Housekeeper's Carousel

And it’s back! Rolling into Summer Town in all it’s scrumptiously cheerful glory. Yes indeed Housekeepers, it’s Carousel time and Darlings this time it’s loaded with quite the cheeriest of inspiration…
Ready to go for a spin? Me too!
*Ok, first up a few notices: I have a new comments system that I am hoping is alleviating a lot of the problems I know many of you were experiencing with the last system. The one I have chosen is very basic, no fancy bells and whistles this time, but it does include support for Gravatars (so I can see your pretty faces!) and better than that it also supports Commentluv so everytime you leave a comment here at Brocante, it will automatically include a link to your latest blog post so we can send you a little link love. Neat, mais oui? While I’m hardly expecting an avalanche of comments in the midst of the Summer vacation I would love to know whether those of you who have been struggling recently will find the new system a little easier and leave a little hello in my vintage housewife sprinkled comment box…
Secondly, I wanted to point you in the direction of the BrocanteHome toolbar because it really does provide the prettiest, most convenient access not only to all thats happening on Brocante, but also to Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Ebay and your email programme, right there in your browser. Try it: it takes seconds to install and speeds up your online life in thoroughly delicious BrocanteHome style…
And lastly my Darlings, for those of you not signed up to the Brocante Newsletter, you can see the latest edition of the Vintage Housekeepers Bulletin right here…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkYGXHmtZcg&w=500&h=315]
* Right onwards and upwards for a good old-fashioned dose of World War Two Girl Power! This absolutely fabulous video comes courtesy of the CBBC programme for kids Horrible Histories, which takes moments from history, gives them a modern (and often rather gory!) spin and in the process makes the dullest of history both accessible and fun. It really is utterly wonderful, hilariously funny and produced with real polish and attention to detail.
And it’s here on Brocante today because I can’t stop singing “Original Girl Power” and of course I’m rather taken with the wrap-around aprons and turbans….

*  Next up: The Georgette Heyer event at Austenprose– a month long celebration of romantic novelist Heyer’s work just in time for her birthday on August 16th. My acquaintance with Georgette Heyer has so far been both brief and casual (but without a doubt, amusing) so I’m hoping popping over to Austenprose during August will leave me thoroughly inspired to add a few more of her titles to my collection.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5LkapBCiFU&w=500&h=315]
* And oh my this! Important Artifacts From A Relationship describes the breakdown of a relationship in an astonishingly unique way, examining in turn the objects that chart the course of a love affair..
“In Leanne Shapton’s marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren’t real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple’s personal effects—the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)—the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple’s accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate.”
Now does that sound wonderful or DOES THAT SOUND WONDERFUL?
* Eating Earl Grey Biscuits from Marks and Spencers (hunt them out or bake them:delish!), coveting a KINDLE (especially now Amazon are practically GIVING them away!), watching Paris Je t’aime and wondering why the city left me cold
* Worrying about this from Andrew Dworkin. Worrying it is true. Worrying that raising my own little monkey isn’t as fulfilling as he implies it should be. Wondering why it should be so. Finding in the very sentences I have just typed the ambivalence he refers to and dreading the day this all embracing love turns into bitterness… It won’t. It won’t. It won’t.
“For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for. She can watch him, as a child, play the games she was not allowed to play; she can invest in him her ideas, aspirations, ambitions, and values- or whatever she has left of them; she can watch her son, who came from her flesh and whose life was sustained by her work and devotion, embody her in the world. So while the project of raising a boy is fraught with ambivalence and leads inevitably to bitterness, it is the only project that allows a woman to be—to be through her son, to live through her son.”

* Spending far too much time rooting around the Lakeland  Catalogue and thinking of cluttering up my recently de-cluttered kitchen cupboards with these two gadgets of puttery loveliness: the Zoku and the Cupcake Maker, because my oven is hopeless and I want to produce little works of art that don’t look like they are made of loofah. It isn’t much to ask now is it??

* And finally though the relentless rain is making me heart sore (and my babba restless), I can’t help feeling that there is something to be said for six weeks at home. Six weeks unpunctuated by hectic mornings and holidays spent in places that make one long for home. Perhaps then Elizabeth Bishop was right: maybe it is merely a lack of imagination that has us seeking respite from who we are…
“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one’s room?
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there … No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?”
Have a lovely week Housekeepers….