Flower Girl

Thank you all for your wonderful responses to my "Sepia Seventies" post. It seems we can all rustle up amazing amounts of detail from our childhoods. Since writing that piece I have been really luxuriating in remembering the flower girl card that Magpie gave me, and all the wonderful creative projects it sparked. I still adore the patchwork umbrella and higgledy piggledy buckets of flowers.

Anyway, as I have been turning all this over I suddenly had a little revelation. I remembered the Birthday present I had from Magpie last year........

Yes, this wondeful image of a flower-girl!

I spotted it in a favourite shop in Lewes some years ago and had lusted after it. When it came to my Birthday last year I suddenly found myself the proud owner of it! Thank you Magpie.

It is quite large (A2) and framed in a simple black frame, every time I pass it I am drawn in to look at the detail of the basket, or the flowers or her steady, frank gaze.

And of course she can't fail to remind me of someone else.....

Eliza Doolittle

When I think of My Fair Lady I am most fond of the scene in Covent Garden Market where Eliza is selling violets and is discovered by Proffessor Higgins.

In honour of that wonderful old Flower Market here are a few of my pictures from Paris on New Years Day.

And a favourite poster of Covent Garden you can find at the London Transport Museum.

I am sad it is no longer in Covent Garden and I am hoping that I will be lucky enough to receive this lovely book for my Birthday.

You can find it here

It is well worth a look, Peter Ackroyd's introduction is simply wonderful.

"In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell shot thousands of colour and black and white photographs of the Covent Garden fruit, vegetable and flower markets, documenting an era before the markets moved out of their site in the heart of London. This hardback book contains almost three hundred of those images, portraits of the people working and using the markets, the flowers, fruit and vegetables, the streets and architecture of the Covent Garden area and its distinctive character. It also includes interviews with the people who know it best - the porters, the stall holders, the flower sellers."

This isn't Peter Ackroyd's intro! Just a synopsis of what's inside!

I really love this exploration of the past through still images. I think Stephen Poliakoff nailed it in Shooting the Past. Sorry off on another tangent, must stay focussed, tee-hee!

So I am longing for Spring posies of violets, anemones and paperwhites .

In the meantime I shall content myself with filling my bud vases with some pretty twiggy, catkin bits from the Lane!

Love Sarah x