Sunday's colours

My unexpected trip eastwards had ended up being much less sombre than I had anticipated. Apart from the semi-planned part of the weekend (involving venturing as far east as Southend) I had time in London “at leisure”, as they might describe it in a holiday tour brochure. My friend Alex had kindly put me up on her unexpectedly comfortable sofa at unreasonably short notice and I spent a lovely Friday night catching up with her (and drinking the best de-caf tea in the known universe). There were a few options for Sunday but number one on my list of things to do would be to see friends. So I sent my friend Char a short notice message and incredibly she was free. We made no plans apart from that until Saturday, and then came to the conclusion that, based on the time I was likely to leave Alex's (Alex enjoys a lie in) and the time I had to catch a coach, we would be wise meeting for lunch in a south London location.

That was until this morning when Char texted me to ask if I'd like her to “do my colours”. For about the last 18 months Char has been running an enterprise doing colour (and more recently style) analysis, mostly around south west London. I would generally place myself in the very unstylish and unbothered category (apart from on very special occasions) so this is something that I would never have considered of my own volition. But, I'm generally open to new ideas and this was not only a new idea but seemed like a good idea. Char is after all an award winning colour consultant so I would be in good hands. She's undergone extensive training so hopefully some of her memorable teenage “fashion” statements would not be an indication of what was in store for me. (In fairness I would now class her as the best dressed of all my friends.)

I don't know what being prepared for a colour consultation would involve but I didn't feel it. I was feeling pretty gross from travelling across London in high humidity conditions and had failed even to brush my hair this morning (well all weekend as I had forgotten a brushing implement). But Char, as always, made me feel at ease. This was achieved in no small part by the offering of a beautiful platter of sandwiches – food will usually make me more relaxed. I learnt something that I didn't know about Char before (despite being friends for nearly 20 years) – she doesn't really like crusts. (But she has curly hair so that disproves that theory.)

Char started by explaining to me a bit of the history and theory behind the colour analysis. It's based on Munsell's theory of colour, which will probably be familiar to anyone has started art. This was developed in the 1900s and states that there are three elements to a colour: clarity, depth and tone

The first step in the process is to determine your dominant colour type: soft, clear, deep, light, warm or cool. Char showed me pictures of celebrities typical of these and I correctly guessed that I was a “deep”, although I was also sort of thinking clear, until I saw Colin Firth and decided that I quite resembled him – he's also a deep. Char then worked out the rest of my theme by some fancy work with squares of fabric. It turns out that I'm deep, warm and clear.

Then we moved on to make-up. Most of the time I don't wear make-up (unless it's a special occasion) and when I do I am not particularly confident with it. I tend to stick to what I know and play it very safe with mostly brown colours on my eyes (with the notable exception of my Strictly Come Dancing make-up for relevant occasions) and nothing more than a subtle lip gloss. So I was both nervous and excited about what Char would do. I was keen to find out something new to do with my eyes. I didn't have anything very glamorous planned for the rest of the day (a 5.5 hour coach trip would be anything but) so I wanted something that I could carry off without feeling too conspicuous. Char did an amazing job. Possibly the best make-over I've ever had (admittedly I've not had many). She created a gorgeous look in just the right shade of green with my eyes. Apparently I've got very flickery eye lids which impedes the application of eye-liner, but she did an excellent job and didn't poke me in the eye at all (unlike if I put my own eye-liner on). But the wow factor really came from the lipstick. As I said, I'm usually a lip-gloss only person – I don't even own a lipstick. Char was more than happy for me to go for this option today but if ever there was a time to try lipstick out now was that time. She got out “Sheer Nutmeg” - in the stick it looked horrific. On my lips it looked stunning.

Char then spent some time showing me all my best colours, starting with my neutrals. Apparently I'm one of the few lucky ones who can get away with black – which is useful. I can't imagine trying to shop without being able to put black in my wardrobe. But there were some other rather lovely neutrals in there like chocolate (mmm) and charcoal which I'm going to keep more of an eye out for. Char also had some really useful tips about whites – I'm better off in ivory and soft white. Which might explain why I generally looked so dreadful in my school uniform.

As we went through my colours (with the assistance of a huge array of cotton swatches) I was pleased it included quite a few that I favour at the moment, like true blue which I liked so much even before I'd been analysed that I bought a matching hat, dress and bikini. My colours also included lots of reds which I was very happy about as I really enjoy wearing red. But even more exciting was finding out about some colours that I could try that maybe I've shied away from before like watermelon (the inside colour) and emerald green; and some great combinations like dark navy and clear salmon, and lemon and charcoal. Best of all was finding out my “wow” colours including mustard (yes really, so now I can wear it as well as cook with it), true blue (so I got something right), scarlet (hurrah) and the purple + pumpkin combination (it's going to take some guts to go out with that on).

We finished off with some scarf action. Char showed me how to tie the “twisted necklace” with a red scarf and then gave me a tutorial on the “pretzel” with a purple scarf. I felt amazing and really enjoyed my “after” photo shoot – it was an absolute transformation, but I was still me.

The make-up lasted all the way back to the South West. Matt, my husband, seemed to quite like it but very tactfully he said that I was hard to improve!

I can't wait now to have a root through my wardrobe and get rid of all those things that I haven't worn for ages. I knew there must have been a reason that I didn't wear them and maybe it's because subconsciously I knew that they are the wrong colour for me. The charity shops are in for a treat (as long as it's not deep people hoping to pick things up). But getting rid of clothes means making space for new ones and for the first time in ages I'm actually looking forward to going shopping (usually an activity that comes from necessity rather than pleasure for me), armed with my hand bag colour wallet an adventure in colour awaits me. Maybe you'll even spot me in purple and pumpkin before too long. With some sheer nutmeg lipstick.

http://www.chicbycharlotte.com/

Monday's gardens

My third day in south London, and as all my friends (or the ones in the vicinity) were working I had to entertain myself. But first I had to transport myself. It was a fairly short trip involving 2 trains and a bus. But I had brushed up my London transport skills over the previous few days and was feeling confident. I think that looking confident (whether or not you feel it) is an important factor in avoiding pick-pockets. One unfortunate lady immediately made herself vulnerable as she failed to "mind the gap" and lost a shoe down said gap whilst boarding the train. Her husband seemed to want to try to reclaim the shoe but she wanted to buy some new ones. I'm sure they ultimately went for the wise option in not delving around under the train (although it does seem a rather extreme way of getting a new pair of shoes), but they made themselves very conspicuous.

Anyway, I duly arrived at Kew Gardens. My first impression was that there were a lot of coach parties of:

1.    School children

2.    Foreign tourists

I was a bit concerned that I would get caught up with these. In actual fact I managed to mostly avoid them, with the exception of some probably year 7s drawing pineapples in the lily house.

A pineapple

A lily

After my quick trip to the lily house I think I mostly avoided the parties by avoiding the most popular attractions in the first part of the day. With the assistance of the excellent touristical map (including both a north marker and a scale) I headed off in the direction of the Mediterranean garden. It smelt wonderful and I spotted a few things that I thought might be possibles for our front garden: Genistra tinctoria, Santolina chamaecyparissus and Cistus laurifolius.

Santolina chamaecyparissus

Cistus laurifolius

It was one of those days that whatever you’re wearing it’s not quite right for the weather. I had opted for trousers and a thin jumper but when the sun came out this was too hot. But if I’d gone for something lighter I would have been too cold. Even now it was slightly cool when the sun wasn’t blaring down. So in what looked like it might be a prolonged period of cloudiness (it wasn’t the sun came back really quickly) I went into the temperate greenhouse. In the sun I would say that it was actually rather hotter than temperate. The greenhouse is due to close next month for significant preservation work and I found my walk around interesting from the point of view of preparations for this – various demarcations in bright paint and the removal of various plants to a secure part of the greenhouse. You can see why this building is grade 1 listed; architecturally I found it quite beautiful. The best plant was a caper.

Caper plant

Temperate greenhouse

Tree-top walkway
(from the ground)

Since I last visited Kew (which must have been at least 10 years ago on a really hot day) they have installed a treetop walkway. Here I did run into a small group of school children who were mainly interested in walking the “wrong” way around the walkway and seeing how much they could make it wobble. It being the summer the view from the walkway was not really that interesting – consisting mostly of green leaves. I imagine it would be beautiful in the autumn. I does realise just how high these trees are – 108 steps.

I stopped for lunch by a pond. This seemed to be a nice spot where I could watch some moorhens (or maybe coots – I can never remember which ones have the white beaks) make their nests and there were plenty of benches. I could hear a peacock so my picnic was slightly impeded by my concerns that it would want to coming after my food (this happened at the zoo once). I needn’t have worried. I should have put my energy into worrying about the ducks who were much more interested and actually required me to vacate my bench for fear of picnic nick-age.

My highlights of the afternoon were:

1. The stag beetle loggery – stag beetles are one of my favourite childhood insects. Sadly I didn’t see any today.

2. Ice-cream – I had a little mid-afternoon break to make up for my duck-shortened lunch. I love ice-cream and this did not disappoint: coffee + honey and walnut.

3. The gravel garden – this gave me yet more inspiration for our front garden. I am definitely going to try some Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’ – it was really popular with the bees.

4. Roses – I love smelling them. Today I particularly loved smelling the orangey-yellow ones which have got a lovely sort of sherbet-citrus aroma like ‘Lady of Shallot’ and ‘Lady Emma Hamilton’. It made me wonder about what the different chemical composition of the various rose smells is, and whether a friendly analytical chemist could help me out with this conundrum.

Lady of Shallot

Ice-cream break

Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’

By 5.30pm I had seen most of what I had wanted to see. There was still an hour before closing time and when I was due to meet my friends for tea so I redeployed my touristical map and headed off for the one major attraction that I had missed: the compost heap. Unfortunately what the touristical map doesn’t tell you is that the compost heap is out-of bounds to the general public so I had to make do with a distant view and a poor quality photo. Oh well.

The compost heap from a distance

Sunday's wildfowl

After a rather luxurious lie in I was setting out to make my own way across south west London. Fortunately, the directions to get from my friend Alex's to Hammersmith (where I was meeting another friend, Lauren), weren't too difficult: take a right, a left, and then another right and then just keep walking until you get to a bus stop for the 220. And indeed these directions were just right. The problem was when I got to Hammersmith. This must be one of the most complex travel interchanges I have ever experienced. Plus it was hot so that confused me even more. After several phone calls I managed to meet Lauren outside a well-known burger restaurant. From where we negotiated our way to the bus stop to get to the London Wetland Centre. 

Lauren had suggested this and I had no hesitation to agreeing because:

1. I had been before in the winter and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It now being the summer there were bound to be some different birds (maybe some baby birds)
2. It being the summer it was sunny and warm and I'd rather be outside (Lauren helped me apply sunscreen while we waited for the bus)
3. Lauren had a special offer voucher as there was a special wildlife event going on, and I love both special offers and wildlife

Before we started on any serious wildlife related activities we needed feeding so grabbed a bite to eat in the excellent café. They had my favourite type of cola. But that wasn't before I'd had a look around a few of the wildlife attractions in the main courtyard area. This included talking to a lovely lady from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and collecting some literature about hedgehogs for Matt, my husband, who thinks they're really cute; who will glance at the pictures before passing the leaflets on to my mum who developed a rather close relationship with a hedgehog last winter.

We perused the various special wildlife activities available to us over lunch and chose to join a guided World Wetlands bird feed walk. Part of the centre is organised on a geographical basis so, for example, fowl from Hawaii are in one area and fowl from Africa are in another. The guide was very knowledgeable, being able to answer all my questions about swans. Not only is it true that a swan could break your arm, but also that a swan would break your arm (if you got in its territory during mating season).

This caused me some trepidation as I negotiated a black swan. But the lure of more baby birds was enough to make me walk boldly past said black swan. The presence of baby birds meant that mostly mating season was over so the male birds tended not to be at their most magnificent, but we still saw a few handsome specimens.

 

At the end of the tour was the otter feed. They were a bit shy to start with but the lure of fresh fish brought them out. They are truly beautiful creatures and I'm somewhat inspired to try to spot one in the wild. However I think that this is unlikely as I learnt (from another knowledgeable member of staff) that the otters native to the UK (the Eurasion otter Lutra lutra)  are nocturnal. I am not nocturnal.

After the guided walk we took ourselves on a tour of the nature reserve part of the centre. The highlights of which were:

1. Observing some keener birdwatchers than ourselves (and we are not unkeen) observing a kite (not the "let's go fly a variety") and a hobby (not the craft variety). They were so enthusiastic, it was entertaining to hear them talk, but it would have seemed rude to hang around with them and we didn't have the right kit to blend in
2. Spotting baby lapwings through the knowledgeable member of staff's telescope in the observation tower. 

I don't think that I have the patience to be a good birdwatcher.

We concluded our walk with a visit to the play area. I always think that there should be some facilities for the young at heart adult provided when I see so many fun things for the under 11s. I was desperate to go on the zip wire but don't think it was designed for someone of my mass. We did have a go on the balance beam (both of us made it across successfully) and Lauren got a bit of climbing practice in.

Before catching the bus back to Hammersmith (which was just as confusing on the second pass through) I had a good time in the gift shop. Here I could indulge in the things clearly designed for the under 11s. I bought some glow in the dark lizards, some birds that are a bit like koosh balls, a frog and two snakes. Which I am looking forward to deploying in my garden.

Saturday's centre court debut

We'd missed the first few games on Centre Court but got to our seats in a change of ends and hadn't missed anything significant in the first match. Even though our seats were four rows from the back we had a good view. That was until the person in front of us arrived.

Obscuring our view

He had very big hair and amazingly upright posture (maybe he used to be a ball boy) such that our view was almost entirely obscured if we sat in a comfortable position. So we had to adopt some slightly unusual poses to see the play. It wasn't helped by this chap's girlfriend (at least I assume it was his girlfriend) who kept leaning into him to kiss / cuddle / whisper in his ear so that the view to that side of his head was also frequently obscured. They would have been able to get a hotel room (even a nice one) for considerably less than their tennis tickets. Nonetheless we managed to arrange ourselves adequately to see and they made frequent                                                                           breaks from their seats for the loos / snacks.

As for Alex and I we were snack prepared. This had the dual benefit of:

1. Not having to pay the extortionate prices for snacks within the grounds

2. Not having to faff around getting out and in of seats and thus not missing valuable tennis

Our array of snacks included mostly refined carbohydrates but with some health benefits:

• cold pizza. Which had tomato sauce on it (a useful source of lycopene I believe) and spinach on it (a source of iron)
• oaty biscuits (fibre)
• strawberries (actually healthy - plenty of vitamin c and also some manganese)
• chocolate bar (the one mostly involving honeycomb so relatively low fat)
• crisps (I can think of nothing nutritionally redeeming about these but they taste so good).

(As an aside one of the doubles’ players was sponsored by one of my favourite type of crisp - particularly the crinkly salt and vinegar ones.)

However, the main health benefit in the above is clearly the energy supply which is after all the second most important thing about food (the most important is that it tastes good).

The snacks were accompanied by plenty of fluids. Mainly water but also a traditional English summer's alcoholic beverage - conveniently (and bargainously compared to the bar prices) pre-mixed in a can. Fortunately the toilet facilities were excellent. Although the combination of refined carbohydrate and ethanol did make us a little sleepy. I caught a snap of Alex having a mini-doze but she made me delete it.

A traditional snack

The tennis itself alternated between excellent matches and excellent players. We saw 2 closely fought battles and in the other matches both the men’s and ladies' number 1 seeds played phenomenally and basically annihilated their opponents. In the ladies' my size differential approach to tennis success held true.

Djokovic serving to success

Lisicki v. Stosur

Williams beats a gracious Date-Krumm 6-2, 6-0

I also enjoyed watching and being part of the crowd: spotting the crazy outfits and cheering on the underdogs.

Diverse spectators

I loved the hats

We weren't in a rush to leave when play had finished, having the distinct advantage of not needing any public (or indeed private) transport to get back to Alex's. So despite there being mess everywhere else I cleared up all our rubbish (separately as recyclables or non) before we descended out of Centre Court to make our way back across South West London. At a slower pace to that by which we had arrived.

Saturday's Wimbledon arrival

I had a much less eventful trip to London than on my previous visit, arriving in Paddington on schedule and showing unusual efficiency in making connections, to reach my friend, Alex's, nearly an hour earlier than the trip planner had suggested. I already knew that I wouldn't have as earlier a start as I had feared because Alex had been successful in securing us centre court tickets so we wouldn't have to chance our luck in "The Queue".

Nonetheless we departed from Alex's just gone 9 in an effort to get seats for an early prime match on an outside court. Alex set off at a determined quick march across south west London. I delayed things by:

1. Being slow at walking (in comparison to Alex particularly given the discrepancy in our leg length)

2. Dithering in the supermarket whilst selecting item(s) to augment our picnic. In the end I didn't properly make a decision and got quite a few naughty treats

We made it into the grounds and settled into some empty seats on court 2. Until a man (allegedly from the fire brigade) came along and told us that it was tickets only and that we'd have to move before play started. So we cut our losses and debated where we'd be best off. I managed to persuade Alex that a doubles’ match on court 16 might be worth a watch. Not only is doubles’ good fun, but it would probably be our only opportunity to cheer on some Brits. (I do hope that I’ve got the apostrophes in the right places there.)

We got some seats in the front row which was great apart from the occasional wayward ball and frustrated player causing me concern.

A front row view

I enjoyed watching the line judges and ball boys/girls close up. Of particular note the there was a line judge who had more than a passing resemblance to a Bond villain (actually quite a few of them did and they all had these little sponge bags in which I've no idea they carried which made them look even more suspicious) and a ball boy who was stood so upright that he looked like he was going to do himself an injury.

As for the tennis itself I didn't hold out much hope for the Brits. I have some sort of mental equation in which the size differential between the players is a significant factor in the outcome of the match (the bigger player having the advantage). And the average sized Brits were playing two enormous guys from Eastern Europe. It was a really entertaining match and the Brits did brilliantly, winning in straight sets. So my mental equation is obviously invalid.

Fleming and Murray made it to the 3rd round

We stayed to watch the end of that match before heading off to find our seats on Centre Court.