I don't care if Monday's blue, Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too...

...Thursday, I don't care about you
It's Friday, I'm in love!
Monday, you can fall apart
Tuesday, Wednesday, break my heart
Oh, Thursday doesn't even start
It's Friday, I'm in love!
-The Cure

Bellissimo Things:-

Gene Kelly singing is happiness.

Cary Grant doing backflips in Holiday.

John Mayer's latest album, Battle Studies. Youtube 'Heartbreak Warfare' and 'Half Of My Heart' with Taylor Swift - soundtrack of my season!

Long naps after late nights out, pub lunches and Baileys-laced hot chocolate.

Laughing so hard that your tummy aches.

Purple and pink suede shoes [mine and the camerado's!].

Rob Ryan.

Panda hats.

Chocolate Mudslide cocktails!

The Parent Trap [and having a big crush on Dennis Quaid...]

"Pfeiffer Beach is situated beneath crumbling hills that have released, over time, billions of tiny garnet crystals. The blood-red garnets shimmer in the sand, bringing it alive with reflected sunlight. The action of the waves shapes and twists the tiny crystals into ever-changing iridescent rainbow patterns..."

Boys who love Disneyland...

...and who save me slices of chocolate cake...

...and he loves to climb trees and plan Easter egg hunts and carry his little sisters on his shoulders and the summer and roast potatoes, and he makes me feel like dancing on the ceiling like Fred Astaire.

In my world, we would all get our own personal flames,
color coded to match with our shoes or skin tone or
our bestest intentions, & Christmas would be every day,
there’d be presents every day & when the phone rang
it would always, always, be for you.
-Nate Pritss

[and it would always, always be you.]

Love, Louboutins and the Cure xx

Maybe this time, I will be lucky...

...Maybe this time, she's gonna stay
Maybe this time, for the first time
Love won't wander away
She's gonna hold me fast
And I will be home at last
Not a loser, anymore
Not like the last time, and that time before...
Now, all of the odds are in my favour
Something's bound to begin
It's gotta happen, happen sometime
Maybe this time, maybe this time, I'm gonna win!
-Frank Sinatra

The past few days have been up and down and all over the place and just tiring, really. I have had to borrow £1300 because both Vodafone and student finances have utterly screwed me over. And yesterday I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in lectures, because I hadn't got home until 7 o'clock in the morning!

But then there is the up! Brilliant birthday dinners and college bops and surprising the camerado in York to see her as a brainiac in High School Musical, crash the after-party with free punch and rock-and-roll dancing, and gossip late into the night with Greg Peck and chocolate cake. And also, there is the new boy.

Did I tell you how we met? It had started off as the worst possible night out - by midnight, I was rejected and abandoned and wandering back home alone, when I stopped by one of the free entry clubs to cheer myself up. And there he was.

We have met again a few times and spent the nights talking, drinking, dancing and saying goodnight on midnight corners. He plays seven sports, and loves Disney World and chocolate fountains and Robin Hood and jumping down waterfalls in the Caribbean, and he has pictures that his little sisters drew of him with them on his shoulders on his walls. It's his birthday today and we're meeting for luncheon. When he asked if I had anything in mind...

Me: Well... are you a hot chocolate fan?
Boy: [Replying seconds later] It's like you can read my mind!!

It just feels, after all this time, too good to be true. Not him - I really do believe with all my heart that he is genuinely and sincerely lovely - but my fortune. The loveliness is just unprecedented. Like Yevtushen, "I’m so afraid, I’m so afraid, the unexpected dawn might end, ending the discoveries, tears, and raptures." But then I remember that every time my high hopes for beloveds are inevitably dashed, I survive. [And this time, I think - I hope - that my affections may be returned.] Every time, I think 'maybe this time...' again...

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."

-Marilyn Monroe

Something continues and I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones

these nights we hear the horses running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house
down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes

the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you what is already yours
it is the morning of the mornings together
breath of summer oh my found one
the sleep in the same current and each waking to you

when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.

-W.S. Merwin

Love, once upon a time and happily ever after xx

Trying not to hope too hard for what I want...

Trying not to go too far with all the dreaming

Oh, the disappointment, so hard to handle
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles

Late at night I lie awake, think I should go

Catch a train to stranger towns
Where no one knows me

Oh, the disappointment, so hard to handle
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles

Oh, the company you keep, and the things you do
Something in my heart will not give up on you

Now that I have got somewhere, where will I go?

Love's a train to city lights
Where someone knows you

Oh, the disappointment, so hard to handle
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles

-The Weepies

Love, stardust and dandelions xx

There was talk of a windmill on Dow's Lake... Harriet wanted it...

...She wanted to hear through the hot summer nights the thud of heavy wooden sails turning in the wind just as they did in that old Hitchcock movie with Joel McCrea, the one where he realises something is wrong because the sails are turning against the wind...
-Elizabeth Hay, 'Garbo Laughs'

I'm seized by a sudden longing to live in a windmill one day...

...With a bed just like this!

...And a book staircase...

...With six little micro-pigs [I was so excited to read this in Varsity!]...

...and a small pug called Souffle.

And I would dress like this.

"At twelve years old, Dinah Bloom knew she would never marry. Sitting beside the lilac bush in her backyard, basking in the May sun, she knew she would never marry, she would never have children, and she would never be what she really wanted to be - a nightclub singer like Peggy Lee; she would be a reporter instead, like Brenda Starr in the comic strip. She saw herself living as she lives now, in a house with a small but beautiful garden, a cigarette between her fingers, and tanned bare legs; frequent love affairs of short duration, as in the movies..."
-Elizabeth Hay

But, oh, all the places I have to live in first...

"Own only what you can always carry with you:
Know languages,
know countries,
know people.
Let your memory be your travel bag."
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

...Cambridge...

...London...

...Via Marghutta 51 in Roma, with Gregory Peck...

...But most of all...

...in Florence...

...with someone who hasn't arrived yet, but is just around the corner...

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
-Mary Oliver

[P.S. Today my mother came to visit me in Cambridge, and we bought brownies and Gregory Peck movie collections and elf shoes. My bad news is, I have had to give up on the Pevensie Boy - all the unrequited love seems to have built up my resistance, so I start to like people a little less when they don't like me back. The good news is, I have a date!]

"You would square your tiny shoulders and glitter with dark wit. You wouldn't droop. You wouldn't need to be liked. You would brass it out."
-Elizabeth Hay

Love, stolen coats and kisses xx

Cinderella flew through the air, far from all things ugly and ordinary...

This week has been very kind to me. But even sitting on rooftops with dearest friends, watching fireworks light up the sky on one side, and the university firsts playing rugby on the other, cannot compare to watching Peter Pan for the first time with the camerado.

I loved it so much that my screeches of delight and "howls" of horror reverberated through my entire flat, and my friends cautiously opened the door to check that I was OK.

It is just the perfect sparkles and crumbs movie. Magic and dreams out of sad things.

I love all of the Peter Pan movies [what is your favourite? Finding Neverland? Hook? The Disney original?], but this one is special because it is a love story between Peter Pan and Wendy. They have to choose between true love and high adventure - between growing up and Neverland. As Nolah puts it, "to be who he is, he needs to forget anything that would change him. He isn't allowed to love, or to remember sad things." To really love Wendy, he would lose who he is...

Aunt Millicent: Have you not noticed? Observe her mouth. There, hidden in the right-hand corner, is that a kiss...? A hidden kiss.
Wendy: But what is it for?
Aunt Millicent: It is for the greatest adventure of all. They that find it... have slipped in and out of heaven.
Wendy: Find what?
Aunt Millicent: The one the kiss belongs to.

Lost Boys: The Wendy lives!
Wendy: It's my kiss. My kiss saved her.

Peter: Wendy? It's only make-believe, isn't it? ...That you and I are...
Wendy: Oh... Yes...
Peter: Wendy? You see... it would make me seem so old to be a real father.
Wendy: Peter - what are your real feelings?
Peter: Feelings?
Wendy: What do you feel? Happiness? Sadness? Jealousy?
Peter: Jealousy? Tink!
Wendy: Anger?
Peter: Anger... Hook.
Wendy: Love?
Peter: Love?
Wendy: Love.
Peter: I have never heard of it.
Wendy: I think you have, Peter. I daresay you've felt it yourself - for something, or... someone.
Peter: Never. Even the sound of it offends me.
Wendy: Peter!
Peter: [Shouting] Why do you spoil everything? We have fun, don't we? I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?

Wendy: There is so much more!
Peter: What? What else is there?
Wendy: I don't know. I think it becomes clearer when you grow up.
Peter: Well, I will not grow up! You cannot make me! I will banish you like Tinker Bell!
Wendy: I will not be banished!
Peter: Then go home. Go home and grow up. And take your feelings with you!
Wendy: Peter! Peter, come back! Peter!


Narrator:
Peter did not want Wendy to leave. Once again, he visited Wendy's home, to see if Mr. And Mrs. Darling had closed the window yet. But, as before, he saw Mrs. Darling in her chair by the window, her eyes tired with searching the heavens.
Mrs Darling [in her sleep]: Wendy... Wendy... Wendy...
Peter: We can't both have her, lady.







Wendy: Peter, we've been talking. What if you came back with us?
Peter: Would they send me to school?
Wendy: Yes.
Peter: Then... to an office?
Wendy: I suppose so.
Peter: Soon I should be a man. You can't catch me and make me a man!
Wendy: Peter.
Peter: I want always to be a boy, and have fun.
Wendy: You say so, but I think it is your biggest pretend.









Hook: Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience and pimples.
Wendy: Things were simpler when I was younger.
Hook: And then the mess starts, the feelings come. Pan is so lucky to be untroubled by them. Oh, no. He cannot love. It's part of the riddle of his being.



Wendy: Once upon a time... There was a boy named Peter Pan... who decided not to grow up. So he flew away to the Neverland where the pirates are.
Hook: What fun he must have had.
Wendy: Yes. But he was rather lonely.
Hook: Lonely?
Wendy: He needed a Wendy.
Hook: Why a Wendy?
Wendy: He liked my stories.
Hook: What stories?
Wendy: Cinderella. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty.
Hook: Love stories?
Wendy: Adventures, in which good triumphs over evil!
Hook: They all end in a kiss. A kiss... He does feel. He feels about you.
She told him stories.
He taught her to fly.




Hook: I know what you are!
Peter: I am the best there ever was!
Hook: You're a tragedy!
Peter: Me? Tragic?
Hook: She was leaving you, Pan. Your Wendy was leaving you. Why should she stay? What have you to offer? You are incomplete. She'd rather grow up than stay with you. Let us now take a peep into the future. What's this I see? 'Tis the fair Wendy. She's in her nursery.
The window's shut.
Peter: I'll open it!
Hook: I'm afraid the window's barred.
Peter: I'll call out her name!
Hook: She can't hear you.
Peter: No!
Hook: She can't see you.
Peter: Wendy!
Hook: She's forgotten all about you.
Peter: Stop! Please! Stop it!







Wendy: Peter.
I'm sorry. I must grow up.
But... this is yours.
This belongs to you... and always will.




[All kisses should do this!]

Narrator: There could not have been a lovelier sight, but there was no one to see it...

...except a strange boy who was staring in at the window. Peter Pan had countless joys that other children can never know, but he was looking at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.

Wendy: Peter!

...You won't forget me, will you?

Peter: Me? Forget?
Never.
Wendy: Will you come back?
Peter: To hear stories... about me.

Narrator/Grown-up Wendy: But I was not to see Peter Pan again. Now I tell his story to my children, and they will tell it to their children... and so it will go on. For all children grow up...
except one.

Peter: Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown-up things again.

Let's find Peter Pan's statue in Kensington Gardens, and fly away to Never-Never-Land...

"We’re going to live like we’re telling the best story in the whole world. Are you ready?"
-The Brothers Bloom

We'll listen to the mermaids sing and escape from Skull Rock with Tiger-Lily, and lie in pink clouds to spy on the pirates...

...and we'll dress like the fairies...

...and dance like them, too.

...and when the end comes, darling [except it won't, not for us], the fairies will fill our sails and fly us out amongst the stars to sleep...

"I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!"

I believe in Never-Never-Land. I believe in Wonderland. I believe in Narnia. I believe in the mermaids singing beside Cair Paravel. I believe in Camelot. I believe in broadswords. I believe in bows and arrows. I believe in knights in shining armour. I believe in the Lost Boys. I believe in the Merry Men. I believe in pirates. I believe in Sir Pellinore and the Questing Beast. I believe in the Scarlet Pimpernel. I believe in Diagon Alley. I believe that it is only a wardrobe's walk away.

I believe in magic.

And I believe that one day - maybe in another story, maybe in another life or another universe...

"Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say about himself. She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind."
-J.M. Barrie

Love, romance and high adventure xx

I love you through sparks and shining dragons, I do...

...I love you, I don't think you care.
-The Guillemots, 'Made Up Love Song #43'

Dear Pevensie Boy,

I like you. I really do. My...

...swells a little bit every time I see you, and I can't help smiling. I love how we can ignore everbody else and speak for hours at a time, even though I can't remember what about [like Carrie, this means I must really like you] - except for our shared love of Robin Hood, of course. And I'm glad I came to your birthday party and that you liked the chocolate cake I took out clubbing for you. I'm glad it somehow ended with just the two of us walking home together, too. I'm not sure if you arranged that deliberately. I'd like to know either way.

Because

I can imagine pilfering toffee apples and toy bows and arrows with you, and kissing in the college corridors...

...and rock and roll dancing slightly drunkenly down Kings Parade under the Christmas lights at midnight...

...and holding hands and sharing apple pie...

...and you know how rarely I share my food. I would even get you this as a Christmas present.

I think you are lovely and perhaps...

...but if you are not, can we go and get cocktails together again some time? [Or hot chocolate.]

[Such a lovely - and fitting! - song]

-When Harry Met Sally

before I met you I used to want to lock myself into a vault just to feel precious
but now with every kiss hello and goodbye I feel a self worth no banker could tally.

And my heart is a protest that I let rally against my ribs because I want to build my bones into cribs
and lay my reluctance to rest; test what it would be like to live frenetically,
to hold you unapologetically, to plant a giving tree on my front lawn so that when you're gone
it can give you back to me...

We've managed to muddle through the awkward stages of "I like you" and "do you like me"
and when we both said yes life became a multiple choice test; not knowing anything,
we became each others best guess. And holding your hand is less like exploration and more like discovery.
Lady, I don't have to study you to be sure you were the choice I made before
I knew what the other choices were.

And like the best idea I'll ever have I want you to occur to me daily.
And I'm sorry but I want to kiss you every time you have something incredible to say
but you're beautiful, beautiful in a "you" kind of way. You're like the long lost vinyl of Louis Armstrong
and I want to play you and play you until it skips.
I want to tell you a secret and I want you to listen with your lips.
I want my hands on your hips like they are on their final resting place and put that
funeral onto paper so you can trace their life time back to the fact that I'm more inclined
to find a space in your heart to haunt for as long as you want me too.
Lady, I'll rattle chains up and down the halls of you. And this
isn't the greatest romance of the world has ever seen.

Lets face it we've been making out to songs about break up and heart ache
but I've come to realize that romance should be less like a flower and more like an earthquake.
And I'm not saying I want to shake cities to the ground.
I'm not saying I want the rubble that remains to become a lost and found where we find
the kind of tolerance it takes to rebuild in the face of tragedy.
Because I'm tired of living in a world that says people only come together when faced with catastrophe.
I want you, to want me, to be the me you see when I'm free to be the me that got me next to you.

And as for romance? Well, I want that too.
I want to fall asleep next to you, 100 times a night,
so I can know you 100 times better before we hit the day light. And despite all of this,
I also want amnesia so I can relive each kiss with a perfect newness
that leaves me smashed in the arms of rapture. I want the sky to fracture under
the impossible weight of an apology because I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I want so much.
I'm sorry that I'm using "I'm sorry" as a crutch to lean on for so long
but if you sing me that song of sweet logic again then I promise to make the effort
to stand on my own. There is a reason that our hearts are more like a muscle
and less like a bone. I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing
in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit.
Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves
then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo.
So lady, don't expect an apology when I tell you I'm only held together
by a heart that pumps blue, it's the strongest muscle in my body and I'm flexing it for you.

-Shane Koyczan

-Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen

One day, I would really, really love to have this:

-Frequency

My heart swelled inexplicably
when I turned the key

and caught the scent
of something lovely, coming from the kitchen.

I dropped my loaded bag
and clowned a heart-attack

when my son came running from his room
and gripped my thumbs, and balanced on my shoes.

And as I broke into our nightly dance—
his graceless, middle-aged old man,

I knew: that I will be content
if this is all the heaven that we're granted.

-Patrick Phillips

Love, Dennis Quaid and Billy Crystal! xx

My spring, summer and fall. Do you know you have missed some of them?

this poem is for the pillow clutchers/for those looking into the imaginary eyes of the person who fills their mind with sugarplum smiles/for those who have a cannon of dreams ready and waiting to blossom/for the men and the women who want to be understood in that way that only someone who kisses you can understand you/this poem is for you.

this poem is not for the desperate/the pathetic/the lame/the loser/not for the one who hasn’t gotten laid in awhile/not for the one who says they’re “choosing not to date” for awhile/there is no such thing/this poem is for the people who cannot bring themselves to admit that they would give their right leg for any length of time with the person on their mind.

forgive me/I am not a brave woman/I do not know what lurks in the hearts of humans and I don’t really want to know/if what’s there mirrors memories I show in my face on bad days it holds kisses that are long gone/people who have disappeared/and passions that have faded into the ether of the past/nothing lasts/that is the one lesson this coward can say she is able to teach.

this poem is for all those who wish to say “I’m sorry”/I’m sorry I couldn’t love you/you deserve love/I’m sorry I couldn’t give something to you/you deserve to be given to/I’m sorry that for every person that loves somebody/another person just doesn’t want to/and sometimes we’re the lucky ones/right/we get to feel sweet truth in the night/the bodies we reach out to are miraculously there/but I know the despair that comes when they are not/I know the long nights and the doubt and the fear and that crawling back to a womb that just isn’t there/I know intensity’s address and the letdown that rents there/I’m sorry for it/it takes years off your life and it cannot be avoided.

and some times these little words are crutches for the crush that we feel/so this poem is a pathetic vehicle for me to tell you/each one of you/that I love you/in so many ways/in the same ways that stay up nights and days/dreaming up the perfect way to be there for someone/meals you would cook for them/poems you would write for them and the things you plan to say when they say no/well I love you/and you will never know how in the slight of a magician’s hand we could’ve been lovers and grandly in love/could’ve changed the whole game/written words on the horizon/changed the compromise/but you will know something else instead/bitter as bitter ever gets/more bitter than a rotten peach pit/more bitter than a child’s most terrifying nightmare at night/you will know that I don’t reflect what I see in your eyes/will will share some banal recognition/some cordial understanding but have I mentioned that I love you for not lying/so many people lying all the time/I hate them/so I love you/and you will still go home alone/and that is very hard to do.

for all the humans with love for those who aren’t their lovers/I love you.

and so the poem ends because we know that it will/but before it slips away like everything else/I will attempt the only words I can think of that are a fraction as good as a kiss: when you reach out at night and find not someone/but the cold grey light of day that wakes you up like a slap/like a curse/like an insult/I love you/when you stay at home thinking of those who are long gone or those who are getting kisses from someone that is not you/I love you/for those who want what they probably need and whose bodies are starving not for food/for me and for you and for all the people who never knew or understood what you would do for them/I love you/I love you/I love you.

-Mary Fons

I have a broken toe, not a broken spirit.

I have fallen in love with a[nother] boy - a Robin Hood-admiring, Narnian High King Peter. Apparently, when I fall in love, I show my affection by buying the beloved chocolate cake. It's the only way I know!

"I fall in love with someone about twice a week, but I’m starting to think that’s a common problem with writers, that they have a dangerous excess of love that they give away to near strangers or turn inward on their private little worlds."
-Zach Vandezande

Ugh - doubtless, once again it shall prove futile! And even worse, a feckless flatmate of mine cheerily informed some of the object of my affection's friends that I have "a huuugggge crush on him! It's really funny!" Which left me feeling somewhat like this...

Still, Hallowe'en concerts, stolen punch and Greg Peck movies bring blue skies to November. And...

This is my 200th post! So it shall be celebratory pinata post, full of sparkles and crumbs - starting with some inspiration from the heroine Lauren Bacall...

"I’m not ashamed of what I am - of how I pass through this life. What I am has given me the strength to do it. At my lowest ebb I have never contemplated suicide. I value what is here too much. I have a contribution to make. I am not just taking up space in this life. I can add something to the lives I touch. I don’t like everything I know about myself, and I’ll never be satisfied, but nobody’s perfect. I’m not sure where the next years will take me - what they will hold - but I’m open to suggestions."

...Because she was 'Den Mother' of the Rat Pack...

...because she was married to Humphrey Bogart...

...because she made movies with Gregory Peck!...

...and Marilyn...

...and because she posts things like this on her Twitter [Yeah. Lauren Bacall has Twitter...]:-

"Yes I saw Twilight my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever. After the “film” was over I wanted to smack her across her head with my shoe, but I do not want a book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die, so instead I gave her a DVD of Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, now thats a vampire film! and that goes for all of you! watch Nosferatu instead!"

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers,
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me...

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
-Stanley Kunitz

And to every shooting star reading this... I love you! Thank you so much for stopping by, for your comments, and for your own beautiful blogs. You make my day so much brighter. In fact, I am bequeathing ALL of you the first Sparkles and Crumbs award [thanks to Charles M. Schulz!] - like Lucy, you should tell yourself this every day:

These pages are like our garden, darlings.

And, at long last, this is what I think life should be like...

True love. Friends who are really sisters. Big, happy, extended family dinners. Delicious food. Magical old musicals. Fabulous clothes. Lots of laughter. Joyous Jennifer Hudson songs.

I love this last scene so much!

Love, falling leaves and autumn breezes xx

[To the next 200 - here's hoping!]

Lately I've been wishing I had one desire, something that would make me never want another...

...Something that would make it so that nothing matters,
All would be clearer then

But I guess I'll have to settle for a few brief moments,
And watch it all dissolve into a single second,
Try to write it down into a perfect sonnet,
Or one foolish line...

I believe that lovers should be tied together,
Thrown into the ocean in the worst of weather,
Left there to drown,
Left there to drown in their innocence...

Once you knew a girl and you named her Lover,
And danced with her in kitchens through the greenest summers
But autumn came,
She disappeared,
You can't remember
Where she said she was going to

But you know that she's gone,
'Cause she left you a song,
That you don't want to sing

Singing, I believe that lovers should be chained together,
Thrown into a fire with their songs and letters,
And left there to burn,
Left there to burn in their arrogance...

Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers,
And laid entwined together on a bed of clover,
And left there to sleep,
Left there to dream of their happiness

-'A Perfect Sonnet,' Bright Eyes

We all want the happily ever afters. The perfect proposal, the confetti, the fireworks, the fairy-tale endings, growing old together in a little country cottage with roses in the garden. The love at first sight that runs without a hitch.

But I think that we all want the sweeping tragedy of love, too. The longing and the loss and the tearing apart - the strength of those feelings. The forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet is just the original; we want Rose and the Doctor, Lyra and Will, Clare and Henry in The Time Traveller's Wife, Princess Anne and Joe Bradley in Roman Holiday!

"You're just another story I can't tell anymore."
-http://pleasefindthis.blogspot.com/

"We’d been apart so long...” she said... “I thought surely you’d built a new life, with no room in it for me. I’d hoped that.”
“My life is nothing but room for you,” I said. “It could never be filled by anyone but you."
-Kurt Vonnegut

Still the best film about love ever made. You don't even need to know the plot to cry over these six minutes.

No matter what may come,
give me this: that all this time I stood here
ignored to death and loved you while you let
every chance go; say your glances at me
suggested almost anything but love;
say I know you cry in bed, poor you.

Believe in love. You know that I am here
to let you loose. Here is my flesh for you
who ay abide with me till kingdom come.
-Miller Williams





And if someday you remember
O you, form and name of my love,
One day on the ocean between America and Europe,
At the hour when the last ray of light sparkles
on the undulating surface of the waves, or else a stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside or in a speeding car,
A spring morning on the boulevard Malesherbes,
A rainy day,
Just before going to bed at dawn,
Tell yourself-I order your familiar spirit-that
I alone loved you more and it's a shame
you didn't know it.
-Robert Desnos

But after all of that, we really want our love story to end like this:



-A friend's wedding.




She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul,
As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm's strife:
He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm,
And a peace which crowned her life.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Love, moons, Junes and ferris wheels xx

But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you...

...and make you glad you’re alive to see?
-Jack Kerouac

Eat that damn chocolate cake, get your hair wet, love someone, dance in those muddy puddles, tell someone off, draw a picture with crayons like you’re still 6 years old and then give it to someone who is very important to you. Take a nap, go on vacation, do a cartwheel, make your own recipe, dance like no one sees you, paint each nail a different color, take a bubble bath, laugh at a corny joke. Get on that table and dance, pick strawberries, take a jog, plant a garden, make an ugly shirt and wear it all day, learn a new language, write a song, date someone you wouldn’t usually go for, make a scrap book, go on a picnic, relax in the sun, make your own home video, kiss the un-kissed, hug the un-hugged, love the unloved, and live your life to the fullest. So when you’re standing in front of heaven’s gate that chosen day, you’ll have no regrets, no sorrows, no disappointments.
-http://copulatedkiss.tumblr.com/

the loving day, the mounting sun, the friend i am happy with,the arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, the hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, the same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green, the rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private untrimm’d bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones, beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after another as i happen to call them to me or think of them, the real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures)
-Walt Whitman

If tomorrow morning the sky falls… have clouds for breakfast.
If night falls… use stars for streetlights.
If the moon gets stuck in a tree… cover the hole in the sky with a strawberry.
If you have butterflies in your stomach… ask them into your heart.
If your heart catches in your throat… ask a bird how she sings.
If the birds forget their songs… listen to a pebble instead.
If you lose a memory… embroider a new one to take its place.
If you lose the key… throw away the house.
If the clock stops… use your own hands to tell time.
If the light goes out… wear it around your neck and go dancing.
If the bus doesn’t come… catch a fast cloud.
If it’s the last dance… dance backwards.
If you find your socks don’t match…. stand in a flowerbed.
If your shoes don’t fit… give them to the fish in the pond.
If your horse needs shoes… let him use his wings.
If the sun never shines again… hold fireflies in your hands to keep warm.
If you’re afraid of the dark… remember the night rainbow.
If there is no happy ending… make one out of cookie dough.
-Cooper Evans

Love, balloons and peacoats! xx

On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises from his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys to all the children...

Carving pumpkins. Bobbing apples. Trick-or-treating. Mittens. Hogwarts. Capes. Clown hoodies. Crunching through fallen leaves. Ghost stories.
Magic.

Charlie Brown: Well, another Halloween has come and gone.
Linus: Yes, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: I don't understand it. I went trick-or-treating and all I got was a bag full of rocks. I suppose you spent all night in the pumpkin patch. And the Great Pumpkin never showed up?
Linus: Nope.
Charlie Brown: Well, don't take it too hard, Linus. I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, too.
Linus: STUPID?! What do you mean STUPID?! Just wait 'til next year, Charlie Brown. You'll see! Next year at this same time, I'll find the pumpkin patch that is real sincere and I'll sit in that pumpkin patch until the Great Pumpkin appears. He'll rise out of that pumpkin patch and he'll fly through the air with his bag of toys. The Great Pumpkin will appear and I'll be waiting for him! I'll be there! I'll be sitting there in that pumpkin patch and I'll see the Great Pumpkin. Just wait and see, Charlie Brown. I'll see the Great Pumpkin. I'll SEE the Great Pumpkin! Just you wait, Charlie Brown. The Great Pumpkin will appear and I'll be waiting for him...

Happy Hallowe'en, my toffee apples!

P.S.
I have just been hired by the Cambridge Tab to write a weekly column - "Cakewise's Culinary Tour of Cambridge!" [Week One: finding the best hot chocolate in town.] I feel like Carrie Bradshaw, only a foodie!

And I am in love yet again, with a boy who loves Robin Hood too...

Love, Sherwood Forest and Oo-Di-Lallys! xx

For there's no blue Monday in your Sunday clothes!

I awoke feeling as grey as the clouds this morning, and since nothing particularly exciting was planned for the day, I pulled out some dullard jeans and a hoodie... and then Put On Your Sunday Clothes came on my iPod! Every word rings true! So I dressed up in my favourite purple dress, dressed my equally despondent friend in my Dorothy shirt dress and sparkly red shoes, and watched with glee as our spirits rose like a hot air balloon!

"This season’s couture shows bloomed like gardenias in the monastery of the new austerity. The collections blew kisses at our plastic-belt-tightening in these dressed-down, hard times. Couture laughed extravagantly at the bonfire of banking, the end of ostentatious consumption. It was, let’s be frank, a let-them-eat-cake moment, and we asked, Who on earth is going to wear this stuff? Who has the gall? Where is the ball? The galas, the dinners, the soirées? Where are these yards of elegant swank going to be appropriate? Where is all this expensive good taste going to look tasteful? These were the wrong questions. We should have asked: Do we really and truly want a world without couture? Are we willing to throw away what we have on top of what has already been lost? Is there no place for the exclusive and the beautiful? For the hysterically indulgent? And the superbly crafted? You have no idea how sensational a couture frock is until you’ve held one, or worn one, as Emily Blunt does with Victorian insouciance here. The skill in making them, the satisfaction of the stitching, the delicacy of the beading and the lacing, the softness and the stiffness, the fall and the rustle and the silhouette. It is the perfect detachable cosmetic surgery. The ateliers that fabricate these clothes are the repositories of centuries of prestidigious patience and acute, minute observation passed from thimbled, nimble fingertip to fingertip. Couture is a promise to the future from the past: There will be entrances and orchestras again, carriages and candelabra again, parties and seasons again. There will be glamour again. Throughout the history of civilization, doom, doldrums, depression, and disaster have descended to paint the town gray. But they will also recede, leaving little but a shudder. What is left, what abides, is beauty."

-A A Gill

Magical accessories, too...

[I want this Kurt Halsey firefly necklace so much...]

Ladybird toes!





More Inspirations of the Moment:

Gorgeous Harpers Bazaar photoshoot

I saw your face
Elegant and tired
Cut up from the chase
Still, I so admired
Bloodshot your smile
Delicate and wild
Give me she-wolf style
Rip right through me...
-'Universally Speaking,' Red Hot Chili Peppers




"She was a wispy imp, pretty and perilous as a firework. Compounded equally of curiosity and cheek, a spark and tinder for the boys, her quick dark body seemed writ with warnings that her admirers did well to obseve. 'Not to be held in the hand,' it said. 'Light the touch papoer, then retire immediately.' She was an active forager who lived on thrills, provoked adventure and brought home gossip. She was agile as a jungle cat, quick-limbed, entrnacing, noisy. In repose she is also something else: a fairy-tale girl, blue as a plum, tender and sentimental."
-I want to be Dorothy from 'Cider with Rosie.'

And, much as Emma Watson is not particularly one of my heart-rallying heroines, she does look the part in these photoshoots - I wish I could dress like this every day...

And for my camerado, who has never failed me...

...And for all of you - love, housewarming party invitations and Italian verbs! xx