[garden centre tulips, just beautiful]
Just discovered Joel and Son Fabrics (not far from wonderful Marylebone Railway Station) and just visited it for the first time. Not a cotton quilting fabric in sight, but just about every other kind of upmarket fabric you could think of, from wafty chiffons to sparkly lace, cashmere checks to embroidered silks. I don't think the word 'emporium' is used enough these days, but this is a wonderful fabric emporium.
Just read A Card from Angela Carter, a book the size of a postcard and just about as economical with words, too. Much as I am interested in Angela Carter's amazing imagination and her retelling of fairy takes, this is such a slight book it almost slipped through my fingers and mind.
And just finished Mildred Pierce. It's a stroke of genius to have delicious home-baked pies running all the way through such a hard-boiled story. This will not slip my mind easily.
Just been to a tasting of Portuguese wines at Lord's cricket ground. No tall men in whites around, but plenty of good wines. Because Portugal is full of interesting, off-beat, slightly unusual, thought-provoking wines that don't fit neatly into any category, and the wines are getting better and better. They are simpler to understand, easier to drink, more modern than they were even a few years ago, and yet they retain a sense of place, a sense of being different to the crowd. Duas Pedras 2010 will be lovely, lightly chilled, when it's summertime, the living is easy, and there's the smell of flowers in the glass and, with luck, all around as well.
By coincidence, I have just started to get excited about tulips because the tulips in the shops are getting better and better by the day which means that the tulips in the garden won't be far behind. I'm just trying to book a visit to the Dutch tulip fields but I need a tulip-shaped crystal ball to tell me when the tulips will be at their best. Too early and it'll be just crocuses and hyacinths, too late and the tulips will have gone over. It's testing my (weak) power of long-range weather forecasting to the very limit.
Just finished writing a book. Just delighted.
