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 ...

Happy Amygdala

The Guardian last week, awash with dire and depressing news on the state of the British/European economy, also carried a short report on research on the brain activity of happy, positive people ... 
... when shown 'positive' images (such as kittens and  baskets of flowers), their amygdalas (that's a little nut-shaped bit deep in your temporal lobe) lit up like Christmas trees compared to less happy people, whose brains remained a black hole of gloom whether shown a kitten or a person being held up at gunpoint, or, presumably, an economic forecast. 

The cheerful people, they said, are not naively unaware or uncaring about bad events; it's just that they choose to respond to the positives where they find them. 

I don't have kittens or baskets of flowers, but I can offer an embarrassed, pathetic-looking seasonal mutt ...

... my Charlie, mortified at having his picture taken wearing ridiculous Halloween headgear ...

Aaaagh, no, not another one!

... and in alternative pose as Thanksgiving turkey


If you want to make your amygdala really happy, please go here to see how one New York pooch and his mates dress for the season, over at one of my favourite blogs, My Life by Buster.


A very Happy Thanksgiving weekend, to all who celebrate ...

November in England

How quickly one's perspective can change. For years living in the southern hemisphere, November meant lush spring-time, the near-end of the school and academic year and the promise of a long hot summer and beach holidays to look forward to. 

In Britain I'm already inured to a November that means early darkness and long nights as the clocks change, the reappearance of winter coats, gloves and boots, and autumn's colour (above and below, snapped early this month) already fading, as most trees are by now stark and leafless. 

It also means ... Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot ... We drove out to Cookham Dean Village in nearby Berkshire (see last year's post here) to celebrate the annual excuse for pyromania that is Bonfire Night in Britain ... 

... our little South African/Zambian party joining the crowds on the very English village green that was alight with fire-torches and sparklers, warming ourselves with hot mulled wine ...

The 'pyre' this year had the usual Guys of stuffed straw made by local school children, though it was larger and more solidly constructed than usual ...

The men from Health & Safety spent a tediously long time crawling around the inside, doing their checks, while the kids chanted 'make it burn!', before finally setting it alight 

snap, crackle, pop ...

... but apparently they didn't anticipate the effects of a strongish wind that quickly blasted the crowd with great gales of smoke and flying, burning ash causing mild chaos as we scattered for safety ... nice one, boys!

The usual fireworks completed the pyrotechnic extravaganza ...

While we made our way to a local pub for a post-sizzlefest dinner, younger daughter was getting into the spirit of things for a late Halloween party ...

La Bella with her dashing ragazzi Italiani !

November also means Remembrance Day in Britain, and this year it seems to have been a bigger event with a longer build-up than I've ever noticed before. 

In the first days of the month, tired early-morning commuters including myself were greeted at London's Marylebone station with the surprising sound of bagpipes ...

The poppy brigade was there in full force, as well as a handful of bearskin Grenadiers, a colourful scene I couldn't resist snapping with my phone camera 

And at 11.00 am on 11/11/11 (what a fabulous synchrony that day was), I happened to be driving past our local church green ... listening to silence on the car radio, as over most of the country ... and saw this going on ... 

I thought it such a very English scene, complete with light drizzle, and the  Norman church tower looming out of the mist.

... even the ubiquitous CCTV cameras - a reminder that we are always being watched in Britain.