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Thursday. Sunny and warm. Annoyed.

Nutritional supplements are not a substitute

for a nutritionally balanced diet.

(Deepak Chopra)

 

Looking close... on Friday! - REFLECTION on BLACK BACKGROUND

(photo by Freya, edit by me)

 

Thanks for views, faves and comments!

This patch of light shining on the whole food vitamins and supplements I take each day fascinated me. Seeing this reminded me it has been such a challenging, painful, intense, lonely journey to get to this point. I’ve also experienced some growth, support, light and a tiny glimpse of life slowly returning. As I tried to heal and recover I was led down a path that involved psychiatric medications that only made things worse for me and prevented me from growing, recovering, and healing (which eventually I courageously discontinued three years ago). And while I’m still struggling a lot I reached a point that I’ve learned the importance of caring for myself in healthy ways—among many things, one way I do this is through these whole food vitamins and supplements.

Each to their own for whatever brings them health

Happy Macro Monday

© David K. Edwards.

I went for a nice ride on the e-trike today and saw this little scene. We have many little herds of cattle around us, but this one got a special treat. We have a local business here in Mount Gambier that makes delicious sweet and savoury scrolls, but when they don't sell on the day when they are at their freshest, they sometimes get donated to the cows who thoroughly enjoy their occasional sweet treat! Although the "delivery guy" had just dropped these scrolls over the fence, the cows would not come closer while I was there, possibly due to my day-glo safety jacket, but as soon as I left, the scrolls were quickly devoured and enjoyed!

 

It was finally a nice day for a ride after all the gale force winds we have had, but it also brought out the magpies. I had my first series of swoops for the season!

 

First trip out with the new 16mm ultra wide lens on the full frame RP body. A nice and very light weight lens to use!

Hummingbirds love nectar from flowers, but will come to the feeders as long as the sugar water is clean and fresh.

 

These RAW photos were taken while lying on my back, looking up with my camera, under the hummingbird feeder hanging from the corner of the screened-in porch. I only cropped them.

 

For more information about Ruby-throated hummingbirds that visit my garden, please click here:

 

njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1316/

Hummingbirds love nectar from flowers, but will come to the feeders as long as the sugar water is clean and fresh.

 

These RAW photos were taken while lying on my back, looking up with my camera, under the hummingbird feeder hanging from the corner of the screened-in porch. I only cropped them.

 

For more information about Ruby-throated hummingbirds that visit my garden, please click here:

 

njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1316/

On the fells, licking the extra vitamin food supplement.

magazine cover

 

Sunday Supplement

Hummingbirds love nectar from flowers, but will come to the feeders as long as the sugar water is clean and fresh.

 

These RAW photos were taken while lying on my back, looking up with my camera, under the hummingbird feeder hanging from the corner of the screened-in porch. I only cropped them.

 

For more information about Ruby-throated hummingbirds that visit my garden, please click here:

 

njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1316/

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Supplemental lighting courtesy of Godox AD360ii in a westcott apollo softbox at camera right.

“The construction of beams

brings the fruition of dreams.

The casting of steel

makes your fantasy real…”

♫

 

Read this post on a little virtual keyhole ☂

 

Love and sparkles,

Dea

Another STP working captured on a Sunday, as 66569 works north towards Craven Arms with a spent ballast engineers from Severn Tunnel Junction to Crewe Basford Hall. The former Onibury Station House is visible at the rear of the train.

 

The Marches is pretty devoid of freight traffic with the lack of coal workings, and less frequent steel trips to Shotton too, so anything is a bonus. Sunday 7.2.16

 

For the Phoenix Railway Photographic Circle on-line Journal - click on the link:

www.phoenix-rpc.co.uk/index.html

This is a top-to-bottom pano, inspired by MJ Northern's bikini stitching technique. With a rented 24mm PC-E I was able to try out MJ's technique on a subject that needed it. This is an exposure fusion of 2 images, with a SB-800 thru Gary Fong lightsphere CR to spotlight the drawers. Cropped to 4:5 aspect ratio.

تعَال ارسّم بقآيآ الحلمُ وَ كملْ بآقيُ الصَورهـ ، وَ لا تخآف ! ، عليَ أنا جرَوحّ الوقت وَ أنيابهَ

365: The 2018 Edition-Artificial Light

 

We went shopping at Indian Creed Farm today and they have this enormous porch on the front of their main building. This is where the produce is set out for sale. Because it's so big it blocks out the sun and they have supplemental light to help the patrons see their produce.

Locomotive Services Limited 90001 INTERCITY (Royal Scot) made a visit to London Euston to supply power to GWR's Night Riveria Sleeper that was diverted away from London Paddington. It is seen photographed having uncoupled from 57605/57603 as it prepares to head back to Crewe on 0Z53.

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.

 

Yet we are far from London, returning to Wiltshire, where Lettice grew up at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie. Tonight however, we are not at Glynes, but rather on the neighbouring property adjoining the Glynes estate to the south and are at Garstanton Park, the grand Gothic Victorian home of the Tyrwhitts. Whilst not as old, or as noble a family as the Chetwynds, the Tyrwhitts have been part of the Wiltshire landed gentry for several generations and Lord and Lady Tyrwhitt are as much a part of county society as the Viscount and Countess of Wrexham. The current generation of the two families have grown up as friends with the Viscount and Countess of Wrexham often visiting Lord and Lady Tyrwhitt and conversely. In fact, the families have become so close that Leslie has become engaged to Lord and Lady Tyrwhitt’s only daughter, Arabella, thus guaranteeing a joining of the two great county families.

 

We find ourselves in the library cum music room of Garstanton Park, the preserve of Lord Sherbourne Tyrwhitt who has always had a voracious appetite for reading, and a great passion for music. In fact, his love of music was how he and his wife, Lady Isobel, met, after attending a piano concert at the newly opened Bechstein Hall* in London in 1899. The library cum music room’s walls are lined with floor to ceiling shelves full of Lord Tyrwhitt’s pride and joy, his enormous library, whilst on the rug covered floor stands his beloved Bechstein** piano covered with photos of his other pride and joy, his family. With the families now officially joined with the forthcoming nuptials of Leslie and Arabella formally announced, Lettice has been invited to a musical evening at Garstanton Park which she has happily agreed to, as she loves the company of Nigel, the Tyrwhitt’s eldest son and Arabella, as well as Lord and Lady Tyrwhitt, who like Gerald’s parents Lord and Lady Bruton, have been honourary uncles and aunts to her. The party is in full swing with cocktails, fortified wine and champagne aiding the high spirits as Nigel plays amusing music hall tunes on his father’s grand piano, accompanied by Arabella, Leslie and Lettice who stand about the piano, all taking turns to choose songs and be Nigel’s page turner as well as singing enthusiastically. The Bright Young Things*** can even occasionally get Lord Tyrwhitt, Lady Isobel and Lettice’s mother Lady Sadie to join in with a few of the less raucous songs.

 

“What shall we play next?” Arabella asks excitedly as she takes a drains her champagne flute.

 

“It’s your turn, old boy.” Nigel says to Leslie as he begins to limber up his fingers to play again.

 

“No, it’s not, Nigel! It’s mine!” cries Lettice.

 

“No it isn’t, Tice!” retorts her brother. “You chose ‘It's a Bit of a Ruin That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit.****’. It’s mine!”

 

“Oh, that was ages ago, Leslie.” Lettice pouts, snatching up her own glass of champagne and taking a sip from it.

 

Always the gentle adjudicator ever since they were children, Arabella says in a soothing purr, “Ages ago or not, Nigel’s right, it’s Leslie’s turn Tice.”

 

“You’re just standing up for him, Bella, because he is your intended now,” Lettice replies playfully.

 

“That’s not true!” laughs Arabella. “That’s jolly unfair!”

 

The two giggle together whilst Leslie shuffles through a pile of music sheets that lie in disarray across one of the comfortable gold striped armchairs next to the piano.

 

“It’s good to see your Leslie and our Bella looking so happy together,” Lady Isobel remarks with a wistfulness to her voice as she sits on the gold sofa that she shares with Lady Sadie. “I’m just sorry Cosmo couldn’t bear witness to it too this evening.”

 

“Oh now! Come, come my lamb,” Lord Tyrwhitt remarks kindly from his favourite reading chair in the corner of the room, reaching over his glass of rich burgundy and Lady Isobel’s champagne flute, gently squeezing his wife’s delicate hand with paper thin, almost translucent skin, comfortingly. “You mustn’t be sorry that our Bella is getting married. As the old adage goes, we aren’t losing a daughter, but gaining a son.”

 

“Oh I know Sherbourne. I’m not. I’m very happy for Arabella, oh, and Leslie too,” she adds quickly, looking across at Lady Sadie. “It’s just…”

 

“I know my dear Isobel,” Lady Sadie assures her friend, patting her on the other hand. “I felt the same when Lally married Charles. You don’t regret your daughters marrying, but you miss having them around the house.”

 

“Yes, that’s it, exactly Sadie. I shall miss her when she isn’t here any longer.” She sniffs and withdraws her hands from Sadie’s and her husband’s grasps, pulling a lace handkerchief from the long sleeve of her deep blue evening gown, hurriedly shoving it beneath her nose as she sobs, looking at Arabella leaning into Leslie as he lovingly drapes a protective arm around her whilst he fossicks through the sheet music with his free right hand.

 

“She won’t be far away, Isobel,” Lady Sadie assures her. “She’ll only be across the way in the Glynes Dower House. You can practically walk there.”

 

“It’s good of you to give them that to live in, Sadie.” Lord Tyrwhitt picks up his glass and cradles it thoughtfully in his hand.

 

“Oh, it’s a pleasure, Sherbourne. It’s only sitting there idol for now, and it will suit the two lovebirds to have a home of their own to begin with, before they inherit Glynes. Besides, it will be good to have someone living in the house until it’s ready for me.”

 

“Oh you mustn’t talk like that, Sadie!” Isobel gasps. “Cosmo is well, isn’t he?”

 

“Aside from the head cold that has kept him in bed for tonight, yes perfectly, Isobel. I’m just being pragmatic is all. It may happen one day. Besides, if Cosmo is to precede me and I am to become the Dowager Countess, I’d rather move into a house that isn’t decorated with his sister’s dreadful daubs!”

 

“But I thought Eglantine was quite an accomplished artist,” Lord Tyrwhitt remarks.

 

“It depends on your interpretation of art, Sherbourne” quips Lady Sadie.

 

“I always quite liked her watercolours of flowers when we were young.” he adds thoughtfully.

 

“You haven’t seen her work inspired by those Modernists at the Slade School of Art***** daubed all over the walls of the room she used as a studio during the war.” humphs Lady Sadie, screwing up her nose in distaste. “Sunset filled landscapes featuring twee characters dancing across it, supposedly influenced by the landscapes and folklore of Wiltshire. Morris Dancers, Stonehenge druids and white chalk horses.”

 

“Sounds rather intriguing to me,” Lord Tyrwhitt replies kindly.

 

“Naïve is what I call it!” retorts Lady Sadie with a snort of derision. “The liberties that woman took when she lived there during the war. Do you know that she brought her German staff with her and hid them in the Dower House?”

 

“They were Swiss-German, Sadie,” Lady Isobel corrects her friend. “And yes, I did know because I visited her at the Dower House.”

 

“They still spoke German,” argues Sadie. “She could have brought shame to the family, bringing potential German spies to Glynes like that.”

 

“And she only brought them to Glynes with her because she was afraid they would be, incorrectly,” Lady Isobel puts emphasis on the final word, pausing for effect, before continuing, “Labled as German spies, when in fact they were just simple Swiss domestics. Really Sadie! Next you’ll be saying there was a German recording device in Sherbourne’s Bechstein between 1914 and 1918! I’m surprised at your hostility to them.”

 

Lady Sadie’s eyes grow wide as she splutters in an unsuccessful defence, “They could have been spies, Isobel.”

 

“Well, I always liked Eglantine’s work,” Lord Tyrwhitt concludes, determined to change the subject. “Even if it isn’t to your taste, Sadie my dear.”

 

“You always had a soft spot for her Sherbourne, just like Cosmo did, and still does.” Lady Sadie scoffs. She turns to Lady Isobel. “She always was a beguiling creature with her Titian hair and green eyes. You’re lucky Sherbourne only had eyes for you, dear Isobel.”

 

“Sounds like someone else has green eyes,” remarks Lady Isobel under her breath with a secret smile, shared quietly with a loving glance at her husband.

 

“Aha!” Leslie cries triumphantly. “I have it!” He withdraws a sheet of music from amongst the pile. He hands it to Nigel.

 

“The Wibbly Wobbly Walk!******” laughs Nigel as he looks at the bright yellow and blue printed cover of the well worn sheet music. “Grand choice old boy! Bravo!” He opens the pages on the music stand in front of him. “Bella, will you do the honours?”

 

“Of course Nigel,” Arabella replies as she slips alongside him.

 

With a trill, Nigel gathers everyone’s attention and begins to play the piano as he sings the opening to the song.

 

“Now, have you ever heard about the Wibbley, Wobbley Walk?

Well, just in case you've not, I'll tell you on the spot!

The Wibbley, Wobbley Walk is just another kind of way,

Of saying that the b'hoys are out upon their holiday.

And note that half a dozen fellas out upon the spree,

In half a dozen minutes, they're full of jollity.”

 

Then with loud and carefree abandon, Lettice, Leslie and Arabella all join in on the chorus,

 

“So they all walk the Wibbley Wobbley Walk,

And they all talk the Wibbley Wobbley talk.

And they all wear Wibbley Wobbley ties,

And wink at all the pretty girls with Wibbley Wobbley eyes!

They all smile the Wibbley Wobbley Smile,

When the day is dawning!

Then all through the Wibbley Wobbley Walk,

They get a wibbley wobbley feeling in the morning.”

 

As they sing, Lady Isobel starts to cough, muffling her throaty gasps with her handkerchief so as not to disturb the fun and frivolity of the young people who stand oblivious about the piano. Quickly putting her hock and seltzer aside on the edge of the table being used for drinks, Lady Sadie wraps her arm around her friend, whilst Lord Tyrwhitt leans forward and takes her outstretched hand.

 

“Isobel!” Sadie gasps.

 

“Just try and catch your breath, my lamb.” Lord Tyrwhitt encourages his wife with a serious and steady gaze as he squeezes her fingers whilst her cough gets heavier and stronger.

 

“At the seaside health resort you see some gay old…” Nigel begins the first line of the next stanza of the song, but his voice falls away quickly and his fingers pause over the piano keys as he, Arabella, Lettice and Leslie all suddenly become aware of Lady Isobel’s coughing fit.

 

“Mummy!” gasps Arabella in horror, dropping the page of the music sheet and leaving Leslie’s and Nigel’s sides as she drops to her knees on the carpet before her mother. “Mummy!”

 

“It’s just another of your mother’s coughing fits, Bella my dear.” her father assures her. “Just give her a minute and she’ll be right as rain again.”

 

“Here Father, give her this!” Nigel hands a quickly poured glass of water to his father, which he gives to his wife.

 

Taking it gratefully in her shaking hand, Isobel takes a few gulps and sits back in her seat on the sofa, wheezing and still coughing, but less severely. She presses her free slender bejewelled hand to the beaded chest of her dress and gasps for air.

 

“Stand back everyone,” Leslie says urgently, gently pulling his fiancée away from the feet of her mother, backing away with Nigel and Lettice. “Let’s give Auntie Isobel some air.”

 

After a few tense moments, Lady Isobel has enough air in her lungs to wheeze weakly, “You’ll have to… get used… to calling me your mother-in-law… Leslie dear. People will… think it odd that… your aunt is… also your… mother-in-law.”

 

The party release a combined held breath and laugh with a mixture of nervous and relieved chuckles and titters at her remark.

 

“I told you she would be alright,” Lord Tyrwhitt says, smiling at his wife.

 

“I am,” she concurs, taking a larger mouthful of water. “But I think it is my signal to retire for the evening.” She swallows a few times. “I’m sorry to spoil the frivolity, but I hope you’ll forgive me.”

 

“Oh don’t be sorry, Mummy.” Arabella says, coming forward again and kneeling before her mother.

 

“You’re a good girl, Bella,” she pats her daughter’s hand with her own as the young girl’s rests on her knee. “You’ll make Leslie a very fine wife.”

 

“And don’t we know it,” Lady Sadie says with a rare broad smile. “If we don’t hear it enough from Leslie when we are at Glynes,” She looks to her son, who blushes at the remark. “Then we hear of your virtues from his father. You’ve won the hearts of the two most important men on the Glynes estate, my dear.” She reaches out and caresses Isobella’s chin lovingly with her fingers, gazing at her future daughter-in-law with genuine affection. “And mine.”

 

Lettice feels as though she has just been stung by a hot poker as she witnesses the gaze and gentle touch her mother lavishes upon her future daughter-in-law: such affection never bestowed upon her. Whilst she doesn’t resent Arabella, for she is a genuinely kind person and Lettice firmly believes her mother’s words that she will make a good wife for Leslie, it still hurts her that Arabella should be granted the approval she has so sorely sought from her mother throughout all her life.

 

“Now,” Lady Isobel announces. “Before I retire, I should very much like to hear you sing, dear Lettice. You have such a pretty voice, and I should like to hear something a little less irreverent played on your father’s beloved Bechstein, Nigel.”

 

“Yes Mummy!” Nigel laughs good naturedly.

 

“Come on Bella,” Lettice says, reaching out her hand to her friend. “Come help me pick out something that your mother will like.”

 

Whilst the two girls return to the piles of sheet music, Nigel to the piano and Leslie by his side, Lady Sadie and Lord Tyrwhitt look on with concern at Lady Isobel as she settles back into the pile of cushions at her back.

 

“It’s just a result of the radiotherapy******* Sadie, nothing to worry about.” Lady Isobel says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

 

“Is it helping with the cancer?” she asks.

 

“Who knows?” the other woman shrugs and lifts her hands, the sequined lace shawl falling from about her shoulders as she does so. “It makes me feel sick enough, and don’t they say that things you don’t like are good for you?” Looking over at her children and those of Lady Sadie, she continues, “I’d just like to live long enough to see Arabella, and Nigel married. I’m just thankful Lettice has offered to help Arabella shop for her trousseau up in London. I’m not well enough to make the journey up to town.”

 

“I don’t know if I’d be too happy that my youngest is helping her shop. Goodness knows what her trousseau will look like.” Lady Sadie remarks disparagingly.

 

“Something modern and young, I should imagine Sadie dear,” Lady Isobel replies. “Just as it should be.”

 

“Here we are!” Lettice announces as Arabella takes a book of music with a prettily decorated cover over to her brother at the piano. “Something a little less irreverent for Uncle Sherbourne’s piano and Aunt Isobel’s ears.”

 

There are conspiratorial whispers at the piano between brother and sister as Lettice comes to stand beside Nigel, resting her hand lightly on the piano’s surface before he begins playing the opening to ‘I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls’********.

 

With her beautiful singing voice, Lettice begins the opening stanza of the song.

 

“I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls

With vassals and serfs at my side.

And of all who assembled within those walls,

That I was the hope and the pride.

I had riches all too great to count,

And a high ancestral name.”

 

As she sings, Arabella nestles back into Leslie’s arms, Lord Tyrwhitt cradles his glass of wine without drinking it and Lady Sadie leans forward in her seat, proud of her daughter’s musical accomplishment, although she would never admit it to her.

 

Shrewdly observing Nigel’s occasional gaze at Lettice as he plays and she sings, Lady Isobel leans forward and whispers discreetly to Lady Sadie, “I don’t suppose there is any chance that your Lettice might take a shine to our Nigel?”

 

“If that ship was to sail, it would have happened long before now, Isobel, and well you know it.” Lady Sadie turns to her friend, a consoling look in her eyes, “I’m sorry my dear, but as you saw at the Hunt Ball, Lettice seems to have turned her attentions to the Duke of Walmsford’s eldest, Selwyn Spencely, and I’m not unhappy about that.” Turning back to her daughter, her mouth twists with disapproval. “Even if she insists on managing her romantic attentions herself, rather than leaving it to me. Marriages are made by mothers, you silly girl.”

 

“Yes,” sighs Lady Isobel heavily. “I did notice where here attentions went that night. I’m pleased for you Sadie, and hope that it all works out. Imagine your youngest one day, a duchess. I on the other hand, would just like to see Nigel settled to some nice young lady of any respectable rank or station before I die.”

 

“And you will, Isobel. I’m sure of it. Perhaps another Season in London might help now that the Season is back in full swing after the war.”

 

The two women turn back as Lettice as she finishes the song.

 

“But I also dreamt which charmed me most

That you loved me still the same

That you loved me

You loved me still the same,

That you loved me

You loved me still the same.”

 

*Wigmore Hall is a concert hall located at 36 Wigmore Street, London. Originally called Bechstein Hall, it specialises in performances of chamber music, early music, vocal music and song recitals. It is widely regarded as one of the world's leading centres for this type of music and an essential port of call for many of the classical music world's leading stars. With near-perfect acoustic, the Hall quickly became celebrated across Europe and featured many of the great artists of the 20th century. Today, the Hall promotes 550 concerts a year and broadcasts a weekly concert on BBC Radio 3. The Hall also promotes an extensive education programme throughout London and beyond and has a huge digital broadcasting arm, which includes the Wigmore Hall Live Label and many live streams of concerts.

 

**C. Bechstein Pianoforte AG (also known as Bechstein), is a German manufacturer of pianos, established in 1853 by Carl Bechstein (1826 – 1900).

 

***The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.

 

****’It's a Bit of a Ruin That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit’ is a song written by Harry Bedford and Terry Sullivan sung by the famous British music hall performer Marie Lloyd in the early 1900s.

 

*****Established by lawyers and philanthropist Felix Slade in 1868, Slade School of Fine Art is the art school of University College London and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the United Kingdom’s top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as a department of University College London's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Two of its most important periods were immediately before, and immediately after, the turn of the twentieth century. It had such students as Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer.

 

******’They All Walk the Wibbly Wobbly Walk’ is a song written by Paul Pelham and J. P. Long sung by the famous British music hall performer Mark Sheridan in 1912. It was a song often sung during the Great War, and associated by the British general public with the survivors of the conflict who trembled due to shell shock or had misshapen walks thanks to injuries inflicted upon them.

 

*******By the 1920s radiotherapy was well developed with the use of X-rays and radium. There was an increasing realisation of the importance of accurately measuring the dose of radiation and this was hampered by the lack of good apparatus. The science of radiobiology was still in its infancy and increasing knowledge of the biology of cancer and the effects of radiation on normal and pathological tissues made an enormous difference to treatment. Treatment planning began in this period with the use of multiple external beams. The X-ray tubes were also developing with replacement of the earlier gas tubes with the modern Coolidge hot-cathode vacuum tubes. The voltage that the tubes operated at also increased and it became possible to practice ‘deep X-ray treatment’ at 250 kV. Sir Stanford Cade published his influential book “Treatment of Cancer by Radium” in 1928 and this was one of the last major books on radiotherapy that was written by a surgeon.

 

********"I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls", or "The Gipsy Girl's Dream", is a popular aria from The Bohemian Girl, an 1843 opera by Michael William Balfe, with lyrics by Alfred Bunn. It is sung in the opera by the character Arline, who is in love with Thaddeus, a Polish nobleman and political exile. It became a stalwart in the repertoire of young Victorian and Edwardian girls who often learned to play the piece on the piano and to sing it, if they had the aptitude for the latter.

 

Cluttered with books and with art on the walls, Garstanton Park’s library cum music room with its typical English country house furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection, including pieces from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The majority of the books that you see lining the shelves of the library cum music room are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Ken Blythe was famous in miniature collectors’ circles mostly for the miniature books that he made: all being authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. However, he did not make books exclusively. He also made other small pieces like the sheet music you see scattered on the carpeted floor and across the arm and seat of the armchair closest to the camera. The book that rests upright against the armchair is a book of romantic ballads published in 1805. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make these miniature artisan pieces. 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 and through his estate courtesy of the generosity of his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.

 

The grand piano and matching stool appearing in the midground is a 1:12 miniature piece I have had since I was a teenager. It is covered in family photos, all of which 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 from various suppliers, but all are metal. The very lifelike daffodils are made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany. The empty champagne and wine glasses all of which are made of hand blown glass were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The full glasses of champagne and red wine were made by Karen Lady Bug Miniatures in England.

 

The soda siphons on the silver tray to the left of the photo were made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, whilst the container of ice and tongs is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The silver champagne bucket is made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The bottle of Deutz and Geldermann champagne. It is an artisan miniatures and made of glass and has real foil wrapped around its neck. It was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

The chairs and sofa in the library cum music room are made by the high-quality miniature furniture manufacturer, Bespaq. The ebonised ornate occasional table I acquired Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom as I did the table in the foreground on which the drinks tray stands.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is hand made by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, Australia.

In the background you can see the book lined shelves as well as a Renaissance portrait of a young nobleman in a gold frame from Marie Makes in the United Kingdom, and a hand painted blue and white ginger jar from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom which stands on a Bespaq plant stand.

 

The gold flocked Edwardian wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

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.

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See the video here www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpaDlwlVhVU

Strobist:2 bare sb600's for BG illumination left and right rear. Sb800 shoot thru umbrella high camera right. Sb800 in 17" SB low camera left. Triggered by PW's processed in LR.

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 in Lettice’s flat. Instead, we are in central London, near the palace of Westminster and the Thames embankment at the very stylish Metropole Hotel*, where Lettice is finally having her first assignation with the eldest son of the Duke of Walmsford, Selwyn Spencely after he telephoned her last week. After she hung up the receiver on the cradle, Lettice was beside herself with joy, causing somewhat of a kerfuffle with her downstairs neighbour, Mrs. Clifford after her jumping up and down caused the lady’s pendant lamps to rattle and sway from the ceiling above. Since then, Lettice has spent hours of her life over the ensuing days going through her wardrobes, trying on outfit after outfit, much to the irritation of her maid, Edith, who has to pick up after her. In a whirl of excitement and nerves, Lettice has gone from deciding to wear pale pink organdie, to navy serge, then to peach and rose carmine satin, to black velvet with white brocade trim. Yet now, as she shrugs her coat from her shoulders into the waiting arms of the liveried cloak room attendant of the Metropole, Lettice knows that her choice of a soft pale blue summery calf length dress with lace inserts accessories by a blue satin sash and her simple double strand of perfectly matched pearls is the perfect choice. The colour suits her creamy skin and blonde chignon, and the outfit is understated elegance, so she appears fashionable and presentable, yet doesn’t appear to be trying to hard to impress. Breathing deeply to keep the butterflies in her stomach at bay she immediately sees her companion for luncheon lounging nonchalantly against a white painted pillar.

 

“Darling Lettice!” Selwyn exclaims as he strides purposefully across the busy lobby of the Metropole. “You look positively ravishing.”

 

Lettice smiles as she sees the glint of delight in his blue eyes as he raises her cream glove clad right hand to his lips and chivalrously kisses it. “Thank you, Selwyn.” she replies, lowering her lids as she feels a slight flush fill her cheeks at the sensation of his lips pressing through the thin, soft kid of her glove. “That’s very kind of you to say so.”

 

“I’ve secured us a discreet table for two, just as you requested, my angel.” He proffers a crooked arm to her. “Shall we?”

 

Lettice smiles at his words, enjoying the sound of his cultured voice call her by a pet name. She carefully winds her own arm though his and the two stroll blithely across the foyer, unaware of the mild interest that she and Selwyn create as a handsome couple.

 

“Good afternoon Miss Chetwynd,” the maître d of the Metropole restaurant says as he looks down the list of reservations for luncheon. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” Ticking the entry off the reservation list he takes up two menus. “Right this way, Your Grace.”

 

He leads the couple through the busy dining room of the hotel where the gentle burble of voices fills the lofty space and mixes with the sound of silver cutlery against the blue banded gilt hotel crockery, the clink of glasses raised and the strains of popular Edwardian music from the small palm court quartet playing discreetly by a white painted pillar.

 

“Your Grace.” Lettice says in a lofty fashion, giggling as she makes a joking bob curtsey to Selwyn as they follow the maître d.

 

Selwyn scoffs and rolls his eyes up to the ornately plastered ceiling above. “You know it’s only because of Daddy**.”

 

“I know,” Lettice giggles again. “But isn’t it a scream: ‘Your Grace’.”

 

“I’m not ‘Your Grace’ to you, my angel,” he smiles in return. “Just Selwyn will be fine.”

 

“As you wish, Just Selwyn.”

 

The crisply uniformed maître d stops before a small table for two surrounded by tables of suited politicians and a smattering of older, rather tweedy women. He withdraws a dainty Chippendale style chair from the table and Lettice takes a seat. The older man expertly pushes the chair in with her as she settles before the crisp white linen covered table.

 

“Does this table suit you, Lettice darling?” Selwyn asks a little nervously. “Discreet enough for you?”

 

“Oh yes, thank you Selwyn.” Lettice replies as she observes all the diners around them, busily involved in their own discussions with never a thought for the two of them, although she does notice an older couple at a table a short distance away observing them discreetly. The woman turns to her husband, indicating something about Lettice’s wide brimmed pale blue hat, judging by her gesticulation and his withering glance in response.

 

“Could that be one of your mother’s spies?” Selwyn asks, breaking into her quiet thoughts.

 

“What?” Lettice gasps. “Where?”

 

“There.” Selwyn gestures towards a potted palm, the fronds trembling with the movement of a passing waiter carrying two plates of roast beef to a nearby table scurrying past.

 

“Oh Selwyn!” Lettice slaps his hand kittenishly. “You are awful! Don’t be a tease and startle me like that.” She smiles as she returns to perusing her menu. “You know my mother’s spies are everywhere.”

 

“As are Lady Zinnia’s.” he replies.

 

Selwyn looks around the room taking in the Georgian revival furnishings, the restrained Regency stripe wallpaper, the watercolours of stately British homes in gilt frames as much as his architect’s eye pays close attention to the restrained fluted columns, ornately plastered ceilings and general layout of the room. “It’s so thoroughly English, don’t you think?” he concludes as he picks up the menu to peruse it.

 

“Oh,” Lettice says a little deflated as she lowers her menu. “You’d prefer something a little more, European? Should we have dined at a French restaurant?”

 

“Oh no Lettice darling,” he assures her with a defending hand. “I was just remarking. As I think I told you on the telephone, I haven’t been here since before the war, and I think the décor is much improved. It’s so much lighter and free of that ghastly old Victorian look.”

 

“I was saying the same thing to Miss Wanetta Ward the last time I came here.” Lettice remarks.

 

“Wanetta Ward? Isn’t she the moving picture star?” Selwyn looks over the top of his menu at his luncheon companion.

 

“The very one!” Lettice elucidates. “Do you ever go?”

 

“To the kinema***? No.” He shakes his head vehemently. “Do you?”

 

“No, I don’t either, but Miss Ward insists that I must experience it some day. Not that Mater or Pater would approve if I ever worked up the gumption to go.”

 

“Surely you don’t need to tell them if you do go.”

 

“Are you encouraging me to be devious, Selwyn?”

 

“No,” Selwyn laughs, his eyebrows lifting over his sparking blue eyes. “I’m simply suggesting that you are of age, and your own person with your own life in London, whilst they live their lives in far away Wiltshire. You can go to kinema if you wish. No-one need see you. In saying that, my parents feel the same about it, especially Mummy. She is very much against what she calls ‘painted women who are a poor and cheap copy of great art, moving about overdramatically on screen’.”

 

“I’ll be sure not to tell Miss Ward your mother’s opinion of her the next time I see her.”

 

“My mother’s opinion is entirely uneducated, Lettice, I assure you. After all, like both you and I, she has never actually seen a moving picture before.”

 

“Well, considering that both my maid and my charwoman*** go to the pictures, I very much doubt that I ever will.” Lettice concludes. “How would it be if I sat next to them? Besides, I have heard picture theatres called fleapits***** before, which sounds none too promising when compared with a lovely evening at Covent Garden.”

 

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Selwyn announces, changing the subject. “But I rather like the look of the roast beef with Yorkshire pudding for luncheon. What will you have?”

 

Lettice looks disappointedly at her menu. “When I came here with Miss Ward, we shared a rather magnificent selection of savories and little deadlies******, but I suppose they must reserve them for afternoon tea, here.”

 

“Fear not!” Selwyn says, giving Lettice a beaming smile. He carefully catches the eye of the maître d and summons him with an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

 

“How may I serve Your Grace?” the maître d asks with a respectful bow as he approaches the table.

 

“Look here, my companion Miss Chetwynd had some sweet and savoury petit fours when she last came here and speaks very highly of them. I’d taken a fancy to trying them for myself, so might we have a selection for two, please?”

 

“Well Your Grace,” the maître d begins apologetically. “They are from our afternoon tea menu.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure you could have word to your chefs, especially to please such a charming guest.” He gestures with an open hand to Lettice as she sits rather awkwardly holding her menu, her eyes wide as she listens to Selwyn direct the manager of the restaurant. “It would please her,” He then plays his trump card with a polite, yet firm and businesslike smile that forms across his lips like a darkened crease. “Both of us really, if you could perhaps see about furnishing us with a selection from your afternoon tea menu.”

 

“Well I…” stammers the maître d, but catching the slight shift in Selwyn’s eyes and the twitch at the corner of his mouth he swallows what he was going to say. “Certainly, Your Grace.”

 

“Good man!” Selwyn replies, his eyes and his smile brightening. “And some tea I think, wouldn’t you agree, Lettice my dear?”

 

“Oh, oh… yes.” Lettice agrees with an awkward smile of her own.

 

As the uniformed manager scuttles away, shoulders hunched, with Selwyn’s request, Lettice says, “Oh you shouldn’t have done that, Selwyn. Poor man.”

 

“What? Are you telling me that you are displeased that you are getting what you desire for luncheon, even though it doesn’t appear on the menu?”

 

“Well, no.” Lettice admits sheepishly.

 

“See, there are advantages to having luncheon with a ‘Your Grace’.” He gives her a conspiratorial smile.

 

“You do enjoy getting your way, don’t you Selwyn?”

 

He doesn’t reply but continues to smile enigmatically back at her.

 

Soon a splendid selection of sweet petit fours and large and fluffy fruit scones with butter, jam and cream has been presented to them on a fluted glass cake stand by a the maître d along with a pot of piping hot tea in a blue and gilt edged banded teapot.

 

“So,” Selwyn says as he drops a large dollop of thick white cream onto half a fruit scone. “At the Hunt Ball we spent a lot of time talking about our childhoods and what has happened to me over the ensuing years,” He shakes a last drop off the silver spoon. “Yet I feel that you are at an unfair advantage, as you shared barely anything about yourself al evening.”

 

“Aahh,” Lettice replies as she spreads some raspberry jam on her two halves of fruit scones with her knife. “My mother taught me the finer points about being a gracious hostess. She told me that I must never bore my guests with trifling talk about myself. What I have to say or what I do is of little or no consequence. The best way to keep a gentleman happy is to occupy him with talk about himself.”

 

“You don’t believe that do, my angel?”

 

“Not at all, but I found it to be a very useful tactic at the Hunt Ball when I was paraded before and forced to dance with a seemingly endless array of eligible young men. It saved me having to do most of the talking.”

 

“I hope you didn’t feel forced to dance with me, Lettice darling.” Selwyn picks up his teacup and takes a sip of tea. “After all you did dance quite a bit with me.”

 

“You know I didn’t mind, Selwyn.” She pauses, her knife in mid-air. “Or I hope you didn’t think that.”

 

“I suppose a healthy level of scepticism helps when you are an eligible bachelor who happens to be the heir to a duchy and a sizeable private income. Such things can make a man attractive to many a woman.”

 

“Not me, Selwyn. I am after all a woman of independent means, and I have my own successful interior design business.”

 

“Ah, now that is interesting.” he remarks. “How is it that the daughter of a viscount with her own private income, a girl from a good family, can have her own business? It surely isn’t the done thing.”

 

“Well, I think if circumstances were different, I shouldn’t be able to.”

 

“Circumstances?”

 

“Well for a start, I am the youngest daughter. My elder sister, Lallage, is married and has thankfully done her bit for her husband’s family by producing an heir, and given our parents the welcome distraction of grandchildren, thus alleviating me of such a burden.”

 

“She and Lanchenbury just had another child recently didn’t they?”

 

“My, you are well informed. Yes, Lally and Charles had another son in February, so now my sister has provided not only an heir, but a spare as well.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “Secondly, and perhaps what works most in my favour is that I am my father’s favourite child. If it were up to my mother, I should have been married and dispatched off by the end of the first Season after the war. But Pater enjoys indulging his little girl, and I know just how to keep him continuing to do so, and keeping Mater and her ideas at bay just enough.”

 

“And how do you achieve this miracle, my angel?”

 

“I decorate mostly for the great and the good of this fair isle,”

 

“I don’t think I’d call a moving picture star a member of the great and good!” laughs Selwyn heartily.

 

“Yes, well…” Lettice blushes and casts her eyes down into her lap sheepishly. “I did rather get in trouble for that, but only because my mother’s awful cousin Gwendolyn, the Duchess of Whitby, told tales behind my back. Anyway, I design and decorate mostly for people my parents approve of, and I play my part socially and pretend to be interested in the things my mother wants for me.”

 

“Like marriage?”

 

“Like marriage.”

 

“So, if you aren’t interested in marriage, why are we having luncheon then, my angel?”

 

“I never said I wouldn’t get married someday, Selwyn,” Lettice defends with a coy smile. “I just want to do it in my own fashion, and I believe that marriage should begin with love. If I am to get married to a man I love, I need to know him first.” She pauses again and stares firmly into her companion’s sparkling blue eyes. “I’m sure you agree.”

 

“I’m quite sure my mother, Lady Zinnia, wouldn’t agree with you and your modern ideas about marriage.”

 

“Any more than my own mother does. When I told her that I wanted to do this my own way, by arranging to meet you myself she told me ‘marriages are made by mothers, you silly girl’.”

 

“And you don’t agree with that?” he asks almost unsurely.

 

“Would I be here if I did, Selwyn?” Lettice takes up the bowl of cream and begins to drop some on her scones.

 

Selwyn starts chuckling in a relieved fashion, consciously trying to smother his smile with his left hand, a hold and ruby signet ring glinting in the diffused light cast from the chandeliers above. He settles back more comfortably in his seat, observing his female companion as she stops what she is doing and puts down both the spoon and bowl of cream self-consciously.

 

“What? What is it Selwyn? What have I done?”

 

“You haven’t done anything other than be you, my angel, and that is a great blessed relief.”

 

“Relief?” Lettice’s left hand clutches at the two warm strands of creamy pearls at her throat.

 

“Yes,” Selwyn elucidates, sitting forward again and reaching out his hand, encapsulating Lettice’s smaller right hand as it rests on the white linen tablecloth. “You see, I was worried that it was a mixture of champagne and the romance of the Hunt Ball that made you so attractive. You were so naturally charming.”

 

Lettice bursts out laughing, the joyous peal mixing with the vociferous noise around them. “I was dressed as Cinderella in an Eighteenth Century gown and wig. I’d hardly call that natural, Selwyn.”

 

“Aahh, but you were my darling, beneath all that. I must confess that when I suggested luncheon today it was with a little of that healthy scepticism that I came here.”

 

“But I don’t need your income, Selwyn, I have my own.”

 

“But you do have a scheming mother, and many a mother like Lady Sadie want their daughters to marry a fine title, especially one that they may have desired for themselves. A Duchess is a step up from a Countess, I’m sure you agree.”

 

“Oh I don’t care…”

 

“Shh, my angel,” Selwyn squeezes her hand beneath his. “I know. However, that also makes you a rather exceptional girl, so I’m glad that my misgivings were misplaced. I’m pleased to hear that you’re in no rush to get married, and that you have set yourself some expectations and rules as to how you wish to live. Perhaps you were born at just the right time to manage as a woman in this new post-war era.”

 

“Please don’t tell Mater that,” Lettice says, lowering her spare hand from worrying her pearls. “She’ll be fit to be tied.”

 

“I promise I shan’t say a word to Lady Sadie, or my own mother. Both are cut from the same cloth in that respect.” He releases her hand and settles back in his chair. Picking up a scone he takes a bite. After swallowing his mouthful and wiping his mouth with his serviette he continues, “Now, do tell me about your latest piece of interior design. I should like to know more about it.”

 

Lettice sighs as she feels the nervous tickles in her stomach finally start to dissipate as she settles back in her own seat and starts to tell him about ‘Chi an Treth’ the Regency house in Penzance that belongs to her friends, the newly married Dickie and Margot Channon.

 

*Now known as the Corinthia Hotel, the Metropole Hotel is located at the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall Place in central London on a triangular site between the Thames Embankment and Trafalgar Square. Built in 1883 it functioned as an hotel between 1885 until World War I when, located so close to the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall, it was requisitioned by the government. It reopened after the war with a luxurious new interior and continued to operate until 1936 when the government requisitioned it again whilst they redeveloped buildings at Whitehall Gardens. They kept using it in the lead up to the Second World War. After the war it continued to be used by government departments until 2004. In 2007 it reopened as the luxurious Corinthia Hotel.

 

**The title of Duke sits at the top of the British peerage. A Duke is called “Duke” or “Your Grace” by his social equals, and is called only “Your Grace” by commoners. A Duke’s eldest son bears his courtesy title, whilst any younger children are known as Lords and Ladies.

 

***In the early days of moving pictures, films were known by many names. The word “cinema” derives from “kinema” which was an early Twentieth Century shortened version of “kinematograph”, which was an early apparatus for showing films.

 

****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.

 

*****Early cinemas were often derisively referred to as “fleapits”, however the name given them was for very good reason. As cheap entertainment for the masses, with entry costing a paltry amount, early moving picture theatres often had problems with fleas infesting themselves on patrons who were free of them from those who had them. This was especially common in poorer areas where scruffier cinemas did not employ cleanliness as a high priority. Even as late as the 1960s, some filthy picture houses employed the spraying of children with DDT when they came en masse to watch the Saturday Morning Westerns!

 

******Little deadlies is an old fashioned term for little sweet cakes like petit fours.

 

An afternoon tea like this would be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate each sweet petit four or scone on the cake plate, you would still come away hungry. This is because they, like everything in this scene are 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau:

 

The sweet petite fours on the lower tier of the cake stand and the scones on the upper tier and on Lettice and Selwyn’s plates have been made in England by hand from 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. Each petit four is only five millimetres in diameter and between five and eight millimetres in height!

 

The blue banded hotel crockery has been made exclusively for Doll House Suppliers in England. Each piece is fashioned by hand and painted by hand. Made to the highest quality standards each piece of porcelain is very thin and fine. If you look closely, you might even notice the facets cut into the milk jug and the steam hole in the teapot.

 

The fluted glass cake stand, the glass vase on Lettice and Selwyn’s table and the red roses in it were all made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The cake stand and the vase have been hand blown and in the case of the stand, hand tinted. The red roses in the vase are also made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.

 

The Chippendale dining room chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.

 

The vases of flowers on the stands in the background are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium. The three plant stands are made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq, whilst the sideboard is made by high-end miniature furniture maker JBM. The paintings come from an online stockist on E-Bay.

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.

 

Tonight, Lettice has been entertaining her two Embassy Club coterie friends, newly married couple Dickie and Margot Channon, whom she recently redecorated a few rooms of their Regency country retreat in Cornwall, ‘Chi an Treth’. The dinner has come to a pleasurable conclusion and the trio have withdrawn to Lettice’s drawing room, adjunct to the dining room, to enjoy a digestif* and continue their gossip, before going out around ten o’clock to the Embassy Club in Bond Street for more drinks and dancing well into the wee small hours of the morning with their other friends.

 

“Dickie daring, why don’t you play barman, since you enjoy it so much.” suggests Margot as they sit down, Lettice and Margot in the two white, luxuriously padded tub armchairs and Dickie on the Hepplewhite desk hair placed between them.

 

“As you wish, my love!” Dickie says cheerily. “Gin and tonics all round?”

 

“Please!” enthuses Margot.

 

“Heavenly!” exclaims Lettice.

 

Whilst Dickie goes to the black japanned drinks cabinet in the adjoining dining room and fetches three highball glasses, the soda siphon and a bottle of Gordon’s gin**, Lettice presses the servant’s call bell next to the fireplace, eliciting a soft buzzing that can be heard from the kitchen through the green baize door leading to the service part of the flat.

 

“Right!” Dickie says, returning with his arms full. “Gin, tonic water, three glasses,” he remarks as he puts the items down one by one on the low black japanned coffee table between the tub chairs. “Now all we need is…”

 

“Yes Miss?” Edith, Lettice’s maid, asks as she appears with perfect timing by her mistress’ side, dressed in her black dress and fancy lace trimmed apron, collars and cap that she wears as her evening uniform.

 

“What do you need, Dickie?” Lettice asks, deferring to her friend with an elegant sweep of her hand.

 

“Ahh, some ice in a bucket, tongs, a lemon and a knife if you can manage it, Edith old girl.” Dickie replies with a bright smile.

 

“Yes sir,” Edith replies, smiling brightly as she bobs a curtsey.

 

Returning a few minutes later with the items on a silver tray, just as Edith bobs another curtsey to her mistress and her guests, Margot pipes up, “Oh Edith!”

 

“Yes Mrs. Channon?”

 

“I just wanted to let you know that Hilda is working out splendidly so far.” She smiles up at the maid, whose pretty face is framed by her lacy cap. “Thank you, Edith.”

 

“I’m pleased, Mrs. Channon. Will there be anything else?”

 

“No, thank you Edith.” Lettice replies with a smile and dismissing her maid with a gentle wave. “We won’t be here for too much longer. You can clean up the dining table after Mr. and Mrs. Channon and I have gone out to the club.”

 

“Yes Miss.”

 

The trio of friends sit in silence whilst they wait for Edith to retreat to the kitchen, Dickie quietly slicing the lemon with a small sharp silver handled knife.

 

“You do know that Edith probably already knows how her friend is faring, don’t you Margot darling?” Lettice says kindly.

 

“What?” Margot asks, here eyes widening like saucers. “How?”

 

Lettice laughs at her friend’s naivety. “You do give Hilda time off, don’t you?”

 

“Well of course I do, Lettice darling!” Margot defends herself, pressing her elegantly manicured hand to her chest where it presses against the gold flecked black bugle bead necklace she is wearing over her black evening dress. “I’m trying to be a model employer.”

 

“And what days did you give her off?”

 

“Well, she asked for Wednesdays, and Sundays free until four.”

 

Lettice smiles knowingly. “Just the same as Edith.”

 

When Margot’s look of confusion doesn’t lift, Dickie elucidates. “I think what Lettice is saying, my love, is that Hilda and Edith probably catch up on their days off, since the two have those in common.” He chuckles in an amused fashion as he pours gin over some ice in one of the highball glasses. “Really my love, you can be very naïve sometimes.”

 

“Do you think they talk about us?” Margot gasps.

 

“Margot darling, what servant doesn’t talk about their employer behind their back?” Dickie replies, depressing the release of the siphon, spraying carbolised tonic water into the glass. “That’s why it’s called servant’s gossip.”

 

“Well, I must be careful what I say around Hilda!” Margot replies, raising her hands to her flushed cheeks.

 

“I should think you would anyway.” her husband adds.

 

“I don’t think you have too much to worry about, Margot darling. If your Hilda is anything like Edith, the talk is more likely to be about the conditions she works in. I think Edith is more scanadalised by my life than genuinely interested in it. In fact, I think being the good chapel girl that she is, she is probably happier not to know what I get up to. Occasionally she might show an interest in one of my clients, like she did with Wanetta Ward the moving picture actress, but overall she’s just a shy young girl with her own life. She’s very discreet, and I’m sure your Hilda is too, Margot darling, so don’t worry too much.”

 

‘The joys of slum prudery***,” Dickie chuckles as he hands Lettice her digestif gin and tonic garnished by a slice of lemon. “You may not have to worry with Hilda, my love, but you’ll have to worry about the servants gossiping when you become the Marchioness of Taunton.” Dickie adds sagely, adding a good measure of gin to his wife’s glass as he prepares her drink. “My parents’ household staff thrive on any bit of gossip they can snaffle out. A single piece can keep them going for weeks. In fact I’m sure Mummy feeds them titbits of gossip just to keep them happily employed. My father might not be able to afford to pay them enormous wages, but Mummy makes up for it with morsels of gossip to amuse them all.”

 

“Well, thankfully I don’t have to worry about that yet,” Margot says. “I’m only just learning how to run a small household as it is. How on earth would I manage with a huge estate? I didn’t marry Dickie for his future title!”

 

“We know that. I’m sure you’ll be fine when the time comes, Margot darling.” Lettice soothes her friend assuringly, picking up the underlying sense of alarm in her voice. She takes a sip of her drink. “Bliss, Dickie!” she exclaims as the cool tartness of the gin and tonic reaches her tastebuds. “Thank you!”

 

“My pleasure, old girl!” Dickie replies as she goes about picking up ice cubes with the silver tongs and placing them in his and Margot’s highball glasses.

 

“Now, thinking of weddings, I must tell you about a most unusual occurrence, Margot darling.” Lettice continues, reaching down to the shelf beneath the surface of the table next to her on which she keeps the telephone. “I received this the other day in the post, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”

 

Lettice withdraws a postally franked envelope which she tosses onto the cover of her Vogue magazine sitting on the coffee table. Margot picks it up eagerly. She opens the already opened envelope and takes out an elegant card printed on thick paper featuring a champagne bottle buried amid a plethora of flowers on its front. Written in stylish lettering across the image in two banners are the words, wedding celebration.

 

“Oh, you received Priscilla’s wedding invitation!” Margot enthuses as she holds it in her lap. “I’m so pleased. Yes, we’re going too, if that was what you were going to ask.”

 

Dickie gives his wife a knowing look as he pours some gin into his highball glass, but says nothing.

 

“Well that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about as it happens.” Lettice replies. “I assumed that as we are all friends of Priscilla, that of course you would be attending her wedding to Georgie. No, it’s what’s inside that puzzled me.”

 

“Inside?” Margot queries, a cheeky smile curling up the corners of her mouth.

 

Dickie looks again at his wife as he adds a slug of extra gin to his own glass, but still says nothing.

 

“Yes!” Lettice says. “Take a look.”

 

Margot opens up the card and peruses it lightly before placing the card upright on the table between them, the cheeky smile broadening across her carefully painted lips, but says nothing.

 

Surprised, Lettice says, “The invitation is for me,” She pauses. “And a friend. Don’t you think that’s rather odd, even for Priscilla?” When Margot doesn’t reply, Lettice adds, “You don’t seem terribly surprised, Margot darling.”

 

Dickie squirts tonic into one glass. “Oh do stop being so coy, Margot. It doesn’t suit you tonight.” He sprays tonic irritably into the second glass. “Tell her!”

 

“Tell me what?” Lettice looks firstly at Dickie as he picks up a piece of lemon and places it on the lip of one of the highball glass, and then at Margot as she smiles back benignly at her.

 

“Me?” Margot asks, feigning innocence, raising her elegantly manicured hand to her throat where a blush starts to bloom.

 

“For pity’s sake, just own up and tell her!” Dickie hands her the prepared gin and tonic digestif.

 

“Well, I wish someone would tell me!” Lettice says a little irritated at being kept out of whatever the secret is.

 

When Margot says nothing, Dickie says as he picks up hie own glass. “It was Margot who arranged that.” He takes a sip of his drink, sighing with satisfaction.

 

“Margot?”

 

“Well, it was me who organised it,” Margot admits coyly.

 

“You did?” Lettice’s eyes widen in surprise.

 

“Yes. When Priscilla was chatting to me about wedding invitations,” Margot continues with a self conscious chuckle as she starts toying with her beads again. “I simply suggested that, well with you and Selwyn getting along so well together, that she might like to leave an opening for you to invite him if you wished.”

 

“Oh Margot!” Lettice exclaims aghast, blushing red as she does.

 

“I say!” Margot’s eyes grow wide as she glances first at her stunned, red faced friend and then her husband, who wears a knowing look. “Have I dropped the tiniest of social briquettes?”

 

“Well, it was a little,” Dickie pauses, trying to think of the correct word.

 

“What?”

 

“I did think it a little presumptuous, my love, when you told me.”

 

“Oh Lettice darling, I was only trying to help!” exclaims Margot, thrusting out her hands across the table to her friend, her face awash with anguish as she does. “Please don’t be cross with me! As I said, I just thought with you two getting along so well, you’d be sure to want to ask him. I haven’t done wrong, have I?”

 

Lettice doesn’t answer at first, taken aback by Dickie and Margot’s revelation. “Well, it was imprudent, Margot darling.” Lettice chastises her friend softly finally as she reaches out an takes Margot’s outstretched hands. “What if Selwyn and I had quarrelled? I would then have had to ask another gentleman of my acquaintance who isn’t invited to the wedding,” She pauses. “And as a jeune fille à marier****, that might have its own unwanted consequences.”

 

“I did try to warn you, my love,” Dickie says not unkindly to his wife. “But the deed was already done.”

 

“You haven’t quarrelled with him, have you?” Margot’s dark and frightened eyes scan Lettice’s face. “Selwyn that is.”

 

“No Margot darling.” Lettice assures her. “But what if I had?”

 

Lettice releases Margot’s hands as Dickie lifts up the highball glass of gin and tonic garnished with a lemon to his wife. She accepts it gratefully and takes more than a small and ladylike sip to calm her jangled nerves as she presses her hand to the cleft in her chest.

 

“Let this be a lesson to you about meddling in other people’s love lives, my darling.” Dickie says with a serious look to Margot. “I’m sure that poor Lettice and Spencely have more than enough meddling between Lady Sadie and Lady Zinnia.”

 

“Yes, Mamma tells me that marriages are made by mothers, not their children. There is plenty of meddling from Mater, Dickie darling, but I don’t actually think Lady Zinnia knows about Selwyn and I seeing one another socially.” Lettice says.

 

Dickie looks across at her doubtfully.

 

Settling back in her seat, cradling her digestif, Lettice continues, “Mind you, that will all be about to change.”

 

“How so, old girl?” Dickie queries as he sips his own gin and tonic.

 

“Because I did exactly what Margot hoped I would, and I invited Selwyn to Priscilla and Georgie’s wedding.”

 

Margot leans forward in her seat, her beads clattering together in in haste, her mouth hanging slightly open in sudden anticipation. “And did he say, yes?”

 

“Of course he did, Margot darling!” Lettice laughs lightly.

 

Margot quickly drops her highball glass onto the coffee table, narrowly missing sloshing some onto its black shiny surface. “Oh hoorah!” She claps her hands in delight, making the bangles on her arms jangle and beams at Lettice, who smiles back shyly, blushing a little as she does.

 

“If he’d said no, how else would Lady Zinnia know about he and I?” She doesn’t notice Dickie’s sage gaze towards her. “She’ll have to know after the wedding, as it will be in all the papers. Therefore, so will Selwyn and I.”

 

“That will be a social briquette to drop then.” remarks Dickie quietly.

 

“What do you mean, my love?” asks Margot.

 

“Because according to Mummy’s stories about Lady Zinnia, it is she who likes to make the society news, not read it.” He pauses for a moment before continuing, ‘And she likes to have her finger very firmly on all that happens in society’s upper echelons.” He cocks his eyebrow as he looks at Lettice. “She will be fit to be tied to find out through the tabloids that her son is seeing you and she didn’t even have the faintest whiff of it. Are you quite sure she doesn’t know about you and Spencely?”

 

“Oh quite, Dickie. We’ve not really seen anyone that we know when we have been out to luncheon, or dinner.”

 

“Or to that picnic in St. James’ Park.” Margot giggles girlishly.

 

“Or in St. James’s Park.”

 

“Oh pooh old Lady Zinnia and her grasp on gossip!” Margot says with a dismissive wave. “It’s Lettice and her happiness we care about.”

 

“I know,” mumbles Dickie half into his drink as he lifts it to his lips and swallows a bit of it, washing down any further thoughts about what Lady Zinnia’s reaction to finding out about Lettice and her son in such a public way might be.

 

*After dinner drinks are often referred to as digestifs. Digestif is actually the French word for “digestive,” meaning they are exactly what the name suggests: alcoholic beverages typically served after a meal to aid digestion.

 

**Gordon's London Dry Gin was developed by Alexander Gordon, a Londoner of Scots descent. He opened a distillery in the Southwark area in 1769, later moving in 1786 to Clerkenwell. The Special London Dry Gin he developed proved successful, and its recipe remains unchanged to this day. The top markets for Gordon's are (in descending order) the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece. Gordon's has been the United Kingdom’s number one gin since the late Nineteenth century. It is the world's best-selling London dry gin.

 

***After the excesses of the reign of William IV, Queen Victoria introduced a very middle-class morality with a focus on respectability to the British monarchy. As her people’s main influencer, the British became very prudish under her reign, and whilst affairs and the like were still not uncommon amongst the upper classes, the middle and lower classes became much more moralistic in the Nineteenth Century. In Queen Victoria’s slums, middle-class respectability and higher than average social morals were often seen as the only ways to escape a poor upbringing. Such attitudes were often called “slum prudery” by their upper-class social betters who had no need of such qualms because of their wealth and birthright allowing them access to society no matter what their behaviour.

 

****A jeune fille à marier was a marriageable young woman, the French term used in fashionable circles and the upper-classes of Edwardian society before the Second World War.

 

This upper-class Mayfair drawing room is different to what you may think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:

 

The bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin, the syphon and the glasses are all 1:12 artisan miniatures. All are made of real glass, as is the green tinged glass comport on the coffee table in the foreground. The bottle of gin came from a specialist stockist in Sydney. The comport, the syphon and hors d‘oeuvres were all supplied by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The porcelain ice bucket and tongs was made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. The two empty highball glasses I have had since I was a teenager, when I acquired them from a specialist high street shop.

 

The postally franked envelope and the wedding invitation on the coffee table are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Mostly known for his miniature books, of which I have quite a large representation in my collection, Ken also made other items including letters and envelopes. To create something so small with such intricate detail really is quite extraordinary and a sign of artistry. 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.

 

The vase of yellow roses on the Art Deco occasional table and the vase of red roses on the right-hand side of the mantlepiece are beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling cord does stretch out.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chairs are of black japanned wood and have removable cushions, just like their life sized examples. To the left of the fireplace is a Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair of black japanned wood which has been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the legs and inside the bureau. The Hepplewhite chair has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven. To the right of the fireplace is a Chippendale cabinet which has also been decorated with chinoiserie designs. It also features very ornate metalwork hinges and locks.

 

On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame.

 

The fireplace is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace which is flanked by brass accessories including an ash brush with real bristles.

 

On the left hand side of the mantle is an Art Deco metal clock hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken.

 

In the middle of the mantle is a miniature artisan hand painted Art Deco statue on a “marble” plinth. Made by Warwick Miniatures in England, it is a 1:12 copy of the “Theban Dancer” sculpture created by Claire-Jeanne-Roberte Colinet in 1925.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug, and the geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

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.

 

Tonight, however we are south of the Thames in the London district of Rotherhithe, where, surrounded by old warehouses, right on the southern foreshore of the Thames, stands the Angel*, a little red brick pub which is always busy, but tonight is exceptionally so, for it is New Year’s Eve 1922.

 

The pub’s comfortable old Victorian décor is festooned with chains of brightly coloured paper, no doubt made by hand by the publican and his family as Edith had created such cheap home made decorations for her own family home in Harlesden for Christmas. Everywhere there is noise and chatter as patrons fill chairs and benches, lean against the bar, or fill the linoleum covered floor space. A hundred conversations, cries of excitement and laughter mix with the clink of glasses, the thud of bottles and the scrape of chairs in one vociferous noise. A fug of acrid greyish white cigarette smoke hangs in the charged air as midnight approaches. Nestled into a cosy nook near the crackling fireplace, Edith, Lettice’s maid, sits alongside her beau, Frank Leadbetter, a delivery boy for Willison’s Grocers, the grocer’s closest to Lettice’s Mayfair flat. The Angel has an interesting mix of patrons, from local workers to more artistic types, as well as a small party of Bright Young Things** shunning the bright lights and nightclubs of London’s West End, at least before midnight, as they enjoy an evening of slumming*** which no doubt they will use to regale their friends with stories about their evening later. It is with these rather noisy people that Edith and Frank share a table, the group taking up majority of it with glasses of wine and champagne, bottles of beer and packets of fashionable Craven “A” cigarettes****. Being much quieter than their table companions, enjoying the delights of freshly made hot chips delivered in to the pub from a local fish and chippery, Edith and Frank don’t tend to be included by the boisterous slum visitors who prefer the colour of equally noisy local characters, except when there is a singalong.

 

Cheering at the conclusion of a boisterous final verse of ‘The Laughing Policeman’***** the group of upper-class people nod their heads in recognition at Frank and Edith before returning to the conversation they were having with a local dock worker before the latest spontaneous singalong began.

 

“It’s a funny sort of place, this, isn’t it Frank?” Edith asks, picking up her glass of port and lemon and sipping it.

 

“Funny, Edith?” Frank queries, cocking his eyebrow questioningly before taking a sip of his own dark ale.

 

“Well, I mean look around at the people here.” She eyes a pair of painters, their occupation evident from the paint splatters on their rather shabby black coats and paint smeared rags hanging limply from their pockets. Then she glances at the young lady in the party sharing the table with them, her fashionable oriental silk frock, and the marcelling****** in her glossy chestnut coloured hair, accessories by a pair of diamond star pins, making her look more suited to her mistress’ drawing room than a Rotherhithe pub. “This isn’t your standard pub crowd, at least not in any of the pubs up around where I’m from.”

 

“Don’t you like it?” Frank asks anxiously, a tinge of hurt in his voice as speaks.

 

Edith looks into Frank’s concerned face and then reaches out her hand and places it lovingly over his, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Of course I like it, Frank. I like anywhere where I’m with you.”

 

“Oh, that’s a relief!” Frank sinks back into the round open balloon back of the red velvet upholstered chair he is sitting on, the tension in his shoulders visibly dissipating as he does. “I’d hate to take my girl somewhere she didn’t like or feel comfortable in.”

 

“Oh no. I like it just fine. The crowd is unusual is all. What made you pick here, Frank? I thought you might have taken me to the Old Crown******* up Islington way.”

 

“Well, you know how I’ve been trying to better myself by attending lectures and the like on art?” When Edith nods as she picks up a hot chip from the diminishing steaming pile of golden fingers he continues. “Well, I ran into a couple of artists, and they told me that Augustus John******** comes here sometimes.”

 

“And who is he?” Edith asks before popping the hot chip into her mouth.

 

“Blimey Edith! I can see I’m going to have to take you to a few art galleries in the New Year!” Frank shakes his head.

 

“I’d like that, Frank.” Edith admits, swallowing.

 

“Augustus John just happens to be one of the best known artists in England!”

 

“I’m so proud of you trying to better yourself and learn things, Frank. I want to keep making you proud as your girl.”

 

“Oh you do, Edith. You know I’m proud of you too. You’re bettering yourself by learning about fine things at Miss Chetwynd’s.”

 

“Yes, but learning to say luncheon or dinner rather than tea isn’t the same thing as learning about art.”

 

“Now, now! I won’t have you talking yourself down, Edith. You’re my girl and I’m proud of you. We’ll go to some galleries on our afternoons off when the spring comes next year.”

 

“Thinking of the New Year,” Edith says. “Mum and Dad talked about you coming over for dinner one night. I want you to meet them. They want to meet you too.”

 

“And they will, Edith love.” Frank apologises. “I just want to do things the right way.”

 

“I know you do, Frank.” Edith looks down into her lap, brushing a few crumbs of golden chip batter off her black coat distractedly. “I told them that too. I told them that you want me to meet your Granny first, and then he’ll meet you.”

 

“And so you will, and then I will.”

 

“When Frank? I’m starting to see comparisons between Miss Lettice and me.”

 

“What do you mean, Edith?”

 

“Well, I don’t like to gossip, you know, but I can’t help overhearing things.” She looks at Frank guiltily. “And well, she talks with Mrs. Channon about wanting to meet Mr. Spencely’s mother, who sounds like a real dragon to me, just to make things formal like. A sign of intention she and Mrs. Channon call it.”

 

“But we’re formal, Edith. You know my intentions clear enough. You heard me tell you I love you at the Premier Super Cinema********** just a few weeks ago.” He reaches over and wraps his hands around her forearms. He looks at her suddenly forlorn face and slumping shoulders. “And you told me the same. What could be more formal than that?”

 

“Meeting your Granny, Frank. I know she means so much to you.”

 

“Well, she’s the only person I have left after Mum and Dad died of the Spanish Flu, and what with my brother getting killed in France, and him being unmarried and all.”

 

“Then why can’t I meet her, Frank? Don’t tell me that she’s a dragon like Mr. Spencely’s mum.”

 

“Oh no, she’s the loveliest woman, my Granny is.”

 

“Then she wouldn’t approve of me? I’m not good enough for her grandson? Is that it?”

 

“Of course not Edith.” He shakes her gently, as if trying to shake some sense into his sweetheart.

 

The fashionable upper-class girl suddenly bursts into a peal of laughter that pierces the air around her like shattering glass, momentarily distracting the young couple. “Oh you are too funny, Charlie Boy!” she says in elegantly modulated, yet slightly slurred, tones to the dock worker as her male companions join in her laughter cheerily. She turns and plonks down her glass of champagne a little clumsily as her constant drinking starts to have an impact on her faculties. Lunging across the table to grab one of the packets of cigarettes scattered across it, she suddenly notices the quiet young couple at the other end of the table. “Gasper, darlings?” she asks, her kohl lined eyes widening seductively as he holds out the open Craven “A” packet to them, the tan coloured cork ends jutting out through the torn red and white paper and silver foil packaging. When they shake their heads warily at her, she merely shrugs. “Help yourself if you change your mind.” She smiles lopsidedly at them, her red lipstick bleeding into her skin around the edges of her painted lips. “They aren’t really mine to offer, but I know Andrew won’t mind. He’s got plenty at home back in St John’s Wood. Don’t you darling?” She turns back to her party and drapes an arm languidly around one of the young men in her party who lets his own hand stray to her bottom cheeks where he fondles her unashamedly through the thin silk of her dress. Neither turn back to see the look of shock on both Edith and Frank’s faces.

 

Turning back to Edith, Frank continues, “Granny will love you, Edith – just like I do!”

 

“Then why aren’t I meeting her yet, Frank?” Tears begin to well in her eyes.

 

“Well, you were partially right, Edith.” Frank admits.

 

“About which part?”

 

“Well, she’s a bit protective of me, you see.” He looks earnestly into Edith’s eyes. “You can’t blame her, can you? If like she is to me, I am her only close living relation, she is always going to scrutinise any girl I show an interest in – not that there have been many,” he adds quickly. “And certainly none as serious as I am with you, Edith.”

 

“Well if you say that she’ll like me, what’s the problem, Frank?”

 

“Look I only told her about you recently, when we both knew we were sure about our feelings for one another. She isn’t upset, but Granny is a bit jealous of no longer being my best girl any longer. Once she’s adjusted herself to the idea, I can ask you around for tea at her house in Upton Park.”

 

“And when will that be, Frank?” Edith asks sulkily.

 

“Oh only a few weeks away, Edith. She’s already starting to come around to the idea, but I think now she knows about you and how serious I am about you, she just wanted what will probably be our last Christmas alone to be.. well, just us. It gives her a chance to deal with being usurped.”

 

“Usurped? What’s that mean, Frank?”

 

“It means to take the place of someone.” Frank replies proudly.

 

The gratified look on his face makes Edith chuckle and her concerns are broken.

 

“That’s my girl.”

 

Frank leans further forward in his chair and wraps his arms around Edith, pulling her to him. He can smell the comforting scent of fresh laundering and soap flakes in her coat as he buries his head into the nape of her neck and nuzzles her gently. He feels her arms tighten around his middle. After a few minutes the pair slowly break apart again and resume their seats properly.

 

“So, what else do you want to do this year, Edith?” Frank smiles.

 

“Well, besides going to a few galleries, and,” she pauses for effect. “Meet your Granny,”

 

“I promise Edith! Just a few weeks from now you’ll be sitting in her kitchen in Upton Park and you won’t be able to get away. I swear!”

 

“Then I was thinking again about having my hair bobbed.”

 

“Oh no, Edith love!” Frank reaches out a hand which he lovingly runs along the chignon at the back of her neck poking out from beneath her black straw cloche decorated with purple silk roses and black feathers. “Not your beautiful hair.”

 

“Oh it’s easy for you to say, Frank. You aren’t wearing it all day, every day. It gets awfully hot when I’m cooking and cleaning at Miss Lettice’s, and it takes ages to wash and dry.”

 

“Well, don’t do anything rash just yet. Meet my Granny first before you decide to bob your hair.”

 

“Doesn’t she approve of girls with bobbed hair then?”

 

“She gets all her fashion tips from Queen Mary, Edith!” Frank laughs. “Of course she doesn’t approve of bobbed hair!”

 

“Then I won’t,” Edith promises. The she adds the caveat, “Just yet.”

 

“That’s my girl!”

 

“Just yet, Frank.” she cautions again. “I have a feeling that nineteen twenty-three is going to be a year of change.”

 

“What gives you that idea, Edith?”

 

“I don’t know.” Edith admits. “But I just have this feeling.”

 

“Well, I don’t want things to change too much.”

 

“But I thought you were all about improvement and betterment, Frank.”

 

“And so I am.”

 

“Well improvement and betterment are just different words for change.”

 

“Well, as long as your feelings for me don’t change.” Frank says with a hopeful look.

 

“As if they would, Frank!”

 

“’Ere! Shurrup you lot!” the publican suddenly shouts loudly from the bar over the top of all the hubbub of human chatter. “It’s nearly midnight!”

 

Edith and Frank stand up and join everyone else in the Angel pub as they start the countdown to midnight. As Big Ben strikes, clusters of cheers can be heard momentarily in the distance across the inky black Thames before they are consumed by the cheers of the people around them as they begin to jump up and down and embrace one another.

 

“Happy nineteen twenty-three!” Frank yells, embracing Edith in his arms.

 

“Happy nineteen twenty-three!” Edith echoes as she sinks against his chest clad in a thick knitted vest and grey worsted wool jacket.

 

As a young woman begins to play the first few notes of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the old upright piano in the bar, Edith and Frank begin to sing along with everyone else, joining hands with each other and the people immediately around them.

 

*The Angel, one of the oldest Rotherhithe pubs, is now in splendid isolation in front of the remains of Edward III's mansion on the Thames Path at the western edge of Rotherhithe. The site was first used when the Bermondsey Abbey monks used to brew beer which they sold to pilgrims. It is located at 24 Rotherhithe St, opposite Execution Dock in Wapping. It has two storeys, plus an attic. It is built of multi-coloured stock brick with a stucco cornice and blocking course. The ground floor frontage is made of wood. There is an area of segmental arches on the first floor with sash windows, and it is topped by a low pitched slate roof. Its Thames frontage has an unusual weatherboarded gallery on wooden posts. The interior is divided by wooden panels into five small rooms. In the early 20th Century its reputation and location attracted local artists including Augustus John and James Abbott McNeil Whistler. In the 1940s and 50s it became a popular destination for celebrities including Laurel and Hardy. Today its customers are local residents, tourists and people walking the Thames Path.

 

**The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.

 

***The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word “slumming” to 1884. It applies to a phenomenon called slum tourism, poverty tourism or ghetto tourism which involves wealthy people visiting impoverished areas of cities. Originally focused on the slums and ghettos of London and Manhattan in the Nineteenth Century, in London people visited slum neighbourhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe life in this situation – a phenomenon which caused great offence to the locals, since they seldom if ever gained from the ogling of their social superiors who were there for the spectacle rather than philanthropic reasons, the spoils going to the tour operators. By 1884 wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points, Manhattan on the Lower East Side, neighbourhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives". Sadly, slum tourism still exists today and is now prominent in South Africa, India, Brazil, Kenya, Philippines, Russia and the United States.

 

****Craven A (stylised as Craven "A") is a British brand of cigarette, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco under some of its subsidiaries; it was originally created by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 and made by them until its merger into Rothmans International in 1972, who then produced the brand until Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999. The cigarette brand is named after the third Earl of Craven, after the "Craven Mixture", a tobacco blend formulated for the 3rd Earl in the 1860s by tobacconist Don José Joaquin Carreras. The year of release of the Craven "A" brand coincided with the well-publicised death of the 4th Earl of Craven in a yachting accident on the 10th of July 1921. It was the first machine-made cork-tipped cigarette, and it became a household name in over one hundred and twenty countries with the slogan "Will Not Affect Your Throat".

 

*****’The Laughing Policeman’ is a music hall song recorded by British artist Charles Penrose, published under the pseudonym Charles Jolly in 1922, making it one of the most popular songs of 1922 in Britain. It is an adaptation of ‘The Laughing Song’ by American singer George W. Johnson with the same tune and form but different subject matter, first recorded in 1890. Charles Penrose used the melody of "The Laughing Song" as well as the same hook of using laughter in the chorus, but changed the lyrics to be about a policeman, and recorded it under the title of ‘The Laughing Policeman’. The composition of the song is, however, credited entirely to Billie Grey, a pseudonym of Penrose's second wife Mabel. The song describes a fat jolly policeman who cannot stop laughing and has a chorus in which the sound of laughter is made in a sustained semi musical way by the singer. It is thought that the character of the Laughing Policeman was inspired by real-life police officer PC John 'Tubby' Stephens, a popular figure in Leicester.

 

******Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women's hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut.

 

*******The Old Crown is a pub built on the corner of Hornsey Lane and Highgate Hill in the north London suburb of Highgate, opposite Highgate Cemetery. Established in 1821 on the steepest part of Highgate Hill, the current building dates from 1908 and features a very ornate and pretty façade including a corner turret with a green tower. The Old Crown closed its doors in 2018 to become a restaurant/bar called Tourian Lounge, where food and drink were still served, but not in an old English pub style. A century after our story is set in 2022, it is Brendan the Navigator, a self-styled gastropub with live music.

 

********Augustus John (1878 – 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John. Although known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits. Those of his two wives and his children were regarded as among his best. By the 1920s when this story is set, John was Britain's leading portrait painter. John painted many distinguished contemporaries, including T. E. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Lady Gregory, Tallulah Bankhead, George Bernard Shaw, the cellist Guilhermina Suggia, the Marchesa Casati and Elizabeth Bibesco.

 

**********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

This jolly festive New year celebratory scene may not appear to be all it appears at first, for it is in fat made up of 1:12 scale miniatures from my large miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the serving of golden hot chips on the table were made in England by hand 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. Made from real glass with great attention to detail on the labels, the bottles of ale come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom, as does the glass of dark ale, also made of glass. The glass of golden champagne is made of real glass and comes from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The two glasses of port and lemon in the low glasses come from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay. The packets of Craven “A” cigarettes come from Shephard’s Miniatures in the UK. Great attention has been paid to the labelling which makes them clearly identifiable and specific to the time between the 1920s and the late 1940s. Made of cut clear crystals set in a silver metal frames the square silver ashtray is made by an English artisan for the Little Green Workshop. It is filled with “ash” and even has a tiny cigarette sitting on its lip. The cigarette is a tiny five millimetres long and just one millimetre wide! Made of paper, I have to be so careful that it doesn’t get lost when I use it! Also made by an artisan, only an Indian one, the black ashtray also features miniature cigarettes, although all of them are affixed within the ashtray. The other glasses on the table and the carafe are all made of clear glass and were acquired from a high street stockist of miniatures when I was a young teenager.

 

The table on which all these items stand is a Queen Anne lamp table which I was given for my seventh birthday. It is one of the very first miniature pieces of furniture I was ever given as a child.

 

The fireplace surround in the background comes from Melody Jane’s Doll House Supplies in the United Kingdom.

 

On the mantle stand more glasses acquired from a high street stockist of miniatures when I was a young teenager. There is also a bottle of beer from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop and a bottle of champagne from Karen Ladybug Miniatures.

 

The Staffordshire hound and fox and the “Dieu et Mon Droit” (God and My Right) vase on the mantle have all been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys.

 

The parlour palm in the background comes from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The colourful paper chains were made by me.

 

The two chairs I acquired from a deceased estate as part of a larger collection of miniatures. They date from the 1970s.

 

The wood panelling in the background is real, as I shot this scene on the wood panelled mantle of my drawing room.

A box of film and milk *slurp*

Here are several add-on lenses and their home-made adapters for mounting on my Nikon 105mm f/2.5 AI-S lens. I keep an inventory of damaged filters for scavenging rings to make a variety of adapters for working with a number of primary lenses.

 

On the left is an RMS thread to 52mm adapter, shown fitted with a Gaertner 80 mm microscope objective. Below is an unmounted 60mm. Their knurled mounting "position" rings have been color coded with a marker for quick reference... red = very short working distance, blue = longer working distance. The mounted objective / aluminum disc (fitted with a 52mm ring), is ready to be mounted on the front of the 105mm with the Gaertner objective facing the subject.

 

At top center is an adapter made from empty 58mm filter rings, and a Zeiss Microscope "dove-tail" accessory adapter (silver ribbed screw). The adapter is shown fitted with a Voss 75mm enlarging lens, below is an unmounted Laminex 90mm. An enlarging lens is screwed into a lens mounting ring locked in place by the silver knob, its aperture always at its widest setting... to minimize vignetting. This mounting ring remains locked in place allowing for quick changing of a number of enlarging lenses. The short stack of empty rings on the right is screwed onto the lens adapter just above the red ring, serving as a spacer to prevent the enlarging lens from contacting the Nikon 105mm objective, the adapter being mounted with the enlarging lens facing the camera.

 

Both adapters have threaded rings that face the subject, for mounting a home-made frozen dinner bowl flash diffuser fitted with an empty Raynox UAC 2000 snap on lens mount adapter.

 

These lenses provide very good magnification when used on the 105mm, which is always used focused at infinity to provide the greatest working distance.

 

DSC-9298

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 we are in the very modern and up-to-date 1920s kitchen of Lettice’s flat: Edith her maid’s preserve, where she is taking possession of her latest order from Willison’s Grocers, delivered by Mr. Willison’s boy, Frank Leadbeater.

 

“Tinned apricots, tinned pears,” Edith marks off the items written on her list that she telephoned through to Mr. Willison’s on Thursday morning. “Plum jam, Bovril.” She places a tick next to each with a crisp mark from her pencil, the sound of it scratching across the page’s surface. “Tinned cherries. Where are the tinned cherries, Frank?” Edith asks anxiously.

 

“They’re right here, Miss Edith,” he remarks, delving noisly into the box of groceries between the flour and Lyon’s tea, withdrawing a small tin of My Lady tinned cherries. “Just as you ordered.”

 

“Oh thank goodness!” Edith sighs, placing a hand on her chest, from which she releases the breath she has been holding.

 

“Everything is just as you ordered and selected and packed with extra care by yours truly!” Frank pats himself with his cycling cap on the chest as he puffs it out proudly through his rust coloured knitted vest.

 

“Oh, get on with you, Frank!” Edith scoffs with a mild chuckle, glancing up at his charming, if slightly gormless grin before continuing her inventory of items.

 

“It’s true Miss Edith!” he replies, holding his cap against his heart rather melodramatically. “I swear. I packed them up myself. As his most trusted member of staff, Mr. Willison lets me do things like that as well as the deliveries.”

 

“I thought you were the only person he employed, Frank.” Edith remarks without looking up from her list ticking.

 

“Yes,” the delivery boy coughs and blusters, colouring a little at the remark. “Yes well, it is true that I am his only employee, but Mrs. Willison does do the books and his daughter helps out on Saturdays. But I am his most trusted employee, and I’m working my way up the rungs.”

 

“What rungs, Frank? You’re the delivery boy. What is there beyond that? Mr. Willison isn’t going to hand his family business to his delivery boy to run.”

 

“Well no, not yet he isn’t, but I’m doing more and more around the shop when I’m not out on my delivery round, so I’m learning about things over time.”

 

“Things! What things?”

 

“Well, Mr, Willison let me help display goods in his front window the other day. Soon I will be able to add visual merchandiser to my list of skills.”

 

“You’ll add what?” Edith laughs, her hand flying to her mouth as she does to try and muffle it.

 

“Hey, it’s not funny Miss Edith!” Frank looks forlorn and crestfallen across at the chuckling maid. “Visual merchandising. It’s just a fancy term we use for window dressing.”

 

“Oh, do we now?” Edith cocks an eyebrow at him. “Very fancy indeed.”

 

“You may laugh now, my girl,” Frank wags a finger in a playful way at Edith. “But one day you’ll say that you knew me when.”

 

“When you have your own grocers?” Edith sounds doubtful as she speaks.

 

“Well, I could do. Others have. Why shouldn’t I?”

 

“Oh I don’t mind you having dreams, Frank.” she assures him. “Miss Lettice tells me the same.”

 

The delivery boy’s ears pick up and leaning a little bit closer to Edith he asks, “So what’s your dream then, Miss Edith, since mine is so laughable?”

 

“My dream?” she put her hand to her chest, taken aback that anyone should be so forward, least of all the man who delivers groceries from the local up-market grocers. “My dream is to…” Then she glances up at the kitchen clock ticking solemnly away on the eau-de-nil painted wall. “Shouldn’t you be out delivering groceries to your next customer, Frank?”

 

“Old Lady Basting’s cook can wait for her delivery a little while longer,” Frank asserts. “She never has a kind word for me anyway. It’s always ‘stop cluttering up the area with your bike, Frank’. Anyway, she’s terrible at paying her bills. I don’t know why Mr. Willison keeps her as a customer when she always waits for reminders before paying.”

 

“Well, a customer is a customer, Frank, even a late paying one. Quite a lot of cooks of titled families around here do the same. It’s almost like it’s expected that they don’t have to pay on time.”

 

“Expected?”

 

“You know: their right. Their right not to pay on time because that would be acknowledging that money makes business revolve.”

 

“Well it does, Miss Edith.”

 

“I know that Frank, and you know that, but families like Miss Lettice’s, they never like talking about money. It’s almost as if it’s dirty.”

 

“I imagine when you have so much money you never have to worry about it, why would you talk about it?”

 

“I suppose so Frank. Well, that’s it.” She smiles and puts down her notepad with a satisfied sigh. “That’s everything.”

 

“Course it is, Miss Edith. I told you I packed it myself, and Frank Leadbetter won’t ever let you down.”

 

“Well, since you’re whiling away some time, Frank, do you fancy a cup of tea then?” Edith asks with a shy smile.

 

“Oh, thank you!” Replies the young man. “Only if it isn’t too much trouble, mind you.”

 

“Oh it’s no trouble. I’m going to have one myself before I pack all this away,” she waves her hand expansively at the piles of groceries. “I can fetch two cups as easily as I can one.”

 

“I shan’t say no then, Miss Edith.” Frank agrees readily. “Cycling groceries around Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico is thirsty work.”

 

Edith goes to the dresser and fetches out two Delftware cups and saucers, the sugar bowl and milk jug which she arranges on the end of the table not covered in grocery items. She places the kettle on the stovetop and lights it with one of the matches from the red and white Webb Matches box that Frank has just brought. Then she scuttles across the black and white linoleum floor with the jug to the food safe where she fills it with a splash of milk, before bringing it back to the table.

 

“One of those Huntly and Palmers* chocolate dessert biscuits wouldn’t go astray with it.” Frank says reaching down to the elegantly decorated buttercup yellow and bluish grey tin.

 

“Ah-ah!” Edith slaps Frank’s hand away before he can remove the lid. “Those aren’t for you Frank, any more than they are me! I’ve got some leftover Family Assorted in the biscuit barrel. You can settle for one of them, if you deign, Mr. Leadbetter, Greengrocer to the best families in Mayfair.” She giggles girlishly and her smile towards him is returned with a beaming smile of his own.

 

“So, Miss Edith,” Frank asks with a cheeky smile as he leans over the box. “What is it you’re making me for my tea?”

 

“You, Frank Leadbetter?” she laughs in amazement. “You have quite some cheek today, don’t you?”

 

“Alright then, if it isn’t for me, what and who are these groceries for?”

 

“What and for whom, Frank.” Edith corrects him kindly.

 

“Is that what your dream is? To teach people how to speak properly, like that chap in Pygmalion** then? What’s his name?”

 

“Higgins, Henry Higgins.” Edith replies. “And no, I don’t. And stop fishing for information not freely given.” She gives his nose a playful squeeze as she crosses her arms akimbo and waits for the kettle to boil. “No, most of this is for a special dinner party Miss Lettice is throwing for friends from Buenos Aires who have come to see the wedding of Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles***. They want summer pudding,” She tuts scornfully. “In the middle of winter!”

 

“Thus, all the tinned fruits.”

 

“Since I cannot move the seasons to those of the southern hemisphere, yes.”

 

Edith hears the kettle on the stove boiling and pours hot water into the white teapot sitting on the server shelf attached to the right of the stove. Placing the knitted cosy over its top, she moves it to the table. She looks Frank Leadbetter up and down as she does. He stands there, leaning against the deal kitchen table, dressed in dark trousers, a white shirt that could do with a decent pressing, his rust coloured knitted vest and a Brunswick green tie****. She looks at his face. He’s quite handsome really, now she looks at him, with fresh rosy cheeks, wind tousled sandy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes.

 

“You know what Mrs. Boothby said to me, Frank?” Edith chuckles, picking up the pot and swirling the tea in it before pouring some into both cups.

 

“No!” Frank replies, accepting one cup. “What?”

 

“She thought that I was sweet on you, and that we might be stepping out together.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes really! That’s what she thought. She let it slip a month or so ago.”

 

Frank adds a heaped teaspoon full of sugar to his tea and stirs it thoughtfully. “Is that such a terrible idea?”

 

“What?” Edith asks.

 

“Us,” He indicates with a wagging finger between Edith and himself. “You and me, I mean, stepping out.”

 

“Well,” Edith feels a blush rising up her throat and flooding her cheeks. “No. Not at all, Frank. I was just saying that Mrs. Boothby thought we were, when we aren’t.” She looks away from Frank’s expectant face and spoons sugar into her own tea. “I hadn’t really given it much thought.”

 

“Ahh, but you have given it some consideration, then?”

 

Edith keeps quiet a moment and thinks with eyes downcast. “A little bit, in passing I suppose.”

 

“And what if we were, Edith?” Surprised by the sudden dropping of her title in a very familiar address, Edith glances back at Frank who looks at her in earnest. “Walking out together, I mean. Would that be agreeable to you?”

 

“Are you asking me to walk out with you, Frank Leadbetter?” Edith gasps.

 

“Well, yes, I suppose I am.” Frank chuckles awkwardly, his face colouring with his own blush of embarrassment. “Only if you’re agreeable to it of course.”

 

“Yes,” Edith smiles. “Yes, I’m agreeable to that, Frank.”

 

“You are?” Frank’s eyes widen in disbelief as his mouth slackens slightly.

 

“For a man so sure of his prospects, you seem surprised, Frank.”

 

“Oh well,” he stumbles. “Its not… I mean… I mean I am. I… I just didn’t think you… well… you know being here and all…”

 

“It’s aright Frank. I was only teasing.” replies Edith kindly. “You don’t need to explain.”

 

“And Miss Chetwynd doesn’t…”

 

“Oh no, Frank! As long as my work isn’t interfered with, Miss Lettice won’t mind. She’s a very kind and modern thinking mistress, Unlike Mrs. Plaistow.”

 

“I remember that was where I first set eyes on you, Edith, at her terrace in Pimlico.”

 

“Do you Frank?”

 

“I do.” Frank smiles proudly.

 

The two chuckle and shyly keep glancing at one another before looking away and burying themselves in their cups of tea awkwardly.

 

“Your day off is Wednesday, isn’t it?” Frank asks eventually.

 

“It is, Frank, how observant of you to notice,”

 

“Well, it pays to take note of things in my profession. You just never know when it might come in handy.” He taps the side of his nose knowingly.

 

“Only, I go and help my Mum on my day off.” Edith explains.

 

“Oh,” Frank says defeatedly, then thinks for a moment and adds. “Well, I work Wednesday anyway.”

 

“What days don’t you work, Frank?”

 

“Well, I don’t work Sundays. So, I’m free after church services are over.”

 

Edith laughs, “Well that works rather well then, as I have Sundays free until four.”

 

Frank joins Edith’s laughter. “Sunday it is then!”

 

The pair fall into an awkward silence again.

 

“So, where would you like to go, Edith?” asks Frank eventually, shattering the quiet punctuated only by the swinging pendulum of the wall clock.

 

“Well,” Edith replies after a few moments. “Miss Lettice’s client, Wanetta Ward is starring in a new moving picture called ‘After the Ball is Over’ at the Premier in East Ham*****. We could go and see that.”

 

“Sounds brilliant, Edith!”

 

Edith smiles shyly and blushes again, a sparkle shining in her eyes. “Yes, it does rather.”

 

* Huntley and Palmers is a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading, Berkshire. The company created one of the world’s first global brands and ran what was once the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley and Son and Huntley and Palmer. Huntley and Palmer were renown for their ‘superior reading biscuits’ which they promoted in different varieties for different occasions, including at breakfast time, and as a dessert biscuit.

 

**Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. Written in 1912, it premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on the 16th of October 1913 and was first presented in English on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.

 

***Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897 – 1965), was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the sister of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She married Viscount Lascelles on the 28th of February 1922 in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. The bride was only 24 years old, whilst the groom was 39. There is much conjecture that the marriage was an unhappy one, but their children dispute this and say it was a very happy marriage based upon mutual respect. The wedding was filmed by Pathé News and was the first royal wedding to be featured in fashion magazines, including Vogue.

 

****In pre World War II times, it was unusual for even the most low paid male workers like delivery men to dress in a shirt, jacket, vest and tie. It represented respectability and the drive for upward mobility in a class conscious society. It is where the term “white collar job” comes from.

 

*****The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

This domestic scene may not be all that it appears, for it is made up completely of items from my 1:12 miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

All of Edith’s groceries are 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail as regards the labels of different foods. Some are still household names today. So many of these tins of various foods would have been household staples in the 1920s when canning and preservation revolutinised domestic cookery. They come from various different suppliers including Shepherds Miniatures in the United Kingdom, Kathleen Knight’s Doll House in the United Kingdom, Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The cardboard box branded with the name Sunlight Soap and the paper shopping bag also come from Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

 

Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick and salty meat extract paste similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar, and as cubes and granules. Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. Its appearance is similar to Marmite and Vegemite. Bovril can be made into a drink ("beef tea") by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast in a similar fashion to Marmite and Vegemite.

 

Bird’s were best known for making custard and Bird’s Custard is still a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange. They also made Bird’s Golden Raising Powder – their brand of baking powder. Bird’s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird’s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.

 

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.

 

S.P.C. is an Australian brand that still exists to this day. In 1917 a group of fruit growers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley decided to form a cooperative which they named the Shepperton Fruit Preserving Company. The company began operations in February 1918, canning pears, peaches and nectarines under the brand name of S.P.C. On the 31st of January 1918 the manager of the Shepparton Fruit Preserving Company announced that canning would begin on the following Tuesday and that the operation would require one hundred and fifty girls or women and thirty men. In the wake of the Great War, it was hoped that “the launch of this new industry must revive drooping energies” and improve the economic circumstances of the region. The company began to pay annual bonuses to grower-shareholders by 1929, and the plant was updated and expanded. The success of S.P.C. was inextricably linked with the progress of the town and the wider Goulburn Valley region. In 1936 the company packed twelve million cans and was the largest fruit cannery in the British empire. Through the Second World War the company boomed. The product range was expanded to include additional fruits, jam, baked beans and tinned spaghetti and production reached more than forty-three million cans a year in the 1970s. From financial difficulties caused by the 1980s recession, SPC returned once more to profitability, merging with Ardmona and buying rival company Henry Jones IXL. S.P.C. was acquired by Coca Cola Amatil in 2005 and in 2019 sold to a private equity group known as Shepparton Partners Collective.

 

Peter Leech and Sons was a grocers that operated out of Lowther Street in Whitehaven from the 1880s. They had a large range of tinned goods that they sold including coffee, tea, tinned salmon and golden syrup. They were admired for their particularly attractive labelling. I do not know exactly when they ceased production, but I believe it may have happened just before the Second World War.

 

Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884. It was created by William Hesketh Lever (1st Viscount Leverhulme). It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight.

 

Webb matches were manufactured by the match firm Bryant and May. Bryant and May was a British company created in the mid Nineteenth Century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant and May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant and May Factory in Melbourne, and owned match factories in other parts of the world. Formed in 1843 by two Quakers, William Bryant and Francis May, Bryant and May survived as an independent company for over seventy years, but went through a series of mergers with other match companies and later with consumer products companies. The registered trade name Bryant amd May still exists and it is owned by the Swedish Match Company, as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant and May group.

  

Lyons Tea was first produced by J. Lyons and Co., a catering empire created and built by the Salmons and Glucksteins, a German-Jewish immigrant family based in London. Starting in 1904, J Lyons began selling packaged tea through its network of teashops. Soon after, they began selling their own brand Lyons Tea through retailers in the UK, Ireland and around the world. In 1918, Lyons purchased Hornimans and in 1921 they moved their tea factory to J. Lyons and Co., Greenford at that time, the largest tea factory in Europe. In 1962, J Lyons and Company (Ireland) became Lyons Irish Holdings. After a merger with Allied Breweries in 1978, Lyons Irish Holdings became part of Allied Lyons (later Allied Domecq) who then sold the company to Unilever in 1996. Today, Lyons Tea is produced in England. Lyons Tea was a major advertiser in the early decades of RTÉ Television, featuring the "Lyons minstrels" and coupon-based prize competitions.

 

The Dry Fork Milling Company, which produced Dry Fork Flour was based in Dry Fork Virginia. They were well known for producing cornmeal. They were still producing cornmeal and flour into the 1950s. Today, part of the old mill buildings are used as a reception centre.

 

Edith’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.

 

To the left of the sink is the food safe with a mop leaning against it. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvinised wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.

Supplement

 

- Luncheon Karolin Stone -

 

Well, she was not my first choice but I thought she was really beautiful and got a lot of potential! ^^

 

Unfortunately she often had so many flaws which bothered me a lot: lips not filled well, wonky eyes, wild & crooked eyelashes...

 

That was the main reason not to get her. I know mine isn't flawless either but I think after all I got hold of a pretty nice Luncheon Karolin! I'm really happy with her and I'm going to upload some photos of her soon... 😊

   

-end series-

Relatively slim pickings on the railway front today with only one non-passenger service on the Tyne Valley line, to break up the monotony of DMU's.

 

On the plus side it was a substantial formation of HOBC stock returning to Tyne Yard following overnight work near Carlisle.

 

66507+563 are in charge for the 1030 Caldew Jn to Tyne S.S as it approaches Blaydon on a sunny 16th August 2015.

B. Ruppes Inc is a health supplement store in historic Barelas. Since it's inception at the turn of the century, B. Ruppes Inc has evolved over the years from at one time a full-service pharmacy to it's current state of selling over the counter medicine, traditional Mexican remedies, herbs, vitamins/supplements, and traditional Mexican medicine supplies and needs.

 

This mural in their parking lot and is a must to see.

 

Barelas, Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, NM

I've gone for a little 'rewind' here with this shot of new to Mainline B6LE Wright Crusader pictured in St Budeaux square working back from Saltash to Plymouth on what was back then the old 'Red Line' route 1 & 2.

I remembered when this one turned up from South Yorkshire, it still had the LEDs programmed to destinations from up North!

We had all of the N-BKY batch here at Plymouth at one point along with N144BWG & M918MRW, they supplemented the native B6BLEs W-PAF batch on the then colour branded routes around Plymouth.

Don't forget to take your daily recommended dose of iron supplements.

Depending on which 'snake oil' salesman you talk to, bladder wrack can be used to benefit all sorts of health conditions, but medical evidence as to it's efficacy is thin on the ground.

 

One definite benefit is not to fall in the water while trying to photograph it.

 

Snaefellsnes Peninsular, Iceland.

April 2016. © David Hill

Our heat pump quit working recently, so we turned on our supplemental heat source. While we know it's actually a 50-year-old electric wall heater, here's a photo of it from Dot's point of view.

In camera multiple exposure.

Supplementing the previous post on RENFE is a view across the Sierra Helada at nearby Benidorm featuring the "Limon Expres" tourist train running upon the FGV narrow gauge system.

12th November 1973.