Alexandra Shulman’s
A fantastic New Year idea has just popped up
RESOLUTIONS have always struck me as an extremely unappealing way to start a new year. What is the point of compiling a list of intentions that are doomed to failure, if not immediately then pretty soon afterwards?
Of course, there are many things I would like to improve: my handwriting, my failure to grasp a foreign language, my tendency to have ‘just one more’. But the mere thought of setting selfimprovement goals puts me off the whole idea of them.
Other people are often driven by goals. The glistening mirage of achievement urges them on to success. Such people know they can do anything if they put their mind to it. Strange folk.
For 2024, I have decided to try a kind of pop-up system.
Since there are so many pop-up ventures nowadays, why not use the same concept for New Year’s resolutions?
I’m not sure how it will work but it’s a sort of part-time resolve motivated by the notion that a bit of self-improvement is better than none. And, hopefully, if I succeed during the popping-up period, I might be inclined to continue. I’ll let you know how it works in a month or so.
The festive movie with a message
ONE of the great joys of Twixmas (not convinced about the portmanteau word) is feeling mandated to spend hours in front of the television.
I watched Paddington for the first time over the break, which David, my companion on the sofa, considers to be one of the greatest films.
Given that our other viewing included Casablanca, North By Northwest and The Wizard Of Oz, could be thought a radical opinion but Paddington certainly should be required viewing for those in the British government dealing with immigration.
Where would we be if Paddington had been sent to Rwanda after braving his perilous boat journey from Peru in search of a new home? He certainly didn’t have the necessary documentation, only a marmalade sandwich.
What a loss to British cultural heritage that would have been, as well as a very poor reflection of UK hospitality to travellers who have made a great journey to the land of their imaginings, an island where people from other countries are made to feel unwelcome.
And you thought foxes were a menace
ON Thursday, I listened to singer Ellie Goulding’s guest editorship of Radio 4’s Today programme, which had an item about rewilding our countryside. Later, I finished Ben Goldsmith’s book God Is An Octopus – partly a love letter to his daughter Iris, who died aged 15 in a terrible, random accident on his land, and partly a rumination on spirituality, grief and the power of nature.
Ben is a passionate advocate of the rewilding movement. His book is extremely moving and he brilliantly marries the issues of trying to come to terms with what happened to Iris with the importance of the health and preservation of the greater natural world. Even I, a relative nature agnostic, was intrigued by his plans for removing man-made intrusion in the landscape, grubbing out hedges, encouraging rampant fauna and allowing pools and streams to take their own course on his estate.
But Ben lost me completely on wanting to reintroduce roaming wolves and bears to our countryside. Honestly, it’s quite enough for us in northwest London dealing with the nasty foxes in our garden, which prowl freely every night and one of which gave me fox scabies, the most painful skin infection I have ever experienced.
The great escape from the family
AS a junior on Tatler magazine in the 1980s, I worked with the charismatic cartoonist Mark Boxer. Just before breaking up for Christmas, he would urge us to commission a flurry of articles from outside contributors that needed to be sent in before the New Year.
We were horrified. Surely, we said, nobody would want to write pieces for Tatler when they could be at home during this festive period having a jolly time with their family? ‘Nonsense!’ would be his brisk reply. ‘They’ll all be grateful to have a reason to escape.’
Back then, I thought it was a harsh and unsentimental attitude to the Christmas break. But now, all these years later, I realise that he was probably right. There’s only so much television and family a person can take.
Wine in a tumbler? That’s just sacrilege!
LAYING the table for Christmas dinner is always filled with minor but nonetheless pressing dilemmas. Do you clog the space with crackers for the whole meal? Should there be some kind of leafy decoration alongside candles? All those tablescaping images on Instagram have a lot to answer for.
I do, however, still consider it right to place wine glasses along with water glasses – a convention that is becoming increasingly rare among many people I know.
The wine glass, let alone different-sized ones for red and white, has become an endangered species now that so many people choose not to drink alcohol. Instead, all-purpose tumblers seem to have become the glass of choice – so much easier to fit in the dishwasher and suitable for non-wine-drinkers, too.
This is sacrilege for all those who cherish the vine. Châteauneufdu-Pape in a Duralex tumbler? Perish the thought.
Charles’s style is not to be sniffed at
I’D always thought men wearing handkerchiefs in their jacket breast pocket was a bit poncey, like bow-ties in the daytime.
But I’ve changed my mind after scrutinising King Charles’s wardthat robe in the TV documentary Charles III: The Coronation Year. Gosh, how that man looks immaculate day and night, always with a nifty handkerchief peeking out that co-ordinates with, but doesn’t match, his tie.
Handkerchiefs have gone out of fashion but perhaps it’s time they made a return. When I was a child, my father always asked for handkerchiefs for Christmas, which seemed the dullest gift possible – other than a pack of Biros, the alternative – and carried them daily. But in these environmentally conscious days, fabric handkerchiefs are probably better for the planet than paper tissues, especially those in small packets wrapped in plastic.
And, worn à la King Charles, they look much more gracious, too.