Confessions of a Boden-loving leftie...

I remember about 6 years ago I was reading a boring women's magazine when a supplement dropped out. It was a mini-catalog for a new mail order clothing company called Boden. Oooh, and weren't the clothes great! Lacy twinsets, long cardies, swirly skirts and tall boots. Great colours and lots of sizes.

The catalogue featured real women (friends of the designer) and a lot of Labradors and outdoor scenery. None of the models had that moronic 'sultry' look (instead it seemed they were having fun in the long cardies and swirly skirts) and there were mini-interviews with the models too, who seemed to have - shock horror - names! I ordered my first top and was immediately hooked, especially since their clothes always seem to fit in with my general look, which is (in case you don't know):

- only skirts and dresses (unless I'm doing yoga or something else exercise-y)
- spring/summer: 'the hippy look' - maxi dresses, long skirts, sandals, embroidery
- autumn/winter: 'the fifties look' - tailoring, defined waistlines, knee length skirts, twinsets, etc

So now it's many, many years later and I'm still a huge fan of Boden. The clothes are GREAT. They last forever and the attention to detail is fabulous.

So what's the problem, you ask? It's just that...that...that....sadly, my fave catalog has become irritiatingly associated with the tory party, because David Cameron wore a pair of Boden shorts once. Big deal. So now whenever we hear about 'Boden man' or 'Boden woman' in the press it's shorthand for Tory voters - and basically used as a bit of a slur! Sloppy, lazy, irritating journalism - and an insult to all of us Boden loving lefties!

To redress the balance in my own little way I've started a Facebook group - Leftwingers for Boden. Please come and join...even if you don't know what I'm on about....

Vauxhall Bridge detail
Originally uploaded by Izabel_Blue

Taking the boat to work

One of the nice things about London is the river. I love it. Sometimes on hot sunny days I forget about the stinky sweaty tube and instead pop on the boat at Putney Pier for the hour long journey to Blackfriars.

This photos is of one of the lovely bronze figures depicting the arts which are on the side of the Vauxhall bridge. The attention to details reminds me that in the olden days people used the river much more for transport - these figures greet you from the river and beckon you to the artistic wonders of London...

If you want to see more exciting commute-from-the-boat pics the North side of the river set is here and you can see the view from the South side of the river here.

We can talk about the weather...


After recommending this book for years to other expats I've finally gotten around to reading it. The first chapter revealed that even though I've been living in the UK for nearly 7 years I have spent that 7 years committing a major, major social faux pas.

It turns out that weather conversations are meant to be about agreement, not dissent! Now I'm good at agreeing during the summertime conversations but if you are an English person having a chat with me during the winter it normally goes like this:

English person: 'oooh, it's a bit on the cold side today'

Me: 'Cold? This? I'll show you cold! Where I grew up it was -30 degrees for two months of the year. You couldn't go outside without 5 layers and people regularly freeze to death in snowbanks! And you think this is cold?'

Apparently this is the worst possible thing to do- not only am I disagreeing, I've gone straight into bragging/boastful one-upmanship mode. Which is a very un-English thing to do. Whoops!

By the time I finish this book perhaps I will understand even more of this social nuances I've been missing.

I wonder if it can explain to me the big mystery of the English though- what's with all that behind the scenes grumbling about things but no actual complaining to the forces in power?

Oh hang-on. I think I might have an inkling of the answer. Dare it be that people think that grumbling is fun? Oh dear...

London's secret gardens....one weekend only!

One of the fabulous things about living here is the amount of green space on offer for such a big city. I think only the occasional Scandinavian city does better than London on this front. We've got it all - from small patches of grassy embankment, to urban fields, to commons and heaths. But the best of them all are London's gorgeous garden squares, beautifully tended patches of green, festooned with flora, fountains and ponds. Lovely!

here's the statue in the middle of Cadogan square...

There is a catch, of course - a great majority of garden squares (with a few notable exceptions) are residents-only, which means that the locals of the square itself pay upkeep fees and have keys to get in. Unsurprisingly a great majority of these lovely local squares are, of course, in unaffordable areas such as Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Belgravia, and Mayfair. Sigh!

Once a year there is something called 'Open Squares Weekend' - so off we went. We hit three garden squares in the end (and one 'grounds') . We started at charming Cadogan square in Chelsea, moved on to the grounds of Lambeth Palace (wow!) and then the next day enjoyed tea, scones and grass court tennis in beautiful Edwardes square in Kensington, followed by a bit of a relax in the noisy but sweet Royal Crescent (see below), on the cusp of Notting Hill.


Lovely lovely lovely, I thought, but there is a big part of me that feels upset that these gorgeous gorgeous parks are for such a small percentage of Londoners. So here's my thought- why not get borough locals to pay a weekly, monthly or yearly fee to visit their local garden squares on more that just two days a year? Keep the fees high enough so that the actual keyholders see their subscription dues going down. Let people swipe themselves into the green space with a card pass rather than a key...and let everyone who wants enjoy this hidden beauty! What do you think? I'm going to write to Boris and give him the idea....will let you know how I get on.

Don't worry, I haven't changed my mind about Boris- I'd much rather be writing to Ken about this!

P.S. photo credits go to my charming hubby N - see the entire 'square' set here

Bit of a new look....

still working on it though.....meanwhile here's a photo of what it's like where I live in the early summertime. This view of the Thames is a 5 minute walk from our flat!

Busy times...

Right - finally I'm back here in London as per usual life - it's been a bit frantic recently. In March and April I went to:

- Boston
- Toronto
- California
- The Lake District (almost wrote that as 'the Cake District' - Freudian slip methinks!)
- Poole

OK the last two aren't as impressive but needless to say I've been taking lots of taxis, drinking lots of (not great) coffee and dealing with all sorts of weather - snow, sun, torrential rain, etc.

Now it's back to reality. And it feels pretty good!

BTW thanks for piping up and saying that I should keep blogging. I'm going to try to be better about it (famous last words). I'm glad you still like to hear about my meanderings every once in a while. Oh, and MikeS, yes, it was really a heartbreaking situation with the Mayor. I blame the borough of Bexley.

If you really want to know what I'm up to on a more, ahem, granular level there is is this thing...

Thinking about stuff

So it's months later and I still haven't blogged for a while. I don't know quite why I'm even worse than usual about this medium. I guess it's a combination of a few things.

Firstly, have you noticed that blogging seems to be dying a death? Or at least a particular kind of the form of which this very blog is an example - the sort of self-obsessed 'experiential' blog about the daily lives of individuals. Blogging that's related to an activity, a topic, or a business seems to still be alive and well, but I think all of the self-obsessed stuff has retreated to hide in Facebook and MySpace and all that. A bunch of blogs which I've followed religiously for a while (some from actual people I know offline etc) have all faded away - the last posts always seem to be November of 07 or January of 08...

I wonder if this is because people have realised that they don't want to share the minutae of their lives with the entire Internet? Or is it just *easier* to keep things updated in those darned social networks? I should add here that I am now officially bored of Facebook - it was fun to find people for a while but now there's nothing really to do on there - I'm sick of Scrabulous (and that's saying a lot) and have come to the realisation that the image gallery features are kinda crap - time to get back on Flickr.

But I digress. The other thing about my personal lack of blogging is this - about a month ago I stopped in Toronto for the weekend and it was the first time I had been in Canada for nearly a year and a half. I've been here for 7 years this summer and I feel like I'm losing my essential fish-out-of-water perspective. Canada was still Canada in March but it didn't feel like *home* anymore: I wasn't up to date on the culture, I was surprised by the television shows, and the weather (a snowstorm: see the dog above.) was just a real bugger to deal with. I was staying with my dear friend V and I got very excited about cleaning the snow off of his car - this wasn't because of the inherent fun-ness of this activity, but instead the joyful realisation that...cleaning snow off of a car is no longer part of my life. And it doesn't have to be again. I should say here that it was great to see my Canadian friends in Toronto for that weekend, and, if anything I felt closer to them, and realised that they are *my Canada* now - the anchors that keep me coming back.

So here I am, mired in the middle of the Atlantic, neither here nor there. Should I keep on posting? Or have I closed the chapter on 'Life with an accent'?

Oh, in case you're wondering I still have it. The accent, that is.