The Steeple Times chooses six of the best items on display at Masterpiece 2014
Thursday marks the official opening of the fifth annual Masterpiece art and antiques fair featuring over 150 leading galleries from across the world. To accompany today’s preview, The Steeple Times asked six of the exhibitors to choose their highlight from their stands (more…)
This voice actor provided the voice for Apple’s Siri and First National Bank’s Tillie the All Time Teller. She lives in suburban Atlanta, Georgia and finds hearing herself “creepy”.
The Steeple Times asks actor Jack Shepherd (“Coronation Street’s” David Platt): “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
Patience and optimism.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Fashion writer Jacinta de Vere looks into the perils of wearing leggings, jeggings and meggings
What is up with women who assume leggings paired with a short top or crop jacket is a good idea for a night out or a trip to the supermarket? Leggings are not trousers, ladies. Leggings are actually the least flattering item in anyone’s wardrobe.
Unfortunately, most women do not realise that most leggings are made with very thin fabric. I was in the middle of Marks & Spencer buying my grapefruit when one woman dropped her apple. She bent over in front of me and I almost puked. I saw the personal bits that her gynaecologist and waxer normally see. It was not a pretty sight.
Similarly, I was at my local watering hole and had a table next to the dance floor. Some chick in her heels bent over to do some asinine dance move and of course, thanks to the flashing lights and disco ball I was also privy to her modesty while her bum was in my face. Seriously, if you are going to wear leggings, wear a thong. Even better yet, do not wear leggings at all.
Maybe the only people who can get away with wearing leggings with a short top are women who have long thin legs and a great bum, which are generally accompanied by a kick-ass body. These women go to the gym almost every day and rarely eat or have amazing genetics. These items are meant for the gym or to lounge around at home. However, if you are planning your wardrobe around finding a comfortable waistband, then that is your sign to wear a longer length sweater, boyfriend blazer or tunic top that covers your bum.
To make matters worse, some moron invented jeggings. It is a fashion mutation between jeans and leggings. If you think buying these is a good idea, then run and get your head checked. With all of the options available in the trouser section of most stores, I would question anyone who seeks out a jegging. Jeans are great; they are comfortable and look good when paired with a nice top and jacket. However, I struggle to find any combination where jeggings are a hot look. Instead, what comes to mind are muffin-tops and drumsticks. Jeggings are not forgiving to anyone’s imperfections. If you put them on, be prepared to be ridiculed and have young children run away in fear.
Even Kim Kardashian, who has a rather large bum, chooses to cover it with a sweater or a jacket. She knows her body and how to accentuate her best assets. A large number of women have no idea what looks good on their body shape, have a herd mentality and just follow trends. Ladies, this old trend, if followed, must be done with caution.
Another fashion travesty that occurs with leggings is wearing them with Ugg® boots. Uggs are Uggly. I have seen women walk around town with their children in matching Uggs and leggings. It makes me want to cry as I witness society deteriorate to a leggings and Ugg wearing generation. Where has the elegance and style gone? I have strong feelings about these unattractive boots and will spend more time on them in another piece at a later date. If you are not convinced, let me throw an image at you.
I did not want to make the male readers feel left out. This article would not be complete without a proper discussion on meggings: leggings for men. Apparently, this “hot, new trend” is crossing the Atlantic thanks to Uniqlo. I seem to recall this trend originating in the UK in the 80s and then going to America. I guess payback is a bitch.
When I see pictures of men who chose to don these appalling tights, I feel like I am looking at soft porn. As mentioned above, it is not cool to see your kibbles and bits whilst you are allegedly wearing clothing.
Whether comprised of sequin, crochet or flannel, they do not belong on anyone’s body except your favourite Raggedy Ann doll. Even then, I would question your taste. Let us examine this fine specimen in the following photograph. It does not matter how “hot” he is, I would rather chew off my right arm than be seen in public with a man wearing meggings. Gents, please ask yourselves: “What would Frank Sinatra or Humphrey Bogart do?” Whatever they would do or whomever they do, I doubt they would do it in meggings.
So, if you find yourself in a boutique thinking about purchasing leggings, jeggings or meggings, please think twice before you buy. Ladies, please channel you inner Audrey Hepburn or ask yourself: “What would Grace Kelly do?” If either of them were alive, they would buy a pair of skinny jeans or cigarette pants, a crisp white shirt, a boyfriend blazer and Chanel flats. You would not see them in leggings and Uggs.
Jacinta de Vere is a lover of haute couture and all things fashionable and decadent. She is based in London.
Follow her on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/jacintadevere
Matthew Steeples highlights the peril of “reaching out”
“Reaching out” is a phrase that can be compared to Starbucks and their taxes.
This toxic platitude has sadly become common in both Britain and America and is generally used by people who don’t know you when they want something. Like Starbucks on the high street, it is everywhere and akin to the coffee company and their tax contributions, it contributes very little.
“I’m reaching out to you today…” began a recent email from Cindy McCain, the wife of a former American Presidential candidate, asking for a donation to a campaign her husband was running. Mrs McCain’s insincere email continued in the same tone and I did not feel motivated to donate. The very words “reaching out” so grated on my psyche that I was utterly turned off. I am certain many others felt just the same.
In her song, “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)”, Diana Ross used the euphemism correctly. Her reference to physical contact is a perfectly reasonable use of the words whereas McCain’s pompous and forlorn request was unwelcome and unwanted. As I “reached” the end of the email and read: “This is a call to action,” all the bleach blonde had achieved was to lead me towards the button marked “junk mail.”
Starbucks are now trying to put a stop to their tax avoidance. Please could Mrs McCain and others “lead by example” and do the same with their “reaching out”?
This mouthpiece was born in Rettendon, Essex in 1958 and vents bile on all manner of subjects. Articles such as: “Why don’t more women moan like me?” and “Liz Jones’ baby craving drove her to steal husband’s sperm in ultimate deception” are frankly illustrative of why she’s so unpopular. After she got banned from the majority of fashion shows and her husband left her, she quit London for Somerset in 2007 to feed organic muesli to the rats in the barns of a 47-acre farm she purchased as her “rural idyll.” That misadventure came to a sticky end in November 2012 after she’d alienated the whole county by calling them, amongst other things, “smelly” and “faintly Amish.” Goodness knows whom she’ll choose to offend next. Phillip Schofield sums her up best: “She is inconsistent, bitter, nasty and unhinged.” Our advice: Just steer well clear of this acid tongued poison pen.
Matthew Steeples examines the truth behind Liz Jones giving up on her “rural idyll”
The Mail’s Liz Jones is a waspish woman who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Those who’ve paid even a moment’s attention to her bleating, will be familiar with lines such as: “Last week, my brand new £1,300 MacBook Pro broke” and “Phil Spencer wanted his £46,000 and he wanted it now!” She never stops talking about money and the size of what she both owns and owes.
In today’s Femail, Jones bores on about about how she feels “like a cross-dresser” trying out the Kardashian Kollection of clothing in a pointed attack on Kim Kardashian, but it was for her diatribe yesterday that she truly got the goat of the nation in “[bidding] a ferocious farewell” to life in the country in an article entitled “Goodbye… and good riddance!” 2,151 people have commented so far and most of them have been far from sympathetic.
When Upcott Farm at Brushford, near Dulverton in Somerset came up for sale in 2007 at a price of £1.6 million, it featured in an article by The Telegraph’s Caroline McGhie. The 5-bedroomed farmhouse came with a 2-bedroom annexe, a courtyard of barns and stables and 47 acres of land. McGhie waxed lyrical about the merits of moving to this location: “People come here for the peace and quiet, the night skies, the dramatic coastline, and they work from home,” she stated before adding: “You can find everything here, including butchers, bakers, afternoon tea and cake, fish and chips, an art gallery and a shop selling fishing tackle.” Of Upcott Farm itself, she concluded:
“This would suit a member of the new wave of buyers dubbed Droppies (Disillusioned Relatively Ordinary Professionals Preferring Independent Employment Situations).”
McGhie got it half right: Upcott Farm sold to someone who considers herself far from “relatively ordinary” and someone who is far from “professional.” The purchaser, however, was certainly someone who’d become “disillusioned” with what she’d bought and someone whose desire to be “independent” and create a “situation” just alienated all she encountered. The buyer, you’ve guessed it, was none other than Elizabeth Ann Jones.
Jones was born in Brentwood, Essex in 1958 and studied journalism at the London College of Printing. She became editor of Marie Claire in 1999 but was sacked, she herself suggests, for “listing in the magazine the freebies she had been offered in the previous month.” Here, it seems, began Jones’s obsession with all things material and here she also met an Indian BBC radio journalist named Nirpal Dhaliwal in 2000.
Jones married Dhaliwal but the union was to prove an “utter disaster” as he had affairs with women she terms “younger, dimmer [and] slimmer.” “I’m no racist” Jones was divorced in 2007 and said goodbye to her “3,000 square foot of Islington real estate” and “easy, if super-busy, London life” in favour of the green, green grass of Somerset.
Whoever’s side you see it from, five years of hell followed. Jones baited the locals and they grew to loathe her. She wrote columns and a book, The Exmoor Files, where she attacked them as “faintly Amish… feral, old and smelly” and another hack and neighbour, Jane Alexander of The Telegraph, responded: “Dulverton [was] positively fizzing with fury” after each and every publication.
Of the local restaurants, Jones stated:
“I have given up trying to eat out in restaurants here on Exmoor… It is still stuck in the Seventies, with only things in baskets and rum babas on the menu… If you tell the waiter you are vegetarian, you are stared at, incredulously, as if you are black.”
She whinged about her inability to find love:
”I will never, ever meet a man here in the middle of a moor, where even to be in possession of your own teeth is a bonus.”
And whined about fieldsports:
“I didn’t increase my popularity by being unable to pass a party of men and often children with guns, shooting rabbits and deer, without getting out of my BMW and saying: ‘Do you really have nothing better to do with your Saturday morning?’ The look of shock on their faces that I had the cheek to challenge them was priceless. I would stop, too, and shout at huntsmen on horses, galloping on tarmaced roads, one hand on the reins, the other clamping a mobile phone to their heads. ‘You will ruin your horses’ tendons!’ I would wail.”
Whilst Jones found little to like in her new community, they found nothing positive in her arrival either. Her dog was blamed for worrying lambs, and Jones’s inability to control it, locals say, was an indicator of the chasm between her life and theirs. In 2009, one neighbour went as far as to tell Danny Brierley of The Independent:
“We have got nothing in common with her, really. I think she may find it difficult to make any kind of life here now. She is not a very friendly person and we are all sick to death of talking about Liz Jones. A hatred has been building up for months. She is actually having a go at people and they are not going to tolerate that. She has feelings like all people, of course she has. But everyone wants her to leave and leave now. No one can make her, but we think she will go. I don’t see how you can live in such a small community with people who think that way about you.”
Matters came to a head when Jones’s precious black BMW convertible, “bought in 2005 for £26,000,” was pelted with eggs and teenagers fired shots at her letterbox with an air rifle. A local councilor even dressed up as her in the local carnival and yesterday Jones took revenge on those she blames for her “five-year prison sentence” and deprivation from Space NK, Cath Kidston and Illy coffee.
Instead, the article just shows the true reality of this bombastic harpy. The lines Jones penned speak for themselves. Country people don’t welcome someone who planned to “hack for miles across the open moorland in my Prada jodhpurs” anymore than the folk of Knightsbridge welcome Arabs treating their roads like racetracks. The gardener who had to endure Jones yelling “walk faster!” at him didn’t deserve such anymore than a bus driver in SW11 deserves abuse from his passengers. Jones concludes:
“I’m now a different person. I became so lonely. I would often get in my car, not just for the warmth, but for the kind voice of the satnav lady. I’ve learned that an amazing view and a pair of nesting grey herons are not enough to make me happy.”
Miss Jones bleats that she’s taken a £500,000 loss on Upcott Farm, which languished on the market at first at £1,900,000 and then £1,750,000 for three years. The “unexpected” sale of the property has given her the ability to “flee back to the city” but the locals and even the “Droopies” should be warned: there’s still 27 acres of the farm unsold and on the market at a price of £200,000. Halloween may have passed but the battleaxe in the Beemer could still call again.
Read yesterday’s “Goodbye… and good riddance!” article by Liz Jones for the Mail on Sunday at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2231033/Goodbye–good-riddance-During-catastrophic-years-country-Liz-Jones-greeted-gun-attack-relentless-abuse-Now-flees-city-bids-ferocious-farewell.html
To purchase Liz Jones’s book, The Exmoor Diaries, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exmoor-Files-Husband-Found-Rural/dp/0297854437
For more information about the remaining 27 acres at Upcott Farm, contact Strutt & Parker on +44 (0) 1392 976005 or go to: http://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/18314693?search_identifier=71cbb8a2fb43a12182bfa7b79b5de0a3
Edward Kay takes a look at a yacht that forms part of the legacy of Steve Jobs
In a bittersweet moment, Steve Jobs’s yacht was launched on 29th October from the Feadship’s de Vries yard in Aalsmeer, The Netherlands with his wife and three children aboard. The Jobs family gave the members of the yard iPod’s inscribed with the name of the yacht to show their appreciation for the six-year build.
The unusual 256-foot yacht has been christened “Venus” after the Roman goddess of love and features huge floor to ceiling windows and teak decks.
The minimalist Phillipe Starck designed aluminium vessel has been described as looking like an iPhone resting on an iPad resting on a MacBook Air and there are indeed seven 27-inch Mac screens clearly visible on the bridge deck.
Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson: “I know it’s possible I will die and leave Laurene [his wife] with a half built boat. But I have to keep going on it. If I don’t, it’s an admission that I’m about to die.”
Of the boat itself, Starck adds:
“The idea for the boat was very simple. It was mainly philosophical. It is not like a lot of mega yachts showing the vulgarity of money. It’s a boat showing the elegance of intelligence.”
Indeed, when Jobs saw the designs, he is said to have stated: “My God, it’s better than I could have dreamt.” I quite agree. Venus is a spectacular bequest.
Remembering Steve Jobs: http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
To view more examples of the works of Feadship, go to: http://www.feadship.nl
Christian Huhnt takes his first foray into the world of supper clubs
I don’t usually find myself in the east of London. It’s not because I don’t like it but simply because it’s just an awful journey to get there from where I live. Eventually, though, a “secret” was able to convince me to make this long journey. This “secret,” I was told, could only be revealed to me if I “attended” it. Of what, you may ask, am I am rambling on about? I am talking of something called: “The Secret Supper Club.”
Next, you’ll be asking: “What the heck is a ‘supper club’?” Well, in essence, a “supper club” is essentially a dinner in the company of a bunch of total randoms. It is a bit like blind dating, although you get to speak to many more people than just the one opposite you. As I had heard and read so much about supper clubs, I became very curious about attending one. Normally these gatherings happen in someone’s own home without any professional help, but the one to which I was invited was quite something else.
This particular supper club is on another level. It is run by Lime&Tonic, an international firm of event planners and costs just £35 per head. Lime&Tonic made their philosophy to: “Save the world from boredom” according to its co-founder Stefan Cordiner and in the London supper club they operate I certainly found plenty that fascinated.
The major idea of Lime&Tonic’s take on the supper club is to make new contacts. In this case it was as far reaching as it could get. We were 14 in total. None of us knew each other beforehand, but almost everyone came as a couple or with a friend. What, I realised, made it particularly special was how wide an array of people came: Where else would a pharmaceutical product developer from Birmingham have dinner with an F-15 pilot from the US?
The “un-restaurant,” as it is also referred to by Lime&Tonic, happens every month at a “secret venue,” but never a private residence. The location is revealed to the attendees one day before the event. It’s usually held in a venue with a “unique feel” but wherever it may be, the focus is on somewhere with “authentic charm.”
Suspense and surprise is the order of the day here as the “secret menu” is not revealed until guests sit down at the table either. On arrival we were told that our chef for the night was Paul Hannagen, a good-humoured young Irish professional who established his own catering operation, Cuisson, in August 2011. His passion for his craft was infectious.
The one element of “surprise” that I found hard to deal with was the “bring your own” wine policy. Without knowing what would be served, how could I know what alcohol my wine buff companion ought to choose?
The food itself, though, was delightful. We started with some small ‘lollipops’ stuffed with chicken liver and chunks of apple as an amuse-bouche. This was followed by a ham that had been cooked for 36 hours and served in a “British farmer’s style” with mini-cauliflower, sliced carrots, a rocket salad and a truly wonderful chutney. For a main we were served salmon, cooked “hot and cold” on one side only at 44.5°C in basil oil served with marinated prawns, mashed potatoes and broccoli. It was a great dish but perhaps a little more salt could have made it perfect. The final course, equally, was a delight: chocolate fudge with Baileys ice cream and salted caramel. I was in heaven.
In general, Hannagen’s approach to slow cooking and his use of local produce reminded me very much of that of Jason Atherton at Pollen Street Social. I was therefore not surprised when he later told me that Atherton was his mentor. He did a great job and my companion and I agreed that he deserves huge success.
The meal over, we ended up downing Patrón XO Cafe shots together while happily exchanging numbers. Though I may have been sceptical in the beginning, this concept is brilliant. I am very much looking forward to attend the next Secret Supper Club soon.
For more details about Lime&Tonic and their supper clubs, go to: http://www.limeandtonic.com/london/en/
For more details about Paul Cuisson, go to: http://www.cuisson.co.uk