Life is like a box of chocolates

I love her stuff: she designs handbags, purses, jewellery, etc.... When I worked in London, I walked so many times by one of her shops but never dared to go over the threshold. It was like watching a dream: all these fancy handbags on shelves in a tiny boutique with bright white walls and a few pieces of twirly black furniture. I have passed this shop so many times that I can remember exactly all the other shops around: Molton Brown, Jo Malone, L'Occitane, Hermès, Penhaligon's, Agent Provocateur, etc... It was right in the City (Threadneedle street at the Royal Exchange now a luxury shopping precinct, still worth having a look inside even if you have no money to spend, the roof of the place is glass panelled and it looks very impressive). Once I was determined to go into Lulu Guinness shop but at the last minute my hands became all clamy and I felt my face turning a shade of deep scarlet that does not look natural for someone with a diaphane complexion like mine! So I went to the shop next door , Jo Malone, where there were 2 customers already. I was browsing and got noticed by a sales assistant. She asked me if I wanted to try their latest fragrance and, cornered, I said "why not?"... Then I got rewarded by a piece of chocolate! So what did I end up doing? I bought a bottle of the perfume I had just tried even though it was a bit too heady for my liking, but I thought it is going to grow on me (well to this day it still has not! But I do absolutely love their "Lavender and Amber Cologne", this one is heaven). And to show their gratitude (?!?) they booked in me for a free facial. Not long after though, I had to leave England: never had my free facial since it was the last thing on my mind at the time.

Anyway, here are some examples of her handbags (that you can buy online):

Think of me as dim, but give me a recipe and I am incapable of following it! It doesn't matter whether it is the most simple recipe on earth, I will not follow it! So the result is always something of a surprise. This is why I am so in awe of people who master baking! Making dainty little cupcakes, victoria sponge cakes or even a delicious chocolate cake that looks good and pretty!

I found a recipe by Nigella Lawson that is really good (and I bet it's even nicer when it actually look like cupcakes!)
125g self-raising flour
125g caster sugar
125g soft unsalted butter
2 eggs
Half a teaspoon real vanilla extract
Approximately 2 tablespoons milk
1 packet instant royal icing food colouring – for preference, colour pastes specialist cake decorations of choice
e.g. wafer roses, sugar flowers, dolly mixtures, and sprinkles
1 x 12-bun muffin tin
12 muffin papers

Preheat the oven to 200C and line the tin with the muffin cases.

It couldn't be simpler to make cup cakes: just put all the ingredients except for the milk in the processor and then blitz till smooth.

Pulse while adding milk, to make for a soft, dropping consistency, down the funnel. Or using a bowl and wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour.

Then add the vanilla extract and fold in the rest of the flour, adding the milk to get the dropping consistency as before.

I know it looks as if you'll never make this scant mixture fit 12 bun cases, but you will. I promise you this mixture is exactly right to make the 12 cup cakes, so just spoon and scrape the stuff in, trying to fill each case equally, judging by eye only of course.

Put in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cup cakes are cooked and golden on top. As soon as bearable, take the cup cakes in their cases out of the tin and let cool, right way up, on a wire rack.

Once they're cool, make up a big, uncoloured batch of royal icing, and then remove a few spoonfuls at a time to small bowls.

Using a bamboo skewer, add small dots of colours from the paste-tubs, stirring with a teaspoon and then adding more colouring, very slowly, very cautiously (pastel works best here, whatever your everyday aesthetic) until you get the colour you want.

Use teaspoons to coat the cupcakes with icing and leave each a moment to dry only slightly, on the surface, before sticking on a rose, daisy or whole stash of decorations.

There are more scrumptious recipes on her website : http://www.nigella.com/index.asp

I was wondering when the tradition of giving lilly of the valley on the May 1 (in France) originated and here is what I have found : it dates back to Charles IX in 1561 when he decided that as a good omen people would hand a lilly of the valley to friends and/or relatives to celebrate the arrival of spring and to wish them happiness for the coming year. However, it was only as from May 1st 1936 that this flower was associated to labour day (May 1st) and also in remembrance of workers who died during the protests of May 1st 1886 in Chicago)

So let me wish you a prosper and happy year with this
muguet1.jpg

On April 22nd, Bettie Page reached the honourable age of 85!

When I first heard about Bettie Page I was convinced that she (like Marylin Monroe and others) was dead, indeed, she seemed to belong to long gone era... But after I watched the film called "The Notorious Bettie Page" and I was puzzled about her life after "modelling", I looked into what happened "next"! For, in the film, during a trip in Florida she rediscover faith and seemed to become a devout Christian.

And this is what I found on Wikipedia :

Bettie Mae Page (born Betty Mae Page April 22, 1923 in Nashville, Tennessee, is a former American model who became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. While she faded into obscurity in the 1960s after her conversion to Christianity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s and now has a significant cult following.

Page was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the second child of Walter Roy Page and Edna Mae Pirtle. During Bettie's early years, the Page family traveled around the country in search of economic stability. At a tender age, Bettie had to face the responsibilities of caring for her younger siblings. Her parents divorced when Betty was 10 years old. Following the divorce, Page and her sister lived in an orphanage for a year. During this time, Bettie's mother worked two jobs, one as a hairdresser during the day and washed laundry at night. As a teenager, Bettie and her sisters tried different makeup styles and hairdos imitating their favorite movie stars. Bettie also learned to sew. These skills proved useful years later for her pin-up photography when Bettie did her own makeup and hair and made her own bikinis and costumes. A strong student and debate team member at Hume-Fogg High School, Bettie was voted "Most Likely to Succeed."

As the Salutatorian of her class, on June 6, 1940, Bettie Page graduated from high school with a trust fund of $10,000 and enrolled at George Peabody College with the intention of becoming a teacher. However, the next fall she began studying acting, hoping to become a movie star. At the same time, she began her first job, typing for author Alfred Leland Crab. Page graduated from Peabody with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1944. In 1943, she married Billy Neal (with whom she had attended high school) shortly before he left for active duty in World War II. For the next few years, Bettie moved from San Francisco to Nashville to Miami and to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she felt a special affinity with the country and its culture. In November 1947, while back in the United States, Bettie filed for divorce from Neal.


Modeling career
Following her divorce, Page worked briefly in San Francisco, and in Haiti. She moved to New York City, where she intended to find work as an actress. In the meantime, she supported herself working as a secretary. In 1950, while walking along the Coney Island, New York City shore, Bettie met Jerry Tibbs, a police officer with an interest in photography. Bettie was a willing model, and Tibbs took pictures of Bettie and put together her first pinup portfolio.

In the late 1940s, men formed what were known as camera clubs as a means of circumventing legal restrictions on the production of nude photos. These clubs existed ostensibly to promote artistic photography, but many were merely fronts for the production of erotica. When Page entered the field of glamour photography she did so as a popular camera club model, working initially with photographer Cass Carr. Her lack of inhibition in posing made her a hit. Her name and image became quickly known in the erotic photography industry, and in 1951 her image appeared in men's magazines with names like Wink, Titter, Eyefull and Beauty Parade. At the same time she posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with pin-up, bondage or sado-masochistic themes, making her the first famous bondage model.

In 1953, working with Herbert Berghoff, Bettie secured several roles in New York stage productions, and made several television appearances as well. Her off-Broadway productions included Time is a Thief and Sunday Costs Five Pesos. Bettie even appeared in the Jackie Gleason show. But Bettie's first love was pin-up modeling. In 1954, during one of her annual pilgrimages to Miami, Florida, Page met photographers Jan Caldwell, H.W. Hannau and Bunny Yeager. At that time Page was the top pin-up model in New York. Yeager, a former model and aspiring photographer, signed Page for a photo session at the now closed African wildlife park Africa USA in Boca Raton, Florida. The Jungle Bettie photographs from this shoot are among her most celebrated. They include nude shots with a pair of cheetahs named Mojah and Mbili. The leopard skin patterned Jungle Girl outfit she wore was made, along with much of her lingerie, by Bettie herself.

After Bunny Yeager sent shots of Bettie to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Hefner featured Page as the January 1955 Playmate of the Month, the centerfold model for the two-year-old Playboy magazine.

In 1955, Bettie won the title "Miss Pinup Girl of the World."

While pin up and glamour models frequently have careers measured in months, Page was in demand for several years, continuing to model until 1957. Although she frequently posed in the nude, she never appeared in scenes with explicit sexual content. The reasons reported for her departure from pin-up, glamour, and fetish modeling vary. Some reports mention the Kefauver Hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which ended Irving Klaw's bondage and S&M mail-order photography business. In fact, the United States Congress called her to testify to explain the photos in which she appeared. While she was excused from appearing before the committee, the print negatives of many of her photos were destroyed by court order. For many years after, the negatives that survived were illegal to print.

However, the most obvious reason for ending her modeling career was her conversion to Christianity while living in Florida in 1957, after which she severed all contact with her prior life. For many years, the last generally known facts of her life were the divorce from Armond Walterson in the early 1960s and that she was working for a Christian organization. Page even attended a Bible college, Biola University in L.A., then worked briefly as a Christian missionary.

This is basically what I was told by a psychologist... Having had a deeply traumatic life, I was told that in order to heal the wounds still gaping open in my heart (so to speak) I would have to write letters (or texts) on what happened and most importantly on my deepest inner feelings. I am most uncomfortable with this: first because the very fact of writing a letter to "no one" seems to me a little strange and immaterial but also because these said letters are going to be read by her! One might think well it does not differ much from writing a blog. But it does, for one single obvious reason: a blog is anonymous: you don't know me, I don't know you, full stop. Whereas, she knows me, I can put a face on her name... I might not mind exposing myself (up to a certain extent) in a blog, I do mind however doing it before someone. Anyhow, she said it was the best known way to heal... Can it be healing if it's unwillingly though? Just like forcing an alcoholic to attend AA meetings if he/she doesn't think there is a problem and therefore does not want to consciously help themselves. However, there is a slight difference: I acknowledge the wounds and want to help myself, I just wish there were other ways that's all.