writing, not drowning

On built-in obsolescence and the joys of vintage

So, there I was, having a brief break from it all in the Chilterns, iBook open, all ready to jump back into regular blogging, when something went wrong. Something horrible and technical, which meant that my beloved iBook, which has been half way round the world and back with me, might not work again. After a bit of deep breathing and giving myself a good talking to ('calm down, dear, it's only a laptop . . . '), I decided to use my oldie's bus pass and take the scenic route from where I was staying to, er, Reading. As you do on a Bank Holiday weekend.

Because Reading has an Apple Store and where there's an Apple Store, there's a Genius Bar. And I apologise to those of you who have PCs rather than Macs because this will mean not very much to you. Suffice it to say that the cool young things at the Genius Bar will tell you, among other things,  a) what's wrong with your Apple whatever and b) whether Apple can repair it or not. I think you already know what's coming. My iBook must be all of five or six years old so, no, Apple doesn't stock the required part any longer and cannot repair my writing companion.

It's not that we're joined at the hip, or anything like that, but I was a little sad. The sky was the colour of lead and the weather cold, windy and wet as I waited for the return bus to arrive and thought of all the places we'd visited together and the fun we'd had and the thousands of words I had pounded out on the keyboard. That's my iBook up on the right-hand typebar, doing its stuff in sub-tropical Kerala. Sigh . . . 

All is not yet lost and there is always the possibility of tracking down a relacement part somewhere and the asking my Apple guru to see if he can fix it. But still, five or six years do not exactly warrant a long-service medal, do they?

The iBook disaster came in the same week as the dishwasher at home ground to a halt and a CD - it was, natch, a library CD and not one of mine - got jammed in the (wrong slot) of the radio/CD player of my trusty old Subaru, the day before it was due back. (It was disc two of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, as it happens.) The nice man at the Subaru garage said he would sort it out, which he did, and when I went to collect the car, he produced not one but two jammed CDs, one of which bore the grime of years.

'How we laughed,' he chortled.

I looked at the CD.

'Not mine,' I said, feeling affronted. 'Do I look like the sort of woman who would have a cheapo cover version of big band ballads? Must have been the previous owners.'

In which case, it has been stuck where it shouldn't be for oh, about 10 years. The previous owner bore an impressive and historic title and was a Deputy Lieutenant, so über posh, but with surprisingly naff musical tastes. 

The dishwasher was fixed too, thanks to a local family firm of electricians who come out at short notice, put things right in a tick, and do not charge an arm and a leg. I know, a vanishing breed.

Thank goodness, however, for our continuing - and growing - love affair with vintage fashion and secondhand pre-loved clothes, which has made increasing sense in these cash-poor and eco-conscious times and which continues to give many a fine garment a new lease of life (unlike my poor old iBook). I've written in the past about my Biba and Bus Stop 1960s clothes bonanza but, despite all those amazing - and affordable - new clothes, my girlfriends and I often added vintage accesories from markets like Portobello Road. It worked especially well with Lee Bender's Bus Stop designs, with their echoes of 1940s styling.

If, like me you still have a passion for fashion but a very tight budget, it's a great way to give a shrinking wardrobe a lift. My Dear Old School Friend, who is tall and slender and always looks a million dollars, never buys new and can work a charity shop dress rail like no-one else I know. As her daughter-in-law remarked, 'Who else could spot an Amanda Wakely number going for a snip in an Ilfracombe charity shop?' Amanda Wakely? Ilfracombe? Who'd have thought?

Anyway, I've been watching the way she works and I think I've picked up a tip or two. This summer, I bought a stylish little black shirt by Nicole Farhi, two Oska linen jackets and two designer-label white linen tops, for the total sum of £22, courtesy of charity shops in Devon and Somerset. And while I was staying in the Chilterns, I trotted along to one of the nearest town's four charity shops - ostensibly in search of a book or three. But this is celebrity land and these shops are positively heaving with brand new designer clothes, bought on a whim and never worn. So, instead of books, I came out with a thing of rare beauty: a Diane Von Furstenberg two-layered skirt in immaculate condition - cotton underskirt with a patterned and hand-beaded silk overskirt. Cost? Embarrassingly cheap at just £5. Now I just need the right party to come along so I can wear it to dance the night away - but the design is timeless, so I'll get years of wear out of it. In the meantime, I'm going to hang it up where I can look at it and admire all the work that went into designing and making something so very lovely. 

If only iBooks worked the same way.

(This post is brought to you courtesy of my Big Mac, which is also five years old . . . )

Hanging about at the bus stop with Biba

Waking far too early this morning, I decided to catch up with the weekend papers. If I don't tackle them the week that they are issued, they grow into an enormous pile and start cloning themselves. At the back of the Sunday Times magazine is its longstanding A Life in the Day interview, which this week featured fashion icon Barbara Hulanicki, the founder of Biba, who still looks striking at 72. 

In Sixties and Seventies London, if you were into fashion, you tended to be either a Biba or a Bus Stop girl (I know, I know, but we were girls then). As it happened, I loved both and followed Biba religiously from the first shop in Abingdon Road, Kensington, to Kensington Church Street (below):

and, finally, to first one and then the other side of Kensington High Street. Years previously, when I was about four, my mother had taken me to what was to become the first of the two Biba stores on Kensington High Street; it was then Daniel Neal, where I had my feet X-rayed and was fitted with sensible shoes. When my daughter was the same age, she was kitted out at Biba, most memorably in a very fetching red and yellow tartan coat.

But I ended up being firmly in the Bus Stop camp (also conveniently located in Church Street) 

because the clothes fitted me better and, as luck would have it, my boyfriend went to work for Lee Bender at Bus Stop. How cool was that? The boyfriend read Penguin Modern Classics, hated sport, loved clothes, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music, especially R&B, and was very, very witty. The perfect accessory for a Sixties girl.

Lee Bender (left) and model at Bus Stop

During one memorable year, I acquired 19 different dresses from Bus Stop, one of which was my wedding dress: a grass-green mini-dress, with a deep, rounded collar, long sleeves, turned back cuffs and a long row of buttons down the front, all covered in the same green fabric. Shoes were lilac and purple (from Ravel), a lilac hat (Dickins and Jones) and cream coloured tights (John Lewis). Haircut courtesy of Vidal Sassoon. Goodness me . . .

Lee Bender's designs for Bus Stop had echoes of the Forties and always had interesting features, from distinctive textile patterns to unusual seaming.

It's great to see that both Barbara Hulanicki and Lee Bender are still designing and I will be one of the first in line when Lee's book on the story of Bus Stop is published next year.

My Biba make-up and household items have long since been discarded, having been used and worn away almost to the point of oblivion. And, of the many Biba and Bus Stop clothes I once owned, only two items are still hanging in my wardrobe. (Whatever happened to my beloved fuschia crepe Bus Stop dress with the cream collar and lacing up the front?) Now, there's only a pair of Biba trousers - black crepe, wide-legged, with peplum, and customised with jet buttons that once belonged to my great-grandmother:

with that unforgettable label:

And from Bus Stop: 

a full length dress made of black figured satin, with the sort of attention to detail that I loved so much, just very slight, soft, gathering on the shoulder:

and a sort of double seam down the outside of the sleeves:

I haven't worn the Biba trousers for ages, although they still fit (just), but the Bus Stop dress, which was a 21st birthday present, manages to get an occasional airing. In the 1980s, I wore it three years running to Glyndebourne, in the days when I was working with the sort of people who went to Glyndebourne every year. You won't be surprised to learn that I'm hanging on to those trousers and that dress for dear life.

And tucked away in my linen cupboard is something else that I've had for over 40 years: a wedding present from Lee Bender and the Bus Stop team - a tablecloth and matching napkins. They're not used much these days but I wouldn't part with them for anything. Decluttering and downsizing notwithstanding.

Of killer heels and surgically enhanced grannies

A huge thank you for all your kind wishes for the Dear Daughter's recovery; she is making good progress, due in no small part to her fierce determination and all that combined positive thinking that came winging her way.

Yesterday saw us back in London for the post-op appointment with the consultant, whose clinic is in one of those areas where everyone looks rich or famous or both. I rarely have the luxury of an hour to spend just people watching; where I live, there aren't enough people to make it interesting. And, in a small village, you know everyone, anyway.

We'd driven into town in my mud-encrusted Subaru Forester, which is ideal for the steep hills and narrow lanes of Exmoor but which looked decidedly shabby (and not in that chic way) in town. Plenty of other 4x4s but all in immaculate, highly polished condition. One couple looked as if they were about to go into grief meltdown when the wife spotted a miniscule dent in the bodywork above one of the headlights of theirs.

I felt a bit like the Subaru myself. The street where I waited for my daughter is lined with designer boutiques and everyone looked impossibly trendy, whether they were wearing casuals or something more formal. There may be a global recession but in this little shoppers' paradise, walking purposefully with a clutch of up-market carrier bags is still de rigueur. 

Once upon a time, I loved clothes but a deeply rural existence like mine does not lend itself to high fashion or even high street fashion. Nevertheless, I do try to keep up appearances, even if it's only a decent pair of jeans, and I refuse absolutely to don the uniform preferred by so many older local women of anything as long as it's polyester and beige or navy blue. So, as I will soon be living among a rather smarter set again, I thought I had better get to grips and make a few mental notes.

And that's when I spotted my very first pair of these:

the killer heels of which I had read so much and seen so many photos. But never close up. Not in real life.

They were topped by a pair of very tight black leather trousers and an even tighter, clingier black top. Mmm, more Hollywood hooker than Gwynneth P on the red carpet, (although I always thought she looked a bit strange  in that teeny black lace dress and very spiky shoes). The wearer was probably in her twenties and was clearly having great difficulty walking. And, yes, I know all the theories about what high heels do to one's shape and why they are supposed to be so provocative. But, you know, she just looked plain daft. She had a little girl with her, dressed up to the nines in frilly skirt and socks and then there was the granny, fifty-something at a guess, wearing this season's must-have cropped mac and red . . . killer heels. She looked even more uncomfortable and wobblier than her daughter.

Decided that this was most definitely not a good look and not one I will be adopting when I return to quasi-metropolitan life a little later in the year. However, I couldn't help noticing that most of the grannies in this part of London go to a lot of trouble when they're out for a stroll with the tiny ones tucked up in their Bugaboos or whatever the latest on-trend pram happens to be. Slick haircuts, foxy little jackets, just the right amount of make-up and . . . . ah yes, just a hint of a nip here and a tuck there in the facial area. And a certain rigidity to their smiles. A different sort of uniform to that of West Country grannies but a uniform nevertheless. Think I'll give that look a miss too.

And it was then that I realised that I had driven into London and had dared to sit among the beautiful people, with evidence of dog hair about my person and with mud on my shoes. See how my standards have slipped after eleven years in the wilds? I have been fantasising about living again, as I soon will be, within walking distance of an occasional skinny decaff cappuccino, newspapers, a bit of culture, and even a Waitrose. But I can see that there is more to semi-urban living than that. There can be no more slobbing around (because no-one can see me so it doesn't matter anyway). In the not-too-distant future, there will have to be Making of Efforts. 

The wrong wellies

Spent far too much time online today, busy - er - researching; you know how it is. I was a tad distracted and it wasn't until I was 15 minutes into this afternoon's riverside dog walk that I noticed I was wearing odd wellies. I do hope that this is not the start of a worrying personal trend. Still, at least it wasn't one laced Ilse Jacobsen and one unlaced Hunter. No, sadly, worse than that: one black Hunter and one nondescript green boot that doesn't even belong to me.

And not the boots shown above either (I don't really do floral). But if you like the look of them, and you live in the UK, Eire or the USA, you can get them here for a mere £20 - that's about $40 - in rather more fetching colours. Dear old Dorothy Perkins will even donate a fiver ($10) to the Woodland Trust for every pair sold. Bargain.

Court jester

And dressed for the part.