I never knew I could get so much amusement from a swimming pool

As previously mentioned the swimming pool had to be filled via Fire department tanker as Colts Neck doesn't have mains water: everyone has their own artesian well. What I didn't mention was just how much 113000 litres (30000 gallons) of waters costs. Trust me, every time Max drinks from the pool he might as well be swilling imported Evian.

I get hours of amusement out of watching Max. He is utterly fascinated by the pool. Y too for that matter. He's the only guy I know who cleans leaves off the bottom of a swimming pool in a wetsuit & snorkelling gear (including fins). (In the manner of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.) Admittedly we have yet to turn the pool heating on so it is a little bracing - but it's 92F/33C outside so the pool, unheated, isn't exactly frigid.

Don't believe me? Here's the proof. And look at Max's expression throughout.

WHAT the hell are you doing?


You're heading for me in that get up?

Yeah, right. Whatever.

Ossie Clark relaunch fails with the closure of the label today

The re-launch of Ossie Clark has been short-lived: another victim of the recession, it was announced today that the label was closing after just three collections. It appears that its commercial appeal wasn't sufficient to take the label any further during a major economic turndown.

The label was backed by one of the founders of WGSN, Marc Worth, who sold the internet fashion news service to EMAP for £140 million in 2005. (Marc continues to be linked to fashion - he sits on the board of on-line retailer Osoyou.com)

The writing may have been on the wall for the label when head designer Avsh Alom Gur left in March, with the usual spin (departing to concentrate on his eponymous label), and was replaced by Nargess Gharani, of British label Gharani Strok, whose work for the label will remain unseen.

It's not just the Ossie Clark label which has had trouble in the fashion phoenix arena: Halston & Biba's recent less than stellar relaunches all point to the lack of enthusiasm in the markets for resurrecting iconic Seventies brands.

Biba went into receivership for the second time in summer 2008, whilst prospective Halston store buyers complained bitterly about the lack of Halston DNA in the revamped collection. The reviews of Ossie Clark were equally lacklustre.

Halston have addressed the criticisms of the line by firing Marco Zanini & hiring Marios Schwab for the main line earlier this year. They have also covered their backs with the announcement of the Spring 2010 launch of the Halston Heritage collection.

It's doubtful whether a Halston level of fiscal commitment was in place to get Ossie Clark to that kind of commercial standing (Halston backers include Tamara Mellon & Harvey Weinstein), as it became increasingly obvious that Ossie Clark's name recognition outside the UK lacked the clout of Halston.

Ossie Clark attempted to get back on track with Avsh Alom Gur's final seventies redux collection for the house for Fall 09, which unfortunately proved only that this was this was not a line that should be showing on the catwalk. (The same criticism that proved fatal to the Biba re-launch.)

It seems that the Ossie Clark name will continue to live on in the closets of serious vintage collectors only.

We have a swimming pool!

So a charming fireman from the Colts Neck Fire Department trucked in the water in this tanker. FIVE TIMES. Over 113000 litres.

That pool is BIG:

Max is extremely excited.

He believes the pool is for his especial personal use, & sits by the edge staring at the water.

However, as the heating isn't on yet, and as we aren't in the middle of a steamy summer, I'm waiting to christen it. Didn't stop Y mind you:

Sick & tired

Well, I never made it to Manhattan. I have a recurrent eye disease, (Thygeson's or SPK), nothing communicable or life threatening, just inconvenient & painful, which tends to recur when I am stressed or over-tired. It has decided to flare up again, probably as a result of insomnia mixed with constant worry about writing my book.

My last bout was when I was working as a fashion editor, trying to simultaneously do my job and cover the collections single-handed, due to grievous under-staffing and a recalcitrant, obstreperous assistant. Working twenty hour days, one night I fell asleep bolt upright on my sofa, still wearing my contact lenses, within seconds of walking through the door. Next morning I felt the tell tale irritation & photo-sensitivity, and missed a day of the shows as I was processed through endless consultants at the Manhattan Eye & Ear Hospital.

A week of eyepatch wearing at the Milan collections, $600 (& that was just the insurance deductibles), and a course of corticosteroids later and I was no longer broken, just broke.

So I take this thing seriously: any hint it's returning and I'm back in my glasses, in a darkened room, artificial tears to hand. I'm hoping I've caught it in time, otherwise I reckon it's cheaper to use my airmiles to go back to England (25000 miles & $374 in taxes) to see my consultant there than it is to see an American eye doctor three times (beginning, middle & end of treatment) and get prescriptions here without medical insurance.

Nothing makes you appreciate the NHS (National Health Service) more than getting sick in America.

Introducing bags by Sara Berman for Isabella Oliver

It’s certainly true that it can be hard to find good bags at price points that don’t scream ‘investment’ or ‘you’ll be carrying this bag for the next ten years to assuage the guilt’, but I rather think that the first fruit of the collaboration between Sara Berman & Isabella Oliver may have hit that mark. In black satin & patent leather there’s a perfect bag for every need. I’m loving the Posey Clutch in Leather (nothing to do with the fact that my dog is called Posy).

Click to enlarge.

1. The Lulu Clutch in Satin $255
2. The Roxy Tote $550
3. The Posey Clutch in Leather $350
4. The Lulu Clutch in Leather $325
5.The Bonnie Weekender $675
6.The Posey Clutch in Satin $275

They aren’t available quite yet, but they can be reserved here for an August delivery.

Bonne Fête Nationale!

In honour of Bastille Day we are flying the drapeau tricolore on the mast outside the house which should froth up the neighbors nicely.

Although, given that we are tortured daily by the repetitive electronic tones of the ice cream truck, I think we should have retaliated by blasting the Marseillaise out the windows on an hourly basis.

I’m still waiting for the fireman action in the garden. The contractors have been here since 7am scooping green goo and turtles out of the swimming pool just beneath my bedroom window which has been mildly exciting, but I’m putting my money on the fire truck providing more interest.

After I’ve calmed down, I’m off to Manhattan for a couple of days. It would seem that I am unable to cope for more than a week without a blast of exhaust fumes and ready access to cupcakes. It’s only an hour on the train from here so I could just go in for meetings but where’s the fun in that?

Mainly I plan to write on the the roofdeck at Soho House in between meetings. This evening S wants me to spend an hour or so in Central Park listening to The NY Philharmonic before I hop off to an industry party at The Box to celebrate Bastille Day with lots of free Champagne.

Then for some reason closely allied to incipient insanity I agreed to take an 8am breakfast tomorrow. I figure I can just do grunting whilst they do presenting at me. Then lunch with JK in Soho, more meetings and supper with L for a dose of sorely needed English loveliness.

Two days is enough. For all my whinging I'll be glad to get back to the country.

Object of desire: 1950s chair & stool

In my past life I took a brief hiatus from fashion to edit an interiors magazine. I got to attend Salone di Mobile in Milan, ICFF in New York & 100% Design in London. I hunted down new designers at the satellite fairs, writing them & the established names up & drooling over pieces I wanted.

The habit stayed with me, but now that I have no idea where I shall live from September, it's little use getting my getting over excited about fabrics or sofas when I have nowhere now or later to put them.

Which is very annoying when I see pieces like this:

British 1950s lounge chair and stool with ebonised frame & newly upholstered fabric.
Price: £690 from Circa 20th Century

Simple pleasures

My life seems to have settled into a gentle pattern here in New Jersey. I write all day, breaking for meals. Y & I eat lunch together every day in the French fashion. That is we sit down together at a table, with salad bowl & placemats and talk, as opposed to my usual fashion which is to shove everything into a deep white bowl and retire with it to my lair to type & eat simultaneously.

Supper is similar, except we move to the dining room, with candles & napkins and, of course, wine. The downside of all this lovely civilised behaviour is that I am getting fatter not thinner. I'm not overly obsessed with my weight - I don't even own scales - but I do like to be able to fit into my clothes.

So I'm back on my regime minceur. It's quite simple: no wine with supper (which will horrify the boys), no chocolate, no bread, no tortilla chips with my guacamole, no cupcakes or ice cream. It's those little treats that make me porky.

It will help too when the swimming pool here is finished, & I can swim each day. We've been unableto use it as the liner split, & we are waiting for the men to come (tomorrow!) to fit a new one and fill the pool.

This, of course, is the part about which I am excited. The house's water supply comes from an artesian well, so the water to fill the pool is being transported in tankers from the local Fire Station. And that, I believe, means firemen. Excellent.

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)

Are you ready for your close up? Max works it

Getting carried away: A studio visit with accessories designer Sang A

Back in May, Carine Roitfeld told The Guardian (UK): "You know, I think as you get older, the snake is more chic than the leopard." She happened to be wearing a pair of Margiela python boots, but her mantra applies just as well to the delectable python bags from accessories designer Sang A.

The bags have that rare combination of immaculately well-made good looks and neat solutions, (detachable chains, deceptively & beautifully lined interiors, and well thought out clasps).

Sang A didn't start out dreaming of making bags. Far from it. With a background as a highly trained dancer, she spent her early twenties in Korea as a successful singer & actress, with three albums to her name. Although she had styled her own videos, it wasn't until she moved to New York, and signed up to study at Parsons that she moved across to the fashion industry.

(Sang A in her studio). Since the launch of her eponymous collection for Spring 06, she has specialised in bags made in both exotic skins (croc, ostrich & python) and leather, all of which are manufactured traditionally in Italy.

I've carried her bags at events:

(yup, those are my stubby fingers) and included them in editorial but never had time, until last week, to visit her studio to see the collection in its entirety.

Hidden away in a building in the heart of New York's SoHo, the studio is the accessories equivalent of a candy store:

These bags are the Jade clutches, (starting from $982 for leather, and available in alligator, python & ostrich). Big enough for more than just a $20 bill & a lipstick, they make great evening bags. As Sang A told me, "I carry around three data devices, so I always design my bags to fit these at least." They work equally well during the day for the same reason: they fit plenty of stuff, not just pared down essentials, without looking like an urban survival kit's been crammed inside.
Of course there's more to see than just enchanting evening bags. Intelligent women will appreciate the chic backpack styles (next season's big thing), which include removable exotic exterior shells so they can be worn in several different ways, which makes for a sensible return on what can be a hefty fiscal investment.

I'm inexorably drawn towards a table of her Migration Duffel (the cream & yellow Degrade bag $1895 in the foreground is from her latest collection) & Cine bags.

This is the Cine Bag in hand waxed rustic grey python. An investment piece through and through at $4749, it looks substantial, yet is unexpectedly light, as I discovered when I started getting carried away.

The detailing is perfect, from the simple magnetic clasps

to the capacious, easy to use open wide interior, with its pretty polka dot print lining (a Sang A trademark), and sensible pockets.

If these prices have you choking into your cocoa, rest assured that the entry level prices for Sang A's bags are distinctly more achievable. These delicious Python Pouch bags are $484.


and these striking card cases start at $209:

But my current lust after pieces from the collection are her series of parallelogram shaped Flash bags, especially this one in Bronze Mirror leather at $695:

Sang A is stocked in the following stores, amongst many others: Augustina in London, Vivre online and Kirna Zabete in New York. A full list of stockists can be found here and her online store is here.

One & Other: The Fourth Plinth

I can't sleep and logged onto Twitter where I saw a tweet telling me a man dressed as a dinosaur was playing swingball & crushing the Houses of Parliament on the Fourth Plinth* in Trafalgar Square.

And there was.

I checked his reason for being on the plinth:

Girlfriend told me to do it.

And his plan for whilst he was there?

I will be monstrous
I may or may not destroy London
I will see how I feel

I just can't see a man in a homemade dino costume being officially sanctioned to jump around squishing models of major landmarks in the middle of, say, DC's Capitol Hill. I'm pretty sure it would be deemed disrespectful.

God I miss England sometimes. That a man who can use his hour on the plinth to do anything he likes would chose to be a dinosaur playing swingball is so quintessentially English. I love the laconic description of his plans to destroy London. Only in Britain...

This is an art project called One & Other by Antony Gormley. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the vacant Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.

Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. If someone is selected, they can use their time on the plinth as they like.

And the winner is....

Thank you everyone who left a comment on the Kimberly Sayer Deep Cleansing French Clay Mask competition post. They all made fascinating reading and I'll be sure to cover some of your beauty suggestions and skin types in future posts.

Meanwhile, to find a winner I used a random number generator to pick comment number 13 who was Anna, who left the following comment:

"I'm always keen on a competition! I've followed your recommendations in the past - with La Roche Posay, and also C is for Carrots - and they always turn up trumps! Ah, my favourite product at the moment is my el cheapo Eucerin Q10 Night Cream - perfect for a grad student budget, and seems to do good things for my skin: calming and quite plumping too. Really enjoying the blog."

Anna - please can you email me at libertylondongirl@gmail.com with your address so that I can get it off to you next week?

Could someone please turn the heat back on?

I would just like to have it on the record that I am thoroughly pissed off with the behaviour of the Clerk of the Weather right now. By July, the temperature on the East Coast of America should be in the mid-late eighties. We should be spending our off hours lolling on the beach, or sitting propped up against trees with our laptops in the park.

Instead we are wearing wellies in Manhattan, at imminent risk of trench foot, as the heavens open and buckets of water are dumped on us hourly. This is America, not sodding Glastonbury. It's supposed to be frigid in winter and sticky & hot in the summer. This mildewed dampness was not part of the contract I signed when I moved over here. Today it is 69F. This is not an American summer as I know it.

To add insult to injury I spent the first fortnight of June in the English countryside. Every morning I looked out of my bedroom window to bright blue, cloudless skies and a heat haze over the horizon. Look: I have proof. This is the view from my room:

The heat was so pervasive that even the dogs collapsed. Exhibit one - Posetta Baddog:

And exhibit two - Maudiepops:

It rained every day for the first eleven days after I returned to Manhattan. This is just not acceptable.

The only plus point is that I can sleep at night with the sash windows flung up, and a duvet over me rather than wriggling around in a knot of sheets sweatily attempting to keep cool.

Picture of the day: Unfurling poppy in an English garden

I took this in my mother's country garden. I like the promise of this picture, that tomorrow this flower will be even more beautiful than it is today.

Today's indulgence: Cupcake Stop

As I pedalled down Fifth this morning I wasn't just keeping a look out for kamikaze taxis and suicidal pedestrians: I was searching for a large white truck which I knew was parked up somewhere near Madison Square Park.

A couple of weeks ago I'd seen a piece on the Diner's Journal blog on The New York Times website about Cupcake Stop, a new food truck prowling the mean streets of Manhattan, selling frosted cupcakes from its window.

I immediately started following its Twitter feed and started to get tweets telling me where it was parked (usually mere blocks from my apartment) and which flavours they were pushing. I was sitting at home filing copy, dreaming of frosting.

So today, when I had promised to return to Jersey with Red Velvet cupcakes for Y,

nothing was simpler than to click on Twitter, pin down the location and cycle up to the truck. $10 bought me a dozen mini cupcakes in the flavours of the day:Red Velvet (as requested), Key Lime Pie, Oreo Crumb & Chocolate Mousse

An added bonus was meeting Lev Ekster, the man behind the cupcakes who was lurking in the back of the truck and came to say hi when I mentioned finding the truck through Twitter. He immediately won me over with two free mini cupcake vouchers. Who says journalists can't be bought?

And the taste? Y cldn't get the box open quick enough. And I am presuming the frankly indecent sounds he made as he inhaled the Chocolate Mousse mini were appreciative. The crumb is incredibly moist, the icing smooth and not too sickeningly sweet. I like the little well of icing inside each cake and, in the case of the Key Lime, the green gooey stuff.

Win or Fail? We say WIN. Yet another reason not to eat those awful dry Magnolia cupcakes ever again.

Oreo Crumb Cupcake Stop cupcakes

Universal grief & the Michael Jackson memorial

When an icon dies there’s often a wrenching twist to the heart & stomach, with a realisation of our own mortality, and the passing of our youth. The icon becomes a totem for each loss one has suffered, plastered across the world’s media.

It happened with unprecedented intensity after the Princess of Wales was killed and, again, this past week after the sudden unexplained death of Michael Jackson, this seeming desperate sadness, and a recognition of universal grief. Yet.

Yet. It’s not really grief for the icon, is it? And watching the news packages of the memorial service for this complicated man last night it seemed that the audiences worldwide were luxuriating in a tempest of grief that seemed wholly shallow. The people interviewed in the street, distraught, literally renting their clothes, puffy eyed and snotty nosed. They weren’t crying for Michael. They were crying for themselves. And I’d bet good money that many of these emotional wrecks with their disproportionate reactions were exactly the same people who bayed for Jackson’s blood back at the time of the child abuse accusations.

Jackson’s music was extraordinary. For many it did change the world around them, gave them, at the beginning at least, an African American role model in a disprportionately white arts & media world. He provided a soundtrack for the lives of millions, including myself. But I don’t make the mistake of allowing my passion for his glorious music to override the fact that this was a tormented, unhappy man.

A man who spent the last years of his life shunned by the very people who have lined up to give sound bites about how much they loved him. I can’t remember who it was last night who said that Jackson gave up his childhood for me, for all of us, and I thought, no he didn’t, he gave it up for money and for fame, whether or not he was too young to make that decision.

The memorial service was in such bad taste that I could barely stand to watch. Memorial services should be hyperbolic: they are there to celebrate not to judge, but this seemed less of a celebration and more of a showcase for many of the stars who flocked to get on the Jackson bandwagon.

Stars like Usher who seemed to think it was all about them, the Rev Al Sharpton who seems to believe that Michael Jackson is a candidate for sainthood for the cause, regardless of the fact that Jackson hated his African American heritage so vehemently that he endured constant plastic surgeries and raised three children who looked nothing like him. Brooke Shields was the only person to speak of him as a real person that she knew well & loved.

But most shameful of all was that Jackson, who went to such complicated ends to ensure the privacy of his children, must surely have been turning in his grave to see his attention hungry family parading his confused, and sometimes terrified looking children in front of a global audience. It was a travesty.

Tuesday: back in Manhattan

It's only Tuesday and already I feel drained. Trying to get my Dell XPS laptop fixed has taken up most of my time over the past two days, what with the countless hours spent talking to well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual Dell Tech Support.

Without it I cannot work, and I have three stories I need to finish and file on there, and which I cannot access until the Dell technician comes to New Jersey to mend it tomorrow (fingers crossed.) At least everything on there is fully backed up to my external harddrive.

I'm also a little tired as we celebrated S's birthday a little too enthusiastically for a Monday night with a dinner for fourteen on the Roof Deck at Soho House. If I remember correctly, we were the last people left up there.

I'm writing this sitting in a corner of Soho House on their guest PC. A couple of years ago I nearly gave up my membership. I was still in London, Shoreditch House hadn't yet opened, & I was spending too much pro rata money for one drink there every couple of months.

Fast forward to New York and I can't imagine how I would get organised on these short trips into the city without having access to the changing rooms & showers in the Spa, the Drawing Room for working in between appointments, the Baggage Check for my cases during the day, and the Roof Deck for meeting friends in the evening. There's even a convenient lamppost outside for my bicycle.

Which I brought in from Jersey on the train yesterday. So simple and easy (apart from the bit where I nearly fell down the Up escalator with it at Penn Station), and makes Manhattan a much easier place to get around, especially with Mr Bloomberg's zippy new bike lines which seem to have multiplied each time I come into the city.

I've been zipping around all day on it doing showroom appointments in SoHo with designers (in particular, accessories designer Sang A who I will blog about later this week), heading to Chinatown for lunch at the Vegetarian Dim Sum House on Pell and then to Crumbs for a quick restorative cappuccino cupcake. Living in Jersey is turning me into a wide-eyed tourist all over again. It's wonderful to be reminded just how much I love this city.

The weird beauty of the Dell phone & online Tech Chat service

“Yes for sure a technician will be calling you this afternoon or Sunday morning.”
(Premium XPS Tech support Saturday 1pm approx)

Nope, he didn't.

“The parts are out of stock. It may be taking 2-3 days for the technician to receive them.”
(Premium XPS Tech support Monday 930am approx)

“I will be calling you absolutely for certain this afternoon to let you know the status”
Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 10am approx)

He never rang so I girded my loins for round three

(interim Monday 4-430pm – three failed calls to tech support as for some unexplained reason Premium (AS IN PAID FOR) tech support is being directed to customer help who redirect my call to 1) warranties 2) general tech support 3) cut me off)

"Well, as 4th July being a public holiday we were unable to send the parts to the service tech.”
(Premium XPS Tech support Monday 430pm approx)

“The parts are in stock. As we had a weekend, the parts are delayed at the warehouse”
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 500pm approx)

"The parts will be reach the technician today. He might call you tomorrow”
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 500pm approx)

"Unfortunately, the parts are not yet arrived at their location. If the parts come to their location by tomorrow morning 10: 30 AM, they will call you by 12:00 PM Noon."
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 530pm approx)

"If the parts are there, they would definitely call you tomorrow."
(Supervisor, Premium XPS Tech support Monday 545pm approx)

Nope I’ve no idea what’s going on either

Rant du jour: Dell (lack of) Customer Service

I've been stuck in the hell of Dell's Technical Support call centre for the past hour. I have a very nice man in India dealing with my increasingly irate state of mind. The only problem is that he has no authority to make any decisions off the call centre's prompt sheet.

I paid Dell large amounts of money for a three year Complete Care comprehensive warranty & service contract that included Next Day/Weekend/Night On Site Technical support.

However they seem unable to tell me why I have been waiting since Saturday afternoon for a technician to ring me to make an appointment. I've had various excuses including Independence Day and 'the parts aren't in stock', but no real answers that will lower my increasing blood pressure. The problem is more acute for me now as, in the interim, the A/C adapter which was working but not charging the battery has now died completely. I have just 1hr of power left.

It wldn't be such an enormous problem if I wasn't supposed to be going into Manhattan this morning for two days/nights. No laptop = no work. I can hardly write & file features copy on my Blackberry.

My blood pressure really started to boil when the nice man told me that it would be another 2-3 days before the parts were in stock again at the warehouse near me. This is the point where I gently explained to him that Dell sell many, many laptops each day in America, each with an A/C adapter.

An A/C adapter that is in fact on sale from Dell RIGHT NOW (For $69.99 that I cannot afford & shouldn't have to pay.) However Dell's EXPRESS retail service couldn't deliver an adapter before July 13th. YUP that's EXPRESS & JULY 13th in the same sentence.

It surely couldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility to locate a new A/C adapter somewhere in this VAST country and use the services of those extremely helpful courier companies to get an adapter to me tomorrow, thereby fulfilling the contract made when I PAID them for a Three Year Complete Care comprehensive warranty & service contract that included Next Day/Weekend/Night On Site Technical support.

I'd love someone to explain to me how if I broke a binding financial contract, I would experience unpleasant consequences, but that all that happens to Dell is FUCK ALL?

I've already missed my first train this morning with this stupid rigmarole, and am about to miss the second. GOD I AM SO ANGRY

Addendum: I just found this genius excerpt over at the Dell blogsite:

"Here's any number of studies that show that consumers trust product opinions from friends, family members and other customers more than they trust what a company says about its own products" So, please, read what I wrote above and take it into account when thinking about buying a Dell product. No electronic product is infallible and if the customer support (especially the PAID FOR customer support) isn't up to scratch, then you are better off looking elsewhere.

Kimberly Sayer Firming Botanical Serum & a reader competition!

As my skin grows older, I find that I need a serum in addition to my moisturisers to keep my skin feeling plump and healthy. I've tried plenty, with mixed results, but the one I keep coming back to is Kimberly Sayer Firming Botanical Serum.



Kimberly trained at Neal's Yard Beauty Therapy College and went on to develop her own organic & natural line, inspired by her family's use of organic fruit & vegetables as she was growing up.

Although I’m all in favour of using organic products where possible, I will always choose the product that I think works the best. In this case I don’t have to make any compromises: the serum always leaves my skin dewily hydrated and is a perfect canvas for make-up. In winter I supplement it with a night cream but this summer, so far, I haven’t needed any extra hydration bar my eye cream.

It's £52.50 from here in the UK
$75 from here in the US

In fact I'm such a big fan of Kimberly Sayer products that I am going to give away a jar of the Kimberly Sayer Deep Cleansing French Clay Mask to one of my readers. Just leave a comment below telling me your favourite skincare product of the moment. I'll use a random number generator to pick a comment on Friday and post the winner then.

(This competition is independent of Kimberly Sayer, & I am providing the mask myself.)

Good morning New Jersey

Being awake very early is one of my most favourite things. Doesn’t happen very often as I rarely fall asleep before 2am, being more of an owl than a lark. Not that I’m out partying, just reading and writing late. Jet lag is brilliant: when I fly back to America from Europe I wake at 6am for at least a fortnight whilst my body adapts to New York’s time zone. I’m always amazed at how much I accomplish when I’m up early.

I woke at 830am this morning which, for a Sunday, is unprecedented. Summer's humidity normally makes for disturbed sleep and late wake-ups, but the temperature dropped here in New Jersey last night. It was cool enough for an embroidered shawl around my shoulders at the Independence Day fireworks on the beach in Long Branch, and we slept without aircon and with the sash windows flung up.

There is a bird squawking in a tree outside my bedroom window which is probably the cause of my waking, but I don’t mind. There’s a particular quality of still out here in the country when no one is around bar the wildlife.

When I moved out here I didn’t expect to see so many animals: groundhogs scuttle across lawns, rabbits perch casually on kerbs, whiskers twitching, and deer & their fawns stand motionless in gardens, regarding me as I whizz past on my bike on my daily early evening exercise route.

The house is in a community of other equally large clapboard homes, all standing proud in their couple of manicured acres with a flagpole flying the Stars & Stripes, a pool out back, a basketball hoop and an SUV in the driveway and a large mailbox standing sentry. I am endlessly fascinated by the people who might choose to live in these places but I rarely see anyone, bar the odd solitary jogger or dogwalker and the ordered teams of Hispanic workers who tend the shrubs and lawns in rotation.

So goodbye to my fantasy of bumping into Colt’s Necks’ version of a young Patrick Dempsey mowing the lawns in Can’t Buy Me Love. The lawn guys are cheery and always wave back as I ride by, but they aren’t quite Patrick Dempsey.

The perfect swimsuit: Ginger's Island custom swimwear

I've been obsessed with finding the perfect swimwear ever since I started my first job and could afford to look further than the High Street. Blessed with a very small back (32) and a very, very large front (fluctuating between F & GG), I had been reduced to wearing Speedo tanks, purely because I could shovel myself into them.

Swimsuits are a problem as ones without cups aren't an option (too much wobble), and off the rack standard ones with cups are never, ever big enough on top in my size. As for bikinis, it's only recently that you could buy tops & bottoms separately, but that hasn't solved my problem because bikinis that fit my front are at least a UK 16-18 & so are always way too loose at the back.

Working on the theory that boob jobs and curves were more prevalent in Miami, I did once find a bikini that fitted in South Beach, but it was wetlook, Brazilian cut on the bottom & downright pervy on top. I never had the balls to wear it in public. (My girlfriends referred to it as my pornstar bikini).

I was charged to buy one for an equally well-endowed best friend who had better remain nameless. She never managed to get further than the bedroom door in it as her husband pounced every time she wore it. Effective but not so useful for swimming purposes.

I have tried all the retailers who now sell bra sized swimwear but it has a tendency to look like underwear not swimwear, with a bias towards pastel prints. And anything above an F is very very limited in range.

The Queen's corsetiere's Rigby & Peller is often cited as THE shop for properly fitted lingerie & swimwear. When I was a 32E I did find an expensive, very dull but useful black halterneck bikini but everything else there was (and is) way too granny or just plain hideous, and they have hardly anything above a 32F.

Then a couple of years ago Tara & I went on a mission to chic swimwear retailerHeidi Klein & I dropped a mind-blowing £140 on their own label, absolutely perfect, hidden underwire string bikini - my holy grail. And then promptly went up a cup size, beyond their sizing. (Useless website for larger breasted women tho as you can't search by size, and few of their pieces go beyond a D, so you have to check every style to see what size it comes in.)

I know many people swear by Bravissimo, but I find it all a bit frumpy, with lots of huge boulder holder tops yet worryingly skimpy bottoms, and they never have quite the right combination of colour & style for me. Large size bra specialists Freya & Fantasie do interesting swimwear & are worth a look through sites like Figleaves, but there's nothing there that looks like it will work for my figure or that has ever induced me to spend $100 on a suit.

So, still no swimwear that fitted.

And then I discovered the miracle that it is Ginger's Island.

Whether you want a bondage style bandeau suit, a modestly cut costume with skirt, a classic tank or a string bikini, have two water balloons attached to your front or are flat as a pancake, California-based custom swimwear company Ginger's Island can help you custom fit swimwear to your body and in your choice of colour, pattern & finish. And, if you have a particular style in mind that isn't just a case of a small adjustment to a current style, they can also, for an additional cost, create a pattern just for you. They aren't cheap: the average suit comes in at around $150 (still substantially less than their competitors), but they fit perfectly and that's got to be better than having five badly made suits in your drawers.

Don't let the slightly tacky website design put you off: the product is fantastic, and the customer support is exceptionally good, possibly the best I've ever dealt with both professionally and personally. They also use real, older women as the models, which is fantastic and extremely unusual for a swimwear site, and a lot more helpful for the prospective buyer than seeing swimwear being modelled by whippet-thin 16 year olds, (although some of the lovely ladies do look a little alarming in a mane of hair, Baywatch kind of way.)

With 49 different types of bikini bottoms, from thongs to hipster board skorts (no, I don't know either), 62 tops from bandeaus to a crisscross back full tankini, 14 swimsuits, 37 different skirt, sarong, sundress & cover-up options, all of which are made to measure, and more fabric selections than I've ever seen:




(This is a compilation of just some of the options, which includes plain colours too) I have absolutely no idea how anyone comes to a final decision.

They cover girls' sizes (2 mos. to 14 years), adult sizes (0 - 24) and cup sizes A - J, and happily send out fitting samples worldwide (for free if you purchase!) to your exact measurements, and fabric swatches too. If you need padding they offer three different types of cup pad, including silicone, and everything is properly lined, especially important in a pale or print suit.

I orderedthis style as my basic template:



When ordering, they ask for seven separate body measurements to put together the first fit samples, which arrived within ten days. The parcel included several suits with different cup styles to accommodate different breast shapes, and I was fascinated to see how some of them didn't fit at all, even though they were the correct cup size.

Once the samples arrive, it's a matter of calling their brilliant fit team, who have masses of experience, and talking through any changes. The basic suit shape worked very well for me, but I needed a higher leg, the waist taking in, & wanted to add a couple of amendments to their design to better fit & flatter my body shape.

I have a nice back (as opposed to my horrid tummy), so I wanted the reverse to be scooped out more, lowering it by a couple of inches.

Halternecks are the most flattering for all chest types: they give a little lift to smaller fronts, and support over-sized breasts. Bra style straps can often result in swaying bosoms as the support in a swimsuit, even with an underwire, isn't comparable to a proper bra. So, on our 'phone consultation, I asked for the bra straps to be converted to a tie neck. This also gives the visual impression of smaller breasts as the eye is drawn to the narrow neck area by the straps rather than to the width of the shoulders. (Strangely this isn't the case with smaller breasts: they benefit from the added volume added by bringing the breasts closer together.)

I wanted to lose the bra back too, but the incredibly helpful & well-informed girl on the other end of the 'phone was dubious, pointing out that the lower back & halter combination meant that my erm, ample, breasts might well escape out the sides without the back strap to pull it all in. This made complete sense, so I stayed with the adjustable bra back.

Although I flirted with the idea of a polka dot costume, I went for a plain French navy as this would be my everyday suit and I wanted it to be a building block for my summer wardrobe.

The finished result:





It may not look particularly exciting but it fits me immaculately: it doesn't look like reinforced underwear, it doesn't ride up, (so no wedgies) as the coverage is perfect on my lower half, my breasts fit into the cups with no chafing or spillage, yet is plunging enough to be sexy whilst giving me plenty of support. Perfection.

Independence Day cocktail: Watermelon & basil vodka martini

I called this a martini as it is nothing more than vodka with a splash of flavouring, but of course it would have a classically trained bartender raising an eyebrow at its presumption.

It's so simple, so fruity, so...thoroughly restorative that it seems perfect as a cooks pickmeup/reward for slaving over the barbecue(grill) on a sunshine-y day.

There are plenty of recipes kicking around for watermelon cocktails that require simple syrups (gomme) and various other ingredients, but this is so simple a child could make it. Not that I recommend that infants play with vodka but you get my point.

For two short glasses hack off a piece of watermelon about six inches long, chop it up, pick out the seeds, and squish it through a sieve, a juicer or any kind of press. (I found some random press in the kitchen whose usage remains obscure.)

Finely chop a handful of basil leaves, reserving a couple for decoration (maybe not the ones that look snail nibbled as in my glass above), and divide the leaves between the two glasses. Add three or four ice cubes & pour over a lovely big shot of frozen vodka (I used Grey Goose) and top with watermelon juice.

It's hardly a recipe but damn it tastes deeeeeelicious.

(If you wanted to get all fancy pants, you could macerate the basil leaves in the vodka overnight to really infuse the basil flavour, but I am waaaay too lazy.)

Happy Independence Day my American friends

Image: Flag dress by Catherine Malandrino

Object of desire: vintage style necklace

The Garden Statement Necklace from Banana Republic $98

Fried courgette flowers stuffed with ricotta, mushrooms & thyme

When we went shopping at Delicious Orchards for all the ingredients for Y's birthday dinner we saw these courgette (squash) blossoms on our way to the till:

Y was looking longingly in their direction so, ignoring the $9.99 sign we picked out eight of them. Which ended up costing a breathtaking $1.50.

I'd dredged up a memory of seeing them stuffed with ricotta, then shallow fried. So I beat together ricotta with an egg, & salt & pepper and added some cooled down sautéed minced mushrooms with garlic and thyme to add a little bite.

Stuffing them with a teaspoon is messy, and I'll use an icing bag next time, but eventually I got the flowers filled (and the counter decorated with) the ricotta mixture. I made a simple tempura batter with a cup of cold water, a cup of flour & an egg, mixing it together so there were still some lumps in the mixture. Then, holding each flower by the stem, they (& my fingers) were coated in the batter and then fried three at a time in an inch of hot oil.

They worked out fine, light & cheesy & crispy, with a little bite of courgette at the stem end, but next time I will add some finely grated Parmesan and some soaked chopped porcini to the ricotta mixture for a more intense flavour.

Grilled cheese, salad, vinaigrette, courgette flowers - not one of my finer food pictures, but you get the idea...

Book of the day: Chastened: No More Sex in the City

Released this week in the United Kingdom, I think Chastened: No More Sex in the City
by literary critic & journalist Hephzibah Anderson would be a great addition to any bedside pile of reading material. (And that's not just because she's a friend.)

The book is a memoir, covering the year that she decided to give up on sex voluntarily and explore what it really means to be chaste in a sex fulled world. Her twelve months of dates, temptation, frustration - and excuses is chronicled in her intelligent, witty voice, and her writing never fails to engage.

She wrote about some of the experiences of writing Chastened in The Guardian here. You can buy Chastened: No More Sex in the City
at a greatly reduced launch price by clicking on the book title in this post. It comes out in America next Spring, published by Viking.

Luella as Minnie Mouse

I find this photograph of my godson Oliver's little sister at her 3rd birthday party in London last month just the most immensely cheering thing. I also covert her Mouse ears.

I had very few days in London on that trip, spending most of my time in the country with my mother and the hounds. But I did sneak away for 24hrs, to lunch in the garden with Tara & her family, and eat her wonderful homemade strawberry ice cream,

to play in the garden afterwards with my goddaughter Amelia

and her baby brother,

to go dancing with my girlfriends at Guilty Pleasures, and then to see A & A and baby Carter, before finally heading for infant overload and Clare's BRILLIANT homemade birthday cake.

And then I slept for two days.

Y's (French, dedicated carnivore) birthday supper menu

I had volunteered to cook everything, not just pudding, for Y's birthday, if he would tell me what he wanted to eat. Sitting on the sun-filled deck at lunchtime, eating bowls of my homemade leftover Thai curry, he came up with the following menu of things he loved and I added a few things too:

Discs of grilled New Jersey goats cheese with walnuts on sourdough toasts with a mustard vinaigrette, fried pancetta & frisée (endive) salad

Roast pork tenderloin, wrapped in smoked bacon (Which Y cooked to his special recipe)
Green beans, steamed & then tossed in melted butter, thyme & garlic
Mashed Idaho potatoes (cream, butter)
Cauliflower cheese, gratinéed (crispy crumb topping)
Homemade apple sauce

Instead of cake he opted for strawberry tart with creme patissiere & strawberry puree.

The whole menu took three hours from unpacking the shopping to putting on the table. For such a super simple menu, there was an awful lot of prep as we made everything from scratch from the fried breadcrumbs on the cauliflower cheese to the salad vinaigrette. (And I also added an extra element to the first course, dropping the walnuts and adding deep fried courgette flowers stuffed with ricotta & mushrooms.)

[I read on Obamafoodorama that the US pork industry has suffered badly from shoppers (erroneously) eschewing piggy products due to Swine Flu. Not in this household is all I can say. There were barbecued pork escalopes the night before, and sausages tonight.]

Tarte aux Fraises: Strawberry tart with strawberry puree

We celebrated Y's birthday yesterday with a supper for four of us, which I cooked as part of my present for him. The piece de resistance was pudding, a classic French fruit tart with a strawberry puree.

I made this! I'm beside myself with glee. My first ever fruit tart!

Whilst I've been making classic quiches for years with great success, I've always been a little scared of making a proper patisserie type tart before. They require two ingredients which are notorious for going wrong: pate brisée, an extremely short, buttery pastry (which can be a pig to work with as, if you get it too short, it has to be pressed into place rather than rolled) & creme patissiere, proper confectioner's custard (which splits if you so much as look at it the wrong way).

It doesn't help either that my mother makes extraordinarily good pastry, and thinks nothing of knocking up a tart at the last minute. Leave it to the experts I've always said, or do as the French and buy one from your local patisserie.

So, I've never made pate brisée or creme patissiere before. As I don't like hot eggy runny custard, I always presumed that I didn't like creme patissiere. How wrong was I? Last year I discovered that I loved it. After all what is there to dislike about a pastry filling that consists of eggs & sugar?

Anyway Y intimated that a tart would be extremely acceptable as a birthday cake, and I didn't like to admit that I'd never made one before. I consulted their rows & rows of cookbooks. Of course, the baking book, Gateaux de Mamie, would be in French, and there was no recipe for tarte aux fraises, or strawberry tart. Still nothing daunted, I found the separate recipes for pate brisée and creme patissiere & set to work.

And blimey, if they weren't the most ridiculously simple things to make. (If you ignore the fact that i had to keep converting the measurements to Imperial on my Blackberry.) Ignoring the instructions to make the pasty by hand, I just threw the pastry ingredients (flour, an egg yolk, icing sugar, a little salted water) into the Magimix, keeping an eagle eye on it so the pastry wasn't overworked. The moment it came together I dumped it onto a floured board, pushed it into a ball, wrapped it in clingfilm and popped it in the fridge to rest for an hour.

The custard was even easier. I had to wing it a bit as the recipe called for French soup spoon measurements & I had no idea if this equated to tablespoons, so I just guessed that it might. I heated 500ml of whole milk with a splash of Bourbon vanilla, meanwhile beating together four egg yolks with 6 tbsps of icing sugar and 4tbsps of cornflour. When the milk was simmering, I slowly dribbled the egg mixture onto it, whisking away. It immediately thickened into perfect creme patissiere. I scooped it into a dish & left it to cool. And that was it.

After the pastry rested I rolled it out to a disc an inch wider than the 26cm greased, nonstick, fluted,loose bottom. metal tart tin, (why on earth do people use china tart dishes? Makes for soggy pasty), flipped it into the tin, pressed it into shape and trimmed the top. No baking parchment or baking beans to weight the pastry as it cooked so it wldn't rise, so I improvised with tinfoil and rice. Baked it at 180C/350F for 25mins (the book said 15 but it was still soft then), and slid it off the tin base and onto a wire rack to cool.

I did slightly overcook it, but better browner & crisper than pallid & soggy I guess. When the pastry shell was cool I tipped in & spread out the custard, and spent a fun 5 minutes decorating with half inch slices of strawberries, blueberries & raspberries.

I had a punnet of just going over strawberries in the fridge, so I used my mother's technique of hulling them, cutting off the bad bits, & throwing them in the Magimix with some sugar and lemon juice. Whizzed into a puree, this is ambrosial.

Gratifyingly, the boys all had second helpings.