Sand in my shoes

(Dress: Bettie Page ‘Jazmin’ dots; shoes, Zara; sunburnt nose, Amber’s own)

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a warm Forever Amber welcome for this red belt! It’s a little crooked, it looks like it’s fastened in the wrong hole, and I think it was probably wishing it was somewhere else, but at least it’s THERE. Which is more than can be said for all my other accessories, which were at that moment sitting at home in the UK, going, “Say, you guys: weren’t we s’posed to be someplace else round ’bout now?” “I dunno, Bob, she never mentioned nothin’ to me. Fancy a game of Yahtzee?”

Anyway, enough about accessories, or the lack thereof.

One of the best things about being at the coast for us was being able to watch the sun set every night (and sometimes to rise in the morning, too: our bedroom had a huge window, so if we were awake early enough, we could watch the sun rise without even getting out of bed: score!). Where we live, we’re pretty much hemmed in by buildings and trees, and we’d have to go climb the nearest hill or something to be able to see a decent sunset, so we really enjoyed being able to just watch from our balcony every night, or go down to the beach. We saw some gorgeous skies over the course of the holiday, and it’s made me even more determined to live near the sea one day, if only for a little while.

This dress is by Bettie Page, and I got it from eBay last winter, just a few days before the great closet switchover of 2011. Because it was winter at the time, I packed it away with the rest of my summer stuff, and as I hadn’t had a chance to wear it, I forgot all about it, so when I unpacked it this Spring, I felt like I’d got a new (free!) dress. This was its first outing, and the photos were taken in a hurry, so we didn’t miss the sunset, but never fear, there will PLENTY more polka dots to make up for them…

Two weeks away feels like the whole world should have changed,
But I’m home now, and things still look the same.
I think I’ll leave it ’til tomorrow to unpack,
Try to forget for one night that I’m back in my flat.
On the road where the cars never stop going through the night,
To a life where I can’t watch the sun set.
I don’t have time.
I don’t have time.

I’ve still got sand in my shoes,
And I can’t shake the thought of you.

~ Dido, Sand in My Shoes