JOY PARADE No.11
Tap Dancing in a Monsoon! A Day Out for Goths! Shirley Bassey on a Yacht!
HELLO!
Ooh intit hot?
It’s ruddy baking here! I stood waiting for the kettle to boil this morning thinking that how Poirot managed to solve that murder on the Nile in this heat whilst wearing a three piece suit is beyond me…
Thankfully the house remains fairly cool, but outside it’s like a furnace. I’d like to be writing this chin deep in a cool swimming pool (even a paddling pool would do) but I’m actually sitting in front of an open window, Roadhouse-ing every fly that tries to buzz in past my earholes. There is a breeze though for which I’m v grateful.
So it’s been another busy week here and the eyes have hardly been off the drawing board. I’ve pushed on well with the Horrible Disgusting Deadline™️and I now have just two pieces left for the main illustrations. There will be some, what I call, Arsing About after that - title page, prelims etc, but hopefully by this coming Wednesday the interior illustrations will all be done exactly on time! HURRAH! HURRAH!
Gosh, I am tired though. In the words of Philippa in dinnerladies: “I’m drained, just a husk in a pinafore dress…”
I’ll limp on until Wednesday though and then after that I can have a good sleep. I CAN’T WAIT!
Of course I haven’t only been eyeballing the drawing board. Last Sunday I had an adventure!
In a couple of weeks I turn 40 move into my mid-to-late 20s (👀) and last Sunday my very, VERY dear friend S took me for an early birthday treat. We went to see an outdoor theatre production of 42nd Street.
S and I have been besties since I was 11 and she was 12. We met, as many teenagers naturally do, when we were paired as dance partners at Cinderella’s Ball. (We were both child actors and were cast together in the children’s chorus of a big professional panto).
Here we are in our finery. This is also the very last moment I was smaller than S.
On the first day of rehearsals she held a wet paper towel on my forehead after I’d been hit by a falling slice of giant pumpkin (a prop) and I think it’s that sort of thing that forges lifelong friendships…
Later, we were cast together again in the first production of Roald Dahl’s The Twits (we were monkeys) and later still I was her dance partner when we were asked to perform a 1940s jitterbug at a reception thrown by a Lady Mayoress for a delegation of international visitors. I had a broken arm for this but kept on hoofing. I HAVE LIVED A LIFE! (And thankfully S has been there now for two thirds of it)
I’m godfather to both S’s (GLORIOUS) children, but last Sunday it was just us two on our day out together and my goodness was it fun!
Of course, after weeks of hot, sunny weather on the one day S and I were going to an outdoor theatre I threw open my curtains that morning to a full thunderstorm raging outside and on the drive to the theatre we had torrential rain. Thankfully the monsoon stopped just as the show began and it all went ahead with no problems. (The stage and audience seating were both covered with a giant awning - HURRAH!)
The show was great fun.
There was tap dancing!
There were WIGS!
There were stagehands dressed as Arkwright dashing on in between scenes with industrial sized mops to dry the stage!
(And you have never seen so many people in an audience clutching cagoules in readiness for another downpour.)
I loved all of it.
But nicest of all was spending a day with one of my oldest and dearest chums. We had a car picnic before the show and gossiped all the way home.
As Dolly P and Kenny R said: You Can’t Make Old Friends…
AND now we simply MUST get on with this week’s JOY PARADE!
1. As per, we start with some BEHOLDING! and EXCLAIMING!
Oh July! Your sultry heat isn’t doing our garden’s much good is it? Everything is looking more like crispy fried seaweed as the hot, sunny days go on no matter how much water you chuck on things. However, there is still much to enjoy.
When walking the dogs the other evening I was thrilled by this spiky thistle. I like the lilac and pea green together, and so did this bee. Delightful!
The other evening I was driving up the hill here and was stuck by the sunset. By the time I managed to take this picture a little later, the sky had changed again, but for a few moments as I motored along the whole sky was a beautiful lavender colour. Heavenly!
Last night (I mean Friday here as I’m writing this on Saturday morning), when the day had cooled and the sun was slipping away, I lay in the garden post dog walk for a bit. I had my book with me but actually I just stared at the sky for a while and wiggled my toes in the long grass and took photos from the perspective of a ladybird…
It was lovely way to spend half an hour especially after a week of contending with the HDD™️.
Here are the dogs as I lay on the grass…
They are confined to their Garden Prison in an attempt to stop them all diving head first into the bit of the garden that is full of brambles, grass seeds, burrs and stinging nettles. The evening before I had spent 45 minutes teasing Knotty Bits from them as they wiggled indignantly in my arms.
Also… please enjoy this photo of Elvis Potato. He is wearing the strap of his lead as an avant-garde fascinator…
2. Horses have been a theme this week. The other evening at sunset I drove past a field of them. They were all just sleepily nibbling the grass and looked beautiful silhouetted against the tangerine sky.
The next afternoon when I was pootering along in the car I found myself behind a horse drawn carriage. At first I thought it was a funeral because the carriage was black and the horses were black and the feathers on the horses heads were deep purple and the carriage was being driven by two people who were both dressed like Nosferatu.
But it wasn’t a funeral!
There wasn’t a coffin!
What there was was a family of goths sitting in the back: a mum (Morticia-esque), a dad (black Victorian suit, tattoos, tiny round Steampunk sunglasses) and two black clad children (one sitting under a black lace parasol.
I wondered if they were on their way to a Goth Wedding, but then I realised - no. They were simply a family who had hired a glossy black antique carriage pulled by two glossy, black, befeathered horses for a nice afternoon out in a heatwave…
What fascinated me more than anything was the dog. Clutched in one of the children’s arms was the family pet who was the sweetest, fluffiest, whitest Bichon Frise you have ever seen. And she was wearing a VERY jaunty, pink, polka dot bow in her tight bubble perm hair.
3. The Goth Dad’s tattoos made me think of this rhyme that has been going around in my head all week:
Does anyone know where this is from? I remember reading it years ago but where I can’t remember. It feels Alan Ahlberg-esque, but it isn’t, I don’t think. Wherever it’s from I love it and it often pops into my head.
4. I could not be more thrilled by this picture of two Hammerhead Sharks created in Japan in the1730s.
The zigzag teeth! The googly eyes! GORGEOUS STUFF!
Find out more here.
5. This is absolutely my type of party…
6. Later this year I will be working on the illustrations for a new book of mine. I can’t say anything about it at all at the moment really other than it’s set in a jaunty version of the Roaring Twenties.
I’ve started compiling my moodboards for the project and in the course of this I rediscovered the work of Russell Patterson.
Isn’t it wonderful!
And that last one was intriguing to me because isn’t it just the flapper version of this meme?
Ideas are cyclical and we live in a spiral…
7. The song “Bette Davis Eyes” has been doing the rounds this week. It popped up on the absolute fever dream that is And Just Like That and also Jojo Siwa (with her voice like an angle grinder) has released her own version.
Instead of sharing THAT I thought we might have the actual Bette D serenade us with in her own, very unique, voice-like-a-pub-ashtray style…
8. Fortnum’s chocolate fish and chips would make a jolly end of school year present for a teacher/child/yourself. (That fish is thick, solid milk choc btw so watch your teeth…)
9. Imagine sitting in a orangery at a delicate but groaning tea table and saying “Shall I be mother?” then pouring out with this snail teapot by Teraphim Ceramics. The thought THRILLS me…
(For more Shall -I-Be-Mother-ing, I highly reco listening to Tim Key on the Off Menu podcast. Honkingly funny!)
10. The Schiaparelli Haute Couture A/W 2025-26 show is breathtakingly beautiful. Enjoy the full collection here.
11. I’m dead keen on getting this beaded chicken decoration to hang from a doorknob.
FINALLY…
Let’s have leather-lungs herself, Dame Shirley B, sing us out whilst wearing a turban on a yacht.
Thank you so much for reading this week’s JOY PARADE.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Tonight (Saturday) I’m going to listen to Liza Tarbuck on the radio whilst finishing making a costume for my ten year old Neph to wear in his end of Primary School play. More on that next week in JOY PARADE No. 12…
In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed this JOY PARADE I would simply adore it if you were to hit the heart ❤️ button below and do please follow me on Instagram (I’m @mralextsmith over there) and also subscribe to and share this newsletter to all your chums.
Thank you so much!
In Tearing Haste,
Alex T Smith
HEAD PIGEON.
I absolutely love EP, especially in fashionable orange. I came to wonder how he would look in a Shirley B turban?
What a marvelous trip down country lanes… thanks!
I’m totally with you on discovering the wonders of illustrators of a past age.
They are so amazing… the design… the whole sense of joy… nothing quite like that today.
I’m lucky that I live near a university where I can bicycle in and photograph the amazing art I find when digging through the 1930’s magazines. It’s like ‘spelunking in history’.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnnez/p/spelunking-for-treasure?r=fcf9w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false