A dash of whimsy

It's Friday again. How'd that happen?

The working week seems destined for forever when I'm in it. But then another Friday rolls around and I realise that, actually, it's flown by. I just know that Christmas is going to sneak up on me. Don't ask me how that happens. Christmas comes earlier and earlier with each passing year and yet it still takes me by surprise. There's the initial excitement of Christmas lights and red Starbucks cups. But then I go back to normal until I'm shocked into frenzy with a week to go.

There are cards to make and cookies to bake. I found a Nigella Lawson recipe for gooey Christmas chocolate cookies that I can't wait to try.

Yesterday I wore my new dress, the navy blue nannarific one with the doily collar and the tan tie-belt. And I paired it with my new tan brogues, which I absolutely love. I am officially a brogues convert, even if I do have to stick with the tamer pump-like varieties.

The outfit made me feel like a shy Amelie type who spends her time reading in dusty corners. This was the vision I had in mind as I scurried in the rain to Foyles on my lunch hour under a butterfly umbrella.

Is it too whimsical to admit that my brogues gave me a craving for books?

There's just something about them that screams bookish. In the best possible way. Is it because they're old-fashioned? Serious-looking? Brown?? I don't know.

As I wandered through row upon row of poetry and prose, I was very much the English grad student taking a break from her thesis on Romanticism in nature literature (not as far-fetched as it sounds - my own Master's thesis covered similar elements but applied them to a science documentary).

And I had an urge to buy a book.

Not just any book, mind you, but 19th century fiction. I'd decided that was the kind of book the outfit called for. EM Forster's A Passage to India seemed to fit the bill. Long, sprawling and epic - and I found an edition with a gorgeous cover printed with pink batik swirls and dark purple bicycles. I started reading and decided that something lighter was called for. A Room With A View pulled me into its chuckle-inducing world of repressed Edwardian England from the first sentence, so much so that I had to force myself to stop reading, pay for it and head back to work!

That was my dash of whimsy for the day.

Life can get so cumbersome, with its cares and concerns and obligations, that I sometimes get the urge to just shake out my curls - in all their wild, Romantic glory - and retreat into my imagination or do something a little bit whimsical. It's not that I neglect my duties; far from it. I just take time now and then, be it on a lunch break or during a spare hour in the day, to allow myself to breathe and have a moment of "sparkle" (for want of a better word :))

Do you ever have moments like that?