Summer Daydreams

by Carole Matthews

  Your Handbag Design

  When you feel you have enough ideas, make yourself a cup of tea and grab a couple of chocolate biscuits, then you can begin to look through everything you have been collecting.

  Making an inspiration board is helpful and lots of fun. Add images from magazines, sparkling buttons, ribbons, textured and patterned fabric pieces, sweet wrappers, feathers and even poems. Using a large cork board is a great idea as you can add and take off any bits and pieces very easily, and when you have finished with that particular design you can reuse it for your next fabulous creation.

  I find it useful to just take your time and digest all of the images and notes until your ideas start to flow. There is no right or wrong way to do this so just sketch what you think feels good – try different shapes, patterns and textures. Ask the questions: who is the handbag intended for? Is it just for you so that you’ll have a handbag that’s totally unique or are you making it for someone else? If it’s for another person what age group is the design intended for? What type of woman? Fashionista, urban, street, vintage, chic, classic, quirky or a mixture? What time of year is the handbag going to be used – is this a fresh spring/summer design, a sumptuous autumn/winter handbag or an all-year-round design? What type of handbag is it going to be – an evening bag, a shopper, a tote, a clutch?

  When I am creating new designs, ideas and concepts, I often ask my friends, husband and sometimes even my eldest daughter on what they think (my youngest daughter is only one, so her feedback is wiping jammy fingers all over the designs!). Feedback is important as it gives you other perspectives and sometimes a better development of an idea.

  Creating your design into a sample ‘real life handbag’ is another design process in itself, as ideas on paper may or may not translate or work on an actual working handbag. I am fortunate that we have a fantastic team in the sample rooms at the factory, where they translate my designs, sketches, ideas and working scaled drawings into the handbags that have been whirring around in my head. To create your ‘real life’ handbag from your sketches, www.josyrose.com is very good for fabrics, buttons, ribbons, handles, clasps, diamantes, motifs and zips. Everything you need to create your very own handbag masterpiece!

  Whatever you do, just have fun and enjoy it. Happy creating! To see my own handbag designs pop along to www.helenrochfort.com and take a peek.

  Helen Rochfort

  xxxxx

  If you enjoyed Summer Daydreams,

  you only have to wait until October 2012

  for Carole’s next bestseller,

  With Love at Christmas

  Meet Juliet, Rick and their family

  as they get ready for a heartwarming Christmas

  EXCLUSIVE!

  Read on to enjoy the first three chapters!

  Chapter One

  You can tell that Christmas is just around the corner. Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ is belting out of the speakers filling the busy supermarket aisles with festive cheer. That’s a pension fund song if ever there was one and it never fails to get me humming along. I ask you, what would Christmas be without the dulcet tones of Noddy Holder?

  I love this time of year. Even something as mundane as the weekly food shop is transformed into a magical experience. I’m at the bread counter in Tesco, squeezing the loaves to check their freshness. Cheery Santas hang above my head. Silver tinsel and colour coordinated balls spiral down from the ceiling. I wish it could look this jolly all year round. Someone at head office has put a lot of effort into planning this. Perhaps I could borrow their theme and refresh my decorations this year. My husband, Rick, would have a fit. He’s considerably more ‘bah humbug’ than I am when it comes to Christmas – the original Scrooge. Every year the expense of it all nearly gives him a heart attack. Every year I vow to cut back. And every year, I don’t. Maybe, for the sake of marital harmony, I’d better just get out the ‘old faithfuls’ one more time.

  I’m happy to say for the record that I’m the complete opposite of my husband. My name is Juliet Joyce. I’m a forty-five-year-old woman with one gorgeous grandchild, two troublesome, supposedly grown-up children, an annoying mother, a gay father, a very grumbly husband and a rather stinky dog. I am also a shameless Christmas addict. And I’m not the slightest bit interested in a twelve-step plan to cure me of it.

  Slade slides seamlessly into Wizzard and ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’. I heartily agree with that. We all need a bit of escapism from the daily grind of life, don’t we? Jesus picked a lovely time of year to be born into the world as it really cheers up the long winter months. It just wouldn’t be the same if he’d been born in, say, July.

  Skipping down the seasonal produce aisle, I slip a Christmas pudding into my trolley, rapidly followed by some mince pies and a panettone, which has somehow become a festive musthave. None of the family are that keen on it really but, like brussel sprouts, Christmas just isn’t Christmas without it. I put in an extra box of mince pies – just in case. You can never have too many mince pies, can you? I don’t like to be caught out without some nibbles in case people drop in. I’d better get some dates and assorted nuts too.

  I’d like to tell you that I make my own pudding, Christmas cake and all that – but I don’t. I’m working full-time now in the office of a busy estate agents and with that and the demands of my family, I hardly get time to breathe let alone anything else. I aspire to be able to produce a completely homemade Christmas, but every year it seems to slip further beyond my reach. I love the thought of creating a decadent Nigella-style celebration with a bit of Kirsty Allsop thrown in for good measure but, at this rate, that will have to wait – possibly until I retire. Even for a modest Tesco-based affair, like my own, you have to start early. That’s the key. I was very organised and bought my Christmas cards in the January sales. What’s the point in paying full price when you don’ t have to? I picked up a couple of great presents at craft fairs in the summer. It’s nice to find the perfect present, isn’t it? And, of course, you never do when you’re looking hard. Like middle age, perfect presents just sneak up on you. The festive napkins were safely secured in August, as were the crackers for the table. The only thing I have to do now is find the ‘safe place’ where I can put them all. It will mean a trip into the loft for Rick, which he’ll be cross about.

  Since the first week of September I’ve been putting a few seasonal bits of food in the back of the cupboard but now, at the beginning of December, the Christmas food shopping must start in earnest. I’ve got a few things in here for Dad and his partner, Samuel, too just to help out as I know how busy they are. Queuing at the checkout, I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. In front of me a harassed-looking woman is berating her child who’s whining for sweets.

  ‘I’ve no money for naffing sweets, Beyoncé,’ she shrieks as she shakes her little girl by the arm more roughly than is right. ‘If you don’t start bloody behaving right now, Santa won’t come to visit. He’ll throw your Wii out of the sleigh and it will break into a million pieces. Then what will you do?’

  The child screams. I think I would too. I should step in and remind them both about the true message of Christmas but, before I can, she’s through the till and out, dragging the sweetless and still screaming Beyoncé behind her.

  Would they both think I was mad if I’d have told them that at Beyoncé’s age I was given one of my dad’s old knitted socks – washed, I hope – filled with an orange and some nuts? That was it. Sum and total of festive present exchange. I couldn’t eat the nuts because mum could never find the ancient pair of nutcrackers needed to go with them and the orange went straight back into the fruit bowl where it had come from. I couldn’t ever buy presents myself because I was never given pocket money. But I was given some paper, glitter and some glue with which to make Christmas cards. Times were different then. We had so little. Our family Christmases were always cheerless, meagre affairs. We never had visitors to call. My mother put
the moth-eaten tree up for a short a period as possible. Sometimes it didn’t appear until Christmas Eve, late in the afternoon when I was almost beside myself with longing, and then with much sighing. It was usually gone again shortly after Boxing Day. My dad used to do his best to liven it up. He’d laugh too heartily at the Christmas shows – Morecambe and Wise being his favourite. Tears would roll down his cheeks and I used to find that funnier than the programme. But Mum was never a Christmas person. To her, it was absolute torture every year and, consequently, we all had to suffer. Perhaps that’s why I like to make Christmas so special now. I like my home filled with laughter and love, overflowing with presents and food. If you can’t go completely over-thetop at Christmas when can you?

  ‘One hundred and forty-seven pounds and thirty-two pence,’ the checkout girl says when she’s rung through my shopping. Even I wince as I hand over the money. It’s going to be yet another bill that I hide from Rick.

  Outside the sky is white and heavy. A few flakes of snow are starting to fall, drifting, drifting down into the car park. The first this year. I smile inside. I love snow. Though I realise that I’m in the minority as everyone else grumbles about how difficult it is to get around. And, it’s fair to say that the country does usually grind to a halt once there’s anything more than a sprinkling on the ground. Me, I’d be happy to be trapped indoors and let it cascade down until it was three feet deep. Holding out my hands, I let the flakes settle. They’re delicate, lacy and land on my upturned palms like filigree butterflies before instantly melting away. I shake it from my short, brown bob and think that I need to remember to wear my hat. It would be lovely if we had a white Christmas this year. A bit of snow makes everything look so much better, so much more festive.

  Someone honks their car horn in a bad-tempered manner. I glance up from the joy of snow on my hands. The car park is heaving now and it looks like there’s a dispute over a parking space. One driver winds down his window. Christmas carols blare out. ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all men’.

  ‘Oi, arsehole,’ he shouts at the other man. ‘I was here first.’

  The other driver who has a sticker stating that ‘Santa does it with reindeers’ in his back window, clearly doesn’t agree with his opinion and shouts back. ‘Fuck off. This space is mine.’

  I push my heavily laden trolley, which wants to go in the other direction, towards my trusty little Corsa. Heaving out the bags, I load them into the boot.

  Both drivers jump out of their cars and shake their fists at each other. One has an aerial with a star and some tinsel on it. The other driver snaps it off and stamps it into the sprinkling of snow.

  I sigh to myself. Not everyone, it seems, enjoys Christmas as much as me.

  Chapter Two

  I pull into the drive of number ten Chadwick Close and kill the engine. What I need now is a restorative cup of tea and perhaps my first mince pie of the season. They’re possibly my most favourite festive food. I know that the shops start selling them in earnest in July now but I like to put off the moment for as long as humanly possible so that I can really savour it. This year I have excelled myself in holding out for so long. I hope it also means that I won’t have to spend as long on a diet after Christmas as I usually do.

  My family and I live in a lovely part of Stony Stratford, a pretty market town in the heart of Buckinghamshire, a stone’s throw away from the ever-encroaching city of Milton Keynes. We’ve been here for years and have brought up our two children in this solid 1970s home. I suspect this is where we’ll see out our days.

  Rick is up the ladder, busy draping the front of the house with Christmas lights. That’s good. I like to have them up nice and early to make the most of them. The one area where all my husband’s abhorrence of Christmas disappears is when it comes to decorating the house with lights. It’s a job that he relishes. Every year Rick likes to adorn the place until it looks like Santa’s grotto. It’s the one trip of the year that he doesn’t mind taking up to the loft. He disappears in there for hours, searching and sorting, and then he lifts down the lights gently like treasured children.

  We currently have LED icicles dangling down from the rafters with changing patterns. We have a string of coloured bulbs across the garage that flash on and off at regular intervals. The front of the house has a sleigh and reindeer in white above the porch. The big cherry blossom in the front garden has its own string of lanterns. On the lawn we have a wire reindeer covered in tiny lights. The rest of our neighbours don’t bother much at all. Though number two do, on alternate years, throw a sparkling net of lights over their cotoneaster bush. We’re the one and only house in the close that attempts to create a Christmassy spectacle. I don’t quite know when or why this started, but I’m glad that Rick enters into the spirit at least in this one small area.

  I climb out of the car. Rick comes down the ladder. My husband is one of those men who’s grown more attractive as he’s aged, I think. At least he has to me and I guess that’s all that matters. His long, lean frame is all knees and elbows – always has been. We seem to have so little quality time together now and, somehow, it seems even harder to find time for ourselves once the Christmas frenzy is upon us. Every year I vow that it will be different and every year it isn’t. I smile as he comes towards me, but he seems to be in a hurry and somewhat red in the face.

  ‘Have you seen that?’ he rages without preamble. A finger shoots out and points in an accusatory fashion at the house opposite.

  Chadwick Close is a very staid neighbourhood, quiet. There’s never any excitement to be had. That’s why we like it here. Any scandal that there has been in the past has mostly emanated from the Joyce household anyway.

  ‘Look,’ he reiterates.

  So I look.

  Across the close, directly opposite our house is the sight that’s offending him so much. Our good friend, Stacey Lovejoy, used to live at number five but last summer she moved out. Now she’s in Gran Canaria living the high-life with Rick’s old boss, Hal, and they’re both having a lovely time according to the intermittent email updates she sends. The new people weren’t here last Christmas, so Rick would hardly have expected to see this.

  Our new neighbours, it seems, also like Christmas lights on their house. There’s no one in sight, but it’s clear that, like Rick, Neil Harrison has been very busy this morning. They have a display that far outshines ours.

  ‘How nice,’ I say. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Lovely?’ Rick has gone quite purple in the face now.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘We’re the house that has lights up,’ he points out.

  I shrug. ‘Now we’re one of the houses that has lights up. I think it’s looks pretty.’

  ‘Typical female response,’ he snorts. Rick runs a hand through his hair mussing it into his customary Stan Laurel hairdo. He’s never been able to tame his hair and now it’s sticking out all over the place. I know that’s the fashion for seventeen-year-old boys, but in a gentleman of a certain age it just looks like mad hair.

  ‘I don’t think you should view it as a challenge to your supremacy.’ Clearly Rick thinks that this is Neil banging his chest and roaring in his face. ‘Maybe Neil just likes Christmas lights.’

  Further snorting from Rick. ‘I’ll have to get some more,’ he mutters. ‘I want ours to be the best house.’ He casts an envious glance at the giant-sized blow-up Santa complete with his own chimney that’s fixed to Neil’s roof.

  ‘Ours look great, Rick. Especially with a little bit of snow on them. Very festive. Already I feel quite in the Christmas mood.’

  My husband tuts. I’m disappointed that all this pointless willy-waving has soured his mood.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Help me in with the shopping and I’ll make you a cuppa and you can have a mince pie with it.’

  With an exaggerated sigh, Rick puts down his screwdriver. I flick open the boot.

  ‘Good God, woman!’ He recoils in horror. ‘What the hell have you got in her
e? It’s not the feeding of the five thousand, you know.’

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ I say. ‘We have to have a little bit extra in. Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case what?’ Rick looks perplexed. ‘You’ve got enough for the Joyce clan to survive a nuclear holocaust. The shops barely shut for ten minutes these days. We can always run out and get a loaf if we’re stuck.’

  ‘Oh, Rick,’ I chide. ‘You know that you always enjoy it.’

  ‘You know that I always want to go away to the Bahamas, just the two of us, and ignore the whole bloody thing.’ He heaves two carrier bags out of the boot, making a big show of how heavy they are. ‘Instead we’ll stay at home, suffer your mother, the Queen’s speech and eat too much and drink nowhere near enough to ease the pain.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  Again he casts a dark glance at our neighbour’s festive display. ‘Putting up the lights was the only pleasure I had,’ he complains. ‘Now even that’s been taken away from me.’

  ‘You could go down to Homebase and buy a few more bits if you want to,’ I suggest. ‘They’ve got some very pretty things in.’

  Rick rubs his chin. ‘I need something with more impact,’ he says under his breath. ‘Much more impact.’

  With that, he brightens up considerably.

  Chapter Three

  My mother, Rita Britten, is sitting in the kitchen when Rick and I struggle in with the shopping. She’s wearing a cardigan that’s buttoned up all wrong, and it doesn’t look as if she’s combed her hair since getting up.

  ‘Get the kettle on, Rita, love,’ Ricks says.

  She looks at him, perplexed. ‘Why would I want to do that?’