Midsummer Magic with Fairy Dust

It is but a year since I discovered Fairy Dust nightwear – how appropriate for midsummer – a confection of gossamer-fine embroidered cotton, pin tucked and trimmed with satin ribbon and lace. My nightie is so magical, I feel out of this world when I wear it. Now that the globe has spun around again, inspiration has struck in this

Paean to Midsummer
All winter long for this we’ve waited
Now our appetites are sated
Trees are clad in summer dress
Grass is green and soft and fresh
Days are long and hot and bright
Meadow flowers are jewel bright
At length, the sun, she tires and sinks
The moon rises, the north star winks
Magical midsummer night is nigh
Let’s to the wood where fairies fly
Spirits of the earth and air
Fire and water linger there
Through the moonlight and the shade
Walk until you find a glade
With reeds and bush and pretty flower
It doth make a splendid bower
Lie down, be still and feign to sleep
And if into the grass you peep
With faithful mind and sincere eyes
The sight will fill you with surprise
Tiny, pretty, winged and sparkly
Mischievous and enchanting darkly
A fairy being you will behold
But be careful; truth be told
Cobweb, moth or mustard seed
To raise their ire, you do not need
As spells can bad as good may be
You’re advised contentedly
To watch the fairy ballet play
Till sunrise herald the break of day
The fairies vanish in the light
They sleep by day and dance by night
Tis’ opposite to man, I know
But that’s the way the sprite doth go
When fairies vanish you’ll feel sad
And wonder if a dream you had
Do not be down, do not fear
Though unseen, the sprites are near
And if to see again you must
Don your nightwear by Fairy Dust ®.

Racks and wrecks: why I am off my trolley with buses.

Will transport companies EVER put in place buses that are designed for passengers AND their shopping, luggage, buggies, children, wheelchairs and so on, to travel comfortably together - I do stress the comfortable bit. Recently, I endured a nightmare journey from Heathrow to the suburbs, on an airport designated bus. Quite simply, I was trying to look after my trolley suitcase, computer bag and handbag. Ravenous, I wanted to consume a sandwich while travelling in comfort. A not impossible feat, you would imagine, but the very few luggage spaces were already occupied when I got on the bus - at the airport, I stress - the craft being no different from a central London bus. I had no choice but to occupy a "normal" passenger seat while holding onto my computer bag and handbag with one hand, and clutching my roving-inclined trolley with the other. Every time the bus turned, lurched or even swayed slightly, I was obliged to become a human octopus, struggling to prevent my possessions from clobbering other passengers. Eventually, another "baggage" passenger disembarked and I was able to occupy his space, but not before I had become an enraged, sweating, humiliated wreck. The irony is - it does not have to be like this. When I lived in central Europe, even "town centre" buses were long, elegant transport cabins, with one or two seats abreast at one side, a wide aisle for walking up and down, and a floor-level rack along the other side. Suitcases leaved singly into this rack, while the smaller top rack was for lighter baggage. Sways, turns and lurches made no difference; the luggage stayed in place throughout the journey. When whatever passenger disembarked, he could simply retrieve his suitcase without disturbing that of anyone else. Best of all, the rack was bayed at intervals, leaving space for buggies, wheelchairs, walking aids, whatever. This seating arrangement enables the passenger to sit alongside his or her secured luggage or child or invalid companion, and allows him or her to eat, read, listen to music and actually enjoy the urban voyage. Of course, I am aware that in chilly, old Great Britain, any sucker unable or unwilling to pay £50 or so for a taxi deserves every discomfort and humiliation that the system can throw at him. If we have to haul luggage onto those boxy, rack-free "passenger" buses, all I ask is that designers leave enough room - in the downstairs deck, at least - between and underneath seats, for suitcases - please.

War on terra: why does the female foot maintain its battle-zone status?

First, congratulations to Nicola Thorp for her stance in wearing flat heels to work. Over the years, I have waxed much lyrical on the eternal tussle between fantasy and reality that is the female foot zone. With the coming of age of Birkenstock and Fit-flops, Ecco and Josef Siebel, I thought that comfort and rationality had finally triumphed. But in the past decade, the fictional Miranda Priestly waved a pair of stilettos under the nose of sensibly-dressed secretary Andie in The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006) while only last year, actual movie stars stood firmly in jewelled flatties on the red carpet in Cannes, deaf to howls of media derision. This year, the spat between receptionist Nicola and her bosses has proved that this sartorial war on terra is alive and kicking. When will men/bosses/people in authority generally learn that high-heeled feminine shoes are not workaday items of dress? Stiletto heels do not lend themselves to eight-hour work shifts, book-ended by fraught, commuter commutes. They are for parties, first dates and award ceremonies – a trope that even the canny ladies of Cannes eschewed. Stiletto shoes fulfill a yearning, a daydream, an aspiration, being the sartorial equivalent of gothic vaults, gleaming skyscrapers and a soaring FTSE index. That is the fantasy; the reality is aching toes and ankles during active hours, with the long-term price of trudging into middle and old age with damaged knees and spinal cords, and corned, calloused and bunioned feet. Ladies, refuse to pay – today.

Remembering Aqua Manda

Now that the long, hot days are upon us once again, the whiff of an orange cocktail the other evening sent me on a Proustian trip, a heady recollection of a scent from the Seventies called Aqua Manda, made by a company called Goya – ah! Aqua Manda was a sublime concoction of orange and flowers, of spices and other, more mysterious ingredients contained within a dark glass bottle, trimmed with gold and topped with stopper decorated with a fruity relief. The Aqua Manda experience was a pleasure from start to finish, from running a finger over the said relief to the opening of the gold-trimmed flask and applying the cologne, to spending the day in a cloud of the glorious aroma. Then, I discovered the accompanying products, including talc, soap and a foamy Aqua Manda bath lotion, a long soak in which was akin to spending a thousand nights in a floral bower. Never did I scratch my head when asked about a birthday or Christmas gift; I had but one mantra on my tongue: Aqua Manda. Challenges were not for me; any lass who longed for a vial of Charlie or Rebel or Tramp could stick it in her backpack and go hike – this teenager wanted to wallow in Scherezade-type fantasies of oriental palaces and adoring oil millionaires queuing up to do my bidding. Time changes everything and one birthday brought not Aqua Manda, but lemon-based Aqua Citra. Just for a change, Mum said. Talk about striking a sour note in a girl’s dreams – what was Goya thinking of? I went off the scent after that and on discovering that life brings bills rather than mills, it faded from memory. But I do have my Proustian moments and following the most recent one, a quick Google revealed that the Aqua Manda Perfume Company relaunched the products in 2013. The Seventies are back...

Can you believe this sticky, Lidl situation?

In writing this, I am apologizing to everyone who was behind me in a recent Lidl queue when I was trying to buy a box of butter. You know, I actually like my local Lidl, it being yet free of those direful automated checkouts and their robot voices. Instead, I had the pleasure of a nice young gent serving me. All good, but when the nice young gent tried to run the 500g box of Olive ® spread past the barcode reader, the reader would not, well, read. ‘Afraid I can’t sell you this, Madam,’ he said, ‘the butter is not on the stock database.’ ‘Eh?’ The nice young gent then offered to run and fetch a box of Clover® or Utterly Butterly®? I jumped at the latter product. The nice young gent ran away and returned two minutes later with a box of Utterly Butterly® and – same result – the barcode reader would not acknowledge the product was in the store. The nice young gent ran away again to seek another product. By now, dark and mutinous mutterings were emanating from the checkout queue, and more than a few desertions happened. Advise me: what do you do when in a situation like this? Who do you apologise to and who – if anyone - is to blame? The store? The manufacturer? The shelf stacker? The bad luck fairies? Not the nice young gent certainly, who was doing his best for me. Sure, I could have paid for the remaining items and found my butter elsewhere, but I was anxious to witness the conclusion to the rather weird scenario. My nice young gent returned presently, this time with a selection of products. He ran a box of I can’t believe it’s not butter® past the reader and – presto! – a price flashed on the monitor. ‘I can’t believe it’s worked,’ I said. The nice young gent didn’t think it funny, either. Has anything like this happened to anyone else, anywhere, ever?

Rock of Ages

When I heard that Tracey Emin had been the other half in a nuptial ceremony, my first thought was oh, no, not another independent, intelligent woman intent on sacrificing herself upon Hymen's altar; but then I learned the truth. Ms Emin has pledged her troth to a rock in the garden of her home. This knowledge has modified my emotions somewhat. After all, what partner could be more perfect than one who is always there, in all weathers, strong, silent and dependable? According to Wikipedia: "a rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of one or more minerals...granite is a combination of quartz, feldspar and biotite minerals." I doubt if Ms Emin has had the geological composition of her spouse analysed - but really, who else knows the exact constitution of their life's partner - and does it matter? Rocks are the children of the stars, born in a cosmic cataclysm and tempered into planets, thus establishing gravity and time. Aeons down the line, the mineral fallout from rocks became me, you and other animals. I resume quoting Wiki: "The minerals and metals found in rocks have been essential to human civilization." Quite; without rock formation, we would not have had the ores and oxides essential for the making of a myriad pigments, marble slabs for Michelangelo's sculptings, and countless other treasures. In summary, we have the geological world to thank for the entire trajectory of art history - what a metaphor for Ms Emin! We wish her and her steady partner every happiness.

Form following function - forget it.

A novel handbag perhaps, born of the jaded imagination of a designer who has tired of creating dress reticules in Italian leather, beads and embroidered silk? A computer with a built-in carry handle – like those old-fashioned transistor radios – designed for executives who can check their complexions in its shiny surface before dashing into meetings – or maybe it is a transistor? A novelty jewellery box with lights that flash every time it is open/shut? No; it’s a toaster, friends – a sandwich toaster, to be exact. Two generations ago, when designers decreed that form should follow function, such an appliance would have screamed its purpose, sitting squarely and proudly on a kitchen counter, and nudging fiercely any other electrical impostor that dared to try to make it redundant. Those days have flown. A quick trawl of the net reveals that all appliances have shed their edges, having been honed and trimmed into round-cornered chumminess – let’s all get along together, shall we? And so many appliances now resemble one another; no individual pride anymore, but a desire to look universally cute and cuddly, what with vacuum cleaners that look like human faces, and computers that resemble cosmetic purses, and cocktail shakers that double up as glow sticks. It could be down to the plastic surgery mentality, the idea that we must all hack and sculpt the protruding pieces of ourselves to try to resemble some notional ideal, extending to gadgetry. More likely, it is designers competing with one another to shoe-horn electronic circuitry into ever more improbable configurations. Fashions have a habit of growing tired, however, and I suspect that one day we will wake up to a whole new generation of rugged, unglamorous and unpretentious toasters, grinders, kettles – but not any time soon.