Anna Loves.... More Spring Blooms

blossoms in my uncle's garden

bluebells on the roadside in Clifton

pansies on the roadside in Clifton

I've spoken about my love of spring before a couple of times, and it's probably starting to sound like a broken record, but as the season progresses more and more blooms are appearing in gardens and alongside the roadside that I simply can't resist pausing to snap pictures of! I'd promise that this was my last post with poorly-labelled flowers all over it, but that would be a very pie-crust-like promise to be making. I've been holed up in cafes and libraries and hunched over my desk working on essays and research proposals, so the moments when I run into blooms on my daily errand-wanderings are little spots of happy in my city life. Speaking of my predilection for the countryside, I spent a very pleasant Easter Sunday out in the Cotswolds with family, pottering around the fields where my aunt and uncle live - which is where we caught this little lady (it's a good thing none of my tribe are squeamish about pond life):

female great crested newt

Anna Hears... Sun Culture

Sun Culture's eponymous debut album has been described as 'the perfect soundtrack to usher in the sunshine and warmer weather' (available free here). Considering the band's name, this sunshine-y nature is far from surprising, but it's the kind of blue-skies-from-here-on-out attitude that doesn't end up being slightly cloying when the clouds inevitably roll in on the British spring, in the way that 'summer tunes' often do. Rather than written for summer, they seem like they've been written with the memory of summer in mind, and are not unconvincingly happy. The happiness in the tracks is bolstered by the upbeat nature of the music, with the right amount of quasi-nostalgia in the lyrics to prevent the summer feelings becoming teeth-achingly sweet.

Anna Eats... Courgette á la BTP

Boston Tea Party, my preferred study spot on the days when the university study spaces are too quiet, has just updated its menu. Although jacket potatoes are gone, they've added a selection of sides to go with the menu. Now, I'm not a fan of a big lunch, so a side is often the right sized amount of food for me. In fact, now that a side salad is an option I suspect my study-lunches might actually get healthier. But on this occasion it definitely did not. One of the sides is 'Courgette Fritters with Harissa Mayo' - and anything that involves both fritters and mayo isn't exactly the healthiest option. If you need an excuse, this probably does count as one of your five-a-day. As the picture above shows, it's a pretty generous portion - perfect for my lunch habits. I wouldn't have thought that courgettes were a match for fritter-isation, but these were lovely. The crispy batter combined with the softness of the courgettes, which were pretty much perfectly cooked (I can be pretty fussy about the level of 'done' that my veg turn out as). Plus, the harissa mayonnaise was pretty incredible; I'm on a bit of a 'hot' kick at the moment,  mostly in the form of jalapeño bread and 'mexicana' cheese, so the addition of a bit of heat to quite a 'meh' condiment was wonderful. I'm pretty convinced that this should only be a treat-lunch, rather than a regular lunch habit, but it's delicious.

Anna Reads... A Possible Life

Sebastian Faulks is one of my favourite authors; he's one of the ones whose books I scout for in second-hand book shops and charity shops. I deliberately make sure that I have my own physical copy of the books, no library loans or kindle downloads there. A Possible Life is the most recent of his books, from 2012, that isn't a James Bond or Jeeves add-on, but I only just (due to my preference for pre-loved, paperback editions) got my mitts on a copy.

Although Faulks has written books encapsulating the stories of various individuals, such as A Week in December, A Possible Life read a little more like a collection of short stories than a coherent novel, due to the unconnected nature of the various 'parts'. There are a couple of minor threads that appear in several stories, such as a particular statue, but none of the characters are directly linked, and the tales take place in several time-frames, including the future.

I'm not really a fan of short stories, as this book seems to be, because I often find that the characters aren't as fully developed as they are in your traditional novel. It takes a different kind of author, I suspect, to write a fully developed short story than it does to write a typical, 200 page novel. However, despite the difference in writing style to usual, I actually feel as though Faulks achieved short stories that actually left me thinking. It might be because I could spot themes common to his stories, like adultery, that gave them greater depth in my mind. It might be my bias towards liking Faulks' writings. Regardless of those potential influences on my attitude towards the story, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

A Possible Life focuses on love stories. Never entirely conventional, sometimes of dubious morality, and not always of a romantic persuasion, Faulks frames the characters' relationships in the greater context of their lives, which somehow makes the works seem more realistic. The all-consuming love affair that leaves its fingerprints on your life long after it ends, the maternal feelings towards other peoples' children, the lingering 'what if' of a flame despite its unhappy ending - all these ideas are familiar, grounded in the way that people live their lives, rather than the unrealistic optimism of the 'happily ever after'.

Love stories like this seem to be increasingly en vogue in recent years, but the idea is one that Faulks has been playing with throughout his works. Love is always more complicated than boy-meets-girl-and-falls-in-love, but rather than portraying these complications as obstacles in the path of true love, Faulks makes it clear, throughout A Possible Life,they are sometimes what makes the love story worth telling. And, in the long run, worth reading.

Anna Hears... Songs for the Friendzone

The "friendzone" is a particular internet trope that won't die and is one of the many that I disagree with because, at the end of the day, what is so very wrong with wanting to be friends and nothing more?

Anyway, thanks to the wonderful people over at Noisetrade I stumbled across a song that mirrored another song I became aware of last summer. Both of them are about wanting to friends with a member of the opposite sex, one from each side of the 'gender divide', both are the right amount of angry about the idea that more than friendship should be wanted, both make me utterly unrepentant about having been one of those "girls that the internet hates", as my brother jokes...

Those Darlins, Be Your Bro (thanks noisetrade!)

Palma Violets, Best of Friends

Anna Eats... Summer Salad

I feel as though I ought to whisper this statement: I really like salads. Partly because it's a super easy way to do "packed lunch" for a day in the library - one box, 2/3 portions of veg (in about 5 veg types) some couscous or the previous days potatoes and a drizzle of dressing and I'm done - and partly because I genuinely think you can do some quite interesting things within the confines of salad. The restaurant I work at, when the chefs remember the veggie staff, makes some pretty scrummy salads out of whatever they find lying around (beetroot, salsa, and spare veg is the usual recipe), which makes me happy. Plus, they're easy to throw together! I feel like I'm living up to that awful media stereotype of girls laughing while they eat salad, but it's more than a 'health thing'.

Take the above - I'm not pretending that the pile of cheese on toast is healthy, I know what I'm doing to myself - but look at the salad. If it had just been rocket, beetroot, spring onions and radishes, it would have been a disappointingly dull salad in the grand scheme of things, even if those are my favourite salad ingredients. Strawberries though. Throwing in those strawberries made the whole 'dish' a different kettle of fish. Eating them with balsamic vinegar is the sort of thing that foodies talk about every summer, starting from about now when British strawberries are appearing in the shops, but putting them into a savoury salad felt a little rebellious and decidedly luxurious. 

And salad should, at least occasionally, be more of a luxury than a diet.

Anna Wears... A Small Challenge

Jacket: "thrifted" / Dress: ZARA / Bag: Accessorize / Shoes: Red Herring

That is, indeed, a flash of midriff. Stop the press, I'm embracing the crop. Ish. My sister got me a couple of crop tops for my birthday, but I took one back as it wasn't very...me. But this version, in a dress, with a fun print and high waist on the skirt, seemed like a pretty easy way to edge into a trend that I can apparently pull off physically, but don't feel confident enough to on a stylistic/emotional level. Word to the wise though - don't go out and eat half a pizza and expect it not to feel a little snug if, like me, you tend to lean towards food babies...

My birthday dinner/cocktails/'do' last week felt like the perfect moment to get this dress out of my wardrobe and into the wider world. Apparently it has already left the Bristol store, so I'm pretty glad I was in an impulsive mood the day that I got it!

Spring in the City

Spring in the city is, as I already talked about, very different to spring in the country. Even though I prefer the country in Spring, the city has it's odd charms. Before the clock change last week, walking home in the dawn, and the glimpses on clear-skied, sunshine-y days, I discovered that Spring in the city, even away from the coast, has the same power to make me feel a little better about the world, like a small calm place in my soul.

Photos taken around the Clifton Hill area, BS8

Anna Wears... Summer Style Change

Denim Jacket: 'thrifted' / Blouse: from clothes swap / Skirt: H&M (c.2008) / Socks: M&S / Scarf: Next x London 2012 / Sunglasses: H&M / Bag: Mat & Nat

Now that summer's finally, if slowing, admitting that it's on it's way - the daffodils are wilting, the cherry blossom is everywhere - I'm making all my usual summer style switches. We've already reached the point where I'm refusing to wear tights (other than at work, where it's mandatory), my sunglasses have re-entered my handbag (I know I should wear them in winter, but when was the last time we had a sunny winter day in the UK?), and I'm thinking about putting all my winter clothes back into the box to make room for the inevitable (and already in motion) influx of new summer dresses. These are ideas I make part of my own Spring Cleaning; I see girls wearing tights in summer and can't fathom how uncomfortable it must be, and I'm already surprised to see wintery-coats still whirling around the pavements.

This outfit is a couple of days old now - alas, today, with the smog and the rain, was not a knee-socks kind of day....

Anna Reads... The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

One of my tentative New Year's Resolutions was that, in an effort to make myself a happier person, I should read more.

That's not to say I don't read - on a 'reading day' while studying, I easily get through a hundred pages, sometimes two hundred - but I realised that I had stopped reading for fun. With all the reading I had been slogging for my less ... appealing classes, all the joy had been taken out of it, and I was only reading for my degree, rather than for leisure. I've been called a bookworm, my family joke that I used to eat books rather than read them, and yet, there I was, not reading. It almost felt like I was losing a part of myself, to be a touch hyperbolic about matters.

I'm currently making my way through Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. According to my Kindle, I'm only actually a quarter of the way through, but it struck me as peculiar, considering my long-standing acquaintance with nineteenth century literature.

Repeatedly, already, Anne's main character (who, unusually even now for a female writer, is male) debunks various features of the gendering of society at the time. It is not only that Gilbert suggest that his aim as a husband, rather than to enjoy the loving attention of his wife to his personal desires and happiness (such as in the matter of the contents of the tea-table), would be to ensure the happiness of his wife in the same matter. It is also that his current love-interest, Helena, steadfastly refuses to bring up her son in a way that is familar to us in the modern age. That is, not raising him to be the masculine ideal of manliness, discouraging her son, still a child, from drinking so as to protect him from later vice, and shooting down the disapproval of her neighbours in this matter.

For obvious reasons, this calls to mind all the debate about raising children in a non-gendered manner, and the discussion I see about how the way boys are raised leaves them with deep-seated emotional issues. It is, of course, possible that I'm only reading these things into the work because of my vague awareness of the issues. But regardless of this, my point is that I'm really quite enjoying the, shall I say, progressive themes in Anne Bronte's work, in comparison to the usual 'please your husband, raise your children to continue these biases' commentary on family life of the time.

Anna Loves... The First Days of Spring

I make no secret of my country-bumpkin tendencies. Although I love living in cities for the ease of walking everywhere and having plenty to do, a not-so-small part of me prefers the relative quietness and open spaces of the countryside. My favourite flowers lean towards daffodils and daisies over peonies and roses; I have a favourite tree (I don't know why, it just is); and my first instinct when the sun appears isn't to find a pub with a garden, but somewhere green and open. Sunday being one of the better days we've had so far this year, and a quick trip back to the family homestead on the cards, I made the most of the changing seasons, romping across the fields between villages along the way and enjoying the blue skies and ever-present daffodils in all sorts of places - grassy banks, hedgerows, the chicken pen chez maman... That's not to say that Bristol is lacking in daffodils, but they seem far more planned here than they do 'out in the sticks'

 Banks of daffs on the roadside

 Stopping by my favourite tree

 The latest residents of the chicken enclosure

A Black Rock (not pictured), a Speckled, and a Bluebell

Autumn/Winter '14 1 - Star Wars

They say that three's a trend, but even just the second appearance of Star Wars during the AW14 shows suggests that wearing my Star Wars Christmas jumper is going to fit in with the season's aesthetic next Christmas...

At Preen, a string of 4 looks features Darth Vader's helmet, while at Rodarte, the final 5 looks down the catwalk featured a variety of imagery from the original trilogy, the Death Star, Luke Skywalker, C3-PO, Yoda, and a shot of some moons.

Preen by Thornton Bregazzi, look 27

Rodarte, look 33

images via style.com

Anna Loves...

dreaming of moving to France in the short term next year

flowers and scented candles all over my bedroom

the new semester, and new things to study

Pop-psychology is full of ideas about 'mindfulness', and the '100 Days Challenge' is doing the rounds on social media as I type, and even though I'm reluctant to admit it, there is a certain degree of merit to reminding yourself of the good things in life, especially when you're as prone to stressing out over the (big and) little things as I am... so here are my current joys.

Anna Wears... Girls' Night Glam

Jumper: New Look, Shirt: H&M, Skirt: H&M, Boots: River Island, Lipstick: Soap & Glory in Mantrap

What I love about 'girls' night' is that, even if we just go out dinner and a quick drink,I know that I'm dressing up for me, rather than there being a chance that I'm figuring out what men think about how I look. The slightly-prim look with the fun touch of studded boots and a glitzy neckline is (for me at least) a more casual way to do an 'evening' look. I'm not usually one for dividing the sections of my wardrobe according to time of day, but this jumper is definitely in the 'event' part of my mental wardrobe; I can't quite imagine wearing it to class in the morning, it might be pushing the bounds of 9am-wear a bit far there.

Anna Draws... Dior

Couture week is my favourite part of the fashion calender; there is something so romantic about the ideas that stand behind it, and the creation of gowns that aren't commercially but artistically driven. It never fails to be inspirational and to remind me of what made me love fashion in the first place. It wasn't the status symbols or the exclusivity, it was the sheer beauty of it all.

Raf's couture collections for Dior might not be the opulent extravagance that couture calls to mind, but his modernist interpretations of the ultimate in garments is high impact and the dress above, look 20 from his most recent collection, caught my eye even in the blurry background of blurry instagrams.