Picture of the day: Shadow portrait

LLG's shadow at golden hour at the Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles

Arriving home in London

As I swing open the iron gate to my sister's house in London, I can hear the thud of something being repeatedly hurled against the inside of the front door. As it opens, a small blur of brown fur races down the path and barrels into my legs, trying to jump up to say hello. Poor Posetta Baddog. As her legs are just inches high, she can only reach up to my knees at full stretch.

Thing is, I know better than to pick her up and, sure enough within seconds, she has reverted to welcome pose no.2: lying on her back like a little wriggling, squishy hedgehog, whilst emitting fountains of wee like a oil geyser in full flood. Apparently this is a typical dachshund move when over-excited, so I take it in the spirit in which it is meant, and gingerly pick past her to hug my sister.

Ten minutes later, I open my two cases to retrieve my sister's presents, which is cue for dachsie welcome ritual no,3. She jumps straight in looking for items of interest. She isn't hunting for specific dog presents; anything could catch her eye.

Today she decides that a brown paper bag from Monterey Aquarium containing a present for Belgian Waffling is the most exciting thing she has ever seen and promptly retires to her bed where she destroys it forthwith. Fortunately she fails to notice the present within. So naughty and, I am afraid, so indulged.


As I write this, she is lying next to me, tummy & paws in the air, making the most fearful grunting, snoring noises. It's good to be home.


(Please excuse dark pic: all the lights are off & if I get up she will wake up.)

ch ch changes (Still dont know what I was waiting for)

Ah London. I am feeling like as though my personality has been wrought in two. On one hand there is the new, active, (fake) tanned California LLG who wakes at 730am and promptly hikes up a canyon wall. On t’other there is the London LLG, who eschews all forms of exercise, sleeps like a baby dormouse in geraniums red till 11am, and kept her hiking boots at the back of the garage, where they remained, unworn & mouldering, for ten years.

I’m looking at said hiking boots as I type. They are glowering at me, daring me to pack them in my London bound case, rather than in the box that is being mailed to New York today to await my return in three weeks. Have I changed so much that I would actually seek out exercise in England that didn’t involve more than a gentle stroll & spot of advanced ball throwing (with plastic ball thrower)on the Heath with Posetta Baddog?

After last year’s mental & physical insanity launching & running the style & fashion department on a huge American magazine, I spent the first three months of this year feeling rather bathetic & directionless. And then I decided to hop it to Los Angeles for a change of scenery. In turn making that decision has set in train a new direction for me, and crystallised my plans for the future.

I’ve become more focused, with a sense of purpose that has been sadly lacking up until now. (I’ve always gone with the wind, taking jobs that have been offered to me, rather than seeking out opportunities.) This time, I know what I want to do, without anyone else prodding me and I am extremely excited. Everything seems to be falling into place, and I have meetings coming out of my ears over the next three weeks in England.

It would seem that just 46 days in California has effected more of a change in me than just working out that I like to run around mountains.

The post where I am made bereft by giving up my car

It's hard to compute that today is my last full day in California. I fly tomorrow to London for three weeks, then head back back home to Manhattan. I've been away for 48 days now.

Apart from all the obvious things (climate, people, environment), I'm going to miss my rental car. After two years of car-free living in New York, it's been odd relying on a car to get me around. And, because I've been on the road continually, I've pretty much been living out the back of it too.

Although I've been trying to clean it out for the past week, it's still full of junk. SPF50 in the driver door for those searing traffic jams when you feel as though your arms might fry, emergency snacks, endless bottles of water, tangled cables & their gadgets to make long distance driving bearable (iPod, GPS), guidebooks & flyers, spare high heels (I'm a fashion editor, after all), sunhats, hiking gear, swimming stuff, lots of sand, and just endless crud.

After my first rental disaster - the car engine blew up, stranding me in the middle of nowhere - this Toyota Corolla arrived to replace the lesser Chevy Aveo I had booked. Apart from losing a day's work and having to spend a night in in San Simeon, I figure the upgrade was worthwhile. I've now driven over 3500miles since I arrived at LAX on 31st March and it's been a pleasure.
>This was taken on the mountain pass between Big Sur and Hunter Liggett Army Base. (Terrifying.)

Of course, with all this relentless driving through terrain ranging from desert (Coachella & Palm Springs) to muddy hills (Marin Headlands), the car was staggeringly filthy, with little handprints all over it. I really could care less, but I was starting to get dirty from it, and LA with its bizarre plethora of carwashes (ever heard of the drought people?) makes you feel pretty self conscious in a dirty vehicle. So, when I spotted this carwash in Cambria on my way back down south from San Francisco, I couldn't resist.

Of course, how could I predict that I would get stuck in the bloody thing and have to be rescued by the guffawing manager?

My first Los Angeles earthquake

Of all the things that might happen to me out here in California, I figured an earthquake was the least likely. It seems I was wrong. Lying on my bed, updating my blog, I suddenly realised that the trembling I could feel wasn’t the band practicing below, but the start of a proper earthquake.

The house rocked to its foundations, and the blinds and furniture rattled away. Nothing broke or fell, and it was over before I had time to realise I had no idea what I should do in an earthquake if caught on the second floor of a huge old wooden house.

If I had been in London, my first thought would have been ‘bomb’, having lived through the IRA reign of terror, and been caught up in both the Camden & the more recent July 7th bombings, but here an earthquake seemed the obvious cause. Twitter soon informed me, through my friends here in LA, and The LA Times’ excellent news feed, that it registered 4.7 on the Richter Scale.

Lucy Jones, seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, has just been quoted in The LA Times Online as saying, “Nothing about the quake or its aftershocks looked unusual, she said.”It's a real garden-variety California earthquake so far."

That’s put me in my place.

San Francisco: Ferry Building Farmers Market

After exploring the interior of the Ferry Building, and drooling over the independent producers' stores, I couldn't resist staying on another day so that I could visit the Saturday Farmer's Market. I loved the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, but this was in a different league. Such a breadth of amazing - cheap - fruit & veg from local suppliers, much of it organic. Below are yellow chard & fennel, white peaches, artichokes, scallions and organic heirloom tomatoes. I bought a bag of the perfect white peaches which dribbled sweet juice down my chin as I bit into them.

May I STRONGLY suggest that you never EVER use UPS?

I ordered an expedited overnight delivery from my efficient long term contact lens supplier. Somewhere along the way the address was garbled. Maybe my fault. I’m not sure. But that's not the issue here.

I checked the tracking number this am. Apparently UPS tried to deliver on Friday (although I was told it wldn't arrive on Monday & no one was here) and cldn’t find the address. Fair enough. This happens. But no one got in touch with me from UPS, although they have my cell phone. And, hilariously, the tracking info reads “we will try to contact you/send a postcard’. What? A postcard to the wrong address?

I called UPS. It’s midday on a Sunday. Oh no we can’t get it out to you until Tuesday now. (Even tho they got it overnight from Canada last week. AND it's supposed to be an Expedited Overnight Delivery). Okay: I fly to London on Tuesday so I’ll just swing by the collection office to get it on Monday.

NOT SO FAST LLG. In the interim, the F&&KING morons at UPS have sent my parcel FROM LA to a collection office in Havasu City. For those of you who don’t live in ARIZONA, that’s five hours from LA.

I find this hard to believe. I do my best to talk some sense to the robot on the other end. But he's not having any of it. Exasperated beyond measure, I lose patience in the end. There may be some 'phone slamming.

Apparently, they can get a parcel from Canada to LA in under 24 hrs, but it appears to be beyond their capabilities to get it a five hour journey in under 48hrs.

I don’t know what is more ludicrous: the environmental waste or the sheer inefficiency of their system.

ADDENDUM: A charming customer services rep from the contacts company gets on the phone to UPS for me whilst I hold. Within five minutes she manages to apply telephonic truth serum to the morons at UPS and discovers that my contacts are not in Havasu City. They are, as logic wld dictate, in LA. I can pick them up tomorrow.

Which makes their 'no delivery until Tuesday' statement even more risible. Apparently UPS are incapable of sending a .6lb parcel a 9 mile & 14minute journey in under 48 hrs.

Dear readers: Please may I recommend FEDEX or DHL for your future shipping needs?

California eating & drinking

In my parallel life eating in fabulous restaurants is part and parcel of what I do but, on the road on my own for most of my time in California, eating in the kind of places you read about in glossy mags really hasn’t been part of my game plan.

Whilst I haven’t been screeching in on two wheels to the IHOP parking lot, lining up at the Jack in the Box drive-thru or jonesing for a Denny’s breakfast, I have eaten a lot of fabulous sandwiches (hello Sebastian’s), eaten lip smacking burritos in way too many Mexican hole in the walls, and scarfed up burgers & fries and waffles & ice cream at the counter in far more diners than I can count.

There’s just something immensely comfortingly and addictively delicious about everyday American food and I can’t get enough of it. (Neither, it would seem, can a lot of America’s generously proportioned population.)

That’s not to say I’ve completely ignored the over-hyped realm of expense account restaurants. I’ve had supper at Koi (excellent food, suburban crowd), lunch at The Ivy (chopped salad that resembled grass clippings) and excellent wine with okay food at The Polo Lounge, (if one ignored the stale bread on the table).

But the two loveliest meals I’ve eaten here in Los Angeles have been at opposite ends of the culinary realm, the first in a private home, the second at a hotel, with each pairing ingredients in wonderful ways. The first was at my friend Miss Whistle’s home high up in Laurel Canyon.

Between her & her husband they cooked up a stunning plateful of food with two particular dishes that had me wondering if anyone would notice if I surreptitiously wiped my plate with a grubby finger: a salad with frisée, pine nuts and little cubes of partly caramelised bright orange squash which looked alluring and tasted better, and a texturally brilliant creamy gratin of cauliflower and fennel, with classic gratineed crunchy cheese above, and fennel fronds lurking below.

The second was the wine & cheese pairing prelude to an excellent tasting menu eaten at the Hotel Bel-Air. Executive Chef Dan Olsen has an immaculate palate and, whilst the grande bouffe at the Chef’s table with its view of the busy kitchen was scrumptious, it was his small plates that we ate on the pretty flower bedecked terrace, before waddling wine-dazed into the private dining room that have remained firmly stuck in my mind.

The Hotel Bel-Air's charming and enthusiastic wine director Emmanuel Faure really pulled out the stops for us and, as this is a blog and not a newspaper, I'm indulging myself by reproducing the menu below:

Bermuda Triangle (Cypress Grove, CA. Ash covered goat, soft)
Morel mushroom & pickled onion salad
Peter Michael L’Apres Midi Sauvignon Blanc 2003

Brillat Savarin (Normandy. Triple crème, cow)
Black mission fig sandwich
Moraga Vineyard 2002

San Andreas (Bellwether Farms, CA. Raw sheep’s milk, hard)
Marcona almond brittle & black olive tapenade
Tyler Vineyard ‘Dierberg Vineyard’ Santa Maria Valley 2006

Crater Lake Blue (Rogue Creamery, Oregon. Cow)
Fruit & nut crisp and port gelee
Ojai Vineyard Botrytis Chardonnay 2006

The indulgent smooth creaminess of the Brillat Savarin against crispy, buttery toast, the sweet stickiness of the reduced figs and the hit of the complex but smooth red was absolutely the most inspired combination I’ve swallowed this year. It actually stopped me talking for a full minute. And, even tho I knew a gargantuan supper was coming, I cldn’t stop shooting lustful glances at everyone else’s plates. I could have eaten this for breakfast, lunch & supper.

As for the wine, both reds, (the Moraga Vineyard 2002 & the Tyler Vineyard ‘Dierberg Vineyard’ Santa Maria Valley 2006) were chock full of fruit & alcohol but didn’t punch out our taste buds as so many high alcohol Californian reds do these days.

The Tyler Vineyard is a single varietal – a pinot noir, with lots of raspberry and rich depth, but the standout was the house blend from the pocket sized Moraga estate in Bel-Air itself, making it truly local. They produce just one glorious red, a Bordeaux style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with a small amount of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. The 02 has a long finish, and a wonderful balanced complexity with lots of lovely blackcurrant. It made properly excellent drinking.

I hadn’t realised that the Californian climate could produce botrytised wines, and the Ojai Chardonnay 06 was from a production of just two barrels. Sweet & syrupy with pineapple but with a balance of minerality, it was a revelation.

And now, after being head down in the Californian food & wine trough for forty-nine days, I am preparing to fly to England from LAX on Tuesday. I have a list of food to eat in London, from breakfast at The Wolseley and Vietnamese on Kingsland Road through to penne al'arrabiata at the Italian café on Hampstead Heath and an enormous Indian takeaway from, well, anywhere.

But I think what I really need is a large green salad.

A fashion post. Affordable elegance: Lace inspired necklaces

Lookity look look look! A fashion post! I am more than aware that I keep being given these wonderful fashion blogging & Twitter accolades in the national press but can’t remember the last time I actually posted something properly fashion. (And, no, I do not count my blog on The Met’s Costume Institute Gala as a fashion post. That’s anthropological).

Although the AW08/09 collections were full of darkly gothic lace (hello Prada), and some wld argue that that that moment is past, at my age I am firmly of the belief that personal style is what counts, not slavish adherence to trends posited by the likes of, well, me, in the fashion press.

So I present to you two necklaces that I rather fervently long to be wearing.



Batucada's three Paris-based designers Otalia Noël, Caroline Homery and Emilie Doizy have come up with a collection of silky feeling, waterproof eco-plastic jewellery that doesn't just sit on the surface of the body, but actually adapts to its contours, remembering them for a perfect fit. You can even wash the pieces with mild soap and water. The stand out piece is The Baroco Collar Necklace (above). Best of all, it's just £20 from the fabulous ethical jewellery retailer Ella Georgia Jewellery (I shouldn't send you there in a recession - the site is packed with wonderful pieces).



>Altho it does rather require a bra free chest, falling as it does just south of the breasts, this deep green, opera-length, silk cotton lace bib necklace (above) from designer Malin Nyman-Smallcombe, is utterly desirable. It's $130 from A+R in Los Angeles, who have an excellent online store here.

Saturday. San Francisco: Burnt chin

I stayed in San Francisco last week and, on Friday night, as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge after a day road trip to Calistoga, realised I had forgotten to book anywhere to stay that night. (All this living out of the back of my car is addling my already sun atrophied brain.)

It was too late to call any of my friends to beg a bed, every motel, hostel and B&B was fully booked and I was starting to contemplate shaking my sleeping bag out on the back seat of the car when my last call hit pay dirt: the Green Tortoise Backpacker's Hostel in North Beach had one bed left in a mixed dorm.

Not exactly ideal: in my experience ALL men snore and late bookers always get a top bunk, which means having to wear leggings in bed to avoid knicker flashing the guys in the bottom bunks when climbing the ladder.

Added to which parking in SF is a bitch, and North Beach (where I lived fifteen years ago) parking is just about the worst of all at a weekend. But someone loves me, because I found a free space (as opposed to a $30 overnight garage one), and the Hostel had jigged things around and found me a female-only dorm.

Next morning, I was curling my hair at the dorm basin (just because I was staying in a backpackers hostel didn’t mean I had to look like I did when I backpacked aged 20) when a fellow guest started chatting about NYC. Soon I was enthusiastically recommending galleries & restaurants. When I talk I wave my hands. A lot. Obviously this is not ideal with a hot curling iron in hand.

Within seconds I had managed to brand my chin. And curse EXTREMELY loudly. And explain that F**K wasn’t the name of a hot new NY bar. Christ, it hurt. A huge blister formed which wept and peeled all day. Attractive. And now I have a lovely burn mark right on my chin which I’m worried will get infected.

I have history in this arena, as lil’sis reminded me just this morning. (Parents: you can stop reading now.) A couple of years ago I got terrible stubble rash on my chin, and then went swimming next day in Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond. For the uninitiated, this is basically a duck pond masquerading as an open air swimming pool.

My chin was still very painful a week later when I lost my voice just before a live radio broadcast and rushed to my GP surgery in a panic for some prescription throat stuff. Elna our wonderful nurse looked at me in her lovely gentle way and remarked that I was obviously there to get antibiotics for the (huge weeping) sore on my chin. I hadn’t realised that I could get an infection from swimming. I am an idiot.


Me and my sore chin on the (very windy) pier at San Simeon harbour, Central Coast, California on Sunday

Picture of the day: Notice at Sebastian's, San Simeon

The reason I've been a little distracted of late

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged for a few days. I had a writing project to finish which took up what was left on Saturday after I had driven from San Francisco to Cambria (about five hrs on the PCH,) via Monterey where I met up with MTFF and her adorable infants for a couple of hours of lovely chat and frolics on the sand. Sunday was basically a drive back to LA, yesterday I shopped & cooked all day for my hosts and today I have been sick (not related to my cooking, I hasten to add).

But, really, the main reason is that I am feeling emotionally drained & battle weary. My parents finally meet in the county court tomorrow for the opening salvos in their increasingly bitter divorce case.

It’s been nine months since my mother kicked my father out – on the day of their 40th wedding anniversary - after having finally been put in an untenable situation, partly engendered by his grasping slapper of a mistress who telephoned my father very early in the morning knowing he would be with my mother. (Whatever the rights & wrongs of their situation, lil’sis & I have no time for her appalling behavior, the very least of which includes going to the family home and raking through my mother’s possessions whilst she was out of the country.)

Lil’sis and I feel rather like Dr Doolitle’s Pushmepullyous. Each parent feels they have right on their side. Each has some valid points. There’s been some outrageous behavior on both sides. Each considers the other unstable. And so it continues. I wish I didn't know any of this, but we’ve never been a family who held back in its opinions, and therefore there is little in which lil’sis & I haven't been involved, but this blog isn’t the place to argue one side or the other.

We love both our parents very much. We want them to be happy. And that happiness, it seems quite clear, does not, has not & will not come from their remaining married to each other. Neither of them are easy; neither, I suspect, are we. Caught squarely in the middle of their battle, it feels as though our heads are swivelling on our necks just trying to maintain some sense of a status quo. Lil’sis isn’t well at all, I’m thousands of miles away. I miss all three of them. It’s far from ideal.

Ferry Market Building, San Francisco

Whenever I mentioned I was headed up to San Francisco, I'd receive a tweet or an email entreating me to please visit the Ferry Building. A spot of Googling revealed it to be SF's food mecca, a restored mercantile marine building which, until the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were completed in the 30s, was the second busiest transit terminal in the world.



In 2004 it was restored & reopened with a new ferry terminal and an indoor arena for some extraordinary food stores. There's a bi-weekly Farmer's market too and SF's famous Vietnamese restaurant The Slanted Door. Probably most famous is the wonderful Cowgirl Creamery who, whilst they sell artisan & organic European cheeses, have made it their raison d'etre to stock local cheese, including their own stellar organic cheese made just up the coast at Point Reyes Station. There are also organic grocery stores selling everything from oranges,



to ravishing organic flowers.



Tales Near the Runway begged via Twitter for a Fedex care package from:



Whose bread had me drooling as I photographed it.



I was also beguiled by:



who use California olives to make their delicious oil blends.



Given that I would happily eat mushrooms for every meal, my absolute favourite store by a country mile was Far West Funghi.



I've never seen mushrooms that look like this:



And I couldn't resist buying a small box of samphire (UK) or sea beans as it is apparently called in America.





But I suspect that both my father and my friends at We Are Dinosaurs would hotfoot it straight to:


For their justly famous hams, salami & charcuterie:



The Ferry Building Marketplace info can be found here

Back to London I go

I’m flying back to London in two weeks! Only for a few weeks, mind: I have found a perfect BA flight LAX-LHR-JFK for me to take, there are some people I need to see for work, and my family is in meltdown. Again. My parent’s divorce is one long war of attrition that seems to have been dragging on for years but, apparently, it’s only been nine months.

I am bereft at the thought of leaving California. Completely smitten, I am looking into a move to the West Coast in the autumn. However, I’ve got some fun things planned in England too: I’ll be cooking a picnic & driving down to the wilds of Dulwich with my sister & the dog to meet Matilda, my cousin’s new baby; I have a riotous lunch booked with some of my blog kindred spirits at Bocca di Lupo; Miss P and a few bosom friends are coming dancing at Guilty Pleasures on May 30th; there will also be prodding of godchildren, advanced dog walking and drinks with various friends at Shoreditch House.

And, for one glorious night, Muv and I are sticking two fingers up at the quotidian grind and booking ourselves into The Halkin in Belgravia for the evening, where we will work our way through the tasting menu at David Thompson’s Michelin starred Thai restaurant Nahm, (conveniently situated in the hotel). I do love The Halkin. One of London’s most elegant & discreet hotels.

Apart from that, I will be whippet-sitting and on attic clearing duty in the beautiful South Northamptonshire countryside. I did good at Christmas, but I have a way to go before I get done with the trunks of clothes I have stashed away up there.

(My London to-do list from this time last year)

Art lovers at San Francisco's MoMA

Toxic commentators

I woke this morning to find a particularly toxic comment on the blog. I don’t get that many & usually I just hit reject as they are always from our dear friend Anonymous. I figure why give them the oxygen if they don’t have the balls to leave their vitriol attached to an actual identity?

But this comment was hilarious. According to my new un-friend this blog comes straight from the realm of my imagination. An imagination, apparently, that aspires to a particular fantasy lifestyle it could never achieve as an ‘unemployed hack’.

I didn't really want to respond, but it occurred to me that other people might be laboring under the misapprehension that this blog is fiction. So this seems a good point at which to make it clear to you all, for the record, that this blog, which started out as my letters home to England, is a work of non-fiction in its entirety.

And that’s quite apart from the fact that I am far too lazy to invent & document an entire life. That’s for novel writing, not for a blog. Everything about which I write I have done. But, equally, I am no Dooce. Not everything I have done I write about: my sex life, my family’s problems, a few well-known friends, some private events all remain off record.

This also seems the place to make it clear that whilst I have been lucky enough to do some amazing things in my private life, as a style writer & editor in the real world for some ten years or more, I do get offered complimentary experiences, some of which I write about on here. But I’d like to make it clear that I use the same parameters on the blog that I do in real life: if I'm comped & I like it, well & good, but if I'm comped & I don’t, then expect me to say so.

Anonymous also picks up on a typo and uses it to try to crucify me (&, by extension, the entire fashion industry). May I point out that this is a blog? I don’t have the benefit of sub-editors or production people to hone my copy for me. I type straight onto the screen, often late at night; spelling mistakes & errors happen occasionally. And, please, readers, I absolutely want to be told (politely) when I make them, so that I can correct them immediately.

All I have left to say to Anonymous is that aspiring to be ‘a genuinely cool cruiser’ is so far from my list of ambitions as to be risible. Off you go Anonymous and cruise elsewhere. You are not wanted on here. (Or anywhere else I suspect.)


The comment below: (with its own typing errors faithfully recorded)

ah dear Liberty Girl,
if only it were all true and not the fantasy of an unemployed hack. A genuinely cool cruiser would KNOW that C. Still is spelled with a Y (Clyfford)- but then again, standards are pretty low in the fashion business.
keep on dreamin' > London Spy


Me in the Ritz Carlton San Francisco bathroom in case anyone doubts I was there!

Picture of the day: Monterey Aquarium: jelly fish exhibit

Tuesday: Back in Marin, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge

Am feeling rather distraught at having to leave my suite at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco. However wonderful a city, there’s something very beguiling about holing up in a fabulous hotel and just letting the cocooning sensation wash over everything. I’m afraid I was terribly self-indulgent during my stay: I did lots of writing & reading in bed, nestled in fluffy pillows, with a Ritz verbena candle burning and a plate of cookies on hand to aid the mental processes.

I had an added bonus when my beloved GG rang yesterday morning to announce his unexpected but imminent arrival in the city from New York for meetings today. The Ritz is his husband’s favourite SF hotel so, in Yo-Yo's honour, he hiked up to Nob Hill from his work-mandated Marriot (ha!) and we sat until 1am in the Ritz’s rather glamorous Lobby Bar sipping 10yr Glenmorangie (me), perfect Manhattans (GG) and being extremely evil.

I probably wouldn’t have felt quite so ropey today if I hadn’t been awaiting his arrival in the Club Lounge working my way through half a bottle of very acceptable Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut NV. There seemed only one sensible way to deal with my case of hotel & hangover induced blues: food.

I hopped it to an unidentifiable Vietnamese in SoMa and ordered a plate of fried tofu, cabbage & noodles which I drenched in Srichaha chili sauce:


Feeling fully restored by tea & noodles, I took myself off to the Ferry Building, currently the epicentre of San Francisco's local food movement, to graze on cheese, olive oil & sweet things. (Post tk). Then it was off to SF's MoMA for a squint at the Clyfford Still room and a chuckle at the emperor's new clothes (from the newer section) in the permanent collection.

I'm now back in Marin for the night, staying here in Fort Barry out in the wilds of the Headlands, where the only neighbours are coyotes, racoons and migrating wild turkeys which have already bird strike-ed on my car. (That'll teach me to park under their tree.)


It’s only a few miles, & twenty minutes from San Francisco itself, yet surrounded by bright green rolling hills, upon which flighty deer graze, it’s hard to compute that we could be so close to an enormous city.

Fashion at The Costume Institute Gala at The Met 2009

I am trying to get that laid back California charm to rub off on me. Be a gentler, nicer, calmer person. But then I had two glasses of delicious Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut NV fizz in the Club drawing room at the Ritz Carlton, had a quick peek at the first images from the Met Costume Institute Gala on WWD, and my inner fashion savage screamed that she wanted to come out to play.

I blame Kate Moss. Hers was the first picture I saw and all I cld think was: sweet mother of God, it's Granny. I've written about her before:she loved her bronzer, kaftans, platforms & turbans well into her seventies. Looked JUST like Kate did last night. Uncanny.

I was a good girl after the Golden Globes. I turned down all offers to appear on radio to dissect (bitch about) the fashion, satisfying myself with a look at the machinations & deal-making behind the scenes on the blog.

Because, honestly, I don't see the point in criticising a celeb for their red carpet apparel when what they wear so rarely has anything to do with their personal taste. At the mercy of the designers who (pay to) dress them, their publicists who want coverage no matter what, and their entourages who are just yes-men (you look FIERCE dahling), you can't blame the star for being so befuddled that they end up thinking that this was a good idea:


Although part of me thinks at least Leighton is having fun. And she has the rest of her life to wear a chiffon gee-own. Unlike Liz Hurley who really needs to think long and hard about putting the prom dress look into perma-storage. (I feel I can take a pop at Liz whose entire life is about getting commented on. But I do draw the line of running a photo of her.)

I did love Liv Tyler & Kate Bosworth for rocking 1940's glamour in such a sophisticated, yet fashion forward way, and the fab, healthy, leggy models like Gisele, Karolina & Lily for playing to the gallery and showing off their endless pins in micro mini dresses. But my two favourite looks are at different ends of the spectrum:


At least Madge owns her Louis Vuitton runway look & is clearly having a laugh. (I wld pass on the hooker boots mind you). And, frankly, I think she rocks her bunny ears. But the palm goes to Carolina Herrera. When I grow up, I want to have her elan.


Images from WWD. Click here for the whole ghastly extravaganza.

The Ritz Carlton San Francisco

I’m back in San Francisco almost exactly one month after I was last here. I’ve always loved this city and I’m contemplating moving here when my lease is up in New York in August. It’s the perfect size, the weather is a more benign version of England’s, the food & restaurants are exceptional and I have lots of splendid friends & acquaintance. The hills aren’t quite such a draw: I haven’t got used to driving at 45 degrees, although I’m certainly appreciating being perched on top of Nob Hill right now.

That’s because after a wonderful week staying with one of my oldest friends, Julian Shah-Tayler in his huge crazy house full of musicians in LA’s Koreatown, and fifteen hours of driving up the coast road (I took a very circuitous scenic route), I have retreated into the luxurious splendour of the San Francisco Ritz Carlton for two days.


And, really, there is no better place to hole up in this city of great hotels. Although the hotel is large (336 rooms), and the frontage staggeringly neo-classically impressive, it’s actually rather intimate in scale. There are no echoing bare corridors here: gently lit by sconces, the carpet sinks beneath your feet, and the staff gently whisk through, greeting you by name.

I’ve been given a delicious 900 square foot suite on the Club Floor and, consequently have not left the hotel today. There’s a dedicated drawing room for Club guests, with giant glass jars of home baked cookies (I’ve been positioned right next to it all afternoon), and complimentary snacks are served all day. With copy to file and books to read, I can’t see any reason to stick my nose outside in the rain.

And by ‘snacks’ I mean a proper breakfast, cheese & appetizers at lunchtime, full afternoon tea, hors d’oeuvres in the early evening and deserts & chocolate fondue later on. Did I mention the full bar?

The Club Floor even offers complimentary pressing so, whilst I hotfooted it down to the Fitness Center to swim, steam and Jacuzzi myself into oblivion, my crumpled silk dresses, cocktail frocks and tux were picked up and promptly returned looking pristine in hanging zipper covers.

But it’s my room that has me properly cocooned in luxe-ness. Without wishing to rub it in, I’m no stranger to the five star hotel room: I’ve reviewed more of them than I can count, from Barcelona to Miami, Bangkok to Ibiza. Not a lot impresses me any more, and in my private life I’m just as likely to bed down in a youth hostel as I am in a smart hotel. After all, it’s only a bed. And, whether or not I'm being comped, high end or low, if I don't like it, I'll tell you.

But then you stay somewhere that gets it so right that you start to wish that ginormous one bedroom suites came as standard. Although it’s not just the jaw dropping size of my current quarters that has me impressed (after all, size isn’t everything), it’s the attention to detail. I’m obsessed with this. I’ve stayed in too many hotels obviously designed by men for men, that forget we need hair conditioner, cotton wool, full length mirrors, somewhere well lit to put on make-up that isn’t the edge of a basin unit, plenty of hangers - padded & wooden, large safes for purses & laptops and more than one luggage stand. And that’s for starters.

My room has all this. And more. Much, much more. 1000 thread count Frette sheets & ten cloud like pillows on my king size bed. There’s a ring stand by the basin, a full manicure set, a glass jar of cotton wool, an alarm clock, Bulgari toiletries from after-shave to facial moisturizer, piles & piles of fluffy towels, an iPod dock, a professional make up mirror on the separate dressing table, an LCD TV in the bathroom and a marble shower big enough for… well, you get the idea.


I had a squint at the entry level rooms here, the Deluxes, and they are just as well proportioned, (4-500 sq ft) with the same attention to detail: I noted the pot plants on the desks, umbrellas, ironing boards and mini-dressing areas.


In fact I am so blissfully happy in my current quarters that I am considering nipping back upstairs to hide in the suite’s loo after I check out. Or maybe in the separate dressing room. Or perhaps behind the sofa in the living room. Or behind the vast flat screen TV in the bedroom.

LLG is a guest of the Ritz Carlton San Francisco

Photo: my bedroom

Otters! Penguins! The Monterey Aquarium

I do apologise if you've popped over here under the impression that this is a fashion blog. Because today, ladies & gentlemen, we are all about the cute-ness:


My car engine blowing up on my coastal drive up from LAX a month ago meant that I had to give up most of my trad sight-seeing plans in favour of putting pedal to metal so that I could arrive in time for dinner in San Francisco with L (and the rest). This time around I was determined to hit up the Monterey Aquarium, about 115 miles south of San Francisco.

I'm not a huge fan of co-mingling with hundreds of small, shrieking, sticky-pawed humans, so choosing Saturday morning wasn't my best move, but I'd heard tell of penguins and of sea otters and I was damned if I was going to drive on by, especially considering I could have pressed on to Santa Cruz the night before when I discovered that my Monterey hotel was over-booked & everywhere else was full. Instead I had opted to spend the night persecuted by snorers & tooth grinders in a dormitory at Monterey Youth Hostel.

Monterey Aquarium is not the huge production you get at the London or the San Francicso Aquariums: there are no sharks nosing at you from behind inch thick glass. What you get is an exhibit dedicated to the fascinating sea life of Monterey Bay and beyond, with an emphasis on education, preservation and sustainability, all within a wonderful building contained in the old dockside sardine cannery. (Think Steinbeck's Cannery Row.)

Really, with the bright colours and emphasis on interactivity & touch pools it's aimed at infants not adults, but I would have happily paid double the $27.95 entrance just to watch the sea otters frolicking for an hour or two.

Stranded as pups, without the skills to survive in the wild, they were rescued by the Aquarium’s groundbreaking Sea Otter Research and Conservation (SORAC) program, and now live in a huge tank, frisking about for the visitors. They are especially tricky to shoot, as they move through the water like greased lightning. I have one too many images like this:


Fortunately I did manage this:


I also shot some rather wobbly video especially for Emma over at Belgian Waffling who, like me, can happily spend lost hours watching YouTube footage of small furry animals. (I suggest turning the sound down unless you wish to have your eardrums pierced by the shrieks of small children.)




You can join Friends of the Sea Otters here. They do need our help: an officially endangered species, there are only about 2200 otters now found off California's central coast.