MARCHANDS AMBULANTS

Yes, that's our name - we wander around, buying and selling, here and there. It's French for pedlar or hawker, but marchands ambulants sounds much more respectable and, as usual, we did a lot of "ambulanting" around junk and antique shops on our recent trip. I pinched the name from Priscilla Carluccio, sister of Terence Conran and an icon to ladies of a certain age. (She is 76 - if she's still in the loop there's no excuse for we spring chickens not to be.) Priscilla has a blog herself, from which I learned that she too was once a "pedlar", in France. She also mentions Alastair Hendy's retro-style shop, the coolest shop in Hastings, almost too cool for us to dare to enter.

A.G.HENDY

Click on this link to see more.

Here are some more of the shops we found in Hastings and Rye.

Here are a few of the things I found...

...a tiny Victorian cross-stitch sampler, just 1 by 2.5 inches in size.

A little dress shirt for a gentleman with an 8 inch chest

An antique miniature dresser made from slate mined at Blaenau Ffestiniog in about 1850.

A model Arts & Crafts chair, finely crafted in oak...

...a prospective new owner already trying it for size.

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HOME STRANGE HOME

Everyone agrees; the South East corner of the British Isles, Margate to Bexhill-on-Sea, is a funny old place. Mysterious, beautiful, sinister, ugly, inspiring, quaint, cosy, threatening, seedy - decidedly odd. Everybody thinks so. Some say that people wash up here when they don't fit in anywhere else. We've just been back, we can't keep away for long.

                                                         

On this break from the usual routine I had time to bury myself in the broadsheets - what did I read? An interview by author William Boyd (fascinated by the South East) with the (South Eastern) rock band Keane about their new album Strangeland (inspired by the South East). Click on the link to see the video. As William Boyd remarks, many writers and artists have been inspired by this place, from Chaucer to Nicola Barker, J.M.W. Turner to Tracey Emin.

                                                   HASTINGS

BROADSTAIRS 

At the Dickens Festival Queen Victoria buys MORE Victoriana

DOVER

DEAL

MARGATE

The Turner Contemporary Gallery

Local people were invited to send in photos of themselves to make into this clever mosaic of the Queen. They came in their thousands to search for their own portraits. Result!

She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea - Tracey Emin's latest show...

...must try harder Trace, they're all looking out of the window.

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SLENINGFORD REVISITED

There's something about a glimpse of sunshine in this soggy English summer that makes us down tools immediately and head outside to make the very most of it. We had noticed that a favourite minor country house, Old Sleningford Hall, was opening its garden for the weekend and realised that it was 16 years since we'd last had the pleasure of accepting the Lord of the Manor's gracious invitation.

Greetings and thank you, kind sir!

This is not a really a plantsman's garden, though gorgeous blooms abound...

...it's more a magical garden with secret places and enchanting vistas.

Ah yes, we've been this way before...

... time softens everything and, sometimes, bits drop off too (see back of stone seat).

I wish this was my courtyard...

...and that I could borrow these ladies to make tea, occasionally.

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Goodbye, until next time...

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AFTER THE EVENT

A lunchtime stroll round a quintessentially Yorkshire village - peaceful, pretty and just a little eccentric - this is Nun Monkton, at the end of a road to nowhere.

   The village generously shares its green with motley herd of cows...

...and the ducks are happy to share their pond.

                                                      

There is a hidden treasure in the church of Saint Mary, built around the remains of an Anglo Norman Priory - a superb stained glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.

A grassy path leads down to the river...

Some things are definitely worth celebrating.

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SIXTY YEARS A KING ...

Mr N celebrates this week!