Old woods offer so much to the imagination. I had decided to go to Little Wittenham Woods before dawn to try some long exposure shots, as it drew light I wandered more into the old part of the wood It is amazing how your senses work overtime in the low light, every sound is a potential threat and you look for a safe place to hide...

 

Really needs to be viewed full size.

Esmerelda / Come What May sailing in the Sound of Bute, Scotland. Inchmarnock and Arran in the distance

 

Log of the Dinghy Esmerelda or Come What May

Three seasons learning to sail (1998 - 2000)

 

May 1998

For years, it seems, it has been at the back of my mind that, when it was convenient, I would learn to sail my own boat. Life being such as it is, I have spent the last nine years living within ten minute's walk of the sea but have not been in a sailing boat in all that time. Last weekend, I answered an advert in the local paper. Now, I am the proud owner of a 14ft Lark sailing dinghy! Ian, the seller, kindly offered to teach me to sail her. She’s a modest little boat, but seems worth the price. Adam (my elder son) is delighted and is raring to have a go.

****

Yesterday evening was our first time out on the water, not on the tide, but on West Kirby marine lake in the Dee estuary. I felt very much an incompetent land-lubber. I have a whole new set of coordination skills to learn, certainly more than when learning to ride a motorcycle or drive a car, but this is part of the challenge. I think it helps to have the limbs and bodily plasticity of an octopus.

****

Ian took me out in the boat for the second time yesterday evening and it was beautiful! - sun sinking in the west, warm blue sky, a gentle breeze and the boat gliding effortlessly through the water. If I am not yet completely hooked, then I soon shall be. My aspirations are modest: I'd be thrilled simply to learn the necessary skills and gain the confidence to navigate the Wirral coast.

****

This sailing has really got a grip on me. I spent last Thursday night in Manchester so that I could start earlier on Friday in order to be home by 5 p.m. to take the boat out. It was wild! The wind was approaching force 4 and we managed to capsize twice, (although we were the last boat on the lake to do so). It is a wonderful activity which, like mountaineering, is completely absorbing both mentally and physically, and which, if you're not actually doing it, then you're thinking about doing it or pottering around with the equipment. I'm pleased, because it has restored a dimension to my life that has been sadly lacking for a few years. Alix and I have decided definitely to withdraw our house from sale and stay put here on the coast, at least for the foreseeable future.

 

Inanimate objects

I hesitate to consider my boat an inanimate object. She has several traits suggestive of animation, and female at that:

a nice shape,

moves gracefully,

behaves wilfully,

demands attention,

requires sensitive handling,

and on two occasions has been quite upset and ditched me.

 

Friday 12th June 1998

Stimulating, thrilling, absorbing and therapeutic.

We went out last Saturday and plan to again this Saturday. It is time I took it out on my own though, or rather with someone I can't rely on to take the initiative in a tricky situation. After all, the whole idea is to sail this boat myself. With this in mind, I persuaded my German colleage Tobias to come over on Sunday to join me. He has never sailed, so it'll be the blind leading the blind, but it has to be the quickest way to learn.

 

Sunday 14th June 1998

Achievement!

I took the boat out truly as 'skipper' this evening (with Tobias). The wind was northerly, gusting force 4, and slightly intimidating - I nearly called the whole thing off - but once we'd cast off it was magical!

Suddenly after all the flapping and palaver of rigging, all is quiet and smooth as we glide downwind. A slightly anxious moment ensues when I realize we'll have to gybe before we run out of lake, but this manoeuvre works smoothly and I realize with relief that I can actually tack back against the wind.

After an hour, despite some interesting moments, we have managed to avoid capsizing and are still relatively dry. We are rewarded by the sun peeping out from under the clouds just before it vanishes below the horizon.

 

Clynnog fawr, Lleyn Peninsula, north Wales, July 1998

 

Wonderful holiday! - the best I think for several years. Brothers Martin and Chris and our three families (15 of us in all) staying in a farm house together. Best of all was to see all the kids together (eight cousins and one half-sister) - how the older ones looked after and amused the younger ones, and also how the younger ones amused the adults, and how the adults are actually kids at heart and behave as such when they are all together. It was invaluable to have so many young cousins for Adam to play with, and to be able to let Ricky trot out into the large green spaces around the house and to play in the sand, knowing that there were nearly always three or four others keeping an eye on him.

 

The farm itself was in a beautiful location on a magnificent length of coast, north west facing, catching the best of the sunsets. The whole area is delightfully quiet and unspoilt (and only two hours drive from home, even towing the boat). The weather was not ideal, but we still managed to spend a large proportion of the time outside.

 

At the beginning of the week high winds, cloud and some rain made it quite unsuitable for sailing but we managed some hiking and some went horse riding. By Wednesday, the forecast was slightly better and we'd discovered relative shelter and what seemed to be a nice launching site at the northern end of Llanberis Lake, so we decided to sail come what may. [At this moment Come What May suggested itself as a name for my boat. Only later did I discern the name Esmerelda almost completely faded written on the hull.]

It turned out to be a delightful, sunny and warm afternoon, the shore had trees to climb, sticks and stones to splash in the water and soft grassy spots for picnics. We launched and I was able to take everyone out in turn. For Adam and Alix it was actually their first time, the complexities of child care being what they are. Adam was fairly excited but not a hundred percent confident, he finds it a little intimidating but hopefully that will change. It was the perfect day for him - gentle and warm.

 

The next day started fine with a light breeze. Majority interest however determined that we go riding again followed by a pub lunch, but in the afternoon I was determined to get the boat out. The tide was up and three of us succeeded in handling it down a steep track to the shore and then over small, slippery, seaweed-covered boulders to the water's edge.

I still find it miraculous how, once rigged, with a quick shove and hop in, we are gliding through the water as if by magic (hoping a freak gust doesn't turn us round before I grab hold of the tiller and get the centreplate down!)

Caernarfon Bay, and first time on the sea! The swell was a little daunting as we sailed into deeper water, especially with four adults aboard (not sailed with that many before), but I practised a few tacks, sailing up-wind and down-wind, and she seemed to handle alright without shipping water, albeit a bit heavy at the tiller, so I was happy. It was a delight with the rhythm of the waves and the late afternoon sun sparkling through the spray and sea to the open horizon; with our course set for the open Atlantic I just wanted to keep going. Fortunately, I didn't. All of a sudden there was no more resistance on the tiller and we swung round into the wind: the rudder had torn off its mounting! I was glad that I'd invested in some oars as a precaution with which we were able to turn about to face shoreward; then, by holding the rudder (fortunately still attached to the boat by the uphaul line) and leaning right into the water astern, we were able to hold a course back to the shore. I since realised that the reason the rudder felt so heavy in the first place was because it was not engaged in its fixed down position but trailing horizontally behind; the extra leverage combined with the weight in the boat must have sheared the two mounting bolts. I've now repaired it with four new reinforcing bolts. It was a learning experience and exciting at the time. The others all seemed to enjoy it and seemed to think it was all in a day's sailing adventures.

 

7th August 1998

Last weekend was wonderful. Summer finally seemed to have arrived: it was comfortable to spend dawn 'til dusk in shorts and T shirt and to sit out late in the garden for dinner with a bottle of wine after the kids were in bed. Adam and I went onto the beach on Sunday and spent a good hour just splashing in the sea and being crabs and sea-monsters wallowing in the deep soft sand. Simple happiness!

More exciting still, I took the boat out twice. First, on West Kirby marine lake completely on my own for the very first time. I was out on the water by 7.30 a.m., it was a gorgeous morning and I had the whole lake and, indeed it seemed, the whole estuary to myself. Second, again on my own, on the high tide for the first time. Two significant achievements which have given me such a thrill that I can't wait to do it again! In fact, I can now say that I have achieved my long held ambition of being able to sail my own boat on the sea, albeit in very easy conditions: a smooth surface and barely a breath of wind. I sailed for three hours on the high spring tide and was really chuffed to be out there on my own, but it would have been nice to have had some good company too. I feel this is only the beginning: my curiosity is already drawing me to peruse the second-hand yacht sections of the sailing magazines!

 

17th August 1998

I had my sailing abilities stretched this weekend when I took the boat out on the tide in a breeze that was slightly too strong for me (also my muscles and parts of the boat were well stretched). It was a humbling experience:

On the sea front, the breeze felt rather intimidating. The lifeguard on duty hailed me, having seen me with my boat the previous week,

"Going out today?"

I confided my reservations to him, but he replied, presumably intending to encourage me,

"Only way to learn, by experience!"

This was a challenge I felt bound to accept.

Having rigged and launched, all there was to do was push off and hop in. It was that moment of hesitation that reminded me of the feeling I had as a novice skier on the lip of my first black run: the point of no return. Hesitation over, the first few seconds I spent struggling to lower the rudder, which for some reason would not go down (because, I found out later, I'd hitched the uphaul too tight), while keeping an eye on other boats at their moorings skimming past me at an alarming rate even before I'd trimmed the sails. In the excitement, I forgot to lower the centreplate, which meant that having covered about half a mile in what seemed like about ten seconds I tried to come about into the wind but couldn't. Hemmed in by a sand bank on one side and an approaching groyne on the other, there seemed to be little room to manoeuvre and all I could do was gybe, but this didn't work properly either and I capsized. I realised the centreplate wasn't down when I tried to stand on it to pull the boat back upright, it then took me a few moments to lower it because first I had to untangle the anchor warp from the centreplate uphaul, the two having become intertwined. The boat then righted quite easily and I tacked back against the wind with the water gurgling reassuringly out through the self-bailers; I was determined not to be defeated.

Eventually though, the jib became wrapped around the forestay and I capsized again trying to unwind it. At this point I felt I was doing everything wrong and it was time to come in so I limped back to the slip still half full of water where by now a small group of spectators had gathered to watch me, including the lifeguard and two old sea-dogs who'd obviously been passing comment. Later, the lifeguard told me that the old sea-dogs were "impressed" that I'd got back without assistance. But really I don't suppose I impressed anyone much. I clearly have much to learn.

 

7th September 1998

I took Adam out in the boat on Saturday. There was almost no breeze: we seemed to spend long periods just playing with the sails trying to detect what little air movement there was. Adam had a go at the helm which quite thrilled him, and he even tacked. He was pretty good at holding a course when I told him to steer towards particular landmarks.

The dissipated remnants of hurricane Danielle have been lurking off the coast of Ireland these last few days and forecast to be moving across the British Isles; on Sunday the wind got up and there were gales forecast in the Irish Sea and I chickened out of going out on my own although several boats did sail on the high tide.

 

14th September 1998

Sunday was too windy for sailing. I'm going to have to experiment with techniques for reefing the sails, or sailing on the jib only.

 

18th September 1998

I saw a centre page pull-out guide in one of the yachting magazines this week entitled, "Your guide to crossing the Atlantic" - I dream.

 

9th October 1998

It's been cool and windy here but with a lot of bright sunshine interrupted by occasional showers. The leaves are starting to thin on the trees and most of the apples are in, except the late ripening ones. I was hoping there might have been a chance to take the boat out, but the weather really wasn't suitable. Most of the moored sailing boats are coming in onto dry land for the winter now.

I did get some useful clearing done in the garden and managed to build up our supply of fire-wood. Richard was following me behind the wheelbarrow and he managed to tumble into the pond!

It is simply beautiful being out in the garden. There is something very special about this time of year: the colours, the earthy smells and the sound of the wind in the trees.

 

20th October 1998

Autumn has set in a big way: chilly, grey and wet, and particularly dismal now that the nights are drawing in. Definitely time for the wood fire in doors. It was beautiful though in the garden on Sunday: I got a lot of clearing done and generated much material for bonfire night; also, I came across a hedgehog - not so rare in our garden but unusual in broad daylight and nice to see. Adam insisted I tell stories to him about hedgehogs for the rest of the day.

 

3rd November 1998

At 11 p.m. there was a 10 metre tide bursting on the sea wall with a strong northwesterly wind behind it and a full moon. I never saw such a high tide here. The sea was all over the road. I felt a strange, pleasant, almost terrified excitement because there is one recurring nightmare that I have occasionally had in adult life which involves standing on a foreshore and seeing the monster of all waves rising up and bearing towards me and the growing realisation that I won't escape it in time.

Our bonfire party is tomorrow. As usual, a huge pile of wood has appeared as though by magic in the night, the local contractors see it as an opportunity for free rubbish disposal and it will take four of us half the day to built it into burnable shape tomorrow, but this is all part of the fun. Adam is looking forward to it and so am I.

 

2nd December 1998

We like too much where we live: our wonderful garden, horses over the fence, lying in bed listening to the waves on a summers night, the crashing surf of a winter storm, opening the door to the tangy smell of sea air in the morning, sunrise in a crispy dawn sparkling on frost-covered sand, and the pink rays of setting sun over the water glowing off the distant Welsh hills. It's a clear, frosty night with a full moon. There's a thin, misty vapour over the water as the tide silently slides past the sea wall and the oyster catchers make their eerie call - I love it!

 

***

 

26th April 1999

Out sailing again - first launch this year. Saturday was a beautiful day and I took Adam out on the high tide in the evening while the sun was lowering in the west. It was neap and there was virtually no wind - very still, we moved like a whisper. It was so still that we went aground (neap tides don't leave much room to manoeuvre between sand banks) and didn't even notice that we were stuck for about a minute! It was good to be on the water again.

 

28th April 1999

The sun is a great red orb above the horizon. The boat is all set for launching at the next available opportunity - this weekend. It is a long weekend with the May Day holiday and there are high spring tides around midday - perfect!

 

14th May 1999

Sailing has been wonderful! Especially yesterday, when conditions were perfect and I spent three hours exploring some of the far reaches of the sand-banks several miles up and down the coast. I'm looking for the best route across the shallows that will allow me to circumnavigate the islands in the mouth of the Dee estuary on a single high tide. The timing is important in order to avoid being left high an dry.

 

18th May 1999

Sailing is good exercise: strong on the back and arms hauling the trailer along the road to and from the slipway, and then on the tummy muscles when leaning out to balance the boat when it's heeling over.

 

I had an embarrassing little incident two weeks ago in front of the lifeboat. It was a perfect day for sailing, sunny with a gentle breeze. I'd been out for about an hour and was starting to think about coming in for some lunch when I saw the Hoylake lifeboat coming past. This is a big, powerful, offshore boat with an experienced, sea-going crew. It pulled up close to our slipway, and the crew having passed some lines ashore set about some rescue exercises. Meanwhile, I thought I'd better make a good impression. I gave them a wide berth and tacked cleanly round to make my approach to the slipway in such a way as to avoid any risk of entanglement with their lines. Gliding in smoothly, I reached aft to raise the rudder to stop it grounding, but instead managed to pull the tiller off the rudder stock: the boat slewed round out of all control and, before I could do anything about it, heeled over wildly and capsized, right in front of the life-boat! What's more, a crewman was recording the whole incident on video! I righted the boat without assistance and then sailed out again to allow the self-bailers to empty the boat of water to avoid the embarrassment of having to do so ashore. Afterwards, our local lifeguard, who was also there on duty, remarked that I couldn't have chosen a better moment: the lifeboat only comes down here about once a year!

 

We've finally booked our holiday cottage for this summer: a house on the shores of Loch Torridon, way up in the north west of Scotland. I'm really looking forward to it. It is in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland and a superb area for mountaineering. Everything is literally on the doorstep. There is access to the loch to launch the boat and the cottage lies at the very foot of one of the most spectacular mountains in Scotland, Liathach, the crest of which, soaring to 3,456ft directly above the sea, is considered to be one of the four classic ridge routes in the country. Of course, scope for serious mountaineering will be limited, but at least we will be four adults to share child minding. Unfortunately, the cottage was only available for one week and not two, but we plan to take the tent and tour for a few days after. I'm already really excited.

 

10th June 1999

Sailing, it is completely absorbing and I love it! This was my diary entry last weekend:

Onshore breeze, about force 3, which seems plenty strong enough for me single handed. The question arises how to launch at a right angle to the breeze with the sails up; hoisting the sails once afloat would be the better solution but with no means of holding the bow this could be awkward. I wheel the boat on the trolley half into the water then swing the trolley to head the boat into the wind, hoist the sails, rig the rudder, then manoeuvre the trolley so as to allow the boat to float, holding the bow. I'm glad Alix then turns up to retrieve the trolley. Which direction to cast off? Try to avoid the embarrassing and awkward situation of being blown back onto the sea wall before making way, but to make good way, must lower the plate and sheet-in immediately but can't lower the plate until in deeper water. Conundrum. Oh well, try it. Here goes. Shove, hop in and grab tiller. Impetus of shove already gone, drifting back on shore into small party launching rowing boat; sheet-in sheet-in: yes! now 45 degrees to wind and making way, miraculously avoid sea wall. Rudder down, plate down - no, not enough depth for plate, grounding on sand bank; half raise plate, can't tack, bear round with wind, avoid moored boats, must gybe - tricky in confined space, risk of capsize. Steady gybe by holding vang as boom swings across. Success! Now on course with clear water ahead.

It takes a few minutes of lively sailing to convince myself that I am really in control. The swell is slight but riding the waves is exciting as every other crest bursts on the bow, shooting spray up my bum leaning out over the windward gunwale. Shortly, the rhythmic plunge and rise through the waves works a very soothing effect, my senses become fully attuned to my immediate surroundings and all else seems a world away.

 

Hoylake Sailing Club Regatta, 15th June 1999

I actually took part in a race this weekend. The local sailing club held its annual regatta. While I was launching on Friday evening one of the officers of the club introduced himself and invited me to take part. It's quite an event locally, with a lot of visiting boats from the region and open to non-members.

So there I was on the water on Sunday morning with only the vaguest notion of what was expected. I was confused by the order of buoys and posts that marked out the course, which ones to pass on which side and in which order. Then there was the gun. There were meant to be six minute and three minute warning shots but I'm sure there was an extra one, and on which side of the line was I supposed to be? At the last moment but too late it suddenly became clear and the start gun found me on the wrong side of the line going the wrong way! The other boats were racing towards the first buoy whilst I having recrossed the line lagged hopelessly in their wake. For a while I was able to follow them, but as the wind got up and the sea became grey and choppy the field spread out and even some of the more experienced boats appeared to become confused and eventually I had to admit that I really didn't know where I was supposed to be heading! Oh well, I'll know what to expect another time.

I appreciated the opportunity to make contact with the sailing club. They seem to be a friendly and pleasantly informal lot and I may consider joining, partly for access to their rather nice clubhouse with bar overlooking the sea, but partly also because it represents a chance to get to know people whose company I might enjoy and who share an enthusiasm for sailing. It is not a sporty, highly competitive dinghy racing club, although they do organise racing on some Sundays. I have the impression that the competitive aspects are not taken too seriously. It is more a group of people who enjoy sailing in all its forms, which suits me. The attractive clubhouse is an added bonus.

It was not a competitive streak that induced me to participate in the race on Sunday, but an exploratory streak to see how I might enjoy it, and a sense of curiosity to see how my sailing matched up to others. I realised that racing is a good way to hone one's skills because I did a lot more manoeuvring and trying to maximise efficiency than when out on my own. I can see how racing could be enjoyable because it involves optimizing your performance, which can be thrilling and satisfying (and it would be nice to win sometimes too) but I can't yet see myself wanting to race regularly. Like skiing, I see sailing as a means of exploration rather than a competitive sport.

 

Tuesday 6th July 1999

We were sailing on Sunday, all of us together for a change. Rick was very excited before he got in, then once underway he kept saying, "Tip over!" and looking worried, but he got used to it for before long he was scrambling to the stern to grab the tiller saying, "Have it, Ricky do it!" Meanwhile Adam was intent that I tell him a story about some limpets who make friends with some ammonites. I am learning that taking the kids out demands additional skills to normal sailing competence.

We're soon away to Scotland for a fortnight. I actually bought myself a fishing rod and some tackle just in case the wind drops while out on the loch, as if I won't have enough to occupy myself with a boat and kids and magnificent nearby mountains. It telescopes down to 18 inches so it won't take up much space. I thought it might be fun for the kids too (good excuse, eh? Of course I'm just a big one.) I have fished exactly twice in my life and caught one trout about four inches long, so the family probably shouldn't rely on me for food.

 

Torridon and Kishorn, July 1999

 

[Monday 2nd August 1999, back home.] It is hard to be back after such a lovely break. Tragic actually. I suddenly see all the things that are wrong with my life here and what an effort it is to try to force myself to put up with them. Especially I see how drab, ugly and over-crowded are the areas where I live and work, even our little patch on the coast holds no magic compared with the northwest of Scotland.

While we were away it was wonderful to be able to spend so much time continually with Richard and Adam and coming back I realize how unnatural it is for a parent to see so little of his children as I normally do here. I have no illusions that we have a right to a perfect life - there is no reason why working for a living should be easy - but some things need to change.

The northwest of Scotland would certainly have limitations as a place to live, the principal of which would be an acceptable means to make a living, followed by the distance to secondary schooling for the boys. Also, family visits would be much less frequent, the midges bite terribly and the weather would not be as reliably good as we had it at least in the second week. But as for the rest of it - city life - I don't need it.

 

We spent the first week on the shores of Loch Torridon nestling at the foot of two of the principal mountains of the area. Torridon is rugged country - one of the last places in Britain to have glaciers as late as 9,000 BC - but like the whole west highland seaboard, sublimely beautiful. Other fjord-scape coastlines in the world are certainly more splendid, but Scotland has a special charm that appeals to me personally.

The peaks of Torridon rise straight out of the sea to over three thousand feet and are composed of thousand Myr old sandstone, which in the larger corries takes the form of sheer, dark grey precipices of giant masonry blocks, and on the tops, precariously placed boulders like part-melted stacks of huge dinner plates. Many of the peaks are capped with silver-grey quarzite which when wet glints and sparkles in the sun. The whole is founded on much older bed-rock (up to half the age of the earth) which shows itself in places as contorted swirls of intermingled shades of pink, orange and fiery red streaked with white. The region has remnants of the original Caledonian pine forest still undisturbed after eight thousand years. But the principal charms are the play of cloud and light on the hills and sea, and the unhurried style of life, where people still leave their house doors unlocked when they go out.

We had a fair bit of drizzle and overcast days in the first week, during the course of which ours was the only boat we saw afloat in the whole of Upper Loch Torridon. In fact, one afternoon, Martin and I were sitting in the boat in the middle of the loch, with the clouds low on the hills and the rain dribbling down the sails, awaiting any movement of air that might get us back to shore before tea, and I did start to wonder what it might take before I started to question my enjoyment!

Another day Martin and I thought we'd make the most of any time when the breeze died by trying my new fishing rod and three hundred piece fishing kit. Out on the water, the sails lolling impotenty, I gave Martin charge of the helm, should any light air arise to stir us, while I sorted hooks and fiddled, trying to remember how to tie them to the line. All of a sudden, there were ripples on the water, the sails filled, the boat heeled wildly and we were creating a creaming bow wave, covering the distance across the loch in a couple of minutes that it had taken us a whole afternoon the previous day, while I scrabbled to prevent fish hooks from littering the floor around our bare feet and at the same time tried to give instruction to Martin who'd never helmed a dinghy!

 

Come the weekend, the clouds evaporated and there followed six days of glorious hot weather when we were out everyday in T-shirts and shorts, even on the water and up at 3,000ft late into the evening - very unScottish! We found accommodation slightly farther south, with magnificent views from our living room window up into the majestic corries of Applecross and out to Skye, in a secluded bungalow just outside the small village of Achintraid on the shore of Loch Kishorn. Alix, Adam, Rick and I spent a couple of days of idyllic sailing when we were out for the whole day with picnic and cans of beer, mooring on uninhabited islands and remote beaches for long lunches, lounging in the sun, exploring the rock-pools for crabs and sea-anemones and swimming nude (there simply was no need for swimming costumes because no one was there!), although not for many minutes because the water was chilly. I love to abandon the trappings of civilization as much as possible on holiday - radio and television, swimming trunks, combing my hair, etc. I go happily for days washing and bathing only in salt-water with my hair gone wild, I like the feeling of it.

The Highlands can be extremely bleak and dreary ("driech" in the Scotch dialect) but only in some places and in certain weather. The atmosphere is often fresh and invigorating or imbued with a remarkable softness. Part of the beauty is this softness and the wonderful cloud-scapes. During our hot weather spell, although I wouldn't have wanted to change it, some of the distinctive charm was lost: it reminded me more of the Alps or the Sierra Nevada than Scotland.

I think we've all felt slightly down since returning, we had such a gorgeous few days. Sailing off the sea front here in Liverpool Bay has (at least temporarily) lost its appeal.

 

***

 

Sunday 19th March 2000

First launch of the year. It was wonderful to be on the water again! It is something very special to me. On the water, I am happy: life is as it should be and I don't want for anything. I was out at 8:30 a.m. for nearly three hours, and there was no one else.

 

28th March 2000

Summer time

We switched to British Summer Time this weekend and today the temperature has dropped to 3°C - it feels like January again! I did get out in the boat though, both on Saturday and Sunday. Good thing is, the kids have not adapted to the time change yet, so we get to sleep slightly later, but I wonder how long it'll take for them to catch on.

 

Sunday 2nd April 2000

Hoylake Sailing Club first dinghy race of the season.

It rained the whole weekend: a pretty much continuous light sea-drizzle which hardly let up even once. Alix took advantage of child-minding by parents and agreed to join me in the boat on Sunday (rare that we are ever in the boat together). At 9 a.m. there was a sea mist and hardly a breath of wind, and we really wondered whether we were silly, sitting bailing the rain out from where it collected from dribbling down the sails as fast as it came in, and feeling the wetness slowly creeping in down our necks. At the starter's gun, the few other boats all managed magically to coax some movement out of the still air, while it took a good two minutes before we managed first to point in the right direction then get underway, bringing up the rear. It was all quite amusing really, and in the end we were glad we'd made the effort to go out. Afterwards, all of us including the boys went into the clubhouse for a drink, then returned home for proper Sunday lunch of roast lamb, a good bottle of Rioja and an afternoon cozily by the living room fire. A near perfect Sunday.

 

Hoylake Sailing Club Regatta, Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th June 2000

There were around 70 boats racing offshore, so quite a spectacle. I didn't race. I'm not convinced that racing is where my interest lies, I simply like to be out on the water and go where the whim takes me rather than jostle with other craft around buoys. The lifeguard introduced me to Billy who offered to take me out in Magnetic, his Cygnet cruising yacht. We walked out over the sand to his mooring in the outer channel. The tide comes up here with a rush; it is impressive like a fast flowing river, one minute you're lying aground and the next you're bobbing around floating free. It was interesting for a change and novel to be able to brew tea en route in the cabin, but it struck me how sluggish and how restricted in manoeuvring over the sand banks is a boat like Magnetic compared to my dinghy, so on Sunday I was happy to be back under my own sail.

Alix took the boys to the Millennium Dome in Greenwich at the weekend. It has been billed as a festival of Britain to match the great ones of the past but has had bad press and accusations of waste of public money. Alix thought it was accurate in presenting an impression of the state of Britain today in that it was confused and didn't seem to know what it was trying to be, and it had an abundance of what this country is famous for abroad: its queues.

 

12th June 2000

I'm considering an over-night sailing and camping expedition to Hilbre. The tides were right this weekend but the winds were too fierce for me, force 4 - 5 the whole time, and I didn't get out in the boat at all (I feel deprived). Beautiful sunny weather for the garden though; however, I had to use some of it on afternoon naps as, first Adam, then Richard, were sick during the night and left us very short of sleep.

 

16th June 2000

I went out on Tuesday evening just after I got home and it was gorgeous in the late light, sailing into the sunset. There was a significant breeze and I was even surfing in on some waves. This weekend the weather looks set lovely and, wind permitting, tomorrow we will all go out and perhaps anchor somewhere for a picnic.

 

19th June 2000

We are enjoying a heat wave; that is, I am enjoying it, but many are not. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the inner cities reached 90°F this weekend. We have a south wind, but plenty of breeze on the coast to be bearable. We all sailed on Sunday, cruising out to the far edge of the sandbank (about a mile offshore) where we beached, ate picnic lunch and had a swim; it is good to have a break to provide variety for Adam and Richard, otherwise they get restless just having to sit. After we returned, we all went to the beach again (with swimming costumes this time) to cool off while the tide was still up to swim in. Adam and Richard loved it. Later Alix and I were eating dinner on the lawn until 10 p.m. I love weekends like this and count it a great privilege to have the wonderful sea on the doorstep. Being back at work is definitely dull by comparison, but it is what I am paid for.

 

Monday 26th June 2000

We are in the 70s today, warmer than at the weekend with its brisk northwesterly breeze - too windy for sailing, unfortunately, which we’d been looking forward to as Alix’ sister and family were here to visit. We were a bit downcast from sadness that our visitors had to leave. The kids were so excited the whole time to have each other as playmates and they were all devastated when they had to part. They all shared the same bedroom and around seven each morning we heard the "gentle" patter of feet as they trooped down stairs, trying to be quiet but not quite succeeding, to organize their own breakfast before any of the adults appeared. On Sunday morning they even let themselves out of the house to play in the garden and in the lane before we got up - two of them still half in their night-clothes! And Adam was revelling in showing them around his home territory.

 

Sunday 30th July 2000

It's been a good weekend for sailing. Thursday evening was looking gorgeous and Adam decided to come with me (partly I suspect as a means of delaying his bed-time); unfortunately shortly after we launched some grey clouds coalesced above and released persistent rain for an hour. Friday really was gorgeous though: what little rain there was had cleared during the course of the day leaving a few fantastic cloud shapes and sparkling sunshine. I was the only boat out and I sailed until just after sunset in only my shorts and T-shirt. The breeze was very light and at one point I let myself hang backwards over the side with my hair almost dabbling in the water becoming almost dizzy from the huge upside down vista of red orb sun and pink tinted clouds gliding passed at water's-eye view. It was very pleasurable.

This morning Richard and I went out together. First time I've taken Richard alone. He was very good (in doing what he was told when told) and seemed really to enjoy and remain interested for the whole of nearly two hours that we were out (in perfect summer weather). He caused some amusement upon landing when he insisted in helping me by pushing the boat from behind with all his might up the slipway!

 

Saturday 5th August 2000

We are leaving for the Isle of Bute next Saturday and I feel there is a lot to rush to do before we go. Preparations for holidays these days are no longer a simple matter of organizing a rucksack on my back, boots on my feet and money in my pocket. There's the boat trailer to load - do the lights work? - need a new registration number plate to match the new car, grease the wheel bearings, where are all the straps and cords I used last year? Adam, Rick, where have you hidden xyz since I last saw you playing with it? Where are all the tent pegs? Does the camping stove work? etc. Alix tends to organise food and kids' clothes, which is a relief. All I've done is had a case of wine sent to the friends we're staying with for the first week (definitely essential provisions). I try to tell myself that this is a holiday and we're supposed to enjoy it, but I know I've worn myself down because I've succumbed to respiratory infection and my back is playing up (doesn't help to have to lift the boat trailer). None of this stopped us all going out sailing today though. We pottered along the shore to Leasowe beach and landed for the kids to build sand castles for half an hour (they like the break), then headed home before the tide went out. We saw lots of birds and a couple of very brightly coloured jelly fish.

 

Wednesday 9th August 2000

The boat and equipment is now loaded for the road and ready to go as soon as we can get out on Saturday morning. I avoid the check-list syndrome as much as possible and usually get by with a single pencilled sheet of paper scribbled a week in advance; I do what I consider necessary to avoid wasting time when we are actually away. High tide is about an hour before sunset and there is light air movement: if I feel I've worked well by the end of the day I'd be tempted to go out, although I'm not sure I want to face all the unloading and reloading again!

 

Isle of Bute and Argyll, August 2000

 

Our holiday was really wonderful. August Scottish weather again proved remarkably fine. There were only two days in nearly a fortnight when rain deterred us from doing what we had planned, and we had several magnificent days. Of our eleven days spent actually in Scotland, we sailed on six of them.

We enjoyed our time on the Isle of Bute spent with a long-standing friend David in his parental house. His parents are now dead but his sister lives there still. David lives in Switzerland, but returns every couple of years to supervise (and pay for) necessary structural upkeep as it is a large, rambling Victorian property. He generally invites a house-full of friends for the duration, which makes for a lively week - ideal for the kids, because there are other kids to play with, and for the adults too, who have the stimulus of each other's company.

The island is relatively close to Glasgow but, on its western shore particularly, it is quiet and has much of the character of more remote Hebridean islands. We had some fine sailing off the beaches in magnificent scenery and crystal-clear water. I also took some of the other guests out - I enjoy sharing their pleasure in it.

 

For the second week we moved farther westward and found a delightful camp spot on the shore of Loch Sween. It was a perfect, level, grassy platform a few yards above the shore, facing the sunsets. We had words with the local farmer who let us stay there and gave us access to a water tap, and who also offered to launch our boat from their adjacent field, enabling us to keep it moored right below the tent. We actually used two tents on this trip, letting Adam and Richard share the small backpacking tent together, which they enjoyed, thus leaving us some peace and privacy in the larger dome tent. It was very close to idyllic: we were completely secluded, I was able to read The Hobbit to Adam snuggled up to the campfire for his bedtime story, and we were very little harassed by midges, which is unusual for the Scottish west coast in August.

 

Upon arrival, it had been a hectic day travelling in the car, the kids had been fractious and were finally in bed, it was a beautifully placid evening with perhaps half an hour left of sun before sinking behind the hills, and I took the boat out. Ghosting along the middle of the loch with barely a whisper, making myself comfortable with my head resting on the thwart staring backwards up at the sky, I was so absorbed that I turned with a start when I suddenly realized I'd nearly bumped into an island full of seals! About a dozen of them on a craggy rock, about twenty yards long and four wide, breaking the surface of the water by about three feet. The rock was actually marked on the 1:50,000 map as a small blip but I hadn'd noticed it. It lay only about 500yd offshore from where we were camped, so we all returned there together in the morning for a closer look. There were several pups among them looking very cute.

 

Our nearest shop was 4 miles away by boat up the loch at Tayvallich on the opposite shore, but a 20 mile trip around by car, so we experienced the novelty of a family grocery shopping expedition by sail, making a fine day trip, with a good sea-food pub dinner thrown in.

 

Kilmartin Glen, not far away, is a centre for some of the earliest known settlements in Scotland, so on non-sailing days there were five thousand year old stone circles, burial sites, iron age fortresses, and also near by, tiny ruined churches dating back to the early Roman missionaries of the 6thC AD, some with original 12thC stone carvings still intact, as well as Castle Sween to explore. But I must say that I loved the sailing most: exploring the little islands, anchorages and unfamiliar harbour entrances. It is completely absorbing, demanding a wonderful combination of attention to physical coordination and judgment. That is what I find immensely satisfying about mountaineering too: this combination of physical challenges together with the continual need for reassessment of the situation in the light of one's knowledge of one's own abilities and of the objective dangers.

 

Tuesday 29th August 2000

I picked up a book from the library recently about how to build a wood and canvas kayak. I am wondering whether I could sustain the motivation and determination for such a project. This came after casually browsing for some information on glass fibre boat repairs: the boat could benefit from a little attention this year. I would like to paint her name on the hull. The word Esmerelda is just discernible written large on the side but so faded as to be almost invisible except in certain light. I'm still in two minds as to whether to call her this or Come What May, which refers to a remark made in conjuction with a decision to sail one day. To me, Esmerelda is the name of an elderly lady, and as time goes by I realize that she deserves the according level of respect.

 

Brother Martin and family came over the bank holiday and we sailed. Then today Adam and I happened to get the perfect combination of clear sunshine, fine breeze and high spring tide that allowed us to cross the sandbank and circumnavigate Hilbre, a feat that has been my aim since the beginning of the season, but from which I had been deterred either by too much or too little wind or insufficient tide. We spotted a dozen seals on the way, a pair of which followed us at close quarters for up to half a mile (Adam was thrilled).

 

Wednesday 13th September 2000

This day I was at home working, ostensibly, but there was mild, balmy sunshine and sufficient breeze to tempt me out onto the tide at midday. It was gorgeous and I made good way into the gentle south westerly air, ploshing pleasantly through the wavelets. Out of the distance, suggesting itself as a destination, appeared the HE2 East cardinal buoy that marks the east side of the West Hoyle Bank, beckoning me like a siren to go farther offshore than I have ever been, two and half miles out from the mouth of the Dee estuary. I decided I ought to be able to round it and return with the breeze behind me in time to cross the bank before the tide receded.

It was eerie being alone and so far out, with the buoy and its apparently resident population of perched seagulls on its large scaffold superstructure behung with lights, bells and other navigational symbols; the boat seemed small and fragile compared to its robust iron bulk.

On the way back the breeze became lighter. A seal investigated me closely, surfacing and blowing noisily just off the stern and rolling tummy-up as if to get a better look. Shortly afterwards the wind died.

I tried with the oars to get as far as possible, and then towed and hauled on the painter as the ebbing tide left me with barely enough depth to cover my ankles, but eventually had to deploy the anchors, abandon my vessel and walk home, some fifteen minutes back to Hoylake promenade.

Next high tide was not until midnight so I would have to walk out and wait for the flood two hours before, then row back in the dark. My main concern was to locate the boat on the vast expanse of sand in darkness; I had taken a compass bearing and, fortunately, noticed that the iron railings on the promenade caused the needle to deviate by about 30°!

Come What May / Esmerelda finally appeared as a ghostly white shadow in the torch beam. Waiting on board for the tide was a quietly serene experience, reclining quite comfortably in my 8mm wet suit in a slight drizzle. It was rather beautiful: wet but warm in the dark, with the night full of the sounds of oyster catchers and imagining the gurgling trickle of advancing water becoming louder by the minute, and a hint of moonlight behind the clouds.

 

20th September 2000

The season is distinctly about to slide into autumn. The apples have reached full ripeness and are starting to drop, and there are widespread hints of leaves starting to turn colour. The sunshine is warm during the day, but last night the temperature dropped nearly to 50°F for the first time probably in months. With the shorter days, the number of high tides potentially suitable for sailing becomes restricted; that combined with the higher probability of poor weather means sailing will be sporadic (I've been out only twice this month). But I love this season.

 

22nd November 2000

I'm enthralled with a book at the moment. It is a description of three seasons spent sailing up the eastern seaboard of North America, from Florida to the St. Lawrence, in a 16ft Wayfarer dinghy by Frank Dye. It is about exploration by sail stripped to its bare essentials, the idea of which appeals to me enormously, and is exactly the sort of sailing I'd love to do on this coast, although without some of the author's more hairy adventures. Among other things, he has opened my eyes to what an enormous and varied coast North America has - like distances on the land, the size of the coastline is difficult to conceive compared to this country.

Uber does it again with its latest service being offered in Stamford t.co/wueRNzQ6vb (via Twitter twitter.com/limoct/status/771798362890735616)

The winter is over

Glims offers a piece of rural peace right in the middle of Espoo and guides you on a fascinating time trip to life in times past. Glims is an old farm, which has also served as an inn during its approximately 500 years of history in the village of Karvasmäki.

 

The oldest buildings of the museum are the storage shed and the old dwelling, both from the 18th century. Like many other farms on Kings Road, Glims served as an inn and hostelry from 1778 to 1822 and from 1891 to 1901. The farm has been as a museum since 1958. Some of the museum articles are from Glims, some have been collected from elsewhere in Espoo. The photo shows the guest room of the dwelling house. With its lace-lined curtains and narrow summer rugs typical of the period, the room is ready to welcome the traveller. The wall papers are copies of the original.

__________________________________

 

Please do not post logos or banners, advertising for groups or any other images in the comments column. They impair the reading pleasure of the others. Thank you!

 

Axe Edge is the main hill on the central horizon. Wetton Hill offers good views in all directions, particularly good in conditions like this where freezing fog covered the low ground all-around

  

I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database of more than 200 images, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

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________________________

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________________________

 

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Chiang Mai - Thailand

We now offer pre-bookings on vacations!

Book here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUn4XE3jzh6E-DNLLPWRi0V...

 

Please note the Park is still open to the public. Anyone can visit or rent at either one of our trailer or campsites!♥

Offered as a Public Service photo to help prevent any chance of misidentification.

Orange County, California USA

Offered at RM Sotheby's 2019 Arizona auction.

About a couple weeks ago I was offered a new career position at a major university. I thought and agonized about it for a few days. I made a list and I weighed the pros and cons of staying in Southern Utah or moving elsewhere. In the end, I turned down the career move.

 

One reason why I turned down the job offer is because of scenes like this and the ease and accessibility of getting to it whenever I want. It might not be a big reason for some but as a photographer outside of my day job this is important to me. I’m very fortunate to live in such a beautiful and unique part of the world. Many landscape photographers would love to live where I am. Heck, people from all over the world come and visit Utah as a once in a lifetime trip.

 

This was photographed earlier in the summer but I haven’t released this photo until now. I’m excited to hike and photograph the Narrows one final time this weekend. I’m hoping to get a couple more pictures of a couple places I missed earlier in the summer.

 

Southern Utah will draw you in with its beauty and it will keep you coming back. In my case the beauty of Southern Utah kept me here for the foreseeable future.

 

Equipment:

- Nikon D800e

- Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR

 

Software and Processing:

- Initial edits in Adobe Lightroom

- Shot 4 images at different focus points for focus stacking. Stacked in Helicon Focus

- Final post-processing in Adobe Photoshop (adjusted curves, orton effect, saturation boost, burn, dodge, added slight vignette sharpen)

 

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... this was incredibly fun!

Yay. So i just got this record player (for free yay!) and then i noticed Amalie had some records so she said she'd share with me. :P

How nice of her.

 

Check out her version!

 

View On Black <-- Really, i only link to that when it's absolutely worth it!

The south of the island offers its visitors strong and decisive colors: dark cliffs, rich vegetation and crystal clear waters and two natural stacks called Le Colonne. These are two rocks of riolitic ignimbrite that rise for 16 meters above sea level, and which due to the particular type of cracking of the rock have assumed a columnar shape. The Columns are a symbol of the Island of San Pietro, and were also described by Della Marmora in his "Itinéraire de l'Ile de Sardaigne". On the columns are told several legends, such as that according to which they would be two monsters turned into rock by St. Peter to defend the island.

The two columns are the result of the differential erosion on the rocks of the promontory in front. Therefore the same storms that created them are also destined to demolish them. The storms occurred in November 2013 have almost completely collapsed one of the two columns leaving only the base.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Il sud dell’isola di San Pietro offre al suo visitatore colori forti e decisi: scogliere scure, ricca vegetazione e acque cristalline e due faraglioni naturali chiamati Le Colonne. Si tratta di due faraglioni di ignimbrite riolitica che si elevano per 16 metri sul livello del mare, e che per il particolare tipo di fessurazione della roccia hanno assunto una forma colonnare. Le Colonne sono un simbolo dell'Isola di San Pietro, e furono descritte anche dal Della Marmora nel suo "Itinéraire de l’Ile de Sardaigne". Sulle colonne si narrano diverse leggende, come quella secondo cui esse sarebbero due mostri trasformati in roccia da San Pietro per difendere l'isola.

Le due colonne sono il risultato dell'erosione differenziale sulle rocce del promontorio antistante. Pertanto le stesse mareggiate che le hanno create sono anche destinate a demolirle. Le mareggiate verificatesi a novembre del 2013 hanno fatto crollare quasi interamente una delle due colonne lasciandone solo la base.

 

Most of the cars offered were in a relatively good shape. But some 15 cars were in a terrible condition, mostly caused by corrosion. I wonder what the value could be for the potential buyer. Spare parts? Garden object?

This pre-war Steyr Typ 50 was one of them.

 

The streamlined Steyr Typ 50 was developed in 1935 by engineer/director Karl Jenschke (1899-1969). The official presentation followed in February 1936 at the IAMA in Berlin.

The Steyr 50 was designed according to the new streamlined ideas which became more and more popular in the first half of the 1930s. Jenschke knew streamline specialist Hans Ledwinka. Although one could expect that Ledwinka or Ferdinand Porsche were involved in the development of the Typ 50 is this not true.

The Steyr 50 was quite popular in its homeland Austria. It received there the name Steyr-Baby. In neighbor country Germany was very little interest for this small car.

Typ 50 was replaced by Typ 55 in Spring 1938. It had a stronger engine but had the same body and equipment.

 

Seen at the viewing days of the Palmen Barnfind Collection Auction initiated by Gallery Aaldering, Brummen and provided by Classic Car Auctions, location Dordrecht.

More info: www.gallery-aaldering.com/nl/the-palmen-barnfind-collecti...

More photos: www.classiccar-auctions.com/nl/lot-details/18316/Main%20c...

 

984 cc 4 cylinder Boxer engine.

Ca. 750 kg.

Production Steyr 50/55 series: 1936-1940.

Production Steyr Typ 50: 1936-Spring 1938.

Original first reg. number: June 30, 1936.

No documents or reg. number present.

For sale since May 24, 2023.

 

Dordrecht, Einsteinstraat, May 29, 2023.

 

© 2023 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved

Last night offered a nice view of the conjunction of the young crescent moon and the planet Mercury in the western skies of the Northern Latitudes. Mars was also visible, although higher above the moon. You can see some stars of the constellation Cetus just to the right of the moon. The ½ second exposure was just enough to bring out the Earthshine on the moon.

Tech Specs: Canon 6D, Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM lens, tripod mounted. ½ second exposure at ISO 640, f/2.8, 140mm. Imaging was done on March 29, 2017 from Weatherly, Pennsylvania.

 

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My very lovely friend Tiffany Michelle Lloyd very kindly offered to use her skills to improve my rather scratchy, spotted old photos and she did a wonderful job with them. I thought it would be nice to re-post them one at a time and add a few notes.

 

This one was taken probably in the late 1970s or perhaps very early 80s. Back then there was no internet and it was terribly lonely for girls like me. Our only real outlet here in the UK were magazines and my favourite was World of Transvestism, which I am sure many of you UK ladies will remember.

At this time I lived with my mother but I still found times when I could dress up and be Elaine. I took these photos using an SLR camera and then developed and printed them myself to avoid taking them to the local chemist, which could have been embarrassing.

 

My outfit was very much the fashion at the time wearing a sweet pussy bow blouse with puffed sleeves and a fishtail skirt. I remember dreaming and wishing I could wear clothes like this each day and work in an office in the city being one of the girls and surrounded by nice male colleagues. I can't remember whether I thought of myself as a real girl or as an accepted Tgirl.

I do remember that I was very shy and quiet at the time though, and so loved dressing as a girl.

 

Anyway I shall post more soon.

Thank you again Tiffany! x

 

Keep safe everyone x

Watching the sun rise offers a profound lift to my mood.

 

I was planning to shot the Lone Tree, but there was too many other people already there, and several using torches, plus a couple of cars with lights on, so I moved on to a quiet spot where I could setup and wait for the sunrise, in peace.

 

This is an old photo, lightly re-edited using today's version of LR.

 

Camera - Canon EOS 5DsR;

Lens - EF 16-35 f/4L;

Settings 3mins, f/14, ISO100 @ 25mm;

Filters 2 stop hard grad to balance the sky to the lake reflection

Gitzo Tripod.

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Vyšehrad is the oldest seat of Czech princes; in fact, the local settlement was established in the mid-10 th century. Situated on a rocky promontory above the Vltava River, it offers stunning views of the city, and the park area holds hidden architectural treasures including the rare Romanesque Rotunda of St Martin, the neo-Gothic Church of Sts Peter and Paul, the national cemetery Slavín, and the underground casements housing the some of the original Baroque statues from the Charles Bridge.

Red Squirrel at my feeding station in the Scottish Highlands. I offer workshops here, please contact me or visit my website (www.karenmillerphotography.co.uk) for details.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

攝影，作為一種強而有力的表達及溝通工具，提供了千變萬化的感受、詮釋及表現。

 

~ Ansel Adams

  

P.S. Non-HDR

United Airlines offers direct flights to Guam from four cities in Japan (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka).

 

ユナイテッド航空は日本各地の4都市（東京・名古屋・大阪・福岡）からグアムへ直行便を運航しています。

*

✈️RWY6L↘ - N35260🇺🇸 - Boeing 737-824 - United Airlines - UA150(KIX-GUM)

*

✨Taken at Guam Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport(GUM) on May 29th, 2024, 15:21

*

📷Canon EOS R3

🔭RF200-800mm F6.3-9 IS USM (637mm)

⚙️MANUAL・F9.0・1/2500th・±0EV・ISO320(AUTO)

(DxO PureRAW v4)

*

Segaia offers African sunsets and stunning views of a dam on your doorstep - a watering-place where Zebra, Kudu, Impala, warthog and the odd leopard come to drink. Birdlife is prolific, as are large numbers of frogs, both of which treat visitors to their songs. One of the jewels of northern Gauteng, Segaia Bush Retreat offers an escape to the magic of the bush that reminds of areas far more remote. It is the perfect getaway for weary, ‘traffic-jammed’ city dwellers who do not want to spend hours on the road to get to a weekend destination, but require an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity combined with fresh air.

Info source URL: www.sa-venues.com/visit/segaiabushretreat/

=========

The photo was taken during 2018-08 at Segaia Bush Retreat, Buffelsdrift, Gauteng, South Africa.

All images available for licensing via me. I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database with hundreds of hand-picked images of dogs, cats, as well as horses, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

For licensing and commission requests: info{at}elkevogelsang.com -

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All images available for licensing via me. I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database with thousands of hand-picked images of dogs, cats, as well as horses, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

For licensing and commission requests: info{at}elkevogelsang.com -

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Photography offers us the opportunity to show gratitude for some of the things around us that are often overlooked: trees, rocks, streams, etc. Without a camera, it is easy to walk through the world blind to the wonders around us. But with a camera, we are forced to engage with our surroundings and open our eyes to the millions of little worlds around us. With deeper exploration we discover that common everyday things aren't boring at all. I am thankful for this.

 

I share this photograph today because I made it on a local trail in the seasonally named Thanksgiving Ground Forest. What drew me to the scene was the opportunity to juxtapose the row of trees against the low-lying frozen pond in the background. One of my favorite creative tools is to try to mix two things together in a unique way. Like an experimental baker, I like to mess around and see how things work out. Toss some trees and a pond into the mix, pop it in the oven, and see what comes out. It doesn't always work, but it's a fun way to spark some creativity. In this scene, I thought that I could engineer the composition to make the pond look like a sky, which intrigued me with its horizontal white lines. These were not clouds, but rather breaks in the shadow over the frozen pond. Call me a menace, but sometimes I like to try to trick the viewer with my photos.

 

I can trace my inspiration here to a fantastic photograph by Gabriel Stankiewicz which was featured on the cover of the third volume of the NLPA book. Had I not seen his photo, I would not have seen this scene. With so many talented photographers out there, it is not difficult to find inspiration these days. I am also thankful for that.

So i couldnt refuse that offer could i lol 💄💄

THE SITUATION IN MINEAPOLIS

I thought it would be useful to offer you some first-hand perspective of what’s happening here as I don’t think people who are watching from afar quite understand what is unfolding, how it feels, and what it means.

In Minneapolis we are living under a fascist assault, and most of our institutions appear to be failing us, including the law, the government, our elected leaders, and the media.

There are masked, highly armed men roaming our city in unmarked cars terrorizing us, assaulting us, kidnapping us, and now killing us. They have attacked my friends’ kids’ school, teargassing students, staff, and community members. Many of my non-white friends are carrying their passports with them at all times now. A friend of mine was assaulted, kidnapped and illegally detained for about 9 hours. Here is her account:

youtu.be/Inn-sfiMcyE?si=G69LrIXMJ2Trrt_l

There is no due process, there is zero regard for the law, there is no regard for safety of anyone, and so far there has been no institutional check on their violence and intimidation. People are disappearing with no way to find out where they were taken. The police are nowhere to be seen, so the lawlessness is becoming increasingly brazen.

They are also joined by outside provocateurs and agitators. One image that got a lot of play in the media was a man burning an American flag. What is less known is that he was masked, no one knows who he is, and he left immediately after creating the spectacle. Some protestors followed him asking who he was or where he was from but he refused to respond and left the scene.

No one is helping us, so we are having to do it ourselves. We have people who are too scared to leave their homes so thousands of us are quickly mobilizing to join neighborhood chats and resource sharing to get groceries and supplies to families that need them. We are keeping eyes on ICE activities and alerting our neighbors of their presence whenever and wherever we can. We are organizing peaceful protests and trying to demand accountability from our leaders. The people responding are not far-left agitators or extremists. These are neighbors from every walk of life who are stepping in where our institutions are failing us, documenting the hundreds of crimes being inflicted on us daily, sharing information in real time, sharing food, and resources. And yes, we are pissed, and sometimes things get heated, but the David/Goliath dynamics here cannot be overstated.

I don’t use the term fascism lightly or carelessly. I really hope people can understand crystal clear the implications of what is happening.

The other day Mayor Frey told a reporter that yes, legally the police could and should arrest the people doing this to us. But, he said there are more of them and they have more guns. Let that sink in. The people who are supposed to be keeping us safe, who took an oath to defend us and the constitution, who are supposedly trained and armed and paid to do just that, appear to be either too scared, or indifferent, so it has fallen upon us to keep our neighbors safe, and to fight for our rights.

If this administration is allowed to so brazenly trample our civil liberties in such a public and spectacular way, with zero accountability, and zero checks on their power, then the game’s up. This is a constitutional crisis. This administration has said it doesn’t care about the constitution and is daring constitutional institutions to do something about it and they are not.

We are all terrified. But here in Minnesota we are standing up for each other, for our safety, our rights, and our lives, and praying our institutions may come around and decide to join us. It is incredibly inspiring to watch the community come together for mutual aid, defense and support. And seeing it makes me so so hopeful. Do not feel defeated. Organize your own community and understand the way we make it out of this is together. Find the people who have been fighting fascism for decades, learn from them, plug into those networks, build power, and don’t let fear lead to inaction because that is how they win.

Dear contacts and visitors,

 

I'm offering this photo in a larger resolution [1680x1050px] for you to use as a desktop wallpaper or facebook cover if you wish!

If you re-blog the photo please be kind and leave a link to the original! Thank you!

 

Previous desktop offer - www.flickr.com/photos/jup3nep/8613630858/

 

A cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water or various chemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body. These suspended particles are also known as aerosols. Clouds in Earth's atmosphere are studied in the cloud physics branch of meteorology. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated; cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. In general, precipitation will fall to the surface; an exception is virga, which evaporates before reaching the surface.

 

The international cloud classification system is based on the fact clouds can show free-convective upward growth like cumulus, appear in non-convective layered sheets such as stratus, or take the form of thin fibrous wisps, as in the case of cirrus. Prefixes are used in connection with clouds: strato- for low clouds with limited convection that form mostly in layers, nimbo- for thick layered clouds that can produce moderate to heavy precipitation, alto- for middle clouds, and cirro- for high clouds.

 

While a majority of clouds form in Earth's troposphere, there are occasions when clouds in the stratosphere and mesosphere can be observed. These three main layers of the atmosphere where clouds may be seen are collectively known as the homosphere. Above this lies the thermosphere and exosphere, which together make up the heterosphere that marks the transition to outer space. Clouds have been observed on other planets and moons within the Solar System, but, due to their different temperature characteristics, they are composed of other substances such as methane, ammonia, and sulfuric acid.

 

You can read more on clouds on Wiki - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud

Taken at Woodsy. To keep up to date with new releases, special offers and the events that Jinx items will be available at special prices please visit the Jinx main store and subscribe to the subscribomatic.

 

Jinx main store: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sea%20of%20Beckoning/96/19...

01 April 2018

Its into the 9th year since I shot this and the situation in the DTES has only deteriorated. Governments have worsened the situation by piling more social housing in the area adding to the “customers with no cash” syndrome. The area is named “Canada’s poorest postal code” by activists and the poverty pimps love the situation making the area one of “Canada’s richest postal codes”, the only differenence being the pimp money goes home at night. Helpful groups support too many by offering them food daily with zero obligation. Its become an impossible sitiuation to address given the current state of political governance.

I wish this was just a sick April Fools Day joke but unfortuantely not.

 

Sleeping on a sidewalk in the Downtown East Side (DTES) of Vancouver BC takes on a different sense of survival than is observed in many west side sleepers. A combination of mental issues, drug sale and use, area resident poverty and the resulting community of "Customers With No Cash" combine for a perfect locale to take advantage of people on the edge where living is not comparable to what most of us bring to mind in our own comfortable world. Prostitution and drugs are a large part of this community. One can not help feel sorry and remorseful this exists in self important Vancouver.

 

The irony of this photo is it was shot about 10 feet from the entrance of BC Housing's recently opened Orange Hall office (open 10 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday) 297 Hastings Street at Gore Ave. This situation has steadily gone downhill since the Federal Governemt cut back funding for social housing.

  

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH:

From BC Housing website:

October 3rd, 2014

VICTORIA – The B.C. government is strengthening the non-profit housing sector by transferring provincially-owned properties to non-profit housing providers.

 

The Province owns approximately 350 parcels of land throughout British Columbia that are currently leased long-term to non-profit housing providers who own and operate social housing buildings on these properties.

 

The non-profit housing sector has been asking for this step for many years. Having ownership of the land will improve a non-profit’s ability to support better long-term planning and selfsufficiency. Owning the lands they operate on will also help non-profits secure the financing they need to be sustainable.

 

In order to transfer title, the Province will end these leases, and then transfer ownership of the land to the societies. The properties will be transferred at fair market value. The Province will assist the societies to secure mortgages on the properties. The current operating agreement that BC Housing has with each non-profit society will remain in place. Approximately 115 properties will be transferred by March 31, 2015, and the rest will be transferred over the next three years.

 

In addition, the Province is looking to transfer ownership of two properties currently managed by BC Housing to non-profit societies. The Province will begin the process by posting Expressions of Interest for Nicholson Tower and Stamps Place in Vancouver shortly.

 

Tenants will not be impacted by these transfers, and the amount of affordable housing stock will remain stable. Non-profit societies have been providing social housing in B.C. for more than 60 years. Today more than 90% of social housing is managed by non-profit societies.

 

THE GLOBE & MAIL:

FRANCES BULA

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Oct. 13 2014

 

Vancouver won’t solve street homelessness until both the city and province focus on targeting the limited supply of expensive social housing to those who need it most, say experts.

 

That means help can’t go to anyone who passes through a shelter or an outdoor camp or even to someone who sleeps outside temporarily. In the vast majority of cases, people who become homeless experience it briefly and are able to avoid losing housing again.

 

But people working on eliminating homelessness do not always understand that the thousands of people who experience homelessness in a year don’t all need expensive subsidized housing. That should be reserved for the chronically homeless, who are not sufficiently helped by temporary assistance with rent or other social supports.

 

“For nearly 90 per cent of people counted as homeless, they’ll get themselves out of homelessness on their own,” says Tim Richter, who led Calgary’s 10-year plan to end homelessness and is now the president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. “It’s critical to set priorities. It shouldn’t be first-come, first-served.”

 

One of the region’s most experienced homelessness researchers, former Vancouver city-hall staffer Judy Graves, said the city is reaping the results of city and provincial staff not always setting the right priorities for the past six years. This past winter, Vancouver still had a count of 533 people sleeping outside (less than in 2008, but more than in 2011), even though the province and city have opened up thousands of new social-housing units rented at welfare-level rates.

 

It’s an issue that is returning to haunt Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who promised in 2008 to end street homelessness by 2015, during this fall’s civic-election campaign.

 

His administration, which has pushed the issue non-stop since he was first elected, has recently exceeded previous efforts by jumping last month into paying for all the costs of converting a downtown Quality Inn to transitional housing, as well as all the costs of a new shelter nearby. Usually the province covers the majority of costs for both of those kinds of housing.

 

But Ms. Graves said even that unusual effort, accompanied by several hundred other new provincial units about to open, isn’t going to solve the problem by January, 2015.

 

That’s because the province is only committed to using half of the incoming housing units for the chronically homeless. And city staff also don’t always correctly identify who is the most in need.

 

“Both the city and province have bought into housing by wait lists,” said Ms. Graves. “It just can’t work. You have to work as though you’re in a disaster zone.”

 

She said she had doubts that the majority of people who camped in Oppenheimer Park over the summer were homeless, but they got priority for the scarce number of rooms available.

 

As well, in the early stages of the province’s big social-housing construction push, which will see 14 towers completed with around 1,400 units by the end, non-profit operators were simply moving people from residential hotel rooms into the new buildings.

 

That meant the housing didn’t go to the chronically homeless and the most in need, but worse, it then allowed landlords in the residential hotels to do renovations, raise rents, or refuse new low-income tenants once the former tenants were relocated to social housing.

 

That then reduced the overall number of private, low-cost housing units in the city. Ms. Graves said the whole region is experiencing an acute shortage of those kinds of private units now. It has become a game of musical chairs for housing-outreach workers to get a low-cost unit for someone trying to get out of shelters or off the street, she said.

 

All cities are grappling with constant pressures that create more homelessness at the front end: low working-class incomes that can’t keep up with gentrification and rising rents key among them, said Ms. Graves. That has left cities trying to solve the problem at the back end, trying to house all the people made homeless as a result of many larger forces.

 

24 HRS VANCOUVER - 16 OCT 14

16 Oct 2014 24 Hours VancouverJANE DEACON Comment at vancouver.24hrs.c

Laura Dilley, PACE Society Action Week, PACE plans to draft housing recommendations for city council before the coming election.

“Oftentimes we will create housing models not including the voices of those we would be housing,” said Dilley.

Rising rent prices that force people out of SROs is a significant factor, as well as landlords who refuse to rent to sex workers out of legal concerns, said Dilley. Low- income housing conditions that require tenants stay in at night or guests to sign in are also significant barriers. She estimates between 10 to 15% of sex workers fall under the category of “survival” or street- based prostitution. For that vulnerable population, simply switching professions is often not an option, said Dilley.

“They’re really forced and entrenched to continuously do that work because they have no options out of it, because we have such stigma in our society that they can’t seek help, they can’t find affordable housing, so they’re really stuck in that situation,” she said.

 

17 April 2019:

 

B.C. drug users demand clean supply, but fear they won’t live to see it happen

By David P. BallStar Vancouver

Tues., April 16, 2019

  

VANCOUVER—Several hundred Vancouverites marked three years since the province declared a public health emergency over the thousands of people killed by overdoses.

 

But as they marched Tuesday from the safe-injection clinic Insite through downtown Vancouver, advocates say “contaminated” drugs have taken a toll on their own leaders.

 

For B.C. Association of People on Methadone member Garth Mullins, the losses are mounting, and it’s been destabilizing and “disorganizing” for the drug-reform movement.

 

“We’ve lost rank and file members and leaders in such high numbers over the last five years,” he said, wearing a distinctive black case of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone on his belt. “It’s hard to organize or think strategically when you’re always doing triage, planning a memorial.”

 

Just last month the president of his organization, Chereece Keewatin, died from a fentanyl overdose. Mullins knew Keewatin for at least six years, and invited her to join the editorial board of the podcast Crackdown, of which he is executive producer.

 

“Chereece was really little, but she had this tremendous capacity to lift people’s spirits,” he said in an interview. “You’d have meetings where we talk about really, really bleak subjects, but she had these funny asides to cut through the bleakness.

 

“She made people laugh. In that way, she took responsibility for the whole collective emotional state of the group.”

 

It’s not just the B.C. Association of People on Methadone that’s seen the direct “casualties” of what Mullins called “a war.” The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and the national Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs have also lost high-ranking board members in recent years.

 

Since 2016, nearly 11,000 people have died across Canada from opioid overdoses, according to the most recent federal and provincial data. The majority of those deaths were from opioids such as fentanyl or its more deadly variants, but B.C. remains the epicentre for roughly a third of those deaths, 1,500 of them last year alone.

 

On average, four British Columbians died every day from overdoses last year, much higher than the national average and largely unchanged since the province’s April 2016 declaration of a public health emergency.

 

11 May 2020

.

A wall mural in the DTES poses a valid question, "how do we end the drug crisis"? A more basic question, how did we get here?

 

Vancouver, B.C. is consistently ranked at the top of the list for the world’s most liveable cities - but not for many in the DTES.

 

The city has a dirty little secret that it has been trying to suppress for decades. The historic four-block area near East Hastings and Main Street — the DTES — known as one of the “poorest postal codes” in Canada, has a combination of drug use, HIV, homelessness, prostitution, mental illness, and crime all making up this poor off neighbourhood.

 

To be successful as a drug lord you need a steady, reliable, cheap supply of product, a location where you can operate relatively free from prosecution and away you go. The prime location ingredients Vancouver offers is the DTES.

 

Over the decades continuing city administrations have built a community of “customers with no cash” by loading the DTES with blocks of not for profit social housing. Along with the myriad of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SRO's) the area is prime territory for the drug trade.

 

Social housing should be spread throughout the city to provide a society of different financial means for common support - IMO.

 

Administrations over the years have been loath to attempt social housing in the rich city enclaves due to onerous push back. It was and still is more expedient to keep adding more social housing in the DTES where there is minimal opposition.

 

***** Today there are at least 6 City of Vancouver development permit applications on file for more social housing in the DTES.

 

The process is welcomed by the myriad of DTES support service groups who like their clientele close at hand and the clientele are fine with it as services are nearby.

 

DTES government and service support groups along with poverty pimp lawyers who have a hissy fit if anyone tries to change the dial, while also making money off the situation, has resulted in the perfect condition for drug dealers to flourish.

 

Social housing residents, many older, Asian and often mentally challenged are living in a hell hole neighbourhood with little individual voice.

 

In recent years, the area is seeing an east creeping gentrification. This is causing the DTES street population to be squeezed into a smaller footprint resulting in more confrontation and the appearance of a worsening situation even though overall the numbers of street people remains fairly constant.

 

The amount of taxpayer dollars spent in the area is staggering with little to show for the investment.

 

Vancouver has always had a drug problem. The opioids of choice — and the increasingly staggering death toll — have changed over the years.

 

In 2017 Fentanyl killed so many Canadians it caused the average life expectancy in B.C. to drop for the first time in decades. But for crime kingpins, it became a source of such astonishing wealth it disrupted the Vancouver-area real estate market.

 

SOME BACKGROUND:

Excerpt from the Province Newspaper by reporter Randy Shore 18 March, 2017.

 

When members of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration came to Vancouver in 1901, they got an eyeful.

“There were whole rooms of Chinese lying stretched out on beds with the opium apparatus laid out before them — all unmindful that their attitudes and surrounding conditions are being taken note of to assist in keeping the remainder of their countrymen entirely out of Canada,” reported the Vancouver World newspaper.

 

The fringes of Vancouver’s Chinatown have always been the centre of Canada’s opiate trade. Ever more potent and easily smuggled versions emerged through the decades, culminating in the scourge of synthetic opiates — fentanyl and carfentanil — thousands of times more powerful and many times more deadly than opium.

 

Opium was a source of revenue for governments of the day. A federal duty imposed on importers fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars between 1874 and 1899. In B.C. ports, and cities charged hundreds of dollars to purveyors in the form of business licences.

 

Between 1923 and 1932, more than 700 Chinese men were deported for drug-related violations.

 

Under constant pressure from the police, opium users began to inject their hit, as the technique created no smoke or aroma and used smaller equipment, which could be easily hidden. In the 1920s and 1930s, white users tended to be young criminals, “racetrack hands, and circus and show people” who smoked opium or sniffed heroin.

 

By the mid-1930s, heroin was one of the most common drugs in circulation and white users were increasingly taking the drug intravenously, especially as prices rose due to scarcity brought about by vigorous law enforcement.

 

The outbreak of the Second World War put opiate addicts into a state of crisis, as opiate drugs were required in great quantities for the war wounded. The street price of a hit — whether heroin, morphine or codeine — shot up and crime along with it.

 

In the post-war period, right through to the mid-’60s, Vancouver was ground zero for Canada’s intravenous drug scene, made up mainly of petty criminals, troubled youths fed by drug lords.

 

Before the ’40s were over, highly refined white heroin had appeared and it was coming from overseas to satisfy a hungry market in Vancouver, home to half of the country’s drug users.

 

Heroin use remained a constant undercurrent in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside during the ’70s and ’80s, even as alcohol was the neighbourhood’s real drug of choice.

 

But a flood of a new and even more potent “China White” heroin arriving into the city reignited public outrage in the early ’90s. A spate of 331 overdose deaths in 1993 spurred B.C. coroner Vince Cain to call for the decriminalization of heroin and addicts be prescribed the drug to legally maintain their habit.

 

It would be nearly 15 years before the Study to Assess Long-term Opioid Maintenance Effectiveness (SALOME) began in Vancouver, just about the time a new threat emerged.

 

Up to 80 times as powerful as heroin, fentanyl hit the streets and reduced the risk for traffickers as it was so concentrated, transportation was easier.

 

The carnage wrought by fentanyl has been without precedent.

 

Heroin seized in drug busts is routinely cut with fentanyl and in recent months the presence of carfentanil.

 

SUMMARY:

 

Where will this go next, who knows ?

 

The richest of societies should be especially judged by how they treat their least fortunate, and Vancouver has its challenge set out for the foreseeable future.

 

UPDATE 23 MAY 2020 - VANCOUVER SUN

John Mackie: The Downtown Eastside is a war zone disaster — stop ghettoizing it.

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun 23 May 2020

Twenty years ago local musician Kuba Oms was recording at the Miller Block, a now defunct Hastings Street recording studio near Save-On-Meats.

 

He jaywalked and was stopped by a cop, who handed him a ticket.

 

“I said ‘Are you kidding me?’” Oms recounts. “You know there’s a guy shooting up over there, and a crack dealer over there. And the cop said ‘That’s a health issue.’”

 

That story pretty much sums up the city’s attitude toward the Downtown Eastside over the past few decades.

 

In some ways the cop was right — it is a Vancouver health issue. But letting people openly do drugs in public and turn Hastings and the wider Downtown Eastside into a ghetto is political correctness gone mad.

 

Drive down Hastings Street between Abbott and Gore and you’ll see dozens, even hundreds of people hanging out on the street, in various states of sobriety. They are definitely not social distancing. It’s a miracle that COVID-19 hasn’t swept the entire area.

 

The height of this madness was the recent occupation of Oppenheimer Park. Vancouver has real issues of homelessness, but to some degree Oppenheimer was about a fringe group of politicos manipulating the homeless.

 

Many police resources were diverted to the park and there was a crime wave in nearby Chinatown — one business closed because they were being robbed a dozen times a day.

 

The province recently made hotel rooms available for the homeless people occupying Oppenheimer Park, so things have calmed down somewhat. But the big question is what happens in a few months? Is government going to find permanent homes for them?

 

Odds are if they do, it will be in highrises in the Downtown Eastside. For decades that’s where the city and province have been concentrating social housing, especially for the mentally ill and drug addicted.

 

Their argument is these residents feel comfortable there. But the reality is the more poverty is concentrated, the worse the area seems to become.

 

Maybe it’s time for the city of Vancouver to give its head a shake and realize that its much-ballyhooed Downtown Eastside Plan is actually part of the problem, not the solution.

 

Part of the plan decrees you can’t build condos on Hastings between Carrall Street in Gastown and Heatley Avenue in Strathcona, or in historic Japantown around Oppenheimer Park.

 

Development in those areas has to be rental only, with at least 60 per cent social housing. This pretty much ensures that no market housing is built in the poorest area of the city.

 

When the plan was unveiled in 2014, Vancouver’s former head planner Brian Jackson said the aim was to ensure that low-income people in the Downtown Eastside weren’t displaced.

 

“The plan is attempting to achieve balance,” he explained then.

 

In fact, the plan does the exact opposite. There is no balance in the Downtown Eastside: It’s been turned into a ghetto. A friend who’s worked there for two decades calls it a war zone.

 

The city desperately need some market housing, co-ops and development on Hastings and around Oppenheimer. The anti-poverty activists will scream blue murder that it’s gentrification, but it’s actually normalization. You don’t have to displace anybody, you just have add a different mix to make it safer.

 

I live in Strathcona, where about 6,500 people live in social housing and about 3,500 in market homes. It’s a close-knit neighbourhood that has the balance Brian Jackson was taking about — it’s diverse and features a variety of incomes.

 

Japantown and the Downtown Eastside could be a real neighbourhood again if the city retained its stock of handsome historic buildings but allowed some development of its many non-descript structures.

 

It could be like Strathcona, even the West End. But I fear it could get even worse, if the planners and politicians continue to concentrate all the Lower Mainland’s poverty and social ills in one small area.

 

jmackie@postmedia.com

 

John Mackie is a veteran Postmedia reporter who has written several stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Plan.

 

13 JULY, 2020

Vancouver can’t catch up to its housing crisis

 

ADRIENNE TANNER

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

PUBLISHED 13 JULY 2020

 

It is obvious now the cheers that erupted when Vancouver’s longest running tent city was dismantled were wildly premature. Fearing a COVID-19 outbreak would take hold in the overcrowded inner-city camp, the provincial government in April acquired emergency housing in hotels for homeless people living there and cleared the site.

 

Many camp residents embraced the offer of a clean room. Some refused and relocated outdoors. The camp shifted, first to some empty Port of Vancouver land, and when a court order quickly shut it down, finally landed in Strathcona Park. With each move, it grew.

 

Today there are about 150 tents Strathcona Park, roughly double the number there were in Oppenheimer Park. How many inhabitants are truly homeless is anyone’s guess. Some of the tents were erected by activists with homes. Others belong to people living in single room occupancy hotels, the worst of which are noisy, bug-infested and so hot that some residents prefer to spend summer outside.

  

There is already an air of permanence to the camp; the city has installed porta-potties, fresh drinking water and handwashing stations. Park rangers drop by a few times daily. The area is reasonably clean, but these are early days.

 

Strathcona residents are largely sympathetic to homeless people, but are understandably unhappy about losing a large chunk of park space. They fear the same violence and social disorder that cropped up at Oppenheimer is inevitable; there has already been a small fire and there appears to be a bike chop shop on site. There are cries for the city to sanction a permanent tent city location – elsewhere, of course.

 

So how exactly did the province’s efforts to shut down a tent city and house homeless people backfire so badly? The city and provincial officials have been out-manoeuvered and out-organized by anti-poverty activists who seized a COVID-19 opportunity when they saw it.

 

The pandemic raised fears the Oppenheimer tent city would turn into a reservoir of disease that could overwhelm the health system. The activists know that’s why the government cleared the camp and purchased hotels for social housing. They understand this is the moment to highlight society’s failure to solve homelessness, even if their end goals seem to differ. Some are calling for permanent housing – others prefer the idea of a permanent, free-wheeling tent city.

  

The sorry truth is, even with the addition of 600 units of temporary modular housing and, more recently, the purchase of three downtown hotels, there are still more homeless people than homes. Successions of governments at all levels have allowed this crisis to grow. They’ve failed to build enough social housing. Failed to provide adequate mental health services. Failed to fund enough drug rehabilitation programs for those who want to quit and provide a safe drug supply for those who can’t.

 

So, now here we are with the largest homeless camp the city has ever seen and another stressed-out neighbourhood. Legally, the new tent city may prove more difficult to dismantle – it’s a large park and the tents are well spaced so the pandemic may not wash as a valid reason. And unless housing is available for everyone who is homeless, it is unlikely the courts would grant an injunction.

 

Solving problems associated with homelessness is a huge challenge. We can start with housing, but that alone is not nearly enough. Many of the people living in the hotels and park are drug users. Many are mentally ill. Some are both. It takes money – and lots of it – to provide decent housing and supports for this segment of society.

  

But to cave to demands for a permanent tent city is an American-style admission of defeat. The park board seems resigned to tent cities in parks and is considering a bylaw seeking to control locations. City council has resisted sanctioning a permanent spot, instead offering up land for new social housing. The province has stepped up with money for temporary modular housing and purchases of hotels.

 

It will be tough to keep neighbourhoods onside if more parks are rendered unusable for recreation. There is only one palatable solution; the provincial government must stay the course and keep adding decent, affordable housing. It won’t be cheap or easy. Catchup never is.

 

01 APRIL 2022

More than 2,200 British Columbians lost to illicit drugs in 2021

 

The toxic illicit drug supply claimed the lives of at least 2,224 British Columbians in 2021, according to preliminary data released by the BC Coroners Service.

 

“Over the past seven years, our province has experienced a devastating loss of life due to a toxic illicit drug supply,” said Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner. “This public health emergency has impacted families and communities across the province and shows no sign of abating. In 2021 alone, more than 2,200 families experienced the devastating loss of a loved one. In the past seven years, the rate of death due to illicit drug toxicity in our province has risen more than 400%. Drug toxicity is now second only to cancers in B.C. for potential years of life lost. We cannot simply hope that things will improve. It is long past time to end the chaos and devastation in our communities resulting from the flourishing illicit drug market, and to ensure, on an urgent basis, access across the province to a safe, reliable regulated drug supply.”

 

The last two months of 2021 saw the largest number of suspected illicit drug deaths ever recorded in the province, with 210 deaths in November and an additional 215 in December. The 2,224 total number of deaths is 26% more than the 1,767 illicit drug-related deaths investigated by the BC Coroners Service in 2020, and equates to an average of 6.1 lives lost every day.

 

The provincewide death rate in 2021 was 42.8 per 100,000 residents. Every health authority in B.C. experienced a record loss of lives.

 

Since the public health emergency into substance-related harms was first declared in April 2016, more than 8,800 British Columbians have been lost to toxic drugs.

 

Toxicological testing once again underscores the reality that the illicit drug supply continues to be unstable and increasingly toxic. Fentanyl was detected in 83% of samples tested in 2021. Carfentanil was present in 187 results, almost triple the number recorded in 2020 (66).

 

Additionally, 50% of samples in December tested positive for etizolam, more than three times the rate of detection in July 2020 (15%). Benzodiazepines create significant challenges for life-saving efforts as naloxone does not reverse its effects. As with previous reporting, almost all test results included the presence of multiple substances.

 

“We need decision-makers at all levels to recognize and respond to this public health emergency with the level of urgency it demands,” Lapointe said. “The reality is this: every day we wait to act, six more people will die. COVID-19 has shown what is possible when goverments act decisively to save lives. And in order to save lives in this public-heath emergency, we need to provide people with access to the substances they need, where and when they need them. Time has run out for research and discussion. It is time to take action.”

 

Additional key preliminary findings are below. Data is subject to change as additional toxicology results are received:

 

In 2021, 71% of those who died as a result of suspected drug toxicity were between 30 to 59, and 78% were male.

The townships that experienced the highest number of illicit drug toxicity deaths in 2021 were Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria.

By health authority, in 2021, the highest numbers of illicit drug toxicity deaths were in the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal health authorities (765 and 615 deaths, respectively), making up 62% of all such deaths during this period.

By health authority, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Vancouver Coastal Health (49 deaths per 100,000 individuals) and Northern Health (48 per 100,000).

By Health Service Delivery Area, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Vancouver, Thompson Cariboo, Northwest, Northern Interior and Fraser East.

By Local Health Area, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Upper Skeena, Merritt, Enderby, Lillooet and North Thompson.

Quotes:

 

Dr. Nel Wieman, deputy chief medical officer, First Nations Health Authority –

 

“The number of deaths due to toxic drug poisonings for 2021 translates to devastating losses of First Nations people: daughters and sons, aunties and uncles, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers. These are people who loved and were loved. In every year since this public health emergency was declared, B.C. First Nations people have been over-represented in toxic drug-poisoning events and deaths. We must change our understanding of the root causes of substance use and addiction, and work together to address the stigmas surrounding toxic drug use and the people who use drugs. We must continue to invest in Indigenous-specific, culturally safe harm-reduction, treatment and recovery services that are accessible, timely and free from discrimination and racism.”

 

Guy Felicella, peer clinical adviser, Vancouver Coastal Health –

 

“I join the thousands of British Columbians who are heartbroken, frustrated and angry over this unfathomable loss. Every one of these deaths was preventable and represents a failure to act, a failure to learn from mistakes. Change nothing and nothing changes. That’s been the story now for years as the approach throughout this crisis has been to meet policies where they’re at, rather than meeting people who use drugs where they’re at. This approach is killing and continues to kill people. Who has the courage to step forward and make this stop?”

 

AUGUST 2023

Today’s release of the report on drug toxicity deaths for the month of July 2023 by the BC Coroners Service is a stark reminder that the ongoing toxic-drug crisis continues to have a devastating impact on communities across our province. We hold in our hearts the memories of the 198 people lost in July in British Columbia.

 

The coroners service said the 1,455 deaths from January to July are the most ever reported in the first seven months of the year since a public health emergency over drug poisoning deaths in the province was declared in 2016.

 

It puts the province on pace to potentially exceed the 2,383 deaths recorded in 2022. A total of 12,739 people in the province have died from drug overdoses in the seven years.

 

30 NOVEMBER, 2023

At least 2,039 British Columbians have died from toxic drugs so far this year, according to preliminary figures released by the B.C. Coroners Service on Thursday, 29 November, 2023.

 

Of those, 189 people died in October, which is about 6.1 deaths a day. Most of the dead were between 30 and 59 years of age, and more than three-quarters were men, according to the coroner.

 

While the largest number of deaths reported so far has been in urban centres, such as Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria, the health authority with the highest rate of death in 2023 is Northern Health, with 61 deaths per 100,000 residents, according to the coroner.

 

As in previous months, fentanyl was found in most — 85 per cent — of the illicit drugs tested, often combined with other opioids or stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine.

 

Earlier this month, Interior Health issued a drug advisory warning for people who use drugs that some substances being advertised as hydromorphone on the black market contain isotonitazine, a drug the coroner says is as potent as fentanyl.

 

Unregulated drug toxicity is the leading cause of death in B.C. for people aged 10 to 59, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural disease combined, the coroner said.

 

Since a public health emergency was declared in 2016, more than 13,000 people have died.

 

JANUARY 2024:

Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, has released the following statement regarding the BC Coroners Service year-end report on illicit drug toxicity deaths:

 

“Today, as we reflect on the year behind us, our hearts are heavy with the loss of 2,511 people in British Columbia to toxic drugs. Each of these lives was precious and important, each with their own story, their own dreams and people who love them. They were part of our community, and their loss is felt deeply by us all.

 

So what is the game plane to stop it?

 

C. seeks to keep cash seized from Downtown Eastside gang

 

Courtesy Kim Bolan and the Vancouver Sun.

  

Kim Bolan is an experienced and award-winning journalist who has covered gangs in British Columbia for the past 40 years. Bolan also investigated the Air India bombing for 25 years until the publication in 2005 of her book, Loss of Faith.

  

The B.C. government has filed a lawsuit against a group of alleged Downtown Eastside drug traffickers, seeking the forfeiture of more than $150,000 seized from them.

 

The lawsuit, filed this week by the director of civil forfeiture, names four defendants that it alleges are part of a criminal organization investigated by the Vancouver Police Department.

  

While the group is not named in the statement of claim, details of the VPD probe outlined in the court document match an investigation into Zone 43 — a gang that originated in Montreal but has taken over the Downtown Eastside in recent years. Zone 43 has connections to B.C.’s notorious Wolfpack gang alliance.

 

In June, the VPD announced arrests of several Zone 43 gangsters, though they were released pending approval of charges.

 

The VPD said it had seized firearms, 24 kilos of drugs and $150,000 in cash during searches on May 14 in Vancouver and Burnaby.

 

The civil forfeiture lawsuit refers to three VPD searches done on the same date in the same cities and alleges Shayne Cozier-Flanagan, Evantee Jevontee Eustace Stoney, Tristin Johnson and Raimon Geday were “participating in the activities of a criminal organization.”

 

When police searched Stoney’s apartment on the 30th floor at 2388 Madison Ave. in Burnaby, they found $143,910.75 in Canadian currency and $607 in U.S. currency, the lawsuit said.

  

Officers seized another $5,800 at Cozier-Flanagan’s suite, also on the 30th floor, at 5665 Boundary Rd. in Vancouver, it said.

 

About $3,417 was seized from Johnson, who also lives in the Madison apartment, when he was arrested in the 300-block of East Hastings. Another $1,920 was found in Geday’s room in a supportive housing building on Kaslo Street, the lawsuit said.

 

The VPD also seized a 2017 Acura RDX, of which Stoney is the registered owner and which was used “to facilitate the trafficking of controlled substances,” the civil forfeiture director alleged.

 

The statement of claim notes that both Stoney and Geday have previous trafficking convictions and are banned from possessing firearms.

 

All four men named in the lawsuit “trafficked in controlled substances in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and the surrounding areas,” the lawsuit alleges.

 

In the Boundary apartment, police also found a money counter and business cards with the number to call to purchase drugs — known as a ‘dialer’ number.

 

In the Madison suite, the VPD also found dilaudid pills, oxycodone pills and “score sheets” documenting drug sales, collection and debts.

 

In Geday’s room, police found crack cocaine, powdered cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and another 275 dilaudid pills, as well as score sheets, bear spray and “miscellaneous drug packaging materials.”

 

The cash and car should be forfeited to the government because they are proceeds of or were used for unlawful activity, the lawsuit alleged.

 

The crimes committed include possession for the purpose of trafficking and trafficking, committing offences for the benefit of a criminal organization, conspiracy, money laundering and failure to declare taxable income, it alleged

 

No statements of defence have yet been filed on behalf of the four men.

 

Vancouver Police Insp. Phil Heard said at the June news conference that Zone 43 gangsters “pose a very significant risk to the public. They’re involved in a well-documented conflict ongoing in the province of Quebec with a rival group.”

 

Sources say the gang is still selling drugs in the Downtown Eastside.

 

AUGUST 2025:

The law protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair

Pete McMartin: I'm tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse.

 

Published Aug 03, 2025

 

In 2014, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert and I wrote a weeklong series of stories identifying the government social welfare programs — and their cost to taxpayers — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

 

Over 100 programs existed just for housing. Thirty provided health care, 30 offered family services and a miscellany of another 100 services — including a food bank for pets — brought the total to 260 social welfare agencies operating solely within the eight square blocks of the DTES.

 

Those 260 programs served just 6,500 clients.

 

Five years earlier, in 2009, Province reporter David Carrigg also did a survey of the programs available in the DTES, and he identified 174 social welfare agencies offering services to about 5,000 clients.

 

In other words, in the five years between Carrigg’s survey and Culbert’s and mine, not only had the number of people needing help grown but so had the number of agencies serving them.

 

And the cost to taxpayers?

 

Over $360 million annually.

 

That astounding figure — almost a million dollars a day — did little to satisfy the DTES’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. More to the point, it did nothing to eradicate the misery and living conditions of the people who lived there.

 

Rather than winning the war on poverty — and what a quaint phrase that seems now — governments engineered a truce, with the unstated understanding that if they couldn’t solve the problem or spend their way out of it, they could contain it. Those 260 social service bureaucracies weren’t solutions to an intractable problem; they were barricades. They ghettoized their impoverished clientele by concentrating the services on which they depended.

 

And let’s be honest: The public was complicit in this, and content for it to continue as long as the misery stayed confined within the borders of the DTES.

 

And yet here we are. The squalor spreads. It corrodes a once-vibrant downtown core. It infiltrates the suburbs. Daily acts of random violence and vandalism have become normalized, while a cornucopia of drugs — some decriminalized, some tolerated, many deadly — act as accelerants.

 

In 2016, a year after our survey, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, over 16,000 people have died from those opioids. That’s not progress. It’s a plague.

 

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has worked. Over the decades, the problem has been studied to death — admittedly, a poor choice of words — with consultants and academics and the legions of poverty industry advocates offering up solutions that ultimately fail. They fail because they’re predicated on two simple criteria:

 

1. Give us more money.

 

2. Give us more of everything — housing, hospital beds, food banks, drugs, injection sites, counselling or — and this is always implicit — empathy, with a side order of collective guilt.

 

I’ve seen this in my own newspaper.

 

In one recent opinion piece, the author laments that it has been the public’s and governments’ norm “to daily bypass our downtrodden, our homeless, our addicted or mentally ill on the street as though they are either invisible or merely equivalent to lampposts” — to which I have to reply: ‘Are you f—ng kidding me?’

 

The public and its governments have done exactly the opposite and, short of bathing their feet with Christ-like piety, have directed billions of tax dollars not only to ease the suffering of the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, but also to make them completely dependent upon those dollars.

 

Another Sun story — this one again by Culbert — examined the merits of involuntary care through the experiences of three addicts who underwent the process, and while two saw it as beneficial and helped them get clean, the third condemned it as “dehumanizing” and a cause of her PTSD. Though she no longer does drugs, she said that if she relapses she would prefer to take her chances with street drugs that could possibly kill her rather than be readmitted to hospital against her will.

 

Well, OK, I thought, ‘You’re an adult. Good for you for having the honesty to express that choice, however idiotic I may find it.’

 

But what I thought was missing in her testimonial was (a) any appreciation of the monumentally expensive efforts governments and the public had tried to make on her behalf, however ill-informed she may have believed those attempts to be, and (b) her failure to recognize the destructive effects that a relapse would have not just on her own health and family, but, more importantly, also on the collective health of the public, who would be asked to offer up yet more money, and deal yet again with her relapse — providing she survives it.

 

Finally, in The Sun, there was another column, this one by Sam Sullivan, who wrote that, after 52 years, it was time to end the DTES “experiment” and the restrictive housing policies that he believes led to the homelessness and violence bedevilling it.

 

Funny thing about that.

 

Between 1993 and 2005, Sullivan was a Vancouver city councillor, and for three years after that, he was mayor. Yet despite the fact that his 15-year tenure at city hall placed him in the midst of that DTES experiment, if not close to its helm, it is only now, 20 years later, that he publicly declares the experiment to be a failure, and — as far as I could tell from reading his opinion piece — without taking any responsibility for it.

 

I will refrain here, in my own column, from claiming to speak for the public or with any inkling of what popular sentiment might be.

 

But this is how I feel:

 

My patience is Exhausted.

 

I’m tired of the endless, self-regenerating calls for more studies and more funding when all I see is a colossal waste of money and effort leading to no improvement. I’m tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse. I’m tired of civil rights that supersede my own, and treat the right to defecate in the streets with greater regard than my right to be offended by it.

 

Finally, I’m tired of a social welfare system that not only encourages dependency, but refuses, out of moral timidity, to also admit its complicity in it, and which shies away from asking hard questions about personal responsibility and the consideration of measures more draconian than safe injection sites — measures like a return to complete drug criminalization, a higher threshold of minimum sentences for trafficking, the establishment of rehabilitation centres or work camps exclusively in wilderness areas far from the temptations of cities, the discontinuation of any efforts that facilitate drug use, and yes, the robust expansion of an involuntary care system.

 

It’s also my opinion that none of these measures, given the current legal climate, will become reality, at least for the foreseeable future. Under our Constitution and the Criminal Code, the law, in its majestic equality, protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair, and, as so often happens, bring about their own deaths.

 

How enlightened we have become! What progress we have made! We’ve reached that point when now sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing one’s daily bread are no longer evidence of a system’s failure.

 

They are the system.

6th and Penn Street

Reading, Pennsylvania

All images available for licensing via me. I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database with thousands of hand-picked images of dogs, cats, as well as horses, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

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French presence in America : The Vilas Albertine.

 

"Reinventing artists’ residencies, Villa Albertine is creating a network for arts and ideas spanning France and the United States. It offers tailor-made residencies for global creators, thinkers and cultural professionals. Explore our magazine, events, and programs for professionals."

 

villa-albertine.org/

 

* * *

 

Présence française à New York, le siège du réseau des "Villas Albertine" dans la Payne Whitney House.

 

Quelques mots sur le réseau des Villas Albertine.

 

" Présente dans 10 villes aux États-Unis, la Villa Albertine renouvelle le concept de résidence d'artistes : ce n’est plus aux résidents de s’adapter à la Villa, c’est désormais à la Villa de s’adapter aux résidents.

…

Les résidents choisissent la ou les destinations de leur séjour en fonction de leurs pratiques individuelles. Pour épouser l’immensité et la variété du territoire américain, la Villa Albertine les invite non pas dans un lieu unique, dans une seule ville, mais dans une diversité de lieux. Les résidents ont surtout vocation à en sortir le plus possible pour aller à la rencontre des acteurs, cultures et communautés d'un territoire.

 

La Villa Albertine a son siège à New York, dans la Payne Whitney Mansion, chef d’œuvre de Stanford-White et exceptionnel témoignage de l’âge d’or new yorkais. Le bâtiment abrite également la librairie Albertine et donne sur la 5th Avenue, à l’angle Sud du MET et face à Central Park."

 

villa-albertine.org/fr/map

 

www.facebook.com/villaalbertineusa

  

All images available for licensing via me. I offer commercial and editorial pet photography on a commissioned basis. And with a pet picture database with hundreds of hand-picked images of dogs, cats, as well as horses, I might already have what you are looking for. All pictures here can be licensed.

For licensing and commission requests: info{at}elkevogelsang.com -

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© Elke Vogelsang

 

20210723_TwixSnickers_TricolouredFriends_01

Of the 80 beaches in Ibiza, this is the most relaxed. Set in a secluded bay, with some of the most atmospheric bars and restaurants, Cala Jondal feels serene, sophisticated and happening all at the same time. Housed in a conservation area and overlooked by pine-clad hills, it offers a 20 yard deep slab of sand and pebbles, which slopes gently into the clear waters.

 

Already this photograph was long ago in Panoramio

 

"Well, as I said before, the map of Flickr is terribly bad, the geographic address of this place is as follows: Cala Jundal, s / n, 07830 Sant Josep de sa Talaia, Balearic Islands, Spain"

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden where Edith, Lettice’s maid, is paying an unexpected call on her beloved parents whilst her mistress is away visiting her own parents in Wiltshire. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith. Usually even before she walks through the glossy black painted front door, Edith can smell the familiar scent of a mixture of Lifebuoy Soap, Borax and Robin’s Starch, which means her mother is washing the laundry of others wealthier than she in the terrace’s kitchen at the rear of the house. Yet with her father’s promotion, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now, and today, rather than soap and starch greeting her on the street, she can hear familiar laughter.

 

“Mum!” Edith calls out cheerily as she opens the unlocked front door and walks in. “Mum, it’s me! Is that Bert with you?”

 

She takes a deep breath and holds it with anticipation as she runs down the narrow corridor with excited footsteps past the front room and down into the kitchen, which serves as the heart of Edith’s parent’s home. Bursting through the kitchen door she beams and gasps with delight, for there at Ada’s old and worn round kitchen table sits her mother and her brother Bert. Edith’s little brother works aboard the SS Demosthenes as a dining saloon steward, sailing between England and Australia. Australia was where Bert spent Christmas 1922, so he wasn’t with his family for Christmas. Yet now, just like in the postcard he sent from Queensland showing a bird called a kookaburra inside the shape of the great southern continent surrounded by yellow wattle flowers, he is home on shore leave.

 

“Bert!” Edith gasps in delight. “You’re home!”

 

“Hullo Edith!” Bert says with an equally happy smile as he leaps out of the comfortable Windsor chair usually inhabited by their father and enfolds his sister in an embracing hug.

 

“Oh Bert.” Edith presses herself against her brother, the comforting smell of their mother’s lux soap flakes filling her nostrils. Pressing her hands against his hips, she breaks their embrace and pushes herself back. “Let me look at you then!”

 

Although a year younger than his sister, Bert is taller than Edith now, after a final growth spurt when he was in his late teens. Dressed in one of their mother’s home knitted jumpers and a pair of grey flannel trousers his skin looks sun kissed after spending a few days ashore in Melbourne during the height of summer in the southern hemisphere before sailing back, and the sun has given his sandy blonde hair some natural highlights.

 

“The sea air agrees with you, Bert.”

 

“More likely the Australian sun!” Ada remarks as she picks herself up out of her own chair with a slight groan. “Just look at those colourful cheeks and those freckles.” She waves her hand at her son lovingly. “We don’t usually see them until high summer.”

 

“Hullo Mum!” Edith walks up and embraces her mother. ‘How are you?”

 

“Oh, I’m grand now our Bert is home, and you are too, Edith love.” Ada says in reply, a broad smile gracing her lips and a happy brilliance in her brown eyes. “Now, put that basket down and have a seat. I’ll pop the kettle on and brew us a fresh pot.” She begins to bustle around the great blacklead range and moves the heavy kettle onto the hob. Turning back to the table she picks up the beautiful, glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid, which Edith bought for her from the Caledonian Market**, and makes a grand sweeping gesture to show Edith it’s presence. “See Edith, a special occasion calls for the use of my special teapot.”

 

“Any day should be a special enough day for you to use that pretty teapot that Edith gave you, Mum.” Bert says, sitting back down at the table.

 

“That’s what I tell her!” Edith agrees.

 

“But then it wouldn’t be a special teapot any more, would it?” Ada says, stepping behind Bert and going to the small tough sink the corner of the kitchen where she turns the squeaky taps and rinses out the pot. “No. It’s a special teapot for special occasions.” She takes up the yellow tea towel with red stitching that hangs over a metal rail above the range and dries the pot. “I used it on Christmas Day didn’t I, Edith love?”

 

“Yes,” Edith agrees. “But you haven’t used it a day since then.”

 

“That’s because there hasn’t been a special occasion worthy of using it,” Ada defends. “Until Bert came home, that is.” She gently squeezes her son’s left shoulder.

 

“I give up!” Edith throws her hands in the air. She shucks off her black three quarter length coat and hangs it on a hook by the back door. She then places her hat on one of the carved knobs of the ladderback chair drawn up to the table next to her mother’s usual seat.

 

“Oh I told you, Edith!” Ada chides. “Don’t put your pretty hat there, love.” She walks over to the Welsh dresser that dominates one wall of the crowded kitchen and pulls out the battered tea cannister. “It might get damaged. Such a pretty hat should sit on the table where it’s safe. You know Edith made that, don’t you Bert?”

 

“Yes, I do, Mum.” Bert acknowledges cheerfully. “Our Edith is the cleverest girl I know.”

 

“I keep saying Mum, the hat’s nothing special. And besides, I didn’t make it. It came from Petticoat Lane***, just like my coat, and it’s not new. I simply decorated the hat with bits and bobs I picked up from a Whitechapel haberdasher Miss Lettice’s char****, Mrs. Boothby, told me about.”

 

“Well, homemade or not, it’s still too pretty to hang there.”

 

“It’s my hat, Mum. I always hang it there and it’s always fine, and I promise you, it’ll be fine there today.”

 

“Well, suit yourself, love. You’re an adult now, just the same as Bert.” Ada remarks dismissively but looks at her daughter doubtfully as she scoops out some black dried tea leaves and puts the heaped spoonfuls into the pot. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

 

“So,” Bert sinks back into his seat and toys with his teacup decorated with pink roses, slowly turning it in its saucer. “What’s the gossip with you then, Edith? How’s your Frank then? Mum says that she and Dad haven’t met him yet.”

 

“It’s become quite the mute point.” Ada remarks as she turns back from the dresser and folds her arms akimbo, frowning at her daughter.

 

“And I hope,” Edith defends herself, challenging her mother’s steely stare. “That she told you why.”

 

“I did!” Ada says crisply.

 

“Word is you’re meeting his mum soon, Edith.” Bert says excitedly.

 

“Well, not his mum. His parents died of the Spanish Flu, but I’m meeting his Granny, who is a bit like his surrogate mum.”

 

“That’s nerve wracking.” Bert replies.

 

“I know! I’m so nervous.” Edith confides, lowing her voice as she leans across the table conspiratorially and reaches for the battered McVitie and Price biscuit tin.

 

“That’s why I can’t get a girl to come home here.” Frank says with a wink and slight indicating nod to their mother. “Imagine meeting Mum.” He lifts the lid off the tin for his sister and lets her make her selection. “They’re all too scared of her.”

 

“Cheeky!” Ada says, laughing good naturedly and swatting her son with the tea towel. “Any girl would be lucky to have me as a prospective mother-in-law.” She shuffles her shoulders and tilts her head upwards as her face forms into a dignified expression. “Or boy.” she adds with undisguised meaning and importance.

 

“So, me and Frank are just fine, thanks Bert. We’re just tickety-boo.*****!” Edith tells her brother before popping a biscuit into her mouth.

 

“Tickety-boo!” Bert enthuses. “You are up on all the latest small talk and phrases, living with your Miss Chetwynd up in Mayfair.”

 

“She comes home with new phrases all the time.” Ada places the freshly refilled cottage ware teapot down on the table between them all. “Goodness knows I can’t keep up with her. It’s the influence of all those fine ladies and gentlemen and moving picture stars that frequent Mis Chetwynd’s flat.”

 

“Moving picture stars? Really” Bert asks excitedly.

 

“Oh Bert!” Edith scoffs, flapping her hand playfully at him. “I only answer the door to them, or serve them tea. And Miss Lettice has only had one moving picture star to tea since I’ve been there: Wanetta Ward.” She sighs. “She’s so beautiful! She works for Gainsborough Pictures******. You’re more likely to have a longer conversation with a moving picture star on board your ship as a dining saloon steward, Bert, than ever I will at Miss Lettice’s.”

 

“I doubt that. There aren’t that many moving picture stars sailing between Australia and home, well none that I know of. Although they are mad for moving pictures over there. There are picture houses everywhere, and they even make their own films there, just like here.”

 

“Anyway, I’m not the interesting one, Bert.” Edith says, seeing a way to turn the conversation to her brother and his news. “You are. Tell me about life on the ship this voyage.”

 

A short while later over tea and biscuits, Edith is brought up to date with Bert’s latest adventures on board his ship, and the interesting people he has served as a first-class saloon steward.

 

“Oh!” Ada suddenly gasps. “Bert! Aren’t you going to give Edith her present?”

 

“Present?” Edith asks with a querying look to her brother.

 

“Yes, Edith love. Don’t you remember Bert wrote it in his last postcard to us?”

 

Edith casts her mind back a few weeks to when her mother showed her the postcard Bert had sent from Australia.

 

“Right you are Mum!” Bert agrees. “So Edith, on Christmas Day, the Second Officer, Mr. Collins, organised a trip for we lads and some of the girls on the ship’s staff who were away from home for Christmas and that were at a loose end. A lot found their own amusements in Melbourne. It’s such a big and vibrant city, full of fun things to do. But about twenty of us didn’t have anywhere to go, so we said yes.”

 

“What did you do, Bert? What had Mr. Collins organised?” Edith asks in suspense.

 

“Well, Mr. Collins was born in Melbourne. Well no, actually he was born a few hours outside of Melbourne in the country at a place called Yarra Glen. It’s quite famous and lots of toffs go there to holiday, not that was where Mr. Collins took us.” Bert quickly adds, seeing the excitement in his sister’s face. “No, Mr. Collins was born on a farm out there – something they call a cattle station – and he took us all out there for a picnic on his parent’s station.”

 

“But a station is a railway station.” Edith mutters, shaking her head, her face crumpling in disbelief.

 

“Well in Australia there are railway stations and cattle station, which are big farms. So, Mr. Collins packed us all into a railway carriage at Flinders Street Railway Station and off we went. We left at ten in the morning and we didn’t get to the railway station at the Yarra Glen until nearly midday.”

 

“Was it hot?” Edith asks. “You always say Australia is hot around this time of year.”

 

“Well it was, but it was alright because we opened up our window in our carriage and poked our heads out so we could look at the passing countryside, so we had a nice breeze. The countryside is so different to here. It’s all yellow grasses and funny trees with washed out leaves: no real greenery at all so to speak, but it’s still really beautiful in its own way.”

 

“Hmph!” Ada snorts from her chair. “Nothing beats the Kentish countryside for beauty.”

 

“Well I guess beauty is a subjective thing, Mum.” Bert goes on, “Mr. Collins was telling us on the train trip down that sometimes travelling artists set up camp on his parent’s property just so that they can paint the landscape.”

 

“Fancy that, Frank!” Edith enthuses. “Did you like it?”

 

“Oh yes! It’s very pretty, in a foreign kind of way. Not many flowers. But we saw jumping kangaroos from the train on the trip down. They sat in the grass and watched us pass, and then some of them just up and jumped away. They can move very quickly when they jump. Anyway, we finally pulled into Yarra Glen. We had to wait whilst a big party of toffs and all their mountains of luggage were taken care of and packed up into cars. Mr. Collins says that there is a famous opera singer who lives out there, named Nellie Melba*******.”

 

“I’ve heard nellie Melba sing before!” Ada exclaims, dropping her pink and yellow floral teacup into her saucer and clapping her hands.

 

“You have, Mum?” Edith asks, the look of lack of comprehension on her face matching her brother’s as they both look to her.

 

“Well, not live of course!” Ada says, taking up her cup of tea before continuing. “But once when I was at Mrs. Hounslow’s, I heard her sing. She was playing records on her gramophone, and I asked who it was, and she invited me to stand in her parlour and listen to her recording of Nellie Melba sing ‘Ave Maria’.” Her children pull a face at the mention of their landlady, the rich and odious old widow whom they both grew up hearing about regularly, and seeing on the rare occasions she would deign to stop by to collect their rent in person, rather than her rent collector. “Now don’t be like that, children! Mrs. Hounslow’s husband died a hero in the siege of Mafeking in the Boer War.”

 

“And neither you, nor she will ever let us forget it.” Bert drones, rolling his eyes.

 

“Now I won’t have a bad word said about her, Bert.” Ada wags her finger admonishingly at her son. “She’s helped pay for many a meal in this house with her sixpences and shillings over the years, especially during the war when things were hard. You should be grateful to her. We all should be.”

 

“Pshaw!” Edith raises her eyes to the ceiling above. “Enough about old Widow Hounslow! Go on with your story, Bert.”

 

“Well,” Bert continues. “Miss Melba must have been home and hosting a big house party, but once they were all packed off, we were ushered to a charabanc******** which took us out to Mr. Collins’ family farm. Once we got to the house – which they call a homestead – Mrs. Collins, Mr, Collins’ mum, had picnic baskets for us, full of delicious sandwiches and pies and cakes. There was even beer and stout for us to drink. When Mr. Collins lead us away from the house to where we were to take our picnic, he took us to a place where there was a stream, so we could dunk the bottles of beer and stout into it to keep them warm. We tethered them to the bank with string he gave us. And so, we sat under these big trees with white bark and ate and drank and had a jolly time of it, all at Mr. Collin’s expense.”

 

“That was nice of him, Bert.” Edith remarks.

 

“It was! We were ever so grateful. He had brought a cricket bat and stumps from the house with him, so we played some cricket after luncheon until it got too warm, and then we sang Christmas carols.”

  

“It must have felt odd, singing Christmas carols in the summer sunshine.”

 

“Not really Edith.” Bert replies. “Christmas is Christmas all over the world, no matter what the weather, if you are in high spirits.”

 

“And the gift?” Ada says, patting her son’s arm as a reminder.

 

“So, when we were walking back from out picnic by the stream, I was carrying one of the picnic baskets, and I noticed what a pretty painted lid it had. When we arrived back at the homestead, I asked Mr. Collins’ mother about it. It turns out that Mr. Collin’s brother and his wife live on the property as well. She cooks for the farmhands and helps keep house for old Mrs. Collins, and she also makes picnic baskets from the reeds growing around the stream we used to keep our beer and stout warm. Her husband carves the lids and she paints them, and she sells them in Yarra Glen.” Bert reaches under the table and pushing his seat backwards, he stands up and places a picnic basket on the table. “So this is for you. It’s the picnic basket I brought back to the house, and then brought all the way from Australia for you. A belated Merry Christmas, big sister.”

 

Edith gasps and raises her hands to her mouth as a smile fills her face. The beautiful picnic hamper sitting proudly on the table has woven pale reed sides and two hinged lids on the top, both painted with stylised leaves and creamy yellow daisies.

 

“Oh Bert!” Edith gasps, as tears well in her eyes. “Oh it’s lovely!” She gets up and hurries over to her brother and embraces him. “Thank you so much!”

 

“I’m so glad you like it, Edith.” Bert replies. “I got more than a bit of ribbing from the other chaps on the sailing home. They took up calling me ‘Basket Bert’.”

 

“Oh they didn’t, Bert?” Edith cries. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Nothing for you be sorry for, Edith, but I afraid that I think it will stick,” Frank adds. “However it’s worth it, if you like the basket. I thought if things were still going well with Frank, you two might use it to go on a picnic in summer.”

 

“Oh, I will Bert!” Edith replies as she runs her hand along the thin and elegant handle. “It’s wonderful! Thank you so much!”

 

*The SS Demosthenes was a British steam ocean liner and refrigerated cargo ship which ran scheduled services between London and Australia via Cape Town. It stopped at ports including those in Sydney and Melbourne. She was launched in 1911 in Ireland for the Aberdeen Line and scrapped in 1931 in England. In the First World War she was an Allied troop ship.

 

**The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

***Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

****A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

*****Believed to date from British colonial rule in India, and related to the Hindi expression “tickee babu”, meaning something like “everything's alright, sir”, “tickety-boo” means “everything is fine”. It was a common slang phrase that was popular in the 1920s.

 

******Islington Studios, often known as Gainsborough Studios, were a British film studio located on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in Shoreditch, London which began operation in 1919. By 1920 they had a two stage studio. It is here that Alfred Hitchcock made his entrée into films.

 

*******Dame Nellie Melba was an Australian operatic lyric coloratura soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town. Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. She succeeded in London and Paris. Her repertoire was small; in her whole career she sang no more than 25 roles and was closely identified with only ten. She was known for her performances in French and Italian opera, but sang little German opera. She returned to Australia frequently during the Twentieth Century, singing in opera and concerts, and had a house, “Coombe Cottage” built for her in the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne.

 

********A charabanc or "char-à-banc" is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early motor coach, usually open-topped, more common in Britain, but also found in places like Australia during the early part of the Twentieth Century. It has benched seats arranged in rows, looking forward, commonly used for large parties, whether as public conveyances or for excursions.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The central focus of our story, sitting on Ada’s table, is the wicker picnic basket that Bert brought home for Edith. In truth it is not Australian made, but was made by an unknown miniature artisan in America. The floral patterns on the top have been hand painted. The hinged lids lift, just like a real hamper, so things can be put inside.

 

In front of the basket stands Ada’s cottage ware teapot. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched rood and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

Surrounding the cottage ware teapot are non-matching teacups, saucers, a milk jug and sugar bowl, all of which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

 

Sitting on the table in the foreground is a McVitie and Price’s Small Petite Beurre Biscuits tin, containing a selection of different biscuits. The biscuits were made by hand of polymer clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Edith’s black dyed straw hat with purple roses and black feathers was made by an unknown artisan. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. This hat is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.

 

In the background you can see Ada’s dark Welsh dresser cluttered with household items. Like Ada’s table, the Windsor chair and the ladderback chair to the left of the photo, I have had the dresser since I was a child. The shelves of the dresser have different patterned crockery and silver pots on them which have come from different miniature stockists both in Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also some rather worn and beaten looking enamelled cannisters and a bread tin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green. Aged on purpose, these artisan pieces I recently acquired from The Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. There are also tins of various foods which would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. Amongst other foods on the dresser are a tin of Macfie’s Finest Black Treacle, two jars of P.C. Flett and Company jam, a tin of Heinz marinated apricots, a jar of Marmite, some Bisto gravy powder, some Ty-Phoo tea and some Oxo stock cubes. All these items are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.

 

Robert Andrew Macfie sugar refiner was the first person to use the term term Golden Syrup in 1840, a product made by his factory, the Macfie sugar refinery, in Liverpool. He also produced black treacle.

 

P.C. Flett and Company was established in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands by Peter Copeland Flett. He had inherited a small family owned ironmongers in Albert Street Kirkwall, which he inherited from his maternal family. He had a shed in the back of the shop where he made ginger ale, lemonade, jams and preserves from local produce. By the 1920s they had an office in Liverpool, and travelling representatives selling jams and preserves around Great Britain. I am not sure when the business ceased trading.

 

The American based Heinz food processing company, famous for its Baked Beans, 57 varieties of soups and tinend spaghetti opened a factory in Harlesden in 1919, providing a great deal of employment for the locals who were not already employed at McVitie and Price.

 

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract which although considered remarkably English, was in fact invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig although it was originally made in the United Kingdom. It is a by-product of beer brewing and is currently produced by British company Unilever. The product is notable as a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B. Marmite is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour. This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan: "Love it or hate it." Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinion.

 

In 1863, William Sumner published A Popular Treatise on Tea as a by-product of the first trade missions to China from London. In 1870, William and his son John Sumner founded a pharmacy/grocery business in Birmingham. William's grandson, John Sumner Jr. (born in 1856), took over the running of the business in the 1900s. Following comments from his sister on the calming effects of tea fannings, in 1903, John Jr. decided to create a new tea that he could sell in his shop. He set his own criteria for the new brand. The name had to be distinctive and unlike others, it had to be a name that would trip off the tongue and it had to be one that would be protected by registration. The name Typhoo comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”. Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1978, production was moved from Birmingham to Moreton on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside. The Moreton site is also the location of Burton's Foods and Manor Bakeries factories. Typhoo has been owned since July 2021 by British private-equity firm Zetland Capital. It was previously owned by Apeejay Surrendra Group of India.

 

The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.

 

Oxo is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube, and the company now also markets chicken and other flavour cubes, including versions with Chinese and Indian spices. The cubes are broken up and used as flavouring in meals or gravy or dissolved into boiling water to produce a bouillon. Oxo produced their first cubes in 1910 and further increased Oxo's popularity.

 

The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).

rail station

A Capped Langur during an early morning foraging giving me the chance to frame him from close. Caring a hang at my close presence he offered me this very natural pose. Pics was taken in Manas National Park, Assam, India.

University Canada West-UCW, is an innovative business and technology-oriented institution located in the heart of vibrant Vancouver. Established in 2004, UCW offers a range of career-focused programs including the Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Arts in Business Communication, Associate of Arts and Master of Business Administration. Courses are offered at our two downtown Vancouver campuses and online too. Offering courses online brings flexibility to education, allowing those who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to gain respected qualifications. UCW Vancouver is a University with a clear vision—to be a leading, respected independent University in Canada and abroad, known for innovation and effectiveness in preparing motivated students for professional-level careers and societal leadership. UCW Vancouver’s learning environment is dynamic and practical.

 

The City of Vancouver is a coastal, seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia. Located on the western half of the Burrard Peninsula, Vancouver is bounded to the north by English Bay and the Burrard Inlet and to the south by the Fraser River. It has an area of 114 square kilometers (44 square miles) with a population of 631,486 (according to the 2016 census. Vancouver is the largest city in British Columbia, and the eighth largest municipality in Canada; the Greater Vancouver metropolitan area (which includes neighboring cities such as Burnaby, Richmond, and Surrey) is the third largest in Canada. The coordinates: 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W measure from the City Hall. It has the Pacific time zone: GMT -8 as part of the Pacific maritime ecozone and has a huge and famous park called Stanley Park is one of the largest urban parks in North America. A very diverse city with a very high standard of living is also one of the most expensive cities in the world and for sure the most expensive one in North America. It is a beautiful city with water and forest and flowers all over.

 

A cidade de Vancouver é uma cidade costeira e portuária da Colúmbia Britânica, no Canadá. Localizada na metade ocidental da Península Burrard, Vancouver é delimitada ao norte pela English Bay e pela Burrard Inlet e ao sul pelo rio Fraser. Tem uma área de 114 quilômetros quadrados (44 milhas quadradas) com uma população de 631.486 (de acordo com o censo de 2016. Vancouver é a maior cidade da Colúmbia Britânica e o oitavo maior município do Canadá; a área metropolitana da Grande Vancouver (que inclui cidades vizinhas como Burnaby, Richmond e Surrey) é a terceira maior do Canadá. As coordenadas: 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W medem da Prefeitura. Tem o fuso horário do Pacífico : GMT -8 faz parte da ecozona marítima do Pacífico e tem um enorme e famoso parque chamado Stanley Park é um dos maiores parques urbanos da América do Norte. Uma cidade muito diversificada com um alto padrão de vida sendo também uma das mais caras cidades do mundo e com certeza a mais cara da América do Norte, é uma bela cidade com água e floresta e flores por toda parte.

 

La ciudad de Vancouver es una ciudad portuaria costera en la parte de tierra firma de la Columbia Británica. Ubicada en la mitad occidental de la península de Burrard, Vancouver limita al norte con English Bay y Burrard Inlet y al sur con el río Fraser. Tiene un área de 114 kilómetros cuadrados (44 millas cuadradas) con una población de 631,486 (según el censo de 2016). Vancouver es la ciudad más grande de la Columbia Británica y el octavo municipio más grande de Canadá; el área metropolitana del Gran Vancouver (que incluye ciudades vecinas como Burnaby, Richmond y Surrey) es la tercera más grande de Canadá. Las coordenadas: 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W miden desde el Ayuntamiento. Tiene la zona horaria del Pacífico : GMT -8 como parte de la ecozona marítima del Pacífico y tiene un enorme y famoso parque llamado Stanley Park es uno de los parques urbanos más grandes de América del Norte. Una ciudad muy diversa con un nivel de vida muy alto siendo también una de las más caras ciudades del mundo y seguramente la más cara de América del Norte. Es una ciudad hermosa con agua y bosques y flores por todas partes.

 

La ville de Vancouver est une ville portuaire côtière située sur le continent de la Colombie-Britannique. Située sur la moitié ouest de la péninsule Burrard, Vancouver est délimitée au nord par English Bay et Burrard Inlet et au sud par le fleuve Fraser. Il a une superficie de 114 kilomètres carrés (44 miles carrés) avec une population de 631 486 (selon le recensement de 2016. Vancouver est la plus grande ville de la Colombie-Britannique et la huitième plus grande municipalité du Canada; la région métropolitaine du Grand Vancouver (qui comprend villes voisines telles que Burnaby, Richmond et Surrey) est le troisième plus grand au Canada. Les coordonnées : 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W mesurent à partir de l'hôtel de ville. Il a le fuseau horaire du Pacifique : GMT -8 dans le cadre de l'écozone maritime du Pacifique et possède un immense et célèbre parc appelé Stanley Park est l'un des plus grands parcs urbains d'Amérique du Nord.Une ville très diversifiée avec un niveau de vie très élevé étant également l'un des plus chers villes du monde et certainement la plus chère d'Amérique du Nord, c'est une belle ville avec de l'eau, de la forêt et des fleurs partout.

 

La città di Vancouver è una città portuale costiera sulla terraferma della Columbia Britannica. Situata nella metà occidentale della penisola di Burrard, Vancouver è delimitata a nord da English Bay e Burrard Inlet ea sud dal fiume Fraser. Ha un'area di 114 chilometri quadrati (44 miglia quadrate) con una popolazione di 631.486 (secondo il censimento del 2016. Vancouver è la città più grande della Columbia Britannica e l'ottavo comune più grande del Canada; l'area metropolitana di Greater Vancouver (che comprende città vicine come Burnaby, Richmond e Surrey) è la terza più grande del Canada. Le coordinate: 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W misurano dal municipio. Ha il fuso orario del Pacifico : GMT -8 come parte dell'ecozona marittima del Pacifico e ha un enorme e famoso parco chiamato Stanley Park è uno dei più grandi parchi urbani del Nord America.Una città molto diversificata con uno standard di vita molto elevato è anche una delle più costose città del mondo e sicuramente la più cara del Nord America, è una bellissima città con acqua, foreste e fiori dappertutto.

 

De stad Vancouver is een kust-, zeehavenstad op het vasteland van Brits-Columbia. Vancouver, gelegen op de westelijke helft van het schiereiland Burrard, wordt in het noorden begrensd door English Bay en de Burrard Inlet en in het zuiden door de Fraser River. Het heeft een oppervlakte van 114 vierkante kilometer (44 vierkante mijl) met een bevolking van 631.486 (volgens de volkstelling van 2016. Vancouver is de grootste stad in British Columbia, en de achtste grootste gemeente in Canada; het grootstedelijk gebied van Vancouver (dat omvat naburige steden zoals Burnaby, Richmond en Surrey) is de derde grootste in Canada. De coördinaten: 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W meten vanaf het stadhuis. Het heeft de Pacific-tijdzone : GMT -8 als onderdeel van de maritieme ecozone van de Stille Oceaan en heeft een enorm en beroemd park genaamd Stanley Park is een van de grootste stadsparken in Noord-Amerika. Een zeer diverse stad met een zeer hoge levensstandaard die ook een van de duurste is steden in de wereld en zeker de duurste in Noord-Amerika.Het is een prachtige stad met water en bos en bloemen overal.

 

Die Stadt Vancouver ist eine Küsten- und Seehafenstadt auf dem Festland von British Columbia. Vancouver liegt in der westlichen Hälfte der Burrard-Halbinsel und wird im Norden von der English Bay und dem Burrard Inlet und im Süden vom Fraser River begrenzt. Es hat eine Fläche von 114 Quadratkilometern (44 Quadratmeilen) mit einer Bevölkerung von 631.486 (laut Volkszählung von 2016). Vancouver ist die größte Stadt in British Columbia und die achtgrößte Gemeinde in Kanada; die Metropolregion Greater Vancouver (einschließlich Vancouver). Nachbarstädte wie Burnaby, Richmond und Surrey) ist die drittgrößte in Kanada. Die Koordinaten: 49° 15' 39,14\" N, 123° 6' 50,23\" W, gemessen vom Rathaus. Es hat die pazifische Zeitzone : GMT -8 als Teil der pazifischen maritimen Ökozone und hat einen riesigen und berühmten Park namens Stanley Park ist einer der größten städtischen Parks in Nordamerika.Eine sehr vielfältige Stadt mit einem sehr hohen Lebensstandard, die auch eine der teuersten ist Städte der Welt und mit Sicherheit die teuerste in Nordamerika, eine wunderschöne Stadt mit Wasser und Wald und Blumen überall.

 

Η πόλη του Βανκούβερ είναι μια παραθαλάσσια, παραθαλάσσια πόλη στην ηπειρωτική χώρα της Βρετανικής Κολομβίας. Βρίσκεται στο δυτικό μισό της χερσονήσου Burrard, το Βανκούβερ οριοθετείται στα βόρεια από τον κόλπο English Bay και την είσοδο Burrard και νότια από τον ποταμό Fraser. Έχει έκταση 114 τετραγωνικά χιλιόμετρα (44 τετραγωνικά μίλια) με πληθυσμό 631.486 (σύμφωνα με την απογραφή του 2016. Το Βανκούβερ είναι η μεγαλύτερη πόλη στη Βρετανική Κολομβία και ο όγδοος μεγαλύτερος δήμος στον Καναδά· η μητροπολιτική περιοχή του Ευρύτερου Βανκούβερ (η οποία περιλαμβάνει γειτονικές πόλεις όπως το Μπέρναμπυ, το Ρίτσμοντ και το Σάρεϊ) είναι η τρίτη μεγαλύτερη στον Καναδά. Οι συντεταγμένες: 49° 15' 39,14\" Β, 123° 6' 50,23\" μέτρο Δ από το Δημαρχείο. Έχει τη ζώνη ώρας του Ειρηνικού : GMT -8 ως μέρος της θαλάσσιας οικοζώνης του Ειρηνικού και έχει ένα τεράστιο και διάσημο πάρκο που ονομάζεται Stanley Park είναι ένα από τα μεγαλύτερα αστικά πάρκα στη Βόρεια Αμερική. Μια πόλη με πολύ μεγάλη ποικιλία με πολύ υψηλό βιοτικό επίπεδο είναι επίσης μια από τις πιο ακριβές πόλεις στον κόσμο και σίγουρα η πιο ακριβή στη Βόρεια Αμερική.Είναι μια όμορφη πόλη με νερό και δάσος και λουλούδια παντού.

 

مدينة فانكوفر هي مدينة ساحلية ساحلية تقع على البر الرئيسي لكولومبيا البريطانية. تقع فانكوفر في النصف الغربي من شبه جزيرة بورارد ، ويحدها من الشمال خليج إنجليش ومدخل بورارد ومن الجنوب نهر فريزر. تبلغ مساحتها 114 كيلومترًا مربعًا (44 ميلًا مربعًا) ويبلغ عدد سكانها 631،486 نسمة (وفقًا لتعداد عام 2016. فانكوفر هي أكبر مدينة في كولومبيا البريطانية ، وثامن أكبر بلدية في كندا ؛ منطقة العاصمة الكبرى فانكوفر (التي تشمل المدن المجاورة مثل برنابي وريتشموند وساري) هي ثالث أكبر مدن كندا. الإحداثيات: 49 ° 15 '39.14 \ "شمالاً ، 123 ° 6' 50.23 \" غربًا من قاعة المدينة. بها المنطقة الزمنية للمحيط الهادئ : GMT -8 كجزء من منطقة المحيط الهادئ البحرية وبها حديقة ضخمة وشهيرة تسمى حديقة ستانلي وهي واحدة من أكبر المنتزهات الحضرية في أمريكا الشمالية. مدينة متنوعة للغاية مع مستوى معيشي مرتفع للغاية وهي أيضًا واحدة من أغلى مدن في العالم وبالتأكيد أغلى مدينة في أمريكا الشمالية ، إنها مدينة جميلة بها مياه وغابات وأزهار في كل مكان.

 

バンクーバー市は、ブリティッシュコロンビア州本土にある沿岸の港湾都市です。バラード半島の西半分に位置するバンクーバーは、北はイングリッシュベイとバラード入り江に、南はフレーザー川に囲まれています。面積は114平方キロメートル（44平方マイル）で、人口は631,486人です（2016年の国勢調査によると、バンクーバーはブリティッシュコロンビア州で最大の都市であり、カナダで8番目に大きい自治体です。バーナビー、リッチモンド、サリーなどの近隣の都市は、カナダで3番目に大きい都市です。座標：市庁舎から北緯49度15分39.14インチ、西経123度6分50.23インチ。太平洋のタイムゾーンがあります。 ：太平洋海事エコゾーンの一部としてのGMT -8で、スタンレーパークと呼ばれる巨大で有名な公園があります。これは北米で最大の都市公園の1つです。非常に多様な都市であり、生活水準も非常に高く、最も高価な都市の1つです。世界の都市、そして確かに北米で最も高価な都市です。それは水と森と花がいたるところにある美しい都市です。

 

वैंकूवर शहर ब्रिटिश कोलंबिया की मुख्य भूमि पर एक तटीय, बंदरगाह शहर है। बर्रार्ड प्रायद्वीप के पश्चिमी भाग में स्थित, वैंकूवर उत्तर में इंग्लिश बे और बर्रार्ड इनलेट और दक्षिण में फ्रेजर नदी से घिरा है। इसका क्षेत्रफल 631,486 (2016 की जनगणना के अनुसार) की आबादी के साथ 114 वर्ग किलोमीटर (44 वर्ग मील) है। वैंकूवर ब्रिटिश कोलंबिया का सबसे बड़ा शहर है, और कनाडा में आठवीं सबसे बड़ी नगरपालिका है; ग्रेटर वैंकूवर महानगरीय क्षेत्र (जिसमें शामिल है) पड़ोसी शहर जैसे बर्नाबी, रिचमंड, और सरे) कनाडा में तीसरा सबसे बड़ा है। निर्देशांक: 49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W सिटी हॉल से मापता है। इसमें प्रशांत समय क्षेत्र है : जीएमटी -8 प्रशांत समुद्री इकोज़ोन के हिस्से के रूप में और स्टेनली पार्क नामक एक विशाल और प्रसिद्ध पार्क है, जो उत्तरी अमेरिका के सबसे बड़े शहरी पार्कों में से एक है। एक बहुत ही विविध शहर जिसमें उच्च जीवन स्तर भी सबसे महंगे में से एक है दुनिया में शहर और निश्चित रूप से उत्तरी अमेरिका में सबसे महंगा। यह एक सुंदर शहर है जिसमें पानी और जंगल और फूल हैं।

 

溫哥華市是不列顛哥倫比亞省大陸的沿海海港城市。溫哥華位於伯拉德半島的西半部，北接英吉利灣和伯拉德灣，南接弗雷澤河。面積 114 平方公里（44 平方英里），人口 631,486 人（根據 2016 年人口普查。溫哥華是不列顛哥倫比亞省最大的城市，加拿大第八大城市；大溫哥華都會區（包括本拿比、里士滿和素裡等鄰近城市是加拿大第三大城市。坐標：49° 15' 39.14\" N, 123° 6' 50.23\" W 從市政廳測量。它有太平洋時區: 格林威治標準時間 -8 作為太平洋海洋生態區的一部分，擁有一個名為斯坦利公園的巨大而著名的公園，是北美最大的城市公園之一。一個非常多樣化的城市，生活水平很高，也是最昂貴的城市之一世界上最貴的城市，當然也是北美最貴的城市。它是一個美麗的城市，有水、森林和鮮花。

 

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however, we are following Edith, Lettice’s maid, as she heads east of Mayfair, to a place far removed from the elegance and gentility of Lettice’s flat, in London’s East End. As a young woman, Edith is very interested in fashion, particularly now that she is stepping out with Mr. Willison the grocer’s delivery boy, Frank Leadbetter. Luckily like most young girls of her class, her mother has taught Edith how to sew her own clothes and she has become an accomplished dressmaker, having successfully made frocks from scratch for herself, or altered cheaper existing second-hand pieces to make them more fashionable by letting out waistlines and taking up hems. Thanks to Lettice’s Cockney charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, who lives in nearby Poplar, Edith now has a wonderful haberdasher in Whitechapel, which she goes to on occasion on her days off when she needs something for one of her many sewing projects as she slowly adds to and updates her wardrobe. Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashery is just a short walk from Petticoat Lane**, where Edith often picks up bargains from one of the many second-hand clothes stalls. Today she is visiting Mrs. Minkin with her friend and fellow maid, Hilda, who works for Edith’s former employer, Mrs. Plaistow and has Thursdays free until four o’clock.

 

“Cor, you are so lucky Edith,” remarks Hilda as the two friends stand at Mrs. Minkin’s cluttered, but well ordered shop counter. “Your Miss Lettice seems never to be home. Weekend parties and all that.”

 

“Are you complaining, Hilda?” Edith asks her friend as she gazes around the floor to ceiling shelves full of ribbons and bobbins, corsetry, elastics tapers, and fabrics and breathes in the smell of fabrics, and the cloves and lavender used by Mrs. Minkel to keep the moths at bay.

 

“Oh no!” Hilda defends with a shake of her head. “I’m so happy that you’ve got spare time in her absence to catch up with me, Edith. I just wish I had such luxury. You remember what it was like. I’m lucky if Mr. and Mrs. Plaistow go to Bournemouth for a fortnight in high summer, and even then, I get penalised by being paid board wages*** since they take Cook with them.”

 

“Miss Lettice has only gone down to Wiltshire for the weekend, Hilda,” Edith confirms, toying with a reel of pale blue cotton she plans to buy along with a reel of yellow and a reel of red cotton. “She’ll be back on Monday, so it would hardly be worth putting me on board wages.”

 

“She never does though, does she? Not even for Christmas when she goes home, and you go to your parents?”

 

“Well, no.” Edith admits, dropping her head as her face flushes with embarrassment. She knows how much better off she is with Lettice than in her old position as a parlour maid alongside Hilda at Mrs. Plaistow’s in Pimlico. Mrs. Plaistow is a hard employer, and very mean, whereas Lettice is the opposite, and she knows that she is very spoilt in her position as live-in domestic for a woman who is not at home almost as often as she is. “But,” she counters. “When Miss Lettice does come back, she’ll be bringing her future sister-in-law with her, and then I’ll be busy picking up after two flappers rather than one, and she often entertains when she has guests, so I’ll have my work cut out for me between cleaning and cooking for the pair of them.”

 

“Still, it’s not the same.” Hilda grumbles. “Even if you do have to work hard, it’s not like the hard graft I have to suffer under Mrs. Plaistow. Did I tell you that Queenie chucked in her position?”

 

“No!” Edith gasps, remembering Mrs. Plaistow’s cheerful head parlour maid who was kind and friendly to both her and Hilda. “She was always so lovely. You’ll miss her.”

 

“Will I ever.” Hilda agrees. “She’s gone home to Manchester, well to Cheshire actually. Said she’s done with the big lights of London now, and she wants to be closer to her mum now that she’s getting on a bit.”

 

“That’s nice for her.”

 

“That’s what she said, but I think she really found a new position to get away from Mrs. Plaistow and all her mean ways.”

 

“What’s her new position?”

 

“She’s working as a maid in Alderley Edge for two old spinster sisters who live in a big old Victorian villa left to them by their father who owned a cotton mill. She wrote to me a few weeks ago after she settled in. She told me that the old ladies don’t go out much as one of them is an invalid, and they seldom entertain. Half the house is shut up because it’s too hard for them to use it. There’s a cook, a gardener cum odd job man, and like you a char comes in to do the hard jobs, so she’s finding it much easier. She writes that she can even take the train in to Manchester on her afternoons off to go shopping and see her old mum.”

 

“That sounds perfect. Does that mean you’ll become the head parlour maid now, Hilda?”

 

Hilda cocks an eyebrow at her friend and snorts with derision. “Don’t make me laugh. This is Mrs. Plaistow we’re talking about.”

 

“Yes, but you seem the most obvious choice to fill Queenie’s spot.” Edith says cheerily. “You’ve been there for what, three years now?” Hilda nods in agreement to Edith’s question. “So, you’d be perfect.”

 

This time it is Hilda’s head that sinks between her shoulders in a defeated fashion, the pale brown knit of her cardigan suddenly hanging lose over her plump frame as she hunches forward slightly.

 

“Of course you would, Hilda!” Edith assures her friend, placing a comforting hand on her forearm.

 

“Mrs. Plaistow doesn’t think so. She says I need more experience.”

 

“Oh what rubbish!” Edith cries, the outrage and indignation for her friend’s plight palpable in her voice. “Three years is more than enough experience!”

 

“She’s gone and hired a new girl after putting an advertisement in The Lady****. Her name’s Agnes.”

 

Both girls look at one another, screw up their face at the name, mutter their disapproval and then burst into girlish laughter as they chuckle over the faces each other pulled in their shared disgust. It is then that Edith has a momentary pang of loss as she remembers the nights she and Hilda used to share in their tiny attic room at the top of Mrs. Plaistow’s tall Pimlico townhouse. It might have been cold with no heating to be had, but all the girlish silliness and fun they had made up for the lack of warmth: talking about the handsome soldiers they met on their shared days off, discussing what their weddings would be like – each being the other’s bridesmaid – and constant discussions about what was fashionable to wear.

 

“Mrs. Plaistow’s just being her usual penny-pinching self.” Edith remarks. “She just doesn’t want to increase your wages and pay you what you’re really worth. I bet she hired this Agnes at a lesser wage than Queenie got, and even then, I don’t think Queenie was paid her worth.”

 

“Probably not.” Hilda says in return.

 

“I don’t know why you put up with her, Hilda. There are plenty of jobs going for parlour maids. I got out and look at me now. I’ve overheard Miss Lettice talk about something called ‘the servant problem’ with some of her married lady friends, where people cannot find quality domestics like us unless they can provide good working conditions. That’s why my wage at Miss Lettice’s is higher than it was at Mrs. Plaistow’s, and why I have a nice bedroom of my own with central heating and a comfy armchair to sit in.”

 

“And Miss Lettice is a nice mistress.” Hilda adds. “Who’s away half the time.”

 

“And Miss Lettice is nice mistress.” Edith agrees. “I can always give you the details of the agency in Westminster that I registered myself with, which led Miss Lettice to me. It has a very good clientele.”

 

“I don’t think a duchess will pay any better than Mrs. Plaistow will.” remarks Hilda disparagingly. “Anyway, I’ve been making enquiries on my days off, not today of course, and putting my name about Westminster and St. James’, so who knows.”

 

“Well, the offer is there if you fancy.” Edith begins.

 

“Here we are, Edit, my dear!” Mrs. Minkin chortles cheerily, breaking the girls’ conversation as she appears through the door leading from her storeroom, a bolt of pretty blue floral cotton across her ample arms. “Mr. Minkin needs to keep to buying fabric and leave it to me to arrange it in my own back room.” She wags a pudgy finger decorated with a few sparkling gold rings warningly as she places the fabric down in front of the gleaming cash register. “It was hidden, but now it is found Edit my dear.”

 

A refugee from Odessa as a result of a pogrom***** in 1905, Mrs. Minkin’s Russian accent, still thick after nearly twenty years of living in London’s East End, muffles the h at the end of Edith’s name, making the young girl smile, for it is an endearing quality. Edith likes the Jewess proprietor with her old fashioned upswept hairdo and frilly Edwardian lace jabot running down the front of her blouse, held in place by a beautiful cameo – a gift from her equally beloved and irritating Mr. Minkin. She always has a smile and a kind word for Edith, and her generosity towards her has found Edith discover extra spools of coloured cottons or curls of pretty ribbons and other notions****** in the lining of her parcel when she unpacks it at Cavendish Mews. Mrs. Minkin always insists when Edith mentions it, that she wished all her life that she had had a daughter, but all she ever had were sons, so Edith is like a surrogate daughter to her, and as a result she gets to reap the small benefits of her largess, at least until one of her sons finally makes her happy and brings home a girl she approves of.

 

“Thank you, Mrs. Minkin.” Edith says.

 

“Have you seen the latest edition of Weldon’s*******, Edit my dear?” the older woman asks as she jots down the fabric price in pencil on a notepad by the register. “There’s a very nice pattern for a frock with side and back flounces in it.”

 

“That’s what this fabric is for!” Edith says excitedly. “I think it will make a lovely summer frock.”

 

“I thought so.” Mrs. Minkin says with a wink. “I’m getting to know my Edit’s style. No?”

 

Edith nods shyly in agreement.

 

“Now, anything else, Edit my dear?”

 

“I’ll take these three cottons too please, Mrs. Minkin.” Edith places her hands over the spools and rolls them forward across the glass topped counter.

 

“Of course, Edit my dear.” the older woman chortles. “Some buttons too?” She indicates with the sweeping open handed gesture of a proud merchandiser to a tray of beautifully coloured glass, Bakelite and resin buttons expertly laid out next to the till.

 

“Oh,” Edith glances down at them quickly. “No thank you Mrs. Minkin. I have some buttons at home in my button jar.”

 

“Nonsense!” she scoffs in reply, expertly flicking through the cards of buttons. “A new dress must have new buttons.” She withdraws a set of six faceted Art Deco glass buttons that perfectly match the blue of the flowers on the fabric Edith is buying. “You take these as a gift from me. Yes?”

 

“Oh, but Mrs. Minkin!” Edith begins to protest, but she is silenced by the Jewess’ wagging finger.

 

“I’ll just fold them in here with the dress fabric.” She announces as if nothing were more normal. “You take them home with you and when you have made the frock, you wear it in here for me so I can see my buttons.”

 

Then just as she is slipping the buttons into a fold in the patterned cotton, a contemplative look runs across her face. She glances at Edith and then shifts her head. “You know what would go nicely with this fabric?” she asks rhetorically as she deposits the cloth onto a pile of brown paper next to the register and leans back. Stretching her arms over a basket of various brightly coloured and patterned fabric rolls she plucks a hat stand from behind her on which sits a beautiful straw hat decorated with a brightly coloured striped ribbon and some dainty fabric flowers in the palest shade of blue and golden red. “This.” She places it on the counter between herself and the two maids, smiling proudly as though the hat were a beautiful baby.

 

“Oh Edith!” gasps Hilda. “Isn’t it lovely?”

 

“Oh yes it is.” agrees Edith.

 

“And with your blonde hair it would be perfect.” Hilda adds enthusiastically.

 

“Your friend has a good eye.” Mrs. Minkin pipes up, nodding in agreement at Hilda, blessing her with a magnanimous smile. “It would suit you very nicely.”

 

“Oh no, Mrs. Minkin.” Edith protests.

 

“Now, I can’t give it away,” the Jewess answers, squeezing her doughy chin between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand as she contemplates the pretty bow and flowers. “But for you, my dear Edit, I sell it for twelve and six.”

 

“Twelve and six!” gasps Edith. “Oh Mrs. Minkin, even at that generous price I could never afford it.” She gingerly reaches out and toys with one of the fabric blooms as it sits tantalisingly on the hat’s brim.

 

“Ahh,” sighs the older woman as she reaches over, picks up the hat stand and hat with a groan and returns it to the display top of the mahogany drawers behind her. “Pity. Your friend its right. It really would suit you.”

 

“I’m only a maid, Mrs. Minkin,” Edith reminds her. “And whilst I might get paid more generously than some,” She dares to glance momentarily at Hilda who does not return her gaze, distracting herself looking through a basket of balls of wool. “I’m afraid it’s Petticoat Lane for me, where I can buy a straw hat cheaply and decorate it myself with ribbons from here.”

 

“And you’ll do a beautiful job of it I’m sure, Edit my dear.” Mrs. Minkin replies consolingly. “Just remember to echo the colours on your new frock. Yes?”

 

“Alright Mrs. Minkin. I will.”

 

“Good girl.” Mrs. Minkin purrs.

 

Just as the older woman turns back to the two girls, Edith notices for the first time a small square box displayed next to the hat. The cover features the caricature of a woman in profile with a fashionable Eaton crop******** wearing a pearl necklace reaching into her handbag. “May-Fayre Handkerchiefs,” she reads aloud softly.

 

“Oh, I just received a delivery of them.” Mrs. Minkin reaches down and pulls open one of the drawers and withdraws another box. “They’re British made, and very good quality. Look.” She points proudly to some red writing on the face of the box. “The colours are guaranteed permanent.”

 

“Hankies?” Hilda queries. “You don’t need hankies, Edith. You’ve got loads of them.”

 

“Not for me, Hilda: for Mum,” Edith explains. “For Christmas.”

 

“But it’s summer. That’s months away!” Hilda splutters.

 

“I know, but I don’t see why I can’t do a spot of early Christmas shopping.” Edith defends her actions. “It will save me having to join the crowds desperately looking for gifts in December. How much are they Mrs. Minkin?”

 

“They’re three shillings and ninepence.” Mrs. Minkin replies. “You’re a sensible girl, Edit my dear. You shop for bargains, and you look for gifts all year round. What a pity you aren’t Jewish. You’d make a good wife for my Gideon.”

 

“No thank you, Mrs. Minkin,” Edith laughs. “No matchmaking for me.”

  

“Never mind.” Mrs. Minkin chuckles, joining in Edith’s good-natured laughing as she carefully folds brown paper around Edith’s fabric, buttons, box of handkerchiefs and spools of cotton.

 

“Besides,” Edith adds. “I already have a chap I’m walking out with. I can’t very well walk out with two, can I?”

 

“Well, a clever girl like you must have dozens of young men vying for her attentions, I’m sure.” The older woman ties Edith’s purchases up with some twine which she expertly trims with a pair of sharp shears.

 

“I wouldn’t say dozens. Anyway, just one will do me fine, Mrs. Minkin.”

 

“Now, the fabric is six shillings,” the proprietoress mutters, half to herself. “And the handkerchiefs three shillings and ninepence. With the three cottons, that comes to ten shillings exactly.” She enters the price into the register which clunks and groans noisily before the bright ting of a bell heralds the opening of the cash drawer at the bottom.

 

Edith opens her green leather handbag and pulls out her small black coin purse and carefully counts out the correct money in her palm. “Cheaper than a new straw hat.” She hands it over to Mrs. Minkin, who carefully puts it in the various denomination drawers of the till before pushing the cash drawer closed.

 

“Right you are Edit my dear. There you are.” Mrs. Minkin says cheerfully as she hands over Edith’s brown paper wrapped package bound with twine. “Now, what may I hep you with, my dear?” She turns her attention to Hilda.

 

“Me?” Hilda gulps, pressing the fingers of her right hand to her chest. “Oh, I’ve just come to keep my friend company. I don’t sew.”

 

“What?” The older woman’s eyes grow wide as she looks the rather dowdy brunette in the brown cardigan up and down appraisingly. “Not sew? What girl cannot sew?”

 

“Well I can’t,” Hilda replies. “And that’s a fact.”

 

“Foyl meydl*********!” gasps the Jewess aghast, her hand clasping the cameo at her throat. “All girls should know how to sew, even if badly.” She folds her arms akimbo over her large chest, a critical look on her face. “No goy********** will want to marry you if you can’t sew, my dear! Edit my dear,” She turns her attention away from Hilda momentarily. “You need to take your friend in hand and teach her how to sew.” She turns back to Hilda. “Your friend can show you. She knows how to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Eh?”

 

Hilda looks in terror at Edith, who bursts out laughing at her friend’s horrified face. Wrapping her arm comfortingly around her friend, Edith assures Mrs. Minkin that she will take Hilda under her wing. Winking conspiratorially at Hilda so that the proprietoress cannot see, she ushers her friend out of the haberdashery and back out onto the busy Whitechapel street outside with a cheery goodbye to Mrs. Minkin.

 

*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

**Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

***Board wages were monies paid in lieu of meals and were paid in addition to a servant’s normal salary. Often servants were paid board wages when their employer went on holiday, or to London for the season, leaving them behind with no cook t prepare their meals. Some employers paid their servants fair board wages, however most didn’t, and servants often found themselves out of pocket fending for themselves, rather than having meals provided within the household.

 

****The Lady is one of Britain's longest-running women's magazines. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. It is particularly notable for its classified advertisements for domestic service and child care; it also has extensive listings of holiday properties.

 

*****Pogroms in the Russian Empire were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that began in the Nineteenth Century. Pogroms began to occur after Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815. The 1905 pogrom against Jews in Odessa was the most serious pogrom of the period, with reports of up to 2,500 Jews killed. Jews fled Russia, some ending up in London’s east end, which had a reasonably large Jewish community, particularly associated with clothing manufacturing.

 

******In sewing and haberdashery, notions are small objects or accessories, including items that are sewn or otherwise attached to a finished article, such as buttons, snaps, and collar stays. Notions also include the small tools used in sewing, such as needles, thread, pins, marking pens, elastic, and seam rippers.

 

*******Created by British industrial chemist and journalist Walter Weldon Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was the first ‘home weeklies’ magazine which supplied dressmaking patterns. Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal was first published in 1875 and continued until 1954 when it ceased publication.

 

********The Eton crop is a type of very short, slicked-down crop hairstyle for women. It became popular during the 1920s because it was ideal to showcase the shape of cloche hats. It was worn by Josephine Baker, among others. The name derives from its similarity to a hairstyle allegedly popular with schoolboys at Eton.

 

*********”Foy meydl” is Yiddish for “lazy girl”.

 

**********”Goy” is Yiddish for a gentile, non-Jew.

 

Mrs. Minkin’s cluttered haberdashers with its bright wallpaper and assortment of notions is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The pretty straw picture hat on the left, decorated with a real fabric ribbon and artificial flowers is an artisan piece and was acquired through Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders miniature shop in the United Kingdom. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. In this case, the straw hat was made by a British artisan. In complete contrast, the hat on the right with its restrained decoration is a mass manufactured hat and came from Melody Jane’s Doll House in the United Kingdom. Contrary to popular belief, fashion at the beginning of the Roaring 20s did not feature the iconic cloche hat as a commonly worn head covering. Although invented by French milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, the cloche hat did not start to gain popularity until 1922, so even though this story is set in that year, picture hats, a hangover from the pre-war years, were still de rigueur in fashionable society even after this. Although nowhere near as wide, heavy, voluminous or as ornate as the hats worn by women between the turn of the Twentieth Century and the Great War, the picture hats of the 1920s were still wide brimmed, although they were generally made of straw or some lightweight fabric and were decorated with a more restrained touch.

 

The May-Fayre handkerchief box and the lisle hose box sitting directly behind it come from Shepard’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, who have a dizzying array of packaging pieces from the late 1800s to the 1970s. The Warner Brothers corset box behind them and the corset box sitting on the second shelf to the left were made meticulously by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The box of Wizard tapes on the top shelf to the left and the pink corsetry box on the bottom shelf to the left I acquired from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel as part of a larger collection of 1:12 artisan miniature hats, gloves, accessories and haberdashery goods. Edith’s green leather handbag also comes from Marilyn Bickel’s collection.

 

The jewellery stand, complete with jewellery comes from a 1:12 miniature supplier in Queensland. The round mirror, which pivots, and features a real piece of mirror was a complimentary gift from the same seller.

 

The basket in the midground to the right, filled with embroidery items is a 1:12 miniature I have had since I was a teenager. I acquired it from a high street shop that specialised in dolls and doll house accessories.

 

The Superior Quality buttons on cards in the foreground next to the cash register are in truth tiny beads. They, along with basket of rolled fabrics in the left midground, the spools of cottons and the balls of wool in the basket on the right all come from various online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures.

 

The brightly shining cash register was supplied by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom.

 

The mahogany stained chest of drawers on which the hats, jewellery, mirror and boxes stand I have had since I was around ten years old.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews, although we are still in Mayfair, moving a few streets away to Hill Street, where Edith, Lettice’s maid, and her beau, grocery boy Frank Leadbetter, are visiting Edith’s friend and fellow maid Hilda. It is a beautiful, sunny Sunday and Sundays all three have as days off from their jobs as domestic servants and delivery boy. Taking advantage of this, all three are going to spend the afternoon at Hammersmith Palias de Danse*. As usual, Frank collects Edith from Cavendish Mews and the pair then go to the home of Lettice’s married friends Margot and Dickie Channon, where Hilda works as a live-in maid.

 

Being Hilda’s day off, her employers usually decamp for the day, and today they are visiting their friend Priscilla who recently married American dry goods heir Georgie Carter. The pair have just returned to London from their honeymoon which took in much of Europe before visiting Georgie’s family in Philadelphia. The quartet will dine at the Café Royal**, doubtless at the expense of Georgie since the Channons seem perpetually to have financial difficulties, but as a result, the Channons have invited the Carters back to their Hill Street flat for after supper coffee, which means that Hilda must do one of her most hated jobs: grind coffee beans to make real coffee for Georgie Carter, who is particular about his American style coffee. We find the trio in the kitchen of the Hill Street flat, the ladies’ dancing frocks and Frank’s suit at odds with their surrounds as Hilda grinds the coffee beans sitting in a white china bowl in the large wooden and brass coffee grinder. By preparing the coffee, ready to make before she goes out, it will be easy to serve when her employers and their guests return after dinner, and the beans will still be fresh enough for Georgie’s liking.

 

“You know,” Frank remarks as he stands at Edith’s elbow and watches Hilda turn the handle of the coffee grinder with gusto. “I don’t see why they can’t just drink Camp Coffee*** like the rest of us.”

 

“Oh Frank!” gasps Edith, looking up at her beau and patting his hand with her own as he squeezes her left shoulder lovingly. “You know perfectly well why not, Frank. Mr. and Mrs. Channon’s friend, Mr. Carter is an American gentleman, and just like Miss Wanetta Ward the American moving picture star, he doesn’t like British coffee.”

 

“What rot!” Frank scoffs at the suggestion. “There’s nothing wrong with British coffee! If British coffee isn’t to Mr. Carter’s taste, let him have tea then, and save poor Hilda the effort of having to grind up coffee beans for his lordship.” He slips off the jacket of his smart Sunday blue suit, revealing his crisp white shirt, red tie and smart navy blue vest. He drapes it over the back of the Windsor chair Edith sits in. “Come on old girl,” he says to Hilda as he moves around the deal pine kitchen table. “Give me a go then. Give your arms a chance to recuperate before we go dancing.”

 

“You’re such a Socialist, Frank Leadbetter.” pipes up Hilda as with a grunt, she pushes the handle of the grinder mechanism over a particularly recalcitrant coffee bean.

 

“What?” gasps Frank as he takes over grinding from the grateful maid. “I thought you’d come to my defence, Hilda, especially as I’m being so chivalrous as to grind coffee beans for you.”

 

“Oh I am grateful, Frank, ever so.” Hilda replies, rubbing her aching forearms with her fat, sausage like fingers. “But just because you are being gallant, doesn’t mean I can’t call you a Socialist.”

 

“Because a hard working man like me thinks I’m every bit as good as this friend of your Mr. and Mrs. Channon, I’m now a Socialist?” Frank asks in an appalled voice. “You’re as bad as Edith’s mum.” He nods in his sweetheart’s direction.

 

“Mum thinks Frank might be a Communist.” Edith explains. “Even though we’ve both told her that he isn’t.”

 

“Handsome is as handsome does.” remarks Hilda with a cheeky smile as she glances at Frank winding the red knob topped brass handle of the grinder.

 

“I’m neither, I’ll have you know, Hilda Clerkenwell!” Frank retorts. “I’d prefer to think of myself as more of a progressive thinker when it comes to the rights and privileges of the working man,” He looks poignantly at Hilda. “And woman.”

 

“Same thing.” Hilda retorts matter-of-factly as she starts to straighten the russet grosgrain bandeau**** embellished with gold sequins which has slipped askew whilst she has been grinding coffee beans.

 

“Pardon my ignorance,” Edith begins gingerly. “But what exactly is a Socialist?”

 

“Socialism is a political movement that wants to reform various economic and social systems, transferring them to social ownership as opposed to private ownership.” remarks Hilda as she runs her hands down the back of her hair.

 

“Well done, Hilda!” Frank congratulates her.

 

“You sound surprised, Frank.” Hilda says with a cheeky smile. “Don’t they have smart girls where you come from, present company excluded, Edith!” Hilda adds hurriedly so as not to offend her best friend.”

 

“Oh, you know I’m not very political,” Edith assures Hilda, yet at the same time self consciously toys with her blonde waves as she speaks.

 

“I must confess, Hilda, I am a little surprised.” Frank admits. “I don’t know many girls who are interested in social rights and can give explanations so eloquently.”

 

“I’m so sorry Frank!” Edith defends herself. “I know you’ve tried to teach me, but I can’t help it. I get confused between this ist and the other ist. They all seem the same to me.” She blushes with mild embarrassment at her own ignorance.

 

“No, no, Edith!” Frank assures her as he stops grinding the coffee beans and reaches out his left hand, clasping her right one as it rests on the tabletop and squeezes it reassuringly. “This isn’t a criticism of you! It was a compliment to Hilda. You’re wonderful, and there are things that you understand and are far better at than me.”

 

“Than both of us, Edith.” adds Hilda quickly, the look of concern about her friend taking umbrage clear on her round face.

 

“Yes, inconsequential things.” Edith mumbles in a deflated tone.

 

“No, not at all.” Frank reassures her soothingly as he takes up grinding coffee again. “What good am I to myself if I can’t cook a meal to feed myself.”

 

“And for all my love of reading, Edith, you know I can’t sew a stitch.” Hilda appends. “I could never have made this beautiful frock.” She grasps the edge of the strap of her russet coloured art satin***** dress as she speaks. “Not in a million years. We’re all good at different things, and no-one could say you weren’t smart, Edith.”

 

“That’s right.” Frank concurs, smiling at his sweetheart. “One of the reasons why I’ve always admired you is because you aren’t some silly giggling Gertie****** like some of the housemaids I’ve known. You aren’t turned by just a handsome face, and your head isn’t filled with moving picture stars and nothing else.”

 

“Well, I do like moving picture stars, Frank.” Edith confesses.

 

“Oh I know, Edith, and I love you for that too.” Frank reassures her. “But it’s not all that is in there. You have a good head on your shoulders.”

 

“And a wise one too.” Hilda interjects. “How often do I ask you for advice? I’ve always asked you for your opinion on things for as long as we’ve been friends.”

 

“You are clever, and insightful, and you want a better life for yourself too, and that’s why I really love you. We want the same things from life.” Frank says in a soft and soothing tone full of love as he gazes at Edith. “You are very pretty, and no-one can deny that – not even you,” He holds out an admonishing finger as Edith goes to refute his remark. “But beauty, however glorious will fade. Just look at our Dowager Queen Mother*******. When beauty fades, wit and intelligence remain, and you have both of those qualities in spades, Edith.”

 

“Oh Frank.” Edith breathes softly. “You aren’t ashamed of me then?”

 

“Of course I’m not Edith! How could I ever be ashamed of you? I’m as proud as punch******** to step out with you! You’re my best girl.”

 

Frank winds the gleaming brass coffee grinder handle a few more times before stopping. He pulls out the drawer at the bottom and as he does, the rich aroma of freshly ground coffee beans fills the air around them, wafting up his, Edith and Hilda’s nostrils. He sighs with satisfaction at a job well done.

 

“Good enough for his American lordship?” Frank asks Hilda.

 

She peers into the drawer. “Good enough.” she acknowledges with another of her cheeky smirks, nodding affirmatively.

 

“I still think he could jolly well grind his own, you know, Hilda!” Frank opines.

 

“Socialist.” she laughs in reply as she walks around Frank, withdraws the drawer of ground coffee and knocks the contents into the small, worn Delftware coffee cannister with careful taps, so as not to spill and waste any of the hard-won grinds.

 

“I bet you, your Wanetta Ward doesn’t grind her own coffee, Edith.” Frank goes on as he walks back around to Edith and slips his jacket on again.

 

“I bet you she does, Frank!” Edith counters.

 

“What? A moving picture star grinding her own coffee? I don’t believe it!”

 

“Miss Ward is a very unorthodox person, Frank, even for an American.” she assures him. “I think she might surprise you if you ever get the pleasure of meeting her one day.”

 

“Maybe.” Frank says doubtfully. “Well now that coffee is ground, we should really get going.” He runs his hands around the back of his jacket collar to make sure it is sitting straight. “The Hammersmith Palais waits for no-one, not even those who slave for undeserving Americans.” He laughs good heartedly. “Shall we go?”

 

“Oh yes!” enthuses Edith as Frank chivalrously pulls out her chair for her as she stands up. “I’ll fetch our coats.”

 

With her pretty blue floral sprigged frock swirling about her figure, Edith hurries over to the pegs by the door where Frank’s, Hilda’s and her own coat and hats hang. She moves lightly across the floor, practicing her dance steps as she goes, silently moving to the music she hears the band playing in her head.

 

“I really wonder why I bother sometimes.” Hilda says despondently as she pulls her brown coat on over the top of the luxurious man-made silk frock that Edith made for her and decorated with lace trimming and small bursts of sequins.

 

“Like I said,” Frank mutters. “He should settle for Camp Coffee like the rest of us, or have tea.”

 

“Not grinding coffee, Frank!” Hilda scoffs in reply. “I mean go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais week after week. What’s the point?”

 

“What do you mean, Hilda?” Edith asks gently, slipping her arms into her own black three-quarter length coat as Frank holds to open for her.

 

“I mean why do I bother going dancing when no man at the Palais ever looks at me, even in this beautiful new frock you made me, Edith.” She picks up the lace trimmed hem of her dance dress and lifts it despondently.

 

Edith and Frank both glance anxiously at one another for a moment. Both know they are thinking exactly the same thing. What Hilda says is true. Whenever the three of them go to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse there are always far more women in attendance than men. The Great War decimated the male population, and almost drove an entire generation of young men into extinction. Sadly, this means that more and more women are finding themselves without a gentleman to step out with, and are deemed surplus to needs by society. In spite of any of his faults, Edith knows how lucky she is to have a young man like Frank. Even the attentions of pretty girls are less in demand with fewer men in circulation desiring their company. Unlike Edith, Hilda is a little on the plump side, enjoying the indulgence of sticky buns from the bakers and an extra serving of Victoria Sponge at the Lyons Corner Shop********* at the top of Tottenham Court Road. Her face is friendly, with soft brown eyes and a warm smile, but she isn’t pretty. Even with the judicious application of a little powder and rouge acquired from the make-up counter of Selfridges********** her skin lacks the fresh gleam that Edith has, and for as long as she has known her, Edith has always found Hilda to have a very pale complexion. When the three of them do go dancing, Frank is often the only man she dances with when he partners her around the dancefloor, and more often than not, Hilda ends up taking the part of the man, dancing with any number of other neglected wallflowers, just to ward of the tedium of waiting for someone to ask her to dance. The plight, for plight it was, of women like Hilda was all too common, in the post-war world of the 1920s.

 

“Perhaps you’re looking in the wrong place, Hilda.” Frank says.

 

“What do mean, Frank?”

 

“Well, a girl with brains like you needs a man who will stimulate her mentally. Perhaps you might find the man of your dreams at a library.”

 

“A library!” Hilda’s mind conjures up images of pale bookish young men in glasses with phlegmatic characters who would much rather shake her hand limply and discuss the benefits of Socialism, rather than sweep her off her feet romantically.

 

“Not at all helpful, Frank!” hisses Edith as she watches her best friend’s face fall.

 

“I was only joking.” Frank shrugs apologetically, unsure what to say.

 

Edith hurries over and wraps her arm around Hilda’s slumping shoulders consolingly. “A faint heart never won a fair lady, Hilda.” She pulls Hilda to her lovingly. Hilda looks up at her friend sadly, yet thoughtfully. “And I think it works the same in reverse.”

 

Seeing a way to make amends for his ill-timed joke, Frank pipes up, “That’s exactly right, Hilda. Edith wouldn’t have been anywhere near as attractive to me if she hadn’t had a bit of pluck.”

 

“And you look splendid in the dance frock I made for you, Hilda,” Edith adds. “Really you do.”

 

“Do you really think so, Edith?” Hilda asks, looking at her friend.

 

“Of course I do! I’m a professional seamstress, and you are my best friend. I wouldn’t make something that didn’t suit you!”

 

“No, no of course not.” Hilda replies.

 

“And didn’t Mrs. Minkin say that russet satin would suit your colourings?”

 

“She did.”

 

“Well then,” Edith replies matter-of-factly. “There is nothing more to be said.”

 

“That’s right.” agrees Frank, and without further ado, he sweeps Hilda into his arms.

 

With the ease of a natural dancer, Frank begins to waltz his partner carefully across the black and white chequered linoleum floor of the Channon’s kitchen, guiding her around the kitchen table and the chairs gathered around it, past the black and white stove and the dresser cluttered with crockery and provisions.

 

“Oh Frank!” Hilda says, laughing joyously as she allows herself to be swept away. “You really are a one!”

 

Edith smiles as she sees a light return to her best friend’s eyes, and a smile appear upon her pert lips. She considers herself so fortunate not just because she has a chap to step out with, but because Frank is so kind and considerate. Not just any man would understand or appreciate Edith’s wish to include Hilda in their excursions to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, and not every man would be as willing to take a turn with her on the dancefloor, as has been proven. Then again, Frank is no ordinary man, and as time goes on and she gets to know him better, the more she is becoming aware that her sweetheart is a very special man indeed. She laughs as Frank dips Hilda, making her squeal in delight, before raising her up again and restoring her to her feet.

 

“There!” Frank says with a huff as he catches his breath. “Now that your feet are suitably warmed up, you’re ready to go, Miss Clerkenwell. We’ll have no more talk of you not wanting to come dancing with us.”

 

“Today might be the day you meet someone, Hilda. Don’t give up on the chance.” Edith enthuses.

 

“Oh alright you two!” Hilda acquiesces. “I give up. Let’s go then.”

 

“That’s the spirit, Hilda!” Frank says. “That pluck will win you a fine and handsome gentleman with a brain that you deserve.”

 

“I can hardly battle both of you, can I?” Hilda laughs as she carefully places her floppy brimmed brown velvet and copper faille poke-style bonnet decorated with a beige rose and leaves atop her head.

 

The three friends walk out of the kitchen door that leads out onto the flat’s back stairs and begin to descend to the street. Hilda locks the door behind her and the coffee grinder and the as of yet to be ground coffee beans sit on the table, ready for when she returns later that day to serve to Margot, Dickie and their friends Priscilla and Georgie Carter.

 

*The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

**The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.

 

***Camp Coffee is a concentrated syrup which is flavoured with coffee and chicory, first produced in 1876 by Paterson & Sons Ltd, in Glasgow. In 1974, Dennis Jenks merged his business with Paterson to form Paterson Jenks plc. In 1984, Paterson Jenks plc was bought by McCormick & Company. Legend has it (mainly due to the picture on the label) that Camp Coffee was originally developed as an instant coffee for military use. The label is classical in tone, drawing on the romance of the British Raj. It includes a drawing of a seated Gordon Highlander (supposedly Major General Sir Hector MacDonald) being served by a Sikh soldier holding a tray with a bottle of essence and jug of hot water. They are in front of a tent, at the apex of which flies a flag bearing the drink's slogan, "Ready Aye Ready". A later version of the label, introduced in the mid-20th century, removed the tray from the picture, thus removing the infinite bottles element and was seen as an attempt to avoid the connotation that the Sikh was a servant, although he was still shown waiting while the kilted Scottish soldier sipped his coffee. The current version, introduced in 2006, depicts the Sikh as a soldier, now sitting beside the Scottish soldier, and with a cup and saucer of his own. Camp Coffee is an item of British nostalgia, because many remember it from their childhood. It is still a popular ingredient for home bakers making coffee-flavoured cake and coffee-flavoured buttercream. In late 1975, Camp Coffee temporarily became a popular alternative to instant coffee in the UK, after the price of coffee doubled due to shortages caused by heavy frosts in Brazil.

 

****A bandeau is a narrow band of fabric worn round the head to hold the hair in position. Although bandeaus existed long before the 1920s, there was a resurgence in popularity for embroidered grosgrain ribbons to be worn around the head across the forehead in the 1920s, and they are synonymous with 1920s flapper fashion.

 

*****The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.

 

******Although obscure as to its origin, the term “giggling Gertie” is of English derivation and was often used in a derisive way to describe silly children and young people, usually girls, who were deemed as being flippant and foolish.

 

*******Queen Alexandra was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from the twenty-second of January 1901 to the sixth of May 1910 as the wife of King-Emperor Edward VII. Daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, at the age of sixteen Alexandra was chosen as the future wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the son and heir apparent of Queen Victoria. When she arrived in England she was famed for her beauty and her style of dress and bearing were copied by fashion-conscious women. From Edward's death, Alexandra was queen mother, being a dowager queen and the mother of the reigning monarch. Alexandra retained a youthful appearance into her senior years, but during the Great War her age caught up with her. She took to wearing elaborate veils and heavy makeup, which was described by gossips as having her face "enamelled".

 

********Although today we tend to say as “pleased as punch”, the Victorian term actually began as “proud as punch”. This expression refers to the Punch and Judy puppet character. Punch's name comes from Punchinello, an Italian puppet with similar characteristics. In Punch and Judy shows, the grotesque Punch is portrayed as self-satisfied and pleased with his evil actions.

 

*********J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

********** Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of upscale department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited, part of the Selfridges Group of department stores. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1908. Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr. was an American-British retail magnate who founded the London-based department store. His twenty year leadership of Selfridge’s led to his becoming one of the most respected and wealthy retail magnates in the United Kingdom. He was known as the 'Earl of Oxford Street'.

 

***********Faille is a type of cloth with flat ribs, often made in silk. It has a softer texture than grosgrain, with heavier and wider cords or ribs. Weft yarns are heavier than warp, and it is manufactured in plain weaving. It was especially popular in the Nineteenth Century, and its popularity, although somewhat dwindling, did carry through into the early decades of the Twentieth Century.

 

This cosy domestic kitchen scene is a little different to what you might think, for whilst it looks very authentic, it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

On Hilda’s deal table stands her coffee grinder with its brass handle, wooden base and drawer, and red knobs. It comes from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The little Delftware canister and the white china bowl also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The coffee beans in the bowl are really black carraway seeds. The vase of flowers comes from an online shop on E-Bay.

 

Hilda’s Windsor chair is a hand-turned 1:12 artisan miniature which came from America. Unfortunately, the artist did not carve their name under the seat, but it is definitely an unmarked artisan piece.

 

In the background you can see a very modern and up-to-date 1920s gas stove. It would have been expensive to instal at the time, and it would have been the cook’s or maid’s pleasure to cook on and in. It would have included a thermostat for perfect cooking and without the need of coal, it was much cleaner to feed, use and easier to clean. It is not unlike those made by the Roper Stove Company in the 1920s. The Roper Stove Company previously named the Florence-Wehrle Company among other names, was founded in 1883. Located in Newark, Ohio, the company was once the largest stove producer in the world. Today, the Roper Stove Company is a brand of Whirlpool.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Lettice is visiting her family home after receiving a strongly worded instruction from her father by letter to visit without delay or procrastination. Over luncheon, Lettice was berated by her parents for her recent decision to decorate the home of the upcoming film actress, Wanetta Ward. Lettice has a strained relationship with her mother at the best of times as the two have differing views about the world and the role that women have to play in it, and whilst receiving complaints about her choice of clients, Lettice was also scolded by mother for making herself unsuitable for any young man who might present as an eligible prospect. Although Lettice is undeniably her father’s favourite child, even he has been less than receptive to her recent choices of clients, which has put her a little out of favour with him. After Lady Sadie stormed out of the dining room over one of Lettice’s remarks, Viscount Wrexham implored his headstrong youngest daughter to try and make an effort with her mother, which is something she has been mulling over during her overnight stay.

 

Now Lettice stands in the grand Robert Adam decorated marble and plaster entrance hall of her family home as she prepares to take her leave. Outside on the gravel driveway, Harris the chauffer has the Chetwynd’s 1912 Daimler ready to drive her to the Glynes village railway station for the one fifteen to London. She has bid farewell to her brother Leslie and her father. Now there is just one final member of the family whom she needs to say goodbye to.

 

“Thank you Marsden.” Lettice remarks to the liveried first footman as he carries the last of Lettice’s luggage out to the Daimler.

 

“I hope you have a safe journey back to London, My Lady.” Bramley, the Chetwynd’s butler remarks as he walks into the entrance hall to see Lettice off.

 

“Thank you, Bramley,” Lettice replies. “Oh, I’m glad you are here. Do you know where my Mother might be?”

 

Considering her question, the old butler looks to the upper levels and ceiling of the hall before replying knowingly. “Well, it is still mid-morning according to Her Ladyship, so I would imagine that she will be in the morning room. Shall I go and see, My Lady?”

 

“No thank you Bramley. You have more than enough to do I’m sure, managing this old pile of bricks, without doing that for me. I’m perfectly capable of seeking her out for myself.”

 

Turning on her heel, Lettice walks away from the butler, her louis heels echoing off the marble tiles around the entrance hall in her wake.

 

“Mamma?” Lettice trills with false cheer as she knocks with dread on the walnut door to the morning room.

 

When there is no reply to her call, she considers two possibilities: either her mother is still in a funk with her and not speaking to her after the scene in the dining room yesterday, or she isn’t in the morning room at all. Both are as likely as each other. Taking a deep breath, she turns the handle and opens the door, calling her mother again as she does so.

 

The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother her mother’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent. Lady Sadie is nowhere to be seen but cannot have been gone long judging by her floral wake.

 

Walking over to the Eighteenth Century bonheur de jour* that stands cosily in a corner of the room, Lettice snorts quietly with derision as she looks at the baby photograph of Leslie, her eldest brother, which stands in pride of place in a big silver frame on the desk’s serpentine top, along with a significantly smaller double frame featuring late Nineteenth Century younger incarnations of her parents. Lettice, her sister Lally and brother Lionel have been relegated to a lesser hanging space on the wall, as befits the children seen as less important by their mother. Everything has always been about Leslie as far as their mother is concerned, and always has been for as long as Lettice can remember.

 

Lettice runs her fingers idly over several books sitting open on the desk’s writing space. There is a costume catalogue from London and a book on Eighteenth Century hairstyles. “Making plans for the Hunt Ball.” Lettice muses with a smile. It is then that she notices a much thicker book below the costume catalogue which has a familiar looking worn brown leather cover with a gilt tooled inlay. Moving the catalogue Lettice finds a copy of Debrett’s**

 

“Oh Mamma!” she exhales with disappointment as she shakes her head.

 

As she picks it up, she dislodges a partially written letter in her mother’s elegant copperplate hand from beneath it. Lettice knows she shouldn’t read it but can’t help herself as she scans the thick white paper embossed with the Wrexham coat of arms. Its contents make her face go from its usual creamy pallor to red with frustration.

 

“Ahh! Lettice!” Lady Sadie’s crisp intonation slices the silence as she walks into the morning room and discovers her daughter standing over her desk. “Heading back to London, are we?” she continues cheerily as she observes her daughter dressed in her powder blue travelling coat, matching hat and arctic fox fur stole. She smiles as she indicates to the desk’s surface. “I’m making plans for my outfit for the Hunt Ball. I thought I might come as Britannia this year.”

 

Lettice doesn’t answer her mother immediately as she continues to stare down at the letter next to her mother’s silver pen and bottle of ink. Remembering her father’s request, she draws upon her inner strength to try and remain civil as she finally acknowledges, “How appropriate that you should come as the all-conquering female warrior.”

 

“Lettice?” Lady Sadie remarks quizzically.

 

“Perhaps you might like to reconsider your choice of costume and come as my faerie godmother, since I’m coming as Cinderella.”

 

“Oh, now that’s a splendid idea! Although I don’t…”

 

“Or better yet, come as cupid instead!” Lettice interrupts her mother hotly, anger seething through her clipped tones as she tries to keep her temper.

 

“Now you’re just being foolish, Lettice,” Lady Sadie replies as she walks towards her daughter, the cheerful look on her face fading quickly as she notices the uncovered copy of Debrett’s on her desk’s surface.

 

“Not at all, Mamma! I think it’s most apt considering what you are trying to do.”

 

“Trying to do? What on earth are you talking about Lettice?” the older woman chuckles awkwardly, her face reddening a little as she reaches her bejewelled right hand up to the elegant strand of collar length pearls at her throat.

 

Lettice picks up the letter, dangling it like an unspoken accusation between herself and her mother before looking down at it and reading aloud, “My dear Lillie, we haven’t seen you at Glynes for so long. Won’t you, Marmaduke and Jonty consider coming to the Hunt Ball this year? Do you remember how much Jonty and my youngest, Lettice, used to enjoy playing together here as children? I’m sure that now that they are both grown, they should be reacquainted with one another.” She lowers her hand and drops the letter on top of the edition of Debrett’s like a piece of rubbish before looking up at her mother, giving her a cool stare.

 

“It isn’t ladylike to read other people’s correspondence, Lettice!” Lady Sadie quips as she marches up to her desk and snatches the letter away from Lettice’s reach, lest her daughter should cast it into the fire cracking peaceably in the grate.

 

“Is it ladylike to arrange the lives of two strangers without discussing it?”

 

“It has long been the prerogative of mothers to arrange their children’s marriages.” The older woman defends herself. “And you and Jonty Hastings aren’t strangers, Lettice. You and he…”

 

“Haven’t seen each other since we were about six years old, when we played in the hedgerows together and had tea in the nursery with Nanny Webb after she had washed the mud off us!”

 

“Well, all the better for the two of you to become reacquainted then, as I’m suggesting to his mother.” She runs her fingers along the edges of the letter in her hands defiantly. “And I am going to send this letter, Lettice,” Her voice gathers a steely tone of determination. “Whether you like it, or lump it.”

 

“Yes, Pappa told me after you,” she pauses for a moment to consider her words carefully. “Left, us at luncheon yesterday, that you had been making some discreet enquiries about inviting some eligible young bachelors for me to the ball this year.”

 

“And so I have, Lettice.” Lady Sadie sniffs. “Since you seem incapable of finding yourself a suitable match even after your successful debut London Season, I have taken it upon myself to do some…”

 

“Matchmaking, Mamma?”

 

“Arranging, Lettice. Tarquin Howard, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes…”

 

“Sir John is as old as the hills!” Lettice splutters in disbelief. “You surely can’t imagine I’d consider him a likely prospect!”

 

“Sir John is an excellent match, Lettice. You can hardly fail to see how advantageous it would be to marry him.”

 

“Once I look past the twenty five, no more, years age difference. No, better he be chased by some social climbing American woman looking for an entrée into the society pages. Perhaps I should ask Miss Ward to the ball. I’m sure she would love to meet Sir John.”

 

Lady Sadie’s already pale face drains of any last colour at the thought of an American moving picture star walking into her well planned ball. “Well, if you won’t countenance Sir John, I’ve also invited Edward Lambley and Selwyn Spencely.”

 

“Selwyn Spencely?” Lettice laughs. “The guest list just gets more and more implausable.”

 

“What’s so implausible about Selwyn Spencely, Lettice? The Spencelys are a very good family. Selwyn has a generous income which will only increase when he eventually takes his father’s place as the next Viscount Markham. He inherited a house in Belgravia from his grandfather when he came of age, so you two can continue to live in London until you become chatelaine of Markham Park.”

 

“Can you hear yourself, Mamma?” Lettice cries as she raises her arms in exasperation, any good will she tried to muster for her Mother quickly dissipating. “Do you want to pick what wedding gown I am to wear too?” Lettice laughs again. “Selwyn and I haven’t laid eyes on each other for almost as long as Jonty and I.”

 

“Well, he’s grown into a very handsome young man, Lettice. I’ve seen his photograph in The Lady.” Her mother bustles across the end of the floral chaise where a pile of well fingered magazines sit. “Look, I can show you.”

 

“Oh, please don’t Mamma!” Lettice throws her hands up in protest. “Please don’t add insult to injury.”

 

Lady Sadie turns around, a hurt look on her face. “How can you say that to me, Lettice? I’m only trying to do right by you, by securing a suitable and advantageous marriage for you.”

 

“But what about love, Mamma?” Lettice sighs. “What if I don’t wish to marry at all? What if I am happy just running my interior design business.”

 

“Oh what nonsense, Lettice! The younger generation are so tiresome. All this talk of love! I blame those moving pictures your Ward woman stars in that you and your friends all flock to slavishly! Your Father and I had our marriage arranged. We weren’t in love.” She emphasises the last two words with a withering tone. “We’d only even met a handful of times before we were married. Love came naturally in time, and look how happy we are.” She smiles smugly with self satisfaction. “And as for your business, you aren’t Syrie Maugham***, Lettice. You’ve always been told, from an early age, that your duty as a daughter of a member of this great and noble family, even as the youngest daughter, is to marry and marry well.” She sinks onto the chaise. “This foolishness about interior design,” She flaps her glittering fingers distractedly at Lettice. “Will have to end when you get married. Whether it be Jonty, Nicolas or Selwyn, you’ll have to give it up. No respectable man of position and good breeding will have his wife working as a decorator! He’d be ashamed!”

 

At her mother’s harsh words, Lettice abandons any attempt to try and make an effort with her. She looks up to the ornate white painted plaster ceiling and crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the room as she clenches her hands into fists. “Well,” she looks angrily at her mother. “We wouldn’t want my future husband to be ashamed of my success, now would we?”

 

“What success, Lettice?” her mother scoffs. “You were only able to decorate Gwendolyn’s small drawing room because I asked her to allow you to do it.”

 

“I’ve plenty of clients now, no thanks to you, Mamma!”

 

“Dickie and Margot don’t count, dear,” Lady Sadie replies dismissively as she fingers the edges of a copy of the Tattler distractedly. “They are your friends. Of course they were going to ask you to decorate their house.”

 

Lettice gasps as though her mother just punched all the air out of her chest. She stands, silent for a moment, her face flushing with embarrassment and anger. “You’ve always been so cruel to me Mamma, ever since I was little.”

 

“And you’ve always been so stubborn and obstinate, ever since you were a child! Goodness knows what I did to deserve a wilful daughter. Lally was so lovely and pliable, and certainly no trouble to marry off.” She folds her hands neatly in her lap over her immaculately pressed tweed skirt and looks up at her daughter. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Lettice, but someone has to make you see sense. Goodness knows your Father can’t, what with him wound around your little finger! You will have to marry eventually, Lettice, and preferably soon. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s what is expected of you, and as I said yesterday, you aren’t getting any younger, and you certainly don’t want to be left stuck on the shelf. Just think of the shame it would bring you.”

 

“More think of the shame it would bring you, Mamma.” Lettice spits bitterly. “To have a daughter who is a spinster, an old maid, and in trade to boot!”

 

“Now there is no need to be overtly nasty, Lettice.” Lady Sadie mutters brittlely. “It’s unbecoming.”

 

A little gilt clock on an occasional table chimes one o’clock prettily.

 

“Mamma, however much I would love to sit here and share bitter quips and barbs with you all day over a pot of tea, I really do have to leave!” Lettice says with finality. “I have a train to catch. Gerald and I have a reservation at the Café Royal**** tonight.” She walks over to her mother, bends down and goes to kiss her cheek, but the older woman stiffens as she averts her daughter’s touch. Lettice sighs as she raises herself up again. “I’ll see you in a week for Dickie and Margot’s wedding and then after that for Bonfire Night*****.”

 

“Hopefully you’ll have come to your senses about marriage and this ridiculous designing business by then.”

 

Lettice raises her head proudly and takes a deep breath before turning away from her mother and walks with a purposeful stride across the room. “No I won’t, Mamma.” she says defiantly. As she opens the door to leave the morning room, she turns back to the figure of her mother sitting facing away from her towards the fire. “Pappa asked me to make an effort at the Hunt Ball, and I will. I will dance and flirt with whomever you throw in my general direction, be they old, blind or bandy-legged.” She sees her mother’s shoulders stiffen, indicating silently that she is listening, even if she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she is. “However, be under no pretence Mamma. I am doing it for him, and not you.”

 

“Lettice…” Lady Sadie’s voice cracks.

 

“And,” Lettice cuts her off sharply. “No matter who I dance with, or charm, I will not marry any of them. Goodbye Mamma.”

 

Lettice closes the door quietly behind her and walks back down the hallway to the entrance hall. She walks through the front doors with her head aloof, and steps into the back of the waiting Daimler. Marsden closes its door and Harris starts the engine. The chauffer can sense the tension seething through his passenger as she huffs and puffs in the spacious rear cabin, dabbing her nose daintily with a lace edged handkerchief, so he remains quiet as he steers the car down the sweeping driveway. As the car pulls away from Glynes basking in the early afternoon autumnal sun, Lettice can almost feel two sets of eyes on her back: one pair from her father looking sadly out from the library and the other her mother’s peering critically from behind the morning room curtains.

 

*A bonheur de jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers around 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable. Decorated on all sides, it was designed to sit in the middle of a room so that it could be admired from any angle.

 

**The first edition of Debrett's Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, containing an Account of all the Peers, 2 vols., was published in May 1802, with plates of arms, a second edition appeared in September 1802, a third in June 1803, a fourth in 1805, a fifth in 1806, a sixth in 1808, a seventh in 1809, an eighth in 1812, a ninth in 1814, a tenth in 1816, an eleventh in 1817, a twelfth in 1819, a thirteenth in 1820, a fourteenth in 1822, a fifteenth in 1823, which was the last edition edited by Debrett, and not published until after his death. The next edition came out in 1825. The first edition of The Baronetage of England, containing their Descent and Present State, by John Debrett, 2 vols., appeared in 1808. Today, Debrett's is a British professional coaching company, publisher and authority on etiquette and behaviour. It was founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The company takes its name from its founder, John Debrett.

 

***Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.

 

****The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.

 

****Guy Fawkes Day, also called Bonfire Night, British observance, celebrated on November the fifth, commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Guy Fawkes and his group members acted in protest to the continued persecution of the English Catholics. Today Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in the United Kingdom, and in a number of countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, with parades, fireworks, bonfires, and food. Straw effigies of Fawkes are tossed on the bonfire, as are—in more recent years in some places—those of contemporary political figures. Traditionally, children carried these effigies, called “Guys,” through the streets in the days leading up to Guy Fawkes Day and asked passersby for “a penny for the guy,” often reciting rhymes associated with the occasion, the best known of which dates from the Eighteenth Century.

 

Cluttered with paintings, photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s morning room with its Georgian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The books on Lady Sadie’s desks are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside two of the books he has made. One of the books is a French catalogue of fancy dress costumes from the late Nineteenth Century, and the other is a book of Georgian hairstyes. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into these volumes, each book contains twelve double sided pages of illustrations and they measure thirty-three millimetres in height and width and are only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. The 1908 Debrett’s Peerage book is also made by Ken Blythe, but does not open. He also made the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk and the stamps you can see next to the ink bottle. The stamps are 2 millimetres by two millimetres each! Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

 

On the desk is a 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottle and a silver pen, both made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles is made from a tiny faceted crystal bead and has a sterling silver bottom and lid.

 

The Chetwynd’s family photos seen on the desk and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.

 

The vase of primroses in the middle of the desk is a delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature made and painted by hand by Ann Dalton.

 

The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design, made by Bespaq. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.

 

The wallpaper is a copy of an Eighteenth Century blossom pattern.