doomsday_disco

Lavender cotton candy fur and vanilla popcorn balls, sent skittering out of the kitchen with a good-natured wave of our polished wood rolling pin.

A sturdy but soft lavender cotton twill, lightly flour- and sugar-dusted, with deep pockets full of kitchen mysteries.

A chewy delight made from a blend of rice flour and purple yam, fried in lavender-infused oil and dusted with granulated sugar.

A row of plump, cardamom-spiced sweet buns overflowing with pooflets of lavender cream and almond paste.

An aromatic crusty loaf covered in pre-bake slashes to create a floral pattern on top, flecked with flax, sesame, pumpkin seeds.

A rapidly melting tower of vanilla ice cream thoroughly glooped with marshmallow sauce and amethyst syrup, speared with shards of waffle cone.

A goblet of pale liquid gold infused with an almost iridescent shimmer of lavender essence.

Nothing beats that classic fluffy, bouncy texture, rendered eternally moist thanks to shreds of fresh carrot, delicately spiced and slathered in lavender cream cheese icing – including the obligatory carrot on top, piped in purple frosting.

Well, he was humming this hum to himself, and walking along gaily, wondering what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like, being somebody else, when suddenly he came to a sandy bank, and in the bank was a large hole.

 

“Aha!” said Pooh. (Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum.) “If I know anything about anything, that hole means Rabbit,” he said, “and Rabbit means Company,” he said, “and Company means Food and Listening-to-Me-Humming and such like. Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um.”

 

So he bent down, put his head into the hole, and called out:

 

“Is anybody at home?”

 

There was a sudden scuffling noise from inside the hole, and then silence.

 

“What I said was, ‘Is anybody at home?'” called out Pooh very loudly.

 

“No!” said a voice; and then added, “You needn’t shout so loud. I heard you quite well the first time.”

 

“Bother!” said Pooh. “Isn’t there anybody here at all?”

 

“Nobody.”

 

Winnie-the-Pooh took his head out of the hole, and thought for a little, and he thought to himself, “There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said ‘Nobody.'” So he put his head back in the hole, and said:

 

“Hallo, Rabbit, isn’t that you?”

 

“No,” said Rabbit, in a different sort of voice this time.

 

“But isn’t that Rabbit’s voice?”

 

“I don’t think so,” said Rabbit. “It isn’t meant to be.”

 

“Oh!” said Pooh.

 

He took his head out of the hole, and had another think, and then he put it back, and said:

 

“Well, could you very kindly tell me where Rabbit is?”

 

“He has gone to see his friend Pooh Bear, who is a great friend of his.”

 

“But this is Me!” said Bear, very much surprised.

 

“What sort of Me?”

 

“Pooh Bear.”

 

“Are you sure?” said Rabbit, still more surprised.

 

“Quite, quite sure,” said Pooh.

 

“Oh, well, then, come in.”

 

So Pooh pushed and pushed and pushed his way through the hole, and at last he got in.

 

“You were quite right,” said Rabbit, looking at him all over. “It is you. Glad to see you.”

 

“Who did you think it was?”

 

“Well, I wasn’t sure. You know how it is in the Forest. One can’t have anybody coming into one’s house. One has to be careful. What about a mouthful of something?”

 

Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, “Honey or condensed milk with your bread?” he was so excited that he said, “Both,” and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, “But don’t bother about the bread, please.” And for a long time after that he said nothing … until at last, humming to himself in a rather sticky voice, he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and said that he must be going on.

 

“Must you?” said Rabbit politely.

 

“Well,” said Pooh, “I could stay a little longer if it—if you——” and he tried very hard to look in the direction of the larder.

 

“As a matter of fact,” said Rabbit, “I was going out myself directly.”

 

“Oh, well, then, I’ll be going on. Good-bye.”

 

“Well, good-bye, if you’re sure you won’t have any more.”

 

“Is there any more?” asked Pooh quickly.

 

Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, “No, there wasn’t.”

 

“I thought not,” said Pooh, nodding to himself. “Well, good-bye. I must be going on.”

 

The Hundred Acre Wood’s resident Virgo (affectionate). The scent of neat rows and polite refusals: toasted oats and clover honey, crushed lemon verbena, wild carrot leaf, and white tea poured with exacting care. A dab of condensed milk on a clean spoon, a faint rustle of vetiver, and a courteous cough to suggest that your visit has gone on quite long enough.

On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
“Now is it true, or is it not,
“That what is which and which is what?”
On Tuesday, when it hails and snows,
The feeling on me grows and grows
That hardly anybody knows
If those are these or these are those.
On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
And I have nothing else to do,
I sometimes wonder if it’s true
That who is what and what is who.
On Thursday, when it starts to freeze
And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees,
How very readily one sees
That these are whose—but whose are these?
On Friday——
 
Hot, sunny cardamom amber and milky musk, honeyed rice and snowy slush.

Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between his paws and began to think.

 

First of all he said to himself: “That buzzing-noise means something. You don’t get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee.”

 

Then he thought another long time, and said: “And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey.”

 

And then he got up, and said: “And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it.” So he began to climb the tree.

 

He climbed and he climbed and he climbed, and as he climbed he sang a little song to himself. It went like this:

 

Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?

 

Then he climbed a little further … and a little further … and then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song.

 

It’s a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,
They’d build their nests at the bottom of trees.
And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),
We shouldn’t have to climb up all these stairs.

 

He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that branch …

Crack!

 

“Oh, help!” said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the branch below him.

 

The bees were still buzzing as suspiciously as ever. A golden gourmand for a philosopher. Wild clover honey buzzing with mead fizz, a gust of woodsmoke, and a dusting of ambered pollen.

“Piglet,” said Rabbit, taking out a pencil, and licking the end of it, “you haven’t any pluck.”

 

“It is hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffing slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.”

 

Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said:

 

“It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.”

 

Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful, that he forgot to be frightened any more…

 

Pink clover and wild strawberries, red bean paste, pink vanilla, sweet acorns, apple blossom, caramelized almond, and a shy puff of sugar.

Each purchase of Gloomily, Gloomily comes with a 1/32 oz imp of the Donkey’s Tail. The Donkey’s Tail is not available for sale on its own, and make sure you keep it safe as you never know where it might end up.

“That Accounts for a Good Deal,” said Eeyore gloomily. “It Explains Everything. No Wonder.”

 

Doubles as a bell-pull: a beribboned strip of French lavender, bourbon vanilla, silver thistle, grey musk, pink silk, and well-loved grey cotton.

“Good morning, Eeyore,” said Pooh.

 

“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt,” said he.

 

“Why, what’s the matter?”

 

“Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”

 

“Can’t all what?” said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

 

“Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.”

 

“Oh!” said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, “What mulberry bush is that?”

 

“Bon-hommy,” went on Eeyore gloomily. “French word meaning bonhommy,” he explained. “I’m not complaining, but There It Is.”

 

Every solid friend group has at least one goth kid representing. Soft grey musk, pink thistle, lavender ash, tea leaves, pale iris, grey lilac, and rain-soaked moss.

 

Each purchase of Gloomily, Gloomily comes with a 1/32 oz imp of The Donkey’s Tail. The Donkey’s Tail is not available for sale on its own, and make sure you keep it safe as you never know where it might end up.

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.

 

When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, “But I thought he was a boy?”

 

“So did I,” said Christopher Robin.

 

“Then you can’t call him Winnie?”

 

“I don’t.”

 

“But you said——”

 

“He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what ‘ther’ means?”

 

“Ah, yes, now I do,” I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.

 

Honey-slathered buttered toast, glittering amber beams of sunlight, warm milk, cotton stuffing, and cuddly roasted vanilla.

By loving friends you are surrounded,
Oh, be not blind to this, I pray.
They wish that joy and mirth unbounded
May crown your happy Christmas day.

 

Winter oak, hazelnuts, and butterscotch rum.

 

The weather’s cold, so devilish hard
My income friend, 
is suffering from the cramp,
So please excuse this impecunious card,
As all I’m good for is a used up.

Sugared-crusted marshmallows and cinnamon candies.

 

A jolly Christmas for some. For others? Not so much. Frosted sage, icy green and menacing.

 

 

 

Red winter berries crushed under tiny claws, fermented wild cherry and mulled brandy spilling into russet feathers. 

 

Pine sap and amber ashes.

 

A sticky brown sphere of black treacle, dried fruits, and brandy with a double honk of marshmallow fluff and buttercream.

 

Hot, sultry beeswax and blushing pink apple.

 

A handful of dates and black figs plopped into a frosted glass frothing with cranberry champagne.

 

Not exactly my definition of a happy Christmas, but to each their own. Wild pansies, white honey, and frothy cream.

 

 

 

May Christmas shed lustre around you.