GOLDIE What is classic?

GOLDIE magazine

ISSUE 4

£10

WHAT IS

STYLE

Goldie EDITION No 4.indd 1

FASHION

CLASSIC?

CULTURE

LIFE

LOVE

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BIANCA ELGAR Celebrating 40 years of the Sickle Cell Society

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COME ON

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goldiemag.co.uk

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What is CLASSIC?

Aspirational Ageing

Do Share Dream Dare Think

SAMMY BAXTER

Growing old isn’t a solo sport

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CONTENTS

BREAKFAST NOT BREXIT C O N T R I B U T O R S Regular contributors

Photographers this issue

Writers this issue

Andrew Harvey Angela Kennedy Fiona Carter Gill Manly Jämes Rïgby Jennifer Angel Louise Pendry Martin Preston Rohan Spencer Sharon Eden Sue Plumtree

Alexandru Radu Popescu Don Pendry Erin James Flavia Catena Gerald Wilhelm Jennifer Evans Karlton Chambers Laurent Mieze Rob Wilson Jnr Sammy Baxter Simon Songhusrt

Adam Brody Ben Pechey Chris Campling David Evans David Hurst Deborah Wilkinson Esther Austin Ethan Burrell Jane Jennison Jill White Jules Ritter

Lisette Schuitemaker Mary Platts Mike Stone Nigel Summerley Penny Ruttterford Sophie Elkan Sophie Elkan Susan Muncey Terry Ramsey

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THIS ISSUE 6 Contents & contributors 9 Editor’s letter

THE INFORMERS

126 Green Planet Martin Preston recounts his efforts to reduce single use plastic 129 Horoscopes Your quarterly stars from Jennifer Angel 130 Getting On This too will pass Sue Plumtree knows that the lessons are going to keep coming 128 Pub Talk Andrew Harvey asks fundamental questions at the bar 129 What’s your problem?

Ask Agony Aunt, Sharon Eden 130 Signing off Sophie Elkan shares her parting requests

18 The Goldie Interview Rebecca Weef Smith meets Artist Duggie Fields 48 Anarcho Dandy Jämes Rïgby is a man of two coats 50 Closet Confidential Angela Kennedy chats to perfumier Sarah McCartney 52 Sartorial Stories Levis have been on Jane Jennison’s classic list forever but are they sustainable?

58 WHAT IS CLASSIC? The Good Life Fiona Carter’s wedding veil has been 34 around the block. Repurposing an old Classic – elegant or boring? favourite proves sustainable fashion Susan Muncey delves into her doesn’t need to be complicated own wardrobe for answers 78 38 Grey Matters Forever Anglia It’s a Wrap - Gill Manly shows us headThe joys of his motoring youth wraps don’t have to be mind-blowingly relived by Mike Stone hard to master 40 94 Seriously…

The Scene what happened to all those classic LFW View from the street jokes asks Terry Ramsey Colourful catwalk 41 98 Intoxicated GOLDIE loves Nigel Summerley’s life changing These are a few of experience at a classic gig our favourites things 42 108 Paris: Saint-Germain-des-Prés The Powder Room The classic destination for a short trip CBD oil for menopause-madness? with Patrick Cordier and Laurent Mieze Rebecca is prepared to give it a go 46 109 Am I late?

Cuttin’ Edge Can her female Icons solve her deadline If the suit fits… expert guidance dilemma wonders Esther Austin from tailor Rohan Spencer 114 FASHION FOR ALL Silver Psycholgist Louise Pendry shares her road to 60 fitness: it all begins with small steps Star Quality 116 Beate Howitt’s first fashion editorial: Life Lessons Second-hand or vintage, it’s a classic n Jill White 70 n Chris Campling Fun & Games n Lisette Schuitemaker Can fashion bridge the generations? n Deborah Wilkinson Mary Platts certainly thinks so

82 Access all (fashion) Areas Diversity in fashion isn’t a single issue topic, Rebecca Weef Smith thinks we need to approach it with a view of complete inclusivity 86 My first Time David Evans on modeling at London Fashion Week 87 True Colours Ethan Burrell explore’s the light and shade of colourful individuals 92 Dressing up Identity Ben Pechey embraces fashion to share the love of the LGBTQ+ community 100 Textile Tales When Sophie Elkan joined fashion label Bianca Elgar she hadn’t expected to find strong friendships and ways to support causes she loved.

RE INVENTION 10 Queen B introducing Beate Howitt MOT Model and GOLDIE magazine Classic Model competition winner 26 Nathan Osgood: tells Adam Brody of live on the road and reinvention from a young age 54 Cool as…

Angela Kennedy finds out how Nancy Zeffman and Eileen Willett have merged friendship and business to form Cucumber 110 Age is no barrier to looking fabulous nor to Entrepreneurship as Tricia Cusden tells Rebecca Weef Smith 120 The Anxiety Conversation An encounter with a therapist led David Hurst to better mental health and a new career as an author of a self-help book 122 Making sense of it all: the empty nest Jules Ritter knew she needed something to fill the gap, could travel be the answer.

124 Ways to go Penny Rutterford looks at how we can reinvent funerals to better reflect our individuality GOLDIE magazine | 7

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EDITOR’S LETTER

What is classic?

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ack in November last year I was chatting with Kate Riley from MOT Models about the representation of life-over-40 in fashion. Kate had noticed a real increase in demand for older models with an adaptable look and we both felt that what was needed was a larger pool of models to meet this expanding market. We decided that one way to approach this was to run a contest to find a new model to represent Classic. The winner would receive a contract with MOT models, appear on their Classic board and be on the cover of GOLDIE magazine.

We received quite a few responses – you can imagine, can’t you? – and it wasn’t an easy task to find a model who epitomised not only a look but an ethos; a way of being that summed up exuberance for life, style, energy and adaptability. Just as younger models who can change their style get the most work so too will these new ‘old’ models who will no longer only be viewed through one type of lens. Currently, the way that ageing is portrayed is still by and large outmoded – in a recent IPSOS MORI report they discovered that modern marketers are happy to stick to worn-out stereotypes - one prominent ad man, approached for comment, simply said “Old people? I steer well clear.”

This is all set to change and we, MOT Models and GOLDIE magazine, are very proud to be challenging these views and shaking up how older models are seen. We believe that fashion and beauty don’t come with a sell-by-date and are delighted that we have discovered Beate Howitt to be the champion of this enlightened attitude. We hope you agree that our cover star Beate is inspirational and truly shows how aspiring to make the most of life, however old we may be, is good for us!

Classic is one of those words which covers a multitude of meanings doesn’t it? Does it conjure up positive aspirations or does it imply bland? Can it be a bit of both? As with so many words we use classic without always making it clear how we intend it to be received. We asked our contributors What is Classic? And as ever the answer we got back was as varied as we hoped for!

From classic cars – Mike Stone’s Ford Anglia – to classic ways to dress – Susan Muncey – classic icons - Esther Austin - to classic emotional dilemmas – the anxiety conversation with David Hurst – to Jane Jennison’s love of a classic pair of Levis. Perhaps reinventing who we are in our 50s and 60s and beyond is set to become a new classic – we have quite a few examples in this issue including the inspirational story of Look Fabulous Forever’s Tricia Cusden.

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THE TEAM Editor: Rebecca Weef Smith rebecca@goldiemediagroup.co.uk Art Director: Weef weef@goldiemediagroup.co.uk Commercial & marketing: Rhoda Idoniboye rhoda@goldiemediagroup.co.uk

I wonder if in years to come we will recall 2019 as the moment we made a classic decision to embrace environmental and sustainable living as the only way forward; we have two new columnists on board: Martin Preston is our environmental correspondent and Fiona Carter is going to be sharing ways we can make our relationship with fashion sustainable without reducing pleasure.

Sub editors: Andrew Harvey Hannah Wilkinson Jayne Gould John Clarke Linda Galloway Mark Barber Nigel Summerley Walter Gammie

In classic GOLDIE magazine fashion, you may find articles that surprise you – did you know that artist Duggie Fields loves Brompton Cemetery or that ageing was of intergenerational interest? You may not expect to see LGBTQ+ fashion discussed – Ben Pechey feels that his generation owes much to those who paved the way - alongside a classic new label such as Cucumber – Angela Kennedy interviews the founders. You might find our nuanced viewpoint – we don’t only come at life from one angle – confusing. But we do hope that you will get what we are trying to achieve, namely, a way of talking about age that allows for a difference of opinions: being old isn’t a choice between wearing beige slacks or having purple hair; there are a vast range of options in between.

We are quietly celebrating getting to the end of our first year of GOLDIE magazine and we have been very lucky to have survived with support and encouragement from a whole host of contributors; we wouldn’t have got beyond last April without our wonderful writers, photographers and editors, who have generously given their time and expertise. Thank you all. And thank you to our followers and readers.

We aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and we wouldn’t want to be; we have cult-readers who get us, which is a great position to be in; we love being here and are thoroughly enjoying ourselves, which we hope shows in the pages we produce.

If you want more please follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Aspirational Ageing is an ongoing conversation.

LOVE

Model: Beate Howitt @MOTmodels Photographer: Gerald Wilhelm Styist: Matt Padilla Make-up: Bryanna Angel Lipstick by Deck of Scarlett

Printed in the UK by Park Communications facebook.com/thegoldiecrew twitter.com/goldiemediauk instagram.com/goldie_magazine goldiemag.co.uk GOLDIE magazine | 9

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QUEEN PHOTOS: GERALD WILHELM

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Introducing Beate Howitt Winner of the MOT Models and GOLDIE magazine classic model contest

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n the space of only a few weeks Beate Howitt has become a bit of a superstar; she is recognised in the bank, has appeared on TV and radio and is all set to take the world by storm. Despite the attention Beate is very pragmatic about the whole thing, when interviewed she says that she is merely “enjoying the experience but has no great expectations for her modelling career”.

We feel that Beate is the perfect person to celebrate aspirational ageing: she is beautiful,

charming, exceptionally intelligent and naughtily witty. We are convinced that you will be seeing a whole lot more of her in fashion editorial, on catwalks and across the media, as a champion of how to age well.

We don’t want to share her life story with you – by the time we go to press you will probably already have heard about her childhood in Germany during World War II and what it meant to her to have the chance of coming to the UK at 10 years old – so what can we ask her u that you may not already know…?

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Dress, crown and earrings Chantal Mallett Stylist: Rebecca Weef Smith Make-up: Bryanna Angel using lipstick by Deck of Scarlett

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u Why did you apply to the GOLDIE and MOT models contest?

Actually I didn’t. I didn’t know I had been put forward until I heard I had won. It was all a great surprise! My friend Sophie put me up for it, I had done a photo-shoot here in Oxford for a local brand, Bianca Elgar, and Sophie, who works with Bianca, had sent the photos into the competition without my knowledge. Of course I was delighted, I have no idea why I was chosen as I believe there were rather a lot of entries.

mother behind - I jumped at the chance. I have always had a positive attitude and given things a go, if it doesn’t work out I haven’t lost anything in trying. But you know I have been very lucky, because generally life has worked out very well. I have had my share of heartache, we none of us can avoid tragedy.

However, I have made an effort to get on with life and here I am at 80 trying something new yet again.

“I wake up every day and find something to smile about”

Have you always wanted to have the chance to be a model?

Well yes. When I was quite a young girl I thought it would be fun, but I grew up with a strict guardian who had rather Victorian values and it was never going to be allowed – I was told that I was going to be a teacher and well, that was that. However, that rather traditional upbringing does mean that I have very upright deportment, which I’m sure is an asset in modelling. I have been told I walk well and when you asked me to balance a shoe on my head for the shoot we did, I could have kept it there indefinitely.

I have held on to the dream for all those years and it’s finally come about, which is really lovely, especially as it has materialised because of others who have seen some potential in me. I would often go into a boutique and be asked if I was a model, it was just chance that I was in a dress shop in Oxford and they asked me to model in a charity fashion show. From there I met Bianca, who asked me to become her muse.

How was the experience of doing a cover shoot?

It was very sudden, only a week after hearing I had won I was in the studio with everyone, being treated like a star. The team on the day were all so kind; from the young stylist Matt, to the super make-up girl Bryanna, to the photographer Gerald; they all made me feel very special. It was a long day, I had expected that. You need stamina in this business and luckily I am fit as a fiddle - even though I have two replacement hips, I walk faster than anyone else I know. The excitement was energising and I love clothes, so getting to wear such amazing outfits like the gold gown

by Chantal Mallett, well, I really did feel like a fairytale princess.

Have you always said yes to opportunities?

Oh yes, very much so. I was given the chance to leave Germany after the war. Although I was a very young girl I didn’t think about saying no, even though it meant leaving my

What advice would you give to other’s who wanted to have a go at modelling?

Much the same advice I would give when asked if you should try anything new - give it a go. Really, what have you got to lose? I think it helps to start with small experiences

where you can build your confidence. My involvement with a local charity fashion show was great fun and I realised walking a catwalk was something I was quite good at. I can wear heels, not trip, know how to take my time and make people look at the clothes. Which after all is the job of the model isn’t it? We are there for that reason and I seem to be able to connect with people so that they are able to see the coat, or dress or whatever. I also think that being nice, smiling and enjoying every moment is useful, I can’t imagine anyone wants to be on set with a grumpy person for a 12-hour day.

What do you hope will follow on from this first job?

I don’t have any real expectations, everything is a bonus. Already I have been interviewed on the TV and radio and I have another local catwalk to do. It would be nice to appear at London Fashion Week, but I am happy that anyone wants to give me the chance to play dressing-up and be in front of a camera. If I can help get a message across that age is what it is and not to be feared, then I would feel that was a good use of my time. I wake up every day and find something to smile about. That’s good enough for me, anything else is extra.

And lastly, what gets you out of bed in the morning?

From a very young age I decided that I would try to make everyone I have contact with feel better after having met me. I smile, I chat, and always find something positive in every encounter. When we look for the good we generally find it. I expect life to have its ups and downs but I know I have a choice of happiness, so I take it. ¢ For bookings contact MOT Models Follow @Beatehowiit on Instagram to learn more about her modelling journey.

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T H E

GOLDIE

INTERVIEW

DUGGIE FIELDS Rebecca Weef Smith expected to find Duggie Fields’ flat as full of bright colours and cartoonish fun as his paintings. It was a surprise to find that Duggie’s world isn’t just surface design.

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alking into Duggie Fields’ Earls Court Flat is like stepping into one of Duggie’s post-POP canvases where classical imagery is reused and repurposed to recreate a totally unexpected landscape.

It’s not life imitating art or art emulating life, it’s a blurring of the boundaries between fact and fantasy. One minute I am in a West London street on a grey March afternoon and the next moment I’m a character in a maximalist journey of discovery.

Lose your ego not your mind. Happiness is what you find.

The unique interior of the flat is an orderly riot of pattern, colour and Duggie’s art. It is very tidy Maximalism; there is a strong controlled element to the placement of each object; this isn’t random daily clutter accumulated without intention. Duggie’s home is so much part of his art that it was reconstructed room by room for an exhibition at the Modern Institute, Glasgow in 2018. The gallery reimagined this personal live/ GOLDIE GOLDIEmagazine magazine| |19 19

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T H E

GOLDIE

INTERVIEW

work environment down to the smallest detail. As Duggie says: “it was an odd experience walking into a space I was so familiar with - I have lived here for fifty years - but in Glasgow, with the rooms ordered differently to accommodate the layout of the building. They did a great job of transporting my total way of living to a gallery space.”

Duggie is Always Making Things.

So says the title of his 2018 film – the space we were talking in is where Duggie’s digital work is created, and the walls of the room seem to reference Miró, Dali and Mondrian (at least that’s what it seems like to me). The furniture has been customised by Duggie and the paint palette emblem crops up frequently. The floor is splattered in a sort of Jackson Pollock way.

Technology has occupied a significant role in the way that Duggie now produces work. He buys batch collections of sound samples and generates music - the day we meet he plays me a haunting and beautiful song recorded very recently. The piece is unfinished, but nonetheless, I am surprised by my emotional response to both the ebb and flow of the music and the two voices: Duggie’s and the unmistakable Marianne Faithfull. The track is poignantly sad, and I am left with a strong sense of loss. I couldn’t share the words with you even if I wanted as I don’t recall them but weeks later the tune lingers in my mind.

I hadn’t anticipated crying during this interview - I had entered Duggie’s world with ideas that his work was fun, joyful, and colourful.

Duggie is known for his bright flat-graphic style large canvases with defined black outlines, for his particular way of flamboyant dress and as a figure of London’s glamorous Chelsea Art scene.

I want to Glamorize. To trivialise.

When Duggie takes me into the space where he creates his large canvases here too everything is very neat. He is a meticulous and industrious painter: the paintings are worked out carefully in advance “I used to use graph and tracing paper but I can plan digitally nowadays” - before being drawn out on a grid on the canvas and precisely painted.

The canvases begin life on a plastic-sheeted section in the centre of the room. On the table to one side, the paints are clearly laid out, intended to be in a particular order, and the brushes are organised in size scale – “I know when a painting is almost complete when I am using the tiniest brush to paint in any of the black outlines which just aren’t right the right thickness” he says.

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DUGGIE FIELDS the walls but not the third, as it isn’t ready “there is something more I need to do…it’s this area here…I’m not happy with the black outlines…” he explains.

The painting in question is of Brompton Cemetery; it is more rural than I had expected from a Duggie Fields canvas. Wildflowers are overgrown and less constrained than motifs in other work of Duggie’s I have seen. In my mind his work is a comment on urban life; I hadn’t expected him to be a ‘nature lover’. “I have been walking through Brompton Cemetery for years, I love the way that the seasons change nature there. There was a spot that was covered in white convolvulus and shocking pink sweetpeas, it was wonderfully wild, then the council came along and tidied it. It will take years to get back to that stage of beauty, and I never quite captured it in my photos…”

I am driven by my own mortality.

Duggie has wandered the streets of Kensington and Chelsea for even longer than the fifty years he has lived in this flat – before settling here he lived in another part of the borough. He has always documented the area with photos and even more so since the advent of phones with cameras. He doesn’t paint directly from those images but they inform his paintings and appear in various guises in his digital films. “This area has nurtured me and sustained me; I still love to walk along these streets. I’m no backwards-looking nostalgia lover, but I do miss the vibrancy of this neighbourhood. There are so many empty shops now; I don’t know what will replace them. The council hasn’t done a great job with urban planning.”

We can’t stop the transition.

The lack of thought from Kensington and Chelsea council crops up again as we view another one of his large scale canvases propped against the adjacent wall. This time the subject is Earls Court Exhibition Centre, home of the Ideal Home Show, which was demolished to make way for a luxury development of flats and shops. “Such a great loss to the neighbourhood, London and the country. We allowed it to be destroyed negligently without enough thought. We need a replacement that puts life and culture back into this part of the city.” Indeed Duggie felt so strongly about this that he started a petition to save Earls Court Exhibition Centre. Alas the building was still torn down, and the resulting improvement to the borough doesn’t seem likely to bring much improvement to the lives of those who have lived there for as long as Duggie.

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T H E

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INTERVIEW

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DUGGIE FIELDS T H E

GOLDIE

INTERVIEW

Identity is not confined.

The third painting in this room is of a Woman in a classic Duggie Fields’ pose – a sexy, almost Hollywood-esque, a fashion stance. This figure is Kate Moss with a very prominent shadow. I comment on how all three paintings conjure up an idea of loss. For me the Kate figure seems a shadow of herself; there is a link to the loss of a classic piece of architecture – the passing of the Ideal Home - and the faded beauty of death in Brompton Cemetery. Whilst all the paintings portray Duggie’s signature style and bold ‘jolly’ colours they don’t fill me with happiness. Not that art should, of course, make you happy but up until now my experience of Duggie Fields art-world had been fun.

Fading Flesh.

We sit on Duggie’s bed to watch his latest film Fit Flesh Fascinates.

I am mesmerised by his world and his vision, but I am struck again by an underlying sense of loss. What is it about these new works that have got under my skin?

The film is multi-layered, collaged and colourful - unmistakeably Duggie Fields. But beneath the pieced-together aesthetic is a far more serious message. “Don’t try and change the world you see. Try and change your inner reality”. Duggie’s films are an expansion of his art but they move me in a way his paintings haven’t. I have loved the canvases for their purely decorative appeal. The films have made me re-evaluate how I have previously related to him. this isnt mere surface design; what I perceived as shallow fun had more to say than I wanted to see: “I don’t know why. I am losing the plot. We fade. The desire to touch.”

I am left wanting more but understanding less. n See more of Duggie Fields' work: Marlborough Contemporary Apr 09 - May 18 London Modern Institute at Frieze May 1 - 5 New York Stop press news: Stars in my eyes with Marianne Faithfull re-mixed by Tom Vek will be released in the Autumn, along with a "very big film installation in a very new West Ends art space..."

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NATHAN OSGOOD

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Lives in “a Socialist paradise”, a Cooperative housing association in South East London; it provides an anchor and a mooring in a life that hasn’t always provided either.

Adam Brody interviews this North AmericanTroubadour against the backdrop of theThames PHOTOS: JENNIFER EVANS

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o tell the story of the Nathan Osgood I need to paint a picture: Sunday night in London’s West End. It’s cold, raining; there is a hint of London smog. Walking through London’s increasingly sanitised Covent Garden you stop off at a pub called the Two Brewers on Monmouth Street. A siren call makes you stop. You look inside and see something we all crave, you see community. You see friends old and new.

Artists, musicians, tourists from across the world. Each one of them has stopped off at this pub, each one has been drawn in for the same reason.

In front of us are the Nathan Osgood trio: Nathan on guitar, Claire on vocals and Joff on harmonica. A rock’n’roll jazz band dedicated to the good life, to fraternity, fighting the good fight and having a fucking good time.

As the night descends into a joyful cacophony of sound, a plethora of guest performers join in the merriment; internationally renowned violinists, trombone players, jazz singers, oldtime music hall acts. Over the years I have seen a room full of stompers provide percussion on the tables, I have seen tap dancers dance

in harmony with the blues and the jazz. I have seen a whole room of strangers sing a mighty chorus declaring war on the economic madness of austerity. I have seen it all at the Two Brewers. And the reason for this joyous musical anarchy is Nathan Osgood.

Nathan was born in Croydon, his mother was just 15 when she had him and he was adopted at 3 years old by a Native American Mohawk serving in the American army and a local South East London woman. Nathan’s father came from Vermont on the border of Canada and upstate New York. He was posted across America, the UK and Germany; subsequently, the family lived a nomadic existence never establishing roots.

It was at a base near Oklahoma on the Texas border when a 15-year-old Nathan made the first of many life-changing decisions. The Klan was recruiting outside the school gates and Nathan couldn’t face it. “I was hanging out in the park smoking a joint and this guy said ‘I’m hitchhiking to Florida wanna come?’

I gave it a beat and said yes. I told my mum I was going, she cried in the kitchen, but I just took off.”

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American guy. “We were doing drugs, hard drugs and I would end up at houses where people were shooting up. Often in African American neighbourhoods. So I was this young ridiculous skinny white kid and they just left me alone. They looked at me and thought ‘you are nothing’.

“The ‘cops’ were a constant problem, always around the next corner. I had long hair, I was a pretty boy but I could run like a rabbit and you know what….? I always thought I was going to be alright. I used to say to myself ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ I could die.”

This wasn’t a death wish, more perverse optimism that everything was going to be alright; youthful fearlessness when faced with a death that would have provided a freedom of sorts. All Nathan wanted was to keep on moving forward and to be, in that very zeitgeist word of the day ‘present’

“Of course, there is talent found at Oxbridge but it is privilege rather than talent that dominates the industry in this country” We only touch the surface of those two years Nathan spent on the street from 1517 - he has made a short film based on his experience called ‘Ditch Digger’ - but as he says “this ain’t no Jack Kerouac ‘on the road shit’, this is real” By 17 Nathan decided he wanted an education and he literally walked into a school in Illinois and asked if he could have one.

The headmaster was so impressed with this worldly kid he allowed him in. After the school he was offered a scholarship at community college but that didn’t last long; the urge to keep moving forward sent him back on the road with his guitar and his curiosity.

Perhaps Nathan has always been searching, always looking for home, for an identity, for an anchor, a base. Is it in this rootlessness that we find the magic behind most of what he has achieved? “Because I wasn’t from anywhere, I could make up different stories. Every time I was picked up in a car. I would become a posh English guy, a cockney, an American writer, always creating a new story.”

When Nathan was in his 20s his natural parents regained contact with him; at the time he was busking in Boston but ever curious he returned to the UK. Alas, the visit didn’t end well. His abusive father chased him from the house with a carving knife and his birth mother was a woman more interested in other men than in building relations with her own 28 | GOLDIE magazine

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Adam Brody

son. He returned to America busking from state to state until, at 30, he moved to London full time; playing guitar in working men’s clubs whilst working as an editor at the BBC and, finally, finding success as an actor.

Over the years Nathan has played Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and JFK for BBC productions. He featured recently on Radio 4 in Mueller: Trump tower Moscow. He is a man drifting through history like a real-life Dr Who. In the film Holmes and Watson he played Mark Twain opposite Will Ferrell and John C Reilly. In his early days he helped found the Southwark Playhouse, a lasting legacy that still produces new writing.

His first acting experience was slightly less inspiring: “I went to an adult education class for acting and in the first class we did animal studies, so I pretended to be a Tortoise and hid under the table for an hour.”

It is in this discussion of the acting world that I witness another constant in Nathan’s life: his politics. He has an intense desire for equality, for comradeship with the working classes. Early on in our interview he described his politics coming from a very pure place “I always stood up to the bully, it’s innate. I did as a kid. I do now.”

Nathan is a proud union man, his politics formed, as was mine, in the heat of the antiThatcher battles and continuing to this day in the battle against an Etonian elite. He sees an insidious political element infiltrating the arts: “I am surrounded by Etonians. At first they were messing around but then they started to take the arts seriously as an industry. There is now a class problem, how can a working-class kid pay their rent? How do you live and work three jobs? I now see a tier of mediocrity. Of course, there is talent found at Oxbridge but it is privilege rather than talent that dominates the industry in this country.”

Nathan is not just a talker. He is a doer; he runs a weekly acting class specifically aimed

at those who feel excluded from this industry.

Many who have passed through his class go on to find work in this notoriously fickle business.

Nathan is adamant that he is an actor first but music comes in a close second. “As an actor I am very natural, I understand subtext, what drives a scene... but with music it’s like fighting a snake, it’s only recently that I am grasping the theory.”

His musical influences range from Tommy Emmanuel, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello to the great bluesman Django Rheinhardt. All of which infuse the Nathan Osgood trio. My mind returns to the Two Brewers on Monmouth Street on a Sunday night listening to the band; I reflect on how proud that 15-year-old kid

“I always stood up to the bully, it’s innate. I did as a kid. I do now” who set off across America would be. I truly believe that as Nathan, along with his band members Joff and Claire, perform rock’n’roll jazz songs in this community of friends, Nathan has found home.

Nathan shares one last story of his most recent road trip across America: travelling through the Trump heartlands, talking to working folk, staying in motels, drinking at dive bars and writing a journal about his time on the street. One night he stopped off at a diner, driving along the freeway after his meal he remembered too late that his journal was on the roof. The great American journal left floating in the streets of West Virginia.

Isn’t that life? As much as we try to order it, make sense of it, control it we can’t. Life is bigger than that; more beautiful, more chaotic, always offering a troubadour his next gig. n GOLDIE magazine | 31

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What is Classic?

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Hat made by Nicholas Oakwell in the 1990s Dress Vivienne Westwood Anglomania c.2013 Vintage bag and wedged shoes individually customised with hand painting and other embellishments Sunglasses vintage Chanel 34 | GOLDIE magazine

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CLASSIC STYLE

CLASSIC: ELEGANT OR BORING? Susan Muncey has never let go of her scorn for dull dressing and doesn’t intend to place function over flair anytime soon

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IS CLASSIC ELEGANT OR BORING?

W

hilst I admire classic beauty, and classical style in the manner of the draped gowns of ancient Greece and Rome, the concept of ‘classic dress’ fills me with horror.

My rebellious younger self has instilled a permanent disdain for the type of clothing I have come to associate with older, middle class, women - a category my ever youthful, creative mind has no desire to admit that I belong to. In the early 1980s, when I turned up for the first day of a job as a graduate trainee surveyor in a power-shouldered, electric blue Betty Jackson dress covered in a swirling, arty print, my staid and stiff-upper-lipped colleagues were visibly shocked. Their expectations of more ‘classic’ style eventually fed through to my dress choices, but I never lost the avant-garde instinct that later led to my being nicknamed ‘fashion flair’.

‘Classic’ brings to mind undistinguished British, American and German fashion labels like Marks & Spencer’s Per Una, Jaeger, Caroline Charles, Liz Claiborne and Basler. ‘Classic’ is my motherin-law, N Peal’s cashmere knits, Bally court shoes, Sloaney ladies’ obligatory string of pearls, advertorials for ‘comfy slacks’ at the back of the Sunday Telegraph, and the ubiquitous sea of puffy ‘make sure you don’t get a chill’ coats that represent ‘sensible’ style. ‘Classic’ is a house in the country with a conservatory, walking the dog, conservative with a small ‘c’, and 1980s Country Casuals. Nevertheless, quite a number of erstwhile ‘classic’ luxury brands, like Burberry and Loewe, have ventured into new, less classic, territory in recent years.

And there still remains the ‘classic’ style is that synonymous with couture designers and high-end houses producing fabulous, sophisticated-yet-subtle creations – like the stunning simplicity of a Dior cocktail dress, the flowing lines of an Armani trouser suit, or the historically inspired drape of one of Vivienne Westwood’s trademark corseted ball gowns. This type of ‘classic’ is timeless, unlike the more derogatory term for fashion with limited originality, the wearers of which are more likely to favour practicality and comfort over elegance, or – heaven forbid – aesthetic adventurousness, wit or panache.

I recently completed a master’s degree in fashion history and culture at the London College of Fashion, where my dissertation considered ‘appropriate’ attire and how formal dress codes are negotiated today.

Some of the research involved interviewing female professionals, including lawyers and bankers, who were expected to dress in businessappropriate clothing – for instance, ‘classic’ suits and dresses, invariably

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CLASSIC STYLE

in dark colours. Women who did not conform to expectations of traditionally formal dress, or follow fashion trends too keenly, were generally considered less professional and taken less seriously - even by their female colleagues, unless they were either already very senior, or just embarking upon their careers and, therefore, still learning how to dress appropriately. Reflecting on my own wardrobe, the garments that I consider to be ‘classic’ - possibly less than two percent of the total – are actually the ones I tend wear most often. Perhaps this is because they feel comfortable when taking into account the company I’m in and the gaze of others. If I can’t think of the best possible combination of clothes and accessories to wear in the time available to get ready, especially if I’m in a rush, I will often revert to something relatively inoffensive. Classic dress in this sense refers to clothing I am comfortable wearing because I know I will not look out of place.

If I am to some extent suppressing my individual style, there are certain occasions when compromise is necessary, usually out of respect for others – for instance, it would be disrespectful for even younger members of the royal family to wear t-shirts and jeans for official public engagements. This doesn’t mean that ‘safe’ clothing necessarily has to be boring – it all depends upon our individual interpretation of ‘classic’.

Being unconventional, my version of ‘classic’ comes with a twist. Even in my City finance days I wore brightly coloured suits, or accessorized sombre colours with patterned scarves and bold jewellery. Although, I have to admit that my ‘classic’ safety net has been overwhelmingly dark-hued, from my very first strappy Pisanti little black cocktail number to outfits for meetings, weddings, funerals and other formal events.

My ‘classic’ is a staple worn for a particular occasion – something that is respectful, yet stylish - for instance the vintage 1960s Chanel dress that has served me well at a number of funerals, a couple of figure-hugging, go-to long black evening dresses, various dresses by Vivienne Westwood that I tend to choose for business meetings, plus a floral dress and a black and white vintage silk duster coat that have attended several weddings and had two outings to Royal Ascot with me. As someone with a unique sense of style, I would be saddened if any of these outfits were associated with the notion of ‘classic’ as mainstream and traditional. I could, without doubt, ‘do’ classic as ‘elegant’, or ‘boring’, but I just don’t think it is for me. n Susan Muncey is a freelance writer, trend consultant and stylist www.susanmuncey.com

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Forever Anglia Mike Stone recalls the joy of reliving his motoring youth – thanks to the iconic Ford Anglia

O

ne of the more agreeable aspects of getting older is that it gives you the chance to enjoy things for a second time. Take music: I loved the Beatles as a kid, and after a brief lull of, say, 40 years, listening to their old albums afresh reminded me just how good they were. Apart from the Ringo tracks, obviously.

The same thing applies to cars. After a lifetime of traffic jams and other people’s road rage you long for a simpler time, when you could tinker under the bonnet and add ridiculous accessories such as a steering wheel the size of a saucer and an exhaust system that could wake the dead.

This thought occurred to me when I went to the Earls Court Motor Show 20-odd years ago. My first car, when I was 17, had been a 1961 Ford Anglia, maroon with a grey top, and if felt like my passport to freedom. I lavished attention on it and showed it off to my school friends, many of whom had “interesting” transport of their own.

These were the days before the MoT test drove £10 bangers off the road. One of my friends drove an Austin Cambridge with no fuel tank. Instead, he had a large Tupperware box containing petrol on the front passenger seat, with a plastic pipe snaking through the bulkhead to the carburettor. Another had no floor on the passenger side – which made wetweather motoring quite depressing.

But that wasn’t the sort of motoring I was hankering for. I wanted something simple I could play with, such as, say, a Ford Anglia.

For a start, at the Motor Show, I bought a book about them. Then I stumbled across an auction of classic cars.

These were proper classics and all worth a fortune. But hidden away among them was a

beautiful 1964 Ford Anglia. It was pale blue with a white top, and it belonged to a wellknown racing driver and motoring journalist who had used the old pals act to muscle his car into such illustrious company.

Fords of the 1960s weren’t famous for longevity. Those were the days of planned obsolescence, when carmakers often put paper inside the doors to encourage them to rust through to force owners to replace their vehicles more often; so most Anglias of that age had long since hit the scrapheap.

But this one looked as if it had just rolled off the assembly line. It had had a back-to-themetal restoration and was probably better than when it was new. The owner – let’s call him

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CLASSIC CAR

Jim, although his name is really Tony – was the editor of a classic cars magazine and had used influence and offers of lashings of free publicity to get the car restored. But you can only write about the same car for so long, and his wife reckoned there were too many motors in the garage, so the Anglia had to go.

The day after the show I mentioned the beautiful Anglia to the motoring correspondent of the paper where I worked.

He knew the owner and that the car had failed to meet its ridiculously overambitious reserve.

“Here’s his number,” he said. “Why don’t you make him an offer?”

And so I acquired the car. Jim’s young children had been so upset at the loss of the

Anglia that they had offered him their pocket money to keep it. But no. Their mother’s mind was made up. And so was I. Driving it home that first day was wonderful. Compared with my everyday car, a Mercedes, it felt very noisy and there was so much vibration through the rear-view mirror that I felt like I was on a bombing raid over Dresden.

The driver’s seat had all the plush support of a church pew, and if it rained, water would slowly make its way from the quarter-light along the lower edge of the dashboard until it was above my knee, where it made its bid for freedom. I drove it to Coventry once in relentless rain. By the time I got out, I looked like I had just waded across the Limpopo.

After a long journey the combination of noise, vibration and lousy seats, plus highly iffy brakes (non-existent in reverse), all gave you the feeling that you had been soundly beaten with steel bars. But I still loved it.

The car brought out the best in people. If you stopped for petrol, someone would always come over and ask about it. Usually their dad had had one or they had learned to drive in one, and they were always smiling as they told their story.

If you drive a classic car which is exotic or very valuable, you won’t get that. You are more likely to meet with snarling resentment.

But the sheer ordinariness of the Anglia made seeing one in such an extraordinary condition a happy occasion.

I had it for nearly 20 years, until the loss of the garage where I kept it and other pressing financial matters, meant it had to go. I sold it for three times what I had paid for it, which easily covered all the servicing and probably the petrol. It even covered the one huge bill I was landed with, when it needed a whole new floor. It was a Sixties Ford, after all.n

Unfortunately Mike no longer has any photos of his beloved Ford Anglia.

Luckily he still has his byline picture from the time GOLDIE magazine | 39

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CLASSIC JOKES

Seriously… what happened to all those classic jokes?

Knock-knock. Who’s there? Terry. Terry who?

TERRY RAMSEY fondly recalls an era of endless laughs

S

omething funny happened when I went to have my hair cut the other day. Or, to be more precise, nothing funny happened – which is strange. Because usually my barber tells me a joke. Or two. But this time, nothing. And that is sad, because he is the last person I know who tells jokes, who has a regular supply of them. The last person to say to me: “Have you heard the one about . . ?”

When I was a child and right into my twenties, people were always saying that.

Conversations, from playground to pub, were peppered with jokes. There was always competition to be the first to tell the latest one.

But now nobody arrives in the pub bursting to tell the latest joke about a man walking into a bar… or a husband coming home to find his wife in bed with the plumber (although these days that would be a husband coming home to find his wife in bed waiting for the plumber who is running two hours late).

So, what were the classic jokes from over the years?

One of the very first I can recall was a classic of absurdity: What’s green and hairy and goes up and down? A gooseberry in a lift.

Goodness knows why that was so popular, but I and my classmates loved it.

Then there were knock-knock jokes.

Knock-knock. Who’s there? Isabel.

Isabel who? Isabel not working?

Knock-knock. Who’s there? Tank.

Tank who? My pleasure.

Light bulb jokes were a fad for a while:

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One – but the light bulb must really want to change.

How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to change it and two to argue about whether the light bulb actually exists.

And one from a later vintage, but which I rather like: How many yuppies does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. Yuppies only screw in a Jacuzzi.

Of course, a truly classic joke format is the one that begins, “A man walks into a bar…”

A man walks into a bar with a set of jump leads and the barman says, “I’m warning you

– don’t start anything in here.”

The format quickly spawned lots of wonderful spin-offs: A horse walks into a bar and the barman says, “Why the long face?”

Here’s a slightly sexist (but funny) gag which seems to have more than a hint of Les Dawson about it.

A husband says to his wife, “Get your coat on – I’m going to the pub.” His wife says, “Oh, are you taking me with you?” He says, “No. I’m turning the heating off.”

Two jokes that are among my very favourites and with which I repeatedly torture my wife when she says she needs cheering up: What’s brown and sticky? A stick A man walks into a chemist’s shop and says, “Do you have anything for complete loss of voice?” And the chemist says, “Good morning, sir. Can I help you?”

Those two share the characteristic that, when you tell them, there is a split second at the end before the penny drops. Perhaps that’s why I like them.

But my all-time favourite joke has a real punchline – coming from nowhere, with force: Pete has a new girlfriend and he wants to impress her, so he takes her to the most expensive restaurant in town. He looks around and is amazed to see Frank Sinatra and his minders a few tables away. To impress his girlfriend even more, he says, “Look, there’s my old mate Frank Sinatra.” She laughs and says, “You’re kidding me.” Later, when she goes to the toilet, he gets up and goes across to Sinatra’s table and says, “Mr Sinatra, I was wondering if you could do me a great favour? I am sitting at that table over there with my girlfriend and I would really like to impress her, so when you are leaving could you possibly just walk past us and say, ’Hello Pete’? It would really make our night.” He goes back and sits down. When Sinatra has finished his meal, he thinks to himself, “Aww, I’ll give the guy a break”, so he walks past the table where Pete is chatting to his girlfriend and says, “Hey, Pete, how you doin’?”

And Pete looks up and says: “Piss off, Frank. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

As they say in comedy circles, thank you and goodnight.n

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CLASSIC CONCERT

Intoxicated

ueen Mary the First said, “When I am dead and opened, you will find Calais written on my heart.” In my case, for “Calais”, read “Saville Theatre, 29th October 1967”.

That was the first time I saw the classic supergroup Cream; it was the best gig I ever attended – and a night that changed me for ever.

The Saville, in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, had been acquired by Beatles manager Brian Epstein and its Sunday night shows were legendary, featuring the best of live music at a time when live music was at its most exciting.

I’d heard Cream on record, with their strange brew (the title, incidentally, of their third single) of blues, rock and far-out-there musicality and was determined to see them on stage. They had just returned from conquering America and recording their soon-to-bereleased Disraeli Gears album.

I was just 17 and took the train up to London from the East Midlands, already feeling this would be a night to remember. But I could not have forecast the huge impact it would have.

The audience, the hippest in London, and thus on the planet, were all dressed like rock stars and some of them probably were. The Beatles themselves were known to be in the audience for some of these “Sundays at the Saville”.

Cream opened up with Tales of Brave Ulysses – wild and wonderfully psychedelic.

Eric Clapton wore granny-style shades beneath his frizzed-up hair; Jack Bruce, the most formidable bassist in rock, wore a white, fringed Native American jacket; and then there was Ginger Baker on drums.

Clapton and Bruce were the top players on their instruments, but this was really Baker’s

by this strange brew How a helping of Cream half a century ago was life changing for Nigel Summerley

band and he wanted to make sure you knew it.

High up on the drum podium behind a massive two-double-bass-drum kit, Baker looked and played like a demon. He was clothed in purple and green topped off with that untameable mane of ginger hair.

But something else hit me as Baker switched from beaters playing cymbal crescendos to sticks producing the fierce rhythms that danced and looped over the patterns played by his feet: this was it! This was what I’d always been looking for.

Playing drums suddenly clicked as the most wonderful thing that one could do. Clapton’s extended interstellar guitar improvisations on the likes of Spoonful and Bruce”s brutally inventive bass lines made mind and body shiver with excitement; but Baker’s impossibly intricate and emotional percussion was the best thing I’d ever heard.

Later that week, I stood in the front room of an older boy selling his drum kit – to me. My parents knew nothing about it until they heard it in my bedroom. My father didn’t really approve of the kit or where it might lead me or whom it might lead me to meet. But that just added to its appeal.

Fifty years and a dozen bands later, I”m still drumming, still gigging, still finding this is the love of my musical life. A couple of years ago at a show in Brighton, someone in the audience greeted one of my drum breaks with a shout of “Hey! Ginger!” And for me, that’s as good as it gets.

Ginger is still playing, too – and I’ve got a ticket to see him in April. Anyone who has seen the Beware Mr Baker documentary will know that he would have not one jot of interest in the fact that he changed my life for ever.

But that’s what happened and I’ll always be grateful to him – and one amazing night in 1967.n GOLDIE magazine | 41

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LAURENT MIEZE

Saint Germain des Prés the fashion way Model Patrick Cordier and photographer Laurent Mieze share their favourite spots 42 | GOLDIE magazine

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CLASSIC TRIP

D

uring the Middle Ages, Saint Germain des Pres was a village outside the Paris city walls, be the end of the Second World War it had become synonymous with intellectual and cultural life in Paris. Saint Germain des Prés was where writers and artists like Marguerite Duras, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, François Truffaut, Picasso, Giacometti and others hung out.

It’s no surprise that fashion’s coolest still frequent the area today. u GOLDIE magazine | 43

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n STAY AT Hotel La Louisiane 60 Rue de Seine, 75006 Paris The Hotel La Louisiane is the kind of hotel that we adore, very basic, quirky and overlooking a proper French street market. (ed note: I was 11 the first time I stayed here.) It’s probably the cheapest place you could find to stay in the area.

The hotel was constructed in 1823 by a former officer in Napoleon’s army, becoming a home base for jazz musicians and writers in the 1920s. The list of tenants reads like a Who’s Who of the era and includes Miles Davis, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Ernest Hemingway, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Even today the hotel is a favourite base for writers and artists, some of whom have given the hotel art and photos as payment for their accommodation (many of these pieces can be found in the hallways and stairways). n SHOP AT The Rue de Seine is home to many high-end art galleries specializing in 19th and 20th century masters, prints, and photographs. If you feel like splurging on a small Matisse Print, or a Picasso sketch, this is the street for you.

Or you can just wander in and admire the art without any need to purchase.

Cire Trudon 78 Rue de Seine75006 Cire Trudon has been making bespoke candles for centuries; the company was granted the royal warrant in the 17th century and has created candles for such legendary design houses as Guerlain, Hermès and Dior. Chic Parisian ladies love them.

Kilo Shop 125 Boulevard Saint Germain, 75006 This warehouse of vintage clothing has nearly everything in almost any colour imaginable. Patrick loves vintage and there is a large selection of menswear here. You pay for items based on weight. Each type of garment (jackets, shirts, pants) has a price per kilogram, and there are scales dispersed throughout the shop so you can keep tabs on your spending. n HAVE A COFFEE AT If you haven’t been before the Café Les Deux Magots, the Café de Flore and Brasserie Lipp are all also in the 6Th arrondissement and you should go at least once in your life.

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n GET SOME CULTURE Saint Sulpice Church 2 Rue Palatine, 75006 Saint-Sulpice was where the S&M enthusiast the Marquis de Sade and the poet Charles Baudelaire were baptized and it hosted the wedding of author Victor Hugo to Adèle Foucher in 1822.

There are three murals by the famous artist Eugène Delacroix (painter of Liberty Leading the People) on the walls of the first chapel on the right.

One of the Paris’ Meridian lines runs through the church (The other being at 11 Quai de Cont)i.

It boasts iconic mismatched towers.

The Zadkine museum 100 bis Rue d’Assas, 75006 Paris The home studio of Ossip Zadkine (1890 – 1967), from 1928 until his death. Thanks to his widow, Valentine Pax, who donated their estate to the City of Paris, his works are displayed where he created them. The museum is a haven of peace and quiet in the hubbub of Paris. Entry to the museum is free. We all love free art. n EAT AT L’Avant Comptoir du Marché 14 Rue Lobineau, 75006 A 100 percent pork tapas bar with excellent wines. The fourth restaurant owned by French chef, Yves Camdeborde it is a love letter to pork, there are pigs on the walls, a flying pig hanging from the ceiling, a ham bone and pots of lard on the counter.

Step behind the plastic curtain with the painted-on pig and rub elbows with locals, chefs, winemakers and other food-industry people standing (no chairs) around the zinc bar. The all-natural wine list is exceptional.

L’ATLAS 11 Rue de Buci, 75006 A traditional French restaurant with a big terrace. This is a very popular spot and gets crowded with gorgeous people every night in the summer – great place to people watch, listen to jazz music and enjoy a drink. It is known for good seafood.

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Am I late?

It’s a

Classic-deadline-thing isn’t it?

Esther Austin looks to her female icons for inspiration

W

ell it could be said that it’s classic of me to ask the editor to ‘give me a little more time please’. I hastily sat down at the eleventh hour to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard and turn my hand to the topic of what is classic? Instantly I conjured images of Sophia Loren, Dame Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Jackie Onassis, Dr Maya Angelou, and Michelle Obama. I then tunnelled down within my own consciousness (it’s ok everyone, I’m not going to get heavy with the psych stuff) to find out what it is about these women that the word classic activated in me?

The words ‘grace, essence, simplicity, natural beauty, poise, elegance, defined by a deep confidence of self’ popped up, and so I decided to explore this word and its identity a little more.

From my own perspective, the above women denoted various attributes which reflected what it meant to be classic. So I decided to Google the word – will Google be considered classic in years to come? - and the following description came up… judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind. And the noun was presented as a work of art of recognized and established value.

I remember watching Sophia Loren when I was younger and was bowled over by her beauty. I spent many a moment just saying ‘WOW, WOW’ especially at what looked like her size 0 waist. However, it wasn’t just that of her physical beauty, but it was, in an almost ethereal way, in her poise, her mannerisms and the way she spoke, even how she formed her words as if she was seductively blowing bubbles to a lover. Her gaze was often strong, daring, captivating, making a statement that ‘I am in charge’ and yet she was also able to capture moments of soft fluffiness in the embodiment of the feminine.

Then there is the esteemed Dr Maya Angelou, a woman whose past captivated us all in her present; she became an oracle for those of us who had experienced pain and woundedness in some way; she helped us to define that pain, to seek the truth in that pain and then to simply hand it over to a power greater than ourselves. Whether you call that God, The Universe or

to wherever you choose to place your pain. It was the pain in her formative years which shaped her identity and that she transmuted that pain to become the victor and not remain the victim, was a classic model for many of us. She was a woman whose constant and continued messages - of forgiveness, letting go, of healing, transformation and self-care - were delivered in a very regal but defiant way; classic delivery for all of us looking to make a difference. Watching Dr Maya Angelou speak there was an embedded dignity and pride that oozed from her evolved identity, not just as a woman, a black woman, a formerly wounded woman, but as a human being. When I watched her ‘do her thing’ she projected a statement; here is a woman of strength, a champion of change, a woman whose conviction of who she was as a human-being was so palpable that she was able to earn respect from those around her simply because of that essence and presence.

Michelle Obama presents similar attitude. Her height and stature are not just ‘structural’ but the core of her being and a rich depth of knowledge, compassion and knowingness; a classic in her own right. She is someone who takes a stand just by being who they are and she does so with such quiet confidence. Of course, that she can carry off thigh high gold boots helps, she wears her clothes so incredibly well doesn’t she?

Dame Helen Mirren is another woman who demands and commands respect with an innate subtlety of confidence in who she is. She has such a regal presentation; the way she walks, the way she holds her own, gracefully, sometimes even ungracefully, with a touch of the rebel. I’m sure there are many more women who qualify for this label but I do have a word count (Classic 800) to stick to…

I don’t know if any of my inspirational women have a classic-deadline-issue but whatever it is these women have it says classic to me. Whether that is spoken verbally, or communicated non-verbally with actions, these individuals can be honoured so that generations of individuals from different eras, when flipping through the pages of nostalgia, can read about such classic people who simply made their mark and encouraged us all to add our own value to the world. ¢

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KARLTON CHAMBERS

CLASSIC ICONS

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THE ANARCHO-DANDY

Jämes Rïgby shares a tale of two coats: one old classic and (perhaps) one new classic. Both came from Harrods and have very big pockets.

There the similarities end

I

found the first coat in a charity shop in Tunbridge Wells in early 2018. I was immediately drawn to it among the padded jackets and short woollen coats on the rail. It oozed quality and I imagine, given the rate at which quality items are snapped up, that it can only have been on the rail for a matter of hours. Most charity shops I frequent seem to have a very similar pricing policy: £5 for a shirt, £10 for a jacket, £15 for a suit, and £20 for a coat. But this one was £40 – the price of five cocktails.

First things first, I checked the label. It said Harrods. Then I tried it on; it was a good fit.

Two minutes later and £40 lighter, I left the store with my new (old) coat.

I’m not normally one to be overly-interested in labels, cut, cloth, design and such; I just like what I like. But I thought this coat must have an interesting history worthy of some brief research. The internet, as ever, was my friend. I searched eBay, Pinterest and other sites for similar items, but to no avail. I knew I was looking for a small black and white houndstooth pattern, and the lapel shape was something I’d not seen before, but that was it.

And then there was the Harrods logo. It wasn’t quite right. Was it a fake? A market knock-off? A Google of the history of Harrods’ logos provided the answer. The one in the coat was used by Harrods between 1952 and 1967. As a late 1965 vintage myself, it’s a fair bet that the coat is older than I am. As far as my research could determine, Harrods has never had its own coat manufacturer, and I therefore suspect it was made exclusively for Harrods by someone like Aquascutum.

Detailed examination of the coat revealed another Harrods label inside one of the pockets, what seemed to be a quality control label on the inside of the cuff, and a sewn number label in one of the pockets. There was no care label, so I couldn’t be sure what the material was, but it felt like a cotton-wool mix.

The top buttonhole could do with restitching, but apart from that the coat appeared to be

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I’ll get me coats close to as-new condition. Even the buttons and the stitching for the buttons seemed original. Perhaps this coat was only worn for one winter by its previous owner.

The double pockets were a novelty, accessible from both the inside and outside of the coat. This seemed like a good design but I soon learned that after a few Old Fashioned cocktails I would have to search all four pockets, usually twice, to find my phone, keys, small change, glasses case, cigarettes, lighter or whatever else I’d stored there.

It has now been my daily coat for a year, on those days when a coat is called for. It gets frequent looks from passers-by, the occasional compliment, and once in while a “Can I ask where you got that coat from?”

I love it; it’s warm, comfy and hangs well too. On top of that I am pretty damn certain that I’ll never bump in to anyone wearing the same. Indeed, it may be the only one remaining.

And so to coat number two.

I was enjoying a long weekend break in London in mid-February. We stayed at a hotel on top of Charing Cross Station, ate at Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner restaurant, went to see The Book of Mormon and The Play That Goes Wrong and did some shopping.

Incidentally, we also spent an hour outside one of the venues for London Fashion week where I was delighted to be snapped by several of the loitering photographers. But sadly this wasn’t to be my ‘Accidental Icon’ moment.

Perhaps next year.

But back to the coat. We went shopping in Harrods. Or rather, we planned to go browsing in Harrods. Having looked at watches that cost more than most houses and whizzed through most other departments, I purchased a travel earring box for my partner’s birthday. And then we went to look at the menswear.

On the lower ground floor, just past the whisky and cigar departments, is the Vivienne Westwood section. We were both immediately

Two coats from Harrods are enough for any man

drawn to a certain coat. There were two the same, one on a mannequin and one on a rail.

We both knew, without either of needed to say it, that it was ‘me’.

I tried it on and it was a fit! It was a big coat, largely unstructured, but in a glorious blue and orange check. The coat was described as “Peasant Check Raglan Coat”. And then, I looked at the price.

Oh! Oh dear!!

Most of my wardrobe comes from charity shops for under a tenner; it would be the single most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever bought.

We left Harrods without the coat, but talking about it. We went for afternoon tea and talked about the coat some more. We Googled to see if anyone else was selling it cheaper – they weren’t. After tea, we went back to Harrods, and I bought it.

It’s a heavy cotton fabric, with massive outer pockets. The pockets are so big and deep that I need to stoop to reach whatever I’ve placed in them. It’s lined only in the sleeves, and the sleeves seem deliberately long so that the wearer is required to roll them up one turn to show off the lining. It also has eyelets under the armpit, perhaps to provide aeration in that area. Or maybe it’s just a largely nonfunctional design detail. I am still finding small details in this coat – and that’s part of the joy of owning it.

At the time of writing, I’ve owned the coat for five days. I’ve worn it to the theatre twice, out at dinner and to the pub. It attracts much attention – all positive. I love it.

I now have two everyday coats – each lovely, each different, one a past classic, one perhaps a future classic. Maybe, in forty or fifty years’ time, someone will be in a charity shop in Tunbridge Wells, and they’ll spot a Vivienne Westwood checked coat on the rail for the price of five cocktails.

If they do, I’m sure they’ll buy it and thereby crank another turn in the circle of life, coatwise. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 49

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CLOSET CONFIDENTIAL

How do you describe a fragrance?

With her whimsical imagination Sarah McCartney is an expert artisan perfumier. Angela Kennedy meets Sarah who shares her story about creating a niche perfume brand with the noteworthy name 4160 Tuesdays, as original as the fragrances themselves

I

t’s rewarding to find something truly individual that makes the heart sing in this age of mass production. An Artisan perfume brand offering fragrances with quirky names like “The sexiest scent on the Planet” is immediately intriguing.

Sarah didn’t start by crushing rose petals in the garden, but she has

WHY?

The name 4160 Tuesdays is inspired by my yoga teacher who was quite phenomenal, she had five kids and could still do head stands in her eighties. I figured that there are 4160 Tuesdays (the forgotten day of the week) in an 80 year old lifespan, so honouring both, the name was born.

She inspired me to make yoga part of my life permanently and now I teach regularly, which helps the work-life balance.

I bought my first proper perfume when I was 16 as a reward for my O levels: Diorella, which I still rate as a singular classic masterpiece, led me to fall deeply in love with fragrance thereafter.

I worked in marketing as a copy writer for Lush but after 14 years with a big high street brand immersed in all aspects of the business, I wanted to do my own thing.

I wrote a book called The Scent of Possibility in 2012 about a perfumer who made fragrances to remind people of happy times to help them through difficult ones, it made me wonder why there were no perfumes like the ones I had described.

By then I knew a lot about perfumes, I read dozens of books and did more than a few courses. I wanted to demystify the aura around perfume and offer something individual and niche.

I ploughed my savings into buying raw ingredients to start experimenting. I was encouraged to launch my own brand by a beauty director who had sampled my first attempts at an indie perfume event.

Initially I set up from home in West London, just myself and husband Nick with freelance helpers when we needed them. We like to encourage new young talent and employ creative people

distilled plenty of intoxicating rose blends into her eclectic collection of hand crafted perfumes. Her workshop is no dainty atelier, but a real hub of lotions and potions, wafting heady fragrances from every corner. There are bottles galore, and rather like Merlin, she conjures up seductive scents with a real passion.

who are flexible and work in-between jobs, like actors and musicians.

WHAT?

Our perfumes are handmade and totally original using the purest ingredients.

There are 56 fragrances currently in the collection and I’m always adding to them as I feel inspired.

We don’t like to discontinue any as clients always request old favourites.

We refill customers bottles if they return them as we believe in recycling, something bigger brands can’t do.

We run small workshops of 8 people in our studio, where anyone can have a go at blending their own perfume. They are very popular.

We’ve even taken our workshops abroad, to Tokyo recently, and frequently to festivals like Wilderness where we were voted one of the top things to do.

I enjoy the challenge of making a bespoke perfume for clients big or small. Customers can dream it up, and I’ll try and make it happen!

For a Hyundai promotional event we were asked to create a fragrance that captured the perfect driving aroma.

I’m a bit like Snape in Harry Potter with my potions and bottles.

Our perfumes have witty names that get straight to the point with little stories to help people choose.

The names are often inspired by events. My sister wanted a fragrance that reminded her of our father’s old cupboard where he stored stuff and I came up with The Lion Cupboard, its comforting smell suggests oak, herbs and chocolate and has sentimental value for us.

The logo was designed by Lucie Gray, a graphic designer I’ve long admired and the colourful flowery graphics are by the talented Rachel Cornish, they are both so much a signature of the brand.

WEAR?

Perfume of course!

My all-time personal favourite is Tokyo Spring Blossom, which was one of our very first scents but I always love whatever I’m currently blending, so often mix and match the two. Tokyo Spring Blossom was made for a fund raising perfume party in Tokyo.

Along with my perfume, I always wear red lipstick, without it I feel invisible.

I like comfort, and must always be warm, so love chunky Trippen shoes from Berlin and wear them with everything, they’re expensive but worth it.

And if I need something special, I’ll always go for designer Issey Miyake. I have his Japanese aesthetic and love of craft.

I always prefer a gift that is hand made to something bought.

We mostly sell online but are in a few niche stores around the world.

One of my favourites, where I also love to shop, is Corso Como in Milan; they sum up what we do. It was wonderful to be discovered by them and gave us a massive boost.

I try to stop worrying about things I can’t change but want to expand with a bigger web-site, more workshops and larger premises, which we are just in the process of developing.

Meanwhile we’ll always be all about creating perfumes that remind people of happy times and interesting places. ¢ www.4160Tuesdays.com @4160tuesdaysperfume

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Lead by the nose: Sarah McCartney in her studio

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SARTORIAL STORIES

Rhapsody Jane Jennison has been a denim fiend since she was a teenager but she needed to make sure her 501 fix was as good for the planet as it was for her legs.

The Levi Strauss legacy lives on

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in blue W

hen I was a teenager, I went to the market to buy some new jeans. I wanted straight ones, to replace the ones I had grown out of. “Oh, you don’t want straight ones, you want these; these are the fashion now,” said the stall holder. Nope. Not then. Not now. I don’t want someone else – however well meaning – to tell me what I want; I know my own mind or, if I don’t, I will figure it out. I also don’t want my wardrobe to be dictated to by the whims of fashion. I wear what I like, and what I like has remained pretty constant.

I left the market without new jeans. I discovered a shop that sold reject, secondhand and army surplus: CA Williams, on Tavistock Street in Bedford. I bought my first pair of Levi 501s. Jeans that were straight, long enough for my gangly teenage legs, and cheap enough for me to be able to afford from the wages of my Saturday job. This shop became a regular haunt: Donkey jacket, Doctor Martens, army surplus cargo pants and jeans all passed through their tills to my wardrobe. I was shopping in a small town with limited shops and more limited choices: internet shopping was in the future, and catalogues were for payment plans rather than wider ranges. Levi’s fitted and were comfy, 501s were a staple that did not change depending on the year or the season.

Years later, CA Williams closed and so the supply of cheap reject 501’s ended. I looked elsewhere, and for some years, Levi’s and I were strangers. High Street shops introduced longer lengths, so I was now able to buy ‘women’s’ jeans that were long enough… but no matter what make or cut, they just were not quite right. I realised I was guilty of being “penny wise, pound stupid” in buying cheaper jeans that I wore once or twice before sending them to the charity shop. My wallet and I took a deep breath and went shopping.

My gangly teenage years are long ago and although my inner self is unchanged, my waistline is not. I wanted to buy the same size and length I had worn for decades. I could have bought them, right enough, but they would not have fitted! I gave myself a little talking to and tried on a larger size. It felt like coming home. The pockets were in the right place; the fly buttoned up, the seat was deep enough and the legs were long enough. Immediately, I bought two pairs. I may not look the same as I did when I

was a teen, but my jeans still do.

At a time when inclusivity, sustainability and diversity are high on all our agendas, I wondered how Levi’s fit into the conversation. I tend to buy second-hand where possible, shop locally and try to make ethical choices.

How did buying new jeans measure up?

Levi jeans were first manufactured in 1873. Levi Strauss was born in Bavaria in 1829 and emigrated with his siblings to America in 1846. He joined his brothers’ dry goods business, in New York, then moved to San Franciso in 1953 to make his fortune from the gold rush dollars. He paired up with Jacob Davis in 1872, who had invented a new way to make jeans, using the rivet, and was looking for a business partner to patent the design.

The first pair of blue jeans were made a year later.

Levi Strauss had other business interests and was also renowned as a philanthropist. He contributed to several charities, and provided scholarships to the University of California, which are still in place. In the world of fashion that is often criticised for its working practices, environmental impact and lack of diversity, Levi’s, seem to stand apart. Their website says, “We’re proud to honour Levi Strauss’s legacy by celebrating his commitment to community, philanthropy and an unswerving devotion to quality. To this day, Levi Strauss & Co. strives to align itself with the same principles that guided Levi’s life.”

They have community initiatives to foster engagement and inclusivity, have production techniques that use less water than traditional methods. They have a goal that by 2020, 100 percent of their cotton will come from more sustainable sources, using less water, pesticides, insecticides and artificial fertiliser. They also promote their worker wellbeing initiative, have a music project that is a global network for communities and have “zero tolerance for intolerance”, supporting LGBTQi and Pride. They give their employees time off to volunteer and match their financial donations.

I love Levi’s 501s as they are the perfect fit for me and I now love the company a little bit more, having discovered their history and ethos. There is no need to change a great design; “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. This would seem to apply to Levi Strauss’s ethos, as well as the jeans. His legacy is in the values of the company, as well as in great jeans. n

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COOL AS… What happens when two like-minded friends with one mission in mind get together and pool resources?

Angela Kennedy asks Nancy Zeffman and Eileen Willett, who teamed up to create a collection that fills a rather unusual fashion gap PORTRAIT BY GERALD WILHELM

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ucumber Clothing offers more than just style; it aims to cool down over heated bodies in more ways than one. It claims to literally regulate your body temperature.

Fashion and functionality are not always happy partners, but Cucumber is a brand that has a pretty unique USP, it offers a no-sweat solution to modern dressing!

Women can tick ‘feeling hot and sticky ‘off their menopausal list of anxieties, while looking cool and comfortable in their easy, relaxed, no fuss clothing.

How did you meet?

We met at the school gates when our sons became friends; they’re now all grown up, still friends and share a flat together. We just gelled. That was nearly twenty years ago.

We were both working mothers (in advertising and in fashion) trying to do and have it all and we both worked on and off in-between raising three children each.

What inspired you to start up?

We realised that lots of women, for whatever reason were struggling with poor sleep, hot flushes and generally feeling over heated, and felt no one was addressing the problem with clothing that helped regulate body temperature.

Hot flushes are always an issue women hate talking about. Our collection is great for menopausal or pregnant women or for women recovering from illnesses, or just for women who get very hot and don’t want to sweat.

It started as a small idea to provide nightwear to help combat night sweats and has blossomed into a fully grown collection for 24-7 dressing.

That was then, this is now We may have started out with menopause in mind but there’s so much more to Cucumber Clothing now.

Our current collection will take you anywhere, whether you’re relaxing at home, at the gym, or just out and about holidaying in a hot country. The shapes are easy to wear and the fabrics comfortable. Our fabrics work especially well in hot climates for holiday packing. One customer bought several of the same dress for a holiday in the tropics.

Why the name?

No genius light bulb moment there! Cucumber just sounds cool and fresh which immediately conjures up the image we wanted to create.

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We like to keep things simple and let the fabric and relaxed styles speak for themselves, so our logo says what it does!

How did you find your special fabric?

With thorough research and hard graft! We trawled the websites to find a fabric that promised “no sweat” properties. It took us about a year to get there, we found an intelligent beautifully luxurious moisture wicking and thermo-regulating fabric and that was the birth of Cucumber. The fabric is from the Far East but everything else is made in the UK, right down to the trimmings.

What is a wicking fabric, it doesn’t sound very sexy!

It is when you wear it! Ours is a soft high-tech moisture repelling fabric that helps keep you dry and is really easy to care for. It whisks your sweat away and has patented bacteria eliminating properties that mean minimal washing, while you still stay fresh.It lasts longer than cotton, is silky smooth and liberating to wear.

We’ve also got a new super-luxe-cashmere-mix with all the same properties and - watch this space - soon we’ll be including a revolutionary new fabric that incorporates volcanic ash!

The designs We’re the antithesis of high fashion, everything is designed for dressdown comfort but is still luxurious - women want clothes that work for their multi-functional lifestyles. We offer a whole range of easy separates, vest and ballet tops, track and harem pants, simple dresses and, our own personal favourite, a fabulous jumpsuit. We’re competing in a big, well established market with the likes of Sweaty Betty, Boden and The White Company, all powerful names to go up against, so our fabric is our USP!

‘We like to think in terms of life stages, rather than ages, women who wear our clothes can be any age’ Nancy (left) and Eileen , founders of Cucumber Clothing

Colour We both feel strongly that black does not work for us, navy is kinder to most skin tones, so we launched with navy and silver, progressing through to slate grey and, a surprise hit last season, cobalt blue. This u GOLDIE magazine | 55

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u new spring range includes soft flattering pastels but, just for fun, we’ve introduced a hot fiery red. We’re still growing and produce small runs which eliminates expensive fabric wastage, pay our workers fair wages, and keep a tight control on everything ourselves.

Who does what?

Nancy is the engine, I’m more on the creative side, says Eileen. We both have our own individual skills and know our strengths and weaknesses. We both do everything, from answering customer queries to fulfilling orders - which we do physically ourselves from a storage unit near our homes. We still only sell online, which means that our web site is in constant need of attention. It helps that we live near each other; we’re both in North London.

Does networking help?

We’re both members of the AllBright Club, which was the first women only members club in Fitzrovia, London, (coincidentally, also launched by two friends). It’s a great central meeting place for women starting up in business. We launched to the press there initially and our first positive editorial in The Telegraph started orders flooding in. We’re exploring all potential ways of getting our message across, from creating more customer interaction on our website with interesting podcasts, to local PR activities and mini competitions. Meanwhile it’s just the two of

us trying to spread the word and keep the Instagram engaging.

Who would you like to see in the Cucumber collection?

Probably too many to mention, since we would love every woman in Cucumber, but if we had to choose our top ten it would be an eclectic mix of Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Atwood, Michelle Obama, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Christine Lagarde, Beyonce, Malala, Darcy Bussell, Venus Williams, and Gwyneth Paltrow - women of all ages, shapes and sizes with busy lives who would benefit with a bit of Cucumber in their wardrobe!

Has working together been the test of a good friendship?

It has not only deepened but widened our relationship in ways that we couldn’t have imagined. Having originally bonded over simple subjects such as the intricacies of building a fort for a Year 5 project, try outs for various football teams and parents’ evenings, we are now at a point where we have a shared vision. We spend hours chatting and working through castings for models, the best way to film vlogs and how to write pitch documents and still manage to squeeze in discussions around the best place for facials, where and what to eat and our next holiday. We are sort of married. n www.cucumberclothing.com

WHAT DO YOU ADMIRE IN EACH OTHER? Nancy on Eileen

So many things, but mostly just being a kind person who looks for the good in people.

Eileen has a lot of time for others and I know that she is someone that her friends can turn to in their hour of need – she will be there. On the business front, I admire her unflappability and cheerful demeanour. Eileen sees hurdles as challenges and does not give up lightly, if at all. Her patience means she will always find a different path around the mountain, where I might have given up already, frustrated. It’s been an amazing journey and hopefully we have only just started out on it. I honestly couldn’t think of a better co-founder to share my Cucumber waking hours with!

Eileen on Nancy

Nancy is so many things I am not that it has been an amazing journey working with her. Her mind is constantly turning over twenty ideas and then out pops a fully formed strategy - mine works best with one, or possibly two ideas combimed with several hours of daydreaming. Her passion and drive means that she is able to spend five minutes with a complete stranger, after which they will have become a devout Cucumber fan. She is also able to be honest and up front about her ideas to anyone - a skill I seriously envy - all the while being a deeply loyal, thoughtful and wonderful friend. There is so very much to admire here.

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LIZ MCAULAY

Ruffle dress and best selling red cashmere kimono dress

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THE GOOD LIFE

Something borrowed Truly sustainable clothes can transcend time when enriched with loving happy memories and passed through the generations, writes Fiona Carter

1952

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eddings are often extravagant, excessive occasions. The clothes we wear on these occasions are usually our finest and most expensive and – generally – classic. In an era where sustainability is what counts, these ‘best clothes’ can become full of memories and sometimes even create a connection for us with loved ones passed to pass on to generations to come.

Like many little girls, my mother’s wedding dress and veil mesmerised me. I marvelled at how its simple elegance shone out of the photos. My parents were married at St Patrick’s Church, Cork, on 3rd May 1952. This was the height of post-war Britain, and the idea it would hang in the wardrobe, never to be worn again was unthinkable - an unacceptable waste of good fabric. Not long after the wedding, my mother had her dress dyed cornflower blue and altered into a sensible evening dress, which she wore regularly for years. I remember discovering it in her wardrobe and loved ‘gadding about’ dressed up in it. Although my antics amused my mother, she lamented that she wished she had kept it in its original condition. If

she had, I might well have worn it for my own wedding, adding extra shoulder pads to make it a la mode for 1984, when I got married on 23rd April. What I did wear on my wedding day however, was my mother’s veil. It meant so much to me that 31 years earlier my mother had worn it as a young bride and I now, as her daughter, was stepping into that same role.

Like most mothers, she cried the day I got married.

She wore a geometric print dress from Hermes with a complementing hat. She always bought the best she could afford and kept everything, so when she died in 2006 her house was full of incredible outfits. Many of them were hand-made with matching hats, shoes and bags in exquisite fabrics. It was a dilemma as to what to do with them, as these were not the kind of clothes that you would bundle into a bin liner and pass on to your local charity shop. Fortunately on Boxing Day at my parents’ house that year, my children and their cousins ransacked her wardrobe, enjoying the fun of dressing up in her clothes and taking the things that they liked. We then sat together in the dining room eating the Christmas pudding she had made the year before.

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2016 After the family had claimed all the pieces they wanted, I took the remainder of her wardrobe to Mary Portas’ Living and Giving charity shop in Primrose Hill.

There, they have brand specialists and clothes are sold for their true value. The proceeds support Save the Children, which was a charity dear to my mother’s heart.

It gave me a lot comfort knowing that her clothes were being shared, passed on, enjoyed and not just ‘got rid of’ or ‘thrown away’. I know, for someone who hated any kind of waste, this certainly would have pleased her.

I kept a few gems from her wardrobe; one of them is the Hermes dress. When my eldest son Glenn, got married in Austin on 23rd April 2011, I did consider, whether to wear, her Hermes dress, but thought better of it and wore it to that American tradition, the rehearsal dinner. After I’d given it a Texan revamp of cowboy boots and Harley Davison belt, my mother’s cousin from New York commented: ‘Fiona, you have great sentiment’.

1984 And this is what our clothes do.

They give us memories, sentiment and a story to tell, as well as style and fashion. It’s not about dressing up in someone else’s clothes, but about celebrating their style, memory and relationship with you.

Of the many hats my mother had, a Phillip Treacy one in spun gold straw that was bought for her golden wedding anniversary was one of her most prized, and it was this that I wore to Glenn’s Texan wedding.

My daughter Roseanna got married on 17th September 2016. She had her wedding dress made by Mirror Mirror, a designer in Chapel Market, London, where many of my mother’s fancy outfits had come from. With warm endearment, the owner, Maria, recounted stories and anecdotes about her and these amusing stories brought alive the memory of my mother in the preparations of her wedding.

The crowning glory on my Roseanna’s wedding day was the fine silk veil of my mother’s.

It looked beautiful and meant a lot, particularly as I had had a full-on panic trying to finding it. My sister had worn it two years earlier before giving it back to me for safekeeping and I had forgotten where I had put it (a major senior moment!). After turning my parents’ house upside down, I was guided to it, wrapped neatly in tissue, with other family mementoes in my own home. The shrieks of utter joy, the relief; I was ecstatic. Roseanna was finally able to declare how upset she would have been had we not found it, something I was only too well aware of. This simple veil, worn on only a handful of occasions by a mother, daughter and now granddaughter, had become steeped with emotion and tradition.

The delicate nature of it has meant there has been inevitable wear and tear but also careful, sensitive repair so time has only added to its story. It has been archived with the dates of when and who has worn it, and is now stored in an obvious place I can remember! ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 59

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Model: Beate Howitt @MOTmodels Photographer: Gerald Wilhelm Direction: Rebecca Weef Smith Styist: Matt Padilla Make-up: Bryanna Angel using lipstick by Deck of Scarlett Comme des Garcons vintage lipstick coat (cover) Burberry cow print leather coat and off white wool coat D&G blazer All from Paul Wood @UrbanTrenchesLondon.

Vintage embellished velvet evening cape Laura Ashley velvet corset worn as a hat 1980s Frank Usher black velvet evening gown Vintage Brocade coat All from Shirley Cecile @thevintagereborn GOLDIE magazine | 65

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FUN & GAMES

Can fashion bridge the generation gap?

Styling and words Mary Platts Photos Erin James

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JADE

When my Nan was on this Earth, we spent a lot of time, mostly, baking, watching her shows, or gardening. We shared a lot of time together, but I wish I spent more time asking her questions. Talking about her childhood, her first kiss, what she imagined her future would be. The older I get, the more I come

to realise how important these things are I will never know. I’m also learning that, our mind doesn’t age like our bodies, it is always discovering, always learning, and that should always be nurtured, with conversation, companionship, no matter what sex, race or age.

ANNE

It was great to hear about Jade’s travels and Darren’s drumming. Erin, our Photographer, was so patient and professional and worked very hard. Mary’s warm and loving relationship with her grandmother (and grandfather) was a joy to experience.

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TONI

The shoot was very much an unknown quantity with little information beforehand. The hosts were lovely and so very welcoming but they were equally unsure what to expect. Despite our age differences the group gelled and we had a fun time together. Laughter is infectious and a real leveller and transcends

DARREN

At first I was a bit shocked - I didn’t know I’d be shooting with old people until I got to the location. To realise how open minded some older people were was really good. Even though they came from a different generation they could still be cool and relatable. It was very easy and relaxing - it just felt like chilling with having food and drink - I forgot about the age gap.

all ages.The truly lovely part was meeting new people in their 20’s to 80’s who I very much hope to meet again as they were just delightful. The feel good factor remained afterwards. I look forward to receiving photos of the day as there were numerous lovely shots capturing our time together.

MAUREEN

The whole day together reinforced my belief that the old and the young can get on well together and enhance each other’s lives. The dressing-up was brilliant at making us all confident and relaxed. It was so easy to talk together on any subject that arose. I quickly forgot that I am in my eighties, and lost any idea that these lovely young people might find me boring! Hope I was right about that. The whole experience was a tonic and I would love to do it again.

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I

have always been passionate about intergenerational social interaction. Whether it was my close relationship with my grandmother, or care work with dementia and elderly patients that lead me to this passion, here I am. I am certain of the social, cognitive and behavioural benefits of intergenerational interaction and I am prepared to work hard to prove my point. That’s why I decided to start Older is Golder, a not-for-profit campaign to close the age gap involving another passion of mine - fashion.

I love fashion as it connects us all; no matter

where you come from, your age, your political preferences, you can always bond over a beautiful outfit. When I worked in a care home some of my clients were 90+ and we could still have a natter about a pearl necklace over a cup of tea.

Older is Golder is my way of showing the world that whatever the political climate, whatever our upbringing, or experiences, age or ethnic group or gender, fashion can bring us together. I have started arranging photoshoots, film shoots and events to do just that.

When I first arranged this shoot I was excited. I am a 20-something who enjoys the company of people older than me, I knew it

would be fun, but I also knew that everyone else involved felt a little hesitant about the age dynamics. After all, we were squashing people aged 20-80+ into a small front room in front of a camera. Although I was sure it would be enjoyable, I didn’t expect such a positive reaction from the participants.

At one point in the afternoon, Jade asked Maureen, “When do you feel like you’ve reached the point where you’re grown up?”

To which Maureen replied, “I still find myself thinking, ‘what am I going to be when I grow up?’”

And I think that sums things up quite nicely. n

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This team consisted of models Anne, Darren, Maureen, Mary, Jade and Toni

ERIN

As a professional photographer I find a lot of my jobs are purely that; a job, which while fun, often don’t mean a lot to me. I wasn’t expecting the shoot with Older is Golder to be so brilliant, not only for my portfolio, but for my mental health.

It’s not every day that you turn up for a job, get offered wine, cheese and a full spread lunch as well as brilliant conversation between generations and races, and it truly restored my faith in the older generation, often getting a bad wrap for being stuck in traditional thinking. I was proven wrong by the amazing, inspirational and beautiful conversations we all had about politics, life and death, and love.

Looking back at these photos you can see the fun we had on set. I loved every second

and it was brilliant to be part of a photo-shoot with older women, who I think left feeling beautiful and important, which every women needs, especially the older generation who are sometimes left behind in modern day media.

I think this photo-shoot taught me that I need to do more projects like this one, one’s with heart, that mean something, that are trying to do good by the community and give back.

It also taught me that we shouldn’t hang out with people just in the same generation as us, as there are far more interesting and deeper conversations happening when you throw people from the age of 20-80 round a table with wine & cheese, and raise the question of what it means to be younger and older in today’s world.

Join Older is Golder on July 20th 2019 Details: olderisgolder.com Follow on IG: @olderisgolder GOLDIE magazine | 77

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GREY MATTERS

It’s a wrap!

GILL MANLY Models: Kemi Rodriguez and Gill Manly Photos: Rob Wilson Jnr Fluid4sight

I

have been a long-time fan of headwraps and more so since an operation that resulted in considerable hair loss three years ago. I have played with different fabrics and styles of wrapping, mostly learned by watching YouTube tutorials. Yes, imagine, you can learn this beautiful styling process online.

What I discovered is that there are no rules and that each time you wrap your head the result is completely different.

etsy.com/uk/shop/ThandiWrap Xsandys Hair & Cosmetics.

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GREY MATTERS

n Every headwrap I have worn has been a unique experience based on what fabric I use, the size of the piece of fabric and often the reason I am wearing it.

n As a performer, I found this wonderful addition to my personal wardrobe incredibly helpful. But interestingly, women of European backgrounds always ask me how on earth do you do that, it looks really complicated?

My reply has always been, practice and play.

n Thandi products “seek to promote love and confidence.”

The signature product, the Thandiwrap, is a unique turban and wraps combination designed to make head wrapping quicker, simpler and practical. It provides a solution to address many women’s hairdressing experiences, be it as a fashion statement, a personal identity statement, a belief statement, to increase confidence, or to decrease morning-hair-time!

n Headwraps are brilliant wellbeing accessories: when you are feeling less than confident, these wraps provide a real fashion statement. You can face the world knowing that you look stunning. Self-esteem elevated. It finishes a look.

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n There can be a number of reasons you want to use a headwrap; hair loss either through ageing or possibly due to chemotherapy for cancer. Or maybe you are just having a very bad hair day. It’s probably the best solution I have found without having to spend a fortune on wigs or hats.

n I love that you can be unique, in the choices of colour and fabrics and size. I was delighted when I meet Thandi, a designer who has created and patented a fresh design of headwrap to make life very easy for those less experienced in head wrapping.

n I have been confronted with the argument on occasions that wearing headwraps as a white woman is deemed as cultural appropriation. I do not agree. History shows that women of all ethnicities have been wrapping their heads all over the world; covering their heads to satisfy the patriarchal dominance over women.

n I choose to wear a wrap for the very reason that Thandi created them; The ThandiWrap is for every woman whatever their age, race or lifestyle. Thandi uses most fabrics – as long as they are pliable. The current collection is in cotton knits and velvets. Thandi also offers a bespoke/custom service, so if you have a special occasion, she can make you a wrap in your chosen fabric. The unique design makes it easy to wrap in seconds and to look as though you have spent hours in front of the mirror. We all love that, right? Prices start at £30 and can be found online: https://www.thandiWrap.com GOLDIE magazine | 81

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ACCESS ALL (Fashion) AREAS Is diversity in fashion having a real impact or are we still seeing a difference between the catwalk and the street?

PHOTOS: SAMMY BAXTER

REBECCA WEEF SMITH

F

ashion has always been accepting of me. Having said that, I started in the industry when I was young and skinny. I was also (and still am) in the privileged position of being a white, middle class female from London so was basically welcomed to the club with open arms. On that basis I never gave a second thought to how blinkered the industry might be. It became my life. I loved it and it loved me right back. I attended countless fashion weeks for work, as both a journalist and a buyer. And mostly had a great time. In fact it wasn’t until I started producing GOLDIE magazine that I realised my experience wasn’t the norm. Here were countless people telling me how marginalised they felt by the fashion industry and in particular by events like London Fashion Week (LFW) with its FROWs, black limos, celebrities and general shroud of exclusivity. A world to which they were not invited. Mainly because they didn’t see themselves reflected on the catwalks or in the ads. I couldn’t sit on my hands. I decided to dig deeper. This being GOLDIE magazine, I focussed on how fashion represents the over50s. I’m sorry to say my findings weren’t indicative of a diverse or inclusive industry.

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FASHION FOR ALL

According to figures published in the Fashion Spot report, only 41 out of 745 magazine covers (5.5%) in 2018 featured models aged 50 or above and every one was a celebrity. Nicole Kidman appeared on six covers, closely followed by Oprah Winfrey with five. Not wishing to blow our trumpet but if they’d added GOLDIE magazine to the mix that figure would have reached a lofty 44 as all three of our cover stars in 2018 were over 50.

That’s a 100 percent strike rate for our covers.

On to fashion ads. There were eighteen older models featured in 11 Autumn/Winter (A/W) 2018 campaigns (3.4%). Each one of those women was white, slim and cisgender not much diversity there. Luxury brands were responsible for 13 of these castings: Saint Laurent’s A/W 2018 campaign starred Betty Catroux; Gucci had Faye Dunaway; Maye Musk modelled for Moncler; Kim Gordon at Proenza Schouler; Vivienne Westwood represented her own label; Louise Johnson, the designer’s grandmother, was in Brandon Maxwell’s A/W ads and Helmut Lang’s “Smart People Wear Helmut Lang” had seven models over the age of 50. If the paid-for media Gods are listening, these are the types of ads we’d love to run in GOLDIE magazine!

Positive, aspirational images that reflect the way we see you – our readers – living your lives.

On the catwalk over-50’s women are still grossly underrepresented in proportion to

their spending power and the percentage of the population they account for. There were 27 (0.36%) catwalk castings for models who were 50 or above during the spring 2019 fashion weeks (which took place in September 2018).

Though a piddly amount it’s still an increase of 14 when compared to the previous season, so it’s a baby step in the right direction.

Traditional fashion weeks have a way to go on the diversity front, especially in Europe.

For all that London is seen as an inclusive and vibrant city, the catwalks at LFW in February did not reflect the streets. The A/W 2019 season had 36 (0.49%) 50-and-over castings.

Granted it was the most age-diverse season yet but should we really regard 0.49 percent as sufficient representation? We think not.

In terms of age diversity London only had five older models on the main schedule: three at Vivienne Westwood, two at Simone Rocha.

Although there were more at the Off-schedule presentations – notably Rixo, Johnstons of Elgin and at the closing On/Off show.

When I tried raising the issue of ageism on the catwalk with other fashion insiders I was told it didn’t need discussing and worryingly that “no one wants to see ‘old people’ in fashion.” This from people who are over fifty themselves. Leaving one show I ran into a wellknown designer (a fellow quinquagenarian with collections at LFW) who basically said “UGH! Gross!” when I asked about the lack of older models in their shows. If those of us u GOLDIE magazine | 83

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FASHION FOR ALL

u in this industry who are over 50 aren’t even willing to support age diversity in fashion, what’s the point?

This problem is deeper than merely seeing all ages represented on billboards and catwalks; it’s about creating an industry where screw ups - like the infamous black balaclava at GUCCI - could no longer slip through without someone noticing; it’s about people feeling they’re recognised for their value regardless of the profit they generate; it’s about developing a caring creative community instead of narrow minded greed.

This is what’s at the heart of the debate over sustainable fashion. It is about finding a way to make fashion for all without destroying the planet or the pleasure we each glean from a great outfit. I have written extensively about “Wearing Wellbeing” and why fashion can be good for us. The need to show’n’share diversity and inclusivity links to our personal happiness and ultimately to a greater good.

I may not have been marginalised during my fashion career but that doesn’t mean to say I don’t want to help others who feel differently. My positive experience makes me want to support, not close ranks. I will do whatever I can to promote a fairer version of fashion, whether that means giving new talent a chance to appear in a print magazine, or encourage new ways of thinking about positive psychology and our relationship to our clothing choices.

I’m heartened to see a younger generation debating ageism in fashion. I recently spent

the day at Southampton University with Georgia, a third year student, whose final project questions the fixation with putting clothes into “age appropriate” boxes: She has developed the courAGE campaign to share intergenerational fashion. Mary, the brains behind OLDER is GOLDER (featured in this very issue) is another young woman who I support in her quest to prove that fashion can be a catalyst for positive change. And I love the work that Jacynth from Bias-cut.com is doing to highlight that ageism is never in style.

When Ethan approached me about a photoshoot (see True Colours) we ended up

having a conversation about the barriers fashion puts up for those who don’t fit its very narrow mould. This sowed the seeds for our Fashion For All campaign which we took to the streets in a loud proud riot of colour, body shapes, genders and ages during London Fashion Week.

We can make our feelings heard. We can be seen. We can do this across the generations, with love and style. It really is time to make fashion open access. n For the full diversity report go to Fashionspot.com GOLDIE magazine | 85

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GERALD WILHELM

FASHION FOR ALL

My First Time: Modelling at London Fashion Week

H

spending is by people over 50, making it essential that they market to that demographic. Whether Johnstons were persuaded by this I know not, but they did use older models at their presentation. It was a privilege to model for them and to wear their superb clothes, made from the finest cashmere, cotton and merino cloths and knitwear.

David Evans www.greyfoxblog.com Instagram: GreyFoxBlog www.instagram.com/greyfoxblog/

ALEXANDRU RADU POPESCU

ow was it that I came to model for Johnstons of Elgin at London Fashion Week? I’m not a professional model, but have been blogging for seven-and-a-half years. On Grey Fox Blog and on Instagram I’ve described my search for style, prompted by difficulties I experienced in middle age and beyond, knowing what to wear and where to buy clothes.

My search for style uncovered

many wonderful brands manufacturing in the UK. One of these was Johnstons of Elgin who, after designing and manufacturing cloth and knitwear in Scotland for the greatest fashion houses in the world, decided to appoint their own designer, Alan Scott, to produce their own collections.

Most fashion brands use young models, often in their twenties, to promote their products, even when the clothes wouldn’t be worn by consumers that age. I often point out that 47 percent of consumer

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FASHION FOR ALL I am an individual who has always lived my n own truth. I thought that it would be interesting to find more people like myself for a celebration

TRUE COLOURS

of colourama in order to shine light on the unseen beauty, kindness and grace of the colourful individuals who step outside the fashion norms and choose to express their identity in their own unique manner.

I wanted to emphasise how it matters not where you come from, the colour of your skin, or your age when it comes to showing the colours that so many are too scared to present in their day-to-day life.

Our Fashion for All day started in Bethnal Green.

We were not scared, we were not backing down and we weren’t running with our tails between our legs. We walked the streets garbed in our very own interpretations of truth: From frills to feathers, leather to lace and full to zero makeup on our face. In emulating the gods of the sun, of the sky, of the sea and the moon we chose to reject the masks that society tells us to wear.

Fashion isn’t always welcoming to outsiders however, when we travelled to The Strand with LFW in full swing we were embraced and accepted for our beauty. The street photographers flocked to us and we were taken into the fashion fold. All ages, all colours and all walks of life swirling and conversing in a way that looked more like a dance. I could not tell in that moment what made me feel warmer and what shone brighter; the sun that happily floated along a river of blue and white or the smiles and chattering of so many colourful individuals.

Ethan Burrell

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“I can only dress this way in a darkened club. I could never be this woman on the street”

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“Fashion is a space we all share”

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Dressing up identity Ben Pechey loves the LGBTQ+ community; he reflects on the pioneers who paved the way for his generation and how age groups across the space can support each other

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FASHION FOR ALL

RACHEL PECHEY

A

s a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, my visual appearance is a large part of my identity. It is where I channel the expression of my gender; in essence, it is my business card for my queerness.

The outward appearance of members of the queer community is what allows us to stand out; it draws attention for good and bad reasons.

Being queer in 2019 can be incredibly tough. Most of the abuse we receive in public spaces is a reaction to our outward appearance. This is because most of the public see our appearance as a visual difference, and thus cannot process this. The knee jerk response is reactionary and in some cases disgust, albeit involuntary. Ignorance breeds fear. The incredible thing is, even in the face of abuse, we draw our strength from our appearance. The material we put across our back is our unique stance on the world.

We get to choose to be our true selves, by ignoring and subverting gender norms. There is an enormous amount of fun to be had in dressing when you just throw out the rule book.

It can be hard though when most of your interactions with wider society are negative. The constant barrage of hate and abuse both in the streets and in the mass media is a huge burden to bear. The queer community are harassed like no other, with our existences refuted and debated on live television.

Groups of people refusing to acknowledge our existence by banning the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues in schools adds to the burden; loving who we are and accepting everyone in our community is an act of anarchy.

This unprecedented level of self-love is our right and is a gift that we have acquired thanks to years of activism from founding members of our community.

We must, of course, acknowledge the huge impact of the Stonewall riots, which was 50 years ago. In 2019 we are more able to live as we choose, thanks to the sacrifices of so many LGBTQ+ people in 1969.

The Stonewall riots were a huge act of anarchy to fight for what is right. The angry uprising of queer people, who had faced too much police brutality, did so much for our community, by simply refusing to accept the hate levelled at them daily.

In in the early hours of June the 28th, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village in New York, enough was enough and the LGBTQ+ community fought back. This was the beginning of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the US and the world at large.

Has much changed 50 years on? Well in a sense yes and in other ways no. We are now much more of a community than we have ever been before, and we are living our truths on the streets in plain view.

We have openly queer heads of state; we have safe spaces, trans visibility, and more awareness amongst

the general public. This is a huge step, but 50 years is a long time for so little in terms of actual progress.

We have a larger presence in the public eye, and certainly, the queer community feels like a vast one. However, the perception, acceptance and treatment of queer people have really not altered. We are struggling because we are seen as a trend, as a choice and as an issue, not as the people we are.

The media presents the issues facing the community as a choice that can be questioned, as a problem that only faces young people. The positive media our community gets is often promoting young, thin and the most heteronormative version of what queer means.

However, the queer community is a crossgenerational community. We are all races, all sizes and all ages. The younger members of the queer community struggle to look up to anyone, because our role models are not as visible, not as celebrated and not in the public interest. Yet knowing the struggle the founding members of the community faced, we should be utilising the knowledge and power they used to fight the battles they faced as momentum for our own struggles.

As a society, we have been segregated by age based on lifestyles, income and spending. Yet we can learn so much from each other, we don’t exist in the world in separate (age) bubbles. Everyone has a voice and everyone’s voice is valid. What we forget, is that in most things, we are not the pioneers.

Someone else will have done it before us. Age is something to be worn with pride, just as being queer is something to rejoice.

As a non-binary person, I subvert gender through the way I dress; mixing feminine pieces into my wardrobe allows me to express who I am. I wear dresses, not because they are supposedly a female garment, but because I want too. Knowing that I am not the first person to do this gives me strength and joy. It also means that I am thankful for the members of the community who did so much so that I can write this being who I really want to be.

Fashion is just cloth, stitching and some fastenings; there are no gender regulations and certainly no age regulations in any garment. Fashion plays a large role in all our lives, not just in the queer community.

It shapes who we are, tells others how we want to face the world, and asserts our personality.

The more we talk about inclusivity for everyone, the quicker we begin to reduce the issues of so many minorities, regardless of race, age and size. Anyone can fight for what they believe in, whether they are part of the LGBTQ+ community or not. You can be an ally of the queer community, whatever your sexuality or gender identity. And we can be inclusive of all ages, at any age.

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THE SCENE The view from the street was extra colourful at London Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2019 Is the only necessary fashion accessory a moble phone?

Images: Gerald Wilhelm and Sammy Baxter

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THE SCENE From pastels to brights it’s a colourful life on the catwalk at LFW A/W19 Images: Gerald Wilhelm and Sammy Baxter

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GOLDIE LO♥ES

LO♥E RIXO We can’t get enough of their gorgeous frocks, we love their vision and their models are just divine.

Plus anyone that throws a Studio54 themed LFW presentation at The Cafe de Paris is right up our street.

RIXO.co.uk

♥

LO♥E CLERKENWELL VINTAGE The best place to go for pieces from little known-brands to pre-loved designer labels such as Chanel, Dior, Biba, and Vivienne Westwood. Keep an eye out for the next event at Freemasons Hall. clerkenwellvintagefashionfair. co.uk

♥

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LO♥E JUDITH BLACKLOCK The Judith Blacklock Flower School: Judith has been teaching at her school in Knightsbridge for 30 years. This is simply the best place to go for classic flower arranging skills and cutting-edge contemporary floristry. Leave with a huge smile and inspiration galore. judithblacklock.com

♥

LO♥E CORNICHWARE The blue original reminds us of the blue skies and white-crested waves of Cornwall but the yellow range has won our hearts. Just imagine having a whole dresser of this?

Shelves full of serotonin! cornishware.co.uk

♥

LO♥E SPICE LONDON nominated for the DRAPERS Independent Footwear retailer of the year (again) SPICE is our favourite place to indulge in a spot of shoesdaytuesday-footwearfantasy. And the best place to buy Chi Mehari shoes. spiceshu.co.uk

♥

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Textile Tales

If every picture tells a story, what story is being told here? We see a beautiful man wearing striking clothes, featuring designs based around African masks but behind the imagery is a world where fabric fashions close friendships.

Sophie Elkan brings the threads to life PICTURES BY FLAVIA CATENA

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I

started working for the designer Bianca Elgar, helping with Marketing and PR, just over a year ago. Bianca was 50 when she launched herself into the fashion world with her luxurious statement pieces; her product was beautiful, her personal charisma and warmth utterly beguiling, but what really attracted me was her ethos. Pinned up in her office is the following statement: “This is a place where we are trying to create something beautiful and unique with a sense of integrity”.

This is a sentence which perfectly sums up the philosophy of her brand: an emphasis on ‘we’ because Bianca, myself, Branwen (our social-media-maven) and Pitia (king of all tech) work closely as a team, with meetings conducted around the kitchen table at Bianca’s home in Oxford. ‘Beautiful’ because each piece is thoughtfully designed and created using the best quality fabrics – mainly silk.

‘Unique’ in that, for Bianca, “my designs have depth and the print is just the starting point.

Each is inspired by relationships, friendships and shared experience; all with their own character and meaning”. Finally, integrity: the brand’s tagline, Created in Britain reflects a deeply-held admiration for the UK’s heritage in manufacturing and craftsmanship.

Bianca has travelled from Margate to Edinburgh, seeking out other small, independent companies with whom to collaborate on producing luxury fashion and – more recently - lifestyle pieces. The garments pictured here form part of her Out of Africa

collection, based around prints inspired by spending time in Marrakesh. “I was fascinated by the many representations of masks, shields and beads. To me, these symbolise both protection and defence and it made me think about how we wear a variety of masks throughout our lives and also how a mask can offer a safe space to develop yourself and try out new things. Now I have reached a certain stage of life I am surer of myself, and my work is a huge part of that. I have been a daughter, a wife and a mother and now I’m following my dream of designing and creating.”

That sense of integrity also extends to a desire to give back and supporting charities has been part and parcel of the business since its inception. This year Bianca is working with the Sickle Cell Society, donating 10 percent from online sales of the Out of Africa collection to raise funds and awareness for their work. Sickle Cell affects around 15,000 people in the UK alone, predominantly those from black African and black Caribbean backgrounds.

And so to the man in these pictures, Lance Lowe. A born and bred Brummie with Caribbean heritage, Lance has the accolade of being only the second black hair stylist to train with Vidal Sassoon, back in the 1970s (the first being the legendary Aitch Peters).

His subsequent career has been immersed in fashion and design: a dancer, a teacher, a stylist, an entrepreneur, now a sexagenarian and still taking on new challenges. You can find him on Instagram at @undergroundhairdresser (so GOLDIE magazine | 103

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called because he’s been at the heart of British sub-culture since the 70s). I’d encourage you to follow his feed for amazing precision cutting, a passion for natural afro hair, his own personal style and his dynamic dance moves.

Lance has been cutting my hair for almost ten years from his private salon in Notting Hill. As soon as I started working with Bianca I knew she’d get on with Lance - they shared a sensibility around art and creativity and design. The idea of collaborating on a shoot using the Men prints from the Out of Africa collection and creating some beautiful images to promote the charity association was the perfect project. These pictures signify another team effort: Bianca’s regular photographer Flavia Catena behind the camera and all of us in the studio working on the styling. Lance is dancing because – in his words – he still can.

“I don’t need to conform and that’s why I’m still dancing in my 60s. I’m a 63-year old black man with white, natural hair. Back in the day, the dominant culture wanted everyone to look alike and now this is being discarded. Society is more open, more inclusive. Discard the mask, it’s a burden which people put on you.”

Both Bianca and Lance are filled with energy and optimism and as Bianca puts it, “One of the most important lessons we learn at a later age is that we need other people. Our combined years of wisdom and experience can come together to create something special. We can’t always do things alone and working collaboratively is how you make things happen.” n All items shown are available to buy online at www.biancaelgar.com For more information on Sickle Cell, visit www.sicklecellsociety.org 104 | GOLDIE magazine

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THE POWDER ROOM

CBD oil for menopause-madness?

Rebecca Weef Smith gives it go

W

e all know the story.

Every woman is born with a set amount of eggs, oestrogen levels rise approximately once a month when an egg matures, and eventually, the eggs are all expended.

Then the monthly oestrogen elevation stops and menopause eventually becomes a reality. Anyone who has lived through this story, however, can tell you that the experience may not be so simple! The changes can be frustrating, overwhelming and, for me at least, often feel like permanent PMT. Although that could also be the result of starting a magazine!

memory loss or even osteoporosis, CBD could help as using CBD assists our ECS to maintain balance in both the body and mind. Cannabinoid compounds can work together with serotonin receptors much like traditional anti-depressants, effectively reducing stress and anxiety. The ECS is a key factor in sleep stability and treatments addressing this system can alleviate sleep disturbances. When the ECS is running smoothly, there is a reduction in pain and inflammation, meaning that achy joints can be considerably improved.

There are endocannabinoid receptors in the brain as well, allowing for a natural treatment to create a potent neuroprotective effect which helps Awaken oil $48.00 prevent memory loss. To top it off, this online from vital mood booster and pain reliever Foriawellness.com can also help increase bone density!

So what can we do to Why is this not being suggested CBD GURU 10% more often? help ourselves?

For the sake of science I have now spent 10 ml size £44.99 Once I had the facts I was keen three weeks without any CBD oil and many One of the many products online from I have tried in the last year to sample some CBD oil to test of the annoyances – sleep disturbance, CBD-guru-co.uk is CBD oil drops, they are the results. I tried three products irritability, moodiness and leg cramps – have easy to use, can assist with a long list ranging in accessibility and price. All three returned. I have ordered a bottle of the CBD of symptoms and apparently begin had some level of success in reducing my Guru oil and can’t wait to get back to the level working with your first dose. anxiety levels; I felt less reactive to other of calmness I was feeling when I added it to I’m no expert but I did do my homework, people pissing me off and generally less my daily routine. Would that brand be my I wanted to know how CBD worked stressed. I was also in the early stages of first choice? No, it would be Foria Basics before I committed to trying it. CBD is an quitting alcohol when I was trying Foria which is much more costly in the UK as it organic compound that occurs naturally Basics oil, subsequently, I was quite is imported and (for the price) CBD Guru in cannabis hemp, but it doesn’t create jittery in the evenings when I would does the job. I really didn’t like the strong a mental buzz. Which was good news usually have a glass of wine; the taste of the Holland and Barratt Jacob for me as the last thing I needed were oil drops instantly took the edge Hooy oil so I kept forgetting to take it flashbacks to being stoned – I was a of my wine cravings. I have had and therefore it wasn’t as effective. really bad weed-smoker, I have no disturbed sleep for over a year, Clearly, this brand had no impact on desire to experience any of that ever waking up at 3 am and tossing my short term memory but then neither again thanks very much! and turning, only dropping did the other two! Bone density can’t The “cannabinoid” compound back to sleep shortly before the be measured in your own bedroom so interacts intimately with the alarm was due to go off, I took I have no idea if that improved in the endocannabinoid system (ECS), a two drops of CBD oil before course of my experiment. network of receptors and signalling bed and slept through the night And talking of bedrooms, Foria compounds located in virtually every this was the same with all three did send me another CBD product tissue of the human body. It just so brands. to try which claims to alleviate Jacob Hooy 5% Foria Basics 30ml happens that the proper functioning I have also had another common menopause 10ml size £22.49 size $98.00 of the ECS helps to balance the problems with foot and issue: sex after menopause can be from Holland online from hormonal system. Beyond helping leg cramps which were quite different. Awaken oil is an and Barrett Foriawellness.com to restore order to the endocrine, becoming increasingly intimate massage oil to ‘enhance or hormonal, network, feeding the ECS via annoying and painful. On one tactile sensation and pleasure natural oils directly addresses the hallmark occasion I was out in the evening and the whilst decreasing tension, discomfort and symptoms of menopause. Are you keeping pain in my foot was making me want to cry; dryness’. I’m not going into personal details up? two minutes after remembering to take a few but if this product were available in the UK So if your symptoms are anxiety and drops of the CBD Guru oil, which I had in my I would certainly stock up and keep it next to stress, sleep disruptions, joint pain, bag, the pain was gone. the bed. ¢

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CUTTIN’ EDGE

If the suit fits...

Sartorial advice from Rohan Spencer

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t was Hardy Amies who said “A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care and then forgotten all about them.”

The way in which one dresses can certainly factor into the reactions of others and a welltailored suit can do nothing more than put a gentleman in the highest standing wherever he may be! A bespoke suit can be an expensive business indeed and yet, men continue to invest into the experience as opposed to off-the-shelf products.

Fuelling this trend and adding to the overall experience are the technological advances that some tailors are incorporating into their services, allowing clients to explore new frontiers in their wardrobe choices!

Fashion is dictated, style however is chosen by the client as they are invited to select from a wide range of fabrics and style choices and guided through, what to some can be an overwhelming task, choosing that perfect fabric, suit and style, tailored to your body’s perfection.

Within the initial consultation, trendy tailors can now illustrate various looks and styles through the use of computer software, allowing clients to see what the finished product will look like. This is most advantageous in striking a balance between client choice and professional advice.

Whatever the statement one wishes to convey, there are wide selections of cloth, fabric and style choices to suit and speaking of which, the one constant feature is a matching jacket, trousers and the optional waistcoat for that extra head-turning effect!

Some men want a bespoke suit because they appreciate the experience, the benefits and the kudos that it brings and ironically, running parallel are those who desire a bespoke suit out of necessity Many of them work in fields that promote relaxed dress codes like marketing or tech fields so no need for too many suits there unless of course, a special occasion calls for it!

Your typical business man will always be looking for a smart suit or sports coat or the guy who’s getting married may want a suit for the big day; that he can also wear for future occasions.

What connects all made to measure clients though, and perhaps where a holistic wellbeing environment enables them to stand out from the rest, is that all these men live within a variety of body shapes and sizes!

“Men are body-conscious too! So, to hear them say things like, “I’m slightly odd shaped”, or “I have a big bum”; or “my belly is too big” is not uncommon and not too far off of some of the self-assessments I hear when they explain why they have issues fitting into suits bought off-the-peg!

Added to the measuring of the client, is the consideration around the client’s figurations e.g prominent seat (big arse), sway back, prominent thighs etc which will ensure that the suit fits the client to perfection. No creases or wrinkles cause by ones dropped shoulder or full chest!

The hook for a made to measure suit also lies within the combinations of a suit in which one can play with anatomy of the individual garments allowing for customisations with the (Jacket) lapel - peak or notch; the button or rose hole with varying shapes and colours; the construction; the cuff - working cuff or sham cuff; and the style of pockets and the internal lining.

For slacks, there are many fits and styles including customisations with belt loops or brace buttons, turn-ups or unfinished bottoms and then there are the considerations of a person’s shape and stance to ensure the sleek look of the garment against the wearer.

In regards to styles of suit and fabrics - for a formal affair a gentleman may wish to formalise his jacket lapel with a black silk or satin. The classic pin stripe considered the uniform of bankers is fit for purpose in a navy blue or grey wool with wide peak lapels. The Glen plaid or Glenurquhart check (often mistaken for the Prince of Wales check) is usually made of black/grey and white with two dark and two light stripes alternate with four dark and four light stripes which creates a crossing pattern of irregular checks.

The made to measure experience in its current form is a sophisticated pick-n-mix conducted by an abled and experienced tailor guiding the client on a voyage of made to measure ecstasy!

The result, a welcomed modern take on a classic and well-respected discipline that caters for men from all walks of life!

Therefore, at an initial consultation, there needs to be an environment where the gentleman feels at ease enough to express himself. They should be welcomed and support the views of wives, partners, in-laws (in the case of wedding parties) and always value their contributions on the journey to the final outcome.

Today’s made to measure experience allows men to enjoy an old-styled classic tailoring experience blended with a more modern sophisticated and innovative approach.

This is not a visit to the doctors.

“What a fine man hath your tailor made you!”

Philip Massinger, playwright. ¢ Smoddysharp of London, 33 Dartmouth Road, SE23 3HN smoddysharp.com GOLDIE magazine | 109

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“Age is no barrier to looking fabulous”

Rebecca Weef Smith talks to Look Fabulous Forever founder Tricia Cusden about why she launched her make-up company

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PHOTOS: SIMON SONGHURST

n 2013 Tricia Cusden was 65 and semi-retired “I had been going through a challenging time with a crisis in our family but had spent a year with a sense of purpose. I was needed. When the worry was over, of course there was a sense of relief but also a feeling of ‘what now’. I needed a new challenge. I needed a reason to get up in the morning. I had some savings and thought I’d see if I could create a totally different kind of beauty brand aimed specifically at older women and showing them in all their fabulousness.”

Tricia choose to launch a make-up brand because she was struggling to source make-up which actually worked for her. “I was using around nine different brands which I had arrived at through trial and error and wasting a lot of time, effort and money and sensed there would be loads of other women like me who felt the same.”

And it seems there are. Look Fabulous Forever (LFF) has grown at a super-fast rate, making it both a successful make-up brand

and an enviable business model. However I get the feeling that LFF was always more than just about make-up.

Right from the start the brand’s philosophy that “age is no barrier to looking fabulous” was at the core of the business, reflecting Tricia’s viewpoint and permeating both the skincare and make-up, but also the community building that runs alongside the product line. LFF is about encouraging what Tricia calls “a period of renaissance and expansion rather than contraction and winding down. I want to show you how to challenge society’s assumption that getting older means becoming invisible.”

Tricia is every inch a brand ambassador for LFF and a role model for other women: Not only does she put on a ‘good face’ and show us how to make-up in a way that brings out our best but she shares her personal way of being which inspires us to maintain hope for the future. When you chat to Tricia you leave with the idea that opportunities to reinvent yourself, in the way she has done, are available to any of us if we stay open to new ideas.

Tricia doesn’t down play the hard work that it

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takes to build a successful brand but she does make the case that it’s accessible if you take a few risks and are willing to try. “Ask yourself, what would you most regret not having done on your deathbed?

“The idea of starting a makeup business was mad. I risked my savings and if it had failed my ego would have been dented but I took a huge leap into the unknown and it’s been the best six years of my life.”

Tricia did have experience in business but not in this business. “It has been a very steep learning curve. And when I had the bright idea of opening a physical shop last year the incline became greater still. I had never run a shop before so, as with many things in my life, I made it up as I went along.”

Tricia is a great example of exercising your brain by stretching yourself and she also (relatively) recently discovered physical exercise and is surprised how much she enjoys working out.

Her attitude to life includes wearing red lipstick, – “I shall tell my daughters to make sure that I am buried wearing our Cherry or Monroe Red lippie,” - driving with the wind in her hair, - “I have a beautiful second hand, six year old Mercedes 350SE and my heart lifts every time I switch on the ignition,” - and dancing, - “I don’t much like the saying ‘age is just a number’ because it feels trite, but I do passionately believe that ‘age is not an excuse’.”

The day I meet Tricia at her shop she looks very much the classic business woman - polished, smart, sophisticated - and yet her refusal to accept the rules of society which tell older women ‘you mustn’t do this and you mustn’t do that’ are a clear sign of a rebellious nature.

Tricia isn’t someone to fade into invisibility: “Tough if you don’t like my red lipstick because I love it and I have earned the right to wear it in a proud spirit of defiance!” n

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Tricia’s book Living the Life More Fabulous is a guide to feeling great, whatever your age Featuring beauty, style, confidence and health it provides advice on how to live an engaged life and keep an active mind. Whether you are looking for ideas to update your look, improve your general well-being or take an exciting or much-needed new direction, this book will encourage and empower you to live your life to the full.

Tricia’s favourite LFF product is Smooth Like Silk Face Prime because…

It is an amazing product. It makes everything you put on top – foundation, concealer, highlighter and blusher look better and holds everything in place from early morning to late at night. It fills open pores and fine lines (with the help of aloe vera and silica) to leave your skin soft, matte and fresh. If you’ve never used a primer before you’ll marvel at the difference. n Smooth Like Silk Face Prime £24.00. lookfabulousforever.com GOLDIE magazine | 113

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SILVER PSYCHOLOGIST Dr Louise Pendry is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Exeter. Over the past 25 years, she has published articles focusing on online communities, stereotyping and prejudice.

Louise is on a mission to embrace age and to get the word out that growing older is more than OK.

It’s not enough to age gracefully, says Louise Pendry, who is on a mission to love exercise in her 50s. But building new habits takes commitment and self-awareness and it really does start with the first step

M

e, write a feature extolling the virtues of exercise? Even just a couple of years ago I’d have found it unlikely.

The odd country walk and sporadic exercise class aside, I’ve spent a goodly chunk of my adult life as a happy sloth, relying on my genetic heritage (tall, skinny) as justification for evading the gym. I’ve closed my ears to warnings about what happens to those of us who do not exercise. Until one day the inconsistency hit me. Here I was, on the one hand embracing growing older while at the same time allowing my body to slide inexorably into irreversible stupor. I may not have needed to lose weight, but my strength, bendiness and cardiovascular abilities were woeful. If I was truly going to embrace this phase, I realised, this body of mine needed work. So I’d like to tell you what I’ve learned this past year or so, informed by what I now know about the psychology of exercise.

Make your exercise habit automatic: Trite though it sounds, there is a lot of psychological research showing that habits need to become almost automatic to take hold.

So how do you do it? My initial solution was simply to prioritise exercise. I put my exercise sessions in my diary first and let other stuff fit in around it rather than vice versa. I am committed to going to the gym several times a week unless I am ill or genuinely unable to do it. My family know this. I know this too.

However, on its own, I soon realised that wasn’t enough. So I coupled this with my secret weapon: Implementation Intentions (IIs). I teach my students about this stuff and yet did not

From sofa sloth to fit feline initially stop to consider how it might help me.

Psychologist heal thyself (not). Essentially, to successfully form an automatic habit, researchers have found that we need to create “When I-I will” type scenarios. In one 2010 study by Professors Sheina Orbell and Bas Verplanken, participants were taught about the value of flossing their teeth. Half were then given this information to help form an II: “You are more likely to carry out your intention to perform dental flossing every day if you make a decision about when and where. Most people perform dental flossing in the bathroom immediately after they brush their teeth at night or after breakfast. Write down where and when you intend to floss your teeth every day for the next four weeks.” Those in the study who did not get the opportunity to form an II, were slower to create automatic habits to floss regularly. Translated into an exercise regime, my II goes something like this: “When I have finished making supper on Mondays I will get my gym kit on and go to my 6pm Total Tone class.” Sounds simple, absurdly so, but IIs have been shown to be super helpful across a range of health behaviours. This is good news!

Simply specify when, where and how you are going to initiate something, and chances are you are more likely to follow through with it (yes, even the things you aren’t keen on).

Because over time IIs help make a behaviour automatic, the act of getting ready is now triggered by features in my environment, rather than my intention or willpower. My kit is laid out, my trainers are by the back door, my drinks bottle and gym card live by the kettle in the kitchen (I might need to develop other habits to do with tidying, but let’s stick with exercise for now). So rain or shine, I don my kit and go. I don’t question if I feel like it, I don’t always relish it beforehand, I don’t always love every moment I’m there, but I do

it regardless and afterwards I am always glad I did. Over time, the habit has finally bedded in.

Miss a session? No problem Even though I timed my gym membership with a quieter phase of year, stuff still happens that occasionally makes it hard to stick to my routine. Research by Dr Phillippa Lally and colleagues found that missing the odd session was fine, whether you were just starting out or well into a routine. It’s easy to conclude you’ve fallen off the exercise wagon and think “I’m never going to be able to do this”. Ban such defeatist talk! Just get back to it when you can.

Check out online support Once I started posting about my gym exploits, my hashtags #workingout and #exercisemotivation introduced me to other gym enthusiasts. Many are further along the fitness trail than me, but I’ve been struck

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DOM PENDRY

by how supportive and motivational the community is, especially for us newbies.

Don’t go compare Very important this, especially at first. I initially found entering the gym scary and felt inadequate. Everyone else knew what they were doing. I was clueless and feeble. Where others were effortlessly crunching, squatting and lunging, I was groaning, creaking and occasionally falling over. Two things I now know to be true: things do get better, and those “experts” are usually super helpful and friendly.

Keep trying different things I have focused on the gym because it’s what I like. There is no point forcing yourself to do an activity you don’t enjoy. I don’t like all gym classes. My very first class was spinning.

Cycling fast to pounding music. Damn near

killed me and my motivation. Many of my friends enjoy running. I hate it. It’s no excuse.

Whether you work out at home or at the gym, or hike or cycle or swim or play a team sport, it should be something that you can (mostly) enjoy. Experiment, move out of your comfort zone. Turns out I’m a demon in the minitrampoline class called Boogie Bounce. Love it! You just never know.

Train with a friend When I first started, my daughter was on her gap year and we both joined the gym. It helped to go with her and I felt bereft once uni beckoned. Now I have a new friend, and we do several classes together. It acts as a safeguard, we motivate each other.

Notice and celebrate small changes It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. I admit I naively thought I’d be Superwoman within

a few months. The truth is it will be a while before I’m breaking boulders with my bare hands. But I’ve noticed many more modest improvements. I can run up several flights of stairs without feeling I’m going to keel over. I have more energy for family life. I can keep up in classes where once I felt at risk of collapse. My embryonic biceps, quads, glutes and six-pack are slowly materialising. And it’s not only the physical changes. My mood is more stable and I’m just more content. That discovery has been the (sugar-free) icing on my (healthy) fitness cake.

Just do it!

On Instagram, I’m forever seeing these motivating (but irritating) memes: “You get out what you put in”, “What are you waiting for?” and so on. I’ve realised, that like most platitudes, there is (sadly) some truth in them.

If you want to see results, you have to put in the time.

OK, so I am a fitness work-in-progress.

I may have finally left the sloth behind me, but I am not yet a cheetah (maybe a middleaged cat, with an ability to scamper, climb a garden fence and catch the odd mouse, while still enjoying a cosy snooze by the fire occasionally). But make no mistake, I am determined to embrace life after 50 firing on all physical cylinders. Medical science is clear: exercise is the magic bullet in our “ageing well” armoury. Now I’ve finally got my arse in gear, I intend to stick at it and cartwheel into my 60s and beyond. n Professor Sheina Orbell is from the University of Essex Professor Bas Verplanken is from the University of Bath Dr Phillippa Lally is from University College London GOLDIE magazine | 115

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LIFE LESSONS

A distinctive dilemma Jill White was convinced she had no aptitude for creativity until she needed to reinvent her working wardrobe

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ack in 2013 at the age of 52, I was unexpectedly made redundant. I was devastated as I’d finally got my dream job of Managing Director after years as a Finance Director, I felt I had made it – I had the best job, the best team and I was loving every minute. My plan had been to work for another three to five years, top up my pension, pay off my mortgage and then sail off into happy retirement. But events well and truly knocked me off my pedestal just when I thought all was going to plan.

Once I’d recovered from the shock of being made redundant I thought I’d head back into the corporate world. Yes, I knew it would be tough. Let’s face it, you don’t see many 50-year-olds in the corporate space and even fewer 50-year-old women.

With this in mind, I wanted to pull together a “knock ‘em dead” interview outfit. At home, I have two rooms with wall to wall wardrobes full of clothes. Typically, none of my outfits made me feel the way I wanted to. My goal was for a modern elegant look, perfectly fitting in a fabric that made me feel fabulous. Needless to say, it was a look I just couldn’t find.

I spent a long time Googling “perfectly fitting clothes for women” to see what my options were. The search results were not that helpful – lots of made to measure menswear or Savile Row options, but nothing that appealed to me in terms of style and price point.

As time went on, my Google searched expanded. I started educating myself on the difference between off the peg, made to measure and bespoke clothes. I spoke to tailors, I visited fabric shops and I began to understand what it was I was really looking for. My perfect outfit, which was timeless and elegant, started to take shape.

I did a wardrobe edit and realised I had 5-10 pieces, a tiny fraction of what I owned, that I truly loved. Each

piece was at least 10 years old, but my love for them and the way each item made me feel when I was wearing them remained the same, over all those years. What each of the pieces had in common was that they were simple styles, made in gorgeous fabrics and in styles that really flattered my body shape.

That was my ‘eureka’ moment, if you can call it that.

After two years of research and exploration I launched Distinctively Me, knowing full well that there was a gap in the market for made to measure womenswear.

A few years down the line, I’m often asked what made me decide to start my own business. In truth, I don’t think I ever consciously decided to start my own business. I just came upon the realisation that wearing clothes to suit my shape, made from fabulous fabrics to fit me perfectly, in styles I could wear again and again was where I needed to be. And I knew that other women felt the same. Without even knowing it I’d launched a clothing business!

It felt good and I felt really proud of myself. A women in her mid 50’s breaking into a whole new world! I still remember my art teacher telling a 13 year old me that I was her worst student ever! I had lived my life thinking I was logical not creative and here I was designing a range of clothing that everyone was saying they loved. It was the first time in my whole career - a career which had seen many highs - that I felt truly passionate about what I was doing.

I’m in my mid-fifties and it has taken me a while to become the person I’ve always wanted to be. I always feel so proud when John, the Distinctively Me in-house tailor, tells me that I have as much creative flair as any ‘designer’ he has worked with and that my designs are actually created to complement the female form rather than pander to my ego. And this from a man who has worked with Thierry Mugler. It feels good to take the compliment!

But by far my greatest joy is seeing our customers fall in love with our designs, fabric and service. There is nothing better than seeing our clients transform from women who have real body hang ups and struggle with the shopping experience, to become so confident and happy with their shape and the way they look and feel in their made to measure pieces. Their smiles really do light up the room and make what I’m doing so worthwhile.

So after the disappointment of redundancy, the fear of what I was going to do next, it’s great to know that I have a new plan now. A plan with no timeline on it. A plan that I can see through in a way that feels totally right for me and my clients. Running Distinctively Me doesn’t feel like a job, it feels like the best hobby ever. I want to show women in the UK that there is an alternative to wearing clothes that don’t properly fit. My business is about far more that creating made to measure clothes. It’s about creating a new relationship between women and their clothes. ¢

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LIFE LESSONS

We are family Social media has deepened the links between Chris Campling and his daughter and established a love of music that he was never able to share with his own father

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uring the summer my daughter Grace and her boyfriend went to the Green Man festival in Wales. And I went with them, she with her smartphone and me with my personal computer. I checked out the set list and didn’t recognise most of the bands playing. She did the same and told me she had seen John Cale. Meh. I preferred John Cage and, at a pinch, J. J. Cale.

It didn’t matter. From hundreds of miles away we had made contact and we always had over the years.

I have been with her to lots of festivals without ever getting my feet wet. The Isle of Wight, where the horrible trip across the sea was shared. And, last year, Glastonbury, where she had a job and actually made it on stage, late at night, to sing Rapper’s Delight to 200,000, most of whom were asleep. I saw that on Instagram. And then there was the time she went to Iceland, to see bands playing dance music under the midnight sun.

It all started at Latitude, the safest place for her to go, when she was in her mid-teens and told me - Facebook again - how she had gone out and seen a band that she knew I liked. And she was right. It was Squeeze. So there she was, singing along to a song that was released before she was born. And I was with her. She was so excited. I was too.

Leaving aside the picture she sent of herself, in a tent, with a balloon full of - I don’t know, probably nitrous oxide, although I prefer to think it was helium - these are all happy pictures, of young people enjoying themselves. Via Facebook I know her friends, most of whom I have not met. Some she has had since schooldays, some from university, others from work. She has grown up, and taken me with her.

It was so different when I was young. I loved my parents, but they lived in another world. I had to keep my interest in pop music rock music - quiet. My parents listened to the classics, and opera, and Broadway show tunes.

All the stuff I hated. I told myself that when I grew up and had children, I would grow with them. I remember, during my prog phase, which has lasted nearly 50 years, demanding my father listen to a piece by Yes. I loved Yes and wanted to share it him. I chose Mood for a Day, a baroque guitar solo by Steve Howe

which showed off his instrumental “chops” we called them chops because we were cool, not to mention groovy. It was also serious music, of the kind that couldn’t fail to impress him. He listened to it, all of it, and then looked at my spotty face and said: “Meaningless virtuosity” and left. I was crushed. I never played him my music again.

Years went by and the music went with me. I started writing about it for various magazines.

I’m sure my father didn’t read them but it no longer mattered. I had my friends and I even had fans. It was a small country.

And then I - we - had Grace. And my second childhood began. Luckily, she was even farther into music than I was. She had guitar lessons from the age of seven, piano lessons from when she was 10. She sang like Adele and she had no qualms about singing in public.

Out of all the albums I owned there were only two she also enjoyed. Excitable Boy”by Warren Zevon and Graceland by Paul Simon. The Squeeze era didn’t last long. But Graceland has. One New Year’s Eve I was woken up around midnight by the phone. It was Grace at a party who wanted me to listen to something in the background, besides the noise of people congratulating each other on having made it to a new year. “Listen, Dad,” she said over the noise. “It’s Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes. I asked them to play it for you.”

I choked up. She was thinking of me. Soppy old Dada.

So we go on. I suggest songs and albums to her, via the phone and Facebook, she does the same for me. Through Grace I have learned to listen to - and love - Trembling Bells and Shirley Collins. I’m still working on her with Rory Gallagher and Traffic but... she’ll learn.

Why, only the other day she saw something on YouTube and wondered if I’d heard it. It was Bouree by the immortal Jethro Tull. I mentioned - casually - that I had interviewed Ian Anderson. She was impressed.

YouTube is a great place to find other hidden gems. James Corden doing carpool karaoke with Paul McCartney. I recommended that to her as well. She’d already seen it. And Linda Ronstadt singing Desperado. Poor Linda. A voice for the ages cut off in its prime.

I have the connection I didn’t have with my father. Thanks, above anything, to social media. Kudos, Tim Berners-Lee. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 117

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LIFE LESSONS

Good grief – are you not a grandmother?

During the course of researching Childless Living Lisette Schuitemaker discovered that with grandparenthood comes with complex emotions

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love children, always have, but with none of my own I am only mildly interested in frequent stories and pictures of friends who have become grandmothers. And I didn’t even particularly want children. How much harder it is for women who wanted to be mothers to see their friends aglow when their children are having children.

‘How many grandchildren do you have?’ The question seems so innocent, but not everyone can happily grab their phone and start to show the latest pics of the darling brood of their brood. As many as one in five adults these days have no children. About half of us who are childless chose another way of life than that of parenthood and are happy with the role we play in society and in the lives of children not our own. The other half would have loved to have children, but life decided otherwise.

This impersonal statistic means that roughly one in ten adults we meet in the high street has longed to create a family of their own but did or could not. They might not have met the right partner in time or might have had a medical condition that prevented them from having children. They might have conceived and miscarried. Some needed long years to recover from their own childhood with parents not up to the task and were - or felt - too old for parenthood once they were able to give the love every child has a right to. They might have tried for long years of going to the clinic and have had to come to grips somehow with deep disappointment month after lonely month.

Whatever the cause, many people without children have had to mourn the loss of a life like they had envisioned it, often from quite a young age. This is not a loss one advertises or sends notices around for. Some are able to change tack seemingly easily and find fulfilment in their work or volunteering, hobbies or a keen interest in other people. For more than a few, however, coming to terms with remaining childless is a long and lonely path and the pain of not having been able to create the life they wanted may surface at any given time.

We are many When grandchildren arrive on the scene, a good many of our mothering friends find a whole new occupation in life. They are positively aglow.

We don’t begrudge them the deep joy their grandchildren bring them, but some of us tumble straight back into a pit of grief that we thought we had dealt with. We, too, would have loved to cradle a baby born from one of our own in our arms. We, too, would have been swept off our feet with a child named after us. We, too, would have made time to babysit on a regular basis and get to know this amazing little being from the get-go.

With our friends over the moon, how to bring up the misery of not having grandchildren of our own causes us? Many opt to ‘keep mum’ about the heartbreak that strikes again in this phase of our life, when we hadn’t expected it. We bite back unkind remarks when the conversation turns to grandchildren and then seems to get stuck on the topic. We smile bravely when a tablet with the latest pictures of precious ones is being passed around to everyone but us – and sometimes to us.

We can only hope that we will not burst into tears when at a party an unsuspecting person might ask enthusiastically if we are grandparents and how many we have.

Going back to the statistics, however, we may realize that we are not at all alone in having to deal with feeling we miss out once more on an essential life experience that brings such joy to the hearts of our friends.

We are many more than we tend to think.

A 91-year old friend of my mother’s confessed to me how the arrival of the next generation in the life of her friends had sent her into depression. She had never spoken of her infertility to her friends when they had children and she hadn’t been able to bring it up now they became grandmothers. She hadn’t even spoken much about her grief with her husband as they hadn’t wanted to amplify each other’s pain. I was aghast at her solitary journey.

These days we are more used to sharing our inner life with friends.

We might also choose to share about feelings of jealousy, sadness or anger we unwantedly experience with total strangers on groups on the Internet. To name just a few, the closed Facebook group The Silver Tent which describes itself as ‘a global movement of wild, wonderful women over 50 discovering and sharing our wisdom’, offers a space to post on our predicament and find comfort in the recognition of others. On her site www.nonparents.com Nina Steele invites people to share on all aspects of our life without children through circumstance or choice.

Next Avenue also runs a closed group on Facebook ‘where grown-ups keep growing’ and I am sure there are many other places where we may open-up about how not becoming a grandparent affects us.

Holding space Reminding ourselves that grandparenthood is not all fun and games might also be helpful at times. While interviewing people for my book about Childless Living, more than a few grandmothers spoke to me of not being able to see their grandchildren as often as they would like, as the young parents had moved away or professed to be too busy. When school holidays went by without the young family coming to visit - or inviting them over - they, too, had had to accept that their life wasn’t going to look like they had imagined. A father of three told me about the rift between him and his wife as she had wanted to stay living close to their grandchildren whilst after retirement he had wanted to travel.

Maybe the wisest words come from the youngest person I interviewed.

At age 29, she is unsure whether or not she wants to have children while her partner would love a life just with her. “Maybe we are all somewhat in mourning,” she mused over a cup of tea at my house, “over the life we didn’t choose or didn’t have.” Having lost her mother at a young age she knows the constant companion that grief can be, and how not to be done in by it. I looked at her over the rim of my teacup and realised once more that for those in grief the best we can do is sit and listen. Maybe those of us in non-grandmother mourning can ask our friends to do that for us. Just sit with us, listen to our side of the story, hold space for feelings to come up, tears maybe – and through their kindness bring us back to ours. n

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LIFE LESSONS

Fruitbats & Screwballs.

Where did that come from?

Deborah Wilkinson no longer tries, she does: reinventing herself as a fashion designer was only the start

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hange can be hard but, as I discovered, it can be extremely rewarding. Not only did I have to embrace change, but I had to do it in my late 40’s.

In February 2014 I was unemployed with a little money in the bank from my previous employment, but not a great deal by anyone’s standards, and the notion that hindsight is a wonderful thing. Should I have walked away from my previous employment as a youth worker a long time ago? “YES!” is the first reaction to my own question. But hold on: If I had walked away at that time, maybe I wouldn’t have found myself where I am today. I am 52 years old. Wiser and more confident than I have ever been in my life.

When I look back at my life, most of it has been governed by crippling self-doubt and issues with self-confidence. I have always been the classic over-thinker. I think a lot of adults can identify with this even if they don’t like to admit it, to themselves or anyone else.

So having been forced to start a new life I had to assess my credentials. In 2014 I was in my late 40’s, I only had qualifications in the field of youth work and outdoor education and I had absolutely no desire to see an adult climbing frame ever again!

Come July of the same year I decided to go away to France with the money I had left. My partner and I drove around the country for a couple of months and I learned to meditate in the Pyrenees Mountains. I can recommend it as a life-reset.

We returned in September 2014, and I had to face the stark reality that my money had all but gone and I was still unemployed. What could I possibly do?

My grandmother was a master seamstress in the Jewish-owned tailoring houses of Leeds. She would make her own clothes at home, and I would watch her every move as a young child. She would take me to the cloth houses to choose fabrics. She would show me patterns and how to cut cloth from them, and she would have me sewing for myself. This was in the early seventies, and I was a child. However in early 2014 I was 48 years old with my back against the wall, should I buy a sewing machine and start to sew? I had no formal education, just wonderful memories and

the determination to strike out in a new direction inspired by May Walker, my Grandmother.

Soon I was gaining attention with my designs. People would ask me which fashion school I had attended, and why they haven’t seen me around the scene before (Age?). It was amusing to watch the expression change on the face of respective inquirers when I replied that I had no fashion training.

By 2016 I had been approached by New York Fashion Week to show my new collection there. Even though it was a great honour I decided that my business needed my attention and that despite the accolade NYFW would not be the right move for me.

Around the same time I had seen an advertisement by Gok Wan fashion to apply to show your ‘designs’ at his Brunch Club. Gok approves everything personally, and I was selected to show my clothes line. Since then I have shown twice for Gok Wan and we actually get on well too! His brand manager Suzy Bastone is now helping me as my business/life coach.

Businesses take time. Particularly one that you strike out with on your own, having absolutely no previous experience in! But I love this challenge. I am 52 years old and I am forging ahead with my plans. I have been met with age-discrimination from various elements in the fashion world (some on a regular basis) but this does not deter me; rather it forges my determination to succeed.

With my new-found confidence I enrolled for a radiopresenting course at our local community radio station. So to add to the mix I am training to be radio presenter; how to run a mixing desk, how to put together shows, interview guests etc. and I intend to see it through. I aim to have a show to encourage others to find the magic in themselves. This world seems to be adept at rubbing the shine off many of us as children, and some never recover from that. If I look back 10 years I can no longer see that person in the mirror. I have changed for the better and I am no longer afraid to take on new challenges. All it takes is to start saying, “I can” instead of “I’ll try”.

Who knows where I will find myself in the future. I certainly don’t. I am taking my new-found confidence to do things that excite me; it seems to be working so far! n GOLDIE magazine | 119

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The Anxiety Conversation David Hurst had always drawn on the support of others to find emotional strength, but a relapse led him to stumble upon a particularly life-changing source of wisdom

I

stopped drinking too much 15 years ago, thanks to the support of others through regular self-help groups. But the year before last I suffered a summer of extreme emotional and mental torment because I became complacent and tried to do things on my own and in my own way again. It was the definition of insanity and although I didn’t drink or use any other mood-altering substances, I felt continually anxious and depressed; washed out and beaten up. No one around me knew this; it was all in my mind as I painted on a sad clown’s smile. But for every waking second it felt as if I was walking through the thickest toxic treacle.

With two young children I knew I was letting down, one morning alone in my house I collapsed onto my knees. I didn’t know what else to do. I felt as if I had no strength to continue. With my bleary-eyed face turned to the heavens I literally cried out for help. I screamed at the sky.

Within 24 hours, I ended up back at a selfhelp group. I still didn’t know how I ended up there; it wasn’t a decision I remember making at all. Afterwards a crowd of a dozen people from the group were having coffees in a nearby cafe. I still felt in such a bad way that I didn’t really want to join them. Nevertheless, aware that isolation and disconnection is unhealthy and a big part of the problem, I forced myself to wander in the direction of their cheery voices. There was only one free chair left and I really didn’t want to sit in it as I didn’t know the chap it was next to… but I did anyway.

I got chatting and it turned out the guy was a successful psychotherapist called Wayne Kemp.

I told him about ending up on my knees crying out for help. “Life feels like I’m trying to climb a vertical cliff face made of jagged glass,” I told him. “And I’m still waiting for what I guess was a prayer to be answered.”

“But what are you doing here then?” he replied.

Wayne explained that he’d been precisely where I was – by the end of his drinking he’d been finishing two bottles of vodka a day.

Also addicted to strong prescription drugs,

David Hurst, above, asked Wayne Kemp over 500 questions to form their book

he spent his days out of his head spitting and cursing at the television, and was too anxious and depressed to leave his house. He told me he also had young children back then. I totally related to him in a way that was quite remarkable. As he spoke, he looked directly into my eyes and it was as if he was telling me my own story.

He said that was 30 years since he’d been in that state, and that he knew not only a way out but a manner of living that would transform my life – to ensure the best years of my life were ahead of me. He promised me that and with such a knowing that I had no doubt he was speaking the truth.

Over the next year, in a weekly series of sessions with Wayne, I heard so much that made so much sense; words and actions that Wayne had used in his own personal life and professional working successfully with person after person. His own story was amazing: Wayne had changed within a couple of years from someone who’d had panic attacks and

been too anxious to leave his house to someone who started to travel without worry wherever he wanted. He’d once been too anxious to get on a bus, train or plane. As a result of the principles that he now passes on to help others, he’d not only got back on public transport and been a passenger on planes – he’d learned to fly one alone!

Immediately upon taking Wayne’s suggestions into my life I saw my own astounding transformation: I felt the most relaxed and happiest I’ve ever been, a state of being that continues to grow every day.

He told me that mental health problems get progressively worse; but that recovery from them, if done correctly, can mean life gets progressively better. He explained how when we feel any sort of pain – physical or emotional – it is a message for us to change, to stop doing something or to do something differently.

“The problem is most people don’t think we should feel that way, so they do their best to avoid it, whether through drink, illegal

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Grow old greatly

and prescription drugs, work, sex, gambling – whatever it may be,“ Wayne told me. “But it’s the resistance to this pain that causes the long-term suffering. That’s not fixing it, it’s merely masking it, and that’s as if you went to the doctor with a broken leg and came away with just painkillers but had nothing done to fix the break.

“The mental pain that people feel is intense because it has to be to get your attention. Face it and you can realise what it’s telling you.

What we today term mental illness is actually there for you to thrive from, not just survive or cope with it. It’s urging you towards becoming the person you’re supposed to be, and that’s never someone who’s depressed or drinking too much or someone who’s anxious most of the time.”

Every time I came away from chatting with Wayne I’d be thinking: “Wow! This really needs to be out there to help others who are struggling.” His knowledge and methods for living I could see helping those suffering

from all manner of mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, addictions, alcoholism, bipolar, schizophrenia, OCD and just about everything that causes emotional suffering. Even for people not struggling, it was a great way to live that could only enhance life. It wasn’t based on theory either – it was all entirely experiential. I started passing it on to other people who also saw amazing transformations.

It was only after several months that I woke up one morning and realised: “I’m a writer – that’s how we can share this far and wide!”

So over the summer I asked Wayne more than 500 questions on all aspects of mental health. His answers are transformational and astounding. They are all in our book. There is a solution that really works – Wayne and I, and in fact hundreds of people that Wayne’s helped and that now I’m helping too, are living proof of that. It’s what drives us to let people know this book is here; it’s written for every single person out there. n

David: At the other end of the age scale, how can we deal with ageing?

Wayne: The most important thing with age, first and foremost, is what you are doing in your life.

People frequently eat themselves older, drink themselves older, smoke themselves older, worry themselves older and then they have a lack of exercise in their lives. All these things make you older much quicker.

Exercise is essential for everyone. Find whatever exercise it is that you enjoy. It’s got to be fun. You need to look at your mental, physical and spiritual way of being. Of course we all get older, but you can get older far healthier than you think.

So many people have severe problems when they get older – but you can see why they do from what they eat, what they drink, what they smoke, how little exercise they do and how much they worry about things. So it’s very important to get that side of it right.

The other thing is, you have to find the meaning and purpose for your existence and to realise whatever you do, whatever you believe –whether you’re an atheist or whatever you are – that you’re not here to stay, you’re passing through. The meaning and purpose in your life is all within you.

D: And everyone who has been given the gift of life has a meaning and purpose?

W: Nobody is left out, we all have meaning, we all have purpose, talents and abilities – and once you look inside you’ll find your answers.

Most people’s relationship with the feeling that time is ticking down, is running out, is to find an escape from the sensation, a distraction, to take a drink or a drug or shop, work, eat.

Alternatively, many people just make love to the fear and instead of the pain being seen as a warning it becomes an obsession. So you have to find meaning and purpose to answer the human condition. I believe that’s part of why we are here.

I’ve met quite a few people who say that when you die that’s the end of it, and they do not seem to have any of the same sufferings I have in this world. They don’t have the oversensitivity, they don’t have the dream about meaning and purpose. That just seems to be how they are. They don’t appear to be conscious of any big question.

D: Are too many of us obsessed with time?

W: Human beings are totally obsessed with time, especially in the modern age. Everyone wants to have everything done and dusted by the time they’re 30. And if it’s not done by 30, then it’s going to be done by 35. Then when they get to 40 it becomes 50, and by then if it hasn’t happened they give up.

So do not fall for one of the Lower Power’s time-traps, such as that you better make up for the lost time – or the really big one that is thinking: I’m too old for this and I’m never going to do it now. You’re never too old to develop in life. I’ve read about people who never did any exercise at all who started running marathons in their 50s and 60s.

Then here I am improving my tennis game, improving my linguistic ability, learning more about science than I’ve ever learned before, still growing spiritually, and I’m three-quarters of the way through my life, I think, or maybe two-thirds…

D: I like the realisation that actually this isn’t our time anyway, that we’ve been granted this time… There has to be a meaning and purpose for that.

The Anxiety Conversation

by Wayne Kemp & David Hurst is available from Amazon worldwide GOLDIE magazine | 121

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Making sense of it all: Jules Ritter has far too much time on her hands. What is she going to do now that her children have left home?

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ou never answer my text messages” came the accusation from my daughter, now studying in Boston. With the time difference and her love of late-night texting – and me groggily struggling to find the right emoji – I was beginning to realise that although my last child had flown the nest, the demands were still the same, less frequent but more intense. A flurry of demands then long, empty hours of silence.

I am, at 57, staring down the barrel of my empty nest life. I’d had Boston daughter Alexia late, or at least it was perceived as late back in 2000, at the ripe age of 39. I’d had my first-born, Oliver, in 1990 followed shortly thereafter by Sophie in 1993, then a sevenyear gap. I prolonged the Mummy stage to a whopping 27 at-home years. Some freelance writing, an attempt to start an English online book company – destroyed by the arrival of Amazon – and co-founding and running a non-profit for five years had filled the gaps between the school run and homework, but basically my life was being a Mum full time.

And I loved it.

Now what? On my good days I think that I’m taking a well-deserved break. Last year, getting Alexia through her IB, her SATS and off to America had made for a busy and emotionally exhausting time. A break and reset were well deserved.

On my more-frequent-than-I-like-to-admit bad days, I think I am over-familiar with my Netflix profile and I will never do anything interesting outside the house again. Am I doomed to a life of doting on my husband and two dogs?

What I am to do with the rest of my life?

I feel as if I’ve gone back in time, moping about like a forlorn teenager worrying about the future but with significantly reduced hormonal urges. It’s not an actual job I need

or necessarily want, at least not full time and requiring a commute. It is a feeling that I am valid, that I contribute, that what I say or do matters. I want to feel passionate about something again.

For past generations this question was moot. Life expectancy for a woman in 1970 was 74 years. It is now 84 and rising. Women didn’t expect to live so long after retiring and they certainly didn’t find themselves with an empty nest at 57.

I left home when my mother was a good ten years younger than I am now. She’d returned to work a decade beforehand so that when I left she was comfortably in a happy work-life balance and quite ready to see me, her last child, on my way. Call it over-parenting if you will, but compared with my mother’s role, mine was all-encompassing.

Extracurricular wasn’t even in the lexicon back then. Mum and Dad took very little interest in our out-of-school lives. If I couldn’t get there and back by myself, they wouldn’t be around to pick me up. Standing by a wet and windy sports field was never something they would see a benefit in. It is not a criticism, they were kind, loving parents. In the postwar years they had both left school at 15. By their standards, they thought they were doing enough with my sister and I. Did I do too much? Should I have gone back to work a decade earlier and now be well into a second career? Oliver was an enthusiastic rugby player, playing internationally and competing for his local club. That meant getting him to twice-a-week training plus Saturday matches and a weekly cake to be made for refreshments. Replace the name Oliver with, Sophie, and rugby with ballet and you are getting the picture. Horse riding was Alexia’s passion, so piebald Ronnie became the sixth member of our family. You would not be mistaken in thinking I was a professional driver for 27 years.

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: the empty nest year

Initially, I revelled in not having to get up at 6.30am for the school run, not having to rush home for 4pm and the start of the evening shift of pick-ups and drop-offs while simultaneously feeding three growing bodies.

The first three months I slept a huge amount and travelled to some of the places on my bucket list: Japan and South Africa. For a while there was another trip to look forward to, which distanced me from that nagging question “What am I going to do for the rest of my life?”

It occurred to me recently that I’m on an adult gap year. Putting a name to my state of

“I was a professional driver for 27 years”

limbo flooded me with relief. That’s it. Albeit a little late in life.

Just as young adults go off between school and university to decide what they really want to do with their lives, this is the year I figure it all out. I’m about to make a Yatra (pilgrimage) to India with my Indian yoga teacher. Of course, I’m seriously that unoriginal. But I’m keeping a positive outlook, turning over rocks as I go along and my head towards anything that seems remotely interesting. I hope 2019 will not be my year of Netflix, although that is still a possibility. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 123

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WAYS TO GO

Why shouldn’t your funeral be as individual as you are?

Penny Rutterford recounts her own experiences of last farewells, and talks to people who want to make their own final exit something special ...

he day my dad died, England beat Sweden in the quarter finals of the World Cup. I know that because I spent the day with my family at the care home beside his “deathbed” with the telly on. But, to add insult to injury, dad waited until we’d popped out for some fish and chips before taking his last breath.

However well we might prepare for our own or a loved one’s final passing, it still hurts, surprises and is out of our control.

My father was not young, and he had been living with dementia for many years; but even when in possession of all his mental faculties, he wouldn’t talk about dying. Just once he remarked that he’d like to be buried with the family dog at the bottom of the garden. But my parents moved and I guess that it would not just be illegal but impolite to bury one’s father in a stranger’s vegetable patch. So it was my mother who took the initiative to arrange plans for both of their funerals.

And what a relief that turned out to be. One might assume that a care home for the elderly would guide you in the event of the death of your loved one, but no. It was the Age UK helpline that talked us through what had to be done.

GOING OUT IN STYLE

My dad’s funeral was the second of four family funerals in as many months last year.

Each one included a religious service, which somehow seemed fitting for that generation.

Though they were not especially religious, the format was familiar but with more modern add-ons. We entered the church for my father’s funeral to Rod Stewart’s recording of “These Foolish Things” and dad’s coffin left for the committal to “Blue Moon” – a kind of mixture of hymn and swing.

I and my friends are now of an age where not only do we have to face the reality of the death of our parents, but also our own mortality. Organising family funerals might help us better understand how we might want our own passing to be marked. I know women who from a young age had extensive plans for their weddings, yet were unlikely to have similar dreams about their funerals. But wouldn’t it be reassuring to know that we left this world in style – in a horse-drawn hearse or

by Harley-Davidson?

According to Sun Life’s 2018 “Cost of Dying Report”, organising a funeral prompted 61% of people to start thinking about their own plans. However, of those, only 21% had actually done anything to prepare.

Procrastinate for too long and you might be dead too soon.

The report also found that “64% of funeral directors say they’ve seen a drop in the number of traditional religious funerals they organise.

Attitudes to funerals appear to be changing.

And eight in ten funeral directors say they’ve noticed a marked difference in the tone of funeral services – which they describe as a ‘celebration of life’ rather than mourning.”

My own family’s recent experience of funerals fitting some of the classic norms of the Western or so-called “Church of England” model led me to speak to some who are considering – or have put in place – alternatives.

PLANNING FOR A HAPPY ENDING

Martin Adams is planning his own funeral and says, “I’m 72 and I’m not very well. I know the condition I’ve got has a ten-year life expectancy. And that’s for younger people. I don’t want to leave problems for other people.

As part of my will I have put in a slip of paper detailing the funeral arrangements that I would like.“I don’t want it to be miserable. I don’t want there to be a service. By no service, I mean not going to a funeral home or having it in the crematorium. I don’t want people to have to trudge all the way out to the crematorium and then find the nearest pub which has got no connection to me.

“I’d like my funeral in my favourite pub.

I’d have some money behind the bar. And I’ve seen a lovely motorbike hearse. I could roll down the road to everybody cheering and waving.

“As my coffin is being carried out the door, we can have the song that I will have recorded.

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Coop funreal services may not be as traditional as you expect

THE WOODLAND FUNERAL

So far I can’t work out which one. I thought of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”, but then I heard it’s the most popular song played at funerals, so it’s become a bit of a cliché.”

A LIVING WAKE

Anna Alcock’s cancer diagnosis had given her pause for thought about her own legacy. And legacy was at the heart of her father’s wishes when, given just months to live, he chose to have a living wake in South Africa. Family and loved ones were invited to a “rocking, rolling, rollicking good time” at a party to celebrate his life as well as the lives of his wider family, friends and colleagues who had made his life so rich. Anna describes her father as Zulu in his beliefs, with ancestors and descendants at its core.

“Dad didn’t want people crying over him when he was dead. He wanted people crying when he was alive! He wanted to feel good and know how he had touched people. So he sat on a chair and people told stories. I guess it was bearing witness to someone’s life.”

Anna smoked grass for the first time at her father’s wake. “My dad said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to die’ and he liked how we went out and he scored some weed. He had the biggest smile. My dad, one of his close friends and I smoked grass together. That day I think he had his happy moments, he never liked crowds, he liked people telling stories and laughing with him.”

When Paul Lindt wrote his own will, a chance discussion with his parents revealed that they had all opted for a woodland burial. When his mother died earlier this year, it meant that he knew her wishes.

“My mum adored nature. Family holidays had almost always been camping, and my parents’ favourite escapes in their later years were staying in their motorhome in the New Forest. If we could have buried her in the New Forest, we would.

“The celebrant visited and chatted to us about mum’s life. We all ended up laughing a lot about how my family is quite unusual and eccentric. He was brilliant, very gentle.

The day of the funeral was blustery. At the graveside for the committal, we were all swept by the wind. Being in such direct contact with the elements felt right. We felt alive, if that makes sense. My mum’s niece read a poem, ‘The Way Through The Woods’, a ghost story about nature overrunning a track once used by man.

“I like the idea of returning to the earth.

Mum always preferred bare feet to shoes, indoors and out, the ground beneath her feet. It was such a beautiful place for mum to be and I love the idea that those infant trees we saw will grow and grow and promise a continuity in life in all its forms.”

A HUMANIST APPROACH

Nick Craig chose to become a humanist celebrant after attending two funerals for friends. “One was religious, the other humanist – I was left with very strong feelings about both,” he says. “I was very upset by the religious service which seemed to gloss over her life. It was like nothing she had done mattered to anyone, and the service just felt ‘mechanical’ with no thought or love put into the content or delivery.

“The humanist service was entirely different – full of warmth, love and humour.

I was swept along in the story of his life, relationships, adventures and challenges. It was moving in a way I had never experienced before. The humanist approach also matched my own, and I feel could be summed up in a way that was so simple and elegant: ‘All we have and all we need is each other.’ It was a message that I felt really resonated with me.

HOW MUCH?

F

unerals are expensive. A recent news story told of a woman who turned to crowdfunding to meet her partner’s funeral bill. According to Sun Life’s “Cost of Dying Report” the average cost of a burial is £4,798 compared with £3,744 for a cremation. And the postcode lottery that might have impacted on your care towards the end of your life is just as harsh for your funeral. If you die in London, the average funeral cost is £5,880. And that’s without any “trimmings”.

Direct cremations hit the news when David Bowie chose to have one. It’s one way to keep costs in check. Sun Life says, “A direct cremation is a cremation at its simplest, with no funeral service. The body goes straight to the crematorium to be cremated – usually in a plain coffin.

There’s no need for hearses and limos, no embalming, no officiant’s fees and no extras like flowers and orders of service to pay for. After the cremation, the remains are returned to the loved ones, to be kept or scattered according to their wishes.

“A simple, dignified send-off like this is particularly appealing to people who don’t feel the need for a formal, ceremonial funeral service – preferring instead to hold an alternative farewell ceremony, celebration of life or memorial service at a later date. It also appeals to people who simply can’t afford a traditional funeral service and all the trappings that go with them. And when someone has died abroad, a direct cremation can save the considerable cost of transporting the body home.”

Further information If you have any questions about planning for your funeral or that of a loved one, Age UK’s Factsheet “Planning for Your Funeral” is a step-by-step guide.

It covers everything from setting a budget for your send-off to donating your body to medical research.

“As a humanist celebrant I take time to meet the family and get to know the deceased.

In some instances, we also get to know and understand someone who is still alive but planning their own funeral. They will share the story of their lives with us – who they loved, what made them laugh, who they influenced. They will suggest and discuss music that they might want to play, or poems and songs to include in the service.

“One mourner once said to me, ‘I arrived today a wife and left a widow’ – which stresses the importance and gravitas of the event and really focuses my mind to create and deliver the perfect celebration and reflection of the person’s life.” n Nick Craig is an accredited humanist celebrant; 07540 469858; Nick Craig – Humanist Funeral Celebrant GOLDIE magazine | 125

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3

GREEN PLANET

The

I

t’s official, I’ve turned into an environmentalist nerd. I blame Lucy Siegle, of The One Show fame, for this mid-life (I use the term loosely) crisis-of-earth consciousness, having just finished reading her excellent book Turning The Tide On Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again.

Lucy has long campaigned against the plastic shrink-wrapped coconut and the many other crazy ways in which our society consumes mountains of unnecessary plastic.

Long may she continue.

Until recently I’d thought of myself as one of the good guys when it comes to plastic. I took on board the recycling mantra, dutifully washing our plastic milk cartons and fast-food trays and haranguing the rest of the household if I so much as glimpsed an unwashed yoghurt pot. All hell would break out if I caught sight of a black plastic food tray that had crept into the recycling box.

Yes, I had read and re-read Chester Council’s guide to recycling. I prided myself on knowing what could and couldn’t be recycled. I was on a mission to make sure all our recyclable plastic made its way to the recycling centre and was then duly re-cycled into . . . well, into something I’m sure.

Plastic gets recycled, gets re-formed into “new” plastic, and we go around the loop again . . . isn’t that what happens? Yes, it must be . . . recycle, recycle, recycle, that’s what we’re told and so it must be what happens.

Well, no, it turns out it isn’t that simple.

Rs of domestic plastic

Most of the recyclable plastic isn’t actually recycled in this country, if at all. We don’t have enough recycling facilities, and that’s down to the cost-effectiveness of recycling.

It’s often cheaper to use new plastic rather than recycled. So, we’ve been shipping most of our plastic recycling problem overseas, initially to China, until early last year it called a halt to it. Now our plastic seeks new “recyclable” homes in countries that are happy to take it, but where there is likely to be a lack of recycling infrastructure to deal with it. Still,

out of sight, out of mind.

And to cap it all, of the eight billion-plus tonnes of plastic us human beings have produced since industrial-scale production really got going in the 1950s, by 2015 only 9 percent had been recycled, with 12 percent incinerated. The remaining 79 percent has accumulated in landfills or the wider environment. Yes, nearly all the plastic we’ve ever produced is still with us! I told you I’d turned into a plastic nerd.

But who cares? So long as we can content ourselves knowing that we’re putting the right plastic into the right bin then what’s to

Or is that the eight Rs? Martin Preston on his, and his city’s, efforts to control the use of singleuse plastics

worry about? Fortunately, a growing number of people do care and we decided we’d better join them if we’re not to leave our children and grandchildren to clean up the planet after we’ve gone. And so, we went back to basics and back to school.

Back in my day at school, we learnt the three Rs: reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. If we were ever to get a grip on our domestic plastic, we had to adopt a different set of three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Or was it five Rs? Refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle. Hmm, not as easy as I thought this back-to-basics stuff. And Lucy adds in another three, eight Rs in total (I’ll leave you to go out and buy her book if you want to find out about these). But whatever the number of Rs, it was clear to me that recycle was always last in the plastic-free pecking order, so arguably we’d been tackling the plastic symptoms rather than the plastic disease.

Refuse plastic, we said, that’s where we’ll start, coffee cups and plastic bottles. A really horribly big number, of papery coffee cups get thrown into bins every minute of every day. As do an equally horribly big number of plastic water bottles. Believe me, these are “filling the Albert Hall” mind-bogglingly big numbers.

Coffee shops are taking over our high streets, and we like nothing better than to stroll round our towns and cities armed with a paper coffee cup, complete with plastic lid.

A recyclable paper cup, surely? I for one had been faithfully bringing these home after u

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GREEN PLANET

“All hell would break out at the sight of an unwashed yoghurt pot”

u

every coffee “fix”, giving them a rinse and popping them into the paper recycling box, job done. Alas, it turns out they aren’t recyclable after all, they’re lined with plastic. It should have been obvious, otherwise how does the precious liquid stop from soaking into the cup, doh!

So out with the single-use coffee cup and in with the reusable coffee cup. And in with a new habit, of making sure that each time we venture into town we go armed with our reusable coffee cups. If you’ve not yet adopted one of these splendid little vessels, then I urge you to get on board. Many coffee shops now offer a discount to anyone bringing his or her own cup. There is something immensely satisfying at drinking from your reusable cup knowing that you’ve saved the life of one single-use cup that would otherwise have ended up in landfill or some similar environmental fate. Give it a go.

It’s that word “single-use”. Collins Dictionary, which knows a thing or two about words, named this the word of the year for 2018. Is it one word? Or two? Who cares, it made a big splash last year, as more and more of us latched on to the problem of products, often made of plastic, that get thrown away after being used just once.

W

hich takes me back to that plastic water bottle I mentioned. What is it with this obsession we seem to have for posh water? In this country tap water is fine. Be proud to ask for it in a restaurant and carry a refillable bottle with you, that’s what I say. This was one of the first of our “say no to plastic” purchases, a shiny turquoise metal water bottle, which

keeps our aqua pura wonderfully cool on a hot summer’s day.

It’s encouraging to see that supermarkets are slowly, but surely, starting to recognise that many of their customers don’t want their plastic. These days I find myself getting increasingly angry when I walk down the supermarket aisles, confronted as I am with shrink-wrapped cucumbers, hermetically sealed tomatoes in their plastic trays of delight and shelf upon shelf of single-use plastic.

In an act of rebellion, we grab our loose veg and pile these defiantly on to the check-out conveyor belt, with only the occasional paper mushroom bag for protection (why is it that mushrooms are the only veg allowed to have a paper bag?).

So far so good, though I must admit that committing to a plastic-free diet is no easy thing, not least due to all the microplastics in the food chain. This has infiltrated itself into every aspect of my life it seems, and as I sit writing this article, I’m already feeling ethically upset from using a plastic-infiltrated teabag to make my mid-morning cuppa.

Still, we’re up for the challenge, armed with only our reusable coffee cups, refillable soap bottles and bamboo socks, we’re ridding Chester and the beautiful Cheshire countryside of plastic waste, one crisp packet at a time (yes, we’ve found a company that will recycle crisp packets). We’re in good company, last year our city was awarded Plastic-Free Community status by Surfers Against Sewage, the marine conservation charity, in recognition of the work that has been done to start reducing the impact of single-use plastic on the environment.

Onwards and upwards. ¢

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HOROSCOPE

Jennifer Angel

^ ARIES

d LIBRA

Nothing stays the same, but planetary challenges and opportunities over this period can set you on the right path. Step back, take a big breath and let life take its course. Positive money news is in the stars. And with love, be patient and positive.

Nothing is set in stone and changes can take place now, so expect the unexpected. Life challenges can be unsettling but move you to a better place – take one day at a time. With love, discard your baggage once and for all, and live with an open heart and mind.

MARCH 21-APRIL 19

_ TAURUS APRIL 20-MAY 20

Don’t doubt your inner judgment, experience should tell you that if it feels right then it is - trust your intuition. Moon energy is a sign that you can get cozier with your partner. To attract love, prepare to expose your inner emotions and feel vulnerable.

` GEMINI MAY 21-JUNE 20

The energy is positive and powerful, and your life can take a turn for the better. If a personal situation confronts you, don’t tip toe around someone, it’s time to speak your mind! You can step up and look after others now, but not at your own expense.

a CANCER JUNE 21-JULY 22

SEPTEMBER 23-OCTOBER 22

e SCORPIO

OCTOBER 23-NOVEMBER 21

Love can sustain you, but romance is the sugar on top. Be realistic about life but also a little idealistic. You can walk on cloud nine and still have one foot on the ground. With money, get ready to negotiate your way into a better deal for yourself.

f SAGITTARIUS NOVEMBER 22-DECEMBER 21

Abundant Jupiter opens a door to reassess your life and make a commitment to change. Your day-to-day schedule can suddenly alter; be open to what comes next. A cosmic connection heads your way so be careful not to play it too safe with love.

g CAPRICORN

Life challenges you to be your best self! Whether personal or professional, your dreams may be different than what they were years ago, but you still have them. Friends are important and step forward to support and nurture - don’t be too proud to accept help.

Something fabulous is happening! As Moon energy influences your home, work, money areas of life, your luck changes. It’s important to let go of your safety-net to embrace a new reality.

With love, an unusual arrangement can take you by surprise.

b LEO

h AQUARIUS

Your creativity motivates you to follow your truth, the path of your heart. When you feel inspired and ambitious, doors open!

Take a step forward and move out of your comfort zone with love to see how you really feel about a person or situation.

No matter what age you are, Aquarius, the first step to success is to wholeheartedly believe in yourself. You can excel at whatever you want to do, so don’t allow anyone to tell you otherwise. But it is up to you to formulate a plan and put it into action.

JULY 23-AUGUST 22

c VIRGO

AUGUST 23-SEPTEMBER 22

Nothing stays the same for long. Life is a continuous process of change. The smallest alterations you make today could affect your tomorrow. The combined energy of planet Mercury retrograde in the sign before yours can spark change, even if it is just with your attitude.

DECEMBER 22-JANUARY 19

Jan 20-Feb 18)

i PISCES

FEBRUARY 19-MARCH 20

It’s important to be passionate about life. But be real with love; it’s wise for relationship longevity to see and accept someone for who they are - their irresistible and irritating traits.

Your life and luck can change now, and as a result, more cash heads your way.

Are you missing out on a life you don’t know about?

Jennifer Angel, New York’s most well-known astrologer, is offering personal readings for Goldie readers via Skype at a discount of 25%. Her readings provide insight and guidance on any issues or concerns you may have. There are different types of readings to choose from at JenniferAngel.com - insert the code GOLDIE at the checkout for your 25% discount.

GOLDIE magazine | 129

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GETTING ON

T H I S TOO Sue Plumtree knows the lessons will keep coming as inevitably as the printer will keep jamming So here I am – again I’m struggling with something techie. Why is it always happening to me!?! This time I’m trying to sort out my brand new printer and tearing my hair out in the process.

Surely I can follow the instructions in the manual! That’s when this quote came to me. ‘This too shall pass’.

I know from personal experience many times over that, even though it doesn’t feel so at the time, bad times usually do pass even if, sometimes, it feels like it’s taking forever. Of course, I knew that, sooner or later, the printer was going to work. I was just letting my frustration get the better of me. But that quote, was a useful reminder because it put things into perspective.

Even the worst painful experiences in my life that felt like they would go on forever – like the breakdown of my marriage, the pain of loss of people I loved, the temporary loss of my health (bulimia, breast cancer, severe pains and depression) – they all passed and I became stronger and definitely wiser as a result.

This is what I learnt It’s through challenges that we develop resilience, experience and wisdom. The reason I chose such extreme examples is that, in times of intense frustration and stress, I tended to lump all challenges together. But now I’m taking a different approach.

Now I think, “OK, yes, I know this too shall pass but how can I make it pass faster?” With the printer, the answer was simple: “Call Team Knowhow!” They’ve restored my sanity more than once – and they did so again which means that I now have a working printer.

Asking for help turned out to be faster and more effective than trying to figure out all by myself the, to me, incomprehensible instructions in the user manual. However not all challenges lend themselves to Team Knowhow…

So what other options are there?

“What else can I try?” “Who else can I ask?”

“Where else can I check?” are just some examples. This approach lends itself well to practical frustrations.

I also learned that we should not always try to sort out every

single frustration, painful – and tempting – that may be, especially when it’s the emotional kind. Sometimes the thing to do is to stay with the pain as opposed to what I used to do, which was to pretend it wasn’t so bad, especially in my marriage of 37 years.

Having said that, staying in this painful space too long is definitely not a good idea because then it becomes far too easy to begin feeling sorry for myself, helpless and hopeless – something I’m definitely not – even when I sometimes forget.

The way out of hopelessness and helplessness and feeling sorry for myself, as I discovered over and over again, is taking action.

Any action, no matter how small. That’s because, when we feel hopeless and discouraged, our energy levels and any feelings of hope, are at rock bottom. Taking action needs energy. It’s the difference between slumping in front of the telly and doing something as simple as standing up and picking up the phone.

With the printer, all I wanted was for the damned thing to work!

What are my options? Call Team Knowhow! Easy peasy.

But what if I look deeper?

What if I look at some of the unsatisfactory areas of my life and relationships which I ‘knew’ were fixed, permanent, impossible to change? Things that actually matter such as love, work, friends?

I remember times when my life looked hopeless or scary when I was still in my marriage, when I left aged 60 feeling more fearful than elated, when I started living alone for the first time in my life, when I had to build the next stage of my life from scratch, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, when my experience of online dating convinced me that I was too old to find love again, and a myriad of other examples. OK, I knew I couldn’t change how my love life looked, how I experienced my work or my friendships but what if I played ‘make believe’?

What if I made it into a game?

What would I love to do? What is really important to me? What would have to happen to bring it about? And what else would have to happen? And then what else?

As for love, how would I recognise my soulmate if I met him? (by the way, I played this ‘game’ in 2004 – I recently found my notes while looking for something else! What I still think is truly bizarre is that Paul ticks every single box!)

And friendships, how do I attract great friends into my life?

What needs to happen? (this is a particularly useful question).

Then some spark lights up inside me and I sit up straighter.

Maybe I could… perhaps it’s not that crazy, perhaps …

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SHALL

PASS And so I started looking at myself What if I’m the one keeping love at bay? What needs to happen to make it easier for love and friendships to find me?

Over time I came to understand better how life works. Here are some of the answers I came to when it came to love and friendship: n Pretending to have it all together doesn’t work. n What needed to happen was learning to make myself emotionally vulnerable. n I needed to learn to ask for help.

Along the way I also learned things that surprised me For example, good relationships had to be reciprocal (duh!) and what had to happen was to learn to take, instead of always giving, which I used to believe would make people love me – something that never happened.

What had to happen was for me to start to do things that I enjoyed, that made me feel good about myself instead of always putting other people first. I discovered that doing this makes my emotional engine begin to fill up, which feels great.

I then discovered that people like to be with people who feel great, who are happy because it’s catching!

Making myself emotionally vulnerable took courage but I discovered that this made other people feel safe to take that risk as well.

Every little bit of progress, however small gave me the impetus to continue to try out something new, to find out something else, to learn something different – and, over time, the ‘unreasonable’ and the ‘unrealistic’ became less so.

None of this happens overnight Some things took a very long time but, as the poet, Goethe said, “whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right.”

Small successes will keep you going, one baby step after another, moving in the generally right direction - once you figured out what that is.

And gradually, those things – poor relationships, a loveless marriage, pedestrian work, even poor health – came under the heading of ‘this too shall pass’ and life now looks just wonderful. ¢ Sue Plumtree’s latest book, Open Your Heart: The 7 secrets of strong and loving relationships, is available on Amazon Details of Sue’s life and work can be found on her website, sueplumtree.com GOLDIE magazine | 131

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PUB TALK

Good health to the drinking man Andrew Harvey finds fundamental questions to be asked – and answered – down at his local

Y

ou wouldn’t normally expect to find Britain’s finest bodies lined up at the public bar. Finest minds maybe; collective centuries of wisdom and experience for sure; but fitness... hardly.

Until now. Some long established habits are being put under serious strain as a health bug has been spreading through the White Swan. There’s even been a tentative exploration of the merits of vegan cooking.

I put it down to Jacko. I wouldn’t say he’s to blame exactly but one day recently he climbed awkwardly on to his bar stool and said everything hurt. He’s a few years past 60 and carries the weight that years of takeaways, microwaves set on fast and every variant of alcohol have converted into an outline of the Humpty Dumpty model. Gout has been a frequent visitor.

What made him think he could survive a game of tennis, I don’t know. But he gave it a go and here was the uncomfortable result.

‘I’ve got to do something about all this weight,’ puffed Jacko, not for the first time. ‘I can’t go on like this. My knees are buggered.’

It was the signal for everyone to pile in with advice. Home truths, remedies and recommendations poured forth: Go to a knee specialist, GPs know nothing about joints You just gotta lose weight You need to cut out cheese, it’s fattening I thought it was protein No, that’s fish There’s a physio near me, might sort you out You know Tesco sells fruit and stuff Have you ever come face to face with a lettuce?

Have you heard of five a day?

Well, two would be a start Just eat less You don’t need chips with a full English Switch to red wine, it’s good for the heart The questions and answers flowed, mostly statements of the bleedin’ obvious and seldom backed by medical fact.

Although, to be fair, no two scientists, doctors or dieticians ever seem to agree on what is or isn’t good for a body. Except maybe not smoking.

When you think of it, Jacko is actually fatter than Fat Tony.

And Tony is at least trying to do something about it with his FitBit walking regime and his daughter checking up on him all the time. Sadly, no one rates the chances of Jacko finding the will power to change his lifestyle. And if he did, he probably wouldn’t be the same bloke. Sitting there on his stool he’s a centre of gravity, or levity more like, at our end of the bar.

Quite funny repartee undermined by out of date jokes. Good natured, generous, voted leave but rather wishes he hadn’t.

Take away five stone (or 31 kilos as we remainers prefer to say) and he might end up all hollowed out.

So Jacko may be looking and sounding much the same this time next year. But that may not be the way for all of us. The most successful of the reformers so far is Pete who switched from 30 cigarettes a day to vaping as soon as the devices became available and who hasn’t faltered. Luckily Reg doesn’t mind vaping in his pub so Pete no longer has to pull his coat on and go outside to smoke with the others.

Jim’s another who has taken action, switching from five or six session pints to white wine spritzers. Yes, really, spritzers in a pint glass and after six weeks he reckons he’s lost half a stone. Oh yes, he’s also been on some non-carb diet, or only the right kind of carbs or some balance with broccoli. It’s a pretty tedious topic.

Dave’s got the right idea: drinks double or treble vodkas and tonic, pops out every 15 minutes for a cigarette, ten-mile walks at weekends, figure as trim as a premier league footballer.

Mind you, he’s another sporting casualty loudly complaining of tennis elbow. Says he can hardly lift his drink. ‘He can’t get his hand to reach his wallet either,’ quipped Jacko as he levered himself off the stool and began an uneven navigation to the gents. ‘Can’t see myself getting to work tomorrow like this,’ he puffed. ‘Don’t worry mate, Sharon’ll write you a sick note, won’t you Sharon?’ said flaky Felix who’s frequently ribbed about his own chipped shoulder.

‘Sure,’ smiled Sharon brightly. ‘Remind me how you spell haemorrhoids.’ n

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WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?

Ask Sharon I’m an accredited and registered psychotherapist with over 30 years’ experience. I’m a trainer, spiritual warrior and author of the bestselling book ‘Bounce Back from Depression – The No Nonsense Guide to Recovery.’ However big or small, your

Q

A

problem is significant to me; you’ll do me a favour by asking about it. Helping you reclaim some of your power and potential through sorting your problem helps me live my professional purpose out loud. A win-win for us both.

It’s taken me ages to pluck up the courage to write because, from the outside, it looks like I have a good life. But inside I feel like an outsider. I see things going on socially but I feel like an onlooker and that I don’t belong. I can put on a mask and do ‘happy’ or make small talk but I don’t feel engaged even with my family. What do I need to do to belong?

My heart goes out to you. The anxiety caused by your thoughts and the duplicity of your inside/outside being exposed can be crippling.

The belief that you’re not good enough is usually based on how you were treated by authority figures both inside and outside your family. Even by the milk man if he was a significant presence in your childhood.

In adult-hood an undermining boss, colleague, ‘friend’ or partner will also do it for you big time!

They all lied...

You believed and internalised their lies which eventually formed your dastardly inner critic. But, in fact, they were unconsciously projecting their own inner shit onto you!

The more you fight your thoughts, the more they re-assert. Paradoxically, what does work to stop them is a twofold approach; embrace and neutralise them.

The embrace approach is deliciously sneaky. When you get a ‘rubbish’ thought, say aloud or in your head, ‘Thank you so much for telling me that and right now I’m... reading Goldie magazine!’ Insert whatever you’re doing in the moment.

The first part of the sentence acknowledges the thought, just as you like to be acknowledged

when speaking. You’ll feel the tension of your thought dissipate... Oh good. S/He heard me!

When you’re in your thoughts you’ve put yourself in trance. Yes! We hypnotise ourselves. So the second part of the sentence, ‘right now I’m... (what you’re actually doing)’ is like a slap around the face. It wakes you up and brings you slap bang into the moment by noticing it.

Kaaaboom! Also known as mindfulness...

Any time you interrupt a thought, you’re neutralising it and degrading the neural pathway to which it belongs. So the pure neutralising approach is pretty powerful... In more than one way as you’ll discover.

Buy about a third of a centimetre wide elastic bands. In the UK size 64. Place one around your non-dominant hand’s wrist. As you begin the thought, very quickly pull out the band out from the inside of your wrist far far far away and immediately let it go.

Yes... it hurts like hell. Where did your attention go? Where’s your thought?

I’ll say no more. Except, if you’re selfharming or have a history of traumatic abuse through physical violence seek a professional’s advice on using this technique.

One last thing. While you’re neutralising the thought you don’t want, it’s important to fill its vacuum with one you do want. So, as soon as you’ve twanged the band and are rubbing its landing spot, there’s a positive mantra to be said.

The new thought always begins, ‘Right now

I’m absolutely...’ Only this time you put in one quality of being that’s missing from your life.

Confidence, safety, courage, love, enthusiasm, contentment and so on.

‘Right now I’m absolutely confident’ might leave you cold the first time you say it. Keep repeating it and, in time, you re-programme your brain to produce feelings of confidence.

These techniques co-operate with the way you’re wired up as a human being. So, unless you’re a Martian they work. It takes will and effort to constantly repeat them but repetitionrepetition-repetition is the way to go to stop these thoughts.

Finally, working alchemically to transform the core belief that underpins these thoughts will speed up the process exponentially. Get in touch if you’d like to be referred. And remember...

They lied!

References: Enter ‘inner critic’ in your online or real bookstore’s search function.

Choose the one that speaks to you.

There are shedloads of videos on ‘inner critic’ online.

How to rewire your brain for happiness explains how it works with tips www.forbes. com/sites/vanessaloder/2015/03/18/howto-rewire-your-brain-for-happiness/ © 2019 Sharon Eden and The Wild Elder®

While Sharon wishes she could reply to all correspondence, regrettably she’s unable to clone herself.

Issues with the widest appeal will be answered where-ever possible.

The Wild Elder Psychotherapist-Alchemist-Guide. thewildelder.com GOLDIE magazine | 133

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SIGNING OFF

Sophie Elkan Combines writing on beauty and fashion for OX magazine, PR and marketing for designer Bianca Elgar and advertising sales for The Chiltern Society. Oh and she found time to write a book...

How do you want your death announced – The Times or Twitter?

Extensive reading of Jilly Cooper, Noel Streatfeild and Nancy Mitford during my formative years imprinted on me the belief that an announcement in The Times is always the correct response. In fact, when I got engaged eighteen years ago I was genuinely concerned that my mother hadn’t sent an announcement to their news desk.

Then I remembered that I was neither celebrated nor a member of the aristocracy. Twitter? Hmmm, not sure. Could sink without a trace and I’d be both mort and mortified.

Cremation or burial? Religious service or gong bath?

I like the ritual of scattering ashes although they have a nasty tendency to blow backwards in a stiff breeze. I think, ultimately, I’m more drawn to a natural burial - tip me in a large cardboard box and bury it somewhere pretty and peaceful. The only issue with this is that much as one part of me is all ‘yeah, back to the soil’ the other part of me wants a permanent marker bearing my name. I think I would like a bench, please. I’ll leave location to my nearest and dearest but insist they be imaginative when it comes to wording, ‘She Loved This Place’ won’t cut it. As for the service, I certainly don’t want any religion or dogma of any kind; remembrance may be for those left behind but I expect a certain respect for my beliefs.

Who’s on the guest list? Anyone you’re hoping won’t turn up?

Haha! What a question. I can’t imagine issuing decrees on who may and may not attend, but I might indulge in some fantasy attendees, utterly bereft at my passing and kicking themselves for missing their chance to know me better. (Writing this is like some brutal form of therapy as I second-guess and over-analyse every sentence I write…)

Last musical request?

Stay Free, The Clash.

What would you like people to be saying about you?

I’d like an outpouring of love and grief because if you can’t have the clichés at your funeral,

when can you? That said, there’s something in me that is hoping for a bit of shade, a bit of snark. If a party isn’t a party without someone crying in the loos then surely a funeral isn’t a funeral without some sort of fisticuffs, even if only metaphorical.

How are you hoping to be remembered?

With great love and a great big smile.

Dress code?

Dress as I would have wanted. By which I most certainly do not expect attendees to see this as some sort of cosplay but instead I’m picturing a roomful of people wearing something of theirs which they knew I’d liked - I’m not reticent in offering up a compliment and my opening gambit in any conversation with someone new is to say something nice about some aspect of their personal presentation so there shouldn’t be a shortage of information out there.

Tea and biscuits or Jaeger bombs all round?

Can’t we have both? I think there’s a lot to be said for the soothing qualities of curled-up sandwiches and crisps, followed by a finger cake medley all washed down with tea and sherry. It will pave the way nicely for the obligatory kitchen disco later, which will feature copious amounts of cocktails and rum.

Can we expect any surprises?

As an adoptee who found my birth family when I was 40 and a novice writer who published my first book at 47, right now I simply can’t conceive of having anything else up my sleeve. However, I’ve never had a five-year plan so who knows what lies ahead.

I strongly believe in looking up and when I look at what women are achieving post-menopause it makes me excited for the next phase.

Describe where you are going to end up?

Gone but not forgotten: “It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

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