to all the things i loved before

This is a lazy, mood-boardy sort of post. Been up to lots of interesting things this week but I don't want to write about them in any great detail. Instead, I'll just summarise (and lavishly illustrate).



First and perhaps most importantly: the snow!! I can't remember the last time it snowed in December, i.e. when it's supposed to. I don't know about anyone else, but I've certainly got my fingers crossed for a white Christmas. Edinburgh in the snow is beautiful.

I hunted down this Louis MacNeice poem yesterday as soon as it started snowing. Tis a lovely, evocative piece of writing:

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was 
Spawning snow and pink roses against it 
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: 
World is suddener than we fancy it.  

World is crazier and more of it than we think, 
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion 
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel 
The drunkenness of things being various.  

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world 
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes - 
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's
hands - 
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Also, got sent pictures of these amazing Andreia Chaves mirror shoes. They feel really wintery, even if they aren't very practical and I'd love to be stomping about London town in a pair.



If I ever get round to it, I'll write a sort of 'best of' culture this year, but if I don't the single cultural consumable I'd recommend to anyone is James Salter's incredible book, Light Years. I'm giving it to pretty much everyone for Christmas after re-reading it this weekend. It's one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever read and I've read a lot of novels. Though he's as good, if not better, than Hemingway or Fitzgerald, he seems to have slipped through the cracks of critical acclaim - possibly because he was born 20 years after the two American literary giants - thus fading into their shadows. It's an elegant, elegiac piece of writing and a definite must read.



I've been to see the Nutcracker ballet nearly every year since I was a little girl. I still remember my mother taking me - just the two of us - when I was very young. It helped that we went to see the ballet at Frank Lloyd Wright's amazing Grady Gammage auditorium. Just walking up the illuminated ramps to the main hall was an amazing spectacle, but I'll always remember how thrilled I was when the Christmas tree magically grows through the roof in the first half.



The Scottish Ballet does a pretty wonderful new-fangled Nutcracker ballet, choreographed by its artistic director, Ashley Page. There are evil snowflakes and a naughty governess who turns into the mouse queen in act two: it's all good fun, but really, nothing beats the classic ballet version.





The ROH put on quite a show - you really see where all the ticket money goes - with buckets of gold glitter, fantastical costumes, and most importantly, superb dancing. The grand pas de deux between the sugar plum fairy and her prince was absolutely breathtaking. The music is also wonderful, personally I think it's Tchaikovsky's best ballet score, and the live choir was icing on the very Christmasy cake.



Finally for something I don't like. Just been reading on coolhunter that McDonald's is to open a bunch of 'boutique food stands' during the various fashion weeks. I don't care if you dress it up in Hermes, Tom Ford, or Jil Sander: McDonald's is revolting and is SO NOT fashion. Ugh. PR fail.

Why fashion people piss me off

So I'm writing a piece on the "architecture of fashion week" for the AJ (no, I don't know how it's going to work either...) and I thought it would be cool to hit up four or five shows and then talk about how they use all the cool old buildings of London - the Natural History Museum and the royal Opera House - to produce their spectacular, spectaculars. However the complete bitchy snobbery of London's fahion PR people has put a massive dent in my plans. Only the nice head of the PR team at Nicole Farhi sorted me out with a ticket, about four other houses promised me a ticket only to bail with two or three days to go.

The problem is that most fashion companies hire PR wenches to do their bidding, theoretically leaving the "creatives" free to deal with the creative stuff. And I get the whole need to whip up an aura of exclusivity around the brand - I mean would PPQ or Christopher Kane really want people to think their A-list status was slipping by making sure only celbs like Lilly Allen and Peaches Geldof were in attendance at their shows? Um, right... Teeny boppers who idolise Peaches and Lilly and the clothes they wear aren't going to go out and actually buy PPQ - they're going to wait until Primark or Topshop rips the designs and then buy the, for a song.

The temptation to stomp my feet and scream at these evil minxes who are reserving tickets for all the sugary pop tarts in town and the assistant's assistants of crappy fashion magazines is quite high, but I'm trying to behave myself. It just makes it a lot harder to write an already impossible to write piece...

Rant over.