I spent Friday afternoon cleaning and organising my room, trying to make it pretty and feminime. One of my favourite bits: my cookbooks stacked on the windowsill, a vintage teacup holding jewels and various treasures and a jam jar filled with fresh peonies.
A few weeks ago, The Boy took me to The Georgian House in Bristol. Clearly, he’s a keeper, because exploring a fully restored and decorated, late 18th century merchant’s house is probably the best way to spend a grey, rainy Sunday morning if you ask me.
Attention to detail has been paid in all the rooms, from the drawing room and the bedroom upstairs to the kitchen and the laundry room in the basement. The whole house is the perfect place for you to play out your georgian/regency fantasies.
The rooms that are above ground are all very grand, all sparkly chandeliers and delicate china and polished silver. I could almost see the ladies doing their needlework or playing the pianoforte in the drawing room, the gentlemen doing business in the library surrounded by hundreds of leather bound tomes. But the less glamorous rooms in the basement were the ones that I thought were amazing. The kitchen, the pantry, the laundry room, bare and in sharp contrast with the comfort found upstairs illuminated the hard life of the servants.
If you are ever in Bristol, I highly recommend visiting The Georgian House, especially if you, like me, dream of being a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. And if you have time, do as we did and go two blocks up Park Street to The Last Bookstore for some guilt-free book buying since every book there costs £2.
This summer bookworm will be…
Eating dark cherries so juicy they stain lips and fingers. People-watching, reading and daydreaming at Hampstead Heath. Getting a tan. Spending lazy Sundays reading and drinking pink lemonade. Meeting long-time internet friends in real life for the first time. Drinking cocktails in gardens. Swimming in the Mediterranean. Filling vases with pink and purple hyacinths. Sporting bright coral nails. Watching classic films in open-air cinemas. Indulging in Laduree macarons. Finishing War and Peace. Mastering messy buns. Using the You’ve been Mangoed bath melt from Lush. Wearing cocktail rings and stacking bangles. Recommending Matchbook magazine to everyone she knows.
What will you be up to this summer?
A nice cup of tea in the afternoon at Foxcroft & Ginger in Soho.
I had not read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child and I really wish I had. They are exciting stories in an enchanting world which I would have really appreciated when I was younger. Still, even now, this book was fun and easy to read, I enjoyed it. My edition – which I got at a charity shop for one or two pounds – has the first three books in the reading order apparently recommended by C.S.Lewis. My book also has really pretty illustrations and maps, which I liked.
The first one, The Magician’s Nephew, is sort of the foundation for the story. It’s set in the 19th century when two children discover magical world and enter Narnia just as it’s being created by Aslan. It’s a rather simple story and not a lot happens in it, but I really liked the way the creation of Narnia was written and it definitely made me curious to read the next books.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is perhaps the best known book from the chronicles. I watched the movie a few years ago, which is not something I usually do if I haven’t read the book, so I pretty much knew what was going to happen. I was surprised to see how close the movie was to the book. I enjoyed the adventure of the four siblings in Narnia, even though just like the first book it felt like a story written for very young children.
In the third book, The Horse and his Boy, things started getting better. It’s a more complex story about a slave boy who escapes into Narnia along with a Narnian horse. This was by far my favourite of the three. Tashbaan, the great city, is described beautifully in the book and brought to mind grand cities straight out from Arabian Nights. The characters seemed more developed in this book, I loved Bree, the proud charger horse who in the course of this adventure discovers his flaws.
Reading this book was fun and very quick, it was a pleasant break in between the more serious books that I’ve been reading. I’m definitely going to read the rest of the books soon, I’m looking forward to being in Narnia again.
Gothic prettiness.
