All Soul's Eve and Hereafter...

I've just retreated upstairs, after running out of sweets for the hordes of little witches knocking on the door this evening. (I thought 60 mini-packets of Haribo would do the trick, but apparently I underestimated the demand).
The candle in the pumpkin is still flickering by the fireplace, beneath one of my favourite pictures of my sister and me in childhood, taken on Halloween. This isn't a shrine to my dead sister -- apart from anything else, she still seems in some sense alive to me, and the photograph has been there for the last few years -- but I feel as if the coincidence is one of the moments that remind me of our shared past, which continues to be present today. Ruth's presence is as fluid as time itself; a narrative that leaps forward and skips backwards; a hopscotch game like those we played together, on the pavement outside our house. I've not scanned the photograph -- it is fixed beneath glass in a picture frame -- but it is vivid in my mind's eye as I write this. Two small girls, beside a kitchen table, eating jelly out of hollowed-out oranges, on All Hallow's Eve.
James George Frazer writes in The Golden Bough: 'Hallowe'en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside.'

If there are shivering hungry ghosts tonight, then I cannot believe that Ruth is amongst them. Like all those we love, she remains within my heart, cherished as she ever was, although not confined inside there. The dead remain elusive, unbound and unbidden, however powerful the threads that bind us to them; thus they have a life of their own.

No, if anyone seeks the affectionate shelter of home, it is me. The clocks went back last night, and now the darkness has descended; a time of year that I dread more as I get older, although I search for all manner of ways to embrace it... firelight, candles, good cheer. (How can I wish the winter away, when I learnt from my sister's untimely death that every moment is precious?)
But despite the compass that pulls me to the familiar safety of my house (a house that my sister never saw, yet which sees her face on its walls), I really should venture out to watch Clint Eastwood's latest film,Hereafter; for the book that I wrote about my sister's death, If The Spirit Moves You, was one of several sparks that set the screenwriter, Peter Morgan, on his way... Ruth was passionate about movies -- she worked for several film magazines, at the beginning of her career as a journalist -- and I imagine that she'd have been delighted to know that her story is alight on screen in some mysterious way...

Of the Galaxy National Book Awards, chocolate, pears and puddings...

Very exciting, Coco has been shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards. Am going to celebrate with a cup of tea and a large quantity of chocolate...
PS. Am speaking next week at a couple of places: on Monday 1st at the Four Seasons hotel in Hampshire (yum, the talk is combined with a delicious afternoon tea: have just checked, and the menu includes homemade scones and jam, caramelised apple baba, and spiced pumpkin tart).
Then to Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop on Wednesday 3rd November at 6.30(for 7pm). There will be wine and v. special bookbags on the night... (21, Kensington Park Road, London W11 2EU; ring 0207 229 1010 for tickets).
Meanwhile, am happily ensconced at home, re-reading Howard's End, and planning to make pear and ginger pudding. It's my own version of Eve's pudding: layer some sliced pears in an oven-proof dish, then add a simple sponge mixture on top -- just weigh three eggs, then cream equal parts butter and brown sugar (ie, if eggs weigh 200 grams, then you need 200 grams each of butter and sugar); add same weight of self-raising flower, plus eggs, a good pinch of dried ginger, and enough milk to make it slightly runny. Pour sponge over pears, and bake until golden. It should be cake-y on top, saucy in the middle, and fruity at the base. I have, on occasion, added a few dark chocolate buttons into the indentations of the pears; please do try this at home...

Pearls and white feathers

Thanks to everyone who came to Daunt's this evening. As always, there were some wonderful outfits in the audience: pearls, stripes, vintage Chanel bags, little black dresses, white feathers, caramel cashmere, and lovely ten-year-old Hannah, who is doing her school project on Coco Chanel. And very intriguing questions afterwards, which sparked an interesting conversation about the meaning of pearls, and their link to the Catholic rosary...
Some people have been asking about forthcoming events, so here they are... Chester on Tuesday evening (October 26th), then back via Manchester, and to the V&A on Thursday, for an event organised by English National Ballet, as part of the 'Rephrasing Ballets Russes' programme. I'll be taking part in a session between 12 and 1.30pm, which will also include a performance of 'The Dying Swan' by the ENB ballerina, Elena Glurdjidze, wearing a feathered Chanel tutu designed by Karl Lagerfeld. I'm going to try to get there earlier, not least because I want to revisit the spectacular Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes exhibition at the V&A.

Now off to eat some lentil and spinach soup that I made before my jaunt to Daunts... from sublime feathers to the comfort of the everyday...

This, that and the other...

Bright blue skies and frost this morning; Daunt's this evening, and Chester tomorrow...
Have been enjoying a little bird, (very much like the look of the chocolate salted caramels) and re-reading Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Rich Boy' (I needed to check his often misquoted lines about the rich being different, for a piece I've been writing today, and then found myself finishing the story). Also admiring the cover for Polly Samson's new book of short stories, as much as the words within them...

Of Dublin, Chanel, and the Book of Kells

Dublin is the most amazing city; filled with ideas and conversation and books, as always. Have been talking about Chanel here (there, and everywhere), and meeting lots of readers, book-sellers, broadcasters, journalists, fashion enthusiasts -- the people that make Dublin such a vibrant place. I was charmed by Pat Kenny yesterday -- (be still my beating heart...), and Tom McGurk today, and everyone who came to Dubray books in Grafton Street.
Am burbling, after a couple of stiff drinks with a friend, but just wanted to say that I visited the Old Library at Trinity College this afternoon, and became absorbed by the Book of Kells, the Book of Armagh, and the Book of Durrow. The Old Library is more magical than pictures can ever convey, but have posted a couple (above), to give you a taste for more...
My head is now overflowing with Celtic knots and interlocked double CCs. Suddenly, the mysterious stained glass window that illuminates the 12th century Abbey of Aubazine, where Chanel was brought up by the nuns, seems to be reflected in the ancient monastic manuscripts of Ireland...

Chanel sunbathing

V. thrilled to be on the sun-lounger with Laura Bailey... Check out the stripes! The glasses! The hat! Coco would mightily approve...
PS. If anyone lives in Dublin and wants to have afternoon tea with me and the fashion editor of the Irish Times, Deidre McQuillan at the Westbury hotel, here's your chance. It may not be as sunny as Miami, and there will be no bikinis, but chic nonetheless...

Next week in Dublin...

... I will be talking at Dubray Books on Thursday 21st at 6.30pm. What a treat -- I love Dublin, and am so looking forward to being there. Have just been searching my bookshelves, and rediscovered Elizabeth Bowen's collection of Irish stories to read on the journey -- not sure if it's still in print (my edition is from 1978, published by Poolbeg Press). One of the stories -- Hand in Glove -- is a wonderfully chilling tale of clothes and ghosts; don't want to give too much away (and neither does the hand in its glove...).
Speaking of brilliant short stories, I also want to recommend Polly Samson's new collection, Perfect Lives, published by Virago. More of which later...
PS. Went to sign books today at Hatchards in Piccadilly. Anyone who loves fashion and books should head along to the 2nd floor -- a great surprise in store.

Chanel goes to Daunts and Dublin

I know that some people have been unable to get tickets for my talk at the V&A on October 15th (it seems to be sold out, although I do have a couple of extra guest tickets, if anyone here is particularly keen).
But there will be another chance to meet in London, on Monday October 25th at 7pm, at Daunts in Marylebone High Street. I love this bookshop -- it's one of my favourites in London, along with Heywood Hill in Curzon Street and Lutyens & Rubinstein in Notting Hill -- for several different reasons. Daunts is a beautiful place, lined with wooden shelves of books, including an inspiring travel section, and it also happens to be very close to where I lived as a child, in a flat at 99 Marylebone High Street (just along from Patisserie Valerie, which used to be Sagne's, where my sister and I ate marzipan piglets and florentines). So there's something about it that reminds me of home, but also of where I might be going to...

First of all, to Dublin (at Dubray Books in Grafton Street, on Thursday 21st October at 6.30pm; more details to follow).

Until then, enjoying the sunshine in my garden... sweeping up leaves from the wisteria, dead-heading the roses, trimming and weeding, and thinking fondly of my cat, whose ashes we scattered last month beneath the magnolia tree.

Emily Bronte's hawk

For reasons that I do not quite understand, I've been dreaming about birds of prey for the last two nights -- startling, unsettling, but not quite nightmares -- and perhaps as a consequence, Emily Bronte is very much on my mind tonight; in particular, her picture of a merlin hawk (see above). As it happens, I wrote about the Brontes and feathers in a previous book, My Mother's Wedding Dress; and have just found myself leafing through the relevant chapter (very rare for me to ever return like this; once written, a book seems to fly out of my reach); and to the episode in Wuthering Heights where Cathy tears open her pillow with her teeth, and identifies the feathers within:

"And here is a moorcock's; and this -- I should know it among a thousand -- it's a lapwing's... This feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot -- we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old ones dare not come."

It's impossible to ignore Heathcliff's cruelty -- a boy/man who hangs puppies, kills lapwings, beats children and his wife -- although many accounts of him as a great romantic hero seem untroubled by his macabre tendencies (as with Mr Rochester in 'Jane Eyre' and, for that matter, Max de Winter in 'Rebecca'; both of them murderous toward their first wives).

Emily Bronte herself remains as enigmatic and intriguing as ever; impossible to interpret (at least in biographical terms), but the clues she left still seem tantalizing, slipping through my fingers, light as feathers in the wind. I very much recommend Juliet Barker's meticulous new edition of The Brontes, and Christine Alexander's book, The Art of the Brontes. The latter contains the following information on Emily's hawk:

"Study of a merlin, a bird of prey, facing right and perched on one claw... Although she does not title the painting, her pet merlin 'Nero', which she had rescued from an abandoned nest on the moors, would have provided ample opportunity for the close observation of plumage and colouring evident in her work. This hawk has been referred to as 'Hero' in many publications, but... this is a mis-transcription of the name in Emily's diary papers."

Emily mentions Nero 'in his cage' in her diary paper of 30 July 1841. Christine Alexander suggests that the bird was probably acquired early in 1841, based on Emily's reference to a bird pining for the liberty of 'Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea' in a poem dated 27 February 1841, 'The Caged Bird'. The bird of the poem, however, is not in a cage but on a chain; Alexander believes that Emily identifies wholly with its 'cold captivity':

Ah could my hand unlock its chain
How gladly would I watch it soar
And ne'er regret and ne'er complain
To see its shining eyes no more

But even so... I wonder why Emily kept her hawk in a cage (not a Hero, but Nero, the Roman tyrant...)? By the time she had returned from Brussels in November 1842, Emily's hawk had gone. She writes in a subsequent diary paper: 'lost the hawk Nero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless dead, for when I came back from Brussels, I inquired on all hands and could hear nothing of him...'

Dreaming aside, I want to know more...

Little black dresses, white feathers, and dove grey scribbles

Like many others, I am a longstanding fan of dove grey reader, so I'm thrilled she has been enjoying Coco. As always, she has made some intriguing connections: take a peep at what she has to say about her father, Winston Churchill, and why women are so good at salmon fishing...
Meanwhile, have been hither and thither, in the virtual and physical world. To Paris, to see the Chanel show on Tuesday morning (of which more later), which took over the vast space of the Grand Palais, and yet seemed also to lead into the dream-like landscape of Last Year at Marienbad. We've talked about Resnais's enigmatic film on this blog before now -- and its links to Chanel past (Delphine Seyrig's costumes were designed by Coco) -- and so it was intriguing to see it shape-shifting into the present (itself a prediction of the future, given that this show was -- is? -- the spring/summer 2011 collection).
I loved the feathers, the little black dresses, the fact that grownup women were on the catwalk -- Stella Tennant, Ines de la Fressange. I'm still wondering about the ghosts that haunt Resnais's film and Karl Lagerfeld's fashion show... and about the 1920s feathered cape that I peeked in the Chanel archive at Place Vendome; and wings of desire and flights of fantasy; of gardens and mirrors and the torn veil between now and then...

Coco's Caledonia

A Frenchwoman and the Scotsman... magnifique.
Also reading Gondal Girl and Alison Kerr... and enjoying the coolness of milk.

Through the round window...

I loved the view from my room on the top floor of the Balmoral -- looking out of the attic window at the Castle beyond. It reminds me of Play School, the television show from my childhood, where the highlight was going through the round window or the square window or -- on special occasions -- the arched window. In my hazy memory of the past (that world where dream and memory blurs into one), the round window was also somehow akin to Alice going Through the Looking Glass... and as it happens, in the opening chapter of Lewis Carroll's story, Alice is gazing out of a window. 'I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire... Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off.' She is talking to her kitten at the time -- who has been playing with a ball of wool -- and re-reading this episode now, I was struck by the tinge of menace in the room. 'Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look.... "Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty," Alice went on... 'when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! ... You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week -- Suppose they saved up all my punishments?" she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. "What would they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came."'
Then, to punish the kitten for not folding its arms properly, 'she held it up to the Looking-glass... "-- and if you're not good directly," she added, "I'll put you through into Looking-glass House."'
But it is Alice who sees the glass go soft as gauze: '"Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through --" She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.'

I know, I know, I'm still obsessed with Coco Chanel -- how could I not be? -- but as I sit here, musing over the looking glass house, I can't help but remembering the mirrored walls of 31 Rue Cambon, and the sense I had while writing at Mademoiselle's desk of how her reflection might be visible just behind me; the back of my neck prickling, wondering whether the glass above the fireplace might soften, just as ice melts...

PS. One of the disturbing things about having a book out is that you feel yourself exposed, as if seen in a distorted hall of mirrors -- and there is shame, too, in feeling that you are looking at yourself, as well as being examined by others. But having just read today's review in the Telegraph , I'm so glad to realize that other writers and readers are discovering the myriad reflections in Chanel's looking glass world -- and that she has a continuing life of her own.