Sakura at Yoyogi Park

Hello! I’m so, so happy I can finally share with you my photos and thoughts from Japan! I’ve spent the last month with a dead laptop – huge and endless thanks go to this guy for extracting the contents, replacing the hard drive, re-installing everything and saving me multiple and expensive trips to the Genius bar!

I went to Tokyo last month – we timed it for the world-famous Sakura festivals. The sakura last for just a couple of weeks – a few days where the blossoms are at peak bloom, with a couple of days either side of buds appearing and shedding. We arrived just as the blooms were opening and caught the full wonder of the season – from seeing the tiny unfurled buds everywhere and anticipating the first full trees to blossom, to the wonderful days (and it was really just a couple of days) where we woke up and all the trees were in full bloom, not a single petal out of place. By the time we left they were starting to shed – the falling petals looked like soft snow and carpeted the roads in baby pink velvet.

These pictures are predominantly from Yoyogi Park. There’s something about the pastel pink against the clear blue sky that just seemed so whimsical and dreamlike to me – like the parks and roads had been dusted with candyfloss and pastel clouds. I’m already feeling wistful about returning. More from Japan very soon – yay!

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Cats in Cardiff

Dress – £5, Daisy Street (sale). Shoes – £6, New Look (sale). Cat face bag – £3, Camden Market. Bandana – £3, Hobo’s Vintage. Cardigan – £28, Rokit.

I had such an awesome time in Cardiff wandering around the cute shops and trying out all the local bars with my friends. I had to include a picture of the stunning arcade rooftop (above) and this beautiful light which reminded me of antlers (below). It was actually in the local Revolutions which if you don’t know is a chain of bars in the UK. The Revs in Clapham is quite grim but this one was so pretty inside, I was in complete shock!

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Here I am with my cat face bag, aka the bag that everyone has! I bought this bag about two years ago in Camden Market and over the last year or so I have seen it all over London and on a number of blogs also! I always feel a bit weird putting stuff in as you’re literally placing items in the cat’s head. I’m wearing a gold brooch from Vintage Zizou and a pink bandana from Hobo’s Vintage, both bought earlier that day! I rarely buy anything on impulse (unless it’s my shift at the charity shop…) but it’s always nice to get a souvenir or two from a trip away, right?

P.S. I’ve made a Facebook page for my blog! If you’d like to, please head over and give it a like :) www.facebook.com/tapeparadeblog

Dress of dreams

We were wandering around Cardiff when one of my friends noticed a shop selling brightly coloured sequin maxi dresses and said “Laila, your dream shop is here!”. I ran inside only to discover the most BEAUTIFUL dress I have ever seen nestled on the back wall. Peachy satin corset, sequinned lace flowers, frilly bows and diamnate ruffles leading into a lengthy feathered train; what more could any self-respecting fairy princess want?! The very friendly shop assistant told us it was the only one of it’s kind and had never been tried on. I pretty much leapt into it when I found out it was in my size and she kindly let me cavort around in it long enough for all the boys to get bored and head to the bike shop next door.

I always loved fairies and princesses and the bigger and more whimsical the better! My Pinterest board of dreamy clothes has a lot of frilly fantasy items and my love for princess clothing has led me to amass quite the collection of second hand wedding dresses over the years (sadly no groom in sight) and probably a few more tiaras than is necessary for a freelance musician and volunteer charity worker. Sadly I didn’t have a spare £365 to add this particular number to my collection, but rest assured as soon as I can I’ll be back to snap it up for future gigs, carnival parades and midnight dances with charming members of fairy royalty… well, I can dream right?

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By the Thames

Do you ever have those days where you end up abandoning your plans to just hang out and chat? My good friend Danilo and I somehow managed to spend the whole day hanging out on an impromptu whim and it was so much fun. We started off the Monday morning visiting an exciting new site where WOLF PACK (the contemporary theatre group I run and which Danilo is a member of) will be performing next year and then supposedly we were both going home to do work. Except we never did! The sun got brighter and brighter and spurred us on to just soak it all up and be tourists in our own city. We ended up wandering around Waterloo, browsing records and vintage clothes, eating falafel in the sunshine, pigeon-watching (far more entertaining than people-watching), wandering along the thames for a sunny afternoon pint on the Tamesis dock and strolling all the way back to the South Bank.

Danilo (pronounced “Dah-nee-low”) is one of my close friends from university and I think we are the only two to have taken the “freelance” path since graduating (as opposed to full time employment or teaching). I don’t tend to feature my friends on here (apart from James, it may as well be called James Parade) as barely any of my friends know about my blog. To be honest I doubt most of my friends actually know what a blog is!

It was such a gorgeous day to take in the beautiful views of the river. I’m not normally a massive fan of my own photography but I was pretty pleased with the postcard quality of the top photo and the garden museum was beautiful despite it being autumn already! Cheesy tourist photos were a must, and I also had to include a shot of Danilo’s amazing vintage shirt inherited from his grandparents. Thank you to Danilo for the photos of me and for an awesome Monday!

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Snufkin

This post was supposed to show you my coat (new) but as I was editing the photos I found I was blurry in nearly all of them. My camera had decided instead to focus on the trees around me. I think this may have been a conspiracy between the trees and the camera; I was using another tree branch as a camera stand so there was plenty of time for them to plot whilst I had my back turned). At first I was a bit annoyed, but then I realised my camera had the right idea as focusing on the immense natural beauty in these photos is far more interesting than my coat. Just look in the first photo – the irregular pattern of the cracks in the tree closest to the camera and the myriad shades of green are far more exciting and dramatic than an item of clothing could ever be!

Recently I’ve spent lots of time outdoors marvelling at the beauty of nature (especially at this time of year) and it makes me think how impossible it is to capture those moments. You can’t paint those colours, or photograph the crisp feeling of a leaf under your shoe, or sketch the smell of the rotting conkers and leaves in the wet grass. The colours on my computer seem so dull and uninspiring in comparison. If you read this post, go for a walk today and admire the leaves. Tell me what your trees are like.

So, this is my new coat from Greece – leave it to me to go on a beach holiday and return with a winter coat! I wore it on the plane home along with a wide-brimmed black hat; when James collected me from the airport he just said “Hello Snufkin“. I was so happy; as I child I always felt a sense of kinship with Snufkin as he was an outdoorsy, rebellious, loner musician like me. I much prefer owning clothing that looks like it belongs to my favourite characters rather than just featuring them! I love my Moomin skirt but if I wore it in Moominvalley, I’d just look weird whereas with this I would fit in. I’ve got lots of coats, but I spend so much time running around between rehearsals and gigs in the cold I feel it’s justified!

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Saturday

Hello everyone! These photos are from last week when I spent a very rare Saturday off work and miracle of miracles; it was sunny! We headed to Tottenham Court Road, ostensibly to buy a banjo from Hobgoblin but in reality we just wandered around the local area, eating food (local cafe), buying food (Holland and Barrat), eating more food (Wagamamas), buying more food (Chinatown), eating more food (Haagen Dagz in Leicester Square)… it was a great day and I also came away with two recipe books from Waterstones. It was so bizarre seeing how rammed Oxford Street was on a Saturday! The nice things about working weekends is I take my days off during the week and exhibitions/food shops/cafes/public transport are all far quieter at 2pm on a Tuesday meaning I forget how busy London gets!

This is my new shirt (along with about 30 others) from the charity shop where I work once a week. I seem to return from every shift with 2 or 3 new amazing items which I couldn’t possibly leave behind. I already own about 4 other gingham items (although none in pink, so it’s justified, right?!) but this shirt is made from such a soft cotton I couldn’t resist. These are my favourite dungarees which I have had for about 4 years. The overall effect was a bit “farm girl” I suppose but whatever; it wasn’t quite warm enough for a t-shirt so this seemed a good in-between outfit!

Check shirt – Gap via charity shop, £2. Dungarees – Rokit, £20. Trainers – Comme des Garcons via charity shop, £6. Sunglasses – €4, supermarket in Greece.

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