Off on holidays

Thank you for the book recommendations! I am here for another 24 hours so anymore would be welcome!

I am very early tomorrow morning and I don't think I am going to have any internet access so I will be back in about a week and a half.

I will be looking forward to reading all of your posts from while I'm away then.

I am taking Un Jardin Sur le Nil with me (I'm off to Egypt ya see). I am not taking anything else because that means I can justify making a duty free fragrance purchase! (really I am as excited about duty free as I am about Egypt...)

Trashy sun holiday book recommendations please!

As discussed below I very unorganised and am off on holiday in under 2 days without having really bought any of the necesseties: swimsuits, towels, suncream, trashy or non trashy books, half of Boots pharmacy etc.

I am relying on the duty free book shops to supply me with enough glorious reading material for a week as I have got through most of what is at home.

So the big question is what you recommend for a sun holiday? This is not the occasion for anything War and Peace like obviously but otherwise I am open to any ideas.

Any suggestions will be very gratefully received.

I am still here

Sort of...

I am preparing for a holiday (don't hate me!) and seem to be trapped under a kind of modern art installation sized mound of work to complete before then.

I have been so busy I haven't been able to buy a new swimsuit/ bikini which is causing many a sleepless night. As if the thought of having to wear a swimsuit/ tankini/ bikini wasn't horrifying enough!

Why oh why didn't I just order some from one of the many websites for women whose cups quite literally run over normal swimwear?

My reasoning at the time when the snail mail would have supplied me with a suitably underwired, upholding and girdle like costume was that swimwear is something that must be tried on and internet returning is oh so complicated and expensive.

I think a mercy dash up west (actually up east) looms.

In other news:

I am wearing Jo Malone French Lime Blossom because it's spring like

I lost about half a stone and then put it all on again eating naughty office snacks (extra appearing in swimsuit dread!!)

I am reading The Shadow in the Wind, which is very involving (which I'm sure you all know as I'm rather behind the times). The only problem with it is the sleepless nights.

Start the week was even better than usual last night

How do you start the week?

I have a particular fondness for staying in on Monday nights and listening to Start the week with Andrew Marr on Radio 4.

I understand that the week is actually started in the morning by Andrew and his guests but as I am at work then I don’t get to listen to the programme until later.

I don’t know why I find the programme so pleasing but it’s half an hour that I always enjoy. The guests and topics are varied but the discussion always relates to books, films, series or other cultural happenings that are scheduled for the week ahead or very soon after. I suppose listening to a radio programme forces you to hear about things you might not think you are interested in. So if there was a review of a book on the history of the economy I might skim over it in a newspaper but on Start the week I continue to listen and usually find I am interested- or if I’m not I will have learnt something.

I find the constancy of Radio 4 extremely comforting. I greatly admire a rich smooth voice and find even something like the shipping forecast quite hypnotic and mesmeric but when the chat is interesting and delivered like oral hot chocolate I am doubly happy.

Andrew Marr has a surprisingly good radio voice, it’s an engaging smooth baritone which is comforting but not too soporific . He isn’t quite at the level of an Alan Rickman who has my all time favourite speaking voice I think (and who I’m sure could convince people to do virtually anything with his voice, like a modern pied conversationalist of London).

In an ideal world I would start the week with Andrew and his guests, a pot of tea and the remnants of the Sunday papers that I never manage to read on Sunday. I am always unfathomable tired on Monday nights because I continue to make the mistake of sleeping in on Sunday mornings and then going to bed far, far too late on Sunday night and getting about 4 hours sleep- which is most definitely not the way to start the week.

Five reasons why life is grand

The lovely Cassandra at Jacob Wrestling has invited me to give five reasons why my life is grand.

So the five reasons that come to mind today are:

1) Feeling and hopefully being well. Quite an underrated but important one I think. Money can't buy me love or health- and those are the things I value most.

2) Real friends, as opposed to either frenemies or just the people who don't really get it. I mean the friends who you can have fun doing virtually anything with, even it's fantastically mundane stuff like washing up or waiting for the bus.

3) I was asked for ID when buying a round of drinks last week. I am well beyond the age where this should be even a possibility now- so thank you to the bar lady at the Brixton Academy I won't have to think about any more expensive face cream for months because of you.

4) The internet, blogging and bloggers. I guess anyone reading this knows why.

5) Dancing is free and I can do whenever and wherever I want- and I'm quite good at it so I'm told- which is a nice added bonus.

Lovely?

In Chandler Burr's book The Perfect Scent there is a description of a fragrance Sarah Jessica Parker blended herself which has always sounded tantalizingly sexy to me.

As perfume obsessives probably know it was supposedly a mix of Bonne Bell Musk, an oil from a street vendor in New York and the magical Commes De Garcon Avignon. Before reading this book it was about the last thing I would imagined SJP in but it seems she basically dislikes florals and loves dirty and incense scents.

Although this was the start of the idea for her hugely successful and I actually think excellent scent Lovely in the end it was decided it would be too risky and unusual for her first foray into the perfume market.

I have tried to create such a scent myself with limited success, in fact using musk oil, lovely and the CDG Avignon. I just felt that the combination wasn't really improving Avignon because it's such a good scent to start with (although actually it isn't at it's best on my skin- much to my dismay- but I am happy to spray it on clothes and on any men around me!).

SJP always seems to say she would like to revisit the idea of a more unisex, fuller and riskier scent but her subsequent perfumes haven’t ever really been anywhere near that first magical combination.

Now she and Coty have released the Lovely Collection- a trio of three scents Dawn, Endless and Twilight. Normally any kind of flanker has me yawning but I did read her saying that Twilight was something she had wanted to do for a long time, a more daring musk and my ears pricked up. Could this be the scent I have always wanted to try?

I am very sorry to say it isn't that scent. In fact bizarrely it smelt closer to her other scent Covet than Lovely to me. Admittedly I have had a cold but on the strip and on my skin it is extremely powdery- almost like talc! There is an undercurrent of something musk or incense based but it's totally overpowered by the powder.

It's a shame because I thought the Sarah Jessica Parker line started so well with Lovely, but nothing she has released since has been anywhere near so good.

By Redo: Pulp

When I first read about the By Redo scents I thought Pulp would be a paper or newspaper scent- I have no idea why that came to my mind at all but it did- and I still think an inky papery scent would be very interesting.

However it is actually pulp as in fruit pulp. I hadn't thought about this before but fruit is probably my most neglected perfume family. I enjoy scents with some fruit but aside from rhubarb scents (Burberry Brit Red and the CDG Rhubard Sherbert) they don't get me worked up the way a chypre or incense scent does.

Pulp is the scent of fruit that is somewhere between perfectly ready to eat and being a little over ripe and almost ready to be turned into jam. It is the scent of fruit that is so juicy it is literally about to burst out of it’s skin.

Blackcurrants dominate Pulp. When I think of blackcurrants I think of wandering riverside or country paths in late summer, pickeing the berries almost absent mindedly. With the wild picked berries you get the alternation of a very sweet, sun soaked ready berry and the tart berries that are newer, or further down the bush. With Pulp you only get the sun soaked berries and this scent mixes the humble but deliciously succulent blackberry with the creaminess of the, to my English palette, much more exotic fig. These figs are perfectly ripe and juicy too.

It isn’t a sickeningly sweet scent though. Partly I think this is because it smells of the whole fruit including the skin. So many fruit based perfumes smell of the juice of the fruit rather than the whole piece of fruit. This smells of the skin, core, seeds, bits, all of the fruit. The sweetness is also counteracted by the apple note and the cedar in the dry down.

This is an interesting perfume and one I can't immediately compare to any other scents- which can only be a good thing. I am looking forward to revisiting in different seasons. I think it might work especially well in the depths of winter.

Picture courtesy of www.allposters.co.uk

I want to live in a Domino home

I thought one of the good things about not working in central London anymore would be that I wouldn't spend as much money as I wouldn't be able to just 'pop' to the shops after work, or after a couple of post work drinks (which is totally fatal of course). It turns you don't spend less you just spend your money on the internet!

I think the whole blogosphere was really upset about the news of the recent demise of Domino magazine. I was extra upset because I had only just started getting copies via e-bay having never been able to find it in the UK. I know we are going to lose quite a lot of magazine titles to the crunch but I was surprised about this one because it seemed to fill a gap between the very high end, great to look at as home porn magazines and the lower end DIY home magazines which are quite a bit dowdier. Domino was the home magazine you wanted to exist but never really did, until it did (well in my case until I bought some on e-bay)- and now it won't exist anymore. Again.

Anyway as a result of my separation from the larger bookshops and due to my ever worsening internet habit I cracked on Friday and bought the Domino book of decorating, which I had long been lusting after. I can report it is as good as it looks. I'm not sure why there hasn't been more press about this in the UK except that I suppose lots of the stockists are American, but really this is book is useful for design inspiration or just to pore over the beautiful images rather than as a directory of shops.

My new e-bay thing (you have to have one thing you are particularly on the hunt for don't you?) is buying back issues of Domino while they're still quite easy to find. The actual issues are fairly inexpensive unless you want a really rare one but the postage is making my credit card feel a little heavy; it could definitely do with losing a few pounds but I'm not sure this obsession will stop until I have every issue.

By Redo: Pulp

When I first read about the By Redo scents I thought Pulp would be a paper or newspaper scent- I have no idea why that came to my mind at all but it did- and I still think an inky papery scent would be very interesting.

However it is actually pulp as in fruit pulp. I hadn't thought about this before but fruit is probably my most neglected perfume family. I enjoy scents with some fruit but aside from rhubarb scents (Burberry Brit Red and the CDG Rhubard Sherbert) they don't get me worked up the way a chypre or incense scent does.

Pulp is the scent of fruit that is somewhere between perfectly ready to eat and being a little over ripe and almost ready to be turned into jam. It is the scent of fruit that is so juicy it is literally about to burst out of it’s skin.

Blackcurrants dominate Pulp. When I think of blackcurrants I think of wandering riverside or country paths in late summer, pickeing the berries almost absent mindedly. With the wild picked berries you get the alternation of a very sweet, sun soaked ready berry and the tart berries that are newer, or further down the bush. With Pulp you only get the sun soaked berries and this scent mixes the humble but deliciously succulent blackberry with the creaminess of the, to my English palette, much more exotic fig. These figs are perfectly ripe and juicy too.

It isn’t a sickeningly sweet scent though. Partly I think this is because it smells of the whole fruit including the skin. So many fruit based perfumes smell of the juice of the fruit rather than the whole piece of fruit. This smells of the skin, core, seeds, bits, all of the fruit. The sweetness is also counteracted by the apple note and the cedar in the dry down.

This is an interesting perfume and one I can't immediately compare to any other scents- which can only be a good thing. I am looking forward to revisiting in different seasons. I think it might work especially well in the depths of winter.

Picture courtesy of www.allposters.co.uk

Daily Aphorism- a good way to start the day

I have signed myself up to receive a daily aphorism. Each day you get a little wise phrase or quote. It's quite nice to read with a morning cup of something hot (I am a total hot drink whore and cannot find it in me to be loyal to one variety at all)

Today's aphorism was:

Laws are like sausages
It is better not to see them being made

Otto Von Bismarck (1815- 1898)

I'm not sure that Bismarck and I see I to eye on many things but I think we do on the sausages. On the laws I suppose it depends on what kind of law, some might be very good ones like the Geneva Convention.

Yesterday's was very good:

Love is a grave mental disease

Plato 429- 347 BC

Plato was wise indeed

The daily Aphorisms are brought to us by The School of Life which seems like an interesting place. I definitely want to drop in on their shop (I know I want to drop into every shop but I would make a special trip for this one as it looks like it has very interesting book recommendations). They also run courses, meals and holidays encouraging us to do the truly scary and talk to strangers. That is probably all a bit much for me but I suppose if alcohol was involved I might give it a crack.

Ashes to Ashes

As previously alluded to I have been having an unscheduled duvet weekend because of a cold. I quite enjoy having lashings of elderflower cordial and tea and catching up on films/ tv/ radio.

Yesterday saw me mostly re watching Ashes to Ashes the, in my opinion, excellent follow on to Life on Mars.

I actually prefer Ashes to Ashes to Life on Mars which I gather from generally reading of reviews is unusual. I don't know if it's because I am a child of the eighties (just!) but I just find all the references in this one more applicable to me- even though I was about a month old when this is set. The fact they spend all their downtime in an Italian trattoria drinking jugs of chianti, the huge clunky walkmans that are cool, the thatcherite boys and coral lipsticked girls (I wonder what perfume Alex Drake wears?).

I love the soundtrack, ultravox, the clash, duran duran, the stranglers- it all sounds so bizarrely fresh on this show where it doesn't always on my radio. Plus there's the cars and the fashions, the way this is put together you can sort of see why they thought they looked good while revelling in how bad they look too.

Then there is Gene Hunt. I have to say I love a real man and he is nothing if not that.

I have been trawling the internet to see when the next series starts but so far it seems there is no definite date- but it should be late March to early April. I can't wait!

The Consolations of Jewellery

I have a cold and therefore cannot smell my perfumes or write the reviews I had planned this weekend.

So I have turned to one of my other loves: jewellery.

Alain De Botton's penguin classic The consolations of philosophy is all very well, a wonderful idea very well executed. It is indeed consoling to an extent, but what do I find truly comforting? Jewellery.

I have loved rings, bracelets, necklaces and any other form of shiny adornment since I was young enough to think these trinkets were so lovely that I must try and taste them. I used to sit in front of my Mother's jewellery box in wonder, as happy gazing at costume bangles as the real gems. Try as I might and often do to embrace a pared down, utilitarian outlook I cannot deny that I adore jewellery despite knowing I don't need it and it won't make a real difference to my life.

I feel very content when I'm looking at jewellery, whether it's in Accessorize or wandering up the Burlington Arcade it makes no difference to me. In fact sometimes the more expensive, the more comforting, because I know I could never afford the art deco diamonds and sapphires it's a bit like looking at a beautiful painting in a gallery.

The jewellery designers whose work I covet most to actually wear are Alex Monroe and Annina Vogel. Luckily both designers have very good websites to help me window shop and feel the consolations of jewellery from under my duvet!