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| Owl at London Zoo, March 2009 |
It's strange because both my husband and I have found ourselves inadvertently "fashionable" as a result of this. This never happens, never! We both love owls you see. We seem to have adopted this love in our childhoods from our grandmothers' love of owls and all the owl themed items they had dotted round their houses. I inherited a couple such items from my grandma. One is a cloth magazine rack with a very handsome owl printed on the side. The other is a little pendant of a wooden carved owl, that I recently began wearing again just before the present trend hit the high streets.
When my husband and I moved into a house share nearly five years ago, I noticed that he had a soft, and very very loved, small stuffed owl sitting on his desk. I had exactly the same toy owl. I sneakily placed mine beside his to see if he noticed, which he did. From that day on Ol and Fluff were inseparable. In hindsight (this was before we were together) perhaps I should have realised that a) matching stuffed owls was a sign we were made for each other, and b) putting mine together with his probably gave out all kinds of messages I hadn't intended to give, because it was several months after this incident that I actually realised my feelings for him.
Anywhoo - towhit - towhoo - it seems that our love of owls is now shared by many others. Just this weekend I tried on an incredibly cool owl print dress in one of my favourite shops - alas! it was too small. A friend of mine has very funky owl print shoes, and also one of those gorgeous owl cushions sitting on her sofa.
We, at the moment, have Ol and Fluff watching over the study together with pride, the owl magazine rack in the living room, and a large newspaper cut-out of Hedwig on our fridge door. So, we're not exactly leading in the trendy home accessory stakes, but we are bemused by owl-themed items springing up everywhere. Even our favourite kitchen shop is now selling a whole range of owl print crockery. What is going on!?
My parents live in a peaceful village. A main road runs through it and during the day the distant hum of traffic is ever present, but at night all is quiet but for the gentle hooting of owls out hunting. I used to love falling asleep to that sound. I've always admired owls in nature. In Art at school, which I usually wasn't very good at, we had to make bird collages and an owl seemed the obvious choice for me. I was quietly beaming with pride when I'd completed my preliminary drawing and my teacher declared, "Ooh, he looks very fierce. I wouldn't want to encounter him in the dark of night."
But natural representations of owls aside, I've found myself falling for them in their cute and cartoon like form as well, which is where the current fashion seems to lie. I want one of those owl cushions, and yes that owl print dress, and hey, why not throw in the owl crockery too? But that would be ridiculous, because we don't need another cushion, I don't need another dress, and our current crockery is just fine as it is.
Other animals given high esteem in this household are bears (especially of the polar variety), penguins, pigs (especially of the wild boar variety), and alpacas. It might be a bit too much to have themed everything for each of these too. For now our penguin bookstands, pig trivet, and various stuffed animals are all fine just as they are. Little touches are what works for us, so we will need to ignore this current owl trend as best we can (although I won't complain if I do get a cute owl accessory of some kind in my stocking this year!)
I will leave you with a few images of my favourite owls:
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| Archimedes, the "highly educated owl", from Sword in the Stone |
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| Whilst not my favourite Winnie the Pooh character Owl is still pretty cool |
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| Plop (the little one) from The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, one of my favourite books when I was little. |
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