May is here, and skies are blue. I’ve been busy working on my MA dissertation, which focuses on the early poetry of William Carlos Williams (hence the title of this post) as well as the writing of the poet and visual artist Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven. Doing all this work for my dissertation perhaps also explains why I’ve not written much here recently - a paltry 4 posts in April! I hereby resolve I will do much better in May.


What else? I’ve been enjoying sunshine and sea views. Marvelling at the wonders of Scottish cuisine (blue cakes? white pudding? unidentified deep-fried objects?). And writing a review for Bookmunch for Helen Oyeyemi’s new novel White is for Witching which you can read here.

More to follow soon...

I think I have a new favourite magazine - the beautiful Lula. Just look at some of these glorious page spreads from the latest issue (no. 8) which I have been happily browsing this afternoon:



Whilst I can see that its style may be a bit girly and whimsical for some tastes, I have to say that for me it is an utter treat to read a fashion-led magazine which isn't entirely focussed on persuading readers they desperately need to buy this week's "must have" item and should slavishly follow the latest celebrity trends. Even better, Lula includes a minimal number of advertisements, which are placed only at the start and end of the magazine, meaning that as a reader, you aren't constantly bombarded - or worse, left wondering what is genuine editorial and what is marketing copy.


As the ever-wise Hadley Freeman points out, "contrary to popular belief, fashion magazines aren't catalogues" and the great thing about Lula is it really doesn't feel like one. Rather than being primarily about shopping, Lula is really all about inspirations, ideas and aesthetics. OK so I'll admit there's a "sleb" or two in there but at least they're not the usual suspects - this is, after all, a magazine that eschews the apparently inevitable choice of Victoria Beckham as fashion icon du jour in favour of such alternative (and far more interesting) choices as Louise Bourgeois, Gertrude Stein, Diana Vreeland and Peggy Guggenheim amongst others. And there are some thoughtful, interesting articles as well as beautiful fashion shoots - because guess what? The two aren't mutually exclusive! This issue, for example, brings together a feature on Edie Beale, a life-size dolls house installation by artist Heather Benning, short fictions by Rupert Friend and Louise Cork, and an interview with the incomporable Luella, as well as a whole treasure trove of lovely images to enjoy.





The only thing I would say is that the typography can get a bit annoying: the distinctive Lula font designed by Becky Smith and Pedro Cid Proenca looks cute for titles but becomes a bit unreadable when used for larger blocks of body text. But that aside - what better way than to spend a lazy Saturday reading Lula, drinking tea and eating ginger biscuits?

I'm now feeling inspired by... boater hats; grossgrain ribbons; birds and butterflies; tea parties; hats with veils; paper cut-outs; 1940s hair; anti-minimalism; giant Alice in Wonderland bows; doodles; latter-day Victoriana; cup cakes and cocktails; plaits; ephemera; Dalmatians; seamed stockings; misty old photographs; layering; eye-popping rainbow brights; and wearing socks with peep-toe shoes. Lovely!

I love Saturdays.

Saturday mornings are for all the best things in life. Mornings which don’t start with the alarm clock ringing at 7 am. Long, lazy breakfasts, ideally involving something like blueberry pancakes or hot chocolate. Reading the Saturday papers (so much better than the Sunday papers) and doing the crosswords. Mooching to the shop and buying something frivolous like flowers or cake. Having more cups of tea than is strictly necessary. Listening to the radio while you float around the house, polishing things and thinking about stopping for a ginger biscuit or two, while you contemplate what you might do later on in the afternoon or in the evening - usually something cheering involving going somewhere and seeing friends. And there are the traces of the excited feeling of childhood Saturdays too - the Saturdays which involved things like riding round the village on my bike (a turquoise Raleigh Bianca), penny sweets in a paper bag, ballet classes and going to the bookstall on Chorley market and spending all my pocket money on paperbacks. Most of all, the lovely sense of possibility. After all, it’s still only Saturday morning. There’s still all of Saturday afternoon and evening, not to mention all of Sunday still to come.

Today I am recovering from a super-busy week I am catching up on domestic things (the War of the Green Taps continues), reading the paper, re-reading The Weather in the Streets by Rosamund Lehman, drinking cinnamon tea, knitting and resolutely ignoring the university work I am supposed to be doing. I am listening to a bit of Radio 4 or, when it annoys me (and/or Any Answers? is on) Radio 3. I am looking forward to going round to my friends’ house for dinner later on.

And in between all of that, I’m just doing absolutely nothing. Except maybe breathing. And sipping my tea. And watching the birds out of the window. It’s very, very good.

Homemade pancakes with raspberries and blueberries; birthday parcels wrapped in baby blue tissue; wandering in (very brief) interludes of sunshine, anticipating spring; drinking rum and ginger beer with mint and lime; taking a nap; celebrating my birthday with Susie and Chris with delicious snacklets and fizzy wine; buying treats; browsing in the Tate Modern bookshop; coffee in Soho; spaghetti with mussels; watching the sky-line; getting lost 'Logan's Run' style in the Barbican; listening to Billie Holliday and Miles Davies; cooking prawn laksa; seagull spotting; new perfume that smells like ginger biscuits; buying pretty cards to send to faraway friends; eating glittery cupcakes for breakfast; watching children in rainbow wellies puddle-jumping; contemplating maps; delicious Mexican food at Wahaca in Covent Garden; seeing friends; following the yellow brick road - or line, in this case - around the Barbican to see if it really goes anywhere after all.

More belated birthday celebrations... a delicious meal at Yard on Tabernacle Street, just off Old Street, where they serve their pizzas literally By The Yard! What could be better? A lovely evening catching up with friends old and new. I thought I'd share a few of the pictures Duncan and I took:

Yep, that's actually a picture of me. I don't think a picture of me has ever made it onto the blog before. Needless to say I don't always have quite such a stupid expression.

Lisa and Chris look forward to a yard of pizza!

Misty and Howie.

"But we can't make up our minds what to have!"
In the pub... Sarah contemplates the merits of a game of "Estonian wife throwing" as proposed by the bartender.

Sarah, Amy, Leah and Hazel (doing her best to avoid having her photo taken) catch up on all the news.

Amy and Leah made me an amazing birthday present - a fabulous box of homemade cup cakes. I should have taken a picture of the whole extravaganza but unfortunately I got distracted by eating them. I especially love the pink ones (with glitter) plus the chilli and chocolate flavour. The Year of Three Birthday Cakes has now become the year of more birthday cakes than it is possible to count. Hooray!

I love old photographs, and polaroids in particular. I have recently become slightly obsessed with poladroid, a brilliant free-to-download image maker that allows you to transform any photograph into a polaroid in a mere matter of seconds. You can even watch the picture develop, just like a 'real' polaroid photograph.

I couldn't resist the temptation to capture in polaroid form a few more of my favourite things to add to the ever-increasing list:

blue skies and autumn leaves



















felt-tip pens



















typewriters: I am seriously coveting this one from three potato four



















sitting in the oklahoma cafe with a hot spiced apple juice



















a very old and special friend

Pink sky at four o'clock: last night's frost still glitters on the roofs of houses.

As promised here are some pictures of my holiday.

I suppose there's probably something very boring, and perhaps even rather egotistical about posting one's holiday photos on one's blog, somewhat "ooh, look at me and my fascinating life".

My holiday photos are sadly, not very fascinating, but I make no apologies. I was hoping to use my time away to write stories and other wonderful and interesting things which I could have posted here; however somehow I didn't quite get round to it (possibly because I spent so much of my time eating and sleeping instead) so you'll just have to put up with photographs.

Actually, I'm quite proud that I managed to take any at all given it rained for most of the holiday. The sky is even blue in some of them.















Excellent wellington boots. Essential for walks in soggy French woods.















Mmmmm, tasty vegetables - a present from our friendly neighbours from their garden.















Dinner - a very important part of the holiday. This is a picture of some boeuf bourginonne which was extremely nice. It is a slightly blurry picture, but possibly I had already had a glass of wine at this point.






















Spooky ruined tower - la tour du rochefoucauld.






















Flowers from the garden.

... went shopping for misty's birthday present - we bought her a bird necklace, a "make your own monster" and a goats cheese (like you do), plus a beautiful moomin bag to put it all inside

... ate a tasty prawn bun at the vietnamese restaurant round the corner (it's a noodle dish, not an actual bun made of prawns, or anything weird like that, in case you're wondering)

...watched the rain from the balcony

...drank coffee, ate bagels

...meandered down Brick Lane for people-watching, window-shopping, bicycle-spotting...

...went to John Lewis to buy luscious Rowan wool for a secret knitting extravaganza

... wandered across the river to Tate Modern to see the Street and Studio exhibition (I liked Wolfgang Tillman's tube photos and the entertaining yet slightly disturbing two channel video installation by Rineke Dijkstra) - and as always, to covet all the lovely books in the bookshop

...misty's surprise birthday party at Mildred's in Soho. I ate baba ganoush, a vegan burrito and vegan tarte tatin (nice but not a fan of the tofu ice cream I'm afraid). I am quite tempted to post a really amusing photograph of me eating the tarte tatin but I'm not sure I'm ready to share my pudding-appreciation grimace with the world just yet.

... read "Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville

... treated myself to a most beautiful ruby slipper necklace - hurrah!

... went to the Publish and be Damned DIY book fair at The Rochelle School and checked out inspiring things from fuselit, strange attractor, 20x20 magazine, the arts pneumonia, impulsive random platform and the archive of shredded catalogues, amongst many others

... took photos of things that caught my eye

... today I thought I would post this piece that I wrote back when I entered the Vogue talent contest in 2005. Entrants had to submit three pieces of writing, one of which was an autobiography in 600 words, and this is what I came up with. It's not strictly an 'autobiography' because most of it isn't true, but it could be the autobiography of a fictionalised version of myself. Of all my work, it was the piece which seemed to appeal to the judges most: when I went to the finalists' lunch at Vogue (my very own "Carrie Bradshaw" moment) it was definitely the one that they remembered: people kept saying, "oh, you're the red shoe girl!" Yep, that's me!

And it's true that I am strangely compelled to wear red shoes (the ones above were a present from France). Even though this piece is now over three years old, it seems particularly appropriate to post it here, given the title of the blog and all. After all, it's all very well to talk of going off to follow yellow brick roads, but how much better if you've got a pair of kick-ass ruby slippers to do it in?

So here we go:

The Red Shoe Diaries

1. Red Sandals

They glistened and gleamed, the red shoes. They were perfect, everything a shoe should be. Red, glistening and perfect, like something out of a dream.

She lay on the rug and rewound, just to see Dorothy skipping along in the shiny red shoes. “Their magic must be very powerful, or she wouldn’t want them so badly,” Glinda the Good Witch said. Her own shoes were black, patent-leather, round-toed and squeaky: shoes her mother chose. They were cartoon shoes, something Minnie Mouse might wear, nothing remotely magical about them. At school, the other girls had proper, grown-up shoes, with little heels that they click-clacked importantly in, up and down the playground. But they weren’t magic shoes, either: it was red ones she wanted.

She had a book of fairy-tales with a story in it called ‘The Red Shoes’. The shoes were treacherous but they were magic too. After all, she read, there is really nothing in the world that can be compared to red shoes.

That summer, she finally got them. Red sandals to wear with her white knee-socks and gingham school dress. They didn’t dazzle like Dorothy’s, but she knew they were magic just the same. They were sandals to skip along unknown roads in, shoes that could take you anywhere. They looked quite ordinary, but she knew better. Sometimes she surreptitiously practised clicking her heels together, once, twice, experimentally, just to see.

2. Scarlet Shoes

No one else had scarlet shoes. Their feet were all the same, in their identikit fashion trainers, and they looked scornfully at her in the red velvet high-heels she had bought from a charity shop for a handful of pennies. Back then, they had seemed enchanted shoes, exotic, otherworldly: shoes to wear to a smoky jazz club or a fabulous party in some faraway foreign city. Now, they were giving her blisters, and the other girls were looking down their noses and saying nothing. The drunk man in the corner kept leering at her across the room. “You know what they say about girls who wear red shoes...”

After that she kept them to wear at home: she wore them to do homework in, to dance around the bedroom to David Bowie. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. Years later, she found them at the back of her cupboard, still waiting for another dance. She thought of the film The Red Shoes with Moira Shearer, which had, for a brief time, made her long to be a prima ballerina. She remembered: The Red Shoes are never tired... Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on....

3. Ruby Slippers

They glistened and gleamed, the red shoes. They were perfect, like something out of a dream. Beyond the haze of the shop window, they stood waiting for her. The perfect ruby slippers: crimson Marc Jacobs peep-toe shoes with tiny bows on. They were everything a shoe should be.

“You can’t be serious,” said Emma. “You’re going to spend a month’s rent on shoes! When will you even wear them?” But she wasn’t listening. As she slid her foot inside, she felt the enchanted transformation take place. They were powerful magic shoes, shoes that would never be tired. There is really nothing in the world that can be compared to red shoes. It was true, she reasoned, as she skipped out of the shop and off along the unknown road, going who knows where.