Seeing detail - Almond Blossom

Spring is really, truly, finally here.....at last.  Better late than never.

Blue skies and almond blossom.  What a treat.

Love Spring Signs

Love Life

XXX

"I always wanted to be a black-and-white photograph..."

It seems that 2013 is going to be a fun year for us old 80s reprobates.  I am mightily excited!  There is much to celebrate.

Firstly, Iain R Webb’sforthcoming book about Blitz magazine, aptly titled ‘As Seen in BLITZ: Fashioning ‘80s Style’, is due to be published any time now.  Personally I can't wait because THAT photograph from 1985, one of my all-time favourite pictures not least because I am clad in fabulous Hermes headscarves, is the cover.

 

One of my all-time favourites, THAT photograph by David Hiscock, make up byWilliam Faulkner, wearing Hermes headscarves for Blitz Magazine in 1985

I spent my teenage Sunday afternoons watching old black and white films from the 1930s, 40s and 50s on television.  There were only three channels in those days.  Every Sunday afternoon, or so it seemed at the time, there was a black and white movie on TV.  I loved the stars.  Bette Davis was then and remains today my favourite, but I loved them all - Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, so many more.  I loved the hair, I loved the outfits, but mostly I loved the lighting.  I loved the still photographs from the time; the drama of black and white, the way the light fell and sculpted the actresses face.  This was all huge inspiration to me back in the early 80s when I was dressing up and wearing sculpted and shaved hairdos, my make up always very dramatic.  I wanted to look like one of those black and white photographs.

I told Iain this when we met to talk about the book last year.  More recently he sent me a lovely email and the photograph below "...off to the printers you went...  AND YOU MADE THE COVER! You ARE a black and white photograph!!!

Now it's real!

Everything goes full circle doesn't it?  As a teenager in the 1970s I loved things from the 1940s, thirty years earlier.  In the last year or so I've been reconnecting with lots of old friends from the 80s and enjoying it enormously.  Now our 80s, the subversive underground counter-culture 80s, is finally being celebrated, thirty years on.  I’ve had a few meetings with the Victoria & Albert Museum over the last few months in connection with their forthcoming exhibition ‘Club to Catwalk’, which starts in July.  They've spoken to lots of my old friends and contemporaries as many of us are loaning and creating for the show.  Roll on this summer, I have a feeling the opening party will be fabulous, and I am in full social whirling mood in this, my Golden Jubilee year!

I will have more news about this exhibition in due course as I have something extremely exciting up my sleeve to share...

In the meantime there is a book to look forward to.  ‘As Seen in BLITZ’ is available now to pre-order, and will be in the shops in a few weeks time.  

And if you're around in May the ICA in London are holding a weekend to celebrate the book's launch.  Go here for more information.

Love a black and white photograph

Love a book cover

Love Life

XXX

Golden Jubilee

Am 50 today - Wooo Hooo!!!  

Officially fabulous and/or old.  I'll take both/either!

Love Life

XXX

New kitchen. At last.

So my new kitchen is finally finished..... well, sort of.  The job itself was compounded by problems, not least by one of the two builders involved, a truly unpleasant little man with a bad case of Short-Man Syndrome, apparently a carpenter but the poor state of his work says otherwise.  It's a long story.  I could write an essay about it, and did consider doing so but realised it would only be an exercise in getting it off my chest.  Instead I sent ShortMan a letter detailing his bad attitude, shoddy workmanship and appalling behaviour, complete with photographs.  I got it off my chest; I've been quite unwell over the last couple of weeks, and a bad chesty cough had stayed with me.  I sent the letter and my chest started to improve.  Metaphysics is amazing.

Of course all is not bad.  In fact it's mainly gorgeous.

It's just been a very, very stressful couple of months.

English Rose kitchen at Vintage Vacations

My inspiration was the 1950s English Rose kitchen.  My friends at Vintage Vacations have a beautiful example in The Mission, one of their beautiful Isle of Wight holiday homes.

I wanted a modern kitchen with this kind of colour scheme and feeling.  I am pretty good at visualisation and I know I have a good eye.  It is quite a thrill to see my vision realised.

Whilst I know there are lots of problems I also know that most people don't notice them (at least on first impression), and that it can only get better. There is lots of fiddling and filling bits and pieces to do and rebuilding the under-sink cabinet.  The other of the two builders involved, whose work was excellent, to a very high standard and who thankfully did most of the work, will sort it out and finish it off properly with me in April.  I think we'll have a very good time.  There is decorating to be done.  And then my sculptor friend Andrew Logan is going to mosaic the yellow plastered wall in his inimitable sparkling and glamorous way.  Lush!

This week I will be making my new kitchen table.  I'm waiting on shiny chrome legs to be delivered.  I'm becoming quite the DIY Queen.  Then I'll change the chairs for something white or cream and more shiny chrome legs.  I will change the lighting when I find the right chandelier.  I will add more shiny chrome.

And then it will be properly FABULOUS!

Love a new kitchen

Love Life

XXX

Building for 2013

The great kitchen refurb project is finally under way - 4 years after my original plan but better and brighter and much more gorgeous.  I am living in a building site though.

*

It's very stressy!

*was going too put a picture here but that's too depressing right now....

I was planning to spend this time catching up with my writing and correspondence.  I think that was a bit ambitious on my part.  I'm unlikely to get much writing done for the next couple of weeks.  You see, my living room and kitchen are divided only by a half-wall, so I can't even close the door on the building site - having no wall there is no door. A temporary screen only serves me psychologically, so that I don't have to look at it all the time.  In reality I am actually living in a building site.

Forging ahead though, with the clear thought that once it's done and the endless dust (a film of which is everywhere, because there's no wall or door) is finally sucked away into the new vacuum cleaner, I will have my dream kitchen, which will improve my life no end.

Onwards and Upwards!

Love Life

XXX

Emotional Activity in the Tarot Zone

I went to Liverpool in November for Cloud’s 70th birthday celebrations.  He threw a wonderful party and looked resplendent in silver suit and pink suede brothel creepers!  I had a lovely time staying down at the docks.  I love Liverpool and hadn’t been since 1985, when dockland was wasteland, and like all cities it has changed a good deal since then.  I was reminded what a great city it is and inspired - I’m planning a return visit in warmer weather.

Bright skies and dark clouds over Birkenhead

Afterwards I headed over to Manchester for a visit with my friends.  Sara, who has always had an excellent natural aptitude for tarot, is now studying very seriously and her gift is being well honed.  She read for me, my question concerning my ‘80s activity, connections and re-connections, of which there is much right now.

"You need to be prepared for a very emotional time" she told me.  It made no sense.  I was absolutely ready to part with my special clothes and have been really enjoying my recent re-connections with old friends.  I couldn't see anything to be of great emotional upset.  Sara's reading also warned of small-minded people who like to see me down, and who will not want to see things working out well for me.  Hhhhmmmmm....

Two weeks ago I met with Charlie Porter who had been put in touch with me by Gregor Muir, the director of the ICA, following their recent exhibition ‘Trojan - Works on Paper’.  Trojan and I were very close 30 years ago and Charlie wanted to talk more about this.  He was also interested in the pieces I was selling at auction.

We had a lovely afternoon and chatted for two hours.  Or rather, I did.  I really can talk for England once you get me started!  Charlie posted our conversation in two parts.  You can read Part I by clicking here, and Part II by clicking here.

Reading Part II had me in floods of tears and sent me into a very emotional state.  I wasn't expecting it but it happened.  So many dear ones gone too young and too soon, so many memories.  Deeply emotional, just like Sara had read.

Another week passed and last Tuesday I sold my special clothes at Kerry Taylor Auctions.  I had popped in to the viewing the day before, to photograph my things, touch them, smell them and look at them for the last time.  I put my amazing Christopher Nemeth/Judy Blame coat on, wrapping myself in the rich brown velvet as I've done countless times before.  I felt my body shape imprinted into it, my DNA almost.  Oh, how I loved that coat!  Then I felt its weight, the weight of adornment - lord-knows-how-many metal buttons, coiled rope, hessian and heavy tassels - and I reminded myself that it weighed a ton and that I would never wear that glorious coat again, and more than all of this, that such was its gloriousness that it needed to be in a better home than hanging on my coat rail, unworn and unseen.  I unbuttoned the shirt of my little black and white cotton pyjama suit.  I wanted a final look at Leigh's handwritten label, and I remembered being given the suit, wrapped in white tissue paper, and Leigh’s excitement at having put labels in it.  Proper clothes made by proper designers had labels, but we were young and had no money for such luxuries so he made his own, using a permanent marker on cotton tape.  Delightful.

My emotions are obvious as I say goodbye to my gorgeous coat....

....which is so comforting and familiar

Oh my goodness!  Again my emotions took hold and twice sent me off to the bathroom for fear of a public sobbing outburst, made all the more shocking to me simply because I wasn't expecting it.  It had nothing to do with parting with my clothes.  It had taken me 12-15 years to get to this point and I was absolutely ready.  It was all about the memories. 

The following day found me a little jumpy and anxious.  Emotions again.  Logically it made no sense, but emotions often don't.  My gorgeous and glamorous friend Roy accompanied me to the sale, both of us auction virgins.  How exciting!  I appreciated his calm nature and understanding attitude.  My lots came up ......... and flew!  I won't bore you with the details, although if you want to you can, for the time being at least, read the results by clicking here, but I will reveal that that red dress went for £6000!  I did shed a little tear as the gavel went down on my pyjama suit, my final but joyful goodbye.  Afterwards I was happy but emotionally exhausted.  I'd been holding Roy’s hand as my lots were going... going... gone and he told me that my vice-like grip was akin to somebody giving birth (although I'm not sure that he's ever been present at a childbirth so I guess he is imagining that experience....?!!). 

Checking the lots with Roy

Me, Roy and a final farewell to my pyjama suit

Afterwards with amazing Kerry and her amazing gavel

Over the next few days there was the response from friends and family to deal with.  Fortunately everybody has been wonderfully supportive and pleased for me, except for one person, the least likely person, whose arrogant shrieking abuse down the telephone at me, coming from nowhere but, judging by its furious delivery, probably bottled up for years (maybe even as far back as the 1980s...??), was devastating.  After two nights of barely sleeping I realised that I had to let it go.  We cannot control what other people think about us.  This person's long-held jealousy finally erupted and they have chosen to end the relationship.  I let myself grieve the loss and am done with it.

For my clothes, parting has not been sweet sorrow at all, but instead immense joy.  On a practical level I have immediately freed up storage space in my shoebox of a flat, and the proceeds from auction will enable me to pay some bills and get a few things sorted out.  By next spring my 50th birthday present to myself will be a long-awaited and much-needed sparkling new kitchen.  This in itself will improve my life immeasurably!

On an emotional level these special, personal and sometimes iconic outfits are now in the care of serious collectors and museums, where they will be treasured, appreciated and shared, helping to illustrate and document an important time in social and fashion history, rightfully honouring their creators.  And this is a wonderful but huge thing to get my head around.

Little wonder then that it's been so unexpectedly emotional over the last few weeks.  I imagine it will take a wee while for me to assimilate all of this activity and rebalance myself accordingly.  But it's a happy end to a difficult year.  Roll on 2013.  And never underestimate a good tarot reader.

Love New Beginnings

Love Life

XXX

My 80s clothes are up for sale!

So, the time has finally come and in just over a week I will sell my past.  Well, some of it anyway.  I have a nice selection of special clothes from my club days in the early 80s which I've been trying to let go of for the last few years.

Regular readers will recall this item that I posted in June, when i-D Magazine ran a feature about me and my clothes.

Billie Turnbull wearing my clothes in i-D magazine summer 2012

This was the first step in letting go.  Nobody else had worn these outfits except for me until fabulous model Billie Turnbull popped them on for this shoot.  

In preparing I had to sort through hundreds, and I do mean literally hundreds, of  old photographs.  What a time-consuming lark!

Me and Judy blame in New York in 1985.  My Bodymap dress and coat are both in the auction

At my club, the Cha Cha, in 1981 wearing  black and white pyjama suit made by a very young and at the time unknown Australian called Leigh Bowery.

Me in that red dress!  Painting by Luciana Martinez 1982

Me in that red dress again!  From Harpers and Queen c1983

My collection includes the much-photographed red cotton dress above, made for me by my friend Leigh Bowery in 1982.

Why am I selling when I've held onto these fabulous pieces for such a long time?  Lots of reasons.

On an emotional level I loved these clothes at the time when I wore them.  They had meaning to me and were made by my friends but these are pieces I will never wear again.  Some of them are so, so special they really do need to be in a museum rather than stored away in my wardrobe.  On a practical level I need the space, but more importantly I need to pay some bills and I desperately need my new kitchen which is by now four years overdue from its original planning*.

So I'm selling them at Kerry Taylor Auctions on 4 December.  And I am excited.

Passion for Fashion and Fine Textiles, December 4th 2012

"What makes my job so interesting is not just the pieces themselves but the people who have owned them.

Scarlett Cannon was an 80’s Club Kid, and at just eighteen became the founder and host of the ‘Cha Cha’ nightclub in 1981. She was a walking style statement. Her extreme and unique looks well suited her avant-garde wardrobe by Leigh Bowery, Bodymap, Westwood , Christopher Nemeth and Judy Blame. Her Leigh Bowery pieces are exceptional and museum quality (lots 212-223)."

You can find out more and see all of the lots on sale here.

*A long and boring story - I almost had the money to pay for a new kitchen when I became very ill in 2009 and had to use the saved money to live on and pay bills.  PAH!!  Not this time though...

Love Clothes

Love Life

XXX

Coping

I arrived at work this week to discover one side of the dry stone wall is half finished.

John has been busy....

...and laid the first of the coping stones, the upright stones that top off a dry stone wall.

It looks amazing so far.  I can't wait until it's finished, it's going to be great!

Will keep you posted.

Love Dry Stone Walling

Love Life

XXX

Dry Stone Walling Weekend

So, this is what I made at the weekend....

A dry stone wall!

Well, the beginnings of one anyway and I have to confess that I did not make it alone.

It was a work thing, hence my deeply unglamorous outfit.

A weekend introduction to the ancient art of making a dry stone wall, under the watchful eye of John Holt from the London School of Dry Stone Walling.  John has been building dry stone walls since he was a child and has a good many years of experience and skill under his belt.  An earthy and engaging gentleman, these days he teaches his incredible craft to groups; for education, for training, for teambuilding and well-being.  It's a hell of a lot more satisfying than paint balling, that horrible thing where you run around the woods shooting each other with paint.  Not that I've never been paint balling.  But I have learned a bit about dry stone walling!

The method is simple to understand.  The practice is extremely difficult, not to mention physically tiring.  Finding the right stones was frustrating for me at first.  I was trying too hard to make it absolutely perfect!  Firstly I found my patience and then I found my niche - finding and placing the hearting stones, the smaller stones in the middle that help keep the wall firm.

We made the first three courses and got it off to a pretty good start.  When finished it will form one of the boundaries of the wildlife area.  Creatures will shelter in the crevices at the base and, if made properly, it will last for hundreds of years.

I want to do more!

To see examples of John's beautiful work and find out more:

London School of Dry Stone Walling www.londonschoolofdsw.co.uk  

Hugely recommended if you like that sort of thing, which I most certainly do.

Love Dry Stone Walling

Love Life

XXX

Writers Un-Block

It's not all been doom and gloom in the last few months.  Whilst I wasn't writing on this blog I did write five items for i-D Online in July:

You can find out more about the genius that is Juliana Sissons by clicking here.

As part of The London Design Festival Juliana will be giving a lunchtime talk on Tuesday 18 September, with V&A Museum curator Angus Patterson, followed by a drop in design workshop. Her work can be seen in the Iron Work Gallery from 14 – 26 September. 

Outfit by Juliana Sissons

I wrote three articles about Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.  I could easily have written five or six, there was so much worthy of comment, but you can read my condensed thoughts about

the show gardens

'Preserving the Community' garden

the plant village and floral marquee

Lovely Lavenders

food and food growing

Cheese....

.....and hens

There's also a rather fabulous online piece about some of my special '80s clothes.  This features different outfits with different photographic images and follows on nicely from the four-page feature in the summer issue of i-D Magazine.  Now that I've let go of these clothes, an emotional process that took quite a while, I love looking at these photographs.  It's also particularly timely as I am about to sell many of these garments at Kerry Taylor Auctions, about which I am very excited. I'll keep you posted as and when I have more information about that.

I was 22 years old!

There have been nice days out too, and treats that are included in my 50 list.  Now I'm back in the mood and back in the stride I will be writing more about these very soon.

Love Life

XXX

The Year of The Bully

Sweet Pea Flower.  Nothing to do with this post - just a much-needed uplifting image 

I got an e-mail from my lovely painter friend Annabel Mednick

"Just wondering how you are as you haven't been writing your blog"

She's quite right of course.  There are many reasons why I haven't been writing my blog, but mainly because life has been rather overwhelming this year.  For many reasons.

2012 has certainly been the year of the bully for me, the year when I have had to learn, or re-learn, how to handle bullies and bullying.  It's interesting, having experienced a good deal of bullying throughout my life, much of it from an early age, you would think I would be really great at knowing how to cope with the emotional stress and upset of such behaviour.  But somehow the act of bullying can still debilitate my sensitive soul.

It's been a tough one.  I had to take a month off work between May and June because of the anxiety and depression that one of my jobs was causing me.  Earlier in the year there was all that dreadful negativity and bullying at my allotment.  

Teaching gardening and being on my allotment; both things that I love, both things that I would never expect to be tainted by hideous negativity.  It is more than disappointing that this year both have been.

Thankfully there is much going on in my life where who I am and what I do is hugely respected and appreciated.  This has kept me sane.

The best way to deal with bullies is to expose them.  Often this can put you in further danger as the bully may ramp up the behaviour.  Nonetheless, this remains the only real way forward.

Now that's off my chest and I'm back in the writing loop I might just keep blogging.  I hope so.

Love Truth

Love Life

XXX

Juliana Sissons chats with me at i-D

My latest i-N Conversation piece is up at i-D Online.  It took a long while to make this item because my old friend Juliana Sissons lives in Brighton, East Sussex and is always very busy.  Take a look at our film and you'll understand why.  She is a very prolific woman!

So it was that I pitched up in lovely East Sussex to make our film, where Juliana was taking part in the Brighton and Hove Artists Open Houses Festival.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, especially when there's a pink beach hut to pose by!

The second film on this piece was made by Makda Iyasu, filmed at the beautiful V&A Museum in London where Juliana has been the Designer in Residence.  We were very lucky to have this access and had a very good day.

Juliana and I became friends in 1982, back in the nightclubbing days when we knew how to wear make up!

Juliana Sissons and Scarlett Cannon 1982  pic:Daniel Faoro

It's a great piece, even if I do say so myself,but that's no surprise because she is a very interesting woman.  Go here to have a look.

Love my brilliant friends!

Love Life

XXX

The last word...

... about HRT cake, because I don't want to become a menopause bore, but....

I've now made three cakes and have eaten a slice a day for just over four weeks.  I have NO hot flushes any more, just a very minor over-warming, maybe 2 or 3 times in the last week but nothing to really note.  Carrying a fan in my handbag at all times is no longer necessary and I sleep through the night without being woken by heat.  Hip hip hurrah!

HRT is not the only answer - make this cake instead.  It's worth a try and it worked for me with incredible speed.

Love Nature's healing

Love Life

XXX

EBS at HCPFS (it'll make sense when you read it)

At the beginning of April last year I discovered The Edible Bus Stop, a community garden at a bus stop in South London, brilliantly conceived and led by local resident and fellow glamorous gardener Mak Gilchrist.  They had only been gardening for about a fortnight at the time but, as it was one of the most inspiring concepts I had ever seen and imagining the enormous potential ahead, I posted a blog about this wonderful garden anyway, complete with rather boring photographs of seed-sown patches of empty soil.  It looked like nothing at the time but I didn't care - I knew it was a fantastic idea!

I returned in August after Mother Nature had done her thing, and the gardeners had done theirs, and it looked amazing.  The Edible Bus Stop has gone from strength to strength.  Starting as guerilla gardeners, ‘outsiders’ who fought the local Council to keep this space green .... and won, there is now a second garden with three more planned, as they work to achieve London’s first ‘green route’, establishing many more such gardens along the 322 bus route.  I was thrilled and excited to see their installation garden at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show where I spent a very busy Monday and Tuesday last week, unfortunately in the endlessly drizzling rain.

With ultra-fabulous EBS founder Mak Gilchrist.  See how I'd dressed for summer but thrown jeans and wellies on at the last minute.  July - but it's cold and raining!

Will Sandy and Mak Gilchrist

Entitled "A Riot of Colour" this garden is an interpretation of the after-effects of the London riots last year.  It includes a vandalised, burnt out red telephone box and an overturned black taxicab.  Nature’s got involved and is making the damaged space beautiful again.  I loved it.  It was such a pleasure to finally meet Mak and landscape architect and designer Will Sandy.  It was disappointing to learn that this garden had not been included in the main judging category.  I'd have given it Gold!  I guess we have to be content that the EBS garden was there at all.  Small steps.....

So much more to say about Hampton Court Flower Show.  Another time.

Love The Edible Bus Stop

Love Life

XXX

HRT cake update

It works!!!!

A yummy slice of HRT cake

And it's delicious and good for you.

Hot flushes are enormously reduced and I am delighted.  HUGELY recommended for women of a certain age!  Enjoy!

Love HRT cake

Love Life

XXX