“A thousand glistening umbrellas were tilted over a thousand bowler hats in Piccadilly; the Jermyn Street shops, distorted by streaming water, had become a submarine arcade; and the clubmen of Pall Mall, with china tea and anchovy toast in mind, were scuttling for sanctuary up the steps of their clubs.”  

- the late Patrick Leigh Fermor, re-blogged from the Travellers Club newsletter, December 2011.

Photo © urban75 2003

An English cousin of the painter James McNeill Whistler wrote to him about their relationship.  Whistler didn’t reply (his brother did).

But when he got the letter he doodled a little sketch on it.  A man.  A hat.  A horse.

Is this how he imagined his correspondent?  Or himself?  Or was this sketch nothing to do with the letter at all?

124 years on, your guess is as good as mine.

delicatetbone:

my-ear-trumpet:

mobilhomme:

Adler via Bloomsbury Auctions

Look at this (vintage) fucking hipster

In the Royal Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth a woman congratulated me on my grey and black chequered flat cap.

She said “It’s nice to see someone making an effort.  You don’t really see that in Portsmouth.”