Every Picture Tells a Story
I mentioned in the post on house-husbands that I have various skills and strangely one of them is dressmaking. Or it used to be, as I haven’t made anything in years.
But look at this picture of Celia, who in this blog I usually refer to as C, taken at a New Year’s Party in Venice probably in 2002 or 2003.
C at New Year in Venice
It looks like a strapless evening dress or a full skirt with a strapless top. It is neither.
The skirt was luxurious and there was an equally luxurious top to go with it. But when C bought the skirt from Beatrice von Tresckow, the top in her size was sold out, so they said they’d make one for her. Something went wrong and it didn’t fit.
So there we were in a five star hotel in Venice, an hour before the dinner and one of us had nothing to wear! And it wasn’t one of those parties, where she could have gone topless. I hasten to add that she never did outside of the confines of our bedroom.
Depending on where I tell this story, there are various versions. In some she’s in tears and in others she wants to go home, but the truth is probably that although she was upset, she trusted me to have an idea that would work. Her versions of the story used to have a lot of emotional actions, as aren’t most barristers frustrated actors?
She thought I was joking when I asked her for some safety pins. I found two in the dinner suit I was wearing and one in a good pair of trousers. All had been used to attach dry cleaning tickets and after that day, she never ever removed one. But she still referred to it as one of my lazy habits.
I then told her to remove the strapless bra she was wearing and replace it with a basque I knew she’d brought with her to wear under another dress, that was a bit tight and needed a bit of an extra squeeze to get into. She’d also brought it because it was New Year and she knew the extra layer added warmth. She also took the opportunity to change from tights to some stockings as a reward to me, which she said she’d remove, if I couldn’t make her respectable.
I then took the shawl that she had brought to wear with the top and skirt and wound it round her securing it with the safety pins. The hotel was warm, so the lack of a shawl wasn’t a problem.
The result is shown in the picture, which was actually taken after the dancing. So it held together without any problems.
I hasten to add, that wrapping the shawl round wasn’t my original idea, but was borrowed from a very old 1950s, TV Series, called Dick and the Duchess. In one episode, Hazel Court, who played the Duchess, got into a scrape as she often did, lost her clothes and ends up in a boiler suit. She then takes a taxi to her couturier, who was played by a very camp, Michael Medwin. To preserve her decency, he wraps her in expensive silk, tucks it all in and sends her home. He orders the boiler suit to be burnt. I never saw the errant top again.
If there is a moral to this story it is to never travel without safety pins! And steal ideas from out of context and old television shows.
Do London Underground Use a Different Calendar to Everyone Else?
I thought thw 2nd and 3rd of July was a weekend this year until I saw this!
2nd/3rd of July Is Not a Weekday
But who knows?
Do Successful Women Have a House Husband?
A news item in the Sunday Times today is headed Top women need ‘him indoors’
It goes on to discuss how quite a few of the top women in the City have husbands who are at home.
I will not answer my question directly, but talk about my relationship of forty years with C. Or more particularly our careers.
For the first few years, we were very typical although, some would say that your early twenties are too young to have children. We had three before I was 25 and C was 24. I worked hard to get on and by that time I was starting my first business. I was working at least 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we were living in a fouuth floor walk up flat in St. John’s Wood. So if you have to live in crap housing make sure it’s in a good location. Just north of Regent’s Park can’t really be better.
When I sold my first business, we moved to the Barbican and C went to UCL to do a law degree, as Politics from Liverpool, where your tutor was Robert Kilroy-Silk, doesn’t really prepare you for the world of real work.
For the next fifteen years or so, I was part of the team creating Artemis, whilst C was getting her career together as a barrister. We were both working hard and I got the financial rewards when the company was sold. C meanwhile gained a reputation as one of East Anglia’s foremost family barristers.
When we moved to Newmarket to start the stud, we started to evolve a new way of working together. We still had our individual careers and interests, but I would spend more time on other things, as C was now very much the major wage owner. It allowed me to develop ideas, some of which worked and some didn’t. And then when she moved to Chambers in Cambridge, which was very much Internet based, I became much more of her support at home.
As we didn’t have young children anymore, I couldn’t be described as anything more than home support.
So in some ways we’d almost come full circle.
I suspect our model has not been untypical and I’d recommend it. As the major wage-earner changes over the years, does it really demean the man to be the one who oooks after the house, when his wife can earn three or four times he can.
But we also did a lot of things together.
Shopping for instance. Some of my friends are incredulous, that for most of our life together we did the general shopping together too. When we were in the Barbican, we’d push the children up to Chapel Market next to the Waitrose I now use. So life has now come full circle in more ways than one.
Clothes shopping was often together too. C was better at choosing clothes for me and in many cases the reverse was true. I remember the year she died being in Zara and C was looking at a sun dress on a hanger. She said that it was awful and I then picked it up, realising that it would be just her size and style. She bought it and wore it all the summer. Remember that I am a designer and also an unusual man, who was taught to make clothes by his mother.
If I have any regrets about our relationship, it was that I dodn’t do more cooking. I taught myself in a few days after she died and like doing it.
So I would suspect that although house-husband is too strong a word for it, most successful women and successful men for that matter have a strong partner at home, who can help or even take charge of the mundane and suggest other ways in the serious part of their career. As an example in the latter, I helped in a few of C’s cases, by using my knowledge and experience to improve her arguments and in some other cases, I have suggested ways of improving her returns from the work.
And then there’s the need for a cuddle and more, that we all need!
Living alone is not a choice we would make for ourselves.
Fourth of July Tomorrow
Remember it’s Darrell’s Day tomorrow.
If Nathanial Darrell and his brave band of Marines hadn’t repelled the UK’s last attempted invasion, we’d all now be wearing clogs!
Kangaroos in Walthamstow
I went to the Village Kitchen today in Walthamstow and had a kangaroo steak for lunch.
It was good! And gluten-free too!
I’ve been skipping down the road since, as a friend will confirm, as we met for a coffee afterwards at the Angel.
Is Rick Perry What the United States Needs for President?
It is being reported that Rick Perry is seeking to gain the Republican nomination to stand against President Obama.
Let’s face it, he’s for capital punishment, the NRA and against publicly funded health care to name just three issues.
He may not be good for the US, but just as with other right-wing presidents of the past, it may well mean that the rest of the world benefits from immigration of some of the United States brightest thinkers, scientists, doctors and engineers.
To a Reception at the House of Lords
Last night, I went to a reception for Liverpool University alumni at the House of Lords.
It was an excellent do, with drinks and nibbles, some of which were gluten-free, in the Peers Dining Room hosted by Lord McNally.
In some ways afterwards was the highlight, as a small group of about eight of us, walked out through an empty, except for one security guard, Westminster Hall. We asked if it would be OK to take a picture and several of us did.
An Empty Westminster Hall
It really is a magnificient building.
Never when I was lying in hospital in Hong Kong, did I think, I’d ever be able to go to something like that again.
So never give up on life! You might miss the good surprises it has in store for you!
Boadicea Stands Guard
Standing guard opposite the Houses of Parliament is Boadicea, or as she is more normally spelled these days, Boudica.
Boadicea Stands Guard
She may or may not have defeated the Romans, as whatever happened they remained in Britain.
Her spirit lives on, especially in East Anglia. She probably came from that region, although no-one is sure quite where! I have heard several people say, including my father, that if the Germans had landed in Suffolk in the Second World War, they would have got similar treatment to that meted out by Boadicea and her ragbag army of upwards of 100,000 men. When questioned as to the legitimacy of this treatment under the Geneva Convention, a common reply was “What would Boadicea have done?” I don’t know the truth of all these reports, but I know Suffolk people well and they wouldn’t have taken an invasion lightly.
Some also say that her tribe, the Iceni, were the supreme horsemen, who when their horses were suffering from horse sickness, looked for a new and healthier place to raise them. They found this valley in the chalk downs and moved there, calling the place New Horse Market. In time this was corrupted to Newmarket. The town is the world centre of horse racing and breeding, known amongst racing people as Headquarters. Every thoroughbred can trace their ancestry back to this small town in Suffolk.
Carve Her Name With Pride
I was walking along the Albert Embankment yesterday opposite the Houses of Parliament, when I saw this statue.
SOE Memorial
It is of Violette Szabo GC, who was one of the best known of the 170 SOE agents who went to France to as Churchill put it “Set Europe Ablaze”. 117 of those sent died including thirteen women. Violette Szabo was just 23, when she was executed in Ravensbruck.
A film was made about Violette in 1958 called Carve Her Name With Pride starring Virginia McKenna. Hence the title of this post.
A Dent In The Olympic Rings
I took this picture yesterday at St. Pancras International station.
A Dent in the Olympic Rings
I wasn’t tall enough to get the clock in the centre of the ring.
The Anonymous Widower 