Living The Dream

I've often thought of those people, mostly faceless, whom I have a tendency to admire for really odd reasons; people who can sing well without even trying, people who live or work in exciting places, people who produce really nice work, be this showcased through a blog or self-publishing, and more. Then I looked back and realised that, at some point in my life, I was living a dream, yet I did not realise it. I used to live in a flat right behind the London Eye, that tall, semi-circular building known as The White House (very imaginatively named, I must tell you). While my own windows faced the rather little thrilling Waterloo roundabout (or the IMAX cinema, if you're feeling a little more upbeat), the roof terrace overlooked the Thames and, with it, Big Ben, the London Eye itself and, a little more to the right, The National Theatre.

At that time, I was consumed by work. I am not saying this in the sense of 'rushing up the career ladder as quickly as I could'; no, I really do mean consumed in its worst sense. I mean consumed as burnt out by a working treadmill that saw me running and running, even at weekends, never stopping to notice anything. Only once did I go to the roof terrace and sat down, taking in the sounds and the beautiful view. Only once did I actually notice Big Ben chiming. I may have taken a couple of pictures of it, but I cannot be sure. 

It's exactly ten years later, and I am, once again, in this marvellous spot of London, watching the full trees swing in the wind, the tourists stopping by to take pics, the river curling up in thousands of creases. A lot has happened since the summer of 2001, and a lot has not happened, despite the plans (they really are for little schemers) and the striving (don't, ever). 

I've recently started reading the blog of an American artist, this one, who lives in Brooklyn. She often talks of what she does downtown and I always smile as she mentions places that I know so well and that are so dear to me. If truth be told, I swoon a little. Then today, back from the copy room, I caught a glipse of the Thames and, for a change, I stopped. It's a fabulous day in London, with a pale blue sky and clouds scattered across it. As I take it all in, after a period that has been traumatic to say the least, I realised that I am living the dream. For a change, it ain't just somebody else's dream, the dream of someone who may be reading this, swooning like I do over Summer Pierre's site, but my own dream too. This time, I want to stay in the dream, I want to record it all, I want to enjoy it all. This time I am the one actually living it. 

Assessing November

I am finally getting to the end of this series of posts. I swear I won't use this stupid title in the year. What was I thinking when I started? Why assessing month x, as if I were writing a damn report? You all know by now that the most notable thing about November is that I finished my book and I sent it to the publisher for editing and that's all there is to say for a month that was, with the exception of the past few days, intense writing only. Now back to London...



Liberty is one of my favourite places, especially so at Christmas because the selection of decorations is always slightly different from the usual suspects found across the nation from John Lewis to Harrods. But this is not all. I've often walked its wooden boards dreaming of living there, not in the shop itself, but in the house that it looks it could have been in the distant past. Yet, despite its mock-Tudor look, both inside and outside, Liberty was always a shop. Its current premises were in fact built at the beginning of the 20th century and have as much to do with the Tudors as I have with a size 6. I bought some vintage-inspired glass ornaments and spent quite some times in haberdashery, where I fantasised about quilting now that I have finally figured out how to use my sewing machine.

There was more to London this weekend than just shopping or indeed eating (at Laduree of course, but also at the Patisserie Valerie, at Zia Teresa, at Fortnum's Parlour and others). There was also this:



But if you too have seen The Mousetrap, you will know that I cannot reveal who has done it after all...

Christmas Windows

I have a very soft spot for two very specific types of mail that come through my letterbox: the Studio Catalogue and the Harrods Magazine. When I mention this to anyone willing to listen, this anyone is baffled, if not shocked, by this coupling, for Studio and Harrods could not be more different if they tried.



The former is the purveyor of all throw-away cheap and nasty tack, Christmassy or otherwise, including revolting boiled sweets of the basest sort and vulgar willie-and-tits-shaped chocolates, while the latter sells everything for everyone everywhere, provided this everyone has a job trading commodities such as oil (the black, not the olive, sort) or weapons and can therefore afford essentials such as £1m snooker tables or £ 18,000 Swarovski-encrusted table footballs.

Still, Harrods is one of my favourite places and the one that has the very best sale in town if not in the world. Having shopped at Saks, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Harvey, Selfridges and everywhere else all the way down to Lord and Taylor, John Lewis and Macy’s, and having read the past ten years of French, British, American and Italian Vogues, I really do know my market. This year, the Christmas windows pay homage to the latest Bond, James Bond outing in Quantum of Solace (nice title by the way, not that it means anything to me), with glamourous Bond girls languidly draped over desirable objects, wearing very gorgeous dresses, among typical Harrods super-lux settings.






Yet, for all of its refined bling (a bit of an oxymoron this one, but not quite if you know Harrods), my personal award of Best Christmas Windows in London goes, yet again, to Fortnum and Mason. Fortnum has a real knack for creating magical displays that tell a story. I recall their fabulous Alice in Wonderland windows for example, but this year they have surpassed their own greatness, with an icy take on the Snow Queen having children and adults alike stopping agog, ooohing and aahing with their mouths open. And I’ll tell you something else... I wasn’t the only one taking pics of these.

And So To London...

Finally, not a tacky shop in sight, at least not in Knightsbridge anyway.

There Is Only One Sale

I know many people do not particularly like to travel by train. As far as I am concerned, it beats the car and the plane by miles. If I am in the car, then I am the one driving, and the best I can do is either talk to a travelling companion (if I have one, which does not happen very often), talk to myself (which I do often) or sing (regardless of whether I can do so decently or not, very democratic). If I am travelling by plane, I cannot take the knitting in case I stab someone with the needles, I cannot take the tweezers in case I tweeze someone to death, I cannot take a selection of books in case they are too heavy for hand-luggage, I have to turn up hours before for flights that are usually delayed by hours and sometimes I even have to fight the hordes of 10p a seat holiday-makers that clog the airport-sphere. Crickey, if you really can only spend 10p per flight (and £ 150 tax on top of it), should you really be going on holiday in the first place? Oh, to have lived when travelling by plane was the privilege of the white linen-suited few instead of the plastic flip-flopped many. When I take the train, time and landscape live with me, they are not dragged around by the car or suspended to the point of non-existence in the plane. Today was an absolutely lovely day to zoom down the countryside on the way to London.



Only snag was the work meeting I mentioned yesterday. It was not half as painful as I had expected it to be, and this is probably because I had brainwashed myself with knitting beforehand and with the idea of a hop to the Harrods sale afterwards. I wanted to conduct an effective meeting so that I could escape quickly and continue the day doing something valuable, keeping the economy going.

Still, by the time I left the office at midday, my heart heavy in my chest and my eyes welling with repressed tears, all I really wanted to do was sitting somewhere in trance and going absent without leave until my face too would eventually flash on SkyNews, even though I am not half as interesting, young or pretty as an abducted child. Even the people I know would probably hold back the reins on the search team on the grounds that the disappearance would actually be one of my many stunts. I recall once coming home at almost 11 pm after an 8-hour stint with horses, a little hurt that Rick had not even called to check if I was ok. He justified himself by saying that he had expected I would sleep out with horses eventually, he just thought the day had finally come, and why was I home so early anyway?

So where was I? Ah yes, the heart heavy in my chest and all that... For a moment I even contemplated coming back home but then refuted the idiocy, hopped on the tube and emerged shortly afterwards at Harrods. There is something funny about Harrods (and indeed Harvey Nichols and Selfridges). You know when you read the magazines or the online news, when you turn on the TV and are blasted with the doom and gloom of the downturn in the economy? When you go to these places you really do not believe it exists. Even I feel in possession of a bottomless AmEx, my sensible 'I am only going to browse', replaced by the equally sensible 'it would be a crime not to get this, it's so cheap'. And so I went and got myself a couple of essentials. I also came back with copious amounts of La Maison Du Chocolat chocs and Ladurée macaroons (vanilla, chocolate, coffee and caramel if you must know) which, really, are also essentials, especially when one feels down for whatever reason. And you know how the old adage goes... those who say that money cannot buy happiness, do not know where to shop.

La Malediction De La Maison Du Chocolat

I love traditional hotels because they make me feel cosy and at home. However, I resolved that staying somewhere modern would not have killed me for once, especially considering that my travelling companion likes post-modernism and minimalism. So I booked us at the Millennium Hotel London Knightsbridge, situated in Sloane Street and overlooking fabulous boutiques and pretty townhouses. I wish I had stuck to my original plan and had diverted us to the Parkes Hotel, one of the best of the best I've ever had the pleasure to spend time at.



Upon check-in, I decided I could live with the extra dingy, extra tired-looking room, with an old television set, antiquated air conditioning (set at 21C, which truly begs the question... why?) and with a corridor temperature that skimmed sauna levels. One doesn't sit in a corridor after all so who cares, right? Later, I also decided to live with bathrobes that took two phone calls and 45 minutes to materialise themselves and with truly abysmal mini-bar and toiletries selections. I closed both eyes on a limp buffet breakfast with skinned clementines but no strawberries (considering the former are out of season and the latter are in season, one has to wonder with which criteria these people draw menus up), and even, shame on me, with a non-negotiable tip of £ 4.90 added to ‘included breakfast’ upon check-out. However, the icing on the cake was poured when the concierge kindly offered my travelling companion to store her chocolates in the fridge behind the bar, ready for collection with our stored bags upon our return late in the afternoon.

I don't need to tell you that the chocolates never materialised themselves, because you've probably already figured it out. I can only guess that an over-zealous hotel employee thought the better of them and decided to remove temptation just in case. This is, after all, a £ 265 a day hotel, they take good care of their guests. I blame the chocolates you see. Last September, a friend sent me a huge box for my birthday. As I was not in, this was delivered to the people who live opposite me, but the courier never left me a card. When I started enquiring about these (or better, when my friend enquired about them to me), it took five minutes to find out that they had been delivered two days before and that the idiots opposite me decided to eat them on the basis that they did not know who the addressee was. Never mind that it takes seconds to cross the street and perhaps ask, just like I did when I was told that so-and-so had signed for them. I have started to grow weary of La Maison Du Chocolat... they seem to bring disaster upon those who come dangerously close to them. And considering that I saw King Tut only yesterday, I am inclined to believe that it's all down to a curse, rather than to incredibly rude imbeciles. Of course it is. It is. I said it is.

A Change Or A Rest

They say that a change is as good as a rest. In principle, I agree. When I finish on one project and move to another straight away it all feels new for long enough to delude myself that I may actually have, not simply a new role, but a new job. I am not sure, however, that change, rest and holiday, or even weekend away, are well-suited to one another. I recently heard from a friend who went to Florida with his kids. They did so much in so many days in so many places, that now he is totally knackered and needs a few days off work to recover. Today has been packed with lousy weather, food, shopping, food, food, shopping, food and food. And we still have to get to dinner. I cannot believe only a couple of weeks ago I was talking about my tight pants. I need to get on track, I need to get on track, I need to get on track. But I'll do that after this weekend. I'll tell you what, London has got so much more than just eating and flitting from store to store. Wasn't it Samuel Johnson who once wrote that it is impossible to get bored of London because London has got everything that life has to offer? I wish it were my quote (I also wish that this one were my quote: 'In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing'). Maybe I can appropriate myself of it easily enough, as an epitaph. And maybe I should get the AmEx logo added at the bottom, just to be fair to what is my Muse when it comes to lifting my spirits.