TIME CAPSULES & NATIONAL COFFEE DAY

National coffee day today, and here I am with the favorite coffee in Cyprus and Greece, the frappe! I believe that the frappe is our national drink. This one is even more special, coz it is home-made! I'm not a coffee aristocrat, and prefer Nescafé to all fancy coffee brews. Truth be told, if I lived in Italy, I may have said otherwise. Authentic Italian coffee is so refined!!! 😋

It's amazing to think that I bought the trousers you see in the pic from Topshop in Exeter ten years ago. Clothes are like a time capsule in some ways! I bought the trousers from the Petite section of Top Shop. It was back when the Top Shop Petite was wearable. Now it isn't.

If you would like to read a nice little book about coffee and culture, I would recommend Coffee Talk, by Morton Satin, and Onward, the story of Starbucks, by CEO Howard Schultz!

Have a great National Coffee Day! Xxx

#NationalCoffeeDay #Frappe #Cyprus #Greece #Topshop #Exeter#Starbucks #TheLipstickPapers #Nescafe

HAPPY EVER AFTER (IN ANSWER TO MISS JONES)

"Exchange of cartes de visit should not be done immediately upon first acquaintance," opined The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine on flirting etiquette. It's June 1862, and the column is Answers to Correspondents. A Miss Jones is writing. Who knows if things ended well, and the couple found its happy ever after? I hope they did. There are few things I love more than reading Victorian periodicals! Getting into the periodicals is like getting into Aladdin's cave 😎

Lessons start this week, however. This means only one thing - a pause to my Victorian periodicals research! I will pick it up again next summer.

Data collection like this is essential to my research. It's like stats to the sociologist. When I write about beauty, clothes, makeup, female education, housekeeping, I need to have primary material to back it up. This primary material is put in dialogue with other forms of Victorian cultural production, e.g. the Victorian novels and letters!

However, I must also say that going through the periodicals is great fun. I enjoy it very much. Victorian writing is rich like a scone with jam! Yum!

What are the periodicals about? Personally I research mainly women's periodicals. You can find everything there, from cooking, and serving tea to dying gloves and, of course, flirting. They called it "courtship" back then.

Victorian women were expected to do everything in the home. They were even expected to know how to do soap and basic medicine (of course as industrialism and living standards both progressed, more and more women could afford to buy these things).

Though my research is postponed, my interest for the Victorians is not. Stay tuned for more on the 19th century 😀

And have a good start to the week! Xxx 💋❤️💖💝💄💄💄💄
#Victorians #Victorianera #Victorianprintmedia #periodicals #research#TheLipstickPapers #beauty

LET ME SHOW YOU THE WORLD IN MY EYES (AS DEPECHE MODE WOULD PUT IT)

Here I am warming up! For the marathon? You might ask. For a competition? No! I am warming up for the new Fifty Shades movie, so I am re-reading Grey, the first book seen through Christian's eyes 💝❤️💖

I loved the dark and intriguing teaser trailer for the movie, and I'm glad it proved so popular. I hope the new movie will be as good!

Los Angeles Times reported that E.L. James will write Darker from Christian's point of view too. This is also amazing news! 2016 has not been such a great year so far - but 2017 will definitely start off great!

I often read books multiple times. Some books do not benefit from a 2nd reading. City of Bones is one example. The 2nd time I found the repeated description of Clary as having the body of an 8 year old to be truly disturbing. At other times, you just seem to outgrow the book. I found the Lord of the Rings obsession with the masculine world of adventure as really annoying. The only woman that has a meaningful part is Aragorn's love interest! I even forget her name (see?). On the other hand, I found Twilight better when I read it again, though that too has many anti feminist messages ("no University for me, I only want him, Edward!" -Bela)

I enjoy Fifty Shades every time I read it though. I think Christian Grey is a lovely and original creation. And I love Jamie Dornan too! 😀😀😀

Have a great mid-week and be well! Xxx
#FiftyShadesofGrey #FiftyShadesDarker #ChristianGrey #LosAngelesTimes#Twilight #JamieDornan #TheLipstickPapers #Cyprus #books

MERMAIDS AND DOLLS

Yesterday, I finished the third and final editing of The Doll's Tale, the first novel I wrote directly on the keyboard! It was a novel with many characters, and a sequel to my Mermaid novel. Moreover, the characters were complex and very different from each other. I changed voices often - sometimes speaking as Marianne, the main character, sometimes as Samantha, her best friend, and at other times as Eliza, my Mermaid protagonist. Then I would switch to 3rd person narration, and present some episodes from an outside point of view. Phew!

As an author, writing The Doll was the toughest thing I have ever done. At times, I had thought to give up. Yet I persisted. I wanted to tell the story. I had started planning it when I was still writing the Mermaid and I really wanted to get through with it.

In the end, I'm glad I persisted. The Doll taught me a lot about writing and crafting a novel.

The keyboard and screen did not help. I prefer to write with pen and paper. I believe that the main reason why the novel needed so much editing was that I wrote directly on the screen. Still, I can't go back to typing whole manuscripts. I think I am improving, coz the novel I am writing now does not need so much editing!

What novel is this? Stay tuned to find out! Xxx
#books #writing #novel #author #Mermaid #doll #cyprus #romancenovels#theromancediaries

TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

The first time I tried this skirt at the store, I decided I wouldn't buy it. "It's exactly like a crinoline". I thought. "Inasmuch as I love the Victorian era, it's now over. Besides, I can't possibly wear something this elegant and formal, can I"? I left the store and went back home.

Still, I could not forget about the skirt. I thought and thought about it, until I decided that we must be daring with our style. Why can I not wear a crinoline if I like????? I went back downtown and bought the skirt.

When an occasion came up, I took it to my Aunt for ironing (I'm getting good at ironing but I'm still not comfortable with fine clothes). Then I wore it and felt wonderful! There is nothing more liberating than daring to make a change. Even a small change counts!

Crinolines appeared in 1829 and reached the peak of their popularity in the high Victorian era (1840s to 60s). Magazines reported an incident where a man was actually pushed to his death by a woman whose crinoline took too much space. Another magazine reported that wearing a crinoline could save your life. Women were ridiculed for wearing huge crinolines, but then, women in the 19th century were ridiculed for just about anything- from asking to vote to wishing to become lawyers. The patriarchal habit of ridiculing women's aspirations, beauty and fashions still exists today - blonde jokes anyone? If you have blonde hair, natural or, like me, dyed, wear it with pride! Beauty and a good mind go together.

In Larnaca, there is only one store you can get crinoline skirts like that, the Coffret boutique in Ermou street. The prices are very reasonable too.

Have a good start to the week, always with beauty and a book! 💋💄💝💖💄💄💄
#fashion #crinolines #Victorians #TheLipstickPapers #beauty #blonde#Larnaca #Cyprus

HOUSEKEEPING AND TEA CAKES (JANE EYRE MEETS GREEK PHILOSOPHY)

Today I channeled my inner Victorian, and marched in a war against the pantry moth! Before the 21st century domestic goddess, the Victorians were all about spotless homes, shiny furniture and cleansed cupboards. Victorian magazines and manuals are full of great advice. I cleaned the tiny pantry in the kitchen, taking courage by thinking about Jane Eyre who, together with the servant Hannah, clean Moor house from corner to corner!

Jane had a pretty cottage, while I have a tiny mortgaged flat in a noisy building. But no matter. A home is a home - Greek philosopher Diogenes lived in an old barrel (one of those huge ones) just to show that we must shun material goods. When King Alexander (the Great) asked Diogenes, "is there absolutely anything I can do for you"? He replied, "please move away, you are hiding the sun".

Back to the pantry moth. My flat was full of it, with larvae hatching and multiplying. I did not know what to do, and went to the Internet for advice. I found info about the moth, and learnt that it comes in the pantry inside some packet of cereal or pasta and it is soon everywhere! Solution: clean the kitchen shelves, and throw away all pasta & cereals!!! It was so tiring! I washed everything from the measuring jug to my Starbucks espresso cups. I threw away my cereals, but kept the pasta. If the moth does not go away I will have to do that too 😢

Being a domestic goddess (or a domestic god) is not easy. But, with a slash of lipstick, and the help of Victorian lit, it's not impossible.

Eventually, I rewarded myself with a M&S tea cake. These are my favorite tea cakes in the world. You can see them in the pic.

Have a nice afternoon and be well! Xxx 💄💋❤️💝💖💄💄

#domesticgoddess #Victorians #JaneEyre #cleaning #pantry #lipstick#AlexandertheGreat #Diogenes #Cyprus #Greece #TheLipstickPapers#Greekphilosophy #espresso #StarbucksCoffee #MarksMarks and Spencer

MERMAIDS AND SOLDIERS

What do ancient Greek soldier writer Xenophon, and Victorian actress Fanny Kemble have in common? They wrote about the sea, of course! Xenophon made the cry, "The sea, the sea," famous all over the Greek speaking world. "Θάλαττα, θάλαττα", cried the Greek soldiers who had gone to fight for Cyrus the younger in Persia. Xenophon was one of them and wrote all about it later. After the expedition failed, the ten thousand made the journey back to Greece on foot. Reaching the sea, they realized that they were back home. But the love affair between Greeks and the sea had started earlier, even earlier than the Odyssey, back to when the first Greek tribes inhabited the Cyclades and created the amazing minimalist statues we all know and love. My book here is not about Greece, but it is an anthology of sea literature from Greek publishing house Narcissus ( Νάρκισσος).

This is a two volume collection, comprising translations from British and US literature from the 19th and 20th centuries. There are passages from famous authors, like Edgar Alan Poe, and less famous ones, such as George Henry Preble.

The fonts you can see in the pic are my absolute favorites. They are the coolest Greek fonts, and I don't know what they are called! They are not available in Word.

However, I didn't like this collection too much, despite the fonts. Many passages are boring or depressing. There is nothing about mermaids! Grrrrrrr!!!

My favorite was the excerpt from Fanny Kemble's memoir. Fanny was a famous British actress who crossed the Atlantic and went to the US for a tour. There she met, fell in love and married a Southerner who took her to live in his plantation. The marriage was unhappy in part because Fanny could not get used to slave owning (Britain had abolished slavery in 1833). Eventually, she divorced her husband & returned to Britain.

Still, the book is great for anyone interested in literature about the sea!

Have a great start to the week! Xxx

P.S. The θάλαττα, θάλαττα, (thalatta, thalatta) is an antique version of the ancient and modern Greek word for the sea, θάλασσα (thalassa)  ❤️💖💋💄 P.

P#Greece #Cyclades #Odyssey #Xenophon #thesea #theLipstickPapers#beauty #books #Cyprus

CHRISTIAN GREY & THE GOLD STANDARD

National ampersand day today - a great day at The Lipstick Papers, for we just love the ampersand!!! You know my obsession with typeface and fonts. I simply adore all fonts and writing symbols, and the ampersand is among my favorites, if not the most favorite of them all! In the last pic you can see me outside my old primary school - but my love for fonts began before school! I sat with books & pretended to read before I knew what reading was.

The Victorians also loved the ampersand, using it with the c character, instead of "etc" like this: "&c". I love this version of etc., and use it myself!

Apparently, the ampersand has had a cool and tough origin and upbringing: it began as graffiti on the streets of Pompeii. Gradually, it won over all other characters signifying "and". Now it reigns supreme, and features in the logos of companies like Tiffany & Co. You can read all about the amazing ampersand story in the book Shady Characters (see picture).

I have the ampersand as a print out pic stuck on a door, and as a figurine on my bookshelf. Even a small fraction of the bookshelf can show many of my obsessions, e.g. Dickens, Woolf, Fifty Shades like books (the one showing in the pic I haven't read yet. Most of the Fifty Shades like books I sold second hand, because -sadly- they are not as good. No one can be as good as Christian. He is the gold standard).

Happy national ampersand day everyone! Xxx💖💋❤️💝💄💄💄

#nationalampersandday #FiftyShadesofGrey #CharlesDickens#VirginiaWoolf #Victorians #lipstick #TheLipstickPapers #books #Cyprus#fonts #typeface #ChristianGrey