All Dressed Up – Bank Holiday Fun

Well, I guess today is back to work proper.

On Bank Holiday Monday I went to Gressenhall Village at War, which you can read all about over at Vintage Norwich, should you so wish! Here, though I get to share the more personal bits of the day.

I actually got in free to the museum as I was “all dressed up”. This amused me slightly as before I’d left the house I’d considered doing fancy things with my hair, looked speculatively at my stocking drawer and decided I couldn’t really be bothered to make much effort and put on a beret (over pin curls and a hair net!) and my Heyday trousers. I also didn’t recall seeing anywhere that said you got in free if you were in period dress (or I would have gone all out, no one gets £8.90 out of me if I can get in free), but hey £8.90 saved is £8.90 I can spend on other fun stuff, so thank heavens for the dressed upedness of Heyday trousers.

Gressenhall is a really fun interactive event, that seems to be growing every year. So I took the chance to play in a refurbished touring caravan from 1929.

And prancing around pretending that this recreation of a “typical” 1950s living room was actually mine. The 1950s room is a permanent feature at the Gressenhall museum. They’d set up a wartime living room especially for the event, but the marquee was so packed we couldn’t get to it. Boo.

I also enjoyed the Battle of Britain memorial fly past, and was pretty pleased with some of the photos I got. I only had my normal lens, no fancy zooms or anything, so I think they’re pretty good, considering!

Yesterday, as I mentioned, Mat from Southern Retro came to take my photo. He was here at least 20 mins earlier than I anticipated and therefore managed to catch me with my curlers still in. One 5 minute emergency hair do later and I was more or less photo ready!

You’ll have to wait to see the results, but from the in front of the lens perspective my living room looked like this!

That large white square that looks like I chopped a bit off the photo is actually an incredibly bright light that you really shouldn’t stare directly at for too long. I’ve never turned my house into a photo studio before, I just hope the photos are worth the fact that I had to hoover!

In the evening myself, Missy Vintage, The Glamour-ologist, and Karen & Graham from Blue Skies Vintage Events took Mat out for a few cocktails. Mmmm, Pink.

And just to prove that boys coo over each other’s clothes as much as girls do, by the end of the evening there was some kind of impromptu jacket swapping sesh going on.

If you haven’t yet taken a look at the Southern Retro project then you really should. Mat takes some beautiful portraits of interesting people. The project is now a year old and features 16 portraits of people for whom “retro” is a way of life. They are everything from bankers and special needs teachers, through to those who have turned their passion into their full time job and set up businesses.

There are 5 portraits coming from Mat’s trip to Norwich, those of us out last night, plus Flamingo Amy, and I can’t wait to see how they come out!