Post Comment Love 23 - 26 May

Hello there, and welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

We had a couple of days in Devon last week, and thankfully we continued to have nice weather. As ever in our quest to avoid motorway service stations wherever possible we made use of our National Trust membership stopping at Croome in Worcestershire both on the way down and on the way back.

It’s a fabulous place and in our two relatively short stops we managed to visit the cafe (twice), the RAF museum and head off in walks in opposite directions around the parkland to make sure we saw as much as possible. We didn’t make it into the house, or coincide our visit so that the walled gardens were open, but I’m sure we’ll be back.

And sadly, we didn’t have time to make proper use of these deck chairs either - so we’ll have to go back!

We’ve another bank holiday here in the UK this weekend, so the link party will stay open for an extra day closing at 11pm on Monday.

The Barbican's Community Garden

On a sunny day in April I was down in London with some time on my hands and so I had a wander, and found myself coming out of yet another undiscovered part of the Barbican. I’m sure every time I go I find another way in or out, and so I wasn’t disappointed!

This time though I stumbled across the Moor Lane Clean Air Pop-Up Community Garden created in 2017 as part of the Low Emission Neighbourhood, and completely new to me. The garden intended to raise awareness of air quality in the City and to encourage pedestrians to take low emission routes to the Barbican station, the Barbican Centre and towards Guildhall using the Podium walkways.

Designed by three young landscape designers known as Studio xmpl, they worked pro bono with Friends of City Gardeners a City-based community group of garden volunteers, who now jointly maintain the garden along with the City of London Corporation’s City Gardens team.

The garden has been constructed from 57 galvanised steel pipes and all plants were chosen for their ability to trap particulates and improve air quality, as well as provided cover and forage for birds and nectar-rich flowers for pollinators.

In 2020 poet Kit Finnie and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama worked with local community groups to create poems which reflected on this garden, the pandemic and what the city means to them.

you have the power
to break something.
a common truth but
still. it comes to you
like ice water gulped
at 3am. joy that
streams freely from
the tap and cupped
hands to catch it in.
the air around your
body. all the london
beyond. beyond
that. another truth.
home is the thing
that settles round
your most beloved
person when they’re
still.

It was a garden full of structure, texture and shape with lush greenery and luckily on the day I visited sunlight glinting off the City offices behind. No doubt a great spot for City workers to eat their lunch.

I loved the poetry too, and wished I’d known about this place before - though of course I stopped working in the City in 2014, so a few years before this was created. But it’s the kind of place I’d have loved to escape to with colleagues, or alone, for lunch.

a distant hush is
an opportunity for
abundance. so is
a pigeon. a seed.
a baby animal. a
stranger biking to
the office. the sound
of a drill. a city fox. a
decision to attend.
a steady beat. a
gentle nudge. a
pavement.
new shoes. the
future. therapy. a
crush. printer paper.
wandering. the
climate crisis. your
inhale. your exhale.
this.

Somehow it seemed fitting that one of the ever increasing e-bikes parked up in the garden was green and labelled forest, less so that the building behind was a car park - but as with everything - balance!

inhale. exhale.
resilience is a
circle. a thread that
never ends. later.
you’ll savour this
encounter with
delight as fresh as
aloe. its audacity.
beating green in the
grey heart of your
city. feral moment
in your familiar day.
it will remind you
of the parts of
yourself that are
also a garden. a
poem. a breath. a
single leaf among
many.

I love discovering places like this, isn’t it great?

The Boy Friend: Outfit Illustrations

It’s only recently that I’ve realised I’ve got a bit of a thing for fashion illustrations, perhaps I always have, but after sharing those from the Biba Story and then buying those Vogue pattern catalogue pages which I intend to frame, well that’s confirmed it for me.

It won’t be a surprise then that I’ve some more to share, this time from the mini exhibition of The Boy Friend which was on at the Fashion and Textile Museum when we visited last summer.

These illustrations look to have more of a collage approach to them - the skimpy outfit above with treble clef motifs on the triangular-bikini like top, show this - though the headdress looks to be larger than the skirt, but maybe that’s a perspective thing, not just me showing my age!

The red outfit on the left below looks to have the text ‘The Boyfriend - Hortense - Barbara Windsor’ in the top right corner, which is intriguing. Hortense was the maid, and it’s only now that I’ve googled it, the part was played by Barbara Windsor, who would have been 34 in 1971.

The sophisticated white trouser suit top right in the photo above, was one of Twiggy’s outfits as the main character Polly Broome. They take wide legged trousers, and flares to a whole new level don’t they?!

Shirley Russell had a fondness for the 1920s, so The Boy Friend must have been the ideal project for her. Twiggy shared Shirley’s love of the era and often joined the Russells for film shows to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers pictures. She also accompanied Shirley on trips to source original costumes, learning more about the costume history of the period, and started collecting clothes from the period too. I wonder if she still has them?

These last two illustrations are the pixie outfits for Twiggy as Polly Browne and Christopher Gable as Tony (the two main characters), though I’m not sure where these featured, as I’m sure in the finale fancy dress ball they were dressed as Pierrot and Pierrette, I need to find out more clearly!

But these illustrations reminded me of my part in the chorus, for the fancy dress ball I was the jester - thankfully there are no photos I’m willing to share, but my outfit, complete with jester hat with bells on, made in what I remember as itchy brown and mustard material, which also thankfully no longer exists!

Memories that may well have remained well and truly buried had they not been reawakened by these illustrations - I’ll let them off though, it was great to see these illustrations!