Let the Dream Begin, Let Your Darker Side Give in

So recently I came clean about my love for musicals - so at odds with my usual tast in music. And I may have also mentioned that I have a mildly obsessive personality type. Some might refer to it as unhealthy fixation or compulsion (ha ha), but I like to think of it as passion. It has been in full force since I went to see Phantom for my birthday (tickets courtesy of my bruv and his girlfriend, Tiff). After singing every song ceaselessly for weeks, I have bought the DVD, and Tiff and I are now regularly watching it (and singing the whole way through, naturally).

Silently the senses, abandon their defences, helpless to the music that I write, as I compose the Music of the Night.

What I have always loved about Phantom is the binaries - the fight between light and dark, such familiar ground for any narrative, and yet this rock opera was so ground breaking. Instead of straight forwardly wanting her to end up with Raoul I always wish she would choose the Phantom - his love and devotion to her is terrifying and yet compelling. He only has to be near her for her to feel his pull, a pull that makes the wholesome, saccharine Raoul seem all the less appealing.

Screw Twilight and The Vampire Diaries with their morality tales and watered down take on the darker side of all of us...Christine is a woman pulled into a passionate relationship of Master and Teacher with a ruthless murder who will do anything for her and his music - makes Edward and all his tortured posing seem a little weak. And yet, despite his mad obsession, when it comes to it, he lets her go - the true test of love.

A lot of puritans were not big fans of the film. I on the other hand love it. I felt the film was a more polished version of the stage show (as of course it would be) but it still held true to the imagery in the original productions. Film allows the maker to extend on the story, and do things that would not be possible with the limitations of a stage - and why not, the stage show is still there to be seen, and the film maker gets to create something beyond the original. When I first saw it on the big screen, there were moments that filled me with as much wonder as the first time I saw the stage show - The amazing chandelier restored to its former glory and taking its rightful place at the centre of the Opera House, filling us with expectation, only to be devastated once more in the crashing down of the dream. The Gothic night time lair of the Phantom, lit gently with a thousand candles, rising mysteriously from the fog to welcome he and Christine. The beauty of a snowy graveyard, where Christine finally says goodbye to her father.

As I never saw Sarah Brightman live, I really can't compare, but Emmy Rossum is my ideal Christine, in her delicate, celestial beauty while the cleaned up, and barely recognisable, Gerard Butler smokes as the Phantom - both sinister and debonair. I am not sure who I am more in love with?! Their attraction is palpable, which is so essential to the story. At all times they seem so aware of each other. It is beautiful to watch.

And so, that is what is making my soul take flight this Sunday.

Do-It-Yourself Class of 2010

Here are some pics from my wonderful prom birthday party. It was a wonderful mix of whimsy and romance - I love dress up for those reasons...You can be someone else, you can act like someone else, you get to surround yourself with things that you love but aren't necessarily for everyday or all the time! I wore a tutu, a tiara and fishnet gloves - would love to say this was my everyday attire, but alas I do not live in a fairytale (most of the time). So I have to take my Cinderella moments were I can get (or manufacture) them...

This party was a Do-It-Yourself extravaganza - all the decorations were made by my ever diligent friends, who cut out stars and made linked up paper chains, and made it a kitch/cool fiesta of epic proportions! Pink and purple, tinfoil stars - it was all totally indulgent! Everyone dressed up to the max - with an alarming amount of nerds, a few 80s throw backs, and even a bit of a tart... I was given a year book to commemorate the event - filled with ridiculous Captains Of and Most Likely Tos - will continue to give me many, many laughs!

In this case pictures are worth a thousand words, do feast your eyes on my silly theme and a handful of my ridiculous friends :) You are all wonderful!

A letter to my Liebe

The love letter is not dead! How do I know? Because the other day I played a little part in delivering one. I was getting on my train to go home the other evening, and I saw a cream envelope tucked into one of the seats. I extracted it, and it was addressed to someone in Berlin, but not yet sealed. Inside there was a letter in German, that was addressed Liebe. A few years ago my lovely friend Yvette bought me a little heart shaped pin that says Liebe on it. And so I know that it said Love. It was also signed with a kiss - and I think this may have been an adolescent kiss, as it was done with glitter lip gloss :) The letter had a faint scent that seemed lightly laced with violets.

The sweetness of this letter just plucked at my sense of romance (plus it was far enough after Valentines Day that I wasn't resenting the world's couples). So I decided to post it for this girl who had gone to all the effort of posting it. I hope it got there safely.

In tribute to the young lovers, I wore my Liebe pin yesterday, along with my favourite new bracelet. I bought it off etsy, and now I want a necklace to match!

Peachy Keen

I have never been the biggest fond of peach...It reminds me of eighties weddings ( above: me as a flower girl in '86), and the frilly toilet roll covers favoured by grannies. However, lately I see it catching my eye. First, I saw this hopelessly girly, romantic tunic listed on Etsy - its all in the whimsy value I tell you. I then started seeing little bits of it I liked all over the place. (All items can be found when searching for Peach on Etsy). I even found myself coveting peach SHOES the other day - whatever next?!

However, I have not as yet given in to wearing any. I am just not sure if I am 'a peach'. While incredibly pretty I am just not sure I am that much of a girl. Give me your thoughts on this here femme dilemma...

What you pick up in a Vintage store

Yesterday I got stuck in a vintage shop for 45 minutes. Trapped unable to leave...

You see it was a sunny day in London, and by sunny I don't just mean not raining or light grey, but proper, sunny, yellow, glowing, light, emanating from that gorgeous orb in the sky. I have been putting off a trip down to my favourite vintage shop for a while now, because it's been wet and windy, but yesterday by some miracle the clouds cleared and I made it. And thank god because I needed to go and find a little something for my favourite vegan, as some of my people are leaving for SA tomorrow and I want to send a little care package.

The shop is called Radio Days (Slogan - tune into nostalgia at Radio Days :), its been open for 17 years and sells a variety of artefacts from the 1920s - 1970s. You arrive into a room decorated in various degrees of our recent consumer past. Old telephones in a menagerie of colours are shuffled onto shelves, ancient vanity cases, their insides pale with spilt powder, overflow with scarves from the past. Polystyrene heads haughtily hold up hats, glasses line shelves gleaming through their faint veil of dust. There are boxes of long forgotten postcards, addressed to long forgotten friends, from destinations that were once in vogue.

Being of a magpie-ish nature I am never quite sure where to look first in this veritable treasure trove, but todays it's quite simple. For I have interrupted one of life's perfectly orchestrated 'meet-cutes'. Behind the counter is a pretty, unusual girl with marmalade hair, in captivated conversation with the tall wearer of a mac. I feel the awkwardness of having stumbled upon a moment of inadvertant intimacy, and, realising that this intrusion was most uninvited, I retreat to the back room to intoxicate myself with mothballs and the fashions of former eras. The shop, however, is small, and their conversation irresistable. I can see him now - a straight Rupert Everett. She is open and friendly with a vague Dutch accent, he endearingly self depricating in that English way. He was an archeology student, and is now a struggling actor. She works here but really she's a set designer. He has a beautiful voice; she lives with a voice coach. He lives in Brixton...and she lives in Brixton. She lives in the pink house, he lives four houses away. She can't believe he hasn't seen her riding her bike with the big basket on the front. He rides a bike - it's outside. And so on and so forth.

I continue to lurk in the shadows, slowly flipping through decades of shirts, shifts, shoes and shoulder pads. She giggles, he laughs. He is buying glasses; she swaddles them in so much bubble wrap they can barely fit in the bag. He says he would hate them to be broken by the time he gets home; she wraps them in yet another layer. He says if they survive the bike ride perhaps she would have a drink with him. She laughs again. She says that they get these kinds of glasses often, maybe he would like her to keep some aside for him. He gives her his card.

I sigh. I am late back from lunch, I need a wee, and I found my treasure twenty minutes ago, but now I can safely escape the time warped back room. He leaves, looking over his shoulder. I come to the counter. She is shaking her head in disbelief, "Amazing...we have so much in common, we live so close, and yet we meet here...Amazing..." I say, "Some things are meant to be". She laughs once more, and looks down at her shoes; her face flaming like her hair - so self-conscious to be caught hoping.