Interested in Female Lifestyles in the 1930's?

If you enjoyed the recent centenary edition of Woman's Weekly then I think you will like the publication I discovered today.

Popping into WH Smiths to look at some knitting magazines, I passed by the display shelves where Vogue magazine lurks and was immediately attracted to a cover picture on a lower level of a glamorous and beautifully made-up young woman in a black hat, and wearing pearls. She clearly came from early last century.

It was difficult to tell if it was a magazine or just a soft paperback cover book from its appearance, but then I picked it up and realised it was the latter.

It was this book, although this is a link for the hardback copy it has the same cover image; the version in the newsagent's is much less expensive- £5.99. 'What Every Woman Wants: Lifestyle Lessons from the 1930's' by Christopher and Kirsty Hudson, Atlantic Publishing.

The contents are facsimile pictures and pages from The Daily Mail of the 1930's. The contents include cookery, household hints and lifestyle; while fashion and beauty feature throughout in the pictures, as well as individual chapters of their own. And not forgetting the advice given by the paper's Women's Bureau to their many correspondents.

Actually looking at some of the make-up advice being given, you realise that bronzing really isn't a modern cosmetic creation...

As with the the Woman's Weekly centenary issue, there was occasional dubious health advice given then too; but of course we know so much more about diet, and enlarged tonsils- I always wondered why I liked beetroot so much, and now I know why.

Even if you don't buy it for yourself, it's one of those items you'll love browsing through for nostalgia...

A Little Award I Picked Up at Awards Night...

As I mentioned in my previous post, Wednesday evening was the annual Nottingham Writers' Club Awards Night and Christmas Buffet.

Now the instructions were to wear something festive and I duly complied with a headband with antlers and bells on- fortunately I didn't have a red nose to go with them...

A Literary Reindeer

So the presentations began.

The winners of the trophies last December received a certificate to show their earlier success. Then it was the presentation of book token cards for the members who had been placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the quarterly prose competitions and/or the monthly poetry competitions.

Then our club President (author and jobbing writer) Roy Bainton presented the trophies.

Now I only entered the Romance competition to help out.

The synopsis and first three chapters I'd intended to enter wasn't ready by the closing date- I was still only on chapter 2. And as a few of the members who would enter if they had a suitable work, didn't enter this year, so the minimum number of entries for the competition to run, was one short.

As the wonderful Ange had got Sue Moorcroft to judge this year's competition no one wanted to miss the opportunity of getting helpful comments on their work, so I put my Dorset novel in to help out.

(I'd only had an afternoon to give it a quick tidy up and trim.)

So I was amazed last night when the winner of the Romance competition was announced. It was me!

Now I don't yet know how much of my entry was good, and how much bad, as the prose competition secretary was poorly, so it will be January 4th before I find out the comments when I get my manuscript back.

So all I can say is I must have done something right...:-)

And here's the trophy I was presented with...

Winner of the Mary Street Memorial Shield 2011
Carol Bevitt

(photos courtesy of Dennis Apple)