ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: Glam Glos’s real charm is as old as its rolling hills

Last week I wrote about how my trip to Provence for the bank holiday was a write-off after BA suddenly cancelled the flights.

Luckily, friends who had hoped to make the same journey invited me and my partner to join them for the weekend at their home in Gloucestershire instead.

Gloucestershire is fast becoming the new millionaires’ playground. Gazing over the softly rolling green hills that surround their home, our hosts pointed out places where many huge houses were being built by newly wealthy escapees from urban life. 

The county has been posh for decades. After all, Prince Charles chose to feather his nest at Highgrove, while Princess Anne lives nearby. 

There’s also the polo at Cirencester and a delightful village where the first croquet meeting was held in England.

It was always an old money kind of place – less kitchen-supper showy than next-door Oxfordshire with the Chipping Norton crowd of Murdochs, Camerons, Freuds, Jeremy Clarkson and where Boris Johnson has just moved into a moated Georgian mansion. 

Gloucestershire has been the type of place where no one bothered specifying whether supper would be served in the kitchen or dining room.

It was simply assumed that everyone was socially relaxed enough not to worry, even if the sofas were covered in dog hair. 

But now the culture is changing to cater for the New-Build Bourgeoisie. There’s The Club by Bamford, a new holistic wellness retreat, with cryotherapy, red-light therapy, vitamin IV drips, ice baths, courts to play padel (a fashionable version of tennis) and a sleek lounge where you can tap away on your laptop. 

With every corner beautifully designed and in the neutral-coloured style that owner Carole Bamford has become known for, it’s another sign of Glos going glam.

Those who can’t afford the membership fee may miss sharing gym sessions with T-shirted masters of the universe. 

But there is comfort from the fact that Gloucestershire offers, at no cost at all, a landscape of hawthorn-lined lanes, wild garlic-carpeted woods and meadows of cow parsley and buttercups.

Urban idea of chic is a lot more shabby

Back into the city where the West London Bowling Club was in full swing for a Sicilian food night.

This hidden treasure has a popular petanque court, an immaculate bowling green that shimmers in the evening sun and a slightly eccentric clubhouse in need of renovation. 

In many ways its the antithesis of The Club by Bamford (though it does have several equally posh members) since it is the ramshackle, faintly amateurish nature of the place that is a key attraction. 

While it needs funds to keep it going, the members want to keep it just the way it is. No ice baths or cream sofas. Any philanthropic donations gratefully received.

As someone who has never watched the show with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby –and now never will – I can’t understand all the fuss. But I am the kind of person who has cared much more passionately about the fictional characters Kendall, Roman (Kieran Culkin, right) and Shiv Roy (played by Sarah Snook, left) in Succession and am now in mourning for their loss with the final-ever series having ended.

This sofa saga is not a patch on the Roys

When Breakfast TV launched 40 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine such a storm in an egg-cup about the presenters as there has been over ITV’s This Morning.

As someone who has never watched the show with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby –and now never will – I can’t understand all the fuss. 

And I’m beginning to feel Schofield has now done his time in the stocks.

But I am the kind of person who has cared much more passionately about the fictional characters Kendall, Roman and Shiv Roy in Succession and am now in mourning for their loss with the final-ever series having ended. 

Perhaps I’ll have to replace my deep emotional engagement with the Roy family with the next set of This Morning presenters when the tea leaves eventually settle.

It’s high time for a kitten-heel revival

For anyone contemplating a clear-out of their wardrobe of items they haven’t worn in years, I have one word. Don’t. You’ll be wanting to wear them again at some point sooner than you might think.

This summer I’ve been back in my kitten heels (out of fashion for at least a decade) but now the fashionable height of the moment as we move on from our beloved trainers. 

Also, pencil skirts. This fitted skirt shape has been knocked off its perch by flouncy midis for far too long but the catwalks of Prada, Saint Laurent, Dior were full of them for autumn.

I’ve got quite a few of my old ones hanging around, and I’ve brought them out again. What a relief to escape all those flapping hems.