Scrolling through my Tumblr dashboard this morning I came across one of my favourite posts ever. Now, I must admit, I do not know the source of this amazing information, or the photos that accompany it, but it was just too good not to share with you.
In 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Mme De Florian locked the doors of her Parisian apartment for the last time...and never came back. What she left behind her was a snap shot of time, portraying the life of a citizen of the Pigalle quarter just before a world changing event. The apartment was rediscovered after Mme De Florian's death some seventy years later, by her descendants, who described the discovery as if they were "stumbling into the castle of sleeping beauty".
The last photo is a painting of Mme De Florian's grandmother, the famous Parisian actress Marthe De Florian. Marthe was a lover of the artist, Giovanni Boldini, and their love letters were also found, tied with ribbon, in the apartment!
What a find! I can hardly imagine, if I left my house for seventy years, it would be this glamorous!
Oh where to start? Words cannot express how much I absolutely love this event. This event was where my decision to dress/live(ish) vintage was born; when I was thirteen I saw beautiful ladies and gentlemen walking around just looking so stylish and sophisticated I aspired to be just like them. Ever since then we, that is the family and I, try to go every year, but this has been hard for me, what with the move to university up north. So it was an immense pleasure to go this year! Well, we sort of went...we went into the 'car park' where they had moved the majority of the stalls, the fair ground and the hair dressing parts - better known as the parts where myself and mother spend most of the day! Our logic worked that as we had not had to pay for tickets we had thus saved around £100 (and 3 gin and tonics thanks to the Gordon's vouchers!) and so needed to spend that amount to balance the books out. My personal highlight of the day was the Chap Olympiad, which was put on three times in the day, just after brunch, lunch and tea. I loved this event so much I am going to dedicate an entire entry to it, so stay tuned for that! I am also going to be dedicating an entry to my purchases as I think they need a special mention because they were absolute bargains! Hopefully next year I shall get a ticket to go into the show ground as I do enjoy some of the racing and the general atmosphere, but this was the perfect supplement!
For now then I shall leave you with some photos of the day...
The ladies working miracles on vintage styled hair - supplied by my old friends the Vintage Hair Lounge
Some of the action moved outside to where we were
I absolutely fell in love with this suit
Anyone got £2.8million spare?
I think that's a Hurricane, a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt but don't quote me on that...
Chaps & Chappettes looking splendid, but more on them later...
I confess I stole this post (gasp!) from the lovely chap over at Eclectic Ephemera, but as a Southamptonian and a complete history freak I couldn't resist sharing this with my readers:
Let's take a seven minute tour through pre-Blitz'd Southampton...
I would have loved to have seen a pre-1940s Southampton town! I do love Southampton (most of the time...) but isn't the old town much more beautiful? I did hear once that the city's High Street is actually a pre-fab one built after the war as a temporary measure. Well, sixty years later it's still there! Time for a revamp I think!
In the video I spotted a complete Holy Rood church, a Bargate that was still attached to the High Street, the old floating bridge, and even the end of my dad's old road in Bitterne Park! What did you lads and lasses spot?
I would be lying if I said I was counting down the days to the field school I had to attend for my degree with Liverpool University. Dreading it would almost sum it up. I think the fact I only knew a couple of people in my group and that it would mean a hefty journey back up north that made me resent the fact I had to go. But alas, I must eat my words and admit that I absolutely loved it! It seems that archaeologists are not those boring sods everyone thinks they are!
I needn't have worried about the only knowing a couple of people there because it appears that the alcohol aisle is the best place to meet new friends! Twelfty bottles of Henry Weston's cider (8.2% and at only £1.89 a pop we couldn't resist) and the last cherished bottle of Sailor Jerry rum later the soon-to-be "Fire Crew" was formed. I understand this makes us sound like a bunch of drunkards but it gave us something to bond over and well...we are students!
The 'Fire Crew'
L-R: Moi, Heather, Hasan, Jhodi, Dave, Tom
The dig itself was on the Iron Age hillfort on Eddisbury Hill in Cheshire and was a hive of excitement - for us archaeologists it was anyway! We were the last team of a two year project on the site and so had the great responsibility of finishing the work off. The site had already been dug a whopping nine times so the layers of archaeology had really built up and some how I had ended up with a very complicated section in Area One which bamboozled even the best archaeologists on site as it changed from a simple afternoon job to one that lasted the rest of the week! I believe now it has all been figured out but it definitely caused a lot of head scratching. One amazing find (other than all the awesome Iron Age things we found like the post holes that could form a round house) was the pit cut into Area Three that contained a collection of World War Two trash such as empty tins, medicine bottles and other throw away items; it turns out the hill was used a camping spot by Italian POWs in the area and they seemly left their rubbish behind them.
Me in 'that' section looking OH so glamourous!
We were working eight hour a day but then we were also playing eight hours a night. The Fire Crew gained their notourity on the first day as Dave 'The Fireman' lit our first campfire and the name just stuck throughout the trip as we lit a fire most days. The fires were the perfect place to relax and drink more Henry Westons after a hard day crouched in a hole, and a great place to get to know the people we were working with who included fellow students, lecturers and people from further afield like America, Scandinavia and Bulgaria.
Two evenings were highly eventful as Beeston Outdoor Centre played host to two parties: A Derelict party where we all had to make outfits out of rubbish a la Zoolander, and a Skull & Crossdress party where the boys dressed as pirate wenches (ooh err missus!) and the ladies donned twizzly moustaches and eyepatches. I will admit that far too much alcohol was consumed (Jen, I'm blaming your punch!) on both these nights and so the memories are a little hazy but the pictures have, unfortunately, reminded me of my antics - don't worry readers, I won't inflict these on you! For the Derelict party I fashioned a vest top out of a co-op carrier bag, a skirt from a black bin bag and a vintage inspired hair piece from a toilet roll tube, so I consider myself almost stylish for this event. For the Skull & Crossdress party I cannot say the same. Wearing my Freddie's rolled to the max, blue stripey vest top and black boots I was almost a rockabilly pirate, but then I added the mascara beard and chest hair (which, according to Harvey, looked like a lady garden) and a pencil moustache which wasn't the most flattering look I've ever sported. The men though must be congratulated for their efforts! I've never seen such...interesting looking ladies!
Pinky & Pikey in action at the Derelict Party
Jhodi, Tom & Dave were there in spirit through our sign
Don't we all look dashing?
A Freddie Mercury moment if there ever was!
It couldn't have been done without all these lovely people!
Human slaves in an insect nation!...ARGH ARGH ARRRRGH!!
Odette Samson (or one of her other countless names used throughout her life) is possibly the most famous allied woman in history. Her work as an SOE spy during 1942 and her mixture of French patronage (and eternal grace granted to so many French women) and English bravery in the face of the atrocities implicated by the Germans awarded her George Cross at the end of the war.
The book 'Odette' by Jerrard Tickell was first published in 1949, and was written with the aid of the great woman herself. This has allowed her 'character' to be unbelievably true to life with the anecdotes conveying the exact feelings and emotions felt by Odette during her war. The French have a strong characteristic of being incredibly loyal to their country and people, and even though adopting England as her home, Odette has an overwhelming connection to her homeland and it's freedom. Even at the end of the book when she is saved by the Americans from the horror of Ravensbrück she keeps her gentle manners by telling the SS soldiers that accompanied her to run (most likely for their lives) - this is an overall theme through the book that just because the soldiers were German does not necessarily make them Nazi, and they were just following orders from the evil above. Her sense of forgiveness is amazing.
The majority of the book is set in France or within her three imprisonments, with very little being set in England or her life before her SOE work; I can only guess that being having being written in 1949 a lot of the work done in Baker Street was still top secret information. The chapters set in France were very fast paced and I did find them quite confusing to follow (probably not helped by my lack of French speaking skills and a few pieces of information being in French) but the speed only reflected the dangerous excitement experienced by Odette and her comrades. At this point in the novel (is that the genre? Is it a biography? 'Faction' before Capote's 'In Cold Blood'?) Raoul - or Peter Churchill, who became Odette's second husband in 1947 - was my favourite character as he was that 'hero' figure, reminding me of a gallant knight from a Medieval folktale mixed with a bit of James Bond's suave style. However when Odette was imprisoned in the Parisian jail of Fresnes she met a German priest (who was an active soldier stationed at the prison) named Father Paul Heinerz; Father Paul was Odette's humane rock in Fresnes (which was unusual as Odette didn't believe in God, although she occasionally prayed in desperate times) and characterised that war didn't mean your enemy was evil and it affected all walks of life - he was German under the boot of the Third Reich.
So, overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book thanks to the extraordinary real-life story aided by great writing. As a Hamsphire girl I had always had an interest in the county's association with the spy networks across occupied Europe but I had never actively sort out any research on it, but I definitely will now! 'Odette' is the perfect book for anyone with an interest in World War Two, great women through history or who just loves a great adventure.
