JOY PARADE No.6
Parasols for Moles! Duck on a Speedboat! Jackie Collins!
Hello!
Firstly, here is a picture from my sketchbook of a duck smoking a fag and driving a speedboat. Good to get that sort of thing out of the way early I feel.
Now, this week I’m coming to you from my Time Machine. I’ve had to write this Joy Parade earlier than usual as I’m off Jaunting again. (Twice in one month? Who do I think I am - Judith Chalmers?) This time I’m going to see my pal M’s new home and also to promenade around Harrogate, a place I haven’t visited for years.
So if you’re reading this on Sunday morning I expect M and I are currently eating something involving hash browns in a cafe and flicking through the papers -well, actually I’ll be flicking through the FUN bits of the newspaper - the style, food and culture bits. The sports bit can get immediately into the bin.
(Writing that has made me remember how my childhood next door neighbour, a glamorous elderly woman called Mrs P (she of the delicious scones and a bathroom full of Chanel cosmetics) would always pop the cartoon strips and the children’s section of The Sunday Times on the garden fence for me to find. I’d then lounge about on the sofa getting really stuck into them. A nice way to spend a Sunday.)
Anyway, I’ll tell you more about this weekend’s Jaunting next week, but what have I to report since we last spoke?
Well, the weather has been GLORIOUS! Summery sun and a light breeze and each morning I’ve taken a particular pleasure from flinging all the windows open like I am about to deliver a line in the opening song from Beauty and The Beast.
(🎶“I NEED! SIX EGGS! THAT’S TOO EXPENSIVE! MY HENS ARE LAZY!” 🎶)
So nice to have fresh, warm air wafting about the place!
Last Sunday I did some gardening. Unfortunately not my favourite sort of gardening which involves pottering about titivating and deadheading. This was the Very Hard Work Indeed kind of gardening - essential but just on the edge of dispiriting.
Earlier in the week the farmer down the lane had very kindly mown my lawn for me with his tractor thing (←technical term) which meant there was lots of cut grass to rake up. With the sun blazing on my D.I.I.S (Delicate Inherited Irish Skin) I got to work until I’d got it all swept up and piled high ready to be used for mulch. In the process I managed to cut my hand. How? No idea. The cut is small and stigmata shaped (about the size of a 5p) yet THIS is the bandage situation I have been dealing with.
THE ABSOLUTE DRAMA OF IT!
Anyway, all that raking was a job well done as the ground is now all prepped for the new raised vegetable beds. I was, of course, supervised by the dogs who lay lazily watching me whilst sunbathing. They were DRAINED by this and could hardly stand upright to eat their dinner when we went back inside. How I’d love to be a small dog who does not contribute anything other than looking beautiful and the occasional nose lick…
Rightio… onto this week’s JOY PARADE…
Firstly, as always, we must start with some BEHOLDING! and EXCLAIMING!
Now, usually we stick with this being centred on flowers or nature or animals - and we will get to that in a moment- but we have to start this week BEHOLDING! my new (old) armchairs. I bought two of them for a song from an antique shop. The chair bases are old but the upholstery is fairly new. They arrived on Tues. when the shop owners, Laura and David delivered them to me (supervised by their French Bulldog, Betty). I’m particularly pleased with the fabric pattern. Is it a Liberty print? Not sure, but it’s in that wheelhouse.
As you can see, HRH Poppy (aka Gravy Gob) made herself at home on them immediately. We both can’t wait for them to get really sat upon and sunken.
Onto the flowers…
My geraniums (above) are popping! I can’t decide if I’m more thrilled with them as plants or the fact that I have managed to keep them alive over a freezing winter? Either way - DELIGHTFUL!
BEHOLD the flowering strawbs! Aren’t they lovely? I always think that if I were a mole I would use strawberry flowers and leaves as a little parasol or sun shade to protect my delicate eyes as I made my way to garden party hosted by a hedgehog or something.
Let us EXCLAIM! at the Marguerites! I’ve been hopping on tiptoes for weeks waiting for the Marguerites to arrive in the garden centre. They’ve had small ones for a while but I wanted a couple of big buggers, and finally they came!
I love them I think as much for their cheerful daisy-ness as for the upkeep required to keep the plants looking good all summer. You have to deadhead them A LOT, but I love doing that. I pad out first thing in the morning in my pjs with my garden bucket and give them a once over. Thrilling stuff!
Also, don’t they put you in mind of those flowered swimming caps of the 1950s/60s?
I might get one. I’ll look STUNNING at the local municipal…
Sticking with the watery theme, I love this photo. Just three gal pals kicking back in the sea with a bowl of spaghetti. Adding this activity to my summer 2025 vision board…
Three Ladies Eating Pasta in the Middle of the Sea. Attributed to Hamilton Wright (Capri, 1939) The strawberry flowers earlier got me thinking about Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell. I think it may be my favourite of all the books written by The Thirks. Set in the fictional (and borrowed from Trollope) rural county of Barsetshire, her stories are always comforting and entertaining, yet never twee. There is a little sliver of spikiness in her writing which stops them falling into frothy territory. Wild Strawberries is particularly lovely. So summery and warm. Set in a large, eccentric family in the early 1930s, it’s about falling in love (complicatedly) and I think it’s The Thirks at her funniest. The character of Lady Emily is honkingly hilarious. If you haven’t read it yet, you MUST.
You can gobble up a copy here.
I don’t really like the tea and coffee you get from chain coffee shop places. The tea is always like dishwater and I don’t know what Starbucks in particular do to their coffee but it always tastes like they have roasted the beans with a petrol bomb.
So I’m simply refusing it all. As often as possible now I’m going to embark on train journey’s armed with my own supplies.
The Lunchbox will be stuffed to bursting with croissants. This is my Train Picnic Situation for my travels this weekend and I’ve been very excited about it. So picture me, if you will, setting off eye-wateringly early on my train adventure with my tote jangling with my Adventuring Flask (filled with tea) and croissants and some other treats rattling around in my lunchbox. I’m even going to take a proper cloth napkin (lavender coloured).
I present to you Jennifer Coolidge casually riding lawnmower in a tea dress.
One of the lovely things about my job is how many very talented people I get to work with. One of them is Nick. He works for one of my publishers and is the complete mastermind behind the audiobooks there. He has coordinated five of my books so far and each time I am blown away by how much care he puts into finding exactly the right narrator for each story and sorting everything out so beautifully (and enthusiastically).
Well, Nick is not only an Audiobook Wizard™️, he’s also a very talented singer/songwriter/musician. (Is there ANYTHING he can’t do? I don’t think so!). He is also the frontman for Underland and his first song was a BBC Introducing pick! Underland’s new song is out now and gosh it’s another goodie!
You can find out more and get it in your earholes here.
Last week I shared some of Edward Bawden’s work and I’m back on it again this week. I can’t get enough. This week my eyebrows have been wagging at his wallpaper designs, particularly Pigeon and Clock Tower. VERY nice!
I’m also v. keen on these fields and cows. Lovely for a bedroom with windows opening onto a pastoral scene I think…
And riffing on the Edward B theme, isn’t this design -Early Bird by Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios- lovely?
Early Bird..Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios I cannot wait to go to this exhibition are the Garden Museum. Gardens AND Cecil Beaton? Absolutely yes please!
Cecil B (and pug) in his garden room. Perfection! This picture of the late Jackie Collins has DELIGHTED me.
FINALLY:
To be this pig, in a house, looking out at the rain and marvelling at the gentle majesty of nature… (Click the image for the glorious video!)
Thank you for joining this week’s JOY PARADE!
I hope you all have a lovely Sunday. I’m going to be making my way home on the train and then I’ll be straight out in the garden, deadheading the flowers and checking in on the hens. They’ve had an exciting week this week - more on that in the May News Briefing at the end of the month.
I’ll be back next weekend with JOY PARADE No. 7. In the meantime, do 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.
Hello, I am really enjoying these newsletters, they are delightful. I have only recently discovered your wonderful books when I was browsing my local library with my seven-year-old and we happened upon Mr Penguin and the Tomb of Doom. He loves adventure, and penguins, so this was right up his street. We are now working our way slowly through the other books, in order to draw them out! Now we are reading Mr Penguin and the catastrophic cruise and we are really really enjoying it! Thank you so much for the lovely books!
Thank you for sharing all your lovely joyous moments :) it’s becoming a highlight of my week and a fantastic reminder to notice even more of the wonderful incidental delights in my own day to day life