In Tiznit, south of Agadir
I discover a very elaborate headdress of Berber design.
And pretty headscarves on the ends of posts.
I think this mannequin is waiting for the shop keeper to return from lunch.
In Marrakesh the clothes themselves are OK --though almost certainly made in China. It's the dummies I find alarming.
In Essouira, something right out of JAWS...
A bus ride from Tiznit......
and very beautiful melons...
For some reason people used to enjoy being rude about English food --probably because until somewhat recently lots of people boiled everything to death. Nowadays English food is rather splendid and enjoying something of a Renaissance.
To start with the traditional cuppa. Here at M&S on Oxford Street. Note the asrounding blandness of the color scheme. I had already eaten the miniature cookie that came with it --just like in Belgium.
More reviving tea. Here the kettle has boiled on an Aga. Note the all-important teacosy.
Rosie has a great selection of tea pots for all occasions. What a jumble of china from low to high from swanky shops and from estate sales.
Good heavens! We used to have the Rector, Mr.Porter, to tea once in a very great while. How splendid it would have been to have the right teapot to hand.
Breakfast tray. Weetabix (my poor brother is Peter Wix --so guess what he was called at school....) Marmite.....Yum.
Apples decorate the church for Harvest Festival. If anyone needs to know how to pick apples and store them, I can supply information.
Lunch. A pork pie! Ham. Branston Pickle. Beans and beets from the garden. I think the cucumber came from a shop.
And last of all -- supper the piece de resistance: Toad-in-the-Hole. A splendid one. Gastronomic bliss!
My story Jane in Winter is rather full of traditional English food.
Decided to discover the Rockaways --out beyond Brooklyn and Queens.
We are out on Long Island where we used to live and have a big garden, so it's bitter-sweet enjoying what used to be commonplace.
On the other hand, Countrymice might want a glimpse of the city. The answer, of course, would to be astoundingly rich and have both....and then there is the bother of two refrigerators and so on. But I digress.
My cell phone has this gizmo ( I think it was free) called Frametastic. Not sure whether it is a good thing or not. Anyway, it's fun to play around with.
As well as looking at flowers, we went to the beach where I managed to study vegetation too.
Probably better without Frametastic.
Talking about beach reads, three of my books are now available in a Kindle edition and therefore super inexpensive.
A Fortunate Child a novel based on the true story of two women, one German, one English, during the Second World War. About mothers and daughters and adoption and joy and loss.
New Roof in October, a small book of poems
and also two books for the 9-12 year old set
and
These last two are adventures set in the 1950's. Happy Reading.
The hinterland just the other side of the East River
lots of rail yards and things
then Queens which has a quite different Karma --see shop front above
then the real shops which sell artificial flowers galore
beneath the elevated subway tracks (sort of an oxymoron)
a deco elevator door to a building behind which there is a secret and magic garden
a glittering blue asteroid
two exotic cats Lorenzo el Magnificat and Suleiman Somethingorother
and a red room with a sparkle-dusted feather.
Then home on the subwayto the relative normacly of Manhattan
The train windows are so absurdly grubby that the dirt makes a design in its own right.
What on earth is there to do on the train? Read The Times, The New Yorker, a book, knit, evesdrop on stupendously banal cell phone conversations.
Look out of the grubby window at Queens
and the train yards outside Penn Station.
Back in the city
the trees are almost popping in Union Square
where there are lots of spring flowers for sale
and I met a very strange woman who wanted to engage me in a very long conversation about England and dogs, and it dawned on me slowly that she was quite, quite mad, so I felt sorry for her and wanted to escape at the same time ....
This morning I spied this tasteful bouquet in a shuttered gallery and came home to
the horror that is our dining table as tax time approaches.... (photo inspired by Janelle's ongoing kitchen board).
Apps and gadgets prove splendid fun... the kitchen cupboards
lots of coffee
on our afternoon walk
then Deniz came over and talked about Turkey
and brought us a splendid cake
to urge us to go there soon.
Finally make it to the NEW MUSEUM on the Bowery.
The lobby is large and light and has a vast arrangement of pussy willow. ( The Metropolitan Museum and the Neue Galerie always have impressive flowers too).
The enviable polished concrete floors reflect so well.
The elevator's chartreuse
The Bowery ( seen through the library window grille) is astoundingly clean and unlike its former not-very-regretted self.
The prisine library brims with info and clean-clean Apple techie stuff.
The stairs are long narrow eye candy
with little exhibits in nooks along the way.
These boards are maybe art work or pieces of frames awaiting fabrication -- the whole point of the exercise, I think. The distinction of art and not-art. Thank heavens I don't have to discuss that sort of thing.......that way lies madness for sure.
So, the exhibits themselves --the vast chalk board brims with ideas. The water containers distill something....
A great deal to ponder
and ponder and maybe shed light on.
Amongst a jumble of stuff in my desk: postcards documenting my husband's grandparents' annual winter escape to Florida.
In the 40's, 50's and 60's Frank and Josie Schmid drove from Long Island to West Palm Beach where they had a house. The Colonial Motor Court in Portsmouth, Virginia cost $6 a night including tile baths and free radios.
Along the way they stopped at all sorts of motels often becoming friends with the people who ran them. This is Danker's Motel Court in Miami. The managers, Fred and Henry Danker originally came from Asbury Park, New Jersey.
The Camden Motor Lodge was also $6 a night -- the post card annotated "Very Good". Arrow points to their room.
This little restaurant has bags of charm. They ate here on January 1st 1948
Mr and Mrs. Henry Rueger were the owner/managers of Rueger's Cottages in Gulfport. "Hi Son, Hope everything is going along smoothly. Will syay here til Sunday morning. Seen Mr. Eichelberger and the Reugers so far. All our love, Mom and Dad."
I want those lawn chairs.
The A&A Tourist Court, one mile north of Claxton, Georgia sprang for fancier postcards even if the restaurant resembled a shoebox.
Not quite sure what the attraction was with the rather grim looking Bancroft Motel in Virginia
or why the Skyway Motel in Fort Pierce, Florida was a steal at $4.50 a night on January 7th 1952
These are the Twin Attractions of the Highlands of Central Florida. (I had not realized there were any highlands. Robert says if you stand up straight you can see across the whole state.)
Be that as it may, in 1948 you could visit Cypress Gardens * "a paradise of beauty and a Mecca for nearly a quarter million visitors a year.....Photographic models pose for your pictures in hoop skirts among the flowers...." The Singing Tower was a "gift to the people of America from Edward Bok, a man who loved nature and all beauty."
* Now Legoland
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