When Life is not a gift....

It's been said many times and in many ways but I'll say it again; rampant social inequality is a recipe for trouble. It goes like this. There are folks in this world with lots of stuff who need other folks to do stuff for them. By implication, the folks doing the stuff won't have as much stuff as the folks they do stuff for and will require stuff while doing it. Tell me, were the Grillo sisters supposed to wear Primark's best while working alongside their luminescent designer-dressed employer? Or to carry out their dutues jumping from one public transport shebang to another while their "betters" hovered along in chauffeur-driven ease? All in all, were the sisters supposed to aspire to the buttoned-down lifestyles of Cistercian nuns while all those around them worked and played with the gaiety and glamour of a Renaissance royal court? Yes, I know stealing is wrong but I also know that the recent non-incidental incident is a metaphor of the monumental social inequality of our times, in short, one of numerous situations that are bound to end in tears, trauma and trials. I really don't see a way through the situation for poor rich families who need folks to do stuff for them, apart from fishing for employees among the slightly less wealthy, folks seeking glamour and prestige by association rather than actual money? In short, why did the Saatchi-Lawson family not simply take on unpaid interns?

Christmas, Milton Keynes's Style

Since 2008, I have been reporting on a strange, Yuletide complaint, namely that a minority of the population feel obliged to visit a Christmas "theme park" at Christmas-time. This is an odd facet for a festival that is defined by its artificiality. After all, every shop, office, factory, domestic home and public space turns into a Christmas theme park at Christmas, what with piped carols, festive trees, fairy lights and ropes of tinsel. Well, unbelievably, it has happened again, this time in the wilderness of Milton Keynes, where a Winter Wonderland was forced to close after one day's trading, following complaints by punters of a Santa Claus that was too young and skinny to be authentic and an ice-rink supposedly made of plastic. Sure, it's execrable greed and fraud on the part of the purveyors but really, I'm beginning to run out of sympathy for the soi-disant victims. Surely folks with a wad of dosh to dispose of upon seasonal delights should have learned by now that the best Christmas themed events ever take place in shopping malls. The nearest one to me boasts a tableau of singing teddy bears, a giant tree, bars and restaurants, and a raft of shops selling every luxury on the planet - what better place to have a Christmas spending blow-out, followed by a rib-straining meal with Partner and children? After all, apart from a few brief days around two thousand years ago, Christmas has ceased to be a real place. Christmas is where we choose to make it, rendering our surroundings jolly and comfortable for our Loved Ones. Most of all, though, Christmas is the goodness and cheer we carry in our hearts. How and wherever you choose to spend Christmas 2013, have a peacful and happy time.

Shouldn't have gone to Specsavers....

The Christmas advertisements are rampant just now and I am not impressed; except for that super little gingerbread man singing Be My Guest in the Morrisons offering, they have all left me feeling queasy. Even the Bear and Hare from John Lewis, though cute and cuddly, is lacking something – dialogue maybe? Nope, my ad du jour is the wonderful offering from Specsavers. As a person who has supported a raft of optical professionals throughout her life, I have a right to comment. I just lurve the sequence. The door busts open on a room filled with senior citizens, all apparently awaiting something. A young lassie heaving a ghetto blaster hurries inside and the music begins – and her dance begins with it. Shake what yer mother gave ya, she shouts, among other aspirational taunts. Soon, the entire cohort of joy-filled older folk is swaying and synching to the beat. The door opens and another woman comes inside, a much older (than the dancing lassie) and rather puzzled looking person carrying a basket of hopeless bingo balls. Should’ve gone to Specsavers, says the questioning voiceover. At this point, I always shout a resounding no! The dancing lassie is my spiritual sister, and long may us short-sighted people bumble through the world…

Post Office Encounters...

One week ago, I went into my local post office to buy a stamp. I have gotten used to personnel trying to hustle me into changing my broadband and telephone service provider, so I wasn’t bothered about that. However, on this occasion, the sales’ woman also asked me if I had life assurance arranged – yes, life assurance. I was so shocked that I didn’t have the presence of mind to dismiss her with a simple “yes” but mumbled a few personal details before deflecting her. All this happened in front of a queue of people, by the way. I’m not complaining about the woman, in particular. She is only doing what she is paid to do. But could someone “high up” in the post office please explain why members of the public must be subject to an onslaught of aggressive sales’ technique every time we try to access a vital public service? I know the post office has to make money and all of that, but there must be a better way to sell services that entail discussion of sensitive, personal information with the sales’ person. The really biting question is: just how do I avoid being accosted by sales’ people every time, yes, every time, I walk into this particular post office? Short of wearing a cheeky “I’m only here to buy stamps” badge, I don’t see what I can do. (I have sent a copy of this complaint to the Post Office website.)

Things Happen After A Great Bath...

When I was a little ‘un, pouring over “grown up” newspapers and magazines, I became fascinated by a series of advertisements. They concerned an attractive young woman who, still wrapped in a towel after her bath, looked out her window to hail the arrival of a man whose physical attractions were in parallel with her own. Things happen after a badedas bath, ran the strap line. Of course, when I came of age, I had to find out what did happen after the bath, and in spite of receiving a bottle of badedas one teenage Christmas time and loving it, I’m still awaiting the arrival of that man. Badedas is still with us and the advertisement series has achieved historical status in the same way as Milk Tray and Martini. Just recently, a leg injury gave me cause to renew my acquaintance with Badedas Original Indulgent Bath Gelee, and my love of the product came rushing back. Online reviews are wildly out of synch with one another. Some reviewers liken it to cheap, pine toilet cleaner – never! – while other reviewers love it as much as I do. The smell of it is extraordinary, so much that after a half-hour soak, I can spend twenty-four hours without using any other scent. Instead, a tangy, spicy cloud, redolent of mountain forests and rushing streams, envelops me throughout the day. Yes, it is expensive; I paid £6.50 for the standard 300ml flagon. But a little goes a long way and a few drops of the dark-green liquid will colour the bath water, rendering it soft and soothing, with a cleansing power that makes soap redundant. And yes, it does seemed to have shrunken the swelling on my leg – one reviewer even said that it helps her psoriasis. The active ingredient in Badedas is aesculus hippocastanum or horse chestnut extract, which contains aescin, an age-old remedy for inflamed and distended skin. Much debate rages around the safety of aesculus hippocastanum, and whether or not it is toxic. One thing is certain; chestnut seed must not be given to horses. They won’t be getting my badedas, either…

Harvest Moon, Shine On...

Normally, I write about manmade objects and this post is no exception. But instead of cursing my broken kitchen light, I praise the opportunity the darkened kitchen gave me to take notice of the glorious harvest moon. Have you seen it lately; a great, glowing lamp in the dark-blue sky, casting its lemony light upon us miserable, earth-bound denizens? No doubt some astronomer somewhere (Brian Cox, please!) could tell us all why the lunar disk is now appearing 10% larger than it has for many a day. It is probably something to do with the proximity of the autumn equinox in combo with unusual atmospheric conditions - or something sniffy like that. Whatever, the moon has inspired Beethoven to write Moonlight Sonata and drew forth the lovely and delicate Claire de Lune, from Claude Debussy while one of my favourite poems (by Walter de la Mare) runs slowly, silently now the moon walks the night in her silver shoon… This very week, Blue Jasmine, a movie by Woody Allen and starring Cate Blanchett, has just been released. The film tells the story of an unhappy woman whose favourite song is the evergreen Blue Moon (you saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own…) In summary, the moon has inspired countless poems, songs and other works of art. It has appeared in paintings many times over (most notably by Joseph Wright of Derby), and was the subject of one of the earliest animated movies, Le Voyage Dans La Lune, by Georges Méliès – gracious, we have even been there. In a weird way, the moon is manmade. On that note, I bow out with one of my favourite autumn ballads….shine on, shine on, harvest moon, up in the sky…

Architecture or Arson: What next for the Glass Towers?

Of all the STUPID things to do! No wonder the “general public” thinks contemporary architects are all barking academics, locked up in their ivory (and glass) towers, with as much a sense of reality as any politician. After the events on Fenchurch Street last week, I’m beginning to believe that this word-image has a semblance of truth. What makes it worse is that the same architect who designed the building for developers Land Securitas and Canary Wharf, designed a hotel that caused meltdown in Las Vegas in 2003. The concave hotel produced similar symptoms; singed sunbathers and melted deckchairs. With reference to the London fiasco, the architect has admitted to “making mistakes”, and has also said that “there was a lack of tools or software that could be used to analyse the problem accurately”. Well, lawksamussy! Any school kid can start a fire with a magnifying glass. If only he had hired a mathematician to do a few calculations with mirrors and magnifiers before finalising the design for the Walkie Talkie – surely the shortage of STEM graduates isn’t that dire? Well, what do I know? We could do worse than to take the power of old Sol, the great and burning eye in the sky, on board. On that note, it seems only yesterday that we had an opposition leader who boasted a wind turbine on his house, and went everywhere on a bicycle. Today, the same geezer is poncing about in a hard hat and waxing lyrical on the joys of fracking. In all of history, I ask, has there ever been such a political metamorphosis? Just imagine, if a few unguarded glass windows can toast baguettes and fry eggs on Fenchurch Street, then just think what a comprehensive, nationwide network of solar panels harnessed to the national grid, could do to lower power consumption and lessen global warming. Sadly, I can’t do the maths but those of you who can, out there, send the calculations to the Prime Minister - and then save us all from arson-mad architects.

Perfume: Personal or Political?

I can never convince myself that perfume is just a harmless pleasure, wrote Susan Brownmiller (Femininity, Paladin Grafton Books, 1986). In her book, she writes about the trappings of femininity, the way us females build our popular image with silly clothing and dangerous shoes, affected postures and layers of make-up. Brownmiller excoriates the perfume industry, blaming it for robbing women of self-confidence by making the olfactory masking of our “natural” female odours almost obligatory. I take on board everything Brownmiller says, but I just do not concur with her stance on perfume. The wearing of perfume is a natural development of our link with the world of plants, never a tenuous one. The scented stuff emerged in the hot spots of the Middle East – witness the many references in the Bible – thousands of years ago. Trade and travel slowly shifted those pots and jars to the Mediterranean, from where they crept unrelentingly northwards and westwards. Around a thousand years ago, the denizens of the northwest began to leave their land-based lives and move into towns and newly forming cities. These places were unsanitary and formed only of social and economic necessity. For centuries, the upper classes strove through stink and squalor with the aid of “nosegays” or floral bunches, and pomanders, oranges stuck with cloves, not to “perfume” the carrier, but to help block out the surrounding smells.

In a contemporary world where we have come to accept public squalor alongside private luxury, I wear perfume in the same spirit as the denizens of the past. Sexual allure is the last thing in my mind as I rove about the urban landscape in a cloud of scent; blocking out the traffic exhaust fumes, the reek of putrid drains, uncollected rubbish and the thousand other miasmas emanating from I know not where. Yes, there is a little “cover up” involved, but no more than is involved with the wearing of clothing – has this ever been dismissed as “dishonest”? On that note, I carry the torch for Eau Dynanmisante by Clarins, a glorious, heady bouquet of “patchouli, petit grain, rosemary and white thyme”, having worn it for twenty years and will probably do for twenty more. A perfume expert would be able to explain in detail how these ingredients work together to make Eau-D the vital stuff that it is but alas, you only have my word for it….

The Almighty Nightie

In this column, I have often alluded to nightwear. To recap, one spends one third of one’s life in bed so, logically speaking, one third of one’s attire should be for the night. If you have ever gone shopping, you will know... nightwear brings out the fantasist in designers, more than any other kind of attire… the nighties I viewed seemed to have been made for ladies with Personal Services Plc after their names…the only alternatives to these sparkly, see-through itsy-bitsys were voluminous, Victorian, lace-trimmed behemoths with in-built chastity alarms…

And so on, and so on. The reader who doesn’t want to live out a Hollywood movie star/Victorian matron/happy hooker fantasy while in bed, this summer, ought to head for Marks & Spencer. I have just picked up and purchased an adorable, knee-length number. The nightie is light as swansdown and could fold easily into the shell of a walnut, yet offers ample cover to the body while in the land of nod. Made of 95% viscose and 5% elastane, its label is in a place that doesn’t chafe or irritate. The metal eyelets that allow for strap adjustment are rounded gently and won’t prod the restless sleeper awake. Indeed, this feature echoes the entire, kind design of the garment; with its contoured bust yoke and flared skirt. The garment is feminine, with a frill detail and a soft bow decorating said bust yoke, and made of a slumber-friendly pale blue and brown polka dot print. I have already spent one night in it – the hottest of the year, in fact – and never once woke up in a sweat. Yet, the garment is inexpensive, to say the least, at £9.50. But this is only one item of M&S’s more wonderful current pieces of sleep tailoring; the body in search of a good night’s sleep should get down there – now.

Telephones: Many Options, Little Choice

Are you telephone cool – or not? As someone who breaks out in sweat at the sight of a new telephone, I can give that question an unequivocal answer. When it comes to telephones, familiarity breeds content. To me, a telephone that has sat stolidly on desk and at bedside for more than three years is a trusted friend rather than a “lump of technology”. The luminous monitor is a friendly face. The thing slides into the palm of the hand as easily as that of a lover. It becomes a talisman, a precious jewel, the key to an important gateway. My fingers fly over the buttons almost preternaturally. This ambience is consolidated by the constant sound of the voices of friends, colleagues and family emanating from its banal mass of wiring and plastic. I can honestly describe actual telephones that I have grown to love. But present me with a new model and…oh me, oh my…and I am talking of simple landline phones, not smartphones and fancy tablet gadgets. The phones always come packaged with an “instruction” sheet. First, the novice has to extricate the English directions from the mass of Indo-European languages alongside them. Next, you are faced with one of those terrible, labelled diagrams; numbered tags pointing out features like “soft key” and “mute key” and all of the weird spawn of the telecoms world that make a technology troglodyte like me cry at ever having had so many darned options. When you finally have worked out what it is and where it is, you have to learn how to use the thing. The ring tone buzzes through your flat like a stranger’s voice. The feel of the handset is unfamiliar and the buttons are in all of the wrong places, leading one to cut off conversations mid-flight…ah! Only heaven knows how many career moves I have lost by pressing the wrong button at an injudicious time. And you can’t keep the same phone forever because, no matter how much you love it, like a pet it grows old and dies. With telephones, as with everything else, we may have many options - but we have little choice.

Willendorf Venus and the Paleo Diet

In all my years writing this blog, I have never, ever once alluded to diet, not the least because there are so many other people writing about how starve to keep in shape. However, I had been hearing so much recently about the “Paleo” diet that I couldn’t resist googling the matter, at least. The Paleo or Palaeolithic diet is based on the food that our ancestors supposedly ate around 10, 20 or 30,000 years ago. It includes meat, eggs, fruit and vegetables, roots and nuts, in short, food eaten by “hunter gatherers”. It excludes dairy produce, bread and cereal foods, potatoes – the results of agriculture - and, of course, the usual processed and refined baddies of our times. Popularized by Walter Voegtlin in the 1970s, the thinking behind the Paleo diet is that, since we have the same genetic makeup as our caveman forbears, we should confine ourselves as much as possible to the same kinds of food as (we think) they ate. For example, hunter-gatherers wouldn’t have kept animals or grown crops. No cows, no milk or no cheese, no bread or potatoes, just the stuff that runs on the hoof, swims in the sea or can be plucked from branches – enter Adam and Eve! Adherents of the Paleo diet suffered less from heart disease, high blood pressure, certain cancers and obesity. In short, if you were running wild with the woolly mammoths, you couldn’t possibly sport excess flesh. Enter the Willendorf Venus, a statuette from about 25,000 years ago, blessed with a body that would put the Michelin man to shame. It begs the question - where did prehistoric artists get the model to create WV woman with? Of course, it could be a construct, a mere votive figurine created to induce fertility, big boobs and belly, and all of that. But experts have pointed out the existence of thin female fertility figures. Why go to the bother of creating a figure not modelled by at least one real, live woman? Art is the lie that tells the truth, they say. I’ll leave off starting the Paleo diet for another day.

House of Cheese

Today’s Guardian (April 20, 2013) carries an interesting editorial, exploring the possibility of building a British, cheese-based economy. My first instinct was to dismiss it but looked at more closely, it is quite credible. Denmark built a bacon-based economy in the 1950s, and there is no reason why we can’t do it with cheese. There is so much already in place; the land, the rainfall, the herds, the people, and cheese districts like Stilton and Cheddar. What is more, our grazing pastures and herds of cattle cannot be salted off abroad. This is in contrast to the manufacturing sector where moneymaking enterprises are routinely carted to faraway places. Another plus is that agri-businesses can be distributed throughout Blighty in ways that compartmentalised sectors like finance cannot. Just think of young people flocking to courses in stock husbandry, dairy culture, nutrition, cheese cuisine, marketing, branding, advertising – OK. We got those already, but this would be marketing with a twist – a cheesy twist, you might say. And just think of the spin-offs; the mountains of crackers and biscuits, the olives and bottles of wine, the cheese tastings and fondue parties – we might even knock the Swiss off their mountain perch. So, how about milking this idea for all it is worth, leaders? My mouth is watering already…

Packaged with care...

A few days’ ago, I received a telephone sales call. This time, it wasn’t anyone asking if I had a recent accident, or pleading to apply for the return of payment protection insurance, nor was it a power company promising mysteriously to “save you some money”. There wasn’t a Floridan holiday in sight, or a new conservatory nor a set of spanking-new, double-glazed windows. Nope, the caller on this occasion was enquiring about the efficacy of my computer care package…ah! Now, there’s a new phenomenon for me to take in: a computer care package. I assured the young lady that my computer was well cared for, thanks, and hung up. I meditated for a while, then I did a quick roll-over of Google to see what I had been missing and – lawksamussy! –ye gods! There are none so blind as those who do not see. For a sum of money, the computer owner can purchase a number of service hours, per month, from a company like Microsoft, to ensure the smooth running of their computer equipment. If you don’t use “your” hours one month, you can roll them on to next month, and so on and so forth. Like health care, there a different levels of care package, from the most basic computer maintenance to the more exclusive (read expensive) levels that include a removal service of old and broken computing equipment for recycling. One package, sold by Microsoft, even includes a power usage health check – now, we are getting into the realms of anthropomorphism. But don’t take my word for it. Check this link for more details. In the meantime, I scratch my head while I wonder what household god to sacrifice in the name of good, computer care – food, perhaps?

Railway to Heaven

Readers of this blog will know that I never was a motorist. On the contrary, I (mis)-spent my teenage years raging at the lack of train track and rolling stock to the remoter areas of the Emerald Isle – weird in a country that sells itself as a tourist paradise. Decades later, I learned of the Beeching Report, trotted out on March 27, 1963, which led eventually to the axing of more than one third of rail services in the UK. Fast forward to March 30, 2013. The volunteer-led Swanage Railway has just reopened the Bournemouth to Swanage line, the occasion marked by running a train. By 2015, the company aims to run a regular train service on that line, using the £1.47 million grant that it has been given. There is much more detail in the Guardian article that inspired this piece. Right now, I am growing all misty-eyed for a time and place that never was; a land where unobtrusive railway tracks wound around steep mountains, allowing awestruck passengers to enjoy vistas of sheep grazing amid ancient, ruined castles and flowers growing around picture-pretty cottages. With the progress of Beeching in reverse, maybe that vision will happen yet.

On Bathtime Battles and Being Cleopatra

It haunts my dreams both when I’m asleep and awake. It fills me with both rage and purpose, as I constantly seek chemical formulae to keep it at bay. I am talking of the purity of my bathroom enamel despoiled by that ring of dirt that will not go away. This is in spite of the friends and relatives who have given advice on how to vanquish it forever. Apparently, the only way never to have that ring around the bathtub is to wipe the scummy ring off the enamel with a cloth the moment you are finished bathing. Fine, if you are a practical creature who (a) prefers to shower anyway and (b) who has never entertained bath-time fantasies born of scented water, good soap and other ablutional indulgences. My favourite daydream is of being Cleopatra as I step from the tub and don my dressing robe – what better way to shatter it than wielding a scouring cloth doused with a dollop of elbow grease? I do not leave behind a colloquial tub of tepid water but a golden, Jacuzzi-like receptacle of asses’ milk or sparkling wine or some such exotic liquid. My fantasy lasts while I massage oil of roses (ergo body cream) into my poor, tired pelt, don clothing and breakfast on grapes and nectar (tea and toast, actually). Later, I do become more practical and focused as the mind switches into daytime mode – but by then it is too late. The ring has hardened into the familiar and stubborn beast, and the battle of the bath resumes.

Made in UK - yes, really.

Many years ago, I bought two rose-pink vest tops at a now closed branch of Miss Selfridge. Actually, they were/are more like bodices with front and back “shaping" darts that allow the garment to “bloom” into a nice, female shape on top. Friend, I still have the tops, not as museum pieces but as good, wearable garments. They have lasted through countless wears and washes, and have never lost their stretch. The seams and darts have never pulled apart and the fine, looped trimming is still in place about the neck. The deep pink colour has barely faded and the labels are still readable, bearing the legend Made in UK. The condition of these vests cannot be a fluke because I have a pair of Miss Selfridge leggings bought a decade earlier still. Made of black lycra with a crushed-velvety pile, they have faded to dark purple over twenty years but are still wearable, never having lost their elasticity or ripped or torn. Again, they were Made in UK. To all of those folks who claim that British manufacturers cannot hold it together, that all of our manufacturing, machining and assembling is best done overseas, I join with the other MP (Mary Portas) in saying natch…unless “UK” means Upper Kazakhstan, of course.

Why are blue badges blue?

Last night, I watched a sliver of a BBC programme Parking Mad, documenting the endless angst experienced by the denizens of the capital in their quest to find parking spaces that don’t come with a health warning. In the main, the doc was good, attempting to show the story from all points of view; those of the drivers, wardens and adjudicators when fines are in question. However, I was left with the feeling that design issues could be making life difficult for all involved. There was one nice old gentleman who found himself with a £70 ticket when a traffic warden failed to spot a “blue badge” on his dashboard. Photographs taken of the car by the warden were indistinct, failing to reveal that the driver’s blue badge was not on display. For this reason, the adjudicator waived his fine and he went away happy. A numbskull, non-driver like me has a question: why does the blue badge have to be blue? After all, blue is a difficult colour to see through glass, even on the finest of days – what happens when it is raining or foggy? Why cannot the blue badge be red, or pink, or yellow, or even fluorescent orange? Authorities, over to you.