JOY PARADE No.46
Doorstep Goslings! Fruity Candlesticks! Miss Mimi The Tuna Queen!
Pssst! If you are reading this via an email, the JOY PARADE might be a smidge too long for you to see all of it. If so, just click the title and it’ll take you to where you can read the whole thing with your eyeballs online!
OH HELLO!
Well, here I am - flush-cheeked and overwhelmed . Thank you for all the lovely messages, comments and restacks of last week’s newsletter. How wonderful you all are - and enormously kind! And to all new readers: WELCOME! I’m so glad you are joining the PIGEON POST gang!
What a week this last one has been! Autumnal is an understatement. Leaden skies, cold winds and a tang of Back to School in the air. BUT IT’S JUNE?!?! I resisted lighting the fire BUT BARELY.
It’s been a busy week too!
I’ve been doing all the finishing off fiddly bits for two books. This has involved repeatedly peering at my own work very closely and trying not to hate it. Trickier than it sounds. I also had a trip to the Big Smoke to do a day of filming with one of my publishers. More on that soon. (I will tell you that some of the videos were How To craft videos and it was all VERY Here’s-One-I-Made-Earlier. If there had been a peeing elephant in the office you would have easily mistaken me for Valerie Singleton .)
But what else has been going on?
Here are some Fun Facts for you:
Did you know that an Apple Pencil is exactly the right size to slip between the gaps in your garden decking if, for example, you decide to work outside one afternoon when it stops raining for five mins?
Did you know that saying a string of FILTHY words will not actually bring the Apple Pencil back up from the void?
Did you also know that should the above happen, absolutely the only way for you to retrieve the Pencil is to call on Urgent Help?
Preferably Urgent Help with a circular saw?
Did you know that my garden now looks like it has a mysterious trapdoor cut into it? So that every time you glance out the kitchen window you brace yourself in case the Phantom of the Opera suddenly springs up through it and disturbs your nasturtiums?
Thank God the decking is all coming up in the next few weeks…
I’m not sure what prompted this memory this week - it could have been a video I saw online of a woman startled by an unexpected swan in her office, but once (years ago when I lived in a terraced house in the middle of York) I opened the front door one morning to go to the shop and found five tiny goslings waiting on the step. They were looking at me and honking irritably liked they’d booked an appointment with me and I’d forgotten about it. No parent goose was to be found anywhere and the babies were hopping from one foot to the other and peering around the door and (I truly believe) eyeing up my sofa.
Six hours later, a team from a wildlife rescue centre eventually came to collect them but not before the manager (on the phone) had said to me with an exasperated sigh, “Look, can’t you just keep them?” as if this were a supermarket order where something I’d picked had been replaced with another item.
“The pint of semi-skimmed milk you requested was out of stock but you’ll be pleased to know we’ve substituted it for a collection of live goslings.”
I was perusing in Waterstones the other lunchtime when a mother and grown up daughter wondered in and looked at the books on the front tables. The daughter pointed to the shelves of new fiction nearby.
“What about over here, mum?”
The Mother: “Oh no. I don’t read hardbacks. I don’t have the wrists for them…”
I saw a baby wearing this hat and it cheered up my entire day.
In London, a woman got in step beside me and I looked over and thought with excitement that she was carrying a white, fluffy Bichon Frise. It was only on second glance that I realised that it was in fact a gigantic, ornate, Rococo wig. It was something Marie Antoinette would wear. This was in St Pancras and she was heading towards the Eurostar. The temptation to follow the wig to Paris to see what the hell was going on was almost unbearable.
One afternoon I was waiting to cross the road when two young men arrived beside me. They were talking earnestly together and I tuned the earholes in.
“When it comes to women…” one said, (and I thought “Oh hello this will be good!”) “When it comes to women, it’s like this: women are like… well, they are like, er…“
I leaned in closer, ears flapping.
“Well, they are like HERBS…”
I waited, blinking, for an explanation but nothing came. The other man considered for a moment then nodded his head very sincerely as if suddenly a great mystery had become clear.
Then they both got into their Uber which had just arrived and drove off. I was left, curb side, Rather Wondering About Things…
I took Middle Neph out for breakfast this week before he went to work. We went to a proper CAFF sort of cafe. We walked in and the entire place was wall to wall builders in high viz waistcoats (definitely not what they are called) and plaster spattered slacks.
I watched in amazement as plates the size of carriage wheels were brought out, all sizzling with mounds of Full English.
What intrigued me most was the table next to us. All five of the man-mountains sitting there were washing down their heaps of eggs and bacon not with mugs of tea but with dainty glasses of ice cold milk. They were like thimbles in their enormous hands.
On the train the other morning, I was intrigued by the woman opposite me who spent a full hour chewing a yoghurt. I have never in my life seen anyone treat an Activia Gut Health (Strawberry) like an over-cooked steak or a violently toasted slice of sourdough.
When not gnawing on her pro-biotic, the woman above was on the phone. She was perhaps in her late 60s, dressed: executive business casual.
“We fly Sunday… yeah - Miami…yeah. Well, whilst we’re in America we’ll definitely go to the World Cup… Six of us… No, we’ve not pre-booked but I’m sure there’ll be heaps of tickets available. Well, I’ve got my kilt and cowboy boots so I’ll be fine…
The lives of others FASCINATES me.
And that’s been my last seven days! Now I really must INSIST we start this week’s JOY PARADE…
1. We’ll begin as per with our traditional BEHOLDING! and EXCLAIMING!
Firstly, I cannot get over the nasturtiums this year. They were great last year but good LORD they are absolutely bossing it this summer. Every time I look out into the garden they seem to have multiplied. And the SIZE of them! Huge and round!
How they are not being used as parasols for coquettishly courting voles strolling around the garden I simply do not know…
The lavenders are popping off too. With all the wind this week it’s been nice to look out and see an undulating tide of delicate purple frilly bits. And the smell! I keep going out to just thrust my entire face into them.
Deeply delightful!
2. I actually gasped out loud at this! A hand made, hand decorated plate by the wonderful and much missed, Janet Ahlberg. Have you ever seen anything more marvellous? Which ceramics manufacturer do I need to bombard with strongly worded letters insisting that they start to sell replicas of this? Would look stunning on the shelf of a Welsh dresser .
3. LOOK AT THESE FLOWERS! They are made from paper and I’m going to buy all of them. Think how cheering they’d be in the depths of winter!
AVAIL. HERE:
4 With the summer party season starting - here is the perfect bag for you. Picture it: you are in the Gargoyle Club and the waistline of your frock is nearly by your knees. You’ve been kicking up a Charleston with a lantern-jawed, cruel man with piercing eyes and after an energetic Black Bottom you pause to catch your breath and you reach into your Squid Purse for a freshening spritz of Guerlain Shalimar. The glamour of it!
Oh also, the reason you have an aquatic themed purse is because you are also secretly a selkie but nobody knows that yet
5. Have you SEEN this? The facade of Annabel’s in London gussied up for the summer. I’m furious I didn’t get chance to go and see this in person when I was in town this week.
Their frontages are always incredible and this is no exception. Jewel-like and magical, it puts me in mind of something created by The Kensington Dollshouse Co. Glorious!
6. This tea cosy is v.nice.
It’s the sort of thing you order and then stand at the window, one hand delicately against the glass, the other hand resting on your clavicle, breathlessly, anxiously waiting for it to arrive.
7. We may have talked about the film EMMA (2020) before but I think it’s worth considering again- especially after the absolutely filthy grey weather we’ve had this week.
It’s SUCH a good version of the book, brought beautifully to life by director, Autumn de Wilde, production designer, Kave Quinn, set decorator, Stella Fox and costume designer, Alexandra Byrne.
I think is so beautiful, so frothy and joyful and most importantly COLOURFUL! I’m exhausted by the trend now to bleach films and tv shows of any colour that isn’t Seasonal Depression Grey or Ennui Beige.
I found this exploration of the costume design of the film really fascinating…
And also this Review of the Bonnets is pretty splendid too. (“Review of the Bonnets” is a sentence that thrills me.)
8. I discovered this painting this week, It’s called The Tram Ride by Robert Sawyers and was painted between 1947 and 1950.
The tale behind it is SUPERB!
Also, I’m enchanted by this character’s hat, nose and lace blouse collar.
9. Deeply, DEEPLY delighted by this peach branch candlestick. I’d put a hot pink candle in it.
Also available with pears! COR!
10. I find this mind blowing. This isn’t a film, but an incredible theatre set. The brain you would need to think of this and then execute it so perfectly!
11. Gorgeous!
12. David Hockney left us this week. Such a loss, but what a life! What a legacy! How lucky we all are to see our world through his eyes.
There is so much we could look at in this moment, but I’m going to recommend this book - a collection of his dog paintings.
Each so beautifully and fondly observed.
Having them all in a book is such a treat.
Available here.
Also - this photo of DH holding hands with Joni M. So tender 💕
Dearest Larry has had a stiff glass of Sanatogen and has picked up a new hobby…
14. PRESENTING… Miss Mimi the Tuna Woman. ❤️
WONDERFUL!
FINALLY…
As you know we ALWAYS finish with a song but this week I’m treating us to two!
Sometimes you just need a ruddy good, five minute tap dance break.
So first up we have Sutton Foster and the cast of Anything Goes performing… well, ANYTHING GOES.
Sit back and just enjoy every second of it..
How she does that five minute, high energy dance break, takes one deep breath and then sings the finale I have no idea. I’d be on my hands and knees, dry heaving over the orchestra pit whilst a flutist reinflates my lungs with a fireplace bellows…
And then of course, we MUST have another tap number this time from our belovéd Victoria Wood.
From Acorn Antiques: The Musical we have Miss Babs, Miss Berta and Mrs Overall joined by the S.C.A.L.OP.S (Sutton Coldfield Amateur Light OPeratic Society) performing The Tip Top Tap…
So much to love here but especially the line “If your bum looks like two bags of tapioca…” which is poetry in its highest form.
In my opinion not enough musicals reference the M11, Roy Rogers, beta-blockers and varicose veins…” all in one song.
Thank you for reading this week’s JOY PARADE.
I hope you have a lovely Sunday. What are you all up to? There’s more building work going on in my garden which will DELIGHT my chickens. They are thoroughly enjoying their new roles as self appointed site managers/quality control. Here’s Pearl performing a security patrol…
I’ll be back next Sunday with JOY PARADE No.47. In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed this JOY PARADE I would simply adore it if you were to prod 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,
HEAD PIGEON.
Honestly, if you knew how much I delight in every detail of your brilliant and funny observations and how you deliver them to us— GOD, it's like manna right now in this world of dull, commercialized muck. Your Joy Parade is a gift and I am so grateful!
Such a cornucopia of delights!