random things and guilty pleasures...

This week I watched the whole series of Ladies in London in two days. It's not something I am proud of and I feel like an addict confessing the truth.
Both mesmerised and repelled, I watched the staged fights and goings on of the group with a sense of recognition and distaste.  It is basically the 'Real Housewife' franchise in London, I am not sure why Bravo gave it a different name, as it is exactly the same format.

I live on the periphery of everything that was on the show, from the locations to the events, to the cast.  Even down to the ne'r do well boyfriend Scott (who is claimed to have hidden £400 million from his first wife to avoid an expensive settlement) The ex wife used to go to my gym in Oxford and hung out in the coffee bar with us.  We are loosely connected to most of the characters and plot lines and if I had had a burning ambition, or been even vaguely good at social climbing, I guess I could have been part of this set (not the housewives, the group that they stand for).  But I have a fatal flaw; the inability to 'make the effort' other than with people that I genuinely like and those people are measured only by their kindness and warmth, never by how they look, what is in their bank account or who they might know.

Watch the show here, Marissa would have become a friend, she is kind and open and a bit out of her depth with all the game-playing, but the Bumpkin chain of restaurants, that she was promoting, must have done well out of the show.

It set me to thinking about my strange split life, Wednesday was a meeting with Coutts

To present a new project that I am working on to their private client team

And then on Friday I headed to Albermarle Street to see the Amanda Wakeley SS15 presentation.  With a little more confidence I would have taken loads of pics of the amazing outfits that were the 'street style' of London Fashion Week, but I haven't quite mastered taking pics of strangers.

It was lovely, but today I hung out at the cottage and walked down an empty street, just me and the dogs and from nowhere a 'flutter of butterflies', (yes that really is the collective noun for a group of butterflies) appeared in the middle of the road, they danced around each other forming a constant helix shape. It was utterly beautiful and bought a moment of calm and absolute happiness that touched my soul in a way that a wardrobe full of Hermes bags never would.

In the afternoon we headed off for a Fahrt im Blau, there's not really an English translation of this, it means a journey into the blue, where the outcome is unexpected, unknown, but probably pleasurable.  It has all the connotations of being relaxed with time on your hands and nowhere important to be. Basically those older Sunday drivers who just 'go for a drive'. The husband and I are well and truly in that category now.  We went to Thame, it will be familiar to viewers of Midsommer Murders....

I did splash out at the Chocolaterie...

And found some pretty things at the artisan made boutique 'From'

And so the dichotomy, I am not a Polly Anna character that loves only the wholesome and the natural, there is a side to my character that is attracted to fripperies and  silliness, but I am happier being an observer than a direct participant.  I think I may have found a like-minded soul in muddy stilettos, who comments on country life through the eyes of an urbanite, she blogs around Thame and just the name of the blog was enough to get me hooked!

Do you embrace frippery and fancies or seek out the meaningful and the real, or are you a bit of both like me?