Spectator Life

'I got it in the days when movies moved slower,' says Hollywood A-lister Tom Hanks of the Airstream caravan that served as a home-from-home while shooting some of his biggest hits of the past 30 years, including Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Sleepless in Seattle. But now Hanks is offering the polished aluminium 33-footer at a Bonhams classic car auction in Carmel, California, on August 13 - where it's tipped to realise up to $250,000. He's also selling the vast Ford F450 Super Duty pick-up truck ($70,000 - 100,000) that he bought to give the Airstream 'a kinder, gentler tow' than usual movie crew vehicles, as well as his customised Toyota FJ Land Cruiser ($75,000 -125,000) and a Tesla Model S P85D ($70,000 - 100,000) - all of which are up for grabs 'without reserve'.

In Mary McCarthy’s 1954 novel The Group, Mr Andrews describes the contents of a charity shop (or thrift store if you hail from the States) as an 'instructive inventory of the passé'. And indeed, all charity shops are repositories of the recent past - a perfect distillation of expended trends and fashions. Worthy of an anthropologist’s eye, charity shops are living museums; rail after rail of cultural history infused with the faint smell of other people’s washing detergent and mothballs. But Mr Andrews missed one vital point: charity shops are not simply about the past. They are also caverns of possibility, where formerly prized objects become affordable, and where the taste of the customer reins supreme. There is no type of shop quite like it.

There have been various style know-it-alls who have been ruminating over the possible, perhaps inevitable, return of suits which have Miami Vice proportions. The Eighties cop show was bold in its broad silhouette, generous pleats, puffy shoulders and unstructured loucheness that undid 100 years of tailoring’s mission to flatter and ennoble. In 2021 it feels like the logical next step for people all too used to not having to dress up at all - an exercise in sartorial fence sitting. What people didn’t predict was that people would also feel inspired by the show’s colour palette too. Pastels are everyone’s favourite tone to mock, but opting for brightness, is the smart move. I’d like to claim credit for the uprising, having written in 2019 about J.P.

Have you ever wanted to fly? For me the urge comes whenever I see a bird hovering directly over a hedge, flying into the wind so it can maintain a position and spot prey. It’s not the prey I’m interested in, just the sensation. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to defeat gravity? Like many of us, Richard Browning had that same urge. Unlike the rest of us, he did something about it. Starting in 2016, he experimented with small jet turbines strapped to his arms and legs, pointing downwards so their thrust would lift him off the ground. His ‘flying suit’ took a long time (and a lot of money) to refine.

Wandering through the sheep pens at the Great Yorkshire Show, it’s clear that a sheep is not ‘just’ a sheep. The sheer array of livestock on display is a lesson in itself. Sheep with fluffy legs; sheep with four enormous horns. Pink sheep, white sheep, brown, black and piebald sheep. Dreadlocked sheep; sheep with huge donkey ears, and rams with huge, curled horns. Above their pens they proudly display their prizes: Breed Champion; Winning Lamb; Best Swaledale; Best Homebred. It’s remarkable calm in here; the odd bleat here and there, or a scuffle as someone objects to being puffed and preened before their next class. But for the most part the sheep are content to loll around, munching on their hay.

In 1983 Cambridge academic W.G. Runciman, reviewing Peter York and Ann Barr’s The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, described the work as an 'anthropological survey' in the mould of such distinguished scholars as Malinowski and Veblen. Veblen’s late-nineteenth century The Theory of the Leisure Class was, Runciman explains, an 'earnest social-Darwinian exercise in the analysis and survival of certain archaic behavioural traits'. By attempting to define the Sloane ranger, York and Barr were Veblen’s disciples he concluded, albeit unintentional ones.  Nearly forty years later, eons from the Harpers & Queen heyday of the Sloanie, driven by Princess Diana and Fergie, we must ask ourselves this: where have they all gone?

Are we witnessing the slow death of manly gardening? A new government initiative urges us that for the sake of bees and pollinators we should leave the mower in the shed and let our lawns turn into savannahs. Some thirty councils are signed up. King’s College Cambridge has turned its lawn into a wild flower meadow. Monty Don approves. He has piously decreed that mowing is 'about the most injurious thing you can do to wildlife' and a 'male' obsession. Get this, Monty. Mowing in my garden is only a male activity because my wife won’t do it. So I have to, while she watches your bloody programmes! I can't really complain, mind you. I have a lawn tractor, a pleasure to ride, and generally speaking tasks in our garden are equally divided.

To some, the sight of Prince George wearing a suit and tie at Wembley on Sunday night was simply too much. The Mum mob on Twitter roared 'Who dresses a child like that?' presumably hoping that the future King would be wearing a football shirt and shorts like the rest of the child population lined up way past their bedtime on Sunday to watch England lose. For the little Prince to wear the apparel of power and privilege was seen as an act of cruelty, a scheme designed by his parents to set him apart from other children. Let kids be kids, the reasoning goes. Let them wear whatever they like. Far be it from parents to impose any kind of sartorial authority over their offspring.

'Have you got any advice?' my friend calls to ask, ahead of going to pick up their pandemic puppy. 'Well, um, as first-time dog owners, I’d say steer clear of spaniels and poodles… but it’s a bit late for that, ha!' 'Ha,' she says, thinking I’m joking and off they go to fetch their cute, Disneyfied cockapoo. What could possibly go wrong? He’s a small dog — they were very clear that they needed a small dog to fit in with their family— he’s friendly, he’s a hypoallergenic little ball of floof. He even looks like a child’s teddy bear. A year on and Harvey the cockapoo is neither small nor cuddly, towering over both his spaniel and poodle parent.

Most electric cars no longer look peculiar, and the battery powered Mini is a good example of this. Go back a decade and electric cars were either tiny city vehicles with crude, shed like bodies or bigger and a bit weird. The original Nissan Leaf had the contours of a giant child’s shoe. The current, less outre one looks like a Micra after a heavy lunch. Before Tesla made electric cars desirable, motor manufacturers didn’t see them as commercial propositions, and paid lip service with prototypes that were about as appealing as a thorn twig scourge. Now the legislative and commercial landscape has changed, and the rush is on to turn electric cars into every day consumer durables.

Yes, we tune in for the tennis on Wimbledon fortnight. But lovers of SW19 also tune in for another kind of spectating on any given day: the sport of the Royal Box. A championship of notoriety and celebrity in its own right. Raised feudally above the Centre Court, the Royal Box has seventy-four Lloyd Loom dark green chairs for its chosen occupants on all thirteen days of play. For nearly a century, since 1922, the Royal Box has welcomed an illustrious rollcall of guests, described by the All England Club as ‘British and overseas Royal Families, heads of government, people from the world of tennis, commercial partners, British armed forces, prominent media organisations, supporters of British tennis and other walks of life.’ And me. Yes, that’s right.

On 9 March 1981, a 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer, then fiancé of the future king, stepped out in a black strapless taffeta gown by David and Elizabeth Emanuel for her first official engagement with Prince Charles – a Gala charity concert at Goldsmith’s Hall, marking the beginning of her royal life and setting the stage for the style icon she was to become. The ruffled dress trimmed with sequins on its sweetheart neckline introduced Diana to the perils and pitfalls of royal dress. Prince Charles criticised her for wearing black (a colour the royals traditionally reserved for mourning) and the low neckline caused a sensation amongst the press, with tabloids dubbing her ‘daring Di’.

James Bond might have served as Aston Martin's greatest ambassador for the best part of half a century, but the Prince of Wales isn't far behind. He's been an Aston man ever since mum and dad gave him a Seychelle Blue DB6 for his 21st in 1969, when a gallon of leaded four-star cost a reasonable six shillings and tuppence.He still owns the MKII 'Volante' (that's Aston-speak for convertible) and allowed the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to use it as their post-wedding 'getaway vehicle,' complete with cringe-worthy 'JU5T WED' fake registration and droll 'L' plates with hearts in each corner.

During the 2018 World Cup, Gareth Southgate turned to a British institution to help get the lads into semis shape, the Royal Marines. It was hailed retrospectively as the key to the advanced-stage success. Now that England have soundly beaten their undoers of said World Cup last weekend, we can begin looking for sensible reasons why. I think I have found it in tailoring. Gareth Southgate is by no means a dandy or natural aesthete. His sartorial dexterity Is achieved through some smart and unexpected twists (that Percival polo out of nowhere), which often catch us off-guard. He is someone who realises as England manager that his clothing will bear scrutiny.

When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrived at Holyrood House to watch a drive-in screening of the Disney film Cruella with NHS staff last month, the Daily Telegraph reported that the couple 'paid tribute to the late Duke of Edinburgh' by travelling in one of his 'beloved' Land Rovers - which, as any Landy fan will tell you, was a long wheelbase station wagon in Bronze Green with glass 'alpine lights' in the roof and, unusually, a colour-co-ordinated hard top and bumper.Judging by the royal couple's un-dishevelled appearance - he in a dark two-piece, white shirt, no tie; she in a belted, ankle-length coat of muted blue tartan with military style buttons - they hadn't travelled far and nor, I imagine, would they have wanted to.

After a dreary May filled with biblical proportions of rain, I’m relieved to be putting my umbrella away for a while and reaching for a summer hat instead. The classic Panama straw hat is a timeless and versatile summer accessory that looks good with almost any summer outfit, casual or smart. From garden parties to Centre Court at Wimbledon, it’s a summer season staple. Panama hats originate in Ecuador, where the traditional art of weaving them from toquilla straw was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2012, reflecting the unique skill, craft and cultural significance around their creation. I have always found straw hats a little tricky to wear (or any hat with a crown, for that matter).

This morning, as I was attempting to adjust my 17-year-old Audi's LED clock which was 11 hours behind as a result of a flat battery, the sage words of F. Scott Fitzgerald sprang to mind: 'Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.....'Which succinctly explains why the very rich couple who commissioned Rolls-Royce to build them a bespoke car from the ground up didn't have to cut corners with a digital clock. Instead, they asked the designers at the proudly British, German-owned marque to collaborate with Swiss watch house Bovet 1822 to make not just one 'timepiece' to grace the car's 'fascia' (as the very rich call the dashboard), but two.

With summer on its way and Covid restrictions (hopefully) easing, what better time than now to take up a new hobby? Clay shooting is a hugely popular sport in the UK – and we Brits are quite good at it too, with a team of five set to head to the Tokyo Olympics, and a tally of two bronzes from the 2016 Olympics. At the Commonwealth Games, Wales, England and Scotland are often at the top of the medals tables, too. It’s no surprise then that there are plenty of people all across the UK willing to teach you to shoot. Whether you’re looking to refine your skills ahead of a shoot day, or simply want to learn the sport of clay shooting in its own right, there’s a huge range of places to choose from.

The only car I have felt unsafe in is a Morgan. It was a sort of pink leather bath on wheels that screamed down the road while men over sixty waved at it. I was right to be nervous. The delivery man crashed it on the way home. A photograph of the crushed Morgan – it was distinctive when formed, and even more so when broken – was circulated on Facebook by the man who recovered it. I initially thought the delivery driver was dead. (He wasn’t. 'Road conditions,' he said, when I telephoned him in hospital. It had rained).  I don’t mind telling you this, because I will never drive another Morgan because I want to live. The Morgan cannot be made safe; if it were invented now, as part of a motoring branch of cottage core, it would not be allowed on the road.

Prince William is a genius. In a single Instagram post, he hoisted focus back over the Atlantic from his prodigal brother, and it seems he and the Duchess of Cambridge have been trending on Twitter ever since. What was the post? He flexed his guns. We have all been there, at the gym where the lighting gives shadowy definition to our various appendages, but we resist the shamelessness of taking a pic. The Duke however, was getting his vaccination, so there is no better justification to have a pic taken of you with your sleeve rolled up, and weren’t we all impressed? Not the first time we have been pleasantly surprised by toned beta-males (heir to the throne does not an alpha make), a little like when comedians do drama – 'gosh did you see Jonah Hill in Moneyball?

I have a recurring dream where a taxi is waiting outside to take me to the airport and my suitcase is empty. I’m not sure what a dream psychologist would make of this, but for someone who has 15 years’ experience in packing other people’s suitcases for work, this kind of dream is the stuff of nightmares! As a former Royal Lady’s Maid, and now a Travelling PA, I’ve packed literally hundreds of suitcases for my employers and myself, so have learned a few things along the way about how to perfect the art of packing and make it as stress-free and streamlined as possible. With travel restrictions easing in the latest move out of lockdown, many people are starting to plan trips abroad after a very long year of staying at home.

So farewell then Arthur Beale, you were the last of the great chandler shops. You and I had little in common… This is how I imagine E.J. Thribb poem starting, and Private Eye’s Poetry Corner would do well to eulogise the passing of one of London’s most eccentric shops. It is to the credit of all Englishmen that a shop like Arthur Beale was able to survive into 2021. The audaciousness of running a chandlers on prime real estate in a notoriously expensive city, when the outboard motor was invented in 1870, does hint as to how we managed to beat the Germans twice.

After 14 months of subsisting in loungewear, with a social life largely provided by Netflix box sets and Deliveroo, many would gladly attend the opening of an envelope in order to get out of the house. Thanks to the vagaries of British weather, ‘dressing up’ has hitherto meant extra layers and grabbing the blanket off the end of the bed to go and sit outside the pub for a couple of hours. But from Monday 17 May we can drink and dine and dance indoors once more in fabulous destinations for which we’ll definitely need to slough off the jeans… The Candlelight Club We keep being told that the post-Covid world will give way to a new Roaring 20s.

If there is one good thing to come out of this godawful pandemic, please can it be an end to the practice of air kissing? You might have spent the past year longing to give your friends a bear hug, or hold your grand children, but how many of us have really missed one of the most bizarre formal greetings during social distancing? I certainly haven't. In fact, I am desperate for building back better to involve dispensing with this stupid affectation.  The beauty of a handshake is there is only really one way of doing it, and therefore much less room for things to go wrong.

How far the world of electric vehicles has come in just a decade. Back in 2011, the most prevalent 'EV' to be found on the streets of London was probably a G-Wiz, the Indian-built microcar that was so light, small and slow that it was officially deemed not to be a car at all, but 'a heavy quadricycle.' But the 2012 launch of Tesla's Model S proved that battery power wasn't just for speed-fearing tree-huggers whose idea of excitement was to potter to the shops at 15mph in what was widely regarded as one of the least attractive automobiles ever made. No - electric cars could be fast, fun, glamorous and covetable.

Admit it, the joy of driving is a myth - in Britain at least. Drivers who talk about the thrill of getting behind the wheel should ask themselves, when was it that they last really enjoyed driving somewhere? Because the grim truth is that unless you are on an isolated country road miles from the nearest speed camera – and certain that no one else is around – you simply can’t let rip anywhere now. The traffic never subsides enough for you to get a decent run up and, if it did, you’d be flashed by speed camera or break the average speed limit before you could even hit fourth gear (let alone hit the near-mythical realm of Fifth Gear).