My I want list: 1. A bicycle with a basket.

I have decided that on a weekly basis I will bring forth my list of wants and NEEDS.


Today.......

The Vintage Bicycle

I can picture myself now, cycling on the cobbled streets of Chichester on my way to uni, my books in the basket with my tin lunch box (On the list next week), with one of my many cardigans on. Pure.Brilliance.

Make Over

Hello Bloggers! I just thought I'd let you know that I have given my blog a makeover! Its still a working progress but I am liking it! Hope you are all good and keep following! x

Photo thanks to: FlightlessXbird on Flickr

To blogger...

via: ourspecialnet.com

I really want a penpal at the moment. I don't know how to get one of these things off the ground, but I really want to do it.

There is something very intriguing about sending a letter to someone you have never met and yet you feel as if you know them. In this day and age of Facebook,text and Instant messaging we can reach anyone in the world in the same day, but there is nothing better then recieving a letter (which doesn't look like a letter from the bank) through the door.

I recall having a very short-lived penpal moment when I was 8 years old and we being taught French at school. I cannot for the life of me remember what was written (and not just because it was French), but I do remember nice pictures.

The reason why I wish to have a penpal I feel is because I believe that there is someone out there who thinks like me, believes in the things that I do, wants the things I want. It's nothing to do with romance, I think you understand what I mean. Recalling back to my love of the sea, I have always wanted to see what would happen if I thew a message in a bottle, would it float so far away I wouldn't be able to see it? Or (and most likely) float right back to me.

So I am calling out to all you bloggers; if you've got the pens, I have the stamps.

Via: ottmarliebert.com

Shooting Stars

For some reason I have been reflecting over my life so far and events which have affected me somehow. Anything can cause a sudden childhood backflash; a thunderstorm reminded me of a rare moment with my dad explaining what thunderstorms are whilst me and my sister counted how far it was, to just walking in my local park and remembering teddy bear biscuits my mum gave me at a picnic. I blame this on the big 2-0. I will be turning 20 this December, I will no longer be able class myself as a child and yet I am burning to start collecting Disney films and making Jam tarts.

I don't think I was the average 10 year old child, I was quite deeply thoughted and extremely shy which people seem to forget. I was and still am someone who is affected by peoples comments, such as when I was 14 some made a joke about me having a large forehead, I had a fringe ever since. Even though I have come to embrace the forehead, I now look back and think of how these silly comments had effected me and it has only been since I went to University that I am now beginning to feel confident in myself. I attend the gloriousness of the University of Chichester and I wouldn't be anywhere else, choosing your Uni is like choosing a house and the minute I saw it, i was at 'home'. However, I am not a stranger to old Chichester, when I was younger we had a caravan in Bracklesham bay and go every year. These were the fondest moments of my life. I never felt more closer to my family then I did on those trips, especially when the sun was setting and mum took us on evening strolls along the beach. I love the Whittering beaches, with their pebbles that annoyed me when I tried to lie in the sun, to the shark teeth my brother and I looked for when the sea was out (when he wasn't accidently throwing pebbles at my head). It was always magical to me, and my imagination took off, I feel very much at peace with the ocean, even to this day I get excited at going to the beach. There is one memory at the beach that I has always stayed with me, it was dark outside and I remember feeling quite quiet that evening then someone said that there was shooting stars in the sky. My siblings, our friends and myself included ran to the beach, lied down and watched them drift in and out to the rhythem of the waves. I don't think and evening could be any more perfect. Every thing fell into place, nature was everywhere and everything felt small by comparision, and these memories of shooting stars and scrap books remind me there is a place for everbody, we are just one pebble in a beach, but they make something extraordinary and that having a large forehead should be the least of my concerns, and will be. I will be turning 20 this year and there are plenty more memories to look forward too....

From your 4-fingered forehead friend :)

Eizabeth Siddal: The Real Ophelia

The Pre-Raphaelite paintings chose some of the most beautiful women to be the models for their paintings, but the life of Elizabeth Siddal has touched me greatly and her tragic death as haunting as the painting of Ophelia that her life came to mirror...

Siddal has a profound effect on the Pre-Raphaelites, her beauty was outstanding, one wife of an artist has called her a 'vision' and she played an important part in their views of feminine beauty. William Rossetti describes her as such, 'a most beautiful creature with an air between dignity and sweetness with something that exceeded modest self-respect and partook of disdainful reserve; tall, finely-formed with a lofty neck and regular yet somewhat uncommon features, greenish-blue unsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliant complexion and a lavish heavy wealth of coppery golden hair." Rossetti quickly fell in love with her and only used her as his model for his art work.
Their love for one another was full of passion and dispair, the latter mainly for Siddal who Rossetti continually tortured her state of mind by his lack of commitment. Rossetti had called off his engagement to Siddal several times which was one of the main causes for her depression and sudden illness, this also lead her to become addicted to laudanum. When they finally married, Siddal was so weak that she was carried to the church.
Siddal started to recover and a year late became pregnant, however she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. This period was a very dark for 'Lizzie' as she was known as, a friend wrote a letter of meeting Siddal after the death, 'When we went to see Lizzie for the first time after her recovery, we found her sitting in a low chair with the childless cradle on the floor beside her, and she looked like Gabriel’s Ophelia when she cried with a kind of soft wildness as we came in, "Hush, Ned, you’ll waken it!".' Clearly she struggled to accept the death of her daughter, that when she became pregnant again, she took an overdose of laudanum. She was thought to have been happy the evening before and the coroner ruled her death as accidental, but many believe that she left a suicide note for Rossetti and her fears of suffering from another infantile death.
Her life opitimised the life of Hamlets character 'Ophelia', she was ill-treated by the one she loved and suffered great tragedy. She was also a talented woman who created her own artwork and poetry, she did not just wish to be a model. The reason why I have written about this woman it seems as if her life was marred by the Pre-Raphaelites who tried to create beauty and Romanticism in their pictures. Georgiana Burne-Jones commented in their marriage, 'I then received an impression which never wore away, of romance and tragedy between her and her husband'. It seemed as if their love was a piece of art they had created together and has become immortal in Rossetti's posthumous of Lizzie in the painting 'Beata Beatrix'. Her beauty and his love and emotion for her, stopped in time.....

All pictures are via: lizziesiddal.com