A guilt trip ... the gift I really don’t want for Christmas
IN OUR house, there’s one passionate Christmas proselytiser –me. I’ m the commanderin-chief, urging the others to fling themselves once more unto the breach to indulge my own passion for the whole schmaltzy, sentimental extravaganza. This, when they would rather try to ignore it all – either spend the day in bed, or possibly head to a place in the sun where December 25 is just another day in the calendar.
However, this year my enthusiasm for all things Christmas keeps coming up against a new obstacle – the guilt trip. So much of the traditional stuff, the things that help make Christmas the Christmas I love, runs counter to how we are meant to behave in this sustainability-conscious age.
Where to start? Well there’s all the non-biodegradable tinsel and glitter that adds essential twinkle, the environmentally unsound cards ( and, no, a digital version that can’t be peered at by everyone does not cut it), the energy-wasting fairy lights glinting through the windows on dark nights. And that’s even before we start on the myriad wrongs involved in shopping on Amazon.
Christmas has become yet another one of those conversations with the little devil permanently perched on one shoulder, who urges our more responsible self to go hang. The one who says: ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t fuss about all that wrapping paper being chucked in the bin.’
It’s the same little devil who is always whispering ‘let’s get an Uber’ despite the threat it possesses to our treasured black cabs and the fact that bad management has left its licence in London under threat.
The fact that so many of us are prepared to put ourselves in the hands of the often reckless driving of a stranger, who is in charge of a potentially lethal weapon, borders on the extraordinary.
But on a late night after a Christmas party, and faced with the choice of an Uber for the five-mile journey home or a cab that will cost even more than taking a train all the way to Oxford, the devil always wins. And, once again, the season of goodwill becomes the season of vanishing scruples.
A night with Dublin’s minidress role models
I’VE long believed it’s vital for young girls to have more female role models in the business and professional world who demonstrate a pleasure in fashion and beauty in their working life. Even today, such inspirational characters are often hard to find once we’re out of the celebrity spheres such as modelling, film, TV and music. Amal Clooney has a heavy load to bear. I was talking about this again last week during a speech at the Image Business Women of the Year awards in Dublin – an occasion where, as I discovered, it would frankly have been hard for me to make a less controversial point. The room was heaving with 800 hugely successful Irish women all in exuberant style – sequined mini-dresses, plunging evening gowns, jewelled hair accessories and immaculate make-up. Their considerable achievements ranged through the broadest of fields; construction, healthcare, hotel management, telecoms. That display of high-voltage glamour would rival anything you’ll find at tomorrow’s British Fashion Awards and was notably different from my experience of similar events in London, where women are more often inclined to stick to the simple and safe little black dresses.
No matter what Brexit brings, it was great to discover that our professional female role models are in safe and inspiring hands on the island of Ireland.
Lyrical farewell to a national hero
MY CURRENT love affair with Ireland was furthered by a BBC2 Arena documentary on the life and work of the great Seamus Heaney. In what other country would you find a one-minute standing ovation taking place at an 80,000- seater football stadium to pay tribute at the death of a national poet?
My growing desire for a slice of countryside
READING columnist Matthew Parris describing in The Times his planned orchard of oak, holly, beech, alder and rowan made me yearn for my own patch of countryside. My one and only contribution to tree-planting, as readers might remember, has been a si ngle Catalpa bignonioides (Indian bean tree) to replace a sun- blocking lime at the end of the garden. Currently, it sits there a lonely, leafless stick, like an only child with too many expectations riding on it.
Girls are feeling the squeeze this winter!
THE buzzword in fashion right now is big knickers. Shapewear, to give them their slightly more refined term, is what we used to call control pants, aka big and mightily uncomfortable pants.
Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have both entered this booming market with ranges designed to accommodate a broad range of skin colours and body shapes. Heist, a relatively new UK brand ( and founded by two men), is becoming a big player on the scene.
Many women, particularly as they squeeze into their party kit, will appreciate the two inches that Heist can knock off your waist measurement. Though I’ve not tried Heist knickers, I will vouch for their excellent tights.
All the same, it’s curious that amid the current democratisation of fashion – which theoretically celebrates a greater range of body diversity – that one of the industry’s thriving areas is one where women are choosing to encase their body in a compressing sausage skin in an attempt to achieve a smoother, more perfect body outline.
At least it’s a far more comfortable sausage skin than in the old days of fingertip control girdles.
The clued-up stars who make TV shine
WE MIGHT be in thrall to boxsets but the most thrilling television at the moment is the interviews. Emily Maitlis grill i ng Prince Andrew, Andrew Neil torturing Jeremy Corbyn, Fiona Bruce aceing the leaders’ debate. Each demonstrated their very singular style; Maitlis deceptively lethal, Neil an unrecalcitrant bully, and Bruce calmly authoritative and insistent.
But they all showed how compelling television can be when you get a real pro ready to go into battle in total command of the facts.