Pictures of the day

After two days of feeling completely fatigued and out of it (I now fully understand the meaning of the phrase “bone-tired”!), my energy has returned and I’m feeling like myself again. So, the house has been de-Christmasfied today, with the floor lamp back in the place where the Christmas tree was…

I had barely unpacked a box that came in the mail today when the cat jumped into it…

Listened to Bowie all day and then late this afternoon on Twitter this gorgeous picture of David and Iman was posted by Iman…

And Sidney Poitier has been on my mind a lot since I heard the news of his passing last night, aged 94. I think I may re-watch Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner again this evening in his honour. I haven’t seen that movie in years but remember really liking it.

May you rest in peace, dear Sir!

David Bowie 75

Today would have been David Bowie’s 75th birthday. I’m celebrating here with the Bowie song that has meant the most to me…

Seeing his handwritten lyrics of this song during the David Bowie Is exhibition has been one of my most valued museum experiences ever. It’s the only secret picture I took when I visited the excellent travelling exhibition a week before he so unexpectedly and shockingly passed away…

Mr Esther and I were going to go to a Bowie tribute concert at the end of January in Rotterdam but due to lockdowns in effect now, the concert has been postponed to next fall. In lieu of the concert, I am listening to only David Bowie today. His wife Iman has shared a 5 and a half hour playlist that has been curated for his birthday….

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A post shared by IMAN (@the_real_iman)

I already have my own Bowie playlist but listening to another one and hearing what has been selected for that will be fun.

Happy birthday, David! Thank you for all the gifts you have given us.

Iman

David Bowie and Iman were together for 26 years and they were the loves of each other’s lives…

Iman has now released a perfume called Love Memoir, which is a tribute to her and David’s love and for the first time ever, I feel very tempted to buy a celebrity fragrance.

There has always been something about these two and how they felt about each other that felt very real and warm. In interviews David did he always spoke so lovingly of Iman and I have seen a few Iman interviews where she spoke the same way about him. Yesterday evening I came across this interview Iman did for the Today Show and it brought me to tears. I also read this little article in Vogue where Iman talks about only really confronting her grief recently while staying in their beautiful upstate New York home during Corona lockdown and that too resonated with me.

My grief for Bowie is somehow also always tied to my grief for my father. I still haven’t listened to Bowie’s final album more than two or three times because of it. My dad and David Bowie were both very important figures during a very low point in my life and they both passed not so very far apart, my dad 10 months before Bowie. These emotional ties between my father in real life and what being a Bowie fan meant to me in my late teens/early twenties, and their passing not so very far apart, is I think why I feel that connection to Iman now so strongly too. Missing a husband is different in many ways from missing a dad who lived to a decent enough age of 81. Yet, the loss of both is very real and can still feel like a stomp in the stomach at times.

So, now Iman has developed a fragrance to commemorate that love and that too is a part of the process of grieving but also of celebrating the life of someone you continue to love even after they are gone. I can so imagine her wanting to bottle David’s scent in a bottle. I don’t have a very strong sense of smell but I do sometimes say to Mr. Esther that if his scent was a perfume, I would want to wear it all the time. I guess it’s a pheromone thing. The description of this new scent sounds intriguing…

“Called Love Memoir, the eau de parfum—which is exclusively available on HSN—blends notes that read like a chapter in Iman and Bowie’s life together. Vetiver, the zesty scent that he wore the day they met and every day after, is balanced with hints of bergamot and blackberry, which bring to mind the Italian countryside where they were married.”

I never want to pay that much for perfume ($85 and I don’t know how much for shipping) but, because of the story of that scent, the ingredients sounding good and the emotional attachment I feel to the David and Iman story, I find that for the first time ever I am interested in actually buying a designer fragrance. Maybe for Christmas?

Saturday music

Certain songs have been playing in my mind a lot this week.

Both Sides Now

As I already blogged about a few days ago, I loved the movie CODA and the song that Ruby (Emilia Jones) sings at the end of the film is a cover of the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now. I love this rendition. The video contains spoilers so if you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to remain completely unspoilered, maybe it’s better to watch the movie first.

Modified to add: here’s an audio only version, so no spoilers…

I don’t know Joni Mitchell well at all and the first time I became really aware of this song was during that scene in Love Actually. Emma Thompson really is amazing in this, with the song underlining the heartbreak so effectively.

Ziggy Stardust

Apparently a David Bowie shop has opened in London, on the same street where the cover of his great album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (my fave Bowie album) was photographed. I bet that, besides cool store items, the in-store music must be excellent as well.

It’s a pop up shop, which could mean it won’t be there long. I wish I could go!

Matchmaker

Mandy Patinkin and his family are matchmaking, trying to find a girlfriend for a family friend! This just made me laugh and is so loving at the same time.

Date our friend!

Hanging out with Ilan on a rainy morning. He’s the best. If interested email him at yeshello.ilan@gmail.com (special email just for this) or DM him @ZZZLLL#truelove #matchmaking #matchmaker #mawwage #findIlanlove #fallinlove pic.twitter.com/6vnjqvoU9T

— Mandy Patinkin (@PatinkinMandy) October 27, 2021

That also meant I got stuck with this song in my head:

Concerts

And 2022 is going to be a great music year for us! We’ve been booking some ‘big’ concert tickets.

In January Mr Esther and I are going to a David Bowie tribute concert. It’s promising to be a big event. There will be something like this in Germany as well, I hope the Dutch version will be as good as this looks.

In May Mr E and I are going to see 2Cellos live in concert. Those guys are really good, I love how and what they play and their energy. So many videos I could link to here, but let me pick a cover they did of a great Muse song…

… but they also do heartfelt well, like this beautiful theme from The Godfather…

And then in July I have tickets for the four of us to go see Ed Sheeran live. I have yet to hear any of his new songs, but I hope they will be good. Let me share here the song through which I first noticed him – I See Fire from The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug. Someone made a video which of course also features Richard Armitage as Thorin. I love the build up in this song. I wonder if he ever sings this in concert.

I hope the pandemic situation in the world will allow for all of this to happen, I’m already so much looking forward to it all.

The fling list

The German blogger Die Singende Lehrerin has called for another blog challenge. I already participated in her Marry Me challenge a few months ago and figured this one would be fun as well. This time the challenge is to name 6 sexy fictional characters you wouldn’t mind diving into bed with. They aren’t supposed to be serious relationship material, just a bit o’ fun. This whole challenge is a little ‘thought expermiment’ as she calls it. So, it’s all about the character, not the actor, but for me the actor also very much helps with this thought experiment which means my thoughts mostly turn to characters portrayed by some of my favourite actors.

Before I get to my list, let me tell you that this is at the edge of my comfort zone as I am not a one-night-stand fling kinda girl in real life and so I never really think in those terms. In real life, if I’d want to dive into bed with someone, I’d want some longer-term potential attached to it and that transfers to my fangirl life as well. This doesn’t take away from the fact that there are some very sexy, fling-material characters out there that can also get into my head. So, here goes:

1- The first (and initially only) character that immediately sprang to mind was John Porter (Richard Armitage) in Strike Back series one, because well, someone so desperate for a lay to release some tension may be fun for a night and look at those arms – strong but not too much.

2- I really like but somehow don’t particularly fancy the actor Tom Ellis. However, his character Lucifer Morningstar in the TV series Lucifer might be a lot of fun to have a fling with, wings and all. He’s the king of flings and shows countless women a good time in bed, I suspect I could really learn something from him and have fun too…

3- Speaking of Lucifer, Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt) might be educational and fun as well for a little fling! I find her very beautiful, intense and sexy.

4- Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) in Suits before he finally came to his senses and chose Donna, just because he oozes sexy, and self-assuredness and knows how to show a woman a good time.

5- Jareth the Goblin King (David Bowie) from Labyrinth, because of reasons I once posted about before. It’s the gaze and the…erm…long legs that would make me curious.

6- Last but not least: I watched this older series called Single Ladies a while back because D.B. Woodside was in it. It’s a bit like Sex and the City, which was OK but not a fave of mine and neither was this series. However, D.B. Woodside as Malcolm Franks, a rich playboy business guy with some shady deals but a good heart underneath, was very sexy. So, yeah, I’d pick him as well for a little fling-fun…

That’s it, that’s my (not really surprising if you read here regularly) list. If you, dear reader, have any suggestions/additions of your own, feel free to let me know in the comments or on your own blogs.

On an end note: the Marry Me challenge was far easier for me than coming up with this list of flings without longer-term potential. Maybe if I considered it more, I could come up with more, but for now, I’m quite happy and comfortable with my six flings.