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Notes on Having a Book Published

Outside, it had begun drizzling. I’d spent an hour faffing around, trying to find the ideal combination of red, white and grey. My bedroom floor was a blanket of clothes – dresses tried on and tossed...

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Cascades of Earliness

4.45am isn’t a time I’m used to. I’m more of a late starting girl, given half a chance: the kind who loves to laze in bed until mid-morning, reading and snoozing and listening to music (and, if I’m...

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Here

We were on our first cocktail of the night. Many (too many) more were to follow. My friend made reference to the music playing. “This is Christine and the Queens. You'd love her.” As we drank and...

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Girl Trouble, Girl Up, and Girls Will be Girls: Books About Being Teenage

Recently, I’ve been devouring books. Funny word, isn’t it? Devouring. Part of the language we apply to reading: one of bookworms, delectable stories, bittersweet endings, sentences to savour, and...

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Walking, Wandering, Striding, and Stomping

I went out at just before 5pm, weaving my way through concrete until I finally hit grass. Grass became woods became ferns became hills and sky – so much sky, stretching gloriously wide and gloriously...

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Words Galore

This has been the best kind of weekend: mellow, satisfying, and full of ideas. A weekend of coffee taken back to bed with a good book, as well as plentiful cooking, and long walks through landscape...

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Skin Deep

Last week, in a burst of very exciting news, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was announced as the new face of Boots No.7. Before I write anything else, I suggest you go watch the video here. In the clip, she...

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The Tale of a Marvellous Velvet Suit

I’ve always loved velvet. The last seven years of blog posts can attest to that. It’s one of my most consistent fabrics: forget-me-not blue velvet capes, bottle green velvet coats, plum velvet blazers,...

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The Art of Adventuring

I’m a big fan of the word ‘adventure’. Blame it on the books I read as a child: a steady diet of Enid Blyton and Eva Ibbotsen, among others, their stories stuffed full of scrapes and escapades and...

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Wearing the Trousers

I was named after Rosalind from As You Like It. As far as female Shakespeare characters go, I think my parents picked well. No sudden, tragic deaths a la Ophelia or Cordelia. No whirlwind romance and...

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A Time for Poetry

(Photos by the brilliant Fabio Paleari of all the New River Press poets)1) It was getting near to dusk, and Paris was all soft blue-grey air and gold lights. I was wandering along the Seine (as you do...

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Light Among the Shadows

Today, for the first time this year, I sat with my window open – looking out at the garden, and over to the hills beyond. The air felt different. Something had lifted. Or maybe it had quickened. There...

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What Does International Women's Day Have to Do With Your Wardrobe?

 In 1908, the International Ladies’ Garments Workers’ Union went on strike. More than 15,000 people participated. Many were immigrants – including one of the main organisers Clara Lemlich, who was only...

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These Shoes Were Made for Walking

Recently, my favourite pair of boots fell apart. I have only myself to blame. Having bought them second hand, I lived in them for months – occasionally substituting in other pairs, but mainly assuming...

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The Power Of Dressing Up

This weekend I wore more sequins than I’ve done in months. From a glittering turquoise playsuit that made me look like a (rather leggy) mermaid to a sequined gold and black bra with teeny-tiny shiny...

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The Next Few Chapters

Sometimes I think of this blog like a creature: one that hibernates on whim, or lies dormant for a while, only to spring back into life. In the past, it had to be fed regularly, and given a good...

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In Praise of the Seventies

What’syour decade? If you’ve got even a passing interest in vintage, you’ll probably be able to answer: reeling off the eras and cuts and types of look that you love best. For some it’s the fifties,...

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Seeing Double

I love a good sleeve. Give me an excess of fabric, a good shirt cuff, a poofy shoulder, a translucent chiffon, or a set of exuberantly ridiculous ruffles that have the air of a budget Kate Bush about...

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Lost Rivers and Pink Roses

London is full of underground rivers. I’ve known this since I was a child: one of those scraps of information you store away at the back of your head, no reason to dwell on anything more than the fact...

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Diaphanous

As a teenager, I owned several wedding dresses. Odd, perhaps, especially given that I had no imminent plans to get married. Yet still they hung there in my wardrobe like a ghosts of brides past: the...

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Dreaming of Green

I blame Sally Bowles. Back before Christmas I re-watched Cabaret, agog at its brilliant, highly disquieting skewering of the 1930s Weimar Republic. Alongside the increasingly disturbing contrasts - and...

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Land of Reinvention

The dress was scrunched up in the bottom of a bargain basket - the kind where everything is 50p, and the vast majority of items are very creased, very ugly, or very suspiciously stained. And yet, there...

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Another Round of Writing About Modelling

Last September I went to a model casting. It was my first in years. For various reasons I’d taken the decision to leave my second modeling agency two months prior, and had, at least for a little while,...

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All Change

Summer ending. Days getting shorter. The return of coats: suede, denim, tweed, wool. The anticipation of wood-smoke. Damp mornings. Crisp air and sunlight through thinning trees. More trousers: tartan,...

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Walking in the Air: 40 Years of The Snowman

I’ve always been a hungry reader. My mum tells fond stories of buying herself extra sleep time when I was small by leaving a pile of books at the end of my bed for me to busy myself with when I...

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