ALEXANDRA SHULMAN: I’ve lastly given up smoking in entrance of the TV
It has taken 50-plus years but I have finally given up smoking. There’s nothing like finding yourself with a post-operative blood clot in your lung to put you off.
The process so far – it’s only five weeks – has been very simple, possibly because for some of that time I was in hospital, so when I returned home to my packs of American Spirit and the idea of throwing them all into the bin, nicotine withdrawal had already begun. However, I was always a smoker through habit rather than craving, and my greatest consumption was at home watching TV. Last week, I binged on The Veil, a tense global thriller starring Elisabeth Moss (which I highly recommend) but never before had I noticed how much people smoke in these programmes. All of them.
Having been in Mad Men, The Veil star Elisabeth Moss is no stranger to smoking on screen
I’d never previously considered the role of smoking on screen but now I’m curious about what writers intend by making so many characters light up, stub out or take a long inhale. Maybe it’s just something for them to do while they plot their next devious move? Or to show their flawed humanity.
I reckon I can survive the lure of the TV without returning to my former habit, so my next hurdle will be an aperitif on a terrace, overlooking the sea. What pleasure smoking a cigarette was then – and will I be able to resist its lure?
Celebs may save our old pubs – but at what cost?
What does someone who has everything buy themselves as a little treat? Answer – an old pub. Pubs are the new status symbols for wealthy entrepreneurs who already have all the houses, cars, holiday villas and Hermes knick-knacks they could want. So they are turning to picturesque drinking spots to transform into their vision of an ideal hangout.
Such pub landlords are different to the traditional image of a surly, if commanding, character pulling pints. PR guru Matthew Freud has just snapped up his second Cotswold pub, The Highway in Burford, which proclaims – as one of its selling points – not having televisions in its rooms. This is to add authenticity.
Jeremy Clarkson, the present-day Midas whose golden touch seems to know no bounds, is investing in The Windmill, in Oxfordshire
Fashion designer Phoebe Philo’s husband Max Wigram has the Three Horseshoes in Somerset, where chef Margot Henderson is on chief kitchen duties, and the exquisite bedroom decoration has been overseen by Frances Penn, daughter of the great interior designers David Mlinaric.
Jeremy Clarkson, the present-day Midas whose golden touch seems to know no bounds, is investing in The Windmill, in Oxfordshire, which naturally will serve his own beer, while his ex-Top Gear colleague James May has his own spot in Wiltshire. Point proved?
These changes of ownership have thankfully improved the dire level of food we come to expect from pubs, where the safest choice is normally a packet of pork scratchings or a ploughman.
Meanwhile, upstairs there are no more candlewick bedspreads, plastic baths and packets of Nescafe. Instead, it’s plush duvets, waterfall showers and inevitably complicated coffee-makers.
But pleasant as this is, it has changed the whole point of pubs.
Originally, they were classless spots where locals gathered, either for companionable chat or to nurse a jar in solitary splendour. In their own way, they were more like the traditional gentlemen’s clubs, only without an annual fee. Regulars knew who they would meet, and would be sure of finding a friendly face propping up the bar. Nobody felt the need to get dressed up.
Now, they’re more Soho House than Red Lion, priced for a wealthy clientele, and losing entirely the sense of being a part of the micro-community that is a treasured part of country living… with tables booked weeks in advance by weekend visitors like me.
You don’t have to play it safe, Kamala
What a delight to see Dame Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, along with a group of leading businesswomen, photographed strolling along Downing Street – and, joy of joys, not a trouser-suit among them.
Dame Emma was in a dashing raspberry-coloured shirt and wide-legged white trousers while the others were in equally attractive and relaxed outfits.
In the Downing Street garden they joined a group of almost entirely grey-suited men in ties at a gathering of industry leaders.
We should not judge women (or men) on what they wear, but the way people dress says so much about them that it’s irresistible.
So what to make of Kamala Harris and her pant-suits. Would it not be possible for a woman who may become leader of the free world to branch out of the uniform so beloved by Hillary Clinton? After all, look where that got her?
No doubt Kamala feels safe in her array of useful, if unremarkable, suits – but I hope if, with every finger and toe crossed, she triumphs over Donald Trump, she will let herself be a bit more experimental.
Women don’t have to demonstrate their power and capability by dressing like men any longer.
… but being a Brat won’t help either
‘Kamala is Brat’ – even though she wears pant-suits – according to singer Charli XCX
Following on from that thought, I doubt that Brat, the name of singer Charli XCX’s new album, and a term for girls who are a bit messy and chaotic, is going to help Kamala’s cause in America’s swing states. Certainly, Brat girls don’t wear pant-suits.
The singer wrote on social media ‘Kamala is Brat’, which I imagine she considered helpful to the cause and Kamala’s team have jumped on the trendy Brat tag and the noxious green colour of the Brat album cover in the hope it may lure younger voters.
Possibly, but it’s an odd choice to embrace when the endgame is to become President of the US, a job where competence might be thought a more appealing draw.
Did Army chief give the game away?
Almost as strange as Army veteran General Sir ‘Roly’ Walker announcing last week to Vladimir Putin and his cohort that Britain is three years away from being in a position to defend itself militarily.
How helpful was that intended to be? Did our enemies need his early warning?
