Saturday, 11 June 2011
blah blah blah
Beautiful but boring woman overheard in coffee shop in Queen's Park saying 'I can't believe I'm a TV actress now'. Spoke for 30 minutes solid about herself to equally beautiful man.
Friday, 10 June 2011
London's hidden enclaves
I am constantly surprised by how often I am constantly surprised.
This week, I attended the local summer party on the square where I work. I was surpised at how interesting, down to earth, friendly and warm the people I met there were. I was surprised also, at how diverse they were and how, having worked in my building for so many years, I had never come across this other world.
Let me explain, I work in a fairly grand but small georgian building, tall and thin and wholly unsuited to being an office, but designed by John Adams, one of Londons finest regency architects. It is situated in a beautiful, rather secret regency square in London, with a small but perfectly formed garden in the middle where office workers spread out their jackets and sandwiches in summer sunshine, and foreign students chatter against the railings outside in faltering English. Occasionally TV companies film period pieces there. Indians from the Indian YMCA round the corner take photos of each other and once in a while anarchist squatters take over a building and create free schools (courtesy of Guy Ritchie.)
As well as varied little hotpotch of offices (engineers, magistrates, interior designers, two small embassies, an international school and a theological hospital) there are flats and houses. A small but hidden community of (often) well to do small holders in the London's Fitzrovia prairies. We also have a few glitterati: Ian Mckeowan, Griff Rhys Jones, Fay Maschler.
So that's it in a nutshell, and like most communities that live side by side each other in London, never the twain shall meet, until, sometimes, oddly, worlds collide in twilight crashes.
The party was catered by a lady from number 14, (and her mother who'd rushed here from france on a hastily booked easy jet flight), music delivered by a jazz trio related to someone in no 1, and dedicated to a man from who'd rented a peppercorn rent for 40 years and had just died.
I talked to his 'adopted' son and daughter in law (he was childless). They described a man who, Betjamen like, had fought the authorities since the sixties turning a parking lot into a garden, by a restored piece of England's heritage.
I like communities. I like London for the way it swirls up separate little groups who keep to themselves. Where you are, as I'd recently read, defined by the title of your postcode. It's not often you look under a stone and uncover a world.
Of course we all got very drunk and a few of tried to sing some karaoke. But that's not for these pages...
This week, I attended the local summer party on the square where I work. I was surpised at how interesting, down to earth, friendly and warm the people I met there were. I was surprised also, at how diverse they were and how, having worked in my building for so many years, I had never come across this other world.
Let me explain, I work in a fairly grand but small georgian building, tall and thin and wholly unsuited to being an office, but designed by John Adams, one of Londons finest regency architects. It is situated in a beautiful, rather secret regency square in London, with a small but perfectly formed garden in the middle where office workers spread out their jackets and sandwiches in summer sunshine, and foreign students chatter against the railings outside in faltering English. Occasionally TV companies film period pieces there. Indians from the Indian YMCA round the corner take photos of each other and once in a while anarchist squatters take over a building and create free schools (courtesy of Guy Ritchie.)
As well as varied little hotpotch of offices (engineers, magistrates, interior designers, two small embassies, an international school and a theological hospital) there are flats and houses. A small but hidden community of (often) well to do small holders in the London's Fitzrovia prairies. We also have a few glitterati: Ian Mckeowan, Griff Rhys Jones, Fay Maschler.
So that's it in a nutshell, and like most communities that live side by side each other in London, never the twain shall meet, until, sometimes, oddly, worlds collide in twilight crashes.
The party was catered by a lady from number 14, (and her mother who'd rushed here from france on a hastily booked easy jet flight), music delivered by a jazz trio related to someone in no 1, and dedicated to a man from who'd rented a peppercorn rent for 40 years and had just died.
I talked to his 'adopted' son and daughter in law (he was childless). They described a man who, Betjamen like, had fought the authorities since the sixties turning a parking lot into a garden, by a restored piece of England's heritage.
I like communities. I like London for the way it swirls up separate little groups who keep to themselves. Where you are, as I'd recently read, defined by the title of your postcode. It's not often you look under a stone and uncover a world.
Of course we all got very drunk and a few of tried to sing some karaoke. But that's not for these pages...
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Doing Make Up on Trains - Our London Heroines
Yo Londoners at large! There's a new class of heroine that's going unnoticed here in our city. She's sassy, smart and has a pretty good sense of balance too. Plus the precision of the hands of a brain surgeon. Not a measured complement.
She's the commuter I saw this morning, stood in a packed tube train, against the open window at one end (you know, where standing there is like being in a wind tunnel and you're Michelle Obama on a state visit to the UK) And what is she doing? applying mascara, eyeliner and a little touch of blusher. Standing up. Yes, bag on shoulder, someone else's elbow near her face, putting the fine points on her lashes. The woman should be in the circus. It's like painting the sistine chapel standing on a vibration plate. Brilliant!
Oh yes, some of you may taunt. Disgusting? No way. She's a testimony to modern womanhood. Not above caring about her looks enough to put make up on at all, but couldn't care less how many people there were around her to see it, and oblivious to the odd jostle from another commuter's elbow.
In Japan they regularly make up on the underground despite having that famous Japanese sense of etiquette. In fact, in 2008 they printed posters telling people not to (see Annie Mole's underground blog). In London there aren't any posters but sometimes the odd grumble behind a copy of the Times.
Apparently it's all about denying we're not alone, say researchers. We're just extending our personal space in a crowded city says one article in the Evening Standard... . I disagree. It's about confidence and liberation of course. Well certainly according to our Make Up Michelangela this morning.
And why not. Here's to adding make up on high speed trains as an olympic sport! I hope though they don't have to wear the same gear as the beach volleyball girls.
(ps, in case you were wondering, yes, I've done a little bit of the art of motion make up myself. Conclusion: overground trains are much smoother than the tube)
She's the commuter I saw this morning, stood in a packed tube train, against the open window at one end (you know, where standing there is like being in a wind tunnel and you're Michelle Obama on a state visit to the UK) And what is she doing? applying mascara, eyeliner and a little touch of blusher. Standing up. Yes, bag on shoulder, someone else's elbow near her face, putting the fine points on her lashes. The woman should be in the circus. It's like painting the sistine chapel standing on a vibration plate. Brilliant!
Oh yes, some of you may taunt. Disgusting? No way. She's a testimony to modern womanhood. Not above caring about her looks enough to put make up on at all, but couldn't care less how many people there were around her to see it, and oblivious to the odd jostle from another commuter's elbow.
In Japan they regularly make up on the underground despite having that famous Japanese sense of etiquette. In fact, in 2008 they printed posters telling people not to (see Annie Mole's underground blog). In London there aren't any posters but sometimes the odd grumble behind a copy of the Times.
Apparently it's all about denying we're not alone, say researchers. We're just extending our personal space in a crowded city says one article in the Evening Standard... . I disagree. It's about confidence and liberation of course. Well certainly according to our Make Up Michelangela this morning.
And why not. Here's to adding make up on high speed trains as an olympic sport! I hope though they don't have to wear the same gear as the beach volleyball girls.
(ps, in case you were wondering, yes, I've done a little bit of the art of motion make up myself. Conclusion: overground trains are much smoother than the tube)
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