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