Yesterday Suffolkmum wrote a post about having been namechecked in a newspaper article as one of a group of "Boden bloggers". The article was a good example of snidely written lazy journalism, probably dashed off so the author could get away on holiday, and Suffolkmum was a bit miffed.I would have been too and it is obvious that the journalist had simply visited the Country Living Magazine website and copied down some of the names without reading the blogs. Suffolkmum strikes me as someone who thinks a lot and writes sensitively and humanely about some very difficult topics. I enjoy reading her blog.
The article as a whole was poking fun at the Boden set - now I suspect that this is one of those groups that we all say "Oh yes, I know who that is" but would never admit to being part of. Even in my wildest fantasies I wouldn't identify myself with the smugly smirking models with "their" spookily groomed children in Johnnie Boden's catalogues. My self image is much more mucky.
And yet back to the article . . . we have decided this year to cut down on flying for leisure so shall be getting the train to Paris in October
. . . and Zoe has mentioned that she fancies holidaying in a yurt . . .and Euan watches airstream caravans on eBay and dreams of one parked in our drive . . .and we have a couple of Emma Bridgewater mugs . . . and a Cath Kidston ironing board cover . . .I've just finished Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (but didn't find it boring) . . . the children have a lot of hand me down Boden t-shirts and I have a pink linen dress. Apart from the school fees, the guilty foreign holidays and the drawstring trousers I pretty much ticked the supposed characteristics of a "Boden blogger".And yet . . . I am so many, many miles away. In muck.
Fairly depressing reading for a non-conformist though!
The photos today are more cornflowers because I forgot to mention that they last out of water brilliantly so you can cut them up and make jewellery, or if you are being more elegant, cuffs for candles and napkins. These will last a couple of days - ideal for flower fairies.
3 comments:
You’re right it was a sloppy piece of writing - the kind of thing you’d expect from a tabloid type paper; I have found much to my frustration that this sort of article is finding it’s way into the broad sheets.
Your daughter looks lovely in her cornflower crown:)
I'm pretty sure that it was Kate Muir who made derrogative remarks about our company name amongst others in an article she was writing for the Times on the Country Living Fair a few years ago. She sneered that folkydokee made twee table linen and tea towels. She obviously didn't visit our stand and took our name from the show guide because as everyone who has seen our stuff knows, we have never made these products. She had a bug up her arse about townies that were pretending to be from the country and had never set foot in it - actually it wasn't that dissimilar to this current article. I was initally really angry because it was such a misrepresentation of us - we're both country girls from a small market town in Hampshire and she had so got her facts wrong. I felt like writing to her to set her straight but was persuaded to see the funny side and treat it as a bit of free publicity!! Actually I do agree with some of the things she harps on about but if she only took the time to ask, she'd find out that some of the people she so busily slags off don't fall in to her yummy mummy bowden 2nd house in the country catagory.
Phew! I love the cornflower pictures too!
Love Al x
She seems to have scribled down a cliche laden piece without any research or a thought for the real people who lie behind the blogs whose names she ridicules.
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