It was about 11pm, just before I got into bed, that I heard a ping from my phone. I assumed it was a text from BA cancelling my flight the next day, but it was an answerphone message with the caller ID coming up ‘Unknown’.
When I listened, I heard a deep, Northern-accented voice saying slowly and deliberately: ‘You haven’t got back to me. It’s been four weeks. I saw you in that shop that one time. Get back to me NOW!’ It was extremely unpleasant. Of course I didn’t want to speak with this man and, in any case, with his number withheld, it was impossible to return the call.
I scanned my memory for any encounter I may have had in a shop or whether I had upset anyone but came up with nothing. No doubt I’d been called by mistake but I couldn’t be completely sure since the man would have heard my voice on my voicemail. This disturbing experience kept me awake for hours.
My experience brought home the reality of how terrifying it must be for the millions of people in abusive relationships, writes Alexandra Shulman
Although I concluded that the call was intended for someone else (I assume a woman), it brought home the reality of how terrifying it must be for the millions of people in abusive relationships. No place is safe. The abuser could be in any shop, call at any time, and doesn’t even need to use threatening words. Just that familiar voice will provoke dread. I haven’t heard from this man again, and I really hope the poor woman for whom the call was intended hasn’t either.
Golden oldies are the moneyspinners
Most of the past week I’ve been in Dublin, which I learnt is a city full of music. Buskers are on every street – almost all playing Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. It made me wonder why buskers always play old faithfuls – the Eagles, Leonard Cohen, The Beatles. Then I realised it’s only oldies who still carry change.
Trinny’s secret? She suffers like all of us
Trinny Woodall was in Dublin at the same time to launch her Trinny London make-up brand.
When I visited the city’s Brown Thomas department store, the cosmetic department was gearing up for her appearance, with all the counter-attendants decked out in her trademark glittering sequins.
Trinny is the newest cosmetic queen, following in the high heels of Charlotte Tilbury, the make-up artist turned billionaire.
Trinny is a great communicator. Although she has no background in cosmetics, she makes the thousands who follow her daily videos on Instagram feel that she understands them
But both women mirror the examples of earlier empresses of the face-cream industry: Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder and Helena Rubinstein.
These latter ground-breaking businesswomen succeeded by making a personal connection with their customers, turning up in person to apply make-up and offer skin-care advice to women in department stores around America. Trinny is similarly a great communicator. Although she has no background in cosmetics, she makes the thousands who follow her daily videos on Instagram feel that she understands them. Charlotte Tilbury sells her brand on stardom; Trinny sells on empathy. She knows what it’s like to wake up with dark circles under your eyes, or be stuck with a random bad skin day. She sounds honest and engaging, and you believe in her, so you believe that her make-up prescriptions will work. I’m waiting for a delivery of her Miracle Blur as I write.
Emma smashes it on style and substance
Emma Raducanu fought her way to Friday’s quarter-finals of the Stuttgart Open, finally losing to World No 1 Iga Swiatek. When she won the 2021 US Open aged just 18, Emma immediately became tennis’s poster girl, with her Zendaya-style looks helping to bring in the £9.6 million she earned last year, primarily from commercial endorsements.
Inevitably there are those who think Emma’s all style and no substance. But on current form she’s showing that she’s both – and a great inspiration for young women who want to look glamorous as well as be taken seriously.
Inevitably there are those who think Emma, pictured playing in Stuttgart, is all style and no substance…
… but on current form, she’s showing that she’s both
Set-jetting is now so selfie-satisfying
Set-jetting (visiting places used as movie or TV film locations) is a new trend. Taormina in Sicily, always a tourist trap, is worse than ever after White Lotus – the series about the exploits of guests and staff at a luxury resort – while the lovely beachside Ca’s Patro March restaurant in Majorca has been booked solid ever since its appearance in BBC thriller The Night Manager. Paris has never been the same since Emily began to haunt the place.
Of course, film locations have always drawn visitors. Would the Cote d’Azur have had the same appeal without those glamorous open-topped drives of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch A Thief? But today the audience is much larger, and successful show locations guarantee a mass of Instagram posts with visitors from across the world enticed to post selfies from the hotspots.
La Maison Highbury, the fairly anonymous café in London’s Islington that featured in TV series One Day, pulls crowds, as does the film Notting Hill’s Travel Book Shop, which all these years later has more tourists outside it than ever.
… But not for Italy in spooky Ripley
Having binged Netflix’s Ripley, set in a series of Italian cities, I doubt that this excellent, thoroughly spooky reworking of the Patricia Highsmith thriller, will have quite the same set-jetting effect. It’s shot in black and white and the murderous Ripley spends his time in rain-soaked alleyways under thunderous clouds.
The dense gloom is deliberate and well-suited to the tale but even Andrew Scott in the lead role is unable to diminish the sinister mood it projects on Naples, Palermo and Rome.
That’s what you call room service!
On my room door handle at Dublin’s Dylan Hotel there was a very chic green velvet card which, rather than suggesting the usual cleaning of the room, asked staff to ‘Please style my room’. This is definitely one I’m going to try at home when I want someone else to make the bed.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk