500 Words XI - This Week's Sentence

This week’s sentence was taken from Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’.

It was:
‘“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.’

I've already written mine and if you thought this week's bromance was out of character you're in for a treat with the next one.

500 Words X - Story Time

I'll make this quick as I am extremely busy and have a headache. Damn, damn, damn!
Just two stories again this week, one of them from another new writer (hoorah for new writers)!

First up:
Todd's ''verse drifting'

An existential drift across the universe with the Wondering Robot.

Plus:
Dive's 'April Love'

Bromance … sheesh! Who'd have thought it?

Next sentence tomorrow.

Goodwood 2009 - Fashion Parade

Well here we are again at the glorious Goodwood Revival weekend. The smell of burning rubber and hot motor oil, the roar of Merlin engines from the Spitfires overhead and … er … the best fancy dress party on the planet!

For anyone who has not been paying attention these past few years, I'll be doing the main Goodwood posts on Friday and at the weekend and shall explain a lot more about the event then, but today we'll be enjoying a little fashion parade.

This is my favourite photo from the whole weekend.

It's not just the grown-ups who have fun dressing up. These three were totally in character as street urchins and behaved like perfect cheeky little scamps.
I can just picture them larking about in the bomb-sites and ruins of postwar England. Their mum was standing off to the left and I must say she did a splendid job. The tomboy dressed as a little princess, the one-sock-up, one-sock-down look, the ties, the untucked shirts, the grime-smirched cheeks; I remember all of that from when I was a kid, clambering over the tank traps and gun-emplacements where we used to play.
Brilliant!

Anyhoo, let the fashion parade begin!

This is just typical Goodwood.
Vintage cars mixed with vintage fashions, from the 1930s to the 1960s; the decades before taste and style died screaming.

These past couple of years a lot more parents have been dressing their kids in vintage clobber, and hoorah for that! More fun for all!

I must confess, the Eva Braun look was a new one on me but she did look gorgeous.

If you're going for the German look, however, please avoid lederhosen!

It turned out to be a stinkingly hot day and an awful lot of ladies were to regret bringing fur stoles.
This was taken bright and early in the morning, however, so it was smiles all round.

Dapper, chic and - at least the girl in the middle - just a leetle bit disturbing.

These girls were off to the funfair in the 1950s Rock'n'Roll party area, ready to drink ice cream sodas and dance the day away with James Dean lookalikes (there are always lots of those).

One of this year's themes was the Swinging Sixties and Carnaby Street so there were lots of spiffy Mary Quant minidresses and a general air of Austin Powers grooviness.

Plus the more genteel look (and of course CARS)!

This outfit was impeccable, though not so good later on when the sun burned us all to a crisp.

Goodwood caters for all tastes.
If you fancy a couple of bull dykes decked out like Rosie the Rivetter, you'll find happiness here.

This lady looks like she just met the couple above and got a little startled.

Much as I love polka dots, the dress on the right here is totally fabulous.
(Click on all the pics for more detail, by the way).

And talking of fabulous, here's Phil again, this time with Dick from Lotus (you can't avoid bumping into sports car people at Goodwood).

Listen up, ladies:
THIS is how you should look.
Burn your entire crappy wardrobe, go out and buy something stylish, get your hair done like this and the world will suddenly be a much better place for us all.

Supercute!
I love this dress!
(The one on the right … duh)!

Yay for the Swinging Sixties!
Dolly birds and scooters ahoy!

Woah, Nellie!
(Shame about the bag, though. Accessorise, girls)!

Eek! Hippies!
This was part of the 1960s area and the little radio station cum discotheque was banging out great sixties music all day. It was groovy, baby!

Dancing dollybirds and a funbus for the kids. Who could ask for more?

How many students can you get in a telephone box?

Not as many as we did back in the sixties, that's for sure!

Ooh! Ooh! Katie, if I buy this will you wear it for me?
Pleeeeeease!
Butterflies, hibiscus and cheesecake glamour girls. Yowza!

Of course, if you own a vintage veehickle you can have even more fun.
Though not as much fun as the guy at the top right appears to be having. Looks like he dropped too much acid in the sixties area.

Not just vintage cars, either. There are always loads of great bikes (and great clothes, too … check out the background in these two bike shots).

Vintage Norton. Yay!

Well, that's it for this year's fashion show (apart from a few more that might sneak in amongst the car racing posts later).
Let's take our seamed stockings and walk off into the sunset.

Stopping only to cheer on the wonderful wartime uniforms. Lots (as always) of military chic, but this one stood out. An ARP Fire Warden, complete with tin hat and fire bucket.
Fantastic!

As it's harvest time, there's not just vintage cars, bikes and planes to play with.

Though these two Land Girls seem to have had enough.

Toodle Pip from vintage Merrie England!

Taxi!

Just a quick taster for the upcoming Goodwood Revival posts (I'll have a bit more time to put them together midweek).

Welcome, one and all, to Spee … er … Seedee Taxis.
Proprietors: Phil and Dive.

Here's Phil looking after a couple of our drivers.
Nice work if you can get it.

Hurry up with our breakfast and coffee, girls!

Here I am in the office, enjoying a racy tale from Can-Can magazine, with the Bettie Paige cheesecake on the wall beside our Winston, the photo of my respectable business partners Messrs. Ronnie and Reggie Kray beside the typewriter and the old bulb car horn on the bookcase (for whenever Katie calls rocket by its Yanqui name, 'arugula', which is the sound of the car horn and not a salad vegetable). You may want to click on this to get the details.

Toodle Pip!

WTF Monday

Dammit!
Just as well I went to the Goodwood Revival Meeting at the weekend in my vintage mechanic's overalls.
I had planned on wearing this exact same outfit!
Meeting someone wearing the same dress as me is always so embarrassing.

Anyhoo, a big thank you to this … er … elegant young lady for being such a good sport.

This is more the accepted Goodwood style.

I'll be doing the usual vintage motor racing posts this week but thanks to Katie's influence I'll also be posting a Goodwood Fashion Parade (yay)!

500 Words X - This Week's Sentence

This week's sentence was suggested by Katie and is from a short story called 'Dall', from the book Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston:

“I don't shoot animals and I hate cold weather, so maybe I had no business following Boone to the Alaska Range for a season of Dall sheep hunting.”

You know the rules.
Get writing!

500 Words IX - Story Time

Woohoo! We have a new contributor to our little coffee-time storytelling group (just as well with the vacation absences and hectic lives of some of our other writers at the moment).
Welcome, Vanda! And what a great story to start us off.

This week's sentence was taken from Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.

The rules you know … if you don't then they're over here in the sidebar to my 500 Words blog.

The sentence was:
'I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.'

First past the post this week was our new writer (yay)!

Vanda's 'No Place'

Wow! What an awesome and emotionally intense piece.
Amazing and frighteningly real writing from Vanda, who I hope will write more for us now.
Wonderful!

Dive's 'Becoming'

Another slice of trashy pulp crime fiction (I'm lazy and I find it easy to write trash), this one gives some back-story to Mackinson from the Bartleby series.
I've deliberately set the Bartleby pieces in the sixties and seventies because the advent of cellphones has made a certain type of Chandleresque crime storyline really awkward to write. I like payphones. They're great plot-drivers.

Katherine's 'Early'

Woah! That's too much like my own mornings, Katherine! Hee hee. Gloriously surreal yet convincing.
If you've not felt like this in the mornings then you've not lived.

Kate's 'The Image'

Holy crap; Aaron's back! The scariest anthropomorphic manifestation since Frank in Donnie Darko returns to haunt our heroine in what reads like a slice of real life.
Great hair and great shoes, Kate!
You also get extra credits (and the tea and flapjacks I was going to send to Lynn) for going over the word limit (naughty girl) and explaining it by saying you were borrowing some of Lynn's unused words. Hee hee hee! Cheeky and cute but you can only use that one once.
Ah, homework excuses are a literary form all their own.

Any more stories will get posted down here as they are handed in.

Enjoy your coffee time reading!

Birthday Girl

Happy Birthday, Honeypie!

Missing you like crazy.

I can't wait for Paris when we can celebrate your birthday in style.

Oh, and for anyone who's been over to Katie's blog today, here is proof that she can indeed iron a pinnie if the need arises.

WTF Monday

500 Words IX - This Week's Sentence

Hokay, Beatniks!

This week's sentence comes from Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road'.

It's the longest sentence I've set so far, at ninety-four words, so - for one week only - I am going to let you make the choice as to whether you include it in or exclude it from your total of 500 words.
No in-betweens!

The rules you know;
The sentence is:
'I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.'

Enjoy!