Take a Leap!

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My sweetheart informs me that it is traditional for women to propose marriage to men during a leap year. I'd never heard of this tradition but it got me thinking about "taking a leap" on or around 29th February- doing something that you wouldn't usually do, because you convinced yourself that you didn't have time, couldn't afford it or didn't dare.

Photographer: Alan High | Lighting: Trevor Yerbury | Hair and wardrobe styling: Faye Yerbury | Makeup: me

During the last few months I have discovered that booking time off to shop or go for cocktails with my girlfriends, visit art galleries and museums, dine in style with my beau or pamper myself in a candlelit bath with a bowl of fresh strawberries and opening a bottle of champagne just because actually makes me a better model at my photo shoots. If the photographer asks me to smile, I have plenty of recent happy memories to smile about. If the photographer asks me to pose, I have a rich mental store of fictional and historical characters fresh in my mind to draw inspiration from. If the photographer asks me to dress myself, I have a wonderful selection of new clothes, shoes and lingerie from my recent shopping trips to choose from, each a little memento of how I felt and what I was thinking about on the day I bought them.

If there is a show that you have been meaning to see at the theatre, a race that you want to run, some racy lingerie that you were too scared to buy or a dramatic new haircut you have been considering for months, take a leap! Embrace a stimulating experience and see what happens! You DO have time, you CAN afford it and you can dare!

Photographer: Alan High | Lighting: Trevor Yerbury | Hair and wardrobe styling: Faye Yerbury | Makeup: me

After my second designer lingerie sample sale shop in a row on Saturday, I went to the Frankenstein double bill at The Vault, this cool little underground arthouse cinema inside a a Victorian mausoleum. There were introductions from film historians and readings from Shelley's original Frankenstein at the beginning of each film by members of the cast.

The mausoleum was under a Victorian train station (now Waterloo) called the Necropolis, which was a train for dead people only! They were dug up from the London graveyards to make way for new bodies, stored in an arched underground waiting room (now a little candlelit cinema!) until there were enough to fill a train, and then transported to another, bigger graveyard just outside of London. There were even First, Second and Third class train carriages! For corpses! I'm sure Frankenstein himself would have approved! One lady in the audience freaked out and had to leave before the movie even started but I thought it was quite cool :)

I tried to take some photos on my phone but it was too dark for them to come out very well!

Taking the day off to go shopping and then to the cinema may not sound like much of a leap to some, but for a workaholic like me, it was a big one, I can tell you!

If you were to take a leap this leap year, what would it be? I'd love to know :)

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