When your birthday is at Christmas, part 2

As they sail slowly, slowly out of the nest and into the rest of their lives, my two Christmas babes ...

                    Ionian Sea, 2002

... their adventures mount as their horizons expand, the circles of their lives growing wider; they are full of surprises

                    AnaCapri, Baker Str., London 2011


... but their journeys bring them home to touch base; that is best of all

                  Kitchen table at home, December 27 2011

Happy Birthday, Nina!

Merry Christmas

Christmas has come and (almost) gone for another year, and there has been much to feel grateful for chez nous ...

Christmas Eve dinner was a doddle with willing sous-chefs on hand ...

Absolutely everybody made an effort to dress for the occasion ...

Two angelic little princes (with their lovely mum) kept us entertained ...

And best of all I have both my lovely girls home for the holidays

... though one mournful-looking pooch couldn't wait to get his Santa suit off for another year ...

... to all who visit here.

When your birthday is at Christmas

When you're turning fifteen and it's Christmas time in London, you could start your day with a make-over in Oxford Street ...

While in Harrods, monument to all that is flashy, tacky, brass and bling ...

... there are plenty of opportunities for silly posing and fun ...

Hagrid, aka Older Daughter and Dumbledore in the Harry Potter department; a bauble for the Christmas tree?


At Covent Garden, going bright red for Christmas ...

... there are performers to entertain ...

balancing unsupported at the top of a ladder, this man stripped from kilt, jacket and stockings down to his underwear, then juggled with knives for an enthusiastic crowd!

... large elves cutting bunches of mistletoe under fairy lights ...

... merry musicians dancing a jig ...

... and even a giant reindeer rearing up under a cloudy sky, while machines pump snow ...

Happy birthday, Bella! May your year be sparkly and bright!

XO

Savile Row soirée

It's party season, of course, and I thought I'd share these pics (my social life very seldom being quite this high-end) of an unusual and fabulous venue for a Christmas drinks party last weekend ... in Savile Row, London's home for bespoke men's tailoring. 

I forget which store this was, above, but I loved the stylish window decoration

We were headed for Hardy Amies (below), which was far too discreet to have any window displays, but where a welcoming fire awaited in the entrance and champagne was on ice in an elegant room upstairs with a view to the street through huge sash windows ...

The house, 14 Savile Row, has a colourful history: the poet/playwright Sheridan lived here before his death in 1816, and supposedly hid from his creditors, as they ascended the staircase below, in a hollow bench just below this window ... 

Hardy Amies moved in here in 1945, and the room below has every copy of Vogue from that year up to the present in bound volumes. Do watch this totally charming short clip here summing up in pictures Hardy's transformation of the house and his heydays in it.

I loved the sparse, clean interiors of the shop itself downstairs ...

Amies was most famously designer of the queen's dresses, from her coronation onwards, and in the 50s and 60s was perhaps Britain's most famous couturier. More recently and since his death, his has become exclusively a men's fashion line. 

Some of Amies' best known creations from past decades are displayed in the store, from tweed and worsted skirt suits accessorised with fox fur to this silk gown made for the Duchess of Kent ...

And what was today's London woman wearing to the party? Dresses were short, the ground-rule was black with splashes of silver or colour, the fun was in the accessories ...

All photos taken with my iPhone camera, useful for discreet snapping, not so hot on quality :)

Sarah Lund returns

Only a few months ago I was gushing, here, about the first in the cult series of Forbrydelsen/The Killing, which I'd caught up with late on DVD. And now, oh joy, Lund is back on our screens for a second season ...

Image source: lifeofwylie.com

So once again I find myself not only addicted, but harbouring a) the delusion that I am actually fluent in Danish ... and find myself muttering for fanden! nej tak, er du sindssyg? randomly to myself (see here for a brief but excellent tutorial on swearing in Danish - click on the expressions to hear the audio versions and marvel at the cadences, not to mention the disjunct between spelling and pronunciation - you thought English was bad?) ...

and b) an urgent desire to refurbish my entire house in cool, clean Scandinavian style ...

Image sources: trendecoration.com  freshome.com homedesignset.com yousaytoo.com

But I digress ... the good news is that BBC4 has decided to give us a double whammy of two episodes per Saturday night, in prime-time viewing slot - a veritable gloomy Danish killing-fest of two sofa-gripping hours with no commercial breaks ... in other words, sheer bliss of the kind only Forbrydelsen Freaks would understand.

In a nod to the legion fans of the famous jumper, it's back this season, in the same chunky knit style, only a solid red this time ... 

Image: guardian.co.uk

In my humble opinion, it's sartorially less appealing than the first jumper, but for die-hard fans the knitting pattern for the red version is already available here on Radio Times online, while if, like me, you prefer the original and are not handy with needles, Gudrun & Gudrun offer a genuine Faroese Sarah Lund jumper for 280 euros (here) ...

Image: gudrungudren.com

Lund of course is her unique, inimitable female detective self - only more subdued and a little broken by the disciplinary action meted out by her superiors at the end of Killing 1 (who could forget that kick-ass moment when she held up her fellow police officers with their own gun?). 

Image: nordjyske.dk

She is brought back from the ignominy of ferry-traffic duty by her former boss, the mono-syllabic and oddly cadaverous-looking Lennaert Brix (above left), who realises he needs her help with a puzzling new murder ... When he asks her to give him one good reason why he should trust her with a new case (duh!), she mumbles some unconvincing apology for past misdemeanours, then says "but this is what I do best". Oh, don't we know that ...

Besides Brix and Lund, the cast is all new in this season - Lund has the usual dysfunctional relationship with a new side-kick in the form of Ulrik Strange (above right, played by Mikael Birkkjaer) - and the plot is all tied up with the war in Afghanistan and political extremists on opposing sides ...

Lund takes on the Danish military. Source: tvtid-dyn.tv2.dk

My only reservations so far, other than the new jumper: one, a distinct absence of sex appeal amongst this season's Danish politicians ...

Image: politiken.dk

(bring back Troels Hartmann, I say) ...

 Lars Mikkelsen as Troels Hartmann in Series 1.  Source:imdb.com

... and two, an absence (so far) of another great female character to equal the fantastic Pernille Birk-Larsen (played by Ann Eleonora Jørgensen) of series 1. 

These are minor quibbles, though. So far this season is shaping up to be every bit as addictive as the first. Just please don't ask me out on a Saturday night ...

Girls' weekend in Edinburgh

Two weekends ago in Edinburgh, the city was bright and sunny in late autumn colours. 

In Princes Street gardens, above and below, carpeted with leaves, people were enjoying the sunshine ...

At the Scott memorial, a sea of Remembrance Day crosses and poppies marked the dead, from 1939-1945 in Europe through to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Older Daughter and I entertained ourselves with some girly shopping ... in Anthropologie I tried to persuade her that the fur hat and red glasses were just the thing for winter in Scotland, but she just rolled her eyes at me ...

... and took me instead to see her daily university haunts ...

stately McEwan Hall, where graduations and exams are held 

students' bicycles lined up outside the university library

Teviot Hall, above, and Old College, below, Edinburgh University's original site 


What a grand and lovely place to spend one's university days ...

At night there was some indulgent (what else are mums for?) eating out, in a city where one is spoiled for choice ...

looking in the window of a cosy pub

The High Kirk of St Giles looked full of mystery and drama in this grainy mobile phone snap, above ...

... while The Dome (below) in fashionable George Street, where we popped in for a drink, was looking extravagantly Christmassy already

Besides being chock-full of the friendliest people in the universe, Edinburgh has more restaurants per person than any other city in the UK. At The Outsider, Hotel du Vin, and Maison Bleue, we had some of the best food I've had in ages ...

The Christmas lights, the markets, funfair and ice-skating rink have since opened along Edinburgh's main streets, and I'm longing to go back. Now to plan another weekend ...