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.