Pleasure and Pain

Whether or not you like shoes (and I'm guessing that since you follow this blog, it means you're a person of taste and discrimination, so naturally you adore shoes) you should check out the Victoria & Albert Museum's new exhibit: Shoes: Pleasure and Pain.

Image courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum

The exhibit opened a couple of weeks ago, but with one thing and another I only made it there this last week, armed (or footed?) in my new pair of Michael Kors booties. Appropriate, n'est-ce pas?

Cinderella's Swarovski slippers (Photo by AFP Photo / Niklas Halle'n)

Oh my God - so many amazing shoes under one roof! Some are just crazy and some are works of art.
While I'm not averse to a little pain in the pursuit of fashion, some of the shoes made even me cringe.

Venetian chopines c. 1600 (Image courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum)

Louboutin works of art (Photo by AFP Photo / Niklas Halle'n)

We went early in the day and managed to take our time looking at everything, but I've been told by colleagues that the show is popular and can get crowded. Crowds do not make for good viewing, so go early. But go.

My only complaint was that the show did not have a coherent narrative structure. Or to put it more simply: I would have preferred a display that started with the earliest shoes and ended with the mot recent. Though I'll admit I was so fascinated it didn't even occur to me until afterwards that the display didn't follow any historical timeline.

If you haven't yet seen this exhibit, you should. At the very least it will make you look more carefully at what people are wearing on their feet.

Royal Ascot 2015

It's that time of year again - Ascot week! What I love most about this week is that Londoners set aside their drab greys and blacks and bring out the colour. Add sunshine and champagne, and we have all the ingredients for a fab day out.

But once again this post is about the hats...

Where does the hat end and the flowers begin?

Irish milliner Jennifer Wrynne, image courtesy of The Telegraph

Musical theatre actress Samantha Barks

Triin Konsap wears Inga Kovalerova, image from Irish Mirror

Perhaps one of my favourite outfits of the day:

Ella McNeill from the Ascot Racecource Facebook page

Even some of the men got in on the act... but seriously, meat on one's head?!

Image courtesy of the Daily Mirror

Finally, here's that splash of colour I was talking about:

Interior designer Anouska Lancaster, image from The Telegraph

Want more? Check out this collection of pictures at The Daily Mail.

Next up... Opening Day at Wimbledon.

Ministry of Smut

During my trip to Ireland this last weekend an exciting new project was born: the Ministry of Smut. Watch this space for more...

My first writerly adventure

After having been away all of last weekend, in Gloucestershire staying with Olivia's parents for Polo in the Park, I'm now off to Ireland this weekend to meet a few of the amazing writers I've met online - Kitty French, Zara Cox and Tabitha A Lane, amongst others.

For the first time in forever I'm feeling a little daunted. I feel like an imposter hanging out with these accomplished writers. I'm a little out of my comfort zone here. What if they think I'm just some upstart wannabe? No matter, I'll do what I always do when I want people to like me: feed them champagne.

Après-blogging

So what am I doing with all this free time I have now that I'm not blogging every week?

Well, the great thing about The Bet was that it forced me to carve out time very week to write the post (which is actually a lot harder than you'd think. Even when the posts are short, I usually spend ages thinking about what I'm going to put in it, then finding links and pictures to add).

Writing this blog has also forced me to be disciplined - which anyone who knows me will tell you I am most certainly not!

Now that I have a little spot of time every week and a whole lot more discipline, I'm using it to learn all about writing, 'meeting' other writers - and actually writing. And I'm getting really excited about this. I now have a completed short novella!

Yes, me! I've actually finished something. I wrote The End. And wasn't that exactly the point of why my girls made me take The Bet in the first place?

Thanks to a few of my new writer besties, I've even found a cover artist who is going to make me covers for... are you ready for this? ... an entire trilogy!

So watch this space. There'll be news and snippets and cover reveals coming soon!