Half-Term Holidays.

I finally managed to walk past Dalston Oxfam when it was open and it was just as wondrous and experience as I might have imagines. It's a rather large branch and the windows are always full of books which I have always found exciting, however I rarely wander down/up Kingsland Road enough to go in. Today was definitely the day. All the books are 99p! They also had an amazing selection which would have probably been even better if I had got there a few moments earlier as the couple queueing ahead were buying around fifty books! In order to renew my attempt at reading all the Booker Prize winners I picked up a copy of Anne Enright's 'The Gathering', 'White Tiger' by Aravind Adiga and 'Possession' by AS Byatt, as well as a nominee from 2003, 'Astonishing Splashes of Colour' by Clare Morrall. Burrowed deep within the shelves was also a copy of Maxine Hong Kingston's 'The Woman Warrior' which I have been meaning to read for a while. I also snapped up a copy of 'The Mitford Girls' (hence the photo) by Mary S Lovell  for a bit of lighter reading.

With some 'free' time on my hands I went for a trawl through BBC Iplayer and found 'South Riding'.  relying only on only streaming I miss programme adverts and tend to miss the beginning of some great Dramas, on other channels this doesn't matter, but as the BBC only keeps things up for 7 days I normally miss the first episode and thus fail to understand what is going on. Luckily, 'South Riding' has only just been shown, yesterday evening I believe, so I managed to actually get episode one. Totally loved it, for a totally idealistic trainee English Teacher, who up until now never really fancied a career as a Headmistress, it's made me actually consider the role of management within my future...

Due to a brief few years where I worked in fashion and spent two weeks of the year sitting on uncomfortable floors backstage waiting for girls who were waiting for hair/make-up fittings and so forth, whenever LFW comes around I always have slight mixed feelings about leaving my potential fashion career, mainly because LFW was my favourite thing, even if I did get a numb bum and no sleep for two weeks. Since then I always avidly check the reports on Style.com and Vogue.com and this year I'm amazed how quickly they are being uploaded. It used to be my job to sift through the shows looking for images of the models I looked after, not that easy when they are made over, wearing a hat and you've only seen them once! So, of the show reports I've glanced over so far from London, I have to see these are my two favourite images. The above, was the closing dress from Holly Fulton, I love it, there is just something about those clouds... and below, well, you can't beat Vivienne Westwood at the best of times and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the fact she had pink hair opening the show.