a handmade one, with three-quarter sleeves with elasticated cuffs, and a slightly psychedelic flower print in orange, lilac and purple on a white background.

I pulled out all the stops by accessorizing it with a purple woven belt, a fuchsia cardigan to which I clipped a row of flower hair clips, a multi-coloured wooden necklace, and an enameled Iris brooch pinned to my dress's collar.

I was wearing the ankle wellies I picked up at a charity shop back in December and which have been a godsend for my gardening activities.

In the week that followed, I had quite a few wobbles, and as it now seems that starting from next week I will be on reduced hours, I will have to find a new routine to keep my mind out of mischief. 

Meanwhile, I wish you all well, and hope to see you in my next post!

Linking to lovely Nancy's Fancy Friday!