What I've been liking
paper flowers, the Belgian coast, two novels, good online travel info + more
Last week I bought some paper peonies from The Post Room, a lovely shop in Norwich, and I can’t tell you how much joy they give me every time I walk into the room they’re in.
When I was a child and at the Belgian seaside every summer, all the children on the beach made paper flowers. Your adults would lie there frying themselves, slathered in factor 0 Hawaiian Tropic (fascinatingly topless, in the case of my stepmother), and you sat making flowers for hours, though sometimes you made them at home the night before too.
When you’d finished making the flowers, you’d spear them into the sand in a row. This was your shop and it was now OPEN. Other children would then come and buy your flowers. The currency was shells. Then you’d take the shells you’d earned from your sales, get someone to keep an eye on your shop, and wander off down the beach with your shells in a bucket to go shopping yourself.