The DKNY Cozy

I first saw one of these almost exactly three years ago when the ever chic JD from Show Me Your Wardrobe turned up at Heathrow for a Halloween trip we took to New York before moving over here.

She has the art of travelling down to a T. She's always swathed in beige & cream cashmere & wool, pants tucked into sheepskin boots, hair tied loosely up, looking like she gets upgraded just by existing. I follow in her effortlessly chic wake, dropping my passport & boarding pass, trailing wraps & shawls, arms full of magazines & water bottle, feeling cosseted by her professional traveller shtick.

When I saw her wrapped in her DKNY cozy, essentially a long sleeved cardigan, short and fitted at the back, long and flowing at the front, I immediately wanted one. I hoped it would confer on me the same kind of traveller style that had evaded me up to that point.

But I didn't get round to trying one on until my mother came to Manhattan a year later for her annual Christmas shopping expedition. We wandered into the Midtown flagship store and there, just by the door, was a rail of cashmere cozys emitting a subliminal siren's call. They weren't cheap but they looked great on her. I flexed my press discount; she bought one for herself and, a day later in the DKNY store on Broadway she bought me one too in black merino.

It's perfect: I wrap it around my body under my coat when it snows here in midwinter. I wear it loosely over LBDs when I don't want to reveal my curves at work cocktails, drape it around my torso to look chic with pants and, finally, wear it over a T shirt on planes when I want to look like I, too, might just deserve an upgrade.

Black Merino Wool Long Sleeve Cozy $160 from DKNY.com

Virgin Upper Class: thanks for the upgrade

Recently my father has very kindly been driving me the hour trip to Heathrow to catch my return flights to New York. He's pretty laissez-faire: I tell him when we are leaving and off we go. He's not one of those irritating dads who micromanage journeys, altho this time, he might have warned me it was a Bank Holiday Friday. Virgin had ballsed up my booking and I was flying a day later than planned, so I hadn't even registered that we would hit the M25 at 4pm: peak traffic jam time.

We pretty much screeched into Terminal 3 on two wheels, and I bolted towards the entrance, barely having time to hug Pops goodbye. Then horror! The auto check-in spat out a 'go to desk' card, instead of my precious boarding pass. With five mins before check-in closed, I & my over loaded trolley skidded to a halt at the end of a very long line of very loud ladies.

Managing to inveigle myself to the front of the line, trailing a fellow traveller in my wake, he & I took the forceful but extremely polite route, waiting patiently for the vociferous ladies and their ten tons of luggage to be processed, but making sure they knew our check in time had passed.

And lo and behold when we were finally processed, they told us our plane had been swapped for a smaller one owing to mechanical failures, and handed us lovely Upper Class boarding passes.

For all the flying I do, I have never, ever been upgraded. Sure, I've flown business for work, but an upgrade on my own dime? Nope. Then again I've never had the balls to ask for one. I think I might start doing so given the blissful experience that awaited us.

A two hour delay on the apron in a seat with my knees up under my chin is normally enough to make me want to stick pins in my eyes back in Goat Class. Up front where the oxygen is headier, my new travelling companion & I were reclining full length under crisp cotton duvets, propped up by downy pillows, glasses of Champagne in hand as we gently perused the day's papers.

I had forgotten my moisturiser, but no problem! Our charming cabin crew came around with a basket of delectable Cowshed loveliness, lipbalm & moisturiser included. I slipped off my ballerines into the shoe bag so thoughtfully provided, snuggled down under my duvet and contemplated supper.



I have no problem with airline food. I love the orderly little plastic trays and dinky glasses, plus flying makes me ravenously hungry. In addition to my gallons of Evian, I went through a phase of taking delicate sushi meals on ‘planes in the manner of a fussy starlet and eschewing the hot meals, but I just ended up eating them as well as the sushi.

So to be presented with a mahajor four course menu and wine list, the contents of which could be consumed on demand is a sure way to my heart. My little table had a linen table cloth thrown over it, then a tray with more linen appeared, in addition to the linen napkin on my lap.

First up was a glass of Malumbres Tinto 2005 from the Navarre. Then I swung into action with a pea, mint & fennel soup, whilst watching some high class entertainment (Fired Up! - nothing wrong with a cheerleader movie.) Look: proper cutlery & glass because, of course, terrorists only travel in economy during a recession.



Then came an asparagus risotto with rocket & parmesan: ideal plane food. Pretty well cooked and creamily comforting. More wine.



Then a strawberry & cream roulade with wild berry coulis. Photographed terribly, tasted delicious. Like proper earthbound food.



Ah the cheese course. Photographic evidence would suggest that I had moved onto the Port by now. Perfectly conditioned Oxford Blue, Lancashire & Cornish Brie with oatcakes & grapes.



And so to bed. The long suffering crew made up my flat bed, and I hunkered down for the rest of the trip. I was a little disappointed that sleeping would mean missing the promised afternoon tea (Victoria sponge, sarnies, scones & clotted cream).
Cowshed & Port supplies to hand:



Oh and with Clive Owen in front of me. On the screen in Duplicity unfortunately, rather than in my cabin.



Thank you Virgin: I had a ball. And I met a charming man in the check-in queue who kept me amused before & during the flight. So, maybe arriving late at the airport has its advantages after all.

*Sound of my father groaning*

August wasn't quite what I expected. Part One

August has been a rollercoaster. Still homeless in America, through an unfortunate combination of other’s caprice and my fiscal incompetency, I was living in New Jersey with a pair of heavenly hosts and two Basset Hounds when the call came to tell me that one of my mother's oldest friends, my godmother's husband, & a man I loved very much had died.

My father very generously bought me a plane ticket home and, three days later, I was being driven to Newark at 6am to catch a flight to Heathrow. I had booked it a day and a half early to avoid any delays – the weather on the East Coast has been atrocious this summer, with electric storms turning airports into hi tech plane parks most weeks.

Arriving late into London, I headed to the post-work calm of Clerkenwell, and the loving welcome of old friends.

I spent the first morning in my home city in back to back meetings, followed by an epic eleven hour lunch fuelled more by streams of converstion than by rivers of booze, although I’d be lying if I said we weren't well-lubricated. I blame Charlie McVeigh for choosing lots of delicious wine for our meal at his glorious Café Anglais and setting Mrs Trefusis, IK & myself off on the path of badness, which ended up with plates of chips and guacamole at Lucky Seven at some very advanced hour, via seats in the sun & buckets of wine at The Westbourne.

The next morning I dressed carefully and caught a train from a heaving Kings Cross, packed with children and tourists and police, arriving in Sandy in the rain.

I handed out my mother & sister’s birthday presents from the back seat of the condensation filled car and we headed to church.

The next few days I spent at home in the country with family & other animals, before heading to London to see, variously, Miss P and her family playing on the grass in Regent’s Park, BA & her husband M in Chelsea for a Saturday dinner party at their glass & light filled first marital home (I had been a bridesmaid at their wedding in Cap Ferrat last October and hadn’t seen them since).

I forced literary L to Shoreditch House at an unearthly hour for a Sunday, and we spent the morning slathered in conditioner & moisturizer in the steam room, before hunkering down on an outside bed on the sun terrace. Lunch was spent with C at Dim T in Highgate, wedged between two delightful infants, each of which carefully laid a sticky, loving set of paws on the arms of my new silk shirt. The joys of Godparenting.

Which continued next day, when they considerately checked that I was awake bright & early. After all, I wouldn’t want to miss a single moment of the dawn, now would I?

Using IRIS scanners at Heathrow

I have to recommend signing up for IRIS, the Home Office's biometric alternative to Passport Control, at Heathrow next time you fly. I sing praises to lovely, CLEVER Show Me Your Wardrobe every time I bypass the monstrous Immigration queues at Heathrow for persuading me to sign up a few years ago on our first flight together to New York. (The little office is just after Security & just before Customs, on the RHS in Terminal 3. They take a digital photo in addition to the initial eye scan.)

She is a genius: the initial signing up process to register your iris takes maybe ten minutes and, in return, when you arrive at Heathrow (or Gatwick or Manchester) there is never, ever a line to use the IRIS machines. Of course it helps if you are not clumsy/spatially f**ked as you have to line your eye reflection up on a digital mirror glass contraption and it usually takes a few frustrating minutes to get this right if you are me. Still much quicker & certainly more interesting in a Star Trek type of way than lining up all cross eyed with tiredness to be stared at by a grumpy & doubtless over-worked Customs person.

I know some people have privacy & Big Brother type reservations about having their biometric details used in this way but, as they scan your passport anyway on re-entry, I can’t really see the difference in methods: your arrival will be registered for perpetuity either way. I rather like the fact that no one can ever pretend to be me using this system. And, of course, I travel so much that anything that cuts down my journey time wins with me: I've found that using IRIS is generally even quicker than a Business Class Fast Track voucher (not that I get to use those as much as I would like).

Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in Rural France

Dearest M, who I visited recently in Lausanne, has spent much of her life with her wonderful Paris-based father at his restored farmhouse, deep in the Vienne, just south of Tours & the Loire Valley.

The first time I visited was when I was desperate to get out of London to write. They lent me a little (& rather unrestored) house in the nearby village in which to stay for the summer.

I drove down singlehanded from London via Calais on an epic trip which started at 9am and ended at 2am in a tiny lane in a ravishing medieval village whilst I crashed around with torch and signal-free mobile. The next morning I discovered that, since last visited, it had also become home to some invisible red biting spiders, (I knew they were there as there was a note on the door,) so I relocated to a rented fairy tale apartment carved out of the walls of the village's ruined castle, complete with oak stairs and creeper clad leaded windows.

Over the summer I fell deeply in love with the village and with the Vienne. I was a constant source of curiosity to the villagers, who were all friendly & charming as I battled through with my schoolgirl French (no one speaks English there). My boyfriend came out for a fortnight and we hurtled around wine tasting, shopping in the markets, eating like pigs and even visiting the Futuroscope theme park in Poitiers, (my advice would be: don't).

I last visited for M&P's beautiful country wedding and, although I have an open invitation to return (& I need to meet the cat that her father has named after me), it's not so easy to get to from Manhattan. Then, out of the blue, the next best thing happened.

Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in Rural France
by ex fashion editor Karen Wheeler arrived from Europe. She thought I might enjoy it because of the similarities in our professional lives, but, in the smallest of small worlds, Ms Wheeler's part of rural France just happens to be a mere 30 miles from my small piece of French heaven.

I gulped it down in a day, recognising the area from her vivid descriptions, & snorting with laughter and with agreement, as she nailed the experience of being a single Englishwoman in a small provincial French village

There are obvious parallels to be drawn between Ms Wheeler's life and my own. We've both been fashion editors & writers on glossy mags & on newspapers. We both upsticked from our shiny London merry-go-round to live in different countries on a whim. And we've both gone from frenetic dashing around in heels to launches & events to pottering around the countryside with dogs and taking pleasure in a slower pace of life. (Although, granted, I'm only in the country for the summer, but I have no intention of going back into full-time, soul-destroying magazine work.)

Ms Wheeler & I have never met (although I do feel we should have) but I feel nothing but empathy for a woman who, on the first day of renovating her new French cottage discovers that she has no suitable clothes for construction work after years in the fashion industry, and sets off for the day in gold sandals.


Released on July 6th, it's already in Amazon's Top 100 Travel Books and you can buy it Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in Rural France by clicking on the book title anywhere in this post. She has a great blog too at www.toutsweet.net and Twitters at @mimipompom1

Hotel review: Mother daughter bonding at The Halkin, London

It’s weird living abroad. On one hand it’s quite useful being thousands of miles and five, sometimes eight hours out of sync from family arguments, squabbling infants and the overly familiar quotidian grind. On the other it is rather miserable not being able to give & receive comforting hugs. Playing on Facebook does not make up for proper face time.

So when I go back to England my first priority is to spend proper time with my family & see as many of my wonderful friends as I can possibly manage. There are always godchildren & bundles of new infants to prod, plus there’s usually a wedding I’ve missed or engagement to celebrate.

I’m like a bunny out of a trap as I land at Heathrow, usually whizzing straight to my sister’s house in Kentish Town for an intensive debrief, and then getting up at 7am to do a stream of breakfasts, lunches, coffees, drinks & suppers, all woven between meetings & work stuff. It's trickier seeing my parents as they don't live in London, (or together for that matter), so I have to grab any opportunity to see them.

Last month I landed in London the day before my mother flew in from Verona, so I persuaded her to spend the night in London with me before heading to the country. I always find it’s best to book a hotel together for the proper mother-daughter bonding experience; we always end up squabbling when together en masse in my sister & Posetta Baddog's one bedroom London flat.

My mother, being of the Birkin bag & Chanel pump-ed persuasion, doesn’t really do anything outside of London's W or SW postcodes unless forced so when I was offered a suite at The Halkin in Belgravia, just behind Hyde Park Corner, I jumped on it. I used to stay at its sister hotel the modernist Metropolitan on Park Lane when I was an NY magazine editor (convenient for 8am appointments to visa wrangle at the US Embassy), but had yet to experience the minimalist taupe experience of The Halkin.

And goodness, it is taupe. And beige. And sepia. And pale cocoa. And other synonyms I can’t be bothered to look up. From the Buddha in the entrance hall to the Como Shambhala aromatherapy products in the bathroom, it may well be the most calming environment in which I have stayed. It’s so tranquil that it’s the hotel equivalent of Prozac. They should have a Halkin in Milan or in Paris for stroppy fashion editors to stay in during the collections.

The calmness was equally good for a mother/daughter stay because we are quite capable of going from smiles to snarls to smiles in seconds. But we seemed unable to have one of our signature blow ups here. It probably helped that when the Front Desk rang to say she (& her luggage) had arrived, I poured us glasses of super chilled Champagne and drew her a deep bath using scoops of fragrant bath salts from the oversized jar in the oversized bathroom. I do find pre-empting maternal requests tends to diminish potential snappiness.

Lulled & cosseted into inertia, leaving the hotel was far beyond our capabilities. Not that this mattered: we had reservations downstairs at Nahm, David Thompson’s extraordinary Michelin-starred Thai restaurant (more of this to come later).

The Halkin really is a boutique hotel for grown-ups: it feels discreet, the scale is intensely intimate (but not claustrophobic), there are no spread out communal areas, soaring atria or chattering tourists, the service is beyond charming. The suite ticked nearly all my demanding boxes: the best soup-plate showerhead I’ve come across in a hotel anywhere, generous toiletries, a proper well-lit dressing table in the bedroom (as opposed to a mirror-free desk or expecting us to balance warpaint on the side of a basin) and plenty of cat-swinging space.

Sure the Asian chic interiors are a little disconcerting inside a Georgian stucco fronted townhouse, but somehow it all comes together. And, best of all, less than half a mile from Knightsbridge, Horrids & Harvey Nicks, cradled in our temporary taupe universe, we felt as though we were on holiday in London. And, as dyed in the wool Londoners, you can’t get better than that.

LLG was a guest of The Halkin Hotel (but if she thought it sucked, she would say so)

Inshriach House: The perfect Scottish getaway

In our twenties, various of us who had been at university together frequently barrelled up to the very, very north west of the Scottish Highlands to a beautiful coastal village called Scourie, where we would set up camp in the tiny stalking cottage which had been left to our partners in crime Nick & Susie by their father.



(Arkle seen from Scourie Beach)

There was lots of fly fishing (or, if you were me, lots of watching fly fishing, sitting disconsolate in a damp boat in the August drizzle, smoking pot to ward off the midges & watching the rain on the loch); mountain goat activity of the running up hills before breakfast kind (or, if you were me, cooking of gargantuan breakfasts), and long walks through the heather (or, if you were me, ceaseless whinging about the mud, the midges & the rain).



I was at my happiest when the others were playing at being mountain goats, & I was left to my own devices. I would cook huge meals for their return, and then curl up in a faded floral armchair in the sitting room next to the fire and the oak bookcase, working my way through old paperbacked Agatha Christie & Georgette Heyers, with the aid of a packet of Garibaldi biscuits and endless cups of tea. I do so love the great outdoors when I have to wipe the fug off a window to see it.

I spent Millenium New Year in Scourie with five of my closest friends, having stipulated I would only go if we dressed up properly. (My silver & green 50’s brocade & tulle number from Cornucopia cost £15 & was so poofy it had to have its own seat on the plane up to Inverness.) On the night we pulled layers of fleece & Gore Tex over our Black Tie and climbed a mountain to set off exhibition fireworks & drink Champagne at midnight, before rolling back down the mountain to the village cèilidh. (If you happen to have architects as friends, then you’ll know that this combination of outdoors & insanity is perfectly normal in their eyes.)

It was on the drive back down to England from one of these trips that we stopped off to pick up our friend Walter from his grandmother’s extraordinary - & enormous - Edwardian country house set in 200 glorious acres near the banks of the River Spey, in the Cairngorms National Park just outside Aviemore.



Untouched by the hand of post-modernism, Inshriach still has open fires, panelled rooms, lots of faded chintz, antlers aplenty, claw footed baths, and shooting prints in the loos. The house has always stuck in my memory as a wonderful escaping place, just as Scourie is, where you can fish, walk, stalk & mountain goat, or do as I do and curl up by the fire to read, so I was particularly pleased when Walter wrote to say that he & his mother Lucy had turned Inshriach into an extremely reasonably priceda fully functioning rental property for groups & location shoots. (It’s just been reviewed (well) by The Guardian.)



This summer, Walter had planned to run the bars, food & a stage at The Outsider Festival in Aviemore. After he had built most of the stage & bar, struck deals with brewers & distilleries, made friends with lots of musicians and invited lots of friends, The Outsider was cancelled. Not being one to give up, he decided to hold an alternative festival in the grounds at Inshriach, catering for a maximum of 400 people.

So, The Insider was born.



It promises to be a magical weekend, not least because it's the Summer Solstice. There’s a fabulous musical line-up including Lau, twice named 'Group of the Year' at the BBC Radio2 Folk Awards, burlesque performances and children’s workshops. There are yurts for rental for sleeping in, & the catering by Ord Ban restaurant is reason alone to turn up, with Walter promising local beef and venison, trout, scallops, curry, stews & cakes. As he says, ‘That's what happens when you organise a festival with a lot of foodies.’

There are still a few tickets left, so do go to www.insiderweekend.co.uk (All tickets are advance sales only.) There are a BARGAIN £40 each, a fraction of what festivals usually cost.

In addition to yurt rental, there's plenty of camping space, but if that's not your thing, then Suie Hotel in Kincraig (about 4 miles away) have offered 10% off their already very reasonable £35 a night rate for anyone who doesn't fancy camping.

American Airlines aren't always merde

I continually whinge when I have to fly American, the Aeroflot of the 21st century. A dedicated Virgin traveller for years, I’ve grown used to on-demand TV & movies (ones I actually want to see), a sense of humour, & imaginative food to dull the Cattle Class experience. AA is not known for ticking any of these boxes.

They were the preferred carrier of the axis of evil last year, and this time I needed to fly LAX-LHR-JFK & AA was super cheap, so I suck it up when I have to. The flight from LAX to LHR was misery in a metal tube; my vegetarian meal had been forgotten, the films were crap, the cabin crew were surly strop artists and I had a woman whose BMI was middle-aged in the teeny tiny seat next to me.

Fast forward. AA’s Heathrow Terminal 3 check-in is unfortunately bang next to Virgin’s shiny new flagship area, which makes AA’s section look even more low rent than normal. The flashy AA check-in machines of JFK & LAX are nowhere to be seen. Instead the scruffy desks are stuffed around a corner and usually manned by cheerless automatons.

But none of this mattered yesterday. Running true to form, I had arrived late at my father’s house for my lift to the airport, and, after he cheerily dropped me off kerbside,
I skidded across the hall with my cart on two wheels convinced that AA’s usual dismal queues would make me miss my plane.

There was no one there. Some SMILING check-in people and no travellers. Not one.

Turned out there were maybe 50 passengers on the 747, so I had two seats for my junk, and a row of five seats across the aisle which I turned into nest central with armfuls of pillows & lovely soft fleecy blankets.

We were delayed on the apron for 1hr30 but I was glad of the rest after my Geneva dash, & curled up like a very happy dormouse in my mental geraniums, with ample chocolate supplies and free copies of the high class literature on offer (Hello!, InStyle).

Of course the movies on offer were at the wrong end of dire (New in Town, Confessions of a Shopaholic) but my supper expectations were confounded by a delicious supper (al dente pasta, fresh Italian bread, Le Vache qui Rit cheese, beurre d’Isigny). And when we arrived (early) at JFK, the arrival gate was maybe 150 yards from Immigration.

Where there was no line. Let me repeat: no line. Of course, AA can’t be held responsible for the global downturn in the economy & resulting lack of travellers but I was very happy not to have to wait behind 400 people (the hideous JFK norm).

And the upside was a very cheery, flirty Immigration guy who wasn’t having to deal with thousands of travel sore passengers, and who high fived me after inspecting my O-1 visa (it’s an Alien of, erm, Exceptional Ability visa which is useful for spuriously impressing purposes and therefore getting through Customs quickly).

It got better. My luggage was already waiting for me on the carousel. SuperShuttle arrived in ten mins not the estimated 25 and, for the very first time dropped me off first not last. (Am trying to be good and not blow $60 on cabs from the airport every time I fly.)

I don’t know what I did to deserve such a blissful journey home, but I am hoping it’s a good omen for the next two months here in NYC.

Banbury - Luton - Geneva - Lausanne

I was in two minds as to whether I would actually get on the plane to Geneva on Monday morning. When I booked the flight a month or so ago from LA, an 0630hrs departure from Luton seemed do-able. After all my parents only live 45 mins away.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

A 24hr trip to Switzerland, arriving back the evening before I left again for Heathrow and Manhattan? I must have addled my brain in the California sunshine.

Because of course what that 0630hrs flight actually meant was me failing to sleep before midnight, being woken at 0200hrs by the cat kneading my thigh with its needle claws, and then whiplashing myself into consciousness at 0355hrs when the alarm clock went off under my pillow.

No one could accuse me of being a dilatory dresser: I was up and out the door in a flat five minutes, still excavating the sleep from my eyes as I put my foot down on the gas in my father’s MX5 and headed for the M1.

I was barely functioning on arrival at Geneva, so thank God for Swiss efficiency. The train terminal is right next to Arrivals, and a monkey could work the ticket machines. One aller simple ticket later and I’m sitting on the platform with my laptop and handbag (all I took were clean knickers & a swim suit, four packets of Xtra Strong Mints for Meriel – don’t ask, and my toothbrush) waiting for this rather nice train to arrive.

Some time later I get to Lausanne and Meriel & infant whisk me off to Café Glancy in the city centre for nourishment (highly necessary for anyone who refuses EasyJet’s overpriced refreshments trolley). My previous memories of Lausanne seem to be mainly of glove shops and staggeringly expensive bistros, so I’m glad to see that Café Glancy is a coffee shop restaurant in the laid back squishy sofa dudes playing on macs mode. It’s still expensive, but then everything is expensive in Switzerland.

I vacuum up a rather nice chanterelle & tomato risotto,

and M has a foie gras & Carpaccio salad – she claims that this is diet food.

Then as I am officially now on holiday I study this pudding menu. (Check the prices: basically ten Swiss Francs is just about ten dollars. OUCH.)

I’ve had recent complaints from readers who don’t speak French so let me (colloquially) translate the utter naming brilliance of two of the dishes:

La Bouchée: J’ai plus faim mais j’ai quand meme envie de sucré”
“I’m no longer hungry but I could do with a little sugary something “ (M has this: a tiny crème brulée)

Le Dessert: j’sais pas quoi choisir
I don’t know what to choose ( It’s actually a tasting plate)

I order Le Tout Chocolat, which looks like this (in the top left corner is M’s Bouchee),

And which is an exceptionally good warm dark chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, an ambrosial ice cream, which appears to just be a smooth frozen custard, and a wonderful creamy, dreamy cross between a chocolate mousse & a crème brulée.

After approx 30 secs the plate looks like this:

I think aliens stole my pudding.

Girls night out in London: Guilty Pleasures

Last Saturday, I kissed the dog goodbye, threw my sequin party dress & high heels in the back of the car, took off the roof, and sped down the M1 to London for a sneaky night of flouro accessories, too much champagne, debauchery and dancing.

I can’t remember the last time I went dancing. Proper, get dressed up, wear high heels, drink vodka, dance like a fiend, love my lovely girlfriends dancing. So it’s a very, very good thing that my last minute trip back to London from Los Angeles coincided with a Guilty Pleasures night at Koko in Camden. I miss nights like these so much that I would happily get on a plane from LAX just for Guilty Pleasures.

That’s probably got something to do with GP having been my night out of choice since I saw GP’s DJ Sean Rowley rock the sleepy afternoon audience at the Big Chill festival in 2004 with a choice set of 70s & 80s classics that included Guns n Roses and Dolly Parton. His main criteria? Sing-along, dance-along tracks that the too cool for school crowd would never admit to knowing, let alone dancing to in public.

Miss P and I ended up having some ludicrous nights at GP’s regular night at the Carling in Islington where the atmosphere was one of glorious amateurism. Akin to a village hall bop, a GP night always celebrates English eccentricity with a tongue placed firmly in cheek. There are theme nights, dressing up, confessional booths, a slow dance room called the Erection Section and, on stage, entertainment from bewigged dance troupes in legwarmers with bosoms wobbling and portly male dancers in leotards and spats.

Eventually GP grew out of The Carling and moved to Koko, formerly the Camden Palace, a glorious old Victorian music hall in Camden, complete with rococo boxes, a real stage and rather too many flights of stairs for vertiginous heel wearers.

We were there at the opening, and again as often as we could make it. The last time I went was just before I moved to America and the next morning had to crawl out of bed to bicycle to BBC London in Marylebone to appear as the fashion expert guest on Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures radio show.

So, last Saturday, courtesy of the very nice people at Malmaison London in Charterhouse Square, Miss P, Clare, Tara & I gathered in one of their lovely big hotel rooms to get dressed, glue on our fake eyelashes, drink Tesco’s Cava (sooo classy) and eat delicious club sandwiches & fries from room service whilst watching Britain’s Got Talent on the flatscreen, before piling into a black cab to Camden. The night’s theme? Club Tropicana. Bloody brilliant.

(Tara looking very sultry). One of the rather nice things about being a grown up is getting VIP’d. The pulchritudinous publicist whisked us up and down stairs to a series of VIP private boxes with a bar and, hallelujah, a VIP loo. (I know I’m getting old when I get over-excited about not queuing for the loo.)

Within seconds we were wristbanded up,

getting stuck into the first round of vodka Red Bull & tequila chasers (my three friends had locked their infants under the stairs to come out to play and today’s drug of choice is caffeine), and dancing around our handbags to Wham!, Duran Duran and the rest.

(Tara & Clare - the publishable photo). Upon discovering that one of our wristbands gave us backstage access we were off through the serpentine corridors to the wings to watch some of the cabaret acts from the back of the stage. That's not all the back we saw:

I was blissfully happy to see long time GP regulars The Dreambears giving it up, fresh from their semi-final appearance on Britain’s Got Talent.(NB I do wish that straight America embraced camp like the Brits do). They were working it in these:


I didn’t go backstage to end up on the stage. But my Clare had other ideas. This is why we were to be found throwing shapes in front of 1500 people for the last couple of hours.

Fortunately it wasn't just us or the audience would have been justified in asking for a refund: it’s a Guilty Pleasures trademark to grab twenty or so people to come and dance on stage from the wings and from the audience in between acts. And it's not the punters who get down: the publicist, MC & DJ join in too. Here's Sean Rowley playing air guitar:

I would have stayed till the bitter end but I was in danger of developing shin splints from dancing in 5inch platform stiletto hooker shoes. I was also becoming aware that every time I reached for the stars, my black sequin mini dress was riding up to flash my knickers.

So the girls hopped it to their night buses (New Yorkers you have NO idea how lucky you are to live in a city where cabs roam the streets at all hours,) and I waited 25 minutes with throbbing feet in a mini cab office for a ruinously expensive car.

I have never been so glad to arrive at a hotel. I drew a bath full of super hot water & bubbles and had a final glass of Champagne, before wrapping myself in a fluffy towel and falling into bed. Oh the wonderful, comfy bed...mmmm, with your Egyptian cotton cool white sheets you were really spoiling me Malmaison.

My now obligatory photo in the rather chic Malmaison London bathroom - I feel I have to prove I was there now after that evil commentator accused me of making it all up!

Picture of the day: Naciemiento-Fergusson Road, Central Coast, California

I drove Naciemento-Fergusson Road, the pass over the top of the Santa Lucia Mountains, on Thursday. This is the view from the cloudline on the narrow, un guard-railed, heart-attack inducing road.

When the The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley *

I try so hard to be efficient and organised, yet it doesn’t always quite work out that way. Take my cunning plan to mail my luggage ahead of me in two parcels to California. This would have been a brilliant idea - if it had worked. Sure one parcel arrived, but the other has gone astray, with the tracking number telling me only that the parcel was accepted for mailing in New York ten working days ago.

This evening it was updated to say my parcel was misrouted. GAH. To put it into perspective, my sister mailed me a package from London on the same day which took just four days to arrive in San Francisco. Shame on the United States Post Office for being so outrageously USELESS.

I was in too much of a packing whirl to write a list of what I packed in each parcel, so I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up the smaller one in SF to discover my fake tan, suntan lotion, hiking sweater, all my party dresses and a couple of good books.

Unfortunately, it would appear that I had mailed everything I needed for later on in my trip in LA in the big gone astray parcel: that’s most of my bras, all my smart summer shoes (including my YSL heels), another pair of jeans, a huge bottle of Frederic Fekkai conditioner, my stone leather Janet Collin handbag, evening bags, my pearl necklaces & the rest of my books. It’s been like playing bloody Kim's Game trying to remember what’s in there.

I’m presuming that the parcel will arrive in San Francisco eventually and, as I intend to drive back up there in a few weeks, it is not the end of the world to be without it all right now.

However, I do have a couple of very smart dinners & lunches in LA the week after next and I have just one pair of shoes that aren’t these, moccasins, flip flops or hiking boots. I am VERY loathe to spend real money on new shoes when I already have more lovely shoes than a girl has any right to own, and am on a shopping moratorium, so I had a quick squint at the Payless website and came up with these two super-cheap options.

To wear with this dress, I thought these would work ($12.99!!!!):



And to wear with my navy blue cotton short shorts, these espadrilles ($22.99):

What do you think internets?

* The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

From: Robert Burns, To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough

Picture of the day: Hearst Castle fountain

Where does the time go?

So the Sunday evening date was, well, easy. Like having a drink with a friend. Relaxed, funny. Interesting guy. I can see I run the risk of being too laid back about dating: I should be worrying about more than my shoe choice for the evening ahead. A healthy dose of trepidation/ anticipation is necessary to keep me on my toes, I think. Tomorrow I have a dinner date (with the charming guy from last week) in the West Village, although I’m starting to wonder from where I will carve out the time.

Suddenly we are half way through March, I leave for LAX in exactly two weeks and there is so much for me to do that my head is spinning. I think I’m going to have to go cold turkey from Twitter & Bloglines for a few days if I am to have any hope of getting up to speed.

I have to burrow through my storage container for my summer clothes to sort & wash, finish a draft of the first four chapters of my novel, lose ten lbs, get a mani/pedi, earn some money, and tie up all my writing commissions for California. (No, I’m not just lotos eating for a month on the West Coast, I’ll be wearing my journalist’s hat for a fair part of the trip. Need any stories from CA? I'm your gal. Email me!)

I have at least booked a one way flight to Los Angeles, ($128!), and reserved a car for an initial month. My itinerary is both set & fluid enough for me to feel relaxed about my plans out there. I have a few chunks of time with no plans or places to stay, but I can’t get that over-excited about it: things always work out, and there is so much to explore. I keep pulling up maps of California & Nevada on my laptop and gloating to myself. Death Valley! Joshua Tree! Canyons! The Getty Center! Redwoods! Hot springs! Frank Gehry!

I am seriously considering extending my trip to spend the first fortnight of May in Los Angeles and have been scanning Craigslist for a suitable sublet/house sitting gig/god knows what. It’s tricky tho when I have only the broadest brush stroke sense of LA’s geography. Still, I guess I’ll have more of an idea once I get there and if the worst comes to the worst, there’s a sofabed with my name on it in the house of one of my best friends from school. (I know I could start harassing friends of friends to put me up but, even after two years in Manhattan, I am way, way too English to go down that route.)

California Dreaming. part two

It’s now three weeks until I depart for California. I already seem to have planned out the whole of April there quite successfully, and am wondering about extending the trip through May now too.

This much I know: I intend to fly into LAX, spend just one night in the city before driving on up the PCH (the coastal route) to San Francisco, stopping for the night en route twice, certainly in Big Sur (I want to see a redwood forest) and not sure where else. I don’t particularly want to do this on my own, but neither do I have a problem with driving alone or being alone, so shall just ensure a well-stocked iPod is on hand to keep me company.

Then it’s glad rags time in San Francisco with the ravishing L for two nights, followed by a meet with an old friend from London who is also an ex too. And with whom I hung out in SF when I worked on a paper there one summer during my University years. It’s a complete coincidence that he ended up back in SF, but it’s the reason why I haven’t seen him for maybe ten years. Anyway, there’s no putative romance there – he’s now married with two children but I shall be curious to see if DS (ex- techno head/Drum Club aficionado/stoner) has mellowed into the Californian version of Suburban Dad.

Then I think I may meander up to Calistoga to check out the mud baths & hot springs, followed by a leisurely drive back down to LA along the edges of Yosemite, depending on snow clearance. JK then arrives for a week of play along the coast. We will start off at her brother’s holiday house on Venice Beach, and then we are thinking beaches, hiking, and spas and, um, well, me anyway, is thinking Disneyland. I’ve always fancied a pair of mouse ears.

Then we are driving out to Palm Springs for Coachella, although we are toying with the idea of leaving a few days early to overshoot PS and visit Joshua Tree National Park first. Then it’s back to NYC for JK, and I shall go find E who is fortuitously flying into LA from her London mag job for a rare holiday about the same time. Bliss. I cannot wait to see her, even if we only manage it once.

Of course, these plans are all completely up in the air right now. There’s a couple of things I’m waiting on in NYC so I can’t book my flight out, JK hasn’t got her vacation signed off, LW is thinking about joining us from London & Tales Near the Runway is shooting in the middle of nowhere so can’t confirm plans for Coachella quite yet but fingers crossed.

I haven’t had a holiday since LW & I went to Lollapalooza in Chicago summer 07, & Manhattan is starting to feel like Narnia in the days of the White Witch.

No fun and an endless winter.

Lollapalooza round up

Lollapalooza was a great experience: to be at a festival in the heart of a city rather than the rolling English countryside felt other-wordly. Nice too to be in a bed each night than my battered old festival tent.

Alhough reporting on a festival isn't the most arduous assignment, I even managed to do some unexpected 'work'* at the rather fabulous Lollapalooza artists & performers CKIN2U relaxation & gifting suites at The Hard Rock Hotel. We left laden down with Skullcandy headphones, the delicious-smelling entire CK fragrance range, Calvin knickers & sunglasses, and even new super comfy plimsolls from PF-Flyers, and certainly refreshed by the vodka bar. We spent Saturday night at the private CKIN2U Blender Sessions back there, where I asked the on-site tattoist to touch up my tattoo. He declined - I think I may have been a bit tipsy by then.



As far as the Festival itself was concerned, rather than the being given free stuff bit, dancing like a fool at Daft Punk as the light came down, and the skyscrapers lit up was one of those transcendental experiences. Watching the Daft Punk pair, dressed in their traditional black leather jumpsuits (designed by Hedi Slimane no less) & robotic, LED enhanced helmets, perched on top of a pyramid on the main stage, and illuminated by a staggering light show, I did wonder about the urban myth - started on Popbitch –that Homem-Christo & Bangalter pre-programme everything, hire two guys to wear their robot outfits on stage, and bugger off elsewhere). Still, hearing brilliant mixes of Around The World & One More Time and giggling as they incorporated Stardust’s ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ into their closing mix, whilst we jumped around like Mexican beans in that setting in a huge crowd, it didn’t matter who might have been under those helmets.

We loved & danced to like fools: The Rapture (to get a crowd to dance in the 95F midday sun to your rocking tunes is an amazing feat); The Fratellis, Daft Punk, Electric Six,

We loved and listened to from a prone position (too too hot, too hungover) Kings of Leon, Amy Winehouse, The Cribs (“ We’re from Wakefield everybody”), Satellite Party, Rodrigo y Gabriela, LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A

Disappointments: CSS cancelled at the last minute, delayed at JFK. Modest Mouse, Muse, Snow Patrol (hardly a surprise there), Blonde Redheads, Sparklehorse.

*Meeting the US PRs for the brands I often write about - not often one gets to mix work & play in such pleasant surroundings.

Going loop la loop at Lollapalooza

A grown up rock festival held in a huge city park ringed by skyscrapers, where bunny rabbits occasionally hop over your ankles, is a wholly new experience to an English festival journalist, who has been more used to greeting each festival day by crawling out of a sauna-like tent to queue at a standpipe to brush her teeth, than by popping into Starbucks for a double espresso on her way to catch the subway to the festival.

I'm loathe to describe Lollapallooza as a festival, in the sense that the English would use it. The nearest English equivalent is a three day Party in the Park but with rockers rather than boy bands. When you take the need to camp out of the equation, it means attendees must either live in the vicinity or have the wherewithal to pay for accomodation. This immediately weeds out the more impoverised, and often more amusing & interesting attendees.

There is none of the sense of anarchy that underlies English, and some US festivals. No grown men dressed as pixies, no fairy outfits, no hippies, no dogs on strings. I've seen just two people with dreads. And barely a soul is smoking, discernably drunk or chasing imaginary friends. There is also no mud, a very pleasant change from Glastonbury.

Lollapalooza is about as alternative as a Buckingham Palace garden party. I'm writing this in the AT & T emblazoned aircon open access tent which is full of dozens of laptops with internet access, cell charging stations, Playstations, luxe sofas and plasmas showing sports and live feeds from the main stage. Treating the plebes like VIPs is a remarkably clever way to get your brand across to your target audience.

Most importantly, the music booking & scheduling is intelligent: a clever mix of the good, the bad, the new, the old and the evergreen. It is staggeringly hot though and dancing in the midday sun at The Fratellis was an (enjoyable) effort. We have spent rather a large part the following sets lying under various trees tapping our fingers & toes. Stand outs so far: MIA, The Rapture, & Electric Six. Pottering off to LCD Soundsystem & Daft Punk now. Then I shall be doing collapsing.