Femme à sa Toilette by Guillame Voiriot, 1760.
I came across this painting in my favourite museum, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and fell totally in love with it. Everything about it is perfection, from her bold gaze to the beautiful ribbons on her dress to the lace cloth on the dressing table to the very feminine clutter that covers it.
Dave has offered to help fund my MA which is very lovely of him, but unfortunately the Mediterranean Archaeology course is no longer being offered by Bristol University and I can’t find anything else that I want to do. Instead, I am considering either doing one of the week long residential courses with the Arvon Foundation or the long Creative Writing course with the Open University. I’m not the greatest writer in the world (I’m terrible in fact) but I do really enjoy it and would like to know more about it so maybe that would be a better idea than doing an MA in a subject that I am uncertain about?
The nearest courses are held at a beautiful manor house at Totleigh Barton in Dorset. How could I fail to be inspired by somewhere so lovely?
Mm, vegan cupcakes!
My other plan for the future is to become fully vegan (as opposed to ‘almost vegan’) in the next couple of months. I’m really looking forward to it and am planning to order some vegan baking books and cookery books from Amazon on payday.
Oh dear, there is a dream sequence currently unfolding before me involving Effie Millais and a slowly drowning Elizabeth Siddal.
The characters in my book surround themselves with flowers.
Lilacs.
Violets.
Lilies.
My favourites, Peonies.
Rhodedendron.
Roses.
Carnations.
Cornflowers.
Hyacinths.
Honeysuckle.
I have totally failed to do any writing this week. Which is understandable, I suppose, considering all the stuff that is going on in my life.
I’m currently wrestling with chapter three, which is set in July 1789 and I keep having mental visions of my characters standing in the yellow salon of the Hôtel de Saint-Valèry on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, their fingers shaking as they hold on to their glasses of champagne, their lips quivering with the strain of maintaining those smiles.
I’d better just get on with it really!
After forcing my husband to watch Bride Wars I decided to be nice and watch Spiderman 3 as it is more his sort of thing. Oh dear, what a mistake. I will come clean at this point and admit that I actually quite liked the first two Spiderman films and was rather looking forward to seeing the third installment.
I’m not sure what the worst thing about Spiderman 3 was. Maybe it was the awful script or maybe it was just the general unlikeability of every single character or maybe it was the dreadful hammy acting. Or maybe it was just the sequence in the jazz club where he does that stupid dance. You know the bit I mean. Yes, that bit. The bit that was all wrong and so embarrassing to watch that my husband, who is as un-squeamish as they come was reduced to hiding behind a cushion because he just couldn’t bear to witness it. That bit.
The main problem for me, besides the dancing scene, was how obnoxious Peter was, even without his ‘evil’ costume or whatever it was. I honestly didn’t care what happened to him at all. How did that happen?
Also, how come the black costume made him not only Evil Spiderman but also Pete Wentz? Was that a trace of eyeliner I spied?
Apparently there is going to be a fourth film at some point. Dear me. How they spoil us.
We can’t decide which is worse: Bride Wars or Spiderman 3. It’s a close one.
Tonight’s trashy girl film was Bride Wars starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. I was fully expecting to really enjoy it as I just can’t resist films and books about weddings (my own wedding was pretty untraditional and I am prone to vicarious over compensation while plotting to renew my vows one day), however, it wasn’t actually that good.
I’m not sure what the problem was. Maybe it was the unhinged behaviour of the brides to be, which, of course was the basic premise of the film but actually made me feel really uncomfortable. Possibly it was the fact that the aforementioned basic premise was actually pretty flimsy. Or maybe it was just really, really lame.
I loved Kate Hudson’s dress, although I was confused by how old she looked. Surely that can’t be right? She always looked so fresh faced and perky and yet in this film she wore enough slap to shame Barbara Cartland into trying out a fresh, new dewy look and was in the habit of pulling an eeeeevil slitty eyed expression that Bette Davis herself would have been proud of.
Anyway, that’s a couple of hours that I won’t be getting back and I think my husband is going to hold it against me for quite some time.
"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is." - Anne of Green Gables.
I am a middle class housewife, History geek, Versailles obsessive, Paris lover, historical fiction writer, Victorian Prostitute re-enactor, Art History graduate, committed vegetarian, GIN taster, curry lover and Pimms addict living in the deepest darkest West Country with my family.
I'm a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, Whitechapel Society and London Historians and also a reviewer for the Historical Novel Society.
I shouldn't really need to say this but all the written content on this site is my own work and copyrighted to me so please ask before using elsewhere. I've come across a couple of sites now that have lifted my work without any acknowledgement and it leaves a nasty taste to be honest and makes me YOUR ENEMY FOR LIFE.
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