New York City Wardrobe Watch: Day 2

A milestone has been reached. As last night I wore my flat sandals to dinner and then changed into my high-heeled sandals for Soho House, today I wore my flat boots, and tonight for drinks at the Bourgeois Pig I will be wearing my high-heeled boots, as of tonight I will have worn all four pairs of shoes that I brought with me, scoring a resounding WIN in the capsule wardrobe war. However, I have muddied the waters a bit by purchasing a new pair of red sandals in the excellent Shoegasm shoe shop on the edge of the Meatpacking District, and I'm not sure if that means I am obliged to wear them too. They are chic, comfortable and vintage-looking and they match my coat. My red coat, that is. Not the new brown coat that I also bought today.

Weather continues sunny and warm despite dire predictions of rain. This has permitted another enjoyable day of walking around New York with my eyes open, specifically Greenwich Village, Soho, the Meatpacking District and the Cast Iron district - an area of particularly spectacular architecture which we stumbled over by accident between one cafe which we couldn't find and another which we did find but wished we hadn't (we turned up our noses at it and headed instead for the peerless Cafe Gitane and the best chicken sandwich on human record.) I am hoping for at least one day of cold weather though: on the day we leave, because I am going to have to wear a hell of a lot of my clothes, and possibly two pairs of my shoes, if I am going to have any hope of closing my suitcase.

New York City Wardrobe Watch: Day 1

Day One: Jeans, Converse, blue knit long-sleeve top, coat. Weather: bright, sunny, warm. Wardrobe suitability: perfect.

As the weather forecast for the rest of the stay is by no means optimistic, today I have mostly been walking around Manhattan with my eyes open - both more enjoyable and less dangerous than walking around with my eyes shut. It's stunning - everything here is iconic, so I am staying in a bit that looks like Friends and spent the afternoon exploring a bit that's kind of Woody Allen and had lunch in a place so Seinfeld that Jerry Seinfeld actually eats there. It's called Barney Greengrass, "The Sturgeon King", and the smoked salmon bagel is the best I've ever had. Also the waiter the most flirtatious. We had a flirtatious waiter at Celeste, the excellent Italian restaurant we went to last night; all waiters flirt for tips, and we give them good tips because they flirt so well. It's like a more genteel version of what goes on in a strip joint, and the food is better. Since I would count as a Result any holiday where I spent a hefty percentage of my time eating good food and flirting with good waiters, I am feeling very pleased with my trip so far.

Tonight I am being taken for drinks to the roof of Soho House by a filmmaker who once had a publicity shot of himself completely nude save for a copy of an Ayn Rand novel (A Format, publishing fans) strategically placed. Will report back on whether I succeed in correctly pitching my wardrobe. If I follow his lead, I will need a trilogy. Paul Auster's New York Trilogy perhaps?

Start Spreadin' The News etc

Off to NYC. Suitcase mystifyingly less cooperative since I took out two t-shirts and replaced with two large knitted cardigans. Two items for two items, I don't get what its problem is. I am going to attempt to take my computer with me (we'll see if it fits in my handluggage - 50-50 chance I reckon) so keep your eye on the blog for transatlantic updates, notably on whether the half of the wardrobe that I am taking was the correct half or the half I should have left at home.

See you - with any luck - on the far side of the Atlantic.

Packing Hell

Off to New York tomorrow. Very exciting... except that the weather forecast is predicting every possible variety of weather. All kinds of heat and cold and sun and rain in every combination available. Which means: packing hell.

Yes, it's one of those trips where I need to take *all* my clothes. Warm weather clothes, cold weather clothes, day clothes, evening clothes, extra clothes for changing into when I've been out all day in the rain and got drenched, light coat, warm coat, and shoes - comfortable shoes, evening shoes, shoes for changing into when I've been out all day in the rain and got drenched, lighter shoes for unexpected days of nice weather when I don't feel like wearing waterlogged boots... I am already getting a second suitcase out of the attic.

I don't know when or why, but somewhere in my upbringing it was instilled in me that the highest of all human virtues is traveling light. I travelled round Australia for four months when I was 19 with two pairs of shorts, a pair of leggings and three tops, which made my backpack nice and easy to carry but left me with a set of holiday photographs I can't bear to look at. (The leggings especially: bad then, should not be back in fashion now.) I'm staying in the same place the whole time I'm in New York so all I need to do is to get there and leave my clothes, and then pack them again and bring them back, and as I alone am carrying my case - as, indeed my case(s) are on wheels, and therefore will barely have to be lifted at all - it really should not matter if I bring twice as many outfits as there are days that I'm going to be in town, and every pair of shoes that I own, except the Crocs which are only for Africa trips and gardening. It is nobody's business but my own. And yet, should that be the case (no pun intended) I would be filled with shame. A worthwhile human being should surely be able to fit all New York essentials into small jaunty handluggage bag, and still leave room for a laptop, three novels and a hairdryer. I have still not recovered from going skiing with a friend who managed to get her entire kit into her boot bag with her boots (skis, to be fair, not included).

Being a heavy packer in my mind equates with being some kind of indecisive, profligate floozy, the kind of person who can't answer the door to the postman without a full face of make-up and six-inch heels. I don't think that's the kind of person I am (my postman is highly familiar with my entire range of nightwear). I'm not even sure that kind of person exists outside of sexist rhetoric. So why do I feel that way just because I can't fit a week's clothing into a clutch purse?

I blame the concept fashion journalists have been trying to drum into us all these years: the capsule wardrobe. These are the same fashion journalists who insist that you can't wear the same shaped trouser for more than three months without becoming a social outcast (you're still in skinnies? Dear god in heaven! where are your harem pants?) and yet somehow they also unironically tell is that all we need in life - and in New York - are 'two pairs of trousers, a dress or a skirt for more formal occasions, a well-fitting jacket, a coat, a casual knitted jacket (or smart cardie) and two pairs of shoes - one pair of flats and one with a little heel'. That's a list I have just copied and pasted from Susie Faux, inventor of the capsule wardrobe. Faux means false, people. I think she is mocking us.

Still don't believe me? Here is a typically smug piece about capsule holiday packing from The Telegraph.

I recently went away for a long weekend with a small, half-empty case. I took a pair of black linen trousers, a pair of tailored stone cropped trousers, a handful of lightweight tops (cotton peasant tops for the day and slinky silk Lanvin and Marni tops for the evenings, which collectively packed down to the size of a washbag), one pair of gold Musa sandals for the evenings and flip-flops for the day.

Does anybody now not hate this person?

This is what I am currently thinking of taking to New York for one week:

One pair skinny jeans, one pair straight jeans, one pair cropped jeans, one skirt which can be worn with or without tights, two dresses which can be worn with or without tights, at least six tops (three smart, three casual), three jumpers which can be layered for different levels of warmth, coat, scarf, umbrella, one pair flat boots, one pair high heeled boots, one pair flat sandals in case of nice weather, one pair high heeled sandals for evening wear which can be worn with tights, pyjamas, and a vast mountain of pants, socks, tights and bras.

It's a capsule wardrobe. Nobody said anything about the size of the capsule.

Maman: do not read the last line and maybe penultimate line of this post

Perhaps was my mistake. Perhaps instead of buying 'Getting Thing Done' should have purchased 'Enjoying Getting Things Done', or possibly 'Learn To Live With Not Getting Things Done'? Better yet, 'Getting Other People To Do Things'?

These are all excellent ideas. Will add to the list of self-help books I have been meaning to write, including:
- 'Cry Yourself Thin'
- 'Oral Sex: Just a Matter of Taste', and
- 'Anal Sex: Can You Be Arsed?'

On Not Getting Things Done

I don't want to do anything at all. Possibly ever again. Even Twittering feels like too much effort, and that's only 140 characters at a time. I blame Getting Things Done. As advised in the book of the website of the seminar of the philosophy of the SADIST, I made a long To Do list of every single thing that I could think of that I needed or wanted to do in my life, categorised it all, fed it into OmniFocus, bought in-trays, bought filing cabinets - I think you know about the filing cabinets - and all of the rest of it. And now, instead of - as I was promised - having my mind freed up for the important business of actually doing some writing, or whatever it is that I do here all day (hey: what is that, exactly?), all I am is overwhelmed by how much stuff I have to do, when before, when it was safely in my head instead of written down where I can actually see it, I could ignore it completely. Now I can't because I have admitted it to myself. What was wrong with denial anyway? It served me well all these years. Now I have to cope with knowing that, day and night, somewhere not too far from me is a list on which the word ironing is written, quite close to buy outdoor bin lid and sort through electronic stuff in drawer and really not that far from learn Portuguese. All things I have managed to get away with not doing for years, with few ill effects, aside from rumpled clothes and an inability to talk to Portuguese people. Bloody hell, David Allen: you never warned me that in order to Get things Done, I was going to have to Do Stuff. What kind of a system is that?

The I Can't Be Bothered To Type It Again Book Dictatorship: Next Month: The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie

Last year, I spent the entire year trying to write a funny book set in a 1930s girls' boarding school, before finally having to abandon hope and the book, which is a very painful and difficult thing for a writer to do, but possibly the reason I couldn't finish the book is that The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie has already been written, and it is impossible to improve upon perfection. Damn you, Muriel Spark!

My first exposure to Miss Jean Brodie was via the justifiably famous film starring Maggie Smith. It is one of the very first films I can remember watching, and was probably shown to me in the misguided belief that if a film is about children, it must be for children. Which is emphatically not the case. But even so, I remember being completely absorbed by, and envious of, the blooming sophistication of the schoolgirl characters as they grow up. The latter part of the film has sex in it, and this was mesmerising and slightly disgusting. Only later did I realise that, ironically, the earlier part of the film is about children being desperately curious about sex but slightly disgusted by it.

It was only years later that I read the book, but even that was a long time ago now, and my memories of the novel and of the film have melted into one another. I picked the book off the shelf yesterday (nice narrow spine) and started reading it again, and was immediately reminded of what makes it so brilliant: the impeccably observed, hilarious dialogue; and the character of Miss Jean Brodie herself, possibly the most fascinating in modern literature.

Published in 1961 but set in the 1930s, it's about the sexual awakening of a group of girls at a time when they weren't supposed to have sexual awakenings, but it's more than that: it's an intellectual and political awakening too, and an examination of the attractions and terrors of fascism, the fascination and fragility of power, a study of the social danger that is an intelligent, sexual, unmarried woman, and an exploration of what happens to that woman when she starts to age.

It isn't perfect, no matter what I might have said in my first paragraph, and I imagine it will divide readers, but that makes for a more fun discussion. Meet back here to talk about it on Thursday May 21st.

Oh god. You probably all did it for A Level, didn't you?

PS Thank you all for your brilliant discussion of A Month In The Country, it totally makes this book club worth doing.

PPS How brilliant is that poster?

WWTTMBBDOBBAWTTL: A Month In The Country by JL Carr

That's "Woman Who Talked Too Much Benign Book Dictatorship Of Books By Authors Who Talked Too Little", as suggested by MediumRob. Can you blame me that I didn't want to type it all out again? And yet I did. Ah well.

It is also my 500th post on this blog. Total blog posts ever are 2320, so it's not entirely surprising that I have occasional moments of blog fatigue where I do things like just not posting since Sunday and totally forgetting that I have a book club to remind you about until I wake up on Thursday morning and wondering whether anybody has read the book, and thus what is the best way to go about this.

In so wondering, I picked up my beloved copy of A Month In The Country (you'll note I'm linking to Play.com, if you have read it you will know that A Month In The Country has gay content and Amazon have still not properly explained or fully apologised for their little tantrum, sorry, "glitch" about the gays). I opened it at random and this is what I saw:

Ah, those days... for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young.

If I'd stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvellous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never, we must snatch at happiness as it flies.

And there it is, the exact reason why I love A Month In The Country so much: its perfect capture of that exact mood of fleeting happiness, loss and regret. My dictionary defines "nostalgia" as "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for something past or unrecoverable." There is no sentimentality in A Month In The Country, excessive or otherwise, but for good measure I looked up "wistful" (I love the precision of dictionary definitions) and got "Full of unfulfilled desire; yearning. Musingly sad; pensive." Which is exactly the tone of this novel. And the tragedy of A Month In The Country is that the chance of happiness does fly past the narrator, Tom Birkin, but he fails to snatch at it, and he loses it forever.

So, book club members: If you have read A Month In The Country, please share your feelings about it in the comments, being spoiler-sensitive. And if you haven't, can you recommend a book which also captures a particular mood to perfection?

Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead

Easter Saturday, 2009. By the machinations of a small hand-held device unlikely to be picked up by Apple any time soon, the Doctor is sucked into a wormhole and ends up in a Bond movie, complete with Bond girl (Michelle Ryan) and Q (Lee Evans). Is there any way out?

With the Christmas specials bound to be Who Mood A - dark, overblown, with fantastic cliffhanger at the end of episode two ruined by dreadful quasi-religious resolution in episode three - this Easter special was Who Mood B: big, dumb fun, sweet as a chocolate egg and not nearly as sickly.

It could have gone horribly wrong. Amidst the schmaltz of the "forget about the fact you're on an alien planet with three suns, what really matters in this life is chops and gravy" scene - not a very Doctoresque sentiment, I might add - I feared that this was going to be yet another "ordinary folk pull together" type morality tale, but the episode pretty much abandoned the bus passengers after that. Instead, what we got was a lot of flirtation between the Doctor and that Michelle Ryan character - what was her name again? Tickle McWim? Yup, it wasn't only the desert that was hot.

This was Doctor Who: The Sexy Special (PG rating, contains mild peril and a lot of embarrassing innuendos.) Poor Michelle Ryan: not the most convincing actress at the best of times, as Tickle McWim she had to deliver a lot of lines which may as well have been suffixed with the words JUST LIKE SEX. "I like things extreme" - JUST LIKE SEX. "We could be good together" - IN THE SACK. Unfortunately this bled into every other line that she said. "There's sand in the engine" - AND IN MY PANTS. When she wasn't being sexy, she was being sexy and posh: "That's how the aristocracy survives, by being ready for everything" (AND BY SHAGGING LOADS), she says, before diving down some kind of giant vent thing to rescue a crystal (shades of The Crystal Maze, anyone?) Everything, except for the Icelandic banks collapsing, apparently. Poor Daddy.

But who cares? It was good to see the Doctor getting flirty and dirty. The harder it gets the more he loves it, apparently - me too, baby. His tongue got an excellent workout, both licking the sand and snogging Michelle at the end, with not a DNA transfer excuse in sight. Of course, he kissed and ran - you can't have shagging in the Tardis, as DT often says. Perhaps Ms McWim will turn up on Torchwood? I'd like to see her face off with Captain Jack - BETWEEN THE SHEETS.

This wasn't the only love affair in Planet of the Dead. The other, and, I hope, the more lasting of the two, was between the Doctor and Lee Evans's Malcolm, a UNIT boffin and sort of genetic splice of Q and Rob Brydon. Watching Evans in action it was hard to believe he hadn't been a series regular since day one. Doctor Who needs a comedy scientist, stands to reason, if only to say lines like, "Doctor, what if I reverse the proton polarity of the anhydrous electromagnet and increase to a force of fifteen Bernards? Oops, my glasses have fallen off." [Disclaimer: may not actually have been what he said]. By the time they were back-and-forthing on the phone, I felt as if they had known each other for years. When they finally came face to face, and Evans delivered his excellent and heartfelt series of "I love you"s, I thought he was going to go in for the snog too. Disappointingly, he didn't, but if Malcolm loves the Doctor, I love Malcolm, and beg Mr Moffat to please bring him back soon.

There were other fabulous details, too numerous to mention. The shit-eating alien flies, who don't have ears but who do have perfect ear-shaped communications devices lying around their spaceship. The fact that a skeleton falling out of a wormhole is "Emergency Code One" which rather makes you wonder what happened at the meeting where they dreamed up the emergency codes, and whether Emergency Code Two is "Tower Bridge unmoors itself and starts dancing the Macarena". The fact that the only thing that can make a London bus run on time is an ancient gold cup "worth 18 million pounds". Have I made myself clear yet? I absolutely loved it from beginning to end.

Next time: "Water always wins": the Doctor is unexpectedly killed by a urine infection.

In case you were wondering...

...why I've gone so quiet, it is not, as you might have thought, because I am Twittering all the lifelong day, or because I really did eat too much pudding and then die, but because I am working. In fact I've been working so hard I've barely been playing Facebook Scrabble. I know. I'm surprised too.

But don't fear, because there's a Doctor Who special over the weekend to write about, and I am also poised to review the astonishing Romeo Castelucci trilogy currently being staged at the Barbican (seeing the third part this evening.)

Are you relieved? I am completely relieved. Phew.