AUNT ALICE AND THE MARSHMALLOW FLOWERS

Dear Aunt Alice,

Somewhere, in other worldly places, you must surely know that I have inherited your perfect signet ring. Initials AJ carved in pretty curving script. I have been wearing your ring from the moment I received it from your niece Mary, because she thinks I am an aunt worthy enough to be in your mould. I thought of taking it off before a jaunt into London to keep it safe, but decided I wanted to take you with me since I suspect the last time you tripped around London as a young woman was, perhaps, a hundred years ago.

Liverpool Station was freezing cold, but once we were in London proper - Oxford Street proper - I warmed up. No snow to offer you this Christmas, but the lights! An assortment of charities paid towards these giant leaping angel figures. Beautiful for the crush of humans below to behold.

Shopping commenced. I'm not sure you would have approved of my purchases, but they were safe enough - a cosy camel turtle neck sweater, a leather bag and a pair of sunglasses. All on sale! Mind you, the prices, even on sale, would probably shock you. To ease the shock, my sister Angelina ordered cronuts and hot chocolate from a famous bakery called Dominique Ansel. Now this would have impressed you - a marshmallow cut like a crown was dropped into steaming hot chocolate, instantly blooming into a flower...

Later, on Great Marlborough Street, we stood outside Liberty and admired the Tudor Revival frontage. Did you know the timber was built from the ship HMS Hindustan? Or that in 1885, Liberty brought forty two villagers from India to stage a living village of Indian artisans? These handy facts are available from an extraordinary web of information us global villagers dive in and out of 'online'. I wonder what you would have made of Wikipedia? Here is something Wikipedia doesn't know: my father had three of his watercolours exhibited and sold by Liberty in the 1970s. Wikipedia you may have been on the fence about, but my father you would have loved.

I did feel a trifle faint in Liberty - so many people! - so was glad first to plop onto an inviting bed in Anthropologie, and then to mesh our way from Carnaby and Kingly Streets towards a Japanese restaurant, which also served my favourite Korean dishes, and to my delight, a delicious plum wine. For a nineteenth century Englishwoman, I suspect your gastronomic tastes possibly didn't stretch to the Orient, but maybe Mary will surprise me and tell me you loved experimenting with the new!

I got muttered at by a stranger for temporarily blocking the entrance to the tube - did I mention this was the day of the human crush? At these moments I am very much the hokey local from a tiny Cambridge village. By the time our train was hurrying us home, we were shattered and ready to slide, submerge and otherwise disappear into sleep. I hope you enjoyed the day out. Today is the last day of the year 2016. Soon 2017 will be upon us. 2016 has been a truly difficult year, for most of us, not least your beloved Mary. If you possess any magic, wield away. We need some magic. I can only be sure of one thing in the new year - I will continue to be the most loving and creative aunt it is possible to be. Keep your spirit beside me!

With love,
Your new friend-in-auntyhood across the century,
Shaista

Photos courtesy Debra Edward

Missing the Bouquet, Avoiding the Crush

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

So long as youth and thou are of one date;

- Sonnet 22, Shakespeare

The first wedding I ever attended was when I was five years old. It was exciting. New dress. I felt important. It was dramatic too - my younger brother, in his excitement, slipped off the sofa he was jumping on, fell against a glass table and cut open the skin near his eye. He was three; he still bears the scar. A memorable first wedding.

I couldn't have known it would be two decades before my next weddings, and then they would come in a rush. Something about that alarming age of thirty. All girlish things at an end and boys no longer the annoying presences in classrooms but worse, future husbands to be obeyed and cherished. I don't know if there is something wrong with me (apart from the hungry Wolf of course) but I don't seem to be able to see him anymore. And when they (the blushing brides) throw the dreaded bouquet over their shoulders, it's all I can do not to run and hide. Maybe I am a coward. But why would anyone want to catch a bride's bouquet? Why??

Husband, if you're out there, you have to find me. And if I am old and grey and full of sleep, it will be entirely your fault.

Meantime, I am enjoying the turbulent freedom of the uncaught bouquets - that deliciously silly teenage phenomenon called Crush. And it's on an actor (eight years younger than me), playing a vampire (eighty years older than me), frozen in time, at the tender age of seventeen... (confused?) and so what if we can never meet? This crush too shall pass, and fast, but not the freedom that goes with it.

And tomorrow, a hen party extravaganza at Chatsworth, where the BBC filmed Pride and Prejudice. You know, the place where Mr Darcy leaps out of his cotton whites and into the (probably freezing) water? Sigh.. literary noblemen, literary vampires, literary perfection... what more does a woman want, thirty years old or not?