Hello everyone,

Hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner, but before that I have three publisher’s deadlines, so a lot to juggle.

Luckily, I have a wonderful part time PA who holds back any mail that isn’t urgent until Friday afternoon, so I can just put my head down and get on with my writing.

I had a breathless summer, organized by Jaz, my publicist at Canongate (my publisher), who republished LACE, a seriously sexy book that I wrote
30 years ago. Jaz was considerate of my great age (80) and very thoughtful about providing cars everywhere.

Authors I met included the very funny Clare Balding who kept a big live audience roaring with laughter for over an hour at the Shoreditch House Literary Salon, which was hosted by the witty and urbane Damian Barr.

Recently, I did three stand-ups, in question-and-answer form from the audience for about an hour and to my surprise I enjoyed them immensely, whereas I hate making speeches. The first of them was hosted by Lauren Laverne, someone I have admired as a radio host and TV anchor.

Lauren is as funny as she is beautiful and she very kindly lent me her makeup lady, so I wore false eyelashes for the first time since the ‘Sixties, when we all also wore false hair, white makeup, pale pink lipstick, flat boots and shoes instead of heels, waistless dresses by Mary Quant or Biba and tights – newly invented – which meant we could fling away a horrible elastic garment called a girdle, which held your stockings up and your stomach in; the drawback was that you bulged over the top and bottom of this updated chastity belt (some men gave up) so your thighs looked the size of Wales.

That fashion era looks weird when seen in old movies, but at the time it was both exhilarating and liberating.

Lauren Laverne introduced me by email to Caitlin Moran, who wrote the non-fiction, book of the year: “How to Be A Woman”. I’ve just bought her latest, “Moranthology” and I’m rationing myself to 30 pages per bedtime, to make it last.

The third stand-up was Girls Night Out at The Wimbledon Bookfest, with an old friend, Penny Vincenzi, who also talked about her enjoyable blockbuster “Old Sins”, being re-published by Arrow. Penny spent quite a bit of her year to date doing research in Paris and the South of France, while she’s off to New York next month. Well, someone has to do it.

Penny never knows what’s going to happen when she’s writing a book. In my novels I need to know EVERYTHING that’s going to happen and what everybody’s wearing. I spend happy hours constructing time/action charts that look like a railway timetable.

My latest extravagance is a cook called Jane who comes every Tuesday afternoon, checks the fridge and the deepfreeze and cooks comfort food: shepherd’s pie, fish pie, lamb stew and everything you ever smelled in your grandmother’s kitchen. When I’m not eating these delicacies, as I’ve no energy left for cooking in the evening, it’s a hamburger, frozen mashed potatoes (Aunt Bessie brand) and salad.

From now on, it’s set the alarm for 6AM and live like a hermit until Christmas. Below is an article written for an Australian magazine that was published last week. I hope you’ll forgive some of it for being repetitious, but, unlike the Vicar of Bray, I can’t change my views to suit different occasions.

Perceptions of Sex

Thirty years ago, the average man thought the clitoris was a Greek hotel and the average woman didn’t know how to enlighten him. A man’s sex education consisted of what his misinformed friends told him. As an editor on British national newspapers, I received letters from confused and timid women, which made it clear that sex, from a woman’s point of view, needed to be explicitly addressed.

During this period, despite the Swinging Sixties, the perception of sex was that everybody did it. You could sunbathe topless, wear see-through dresses and fornicate more than previously, but nobody actually talked about sex: it was considered embarrassing.

The contraceptive pill had recently appeared but few women felt sexually self-confident. Women, and young girls especially, were being pressured by their boyfriends to have sex. Girls were hesitant, confused about sex. Now that they didn’t risk pregnancy . . . should they or shouldn’t they? Did
first-time sex leave you feeling like a goddess or a doormat? Would he still love you tomorrow? What did ‘being good in bed’ actually mean?

A lot of women felt inadequate; a lot of girls acquiesced because they were frightened of being dumped; a lot of bewildered girls felt rejected when they were dumped. There was a lot of anxiety and disappointment.

At this point, I had written a successful non-fiction book, Superwoman, so I decided to embark upon an informative book about sex for teenage girls. I spent eighteen months doing research for it.

The only sex education I had received from my mother was by way of book that featured goldfish – had I fallen in love with a goldfish I would have known exactly what to do. My friends were given similar birds-and-bees publications. We actually learned about sex from a banned blockbuster, Forever Amber By Kathleen Winsor, which was passed around school in a dust jacket of A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young.

Mindful of this, I finally wrote my textbook as a novel, and Lace was subsequently described as the book that taught men about women and women about themselves. Lace gave the reader explicit information about sex. It helped women to discover their sexuality and take charge of it: it generated the murmur of bedroom guidance, ‘Up a bit . . . down a bit . . . more to the left . . . MY left’. Teenage girls passed Lace around in secret, so in a roundabout way, I reached my target audience.

Somewhat surprisingly, I encountered no negative reaction to Lace, except in Kansas City. On my American publicity tour I flew into that town around midnight, only to be told that the City Fathers had forbidden me to make any appearances in public on radio or TV, because I was making my living out of sex. I was fifty-three years old at the time, a bit late for entry into the sex profession, but delighted to have a day off in the hotel, and wash my backlog of underwear.

Today, girls may know more about sex but Lace’s message of empowerment and equality is as relevant and important as it was thirty years ago. It’s a pity that modern novels, especially informative ones, that involve women’s sexuality are put down as ‘mummy porn’, ‘bonkbusters’, ‘bodice rippers’, ‘beach-reads’, ‘wank-fodder’ or, simply, trash.

The worldwide success of Fifty Shades of Grey has made it clear that, for whatever reason, women want to read erotic books (although I don’t believe that millions of women long to be handcuffed and beaten on the behind – one thing can so easily lead to another and there is nothing sexy about a broken nose and a ruptured kidney). But what has clearly been proved, and what has changed in the last thirty years, is that women are far more openly interested in having an enjoyable sex life.

These days the perception of sex is everywhere – you can’t get away from it. The other day I pressed the wrong button on my TV remote and there before me was a glistening eighteen-inch lavender penis, waving gently. Male magazines are in full view at the local corner shop, and where modern children learn about sex is on the internet. What’s that you mutter? The parental control button? Don’t make me laugh.

Unfortunately, sex-as-business productions are male-filtered, and so reinforce male misapprehensions about female sexual needs. They can also persuade some women that they must be abnormally unresponsive, when they are not.

The result of sex-as-business is that teenage boys expect a naked teenage girl to look like the plastic-enhanced ladies featured in the media, with melon-sized boobs propping up their chin, legs lengthened by six inches courtesy of Photoshop, and bald genitalia.

Teenage girls have always felt not-good-enough, but now, as a result of male comparison and criticism, they borrow dad’s razor, buy their own Ladyshave or save up for a full Brazilian; they plan to have breast implants and facial silicone injections as soon as they can get their hands on enough cash. Sometimes feeling not-good-enough leads to bulimia, anorexia or a victim mentality, and it always leads to lack of self-confidence.

This is as worrying as the clear message in Fifty Shades of Grey, the latest Cinderella update, which – forgive my psychobabble – illustrates the adult female’s childish wish to dump the responsibility of her life on somebody else, preferably a handsome, rich cardboard-cut-out man. A modern Cinderella doesn’t want to plan her career, work for her success, or buy her own car. But in fiction and in real life, a modern man should never be seen as a woman’s meal ticket in return for sex with the woman bound, beaten and humiliated. Young students should not be groomed for sex in this way.

What has changed since the eighties is that now women talk frankly about sex over coffee in a work break, in the kitchen at home, or when choosing lingerie at an Ann Summers gathering (the modern equivalent of a Tupperware party).

What is not yet discussed by either sex is female masturbation, which remains a taboo subject. Men think it is a) filthy, b) an affront to masculinity and to themselves personally. Nice women don’t do it.

But we do.

On the other hand, male masturbation a) is only natural, b) provides a healthy relief before marriage or when a woman is not available, such as in prisons, warships, tents and tanks or anywhere, anytime, when alone and unobserved.

After the nine o’clock TV curfew, when all fourteen-year-olds are safely tucked up in their bed, TV comedians hurl male masturbation jokes at audiences, which roar with the laughter of recognition.

The French writer Colette once wrote that a good lover is one that can do it better than you can. Maybe that’s why men don’t like the idea of a woman being able to please herself. This is one perception that hasn’t changed a bit in thirty years – both in bed and out of it.

There is about to be a considerable time gap before my next blog because

a) I am editing two books – almost typing with my toes.

b) I am one of a team that is putting a school textbook online.

c) I’m making notes for writing a fourth book – about Women and Money, lack of sufficient, etc.

So to all of you who are off to Ibiza, Cornwall, or the always popular
sardine-packed sands of St. Tropez… enjoy the rest of your summer.

A naughty tabloid newspaper has linked two ideas of mine that were unrelated in the interview I gave.


The newspaper suggests that I regretted having given birth to my sons.


This is not true.


This is roughly what I said.


Today, if I were twenty, I would decide not to have children because I would not want the stressful and expensive life of today’s working mother. It can cost more to run a child than it costs to run a Rolls Royce. Childcare is not tax deductible as an expense of working, like a chauffeur or a secretary. But without childcare, a mother – and some fathers – cannot work.


Some modern young women may not want to spend their evenings and weekends doing the system – support work that children involve. (Statistically, mothers do far more work in the home than fathers).


Some young women may not want to give up – for 18 years – holidays, evenings out, most new clothes, hairdos, personal interests and the satisfaction of their work and pay in order to care non-stop for someone they have not met… a baby.


I love my two sons passionately. I certainly don’t regret the two children I had – but neither do I regret the other children that I didn’t have.

It’s a pity that modern novels which involve women’s sexuality – especially informative novels – are put down as ‘mummy porn’, ‘bonkbusters’,
‘bodice rippers’, ‘beach-reads’, ‘wank fodder’ or simply – trash.

Erotic literature has been published since books were first printed and although my erotic novel LACE was written thirty years ago, it’s about to be republished by Canongate.

It’s clear from the sudden, international success of the S&M novel,
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY – outstripping Harry Potter in early sales – that there is an enormous need for erotic stimulus that doesn’t necessarily involve gadgets. So throughout the Western world, publishers are lashing their authors to get down and dirty… FAST. Women who’ve never written a book before are being urged by their husbands and lovers to talk dirty on computer and sell it for six million… ahem… smackers.

But such cynical and calculated sex products will not achieve the required result. What women clearly, really want is writing that provokes a careless eroticism, a playful sensuality that propels them to the pillow or a reckless freedom that generates the urge to yank a man by his tie and pull him to bed. This takes good writers.

There is probably as big a demand for frankly erotic films made frankly for the bedroom, directed and produced by women for women, rather than what is currently available: dainty sex scenes on TV and film – with plenty of bared breasts but never a penis in sight – or sexual misapprehensions reinforced in cheaply made, male-filtered pornographic films in which the male participant may supposedly thrust away six times a night but clearly his heart isn’t in it.

Where is the impresario – the female Richard Branson – to nurse such a project and attract initial investment? Any suggestions?

What about Lucy Prebble who created the Billie Piper TV series,
Secret Diary of a Call Girl? I’d willingly invest in Lauren Laverne or
Caitlin Moran, both clever, witty, shrewd, creative creatures who know what women want, why they want it and the huge sums they are prepared to pay for it.

However LACE started life as something very different. As an editor on the Observer and the Daily Mail, I had received many letters from confused and timid women, which made it clear that sex from a woman’s point of view needed to be explicitly addressed at a time when, as I’ve said before, the average Englishman thought the clitoris was a Greek hotel and his sex education consisted of what his misinformed mates had told him.

Originally intended as a textbook to teach teenage girls about sex, I finally wrote it as a novel, subsequently described as the book which taught men about women and women about themselves. LACE gave the reader explicit information about sex. It helped women to discover their sexuality and take charge of it: It generated the murmur of bedroom guidance, ‘Up a bit…down a bit…more to the left…MY left.’ Teenage girls passed it around in secret, so, in a roundabout way, I reached my target audience.

LACE is now being republished for a new generation of women and young girls; they may know more about sex, but the message of empowerment and equality is as important now as it was thirty years ago: some men still get indignant if anyone suggests they are not a walking, talking Kama Sutra.

LACE was also empowering in other ways; I know women who started their own business – or expanded an existing one – after reading LACE. Many women told me that LACE changed their lives. I do not believe that people will say the same about FIFTY SHADES OF GREY.

I respect the popularity of FIFTY SHADES and the money it has generated both for the author and the publishing industry, which shows there is a huge audience for erotic literature for women. I’m not surprised that
Mills & Boon are publishing a series of ebooks that include,
“12 SHADES OF SURRENDER” and “CUFFING KATE”, a fantasy about domination and submission.

FIFTY SHADES may have provided a convenient template for the genre but I hope that “CUFFING KATE” is better written. The writing style of FIFTY SHADES reminds me of stilted, eighteen-century porn, it has a coy whiff of “Faith m’lord, pray desist.” it makes me feel the heroine is about to faint.

Be warned, FIFTY SHADES may disappoint: it’s S&M for beginners; it takes 200 pages for the heroine to get spanked on the behind, and 400 pages for her to get spanked with a belt. That’s what my dad used to do to my brothers when they blew up the garden shed or set the house on fire. I don’t think my dad or my brothers thought of a walloping as exciting sexual shenanigans. I do not believe that S&M is what the women of the world are thirsting for.

Furthermore, although I am not a college virgin like the heroine,
FIFTY SHADES is curiously uninformative. On a practical note, a professional dominatrix does not do physical sex with his or her client and only the client has a climax. But no matter, FIFTY SHADES tells you how to decorate your home torture chamber, and how to bag a psychotic billionaire, if you have the personality of a mouse. However, I have had affairs with psychotic billionaires and they don’t behave like Mr. Grey, the hero of FIFTY SHADES, and they don’t look like Mr. Grey who has the traditional hero’s clean-cut face, high cheekbones and immaculate underwear.

In fact, Mr. Grey’s clean Calvin Kleins may be a clue to his outstanding literary success. The basic plot of FIFTY SHADES is Cinderella, plus sanitized sex. But real sex isn’t clean: it’s messy and sweaty and sticky and marvelous.

Mr. Grey as the Prince Charming update, gratifies all the drab heroine’s material wants with gifts that I wouldn’t mind myself, such as a Porsche and a complete new wardrobe. But like Prince Charming, Mr. Grey is curiously two-dimensional: he hasn’t got the sensual pulling power of Heathcliffe, Mr. Rochester or Mr. Darcy in a wet shirt.

The favourite fairy story of little girls is Cinderella. The Cinderella syndrome is the adult female wish to dump the responsibility of her life on somebody else, preferably a handsome, rich, clean-cut cardboard cutout who won’t give her any trouble. Cinderella doesn’t want to plan her career or work for her success, or buy her own car.

Perhaps it’s time to ban the story of Cinderella because – forgive my psycho-babble – it reinforces the seemingly easy option of female dependency on men: in fiction and real life, a modern man should never be seen as a woman’s meal ticket in return for sex, which is what FIFTY SHADES is really about.

The teaching unions justify long school holidays on the grounds that teaching is stressful.

I agree with the teachers’ unions. Everyone who is in a stressful job needs 3 months holiday a year.

That’s all of us. Especially mothers.

What a silly justification.

Oh, by the way, are school holidays for the children or the teachers?

The long summer holiday – in which a child forgets what it’s been taught – was originally because children were needed to help get the harvest in. Since the invention of the combine harvester, that’s no longer been case.

The Tablets are Coming

In China, instead of schoolbooks, all secondary school children will soon have tablets that look a bit like an iPad, a bit like a nineteenth century school slate. They are cheaper, simpler but less advanced than what is available in the West.

In America, the Government aims for a similar transition for its public schools, within the next five years. Apple, Samsung, and other tech industry leaders recently met leading textbook publishers to plan a joint effort, working with the US Department of Education, “to create a fully digital, interactive learning environment.”

In Britain, Bryanston and Wellington College are two public schools that are switching totally to iPad, instead of textbooks, for all pupils. A few state schools are also doing this.

Learn biology on an iPad.

The Daily Mail rages that parents can’t afford iPads, but I’m told you can buy a second-hand iPad from £160, and some fancy kids trainers are not much less expensive – but aren’t going to make your children any smarter. And iPads will get cheaper.

Move over Gutenberg

The printed book, invented in 1455 in Gutenberg, Germany, now faces serious competition. The internet led to globalization of everything from banks to burgers and, also revolutionized book publication: academic, scientific and medical publishing switched to online publishing long ago, while ebooks now account for 20% of the British language book market.

In Britain, more books are produced now by non-publishing houses than by traditional publishers. Whether the subject is a family history, a cookbook, or saucy sexual adventures, self-publishing is booming and thousands of books are now listed on self-publishing websites.

Great Grand-dad is in front row, middle figure.

Want to write your own?

Apple recently launched a free self-publishing app called iBooks Author. It provides a format for publishing an on-line textbook, which can also be printed on an ordinary, domestic printer.

If you’re a wannabe author and family historian, a good software programme is Family History (Learn how to research your family history).
Costs £24.99 from Pearson’s Love to Learn site. Download it at: (link)

Suck-eggs links for old-fashioned bookworms

Amazon for cut-price books, including those just published. (link)
Kindle for ebooks and free, out-of-copyright books, such as “Black Beauty” or The Bible. Kindle batteries seem to last forever. (link)
Apple’s iBookstore for ebooks and free books, available when you download the free iBooks 2 app from the App Store. iBooks Author is available as a free download from the Mac App Store. iPad batteries last 10 hours. I charge my iPad overnight when I clean my teeth. (link)

Lazy Cook

Nerve Juice

In the office, when we’re too busy to fix and eat a full meal, we drink Nerve Juice. Supposedly also good as a pick-me-up for hangovers, although I can’t vouch for this as I’m allergic to alcohol.

Nerve Juice (Makes half a pint, just under half a litre. Warning: contains raw egg)

Ingredients

• Juice of 1 orange
• 1 raw egg
• 1 large teaspoon runny honey

Method

1. Put all ingredients in a blender or use hand beater. Mix well until frothy.
2. Pour over ice cubes.

When we’re too busy to make Nerve Juice, we eat a politically-correct, banana, mango and brazil nut chewy cereal bar. I also keep one in my tote bag for rush-around days.

A box of 5 costs £2.88. Available in supermarkets or direct from Doves Farm at link

Window Cleaner

Q: The man most likely to succeed with me?

A: A man who does windows.

Diamond Sparke

This week, the most expensive items in my supermarket trolley were the cleaning products. So here are a few of my grandmother’s homemade cleaners.

Save on a window cleaner. When independently tested (by the British Glass Economics Division), this recipe was considered as good as any on the market.

Recipe
In a jug, mix 1 cup water, 1 cup methylated spirits and 1 cup paraffin. Pour into empty bottle and shake well. Remember to label the bottle……… POISONOUS WINDOW CLEANER.

Use a cloth to rub this mixture on glass tiles and mirror, then use another cloth to polish off when dry. What’s best is to rub with newspaper then polish with a chamois leather.

Chamois leather £3.98 from Wilkinson Plus at link

Paraffin 4 litres £6.98 from B&Q at link

Here’s another window cleaner with ingredients more likely to be in your kitchen.

Recipe
In a jug, mix 2 cups water, 1 cup cheapest vinegar, juice of ½ lemon. Before cutting the lemon, roll it around hard on a flat surface – such as your worktop – because you’ll get more juice out of it.

Save on a washing up liquid that’s also a hair shampoo.

Gran kept a tin mug in the kitchen for leftover bits of soap. When the mug was full, she chopped up the soap, put it in a pudding basin and topped with boiling water. This results in a soft soap jelly for washing up and washing hair. To get silky glossy hair, Gran added a dessertspoon of vinegar to the rinsing water.

Save on toothpaste

You don’t need an inch on your toothbrush, you only need a smear. Try it.

Conversion Idea

Builders report that the most popular conversion project is to enlarge the kitchen. In my wall of kitchen storage cupboards, I included a laundry area with sliding doors. It also acts as a hurl-it-in area when tidying up for visitors. The drip drier is adjustable, but I wish I’d chosen a simpler, fixed chromium rod for drip-drying shirts.

Backing Down Memory Lane…

Over black coffee and Bittermints in my kitchen, illustrator Christopher Brown reported that at the launch party for his new book, An Alphabet of London (number 4 on the non-fiction best-seller list) he had signed 200 copies. I told him I’d never signed that many at one sitting.

Many moons ago, when I toured British bookshops with former Prime Minister Edward Heath, he had just knocked me into 2nd place on the best-seller list with his first book on sailing. At every bookshop, blue-rinsed matrons and decent chaps in cricket blazers queued round the block to purchase Ted’s book. He had to organize a production line: one clean-cut chap would take the money, a second one would thrust the opened book in front of Ted, who barely had the time to scribble his signature before a third young man snatched it away, to make room for the next one.

Meanwhile at the next table, to try and avoid humiliation, I signed books for my little group as slowly as possible, with personal dedications and long messages (“Tell me more about your aunt.”)

Together, Ted and I also attended glittery events, such as the Yorkshire Literary Luncheon. After my first speech, Ted looked a bit worried and coached me. My next speech described Ted coaching me, with a little mimicry. We remained friends until he died, 30 years later. This man, who could seem huffy, had the rare gift of friendship, and at his big parties, as he approached, faces softened into smiles and eyes shone with love. Whenever I asked his advice, Ted’s reply was always good advice, from financial affairs to the correct action when waiters don’t take any notice of you.

“An Alphabet of London” is a reminiscence of Christopher Brown’s London childhood. Lavishly illustrated, it has rare charm: all London life is here, from Dickens, Dr. Johnson and Tower Bridge to HM the Queen, pigeons and jellied eels. Having spent a happy evening with it, I purchased four copies for my gift cupboard. Costs £12.50 published by MERRELL or on Amazon (only £8.41) at link

I admit to a personal interest. The introduction is by my son,
Jasper Conran.

To Work or Not to Work?

Isn’t it odd that the government is so financially concerned about – and spending so much money on – people who don’t want to work, but don’t seem to be similarly concerned with helping people who do want to work?

WORKING FAMILIES is the charity that helps working parents and carers achieve work-life balance. It stops people breaking up and breaking down.

Incidentally, a parent with difficulties is not necessarily a woman; it might be a man who is caring for his aged parent or a one-parent father with childcare problems – perhaps for a disabled child.

This charity receives 174,000 distress calls for help every year.

WORKING FAMILIES GETS NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING to run their day-to-day operation; I worked alongside Working Parents for six years and I saw the CE stretch every penny. This charity depends on voluntary contributions. Can you help?

Working Families: link

Travelling?

Slim and scarlet

I buy one fashion item every season. This spring it’s a well-made, classic scarlet leather handbag, strangely reminiscent of the Hermes bag that cost thousands. It comes with a detachable shoulder strap and costs £245. Measures 32cm wide X 27cm high X 12cm at base.

My handbag test

• It needs to expand from slim elegance to wide practicality.
• It needs to be light.
• It needs to be reasonably small, not so large and lumpy that it looks as if you’re going to outer Mongolia after lunch.
• It needs to stand upright, not flop over, so that, from my desk, I can throw stuff into it.
• It needs to take A4 size papers.

Only obtainable from a Russell & Bromley store, because they aren’t yet online (Wake up, R & B!).

Pack it in

What do you give a neighbour who looked after your cat for several months when you were ill and is now about to travel to San Francisco? I chose a dark red moc croc tote-bag (aircraft cabin size) with a section below for shoes. It’s bigger than handbag size, it’s weekend tote size. It costs £89 from a limited edition.

It’s from a luggage range for Tripp, part of which won a Condé Nast Traveller Magazine Innovation and Design Award. Now only available in delicious deep purple or black.

Details: link

The Tripp website also shows a good packing check list for vital stuff.

Go to link

Again, I admit to an interest. It’s designed by my son, Jasper Conran.

Reality Check

Watching my daughter-in-law, Gertrude, glide down a restaurant staircase, I said admiringly to my son, “She looks like an Amazon.”

He said, “Those women were in the army; they had hairy legs and stank of sweat. If they had droopy breasts which made it difficult to pull back a bowstring, they hacked off their right tit. My wife doesn’t look like that.”

Walk the Line: How to Avoid Exercise

Veteran exerciser Jane Fonda’s daily routine includes walking barefoot in a straight line for 5 minutes, without wobbling. This is only possible if you push your pelvis forward on the right, when you stride with the right leg, and ditto for the left leg.

I do this catwalk slouch up and down my long hall. It keeps me as supple as I’m ever likely to be. This is the only exercise I’ll never dump – because you can do it anywhere, short of a prison cell, any time of day and fully dressed. Just kick off your shoes.

From You to Me

1. Janey G. from Hampstead, London writes, “It has been medically proven that women wear high heels because the angle of the pelvis is thrust forward, so every step causes erotic stimulation of the clitoris.”

Doesn’t do it for me, alas.

I suspect Janey G. is a man.

2. Lucy writes from Dundee and asks how to reply to a twitter. Start the tweet by typing the @ symbol followed by the twitter name of the person, then the message, which must be limited to 140 characters.

Example: @ShirleyConran Where can I get tiara polish?

3. Anne writes from Ottawa, Canada, “Is ‘Savages’ available in ebook and if yes, where can I get it.”

Sorry, my book ‘Savages’ is out of print and not yet available as an ebook. I’ll send you a free signed original (ie old) hardback if that will do? Please let me know where to send it.

Savages is an adventure story but also a complete tropical survival guide. When I was writing it, no tropical survival guide existed, so just for fun and because I had researched it, I wound this course around the story.

When I was in Ottawa – for the original launch – I phoned a nearby bookshop to check there were copies for me to sign (sometimes an author travels miles for a signing to find the books haven’t arrived). Yes, they had fifty copies of ‘Savages’. Half-an-hour later, when I arrived, there was not one.

I glared at the manager, “Don’t tell me you sold fifty copies in half-an-hour?”

“Yes. To one customer.”

“Why would one person buy fifty copies?”

Eventually, he told me they were for the Canadian Secret Service. What a compliment.

Goodbye!

I’m off to…erm…research something. I’ll practise my catwalk steps on the way.

How to reach me

I’d like to hear from you. Please send any questions or comments to reply@shirleyconran.com

If you would like to read my future blogs, touch SUBSCRIBE

$400 for the bit of sculpture that changes hands before another tedious speech, thanking everyone they’ve ever met.

No wonder there are so many awards.

Candice Martin of the Atlantic Productions team, which won the little gold coated man for David Attenborough’s First Life series.

Candice is a minor saint. For months while her mother has lain helpless in hospital, Candice has had a night job, running her mother’s business and keeping friends informed and supportive.

Home Hints from the Rich

Veteran of the New York social scene, Shirley Lord, has duplicates of her beauty bottles and bits, kept in a beauty box that matches her luggage, and is only used when traveling.

Down-scaled, this is actually a copyable idea. Transfer some of your makeup into small containers. Don’t use your existing lipsticks down to the stub but slip them in a small travel bag that you can take to work or the gym, as well as overnight or on holiday.

Small makeup containers from Muji (link). Cost from £3.50.

!!!Jewellery!!!

How to get it

Femme fatale Pamela Churchill had a walk-in jewellery safe after a lifetime spend collecting jewellery donators. She attributed her collection to “being a good listener”, supposedly also the secret of the Duchess of Windsor. Why doesn’t this work for me? I have ears.

How to keep it

How do you avoid being robbed of your diamonds?
a) Don’t wear any when outdoors.
b) Don’t possess any.

Inexpensive jewellery is as pretty or flamboyant as anyone could wish. Trouble is that you can’t keep much in the sort of dinky jewel box that people buy you as a gift. I economize on jewellery – and its insurance – and splurge on my jewel box drawers.

How to file it

!!!Jewellery!!!

Some people hang their jewellery over hooks in the wall or on the back of a door, but I don’t because the stuff gets grubby. Instead, I file my jewellery. You can stack filing units on top of each other and have fun writing out the drawer labels, “Diamonds…” “pearls…” “gold only”.

Costs are from £52 for Ryman’s smallest filing unit. They’re deep, so make sure you have enough room. I’ve stacked two black ones on top of each other.

I cut black felt to line the bottoms of the drawers. I stuck the felt with MARABU FIXOGUM RUBBER CEMENT and I tested a lot of adhesives before I found one that doesn’t leak through the fabric. It’s also useful to deal with a sagging hemline, five minutes before you’re due to leave.

Felt from John Lewis (link)

Marabu gum costs £5.85 a tube. Get it from Great Art (link)

Rymans link: Go to (link)

How feminine are you?

Think women are equal? Think again.

When anyone asks if I’m a feminist I say, “I’m a democrat,” because I believe in fair deals. But I admit to having been involved in organizing demos, marches and sit-ins around 1970, which may explain why I was invited to a small evening party at the House of Lords, to view Suffragette museum exhibits borrowed from The Women’s Library.

It was moving to read a handwritten letter from Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Dame Millicent Fawcett to tell her, in 1928, that Parliament had agreed to agree that all women should have the vote.

Pity we don’t use it better, to get a fair deal for women.

Forty years after the Equal Pay Act, the average pay gap is still 15%. Men still believe – only because they have a willy – that they have a right to earn 15% more than women, for doing the same job. Why? Most men aren’t speciality sex workers.

Sexism and the City

The third wave of feminism seems to be slowly simmering to the boil. I hope it doesn’t scatter its shot but aims where the power lies, to target executive boards: on average, FTSE 100 boards contain 84.4% men and 15.6% women (an interesting cartoon?).

Who’s voting?

We have 22 women MPs but over 600 male MPs, so it’s not surprising that it’s taken forty years NOT to get equality of representation.

Supper discussion

After the exhibition, social historian Peter York took me out to dinner to discuss, “Let’s Hear it for the Boys” – the subject of the next exhibition at The Women’s Library. Certainly in the Seventies there were a few men nervously standing by their women – and they were derided for it. So I look forward to their recognition. Women’s Library (link)

Ever had a bad builder?

Have you ever suffered from bad builders? Here are some more to avoid.

To enlarge the yellow page, so you can read it, click on the photo.

Lazy Cook

I was cooking French onion soup when the telephone rang. While answering it, the doorbell rang with a complicated delivery for a neighbour who wasn’t at home. Returned to clouds of smoke in kitchen and burnt saucepan. This reminded me to tell you how to rescue a burnt saucepan provided it isn’t burnt so badly that it looks like a bombed tank.

Method

Fill saucepan with water to the depth of your little finger. Add 2 heaped desertspoons of BIO TEX laundry stain removing powder. Soak overnight. Wash pan.

Don’t burn it.

My favourite cookery gadget is a small circular, 60 minute alarm clock that hangs round my neck and reminds me when to leave the TV to turn things off in the kitchen, and when to leave the kitchen for one of those rare TV programmes that isn’t do-it-yourself TV for fat people or an updated Victorian parlour game for idiots.

No batteries required, you just wind it up before using. Costs £6.50 and £2.99 shipping from Made4Men (link)

Quick French Onion Soup

(serves 4)

A winter warmer that’s cheap
and can use stale cheese.

Ingredients

• 4-6 large onions
• About an egg cup of butter
• About 1 ½ pints stock/scant litre, made with chicken or beef cube (I like Knorr Swiss)
• 1 ½ dessertspoons Worcester sauce
• 2 oz/50g grated cheese
• 4 slices bread, little-finger thick
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and thinly slice onions. On low heat, fry in butter until golden.
2. Pour stock over onions, add Worcester sauce. Season to taste.
3. Simmer gently for 5-10 minutes. While that’s going on…
4. Toast bread lightly. Sprinkle grated cheese on top side and put under grill until cheese bubbles. Cut toast into bite-size squares.
5. Serve soup in individual bowls, with floating toasted cheese islands.

Jinty on London Fashion Week

Jinty on a good day.
Photo by kind permission of
Virgin Atlantic.

My fashion spy, Jinty, is still depressed after London Fashion Week, “The clothes were too expensive, too extreme, too young and too short. There’s nothing for anyone not on a diet except for classics at Margaret Howell and Nicole Farhi – chic without bum exposure.”

“So much reminded me of Karl’s new label for the young. But the young can’t afford designer clothes and they can do the rebellious, street look cheaply – because they invented it. Like half the women in Britain, I’m a size 16 and I’m willing to spend – but I don’t want to meet my grandchildren wearing biker boots below sequin shorts and a tiny biker jacket.”

Granny Alert

Grannies are useful for several things, apart from free babysitting: when babies grow, they need birthday presents, Christmas presents, and outings. Once I had been trained to give them money (“Sam doesn’t need a crossbow”) I focused on the outings, and there’s a perfect Easter treat coming up for around-twelve-year-olds of either sex.

Easter holiday outing

One-hour fashion workshops for around-twelves are being held in London on Saturday 7th April and Saturday 14th April at 10:30am and 12pm.

Catch ‘em young

Would-be designers can learn how to create their own fashion mood boards, and meet the authors of MY FASHION LOOKBOOK: design your own collection. Meanwhile, there’s a delightful café in the museum where grannies can wait over coffee and really sinful cakes.

Smarten up

Irritatingly, the book isn’t published until after Easter but I’ve had an advance peep and it’s WONDERFUL: keep ‘em quiet for days. It shows how to create your own fashion workbook, with contents that include: “What are your favourite things? What’s your big idea? What are your best colours? What shapes will best suit you?” And there’s a wallet at the back for scrapbook cuttings.

Catch ‘em young

Also showing is an exhibition of thirty outfits designed and painted by twelve-year-old girls.

Keep ‘em quiet

Grannies who don’t live within a bra’s toss of London Bridge might buy the book and use it, with sketchbooks and crayons, as a basis for a small, young designer’s party.

Details

MY FASHION LOOKBOOK is by Jacky Bahbout with delicious illustrations by Cynthia Merhej. Priced £12.95 (cheaper from Amazon). It will be published on 16 April 2012 by Thames & Hudson.
www.thamesandhudson.com
Tel 020 7845 5024

The Exhibition and workshops are held at the Fashion & Textile Museum near London Bridge.
Fashion workshop £9 each person.
Entry to museum £7, £5 concessions (only adults pay, not the 12-year olds)

Tel 020 7407 8664 to book.
83 Bermondsey St, London SE1 3XF
www.ftmlondon.org

Overheard

“Mummy, why do they go flat as a pancake when you’re lying on the sofa but float to the top in the bath?”

Tight spot

Reader’s request

Q: How do you stop your navy tights getting muddled with your black tights?

A: A woman of your sophistication should know better than to wear navy tights, which are not sexy and remind men of hospitals.
Dump all the navy tights. Always wear black tights with navy outfits.

Getting late! Must Fly!

…Now where did I park my Sopwith Camel?

How to reach me

I’d love to hear from you. Please send any questions or comments to reply@shirleyconran.com

If you would like to read my future blogs, touch SUBSCRIBE

A clusterfuck isn’t an orgy in a cupboard, it’s a military term used to describe a bungled operation. Just as a cluster-bomb throws at out a number of smaller bombs when it explodes, a clusterfuck means a screw-up – probably due to disorganization – that causes a lot of other problems. Such fallout can easily occur in companies that outsource.

Cossack party

I purchased a flat that looked as if Cossacks had been having a party in it for several years. Buried beneath the litter was a disconnected, ancient yellow gas meter that looked like something from an early Dr. Who episode. I asked my builder to dump it, but he warned me that if I did so, the energy company might charge rent for it…forever. It was then that he gloomily predicted a clusterfuck.

Yellow peril

The energy company cheerfully agreed to collect their yellow gas meter…but they didn’t. I wasn’t allowed to deliver it to them for health & safety reasons. Many weeks and many departments later, I threatened to counter-charge rent for my hall, where the yellow peril waited, a health & safety menace to visitors. Recognizing that I would have to live with it for a while, I decorated the gas meter for Easter. The next day, it was collected.

At least I learned a new noun.

Finance

What to do in a financial crisis?

The entire Western world is in an inflation spiral cause by bankers gambling with other people’s money and vote-fishing politicians borrowing recklessly to finance their pet projects.

All the world’s main currencies are government-manipulated, and the easiest way for politicians to get rid of these debts is by simply printing more money, which makes money worth less and – as they well know – causes inflation. It’s like watering the milk: there’s more liquid, but it’s lost some of its value as milk.

What to do?

Invest in hard assets – stuff you can see, touch and use. A good excuse to shop. Buy futures in the best, warmest winter coat you can afford (for when you can’t afford heating) and the best quality tote bag (not smaller than A4 or magazine size). The ones I purchased in the 1974 Financial Crisis are still being used: back then, the real-blonde crocodile bag cost £40, so a good investment.

Go shopping

My second husband’s second wife, fashion designer Jinty, is a brilliant shopper. We go shopping with my to-buy list and at the end of the trip, everything has been crossed off my list, I have purchased nothing and I am happy. Then Jinty takes me to lunch at the Wolseley. Afterwards, she guides me to the one perfect item.

Time savers

Jinty checks Net a Porter every morning (I dare not – too tempting) and when we last spoke, she was fresh from a visit to Harvey Nichols. “Saw nothing mouthwatering – not even for thin people – so caught the 22 bus home.”

Jinty’s philosophy is to buy the best whether it’s in a cheap or an expensive range. Right now, she tips:

• Cashmere sweaters from UNIQLO, from £49.99 in their sale. (www.uniqlo.com/uk)
• Goosedown puffer jackets from MAXMARA. (www.maxmara.com)
• Bags from JP TOD’S. (tods.com)
• Good leather jackets from ACNE, the Swedish firm who do big sizes (difficult to find in leather). (www.acnestudios.com)

Lazy Cook

Reputation Maker Sauce

Good to accompany beef sautéed (fried) in frying pan (hamburgers, chops etc).
Time taken: less than a minute.
This quantity: for two, or one greedy person.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 tablespoon cream, double or single.

Method

1. Remove cooked meat from frying pan, remove pan from heat. With a wooden spoon, quickly stir in the Worcestershire sauce, then the cream. Pour.

(Exit Stage Right)

My friend, Enid Chanelle, in her nineties, died on 19 February 2012. I find that I can’t feel sad, because every time I think of Enid – one of the most beautiful women I’ve met – I remember her laughing.

In spring, there will be a memorial at her favourite theatre – the elegant Theatre Royal in London’s Haymarket, part of a chain of theatres of which Enid was President.

Once, during a first night performance, Enid had to deal with some backstage drama. She sent a message to me, sitting in the audience: please would I go to her box and entertain her friend during the interval. Sitting in the box was Princess Alexandra.

I foresee a problem in the spring. No theatre is big enough to hold all Enid’s friends.

Support Your Tote Bags

Anne Robinson – yes, that one – wants more wardrobe tips.

Care for your tote bags and stop them flopping sideways with magazine dividers, which are like book-ends, only bigger, and heavier. You need one per bag. Here is a photo of mine.

Cost about £7 from Amazon UK (link). Search ‘large bookends’.

When tote bags not in use, fill with a flimsy supermarket bag, stuffed with crumpled paper. When you want to use the tote, just lift out the plastic bag and leave it on the shelf, in the tote bag’s place.

Helping Hand

35 years ago, Prince Charles started the Prince’s Trust, which has helped 650,000 young people get on their feet, train and get jobs – that’s about 70 young people helped every working day for 35 years.

Prince Charles has also established seventeen other charities. In all, they raise over £100 million every year, to help people.

Prince Charles doesn’t top the popularity charts in Britain, but he’s possibly doing more than film star Paul Newman, who is still revered in America for raising money for charity through his food manufacturing company.

To be fair, isn’t it time someone gave Prince Charles an award?

Prince’s Trust website: www.princes-trust.org.uk

Prince of Wales’ website: www.princeofwales.gov.uk

To pack or not to pack it?

Do you have luggage problems? Once, standing at the airport carousel, I saw a flurry of pretty underwear coming down the chute. Poor woman, I thought, then recognized the nightgown. My cheap suitcase had burst open.

Silvery suitcases

A novelist has to tour a lot, so as soon as I made some money, I ordered two of those expensive silvery suitcases, upon which baggage handlers can tap-dance without denting them – I had read that George Clooney traveled with fourteen of them. Later I discovered that they each weighed the complete baggage allowance when empty and the inside was perfectly planned – for a man: it was like an exasperating computer programme, you couldn’t deviate from it for your personal requirements: the shirts went in the shirt place, the pants went in the pant place and the underwear place allowed only a couple of
y-fronts.

Shortly afterwards, when a New York cab driver admired them, I said, “You can have them if you buy me two tough, canvas suitcases.” He did, and years later, I’m still using them.

Traveling light

I despair when I look at packing lists of friends who whizz halfway around the world with only hand luggage, a cashmere shawl and Chanel sunglasses.

Packing plan 1

Actress and National Treasure, Joanna Lumley’s miniscule packing plan was for a trip that was half camping in tents, half formal (an embassy visit). Her colour plan was black, white, khaki and one bright colour – pink (but it could have been purple or lime green). She took three pairs of comfortable trousers, two warm sweaters, t-shirts in plain colours, a lightweight, hooded rain-proof jacket, three bras, three pants, three cotton neckscarves and pyjamas. She added a warm jacket, in case the weather was colder than she expected. Her formal outfit was all-black: heels, skirt, cover-up top, plus an interesting evening clutch and string of pearls or handsome necklace.

Packing plan 2

Once I flew sitting next to the owner of a travel agency, who she said she only ever traveled with on-board hand luggage because of the airport luggage holdups and losses. She showed me her bag. Inside was a change of beige underwear, two silk blouses, two no-crush silk jersey dresses, one crimson sweater, two pairs of navy pants plus two bikinis. She had flip flops, navy ballet shoes, one pair of really classy high heels, and a light, rain-proof egg-yellow jacket that rolled up into itself. She slept in a T-shirt. She traveled in a heavy wool jacket, skirt, plus sturdy walking shoes, and carried her heavy overcoat.

Packing plan 3

My packing prize goes to the late Jacqueline Onassis who once went to Cambodia on a short, jungle trip to see ruined temples with: her lover, two pairs black pants, two black shirts, black espadrilles, a gold jacket and gold sandals for evenings, two scarves, spare sunglasses and a change of underwear.

MODESTY?

Is it time we called the land we live in simply ‘Britain’ or should we start calling other countries, ‘Great Sweden’, ‘Great France’ or ‘Great Irian Jaya’?

On the Beach!

I’m off to the beach. I’m the one on the left.

How to reach me

I’d love to hear from you. Please send any questions or comments to reply@shirleyconran.com

Another giveaway is lying on your back on the floor to wriggle into your jeans.

Or simply – wearing high heels. Why go through the agony?

“It’s to make myself look taller.”

Why do you want to look taller?

“So that I look slimmer?”

Why?

“So that I look more attractive.”

To whom?

“No you’re wrong, I do it for myself alone.”

…Further excuses to taste.

Nobody with any respect for their metatarsals wears high heels, if they are going to see nobody all day.

How do you create a fashion brand?

Went to the opening party for Jane Ashley’s exhibition – Photographing Laura Ashley – at a jewel box of a museum, The Fashion and Textile Museum. Cocktails and talks about the establishment of a brand, with Philip Meech, photographer for Prada and Laura Ashley contrasted. Saw beautiful photographs, films and some of the actual vintage clothes. Exhilarating!

Fashion and Textile Museum, www.ftmlondon.org

THE QUAY is one of Jane Ashley’s beautiful publicity photographs taken in the late Sixties, at the start of the family firm, Laura Ashley PLC. On exhibition until 25th February 2012, 11 am – 6 pm

Dazzling entrance to The Fashion and Textile Museum, currently also exhibiting “CATWALK to COVER, a fashion exhibition.”

Why do women MPs wear scarlet jackets?

The scarlet women want to look different, to stand out in that sea of ill-pressed dark suits. Do they want to look like holiday camp hostesses? Or do they hope to look like Virgin air hostesses?

They wish.

Seduction by Tweet

Many moons ago, online, I would intend to check something on Wikipedia and, two hours later, find myself on the brink of buying a penthouse in San Francisco.

Tweeting is even more seductive. In fact, I’ve spent my entire working morning reading other people’s tweets.

I’ve narrowed my favourites down to three. What are yours?

1. Best Fashion: Karl Lagerfeld @Karl_Lagerfeld
2. Best Author: Ken Follett at @KMFollett
3. Best Political Writer: Andrew Rawnsley @andrewrawnsley

Dullest Tweeter: Sarah Brown, wife of our fallen leader @SarahBrownUK

Lazy Cook

Fruity Muesli

(serves one)

Can be multiplied for more people.

Prep time 5 minutes (for me).

This is made the night before, so useful for when Mum can’t or won’t cook breakfast. (Sunday morning?) It can be customized to fit what’s left in your fridge and fresh enough on a Friday night.

Ingredients

• About 2 oz any soft clean fresh fruit, or 1 peeled finely sliced banana and some quartered seedless grapes (don’t peel).
• A few chopped almonds
• Half a cup of apple juice
• 60g / 2 oz porridge oats or one packet Quaker Oats quick porridge. Ignore instructions on packet.
• One tablespoon natural yoghurt.
• Salt to taste (I use 2 pinches) maybe a little clear honey.

Method

1. Roughly chop the fruit and put in a DEEP bowl. Add almonds, apple juice and stir.
2. Add oats, mixing thoroughly. Stir in yoghurt. Cover bowl with a plate and stick in fridge overnight.
3. Next morning, stir well and taste. Add salt and drizzle honey to taste. Serve.

How to avoid BURNOUT

Stress makes people yell at each other and it’s bad for the complexion: lines and frowns. And too much stress is bad for your health.

In Sweden the illness M.E is called burnout, because that’s considered the main factor. However much you’re doing – it’s too much for you.

Flameout

From New York I hear that business women are burning out by the age of 30; they are called FLAMEOUTS because they burn brightly before falling off the corporate ladder. According to McKinsey research, over half of corporate entry jobs go to women but because one woman in three is a drop-out, the percentage rises to 37% for mid management roles and then drops further to 26% for senior management.

Back in Britain, 25 year old Josephine, married with twins, has a terrific job as a fashion journalist juggling blog, twitter and London Fashion Week but is about to drop from exhaustion. What should she do?

LESS. This can be tougher than a New Year Resolution.

Superwoman

Once long ago, I wrote a book on how to minimize housework called Superwoman: my definition of a Superwoman is not a women who tries to do everything, but a woman who knows her own limitations, firmly sticks within them and makes sure everyone else – husband, children, boss — knows what they are.

Also, I founded the Work Life Balance Trust. As soon as you work out what work-life balance means, you ask yourself whether you’ve got it, and the answer is NO. But you’ve just worked out why you haven’t got it.

Psychologist Dennis Friedman told me that the main rule is: one hour overtime needs one hour extra rest. One week of overtime needs one week compensation rest.

Flexi – time suits all

The aim of the Trust was to alter the timetable of the British workplace, which hadn’t changed since the Industrial Revolution. This was achieved by introducing flexi time. There are twelve different sorts of flexi time, one specifically for seasonal heavy workloads to suit postmen, pressurised lawyers and accountants just before the end of the tax year.

Backing down Memory Lane

About 100,00 British authors are published every year, and they all long for their publishers to pay for a publicity tour.

SUPERWOMAN, my book showing how to minimize housework, was published long ago in the summer of 1975. My publishers were a tiny Dickensian outfit in a Bloomsbury attic, and they hadn’t had a bestseller since before the first World War, when it was poet Rupert Brooke: they had little money to spare for publicity.

Poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

One Sunday morning the publisher woke me at 7am and said in a disbelieving blow-job-crescendo voice, “YOU’RE NUMBER ONE! YOU’VE BEATEN WISDEN!”

“Who’s he?”

“Wisden’s Cricket Annual. Now you must go on a publicity tour!”

I agreed to provide my new estate Citroen – a friend’s gift – so long as the publisher insured it and paid for a chauffeur.

So I spent most of my payment-upon-publication on clothes – the sort of clothes that might be worn by a country bookshop customer: tweedy skirts and jackets. I was advised to buy something flashy for Glasgow, so I got a scarlet velvet, mermaid-clingy dress with a low neck-line.

The Tour

Cut to tweedy me, signing books for an appreciative small crowd at the back of a bookshop, when there’s a commotion at the front. My entire small crowd speeds off like lemmings. Blonde film star, Diana Dors appears wearing – at teatime! – a white, satin topless gown shrouded in white fox fur. Immediately, I realised that booklovers do not want to meet an author dressed like a bookworm, but one dressed like a Christmas tree.

My next gig was TV in Glasgow and, as we sped northward, I realised that my driver was the worst driver on the planet. The red velvet dress was a success on TV but afterwards we found that my suitcase had been stolen from the unlocked – so uninsured — boot of my now-battered car. Goodbye all new clothes.

Red velvet for breakfast

My media schedule was crammed as full as a baby’s first Christmas stocking – TV studios, radio stations, local newspaper office and functions such as the Yorkshire Literary Luncheon. There was no time to stop ‘n shop, so I wore the red velvet for twelve days from breakfast TV to bedtime. I grew to hate both it and the publicity tour: had I wanted to talk endlessly in public, I would have been an actress.

One wet and windy night on the way to Norwich, the chauffeur smashed my new car, the last in a six-car pile up. My driver had forgotten to insure the car. My first publicity tour cost more than the sales revenue it was supposed to promote.

Chips off the old block
A young Sebastian and Jasper

I raised my sons to look after themselves: Jasper cooked his first business lunch for me when he was twelve (yes, he was paid) and when Sebastian married, his wife was delighted to find that he could sew his own shirt buttons and recycle his socks. Here’s an early view.

Notice Sebastian’s posh prep school accent. In the Sixties, he switched to a Liverpudlian accent. Now, he talks Normal with a hint of Thames Estuary, like Prince William.

How to undress

Ever wished at night that you could press a button and be undressed and in bed? Here’s the next best method.

If you hang your clothes up at night, theoretically the creases drop out because of your retained body warmth. To get yourself to do this, get four spare hangers – one for pants or skirts. Open the wardrobe door and undress in front of it, hanging clothes as you advance to nakedness.

My ex daughter-in-law, Georgina, says she follows a similar method which consists of simply opening the wardrobe door and dropping her clothes inside it.

Hangers

For me, the best hangers are from Practicalprincess.com. Nothing seems to slip off; the pants are gripped but not indelibly so; and the hangers don’t take up too much width room in my wardrobe. I purchased £50 worth of hangers: they make me feel pampered. I’m going to buy some more.

Wardrobes

Who has the best walk-in wardrobe I’ve ever stood in? Shared first place – because neither of them have ever been second at anything – goes to best selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford and journalist Felicity Green. Barbara’s designer produced a walk-in of pale polished wood, with indirect lighting that made you look ten years younger. There was a place for everything, including belts, bras and brooches. Everything seemed to work at the touch of a button: doors glided open, the drawers slid sinuously.

Savile Row

Felicity, whose entire writing archive is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, never buys any article of clothing that doesn’t go with everything else in her wardrobe: that’s because nearly everything is black, white or grey with an occasional touch of scarlet and everything is colour coded, so to enter her walk-in feels like stepping into a Savile Row tailor.

Felicity’s flat had two bedrooms but as there’s only one Felicity, she knocked down a dividing wall to create a walk-in wardrobe that you enter from the end of her bedroom. There are no cupboards. Instead Felicity fixed rails
wall-to-wall. Instead of cupboard doors she has pull-up linen blinds. On the floor stand cheap wire Ikea-type storage baskets, for sweaters and underwear, with a small space for suitcases. Above these, hang coats, shirts and trousers. Above, bags sit on a high shelf that runs around the room. There is one small area for long clothes. On the back of the door to the landing, is a full length mirror.

Fashion or style

Felicity isn’t interested in fashion but in STYLE. “My icon is Audrey Hepburn, although she was twice my height and half my width. Her clothes were simple classics that could still be worn today. If you buy clothes that are your style, they are never fashionable or unfashionable: I have things over forty years old.”

To discover your own style, look at the clothes you wear regularly and write down what they all have in common, advises Felicity.

Want to do a little bit for the Big Society?

We’re a financially illiterate nation, so it’s not surprising that we’re not yet half-way through a financial crisis that will take ten years to resolve (my guess).

Which is why every child needs a financial education, and this should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. To make this law, financial writer Martin Lewis has organized an e-petition; please join me in signing it.

Martin’s petition already has over a 100,000 signatures, but more are needed in order to get the government action. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/8903

Goodbye

“Here’s my vision of you preparing your first blog,” writes ex-daughter-in-law, “I have given you a boob job – only a slight lift – a string of pearls and a martini glass – Love Georgina ”