The Hay Wain

'The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers' by TC Dugdale

I'm sick in bed, but over-the-moon because I can spend the day giggling whilst I read 'Highland Fling,' Nancy Mitford's first-hand account of the Bright Young People of her time.  I will talk about it more fully once I've finished but this little quote struck me as so modern, so applicable for our time:

To 'The Hay Wain' they went.  Albert felt battered with fatigue and longed for his bed.  This time they approached their destination by means of a fire-escape, and when they had successfully negotiated its filthy rungs, they found themselves in a long, low, rather beautiful attic.  There were rushes on the floor, pewter and wild flowers (which being dead, slightly resembled bunches of hay) on the tables, and the seats were old-fashioned oak pews, narrow, upright, and desperately uncomfortable.

A waiter, dressed in a smock which only made him look more like a waiter than ever, handed them a menu written out in Gothic lettering.  Ten or twelve other people were scattered about the room, none of them were in evening dress.  They all looked dirty and bored.

Mitford wrote this in London in 1931, but easily this could be Brooklyn 2012.  A place where C.C. Blair the younger could spend hours talking with the barman about the bitters made-in-house, or we could retire in the early hours for a night cap.

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And on the subject of Bright Young People, I realized that at this moment many of my nearest and dearest have blogs of their own, a way for me to keep up with them while I'm on the Continent.  Something Miss Mitford would surely have loved while she was in Paris.

My kindred-spirit, soul-sister, St. K., has a lovely blog with a juxtaposition of images only she could create, and that with few words can create a world for us she only knew was in our deepest of hearts:  Strange Fruit

Her other half, Micah, another dearest of mine has put his clever thoughts from our sauna conversations into writing, while reading and sharing his experiences from the books of 'Le Monde 100':  Man is Men

Miss Jenna has escaped her post as an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn and run for the hills.  The hills of the Great North West to be exact.  She shares her lovely forest and field experiences here:  Flushing the Noun

Anzelina followed the Oregon Trail and found solid gold: her husband now!  She gives us wonderful bits of this and that from Portland that make her eye so unique and captivating: Scattergoods Creative

Sarah blows me away every day with the blog posts she creates.  Not only are they desperately beautiful, interesting and one-of-a-kind, but they are consistent.  I'd love to know what she takes to turn out such creativity:  The Wolf of Insignificance