GOLDIE A new Golden age

GOLDIE magazine

JANUARY 2019

£10

A new Golden age

STYLE

FASHION

CULTURE

LIFE

LOVE

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COME ON

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instagram.com/goldie_magazine

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Time travellers

Embracing-agers

Rebels

Adventurers

Grey goddess’

Left-of-fieldfunksters

Silver foxes

Rockers

Antistereo-types

Old romantics

City dwellers

GOLDIE magazine A-place-in-thesun-worshippers

New frontier ambassadors

Mods

Lounge lovers

Jazz funksters

Fashionistas

Ageless advocates

Bold & beautiful people

Silver surfers

Golden-agers

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CONTENTS

W R I T E R S Andrew Harvey Angela Kennedy Carl Honore Carolyn Mair Chris Campling Gill Manly Hilary Alexander James Rigby Jennifer Angel Jo Wheldon Josephine Halbert Karen Arthur Linda Galloway

Linda Mason Louise Pendry Lucy Shaw Penny Rutterford Rachel Peru Radica Ankipe Rohan Spencer Rona Steinberg Sharon Eden Sue Plumtree Sue Plumtree Tim Boddy Wendy Rigg

P H O T O G R A P H E R S

SUZANNE MIDDLEMASS

Gerald Wilhem Mark O’Brien Mike Marchant Sammy Baxter Stephen Cottrell

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Stevie Cockram Suzanne Middlemass Tim Boddy Trendziine

T H I S 6 Contents & contributors 8 Editor’s letter

I S S U E

T H E

I N F O R M E R S

18 Goldie interview Rebecca Weef Smith interviews Catherine Armitage 40 Closet confidential Angela Kennedy talks to Nikki Gewirtz of Lola Rose 42 The Anarcho Dandy James Rigby searches for subcultures 74 Silver psychologist Louise Pendry unearths the benefits of social media 79 Grey Matters Gill Manly spreads her New Year’s resolutions across the year 96 Sartorial stories Quant memories from Josephine Halbert 102 The Scene 118 Powder Room Winter beauty - Radica Ankipe 119 Cuttin’ edge Sharp as you like it - Rohan Spencer 122 Life lessons ¢Chris Campling ¢Lucy Shaw 124 Getting on Sue Plumtree thinks bitter lessons can lead to happy endings 129 Horoscopes Jennifer Angel’s take on the next three months 130 Live out loud Take Courage says Rona Steinberg 132 Pub Talk I drink therefore I am 133 What’s your problem?

Ask Agony Aunt, Sharon Eden gives her wise advice 134 Signing off Rebecca Weef Smith

T R I B E S A N D T R I B U L AT I O N S 10 Noble aureate Rachel Peru ushers in a golden age 24 Carl Honoré asks us to view ageing as a bonus 26 Penny Rutterford celebrates unreconstructed women 72 Heights of adventure Andrew Harvey discovers Peru 76 Tim Boddy on visiblity as an older LGBT man 120 Linda Galloway interviews author Jane Devonshire 126 Rebecca Weef Smith visits The Waste House

A R T F U L LY

D O N E

32 Linda Mason makes it up as she goes along 52 Here’s to Hope Angela Kennedy interviews Nayna McIntosh 70 Knit yourself a group of friends Karen Arthur bonds over crafting 82 Double Decker Icon Wendy Rigg talks to Lee Bender 90 Quant Rebecca Weef Smith interviews Heather Tilbury

W E A R

I T

W E L L

44 Clothing conversations are a regular feature at Gigi’s Dressing Room 56 Club culture without ties Fashion to open doors 98 LFWM A/W19 why don’t you...?

110 Leopard lovers ¢Fashion’s most powerful print according to Hilary Alexander OBE ¢Jo Wheldon is purrfectly fierce ¢Carolyn Mair on the psychology of leopard print GOLDIE magazine | 7

EDITOR’S LETTER

Are you ready for the NEW GOLDEN AGE? Anyone can join

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as I the only person over forty unaware that ageism was such a problem in society? Truthfully, until we started GOLDIE magazine, it hadn’t occurred to me that discrimination on the grounds of being old was an issue. What I have found so positive about this -ism is the manner in which people are uniting to challenge it. Whether it is online groups coming together to support each other - Louise Pendry shares her views - or books being published to highlight how we can be BOLDER – thanks, Carl Honoré – tackling the stereotypical view of ageing has become a sub-culture all of its own.

It doesn’t surprise me that I am late to this party; I was too young to be a punk and too suburban to be a committed New Romantic – unlike James Rigby. Whilst GOLDIE magazine wholeheartedly challenges the view that old is bad, I probably still have an outsider perspective and am not really part of any one particular group within this new sub-culture.

In many ways that is exactly what the magazine aims to be: an outsider who can share multiple views. This may be a bit eclectic, but that’s how we roll here. We want to offer you choices; a nuanced vision in all shades. I have been told this makes us eccentric. In today’s polarised world you are expected to be one thing or another. Well, sorry if that was what you were expecting from GOLDIE Magazine, but we are old school liberals and think that it’s okay to have a magazine that doesn’t adhere to rules. Rules like “you can’t have a magazine for men and women.” Who says? And “you shouldn’t try to cover all the diversity questions in one magazine, just stick to age.” Why not?

And even “you can’t be a magazine editor because you haven’t done it before.” Yes, well watch me. Possibly one subculture that would let me join is the Mavericks and Bloody-mindedness Brigade, although they may have a dress code which doesn’t include gold boots.

‘Cause one shade that does unite us here is gold. Are we about to enter a new GOLDEN AGE in which our chronological age is irrelevant and society no longer judges us negatively by the years we have accrued? Rachel Peru is our golden age goddess and cover star who exemplifies the attitude of aspirational ageing. Her story shares all the factors which are at the heart of this movement to seize the moment and live life to the full regardless of age.

Fashion is an area where I feel I can make a difference in this ageing debate; it is a culture which has always welcomed me and allowed me

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THE GOLDIE CREW Editor: Rebecca Weef Smith rebecca@goldiemediagroup.co.uk Art Director: Weef weef@goldiemediagroup.co.uk Sub editors: Linda Galloway Walter Gammie Jayne Gould Andrew Harvey Nigel Summerly Hannah Wilkinson

to be my awkward and changeable self. As far as I am concerned, clothes have no age labels and anything goes. The fashion in this issue covers classics - Angela Kennedy interviews Hope founder Nayna McIntosh; second-hand - real women model outfits from Gigi’s Dressing room; new London labels I love – Club Culture doesn’t mean ties; and vintage - Heather Tilbury on the Quant years.

If I were to belong to any tribe it would be Leopard Lovers, a subculture of fashion which includes Hilary Alexander, Jo Weldon and Carolyn Mair. If your sub-cultural leanings veer more towards art then my interview with painter Catharine Armitage, Linda Mason’s transition from MUA to artist, or Wendy Rigg’s chat with Lee Bender may be more your thing. Maybe crafting could be just the community you’re looking for – Karen Arthur helps create wellbeing though creativity. Or perhaps you find your gang in the local pub like Andrew Harvey? If sustainability is your tribe then Duncan Baker Brown’s Waste House may inspire you to create a joint project to share waste resources.

Does adversity join us with others to form a community? Penny Rutterford shares experiences of breast cancer and how it reshapes more than just a body. Tim Boddy talks to Ted Jacobs about ageing within in the LGBT community, many members of which had to hide their sexuality in their youth.

As ever, we end with Signing Off and I have chosen to share my thoughts on what kind of send-off I want, mainly because no one else put their hand up. I know that we don’t want to think about our own death but it is actually rather good for us, so I hope that in setting an example someone else will come forward for the next issue, or else I will have to commandeer our Art Director Weef to draw his cartoon version!

Thank you yet again to everyone involved in making this magazine a reality; regardless of our different styles, we are united in believing that life is still great fun over forty and indeed can get better with age.

And thank you, dear readers, for coming along for the ride. Do let me know your views – if social media is your thing I hang out on instagram every morning at around 6:30am GMT and Facebook predominantly in the evenings and try to answer all emails but, if all else fails, a hand-written letter will certainly get my attention.

Watch out, world - the Golden Age is about to make itself felt!

Love Rebecca xx

Cover: Stevie Cockram Model: Rachel Peru Back cover: Sammy Baxter facebook.com/thegoldiecrew twitter.com/goldiemediauk instagram.com/goldie_magazine goldiemag.co.uk GOLDIE magazine | 9

N O B L E wTw aureate Rachel Peru is on a quest to usher in a golden age of body positivity

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PICTURES BY STEVIE COCKRAM

hat is it about seeing the flesh of a woman over forty that seems to cause so much distress to so many? I remember seeing a beautiful photograph of a model in her fifties wearing a simple black low-cut top, unable to believe how much hate she was given for apparently showing too much cleavage. What surprised me most was that the majority of unpleasant comments were from other women. So what is it that causes us to shy away from embracing our older bodies?

The lack of representation in the media must be a contributing factor, because women over forty are rarely used in lingerie or swimwear adverts, sending a very negative message that no one wants

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to see them. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to walk into a store and see older women showcasing the latest lingerie campaign alongside younger models? I am sure I am not alone in being left feeling demoralised when shopping for new lingerie and being bombarded by young, fresh- faced models who look stunning in their youthful bodies. Does the fashion industry really believe that when you reach a certain age you stop wanting to feel good about yourself when you get dressed in the morning? Trying to imagine what my size 16, 34G body will look like in comparison will never be a positive experience; my skin isn’t as tight and firm and I definitely need more support upfront. But I can still look good in the right lingerie and can still feel sexy in my own skin when I choose to cherish what I have and embrace the changes. u

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AUREATE adjective made of or having the colour of gold

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When we acknowledge our sensuality and choose to express it when we go to the wardrobe each day, we can see ourselves as golden.

The current lack of representation isn’t just an issue for our current generation but has a knock-on effect on future generations of women. I think we have a duty to our daughters, grandchildren and all young women to show our body confidence and dispel the ageing stigma. I began a new career as a curve model two years ago, aged 46, and am still surprised when people comment on any lingerie or swimwear photographs by calling me brave. Brave is someone with courage facing difficult situations, not someone who is comfortable in their skin, and I really want to inspire other women to appreciate their bodies too.

If we saw more women celebrating their bodies with confidence we would be less insecure about growing older and it would help our self-assurance as we change through the decades. I want my daughters to see me leading a fulfilled life as they grow up and not worrying about wrinkles, lumps and bumps.

That’s not to say I don’t have bad days; we all do. The difference now is that I get over myself much quicker; I don’t beat myself up and let the negative feelings linger. I choose to feel happy in my skin and want that for my children too.

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ociety is so hung up on youth culture that it is hardly surprising anything vaguely classed as ageing gets a poor rap. It is evident with the increase in young girls using Botox and fillers in their twenties that there is a fear being created by society of looking naturally older than you are. Fortunately, the tide is changing, with women approaching midlife fighting back and owning their bodies and their space. As someone who lacked body confidence until my forties I can appreciate the journey I have been on with every part of my body. We are a team and something to be cherished. I will be fifty next year and I am more confident now than at any other time in my life so far; I know from talking to other women that many feel the same. With a depth of beauty that only comes in later years, we are redefining what middle age looks like. So next time you look in the mirror, remind yourself that your body is like gold: precious and beautiful. ¢ Photographer: Stevie Cockram brusselsstreetstudio.com Model: Rachel Peru @rachelperu1 Bridge models Stylist: IG @trudybeaustylist MUA/Hair:Rachel O’Dell IG-@rattyred

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THE

GOLDIE

INTERVIEW

CATHARINE ARMITAGE

After Catherine Armitage’s marriage to Paul Feiler, she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. She shared her journey to becoming an artist in her own right with Rebecca Weef Smith

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INTERVIEW

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spoke to Catharine shortly after her latest exhibition at The Redfern Gallery in London had closed to chat about her life and work.

The exhibition at The Redfern was a joint show alongside a retrospective of Paul Feiler’s paintings, works on paper and prints. Paul and Catharine were together for 48 years, married for 43 of them and I began by asking Catharine if there was a connection between her meeting Paul in 1966 and becoming an artist.

“When we first met I didn’t realise quite how well established an artist Paul was. I didn’t know who he was; he was having a show in London at the Grosvenor Gallery but he didn’t mention it to me. By the time I got to know he was a famous painter we were already firm friends.”

After they had been together for about a year she asked him to teach her to draw and his response was to give her a pencil and paper and ask her to draw him. They would go out into the countryside and sketch and he encouraged her to attend life drawing classes.

Within a few months Catharine was accepted as an undergraduate at The Slade; she was 23 and by the time she left at 29 was pregnant with their twins.

However, Catharine was clearly creative from a young age; she tells me of a painting she did at ten that won a school prize: a view from her bedroom window that she can still remember to this day. When she met Paul she was working in interior design. She herself says “I think it was all in there, it just took Paul to bring it out. Paul said he was born with a paintbrush in his hand. I knew I was interested in colour and textures but I never thought of myself as a career woman. In those days I expected I would go along with wherever my husband’s career took me.”

From today’s perspective it seems odd that it was accepted that a woman would automatically give up a career for her family.

Catharine says she feels lucky that Paul encouraged her to develop as a painter as many other male artists of his generation would have said “there can only be one artist in the household and it’s going to be me.”

Paul always wanted Catharine to paint. They shared a studio, with him working downstairs and her on the upper floor. However, their working schedule was very different, with Paul choosing to go to the studio every

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morning, coming back for lunch and working again until evening and Catharine painting when she felt like it.

“For a long time I felt guilty that I didn’t see working as an artist as something I did every day. I fitted it in around peeling the potatoes.

I was well into my fifties before I understood that I didn’t need to feel guilty; I could paint in my own way and be productive. I need to think a lot about a painting and then I get to the studio and it all comes rushing out. At that point it paints itself, and it’s often not a bit how I intended it to be.”

Catharine finds inspiration from her surroundings and Cornwall is reflected in much of her work. The paintings are predominantly abstracts which contrast organic and geometric forms. Her work has always been a direct reaction to what she sees; it is always based on reality and she frequently uses photos she takes of the Cornish landscape as her inspiration. She

“I get to the studio and it all comes rushing out” tells me she has always wanted her work to be about the visual representation; there is no message or agenda.

After Paul died in 2013, Catharine was unsure whether she would paint again; she knew that Paul would want her to but she also knew that she couldn’t continue to work from the studio they had shared. Within a year she found herself tempted by a photo her son had sent to her; an image of two nanocells which had formed a heart. The subsequent painting she called Farewell.

“It is always about what I see. I react to things I’ve seen. Over the years, it’s been more abstract, but at the moment I’m being a bit more realistic.” In the recent show at The Swiss Summer Redfern there were a few paintings which portrayed actual objects; the one titled John’s Gate was based on that real gate. However, Catharine also visually responds to her own previous work, coming back to a piece and being influenced to take an idea into a new work. At the bottom of her bed there used to hang a painting of Paul’s but it was transported to the Jerwood Gallery and that left a space. Ever practical, Catharine filled u

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Indian Summer

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INTERVIEW

u it with one of her own paintings from 1978 “because it was the right size.” She hadn’t looked at that work for quite a while. It had a “blotchy background and some shapes on it. When I went to my studio I found myself painting a similar background. I had a photo I had taken of a boulder from a clifftop in Cornwall and that was worked into this background, so the new painting is a combination of the two visual images. There is a direct line between those two. That’s my progression. One is 1978 and one 2018.”

The show at the Redfern felt like a true celebration of the relationship Catharine and Paul had as artists as well as husband and wife. Catharine felt she didn’t have enough work to fill the gallery on her own. She was asked by the Redfern if she would like a show and she was the one who suggested combining her work with Paul’s. “My work is my own but it worked to show together.”

That seems to me very typical of Catharine’s generosity. She tells me her family has always come first; being an artist had to fit around family life. And family life has created the inspiration for work: “I think my next painting will be two trees I spotted on a walk with my grandsons.”

But her paintings in themselves are generous - they share a love of shape, colour and form which is very pleasing. Catharine says she wants her paintings to make people feel good, to give pleasure and to be part of people’s lives that they want to return to. “I am happy if it makes people happy.”

Someone who had been at the Slade with Catharine (but whom she hadn’t seen since) had seen the show at the Redfern and left a note for her there to say thank you, and how much he Ioved the silence in her work. They are calm paintings; there is nothing busy or unnecessary in them. As Catharine says, she is content. “I have had a lovely life. It’s been very satisfying. If you meet me in ten years’ time I hope you would get the same feeling from my work. I don’t think the paintings will be very different. My work does progress, for instance, for a long time I would stick bits of canvas on my work then paint on top. I don’t any more. I realised I was hiding behind the collage, a bit like a fringe, and I thought I would see if I could do without it. So I did for years. This year I wondered how it would feel to collage again. I tried it, but I tore it all off; it wasn’t me anymore.” ¢

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A guide to making the most of our longer lives.

Learn how to age better and feel better about ageing

Carl Honoré’s new book BOLDER asks us to view ageing as a bonus rather than a burden; we call it aspirational ageing at GOLDIE magazine but there is no doubt that our visions for shaking up how to age are on the same track 24 | GOLDIE magazine

What is BOLDER about?

Ageing – how we can do it better and feel better about doing it. It’s also a rallying cry against the last form of discrimination that dare speak its name: ageism.

What inspired you to write BOLDER? I was at a hockey tournament, and playing well, when I suddenly discovered I was the oldest player there. For some reason the news shook me to the core. I began wondering whether I looked out of place, whether people were laughing at me, whether I should take up a gentler pastime, like Bingo. It got me thinking about how we often feel ashamed and afraid of growing older. How we imagine it’s all about loss, decline, decrepitude and sadness. Is it any wonder that “age” is the number one answer that comes up on Google Search when you type in “I lie about my…?”

After the shock at that hockey tournament, I wanted to know if there was another, happier, story to tell about ageing. Full disclosure: I wrote BOLDER to help myself feel better about my own advancing years.

Did it work?

Yes, it did! I feel a million times better about growing older than I did when I began the research. So many of my own downbeat assumptions about ageing turned out to be wrong and so many things can get better as we grow older.

Such as?

The thing that really blew me away is that people are generally more contented in later life. Across the world happiness seems to follow a U-shaped curve, bottoming out in middle age and then rising again thereafter.

Even Pete Townshend confessed to feeling more cheerful in his 60s than he was when he wrote one of the most ageist lines in the pop music canon: “Hope I die before I get old.”

We become more comfortable in our own skin and less worried about what others think of us. We tend to form stronger, more fulfilling relationships as we age. Ageing also makes many of us more altruistic and eager to serve the common good.

What about all the terrible things that happen to our bodies as we age?

The news is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. These days we know that we can do so much - nutrition, technology, medicine, exercise - to go on doing amazing things with our bodies deep into later life. That is why the media is packed with stories about people kitesurfing in their fifties, climbing mountains in their sixties, running marathons in their seventies, cycling long distance in their eighties and swimming competitively in their nineties. Today, the average over-65-year-old is in better shape than ever before. Japan is even toying with moving the age when someone is deemed rojin, or old, from 65 to 75.

And what about our ageing brains?

Well we lose some cognitive zip as we grow older but our brains are extremely good at compensating. That’s why creativity can carry on right up to the end of our lives: Louise Bourgeois came up with those iconic giant spiders in her 80s. Some experts think ageing alters the brain structure in ways that make us even more creative. Older adults also tend to be better at seeing the big picture, embracing compromise, weighing multiple points of view and accepting that knowledge can only take you so far. When tackling problems in a familiar field, older brains are quicker to spot the patterns and details that open the door to finding a solution. After sifting through piles of studies, researchers at Harvard University concluded that four key skills do not ripen fully until around the age of 50: arithmetic, vocabulary, general knowledge and a grasp of how the world works.

What about dementia?

Without doubt dementia is the darkest cloud hanging over later life. Not only is there no cure but we do not even know why it strikes in the first place. Nevertheless, the picture is not as apocalyptic as the headlines proclaim. Around 17 per cent of people over the age of 80 have dementia, but that means the other 83 per cent do not.

And researchers are confident that we’re on the road to making breakthroughs in both treatment and prevention.

Is there more good news?

Yes, the list goes on. Social and emotional intelligence often improves with age, too. We get better at reading people. Our richer vocabulary

helps us speak, write and communicate better and our capacity to cooperate and negotiate improves. We also get better at putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, finding compromises and resolving conflicts.

As we age, we become less prone to wild swings of emotion and better able to cope with negative feelings such as anger, fear and envy. In other words, we find it easier to keep our heads while all about us are losing theirs.

What does all this mean for ageing in the workplace?

It means that older workers can bring a lot to the party. Productivity rises with age in jobs that rely on social skills – as more and more do nowadays. When companies set up suggestion boxes, older staff usually generate more and better ideas, with the best proposals tending to come from the over- 55s.

Isn’t ageism still a big deal though?

The world is changing in ways that herald a golden age of ageing.

More jobs rely on the social acumen that improves with age. Every day, medics are getting better at managing the diseases and decline that come in later life. Every year we see an increase in older people on the planet – and there is strength in numbers. It is harder to dismiss or denigrate a growing chunk of the population, especially when so many of them are taking life by the scruff of the neck. At the moment, at least, older generations are loaded – and money talks.

Has writing BOLDER changed you?

Yes, profoundly. It has made me feel so much more at ease with the idea of growing older. Like anyone else, I still worry about what the passage of time will do to my health, my finances, my looks, my loved ones. But such worries feel less daunting now because I know that, with a little luck and the right attitude, lots of good stuff awaits me in the coming years. Best of all, I no longer feel ashamed to play hockey (or any other sport) with people much younger than me!

What do you hope readers will learn from BOLDER? To see ageing in a completely new light. I hope they will move from fear and dread to the kind of understanding and optimism that will help them to make the most of their lives – at every age. My first three books – let’s call them the Slow trilogy – took down the myth that faster is always better. BOLDER is about taking down the myth that younger is always better. I also hope to spark a wider public debate about attitudes to ageing. If all of us are going to have an equal chance of ageing better then we need to rewrite the rules of everything, from the workplace and education to design and social services. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 25

SUE LACEY

Juliet FitzPatrick believes you can still be happy as a woman without breasts and actually it’s not scary to look at.

When faced with a cancer diagnosis and radical surgery, the option to refuse reconstruction is not often discussed. Penny Rutterford gets it off her chest

PERFECTLY

UNRECONSTRUCTED

WOMEN

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ccording to legend, in 19th century Kerala, Nangeli cut off her own breasts to protest a caste-based “breast tax”. She didn’t survive. This is one of the stories writer and visual artist Claire Collison might share if you join her Birmingham-based Intimate Tour of Breasts. I first met Claire on her London tour. Amongst other breastinspired sights, she took us to see possibly the most lactating painting in the National Gallery; a Tintoretto, of course. She reminds us that whilst a painting of such provenance would be exhibited with pride on the walls of any stately home, in recent times one of our more “stately” hotels took exception to a reallife lactating woman breastfeeding her baby where she could be seen by other guests. You couldn’t make it up.

Topless models were for many years

proudly featured on Page Three of one of Britain’s tabloid newspapers but I never expected that in my 50s I would find my own breasts discussed on its pages. However, one divorce and a mastectomy led me to share my personal one-breasted dating fears in a blog and The Sun reported it with “I fear men will recoil in horror at my body”: Cancer survivor lifts the lid on what it’s like to date after a mastectomy.

Claire and I are both “uni-boobers”. Stand still in any busy street, on a packed railway carriage or in the queue at the checkout and women like us are all around you. In the UK alone, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime. But you wouldn’t know. We are hiding in plain sight. Most common breast cancer narratives have us swanning around in pink tutus kicking cancer’s butt or getting a “boob job and a tummy tuck on the NHS.” One day last year, Juliet FitzPatrick’s photo

appeared on the BBC website. Juliet was topless in the truest sense; she has no breasts.

It was the BBC’s most clicked-on image that day. She looks fabulous, with arms outstretched as she smiles at the camera. It’s a joyful picture. Claire, Juliet and I are all women “living flat” after breast cancer.

Claire and Juliet talked to me about their own breast cancer diagnoses and how, in the same appointment hearing the news that they had cancer, they were asked to make decisions about their choices around reconstruction. It begs the question: who owns our bodies and how on earth does how our bodies are viewed by others have greater currency than how we feel in our own skin?

Describing her artistic practice, Claire says: “I use words and images in about equal measure. As a visual artist, I’ve used self portraiture a lot. I started off as a life model.

I wanted to do stuff around women and identity. I just thought if I want to make work u GOLDIE magazine | 27

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“I looked good. I am still the same as I was as a life model before.

I’m a whole, I’m interesting.”

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about women’s bodies I should cut out the middle person and use my own.”

“With the Intimate Tour of Breasts, I explore the landscape right from high art to the street, looking at the commodification and mythologising of women’s bodies, and breasts in particular.”

In her latest project, Truth is Beauty, Claire performs a monologue with her mastectomy scars exposed as she challenges attitudes towards female beauty. The poetry she encorporates into this piece was recognised in 2018 with the inaugural Women’s Poets’ Prize. I attended Claire’s first performance at The Women’s Library in London. As Claire modelled and performed her poetry the audience was invited to draw her. It allowed us to really examine her scars when usually one might look away. Isn’t it rude to stare? I found it emotional. She looked great, healthy and feminine. Until I attended a hospital “show and tell” evening for patients like myself facing mastectomy and being urged down the path of reconstruction, I had never seen a post-surgery body. It frightened me. Claire said of the drawings of her body produced that day: “ I looked good. I am still the same as I was as a life model before. I’m a whole, I’m interesting.”

I asked Juliet about the events leading up to her topless photo on the BBC website.

As a news and sports fan, Juliet is a BBC Radio 5 Live listener. She was listening to a programme discussing plastic surgery and how you get to the point of loving your body, and whether or not to have plastic surgery.

Juliet texted in: “I love my body and I have no breasts. I had a double mastectomy and I don’t intend to reconstruct them any time soon. Fancy having a chat about that?” And they did. She was invited to guest-edit a Tuesday lunchtime show. Faced with her own mastectomy, Juliet, like the rest of us, was led to believe that the only choice was reconstruction. Those of us diagnosed with cancer are advised not to Google our diagnosis. But reflecting on the major series of operations she might face to re-build her breast, Juliet did resort to Dr Google. This is how she found the charity and support group Flat Friends. Realising she was not alone was a game changer and helped her decide to have both breasts removed for symmetry. She is now passionate about spreading the word about the whole range of choices for those facing a mastectomy. I use the word choice in the loosest sense. We find ourselves stuck

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between a tumour and a hard place – we certainly didn’t choose to have cancer.

Juliet and I have both blogged about our breast cancer. I think it’s true to say that we have both stepped out of our respective comfort zones since having treatment, including my own brief foray into stand-up comedy. Juliet’s blog is called Blooming Cancer and she includes photographs of her post-surgery body taken by a photographer friend Sue Lacey.

Juliet said, “I think I got a bit fired up about the whole choice thing and being given just one treatment option. Women are not given the option of just staying flat. Once I had those photos, I thought, I’m going to tell my story and share them. You can still be happy as a woman without breasts and actually it’s not scary to look at. It felt really empowering, I felt quite good about myself. I have had a few comments from people who read the blog and have said it really has helped them.”

Juliet’s blog also features her love of flowers: “I was meant to be going to Chelsea Flower Show with my mum and it was the same year as I was diagnosed. It was two days after chemo and by that point I knew that I would feel awful so I decided I couldn’t go. My husband arranged for friends and family to send me packets of seeds so that on the day I was meant to be going there would be all these lovely seeds so I could have Chelsea at home. It was lovely. I sowed all those seeds and they grew and it was just blooming amazing. When I started writing the blog I thought, I’m going to write about cancer and being flat but also my recovery and my flowers and that became Blooming Cancer. I do feel like it has been a metaphor for my recovery.”

Claire recalled a particular instance before her own diagnosis which had a major impact on her attitude when it came to deciding what surgery might be best for her. Working with a group of teenagers on developing their visual literacy skills, she took them to the Taylor Wessing Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. She invited them to choose their favourite portraits and give an explanation for their choices.

“This one girl chose two. One was an Amy Winehouse lookalike, a beautiful young woman. The other was a photograph of a woman who had had a mastectomy and was naked from the waist up. She was staring directly out at the viewer. I asked her about the Amy picture and she said she chose it

CLAIRE COLLISON

because she looked sexy. She had loads of makeup on and jewellery and bling and dyed hair. I asked her about the other one and she said she didn’t know, she thought you were supposed to get a false one if that happened.

She said she thought she looked really strong.

I told her that was great, and that I believed that made her a modern feminist.

“That conversation still makes me emotional because it was such a chance thing.

This kid was really susceptible to the stuff around us and how we’re supposed to be and she was just at that age when you notice these things, and yet she wasn’t in the least fazed.”

The National Portrait Gallery is the home of a portrait of another breast cancer survivor, author Fanny Burney. In the early 19th century she survived a mastectomy without anaesthetic. She continued writing and lived a further 29 years, dying at the respectable age of 87. Thanks to medical advances, women like us get the benefit of full anaesthesia and more modern treatments. During Fanny’s time, their falsies were probably much less comfortable than the soft prostheses of today.

My own prosthesis I have named Serena and she sticks directly to my chest. Far less itchy.

And who owns our bodies? We do. ¢

Claire Collison will be delivering events in 2019 at‘ Women,Power Protest’ at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and in Liverpool and Peterborough.

She tweets @clairecollison1 Juliet Fitzpatrick blogs at: flatfriends.org.uk bloomingcancer.com Penny Rutterford’s blog: greatthingsaboutcancer.com

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MAKING IT UP AS Make-up artist Linda Mason worked in Paris before moving to New York in the early 1980s where she started painting. She has had shows in the US, Paris and the UK – and in her hometown of Sunderland at the National Glass Centre

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love Sunderland; love being there, not just for the memories but for the excitement around the arts, the beauty of the place and the enthusiasm of young people, inside my family and outside, and their energy and resilience.

By young people, I mean those in their fifties too.

For many years my thinking was: “Why would someone not want to travel like me and have my glamorous life in Paris and New York?” Now, I have so much admiration for people who make the choice “to stay put.” People have more opportunities and they base them on what they truly want and not what they feel they have to do to succeed. The North East has so much going for it and people are beginning to realise that they can find fulfilment through staying in place, building their lives and travelling from their home base.

I have no regrets about my life and am very happy to have lived in Paris, Beirut and now in New York, but my heart does sometimes feel torn and, as crazy as it may seem, I look upon these four places as home. I would do anything for them, and want them to improve and prosper, as one does with friends and family one loves. From the outside I am able to see the big picture and into the future and want to take steps to realise a vision for them, so I spend a lot of my time putting proposals out there. I don’t seem to get them to the right people – but I am totally convinced that, of course, my ideas are genius. I keep thinking I will stop with these proposals, but sayings from my childhood flood my mind. Never, ever give up, slow and steady wins the race – actually that tortoise always looks like he or she is just enjoying the stroll. Before these u proposals I probably did about 40 or 50

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ALL IMAGES BY LINDA MASON

SHE GOES ALONG

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u business plans to no avail. Or maybe these proposals and plans are destined to become an art installation – which is actually the subject of one of my proposals.

MAC Pro Cosmetics made a short movie about me recently, and I was very touched that it thought me worthy of a movie, and I loved what it did. It portrays me well – pretty much an open book, but different whichever page you open it at.

My first career was as a nanny. I chose it because I was terrified of children, and I love them so very much now, as I hope you can tell from the images of the children’s portraits I have painted.

The next career was in sales. I first sold ties at La Maison d’Argence near L’Opéra in Paris and moved on to selling magazine subscriptions, advertising space then finally perfume; Le Coup de Feu and L’Elu in the souks of Beirut. After that I worked with 38 | GOLDIE magazine

Lancome for three years in sales and as a make-up artist.

Make-up really was an awakening for me. I do love people and want to help them, and what better way than by helping them feel better and more beautiful? It is truly incredible what make-up can do and how it can make you feel. When a woman is younger, you are allowing them the freedom a mask gives and also teaching them how to “equalise the territory”, so to speak.

Often women need encouragement to experiment as they grow older, and young saleswomen tend to encourage the opposite.

Women can adapt their make-up to the trends without losing their personality. You don’t have to tattoo on thick eyebrows just because it is the fashion, but you could thicken them slightly and wear a more matt lip colour. The biggest mistake I find is all over shine. Just look at the women on the red carpet – is it

really that flattering? I’m not saying all over matt is best, but powder well placed makes for a more flattering and more enduring make-up.

I have always enjoyed making up women from all walks of life, not just models or celebrities. There are models and celebrities who are truly beautiful without make-up, but many have become beautiful because of make-up – and being told and made to feel beautiful by the people around them.

It is really all in the attitude, and yes, Kate and Naomi are beautiful and even more so in real life. Models who have chosen to stay in the business have been successful not just because of their good looks but as charming women with good business sense.

But back to my art: I started out making abstract art, first using make-up then transferring over to acrylics. I was in my late thirties but I had been experimenting a

lot with make-up. I was never one to just do the same make-up. Every day was different for me, so I was never ever bored. When my daughter was born, I just had the need to paint figuratively and capture her through painting, and I am so thankful I did. A painting is very different from a photo. Naturally it followed that I began painting women.

It wasn’t until I opened my boutique/ gallery in Soho, New York, in 1998, The Art of Beauty by Linda Mason, that I started to get commissions. My paintings were decorating the space and my first client was a wonderful model I had worked with in the early 1980s; she commissioned a portrait of herself and her two young sons who are now in college.

Then neighbours of mine (the Novogratz) who had just renovated a house nearby bought some art. They then asked me to paint their twin daughters. These paintings

were shown on a television show they had a few years later and that brought an influx of clients from all over the world. The same thing happened recently when I did mixedmedia portraits of Carole Radziwill, who was on The Real Housewives of New York.

In 2010, I wrote a book called Make-up for Ageless Beauty. I asked supermodels and celebrities of the 1980s, women now in their fifties, If I could photograph them for the book and asked some of them if I could also freestyle bodypaint them for my artwork.

It was an amazing experience to rediscover these fabulous women; they had lost none of their freshness and love of the camera.

I moved from Paris to New York at the height of my career as a make-up artist in Paris and took a summer film course at New York University. I wanted to become a film director, but my career as a makeup artist became very exciting and, just

as in Paris where I had worked with all the then-young designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler, in New York I started to work with the up-andcoming designers and photographers as well as some of the more established ones.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I started to make films and incorporate them into my artistic practice. I have been greatly inspired by the life and work of the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who kept working ‘till the ripe old age of 106 and still had plans for more movies when he passed away in 2015. I loved Fellini and Kurosawa. My tastes in art are eclectic and I am still inspired by my first love, Degas, when I stand in front of one of his paintings of dancers. At the moment I am working on a modern-day biblical series of large mixed-media works and have plans to create a movie to go with them.¢ GOLDIE magazine | 39

CLOSET CONFIDENTIAL

A timeless friendship bracelet was the pivotal piece that launched the much-loved accessory label Lola Rose, 18 years ago.

Angela Kennedy chats to the founder and creative director Nikki Gewirtz who has made this forever friend a byword for stylish longevity.

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hether you’re looking for a special gift with positive vibes or something bright and beautiful to lift a simple outfit, Lola Rose will have it. Expect colour, lots of it. Lola Rose is founded on the principle that ‘more is more’ with colour the key to creating confident, bold looks.

WHY?

I have vivid memories of my glamorous grandmother Lola and loved dressing up in her ginormous necklaces when I was little. It instilled in me an unconscious love of bold jewellery.

The brand name combines Lola and my love of roses, and was decided in an instant, on a whim.

My father was an antique dealer. I loved the excitement of trading and used to help him at markets and fairs which generated an interest in communicating through beautiful things.

I became bored with my job as a PA; I wanted something more creative to focus on and so I started to make friendship bracelets from home, selling to friends initially.

The idea was born out of frustration that everything I liked was too expensive. Most women at that time regarded jewellery as something they would wear just “for best” rather than for everyday and that seemed such a waste. Why should you wait for a special occasion to wear something you love? Life’s too short!

the beauty of gemstones, by their aura, colour, and healing powers. I’m a natural worrier at heart and stones really do have a calming influence.

The same bangle can take on a whole new meaning when it’s worked in a different stone and each stone is distinctively different. Although we have a large selection of gemstones in the collection, such as Rose Quartz and Lapis Lazuli, it is Blue Sandstone, with a natural shimmer, that has always been the best seller.

WEAR

We’re a brand for women of all ages. I realised early on the importance of being inclusive and I embraced alternative ways of reaching lots of different women. Now

WHAT?

I wanted to create a collection of jewellery with a feel-good factor, designed by women for women. I could see that just by adding a touch of colour with a bold piece of jewellery a woman could make an instant style statement.

Colours change the way you feel; they’re uplifting and empowering.

With no business training but a lot of passion I set out to prove to myself that I could do something creative. I taught myself about gemstones; the cutting, carving and skills required to create jewellery. I’m fascinated by

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Layering is key, more is more!

I’m celebrating my 16th anniversary with shopping channel QVC. It’s a great feeling to get an instant reaction to new pieces and QVC has opened up a new and diverse audience.

I will always stay true to semi precious gemstones because they are the core of the business and though we have a massive scarf collection and new home collection, everything centres around jewellery.

Through social media I can really communicate with women, it’s like being in one big friendship group.

I get tweets and texts after every appearance on QVC and that powers me on.

I hope to build on this with more personal styling videos for our website showing how to layer pieces. Layering is my personal style signifier; I always wear a stack of friendship bracelets. I even sleep in them. And I always wear our ‘LOVED’ diamond charm necklace, which came about because my younger son wrote me a sweet little card that said simply, “Mummy I loved you,” rather than “love you” – and that has become a firm favourite in the collection.

I’m never without one of my printed scarves. They’re so flattering and always sell well when we demonstrate different ways to wear them. I dress for my shape rather than for what’s in fashion. I like girly shapes that drape and flow; labels like Tucker, Rixo and Diane von Furstenberg.

When I received an MBE in 2015 for my “contribution to fashion and jewellery design” it was such an honour. I still can’t believe it. I was so humbled and appreciative as all I really try to do is create a little luxury for women to feel great about themselves. ¢ lolarose.co.uk

Nikki Gewirtz, founder and creative director,

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THE ANARCHO-DANDY

Nothing if not an Music and fashion were once inextricably intertwined.

Jämes Rïgby, a former Seventies Teddy Boy, wonders if that’s still the case

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ribes. The editor said: “Talk about fashion tribes that you’ve belonged to or been influenced by.” Easy peasy, I thought. I’ll focus on how, in the past, it was music that led the fashion but that’s no longer the case.

I decided to start with the first fashion/ music tribe to which I belonged, the Teddy Boys (the Seventies revival, not the Fifties original), do a bit of research and then let the stream of consciousness take over once my fingers hit the laptop. The plan went to pot at the first step. It transpires that the Teddy Boys fashion tribe was not a musical tribe. At least not originally.

In the early Fifties, the postwar tailoring industry in London was looking to revive its fortunes. The demob suits were wearing thin and there was no clear discernible look that could be sold to young people with a few shillings to spend.

As with many fashion trends, the industry looked to the past for inspiration and determined that an Edwardian dandy revival, with tweaks, would be the next big thing. The Teddy Boy look was born: tapered trousers, winklepickers, long jackets, velvet collars, fancy waistcoats, shirts and narrow

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old romantic

ties. This was the first working-class youth fashion tribe of any notable size in Britain and predated the arrival of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde and Adam Faith by at least four years. The attachment of the fashion to the music came later.

I’m not one of those people who has ever said “music speaks to me” or “I couldn’t live without music”. I’m generally happier playing music than listening to it (keyboards, cello, violin, guitar, trombone and, most recently, banjolele). The styles of music I have listened to over the years have, in hindsight, been driven by the fashions associated with them, rather than the inherent qualities of the music itself.

Having dabbled briefly with punk, the next tribe, and perhaps the one with the biggest influence on me, was the Two-Tone, Ska or Rude Boy tribe. Think Specials, Madness, The Beat, and so on, with black tailored suits, narrow trousers (sometimes baggy trousers), white shirts, white socks, black and white shoes and a black trilby. Indeed, this look is something of a black and white version of the things I wear today. Turn up the colour dial, add a waistcoat and cravat or bowtie and you won’t be far off. Of all the musical tribes, this was the music I loved the most. It’s often said of Ska that men like it because it’s something they can dance to, which is perhaps why I was never into disco.

Then the Eighties arrived, along with a great fashion/music tribe, the New Romantics. I first encountered this at the Camden Palace, a vast multifloor North London club. The music seemed completely new, a lot of it electronic, and clothing involved long and military-style coats, jazzy trousers, flamboyant shirts and big hair – a dandy fashion indeed. Thankfully, all this predates digital photography and any prints

of me have been lost in many house moves. I think I would look naff now but at the time I was in my element.

Marriage, responsibilities, the rat race and children arrived and it seemed right to put aside such ‘‘childish” things. The AnarchoDandy died, occasionally being resurrected for a fancy-dress party. On the dress-down days in the office, there would be a token nod to dandyism, perhaps some fancy shoes or a fairly sober but long tailored jacket – but that was about it.

Then, 20 years later, like the Terminator, just when you thought it was dead, the circuitry flickered. The lights slowly came on and the dandy returned. I was single again, I felt young still, and there were nightclubs and parties to go to. I looked around and the fashion tribes seemed to have disappeared, while the music tribes were incredibly fragmented, often corporate. None seemed to have a dandy dress sense. Training shoes, trousers hanging low and branded casual jackets certainly weren’t going to be my thing.

But there were new fashion tribes that weren’t aligned to any musical styles. I went to gatherings of some of these tribes and never found myself out of place. For each, a gentle tweak to my standard attire meant I could fit in. Yet, by going one step beyond I could stand out just enough.

Last October, I was in a private bar in Soho.

There were 16 of us; a few I knew beforehand from some of these fashion tribes, a few I knew of, a few I didn’t. What had brought us together was a desire to reinvigorate one of London’s oldest members’ clubs, The Eccentric Club. As we exchanged ideas on membership and activities, I was struck by how many mini-tribes are out there in London with which I am associated, and several like-minded ones with which I am

“Then the Eighties arrived, along with a great fashion/ music tribe, the New Romantics.”

not. It also occurred to me that there are a few people who are social kingpins, active members of several of these tribes.

The tribes are: The Eccentric Tribe: anything goes as long as it’s elegant, not “normal” and it’s vaguely artistic The Chap Tribe: a tongue-in-cheek tribe that wears the clothes of a perhaps idealised bygone era when men were gentlemen and women were ladies. Most evident at the Chap Olympiad and monthly “lodge” meetings in a pub off Oxford Street The Colour Walk Tribe: anything goes as long as it’s vibrant and colourful. No beige or grey. A regular monthly meeting in East London and ad hoc ones all over London and the South East And, of course, The Goldie Tribe. Growing older disgracefully, yet with style.

There is also a strong overlap with the huge, but understandably discrete, Fetish Tribe. Perhaps my dabblings in this scene may be revealed another day.

There isn’t Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees of separation with all these tribes; it’s closer to two degrees, made possible by the internet, largely Facebook.

Have I found myself as one of very few people inhabiting the overlap of a Venn diagram of the four or five fashion tribes I hang out with? Are these movements or just a few mates dicking about with clothes?

Is the reality that the world is so vast and connected that anyone can easily find local tribes that fit them to a T, and their social media bubble gives them the impression that their little tribes are bigger and more influential than they think?

And does it matter? If you’re happy in your skin and your clothes, and if others accept you or at least don’t shun you, it’s probably all good. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 43

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Clothing conversations PICTURE CREDIT

PICTURES: ALEXANDRIA HALL STYLING: GALINA SHERRI

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Gigi’s Dressing Room is the brainchild of Galina Sherri. It may be a little dress shop in East London but it clearly has quite an influence on those who shop there, as Rebecca Weef Smith finds out

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igi’s is clearly quite a hub.

When I visit on a grey November day it’s full of laughter and warmth. I never quite get time to chat to Galina for any length of time as people are constantly popping in. At a time when other fashion retailers are bemoaning the death of the high street, this small boutique in Walthamstow is doing a roaring trade. The clothes are predominantly second-hand, but without the feel of being vintage. Galina’s own sense of style makes the mix of garments totally unique. The turnover of stock is rapid and there is always something new to discover, but this is the opposite of fast fashion. Without needing to shout about ethics and values, this shop all about sustainable fashion. There’s pre-worn and recycled, you can borrow clothes if you don’t want to commit to buying them and new garments are made locally using fabric that Galina sources from surplus stock which would otherwise end up in landfill.

Galina grew up under Communism; she tells me that she didn’t have much opportunity to be creative. “That side of me was quite suppressed; I was sunny on the outside as a child but inside I was a little bit depressed.

I couldn’t express myself. Not with the way I dressed; there was so little choice. But my grandmother had a sewing machine and I took her sixties pieces and reworked them for myself.”

At eighteen, Galina came to London and on a visit to Epsom Antique Market became entranced with second-hand clothes. “All the colours and all the choice; such a contrast to the greyness of growing up in Bulgaria. It was as if I had fallen into Alice in wonderland.”

It was when her children started school and other mothers would ask about her clothes that Galina began to use her eye to style others. “I’d say come to the house and they would try stuff on and borrow things. I would style them; that would bring about changes in the way they saw themselves. I realised then that this was a kind of way of doing therapy.

I had intended to go back to education and train in psychology but suddenly I had this business and it didn’t feel relevant to train as a counsellor. I seemed to naturally influence people to try something different, to step out of their comfort zone. We all have a need to express ourselves and be creative; if I can encourage that, if I can help someone find out a bit more about who they are, to be brave and

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Vicky’s story The dress code was “black tie”. It was not just that I had nothing suitable in my wardrobe; the thought of having to go shopping filled me with dread. Since escaping a domestically my abusive relationship, self-esteem at rock bottom, I had largely tried to be invisible. Dressing up was not something I enjoyed - it was something for other people, people without the lumps and bumps that come with having children.

Enter Gigi. I had expected my first visit to Gigi’s to be the same as visits to other clothes shops - something to be endured. I did not expect it to be fun. Gigi made me feel at ease from the beginning. She was able to visually assess my size and only brought me dresses that would fit. “Hmm,” she said, “that looks good but if I put a stitch here.....dress goes from looking good to looking fabulous”. Not an experience I was used to

as all. I had not worn a dress in years, let alone one that looked this good. I felt good.

From then followed a number of visits to the dressing room.

Gigi helped me to understand the clothes that suited my figure. She took the time to get to know me, what I liked and the clothes that suited my personality. All the clothes were adjusted and customised. Many times she would gently push my boundaries as far as clothes were concerned. “Try this,” Gigi would say, “No, that will never work,” I would reply - then try it and find out I was wrong. Over a period of 18 months, Gigi and I worked together to reinvent my wardrobe. Perhaps you may say that it coincided with other changes in my life. But it helped me come out of the shadows and become a more confident version of myself; I have learnt that expressing yourself through clothes can be for everyone, even me. ¢

The dressing room: A love story by Tina It was love at first sight. A black leather jacket, with fringes and beading, a little cowboy, a little more vaquero, and wholly desirable…and so entirely unsuitable for me. At my age.

I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I mustn’t…but I did. I touched it. Oooh – soft as a glove and somehow it was sliding off the hanger and into my hands.

But I was safe. It wouldn’t fit.

It had been made for some slim-shouldered girl or boy… it slipped on. And it might have been made for me. The sleeves were a fraction to long, but they could be altered…I bought that jacket. I wear it. I love it. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 49

All clothes from Gigi’s Dressing Room, Wood Street, London E17 With thanks to the models on the day: Pam, Jacq, Tina, Vicki and Sushila

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show themselves, then that feels good.”

In this part of London there is a real mix of cultures. Galina sees one of the roles for her shop as a space where clothes start conversations. “It’s good to learn about each other; we are all humans underneath, I may not agree with your views but I can try to understand them. I want to create a community where we are all accepted and I do that in my own little way in Gigi’s.

People drop by to chat and try on clothes and play with the way they look; people from all backgrounds and communities. It’s allencompassing. That’s my vision, that we all get along together, that no one is left out. I start with myself, my ideas about fashion, and colour and the arts and how they have helped me, then I hope that my way helps others; that my love, of creativity, colour, way of being, expands and brings about healing and forgiveness. We can all share that. I don’t see fashion as being superficial if it can help me with generating an open mind and an open heart.”

Not quite what you may expect when you go shopping for a new outfit, but it seems that’s what happens at Gigi’s. I get the sense that the customers who frequent this shop always come away with more than just a new frock: when say they have been ‘Gigified’ they are not just talking about looking good, but expressing a deeper connection with their best self. ¢ This old Cinderella shall go to the ball by a Happy Shopper As a child growing up in the 1950s I remember how towns and villages all had their own small specialist shops and always a ladies dress shop, no bigger than a front room.

These shops often belonged to one person who lived over the shop, or in rooms at the back. Gigi’s is like stepping back to those times when visiting a shop was personal.

The owner knew who you were; shopkeeper and customer were friends. Gigi has created that in her shop but totally up to date.

The first time I visited, on the recommendation of a friend, I was looking for something to wear to a posh afternoon tea with my daughter.

I was getting to the point of giving up the hunt; nothing on or off line was suitable. Gigi found me the ideal dress in no time. It was too long, but that was no problem for Gigi; out came the needle and thread, it was made perfect. I thought I’d found my fairy godmother. Never can I say I have noththing to wear there are times when what we need from a shop is a good friend who can help you love yourself in your clothes after years of frustration.

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HERE’S TO HOPE ... a fashion brand that has so much more than clothes to offer

Dressing the mind, body and spirit, Nayna McIntosh, the inspired CEO and Founder of Hope, tells Angela Kennedy how she launched her own fashion label in her fifties

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and M&S, I had come to a crossroads in my life and although I enjoyed my work I knew I needed to radically reevaluate the next phase of my life and take control of my own destiny .

It was ‘now or never’ to realise my dream of starting my own business.

Turning 50 was that milestone and although in my head I was still 30, regrettably my body shape was not!

At the beginning After years of working in fashion for big corporate brands like George at Asda

Why the brand name Hope?

It is a positive expression of optimism and it’s my mother’s middle name.

It encapsulates our family values:

ith Monday motivational messages on Instagram such as C.S Lewis’s positive, ‘You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream’, Hopeis a brand that spreads the love by offering a new approach to sizing and to recruiting real women as models.

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“I have never worked this hard in my life but it is so worth it”

Nayna McIntosh, Founder and CEO of Hope

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u love, trust, integrity and ambition.

My family are my anchor.

I grew up in a large, loving, Jamaican family. My grandfather came to the UK in the 1950s filled with Hopefor the future. And at 77 my mother is still a major influence, an amazing woman and very much part of the business.

My father-in-law designed the logo (he had his own graphic design studio) and my husband is my business partner.

We have two children, Florence, 15 and Arthur, 17.

It’s very much a family affair, although everyone ’s delighted that we’ve finally moved the business out of our family home and they’ve got their own space back.

Getting started My aim was and still is to make women feel confident.

I’m always taken aback by the psychological effect clothes can have on making women feel good about themselves. I suffered my own mini crisis of confidence when I hit 50 and knew there must be many other women out there who felt just the same .

I wanted my brand to be all about quality and deconstructed shapes, easy outfits that can be interchanged for women who want to look smart but not corporate .

It feels as if YOU are the brand ambassador?

The brand IS so me. I wear our clothes every day. I HopeI’m not a control freak, but l do like to get involved with every aspect of building the brand.

I’m not a designer although I come from a strong design aesthetic.

We have two talented designers and there are six of us full-time, aged from 20 to 62, with regular freelance contributors.

It’s good to get experts in different areas to help us grow organically.

The foundation of the collection Everything starts with the right foundation. Our basic collection of simple foundation pieces has stretchy Lycra content to hide lumps and bumps. Getting the foundation right is our Hopedesign mantra.

Pieces like our Longline vest can be worn under anything and pull you in with confidence while the Ultra leggings work under dresses and tunics to sculpt and slim. They are the basics to build a wardrobe around.

The language of sizing I wanted to really challenge the concept of sizing in an emotional way.

Dual slim and dual curvy, for example, are kinder words than plus-size and outsize.

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clothes on. We take the rigid number out of the equation. Most women don’t conform to standard sizes like 10- 20 . It’s all easily explained on our customer-friendly website tables.

Always and forever styling Initially we were known for voluminous flowing shapes, which we still offer, but now we want to broaden the collection to offer more body conscious shaping as our customers have requested this.

Our customers work hard to keep fit and want to show off their shape so we’ve introduced a few more slimmer lines this season and gradually the collections are becoming more feminine. We will also be introducing more prints for spring .

Our brand ethos It ’s so important for me to show a good representation of diversity in age, shape and ethnicity in our models.

We insist on having a curvy model on all our campaign shoots. We mix professional models with ‘real’ women and regularly put calls out for potential lifestyle models.

We chose two fabulous women to feature in the current campaign, and everyone works together to achieve the best results.

Photo shoots are all done in our offices and catered for by “the Golden Girls “, namely my mother and mother-in-law.

Reaching the customer Initially we only sold online. The biggest leap forward has been wholesaling to small independent retailers around the country.

I want to support small independent businesses like ours.These are owned by passionate, dedicated women (like us) who really know their customer. They act as personal stylists and often have someone specific in mind when they purchase from us. I love their customer loyalty; it demonstrates everything we believe in too.

With the high street on its knees, these women cater for very targeted customers and make buying clothes an enjoyable personal experience. It has been The laid-back lux style that encapsulates Hope, from Freesize (8-10) to Super Curvy (16-20)

extraordinary watching their development.

Women with coffee shops or craft galleries are now selling a few pieces of our clothing on the side.

It’s about creating atmosphere, quite the opposite of faceless online purchasing.

Looking ahead We want more women to discover our collection. We’re now in 35 shops in the UK. I’m hoping to expand our wholesale business and make that 50 by the end of the year. I want to increase our digital marketing , working with more online marketing places to reach more women.

Instagram has helped us raise brand awareness and we will continue to keep it interactive and consumer-friendly.

What inspires YOU Women inspire me.

I love strong women with positive attitudes who have achieved great things from small beginnings; women like Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama. I have been so inspired by her and attended a talk when she was in London recently .

Business-wise, Eileen Fisher would have to be my ultimate role model. I love what she stands for and has achieved with her global fashion brand. The best compliment I was paid recently was when someone said she thought we were like a British Eileen Fisher. ¢ hopefashion.co.uk

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CLUB CULTURE without ties PICTURES BY SAMMY BAXTER. STYLING: REBECCA WEEF SMITH

Suit and shirt: Immortal Pocket square:Ette + Harr

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Menswear: Immortal Silk scarf: Ette + Harr Opposite page Catsuit: Fandangoekid

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Menswear: Immortal Patrick’s Tee shirt: Victim Fashion Street Coat and bag: Fandangoekid Glasses: Kirk & Kirk

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Opposite page Catsuit (just seen): Fandangoekid Dress: Immortal Menswear: Immortal Glasses: Kirk & Kirk This page Dress: Immortal

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Menswear: Immortal Shirt: Victim Fashion Street Skirt: Fandangoekid

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Coat: Fandangoekid

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T-shirt: Immortal Suit jacket: SmoddySharp Pocketsquare: Ette + Harr 66 | GOLDIE magazine

Dress: LAMAR Suit: SmoddySharp GOLDIE magazine | 67

Models (left to right): Antony Fitzgerald Mercedes von Thun-Hohenstein Patrick Cordier All footwear models’ own Shot on location at SmoddySharp of London 68 | GOLDIE magazine

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Craft group at the Stag and Bow, haberdashery shop in South East London

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Knit yourself a Loneliness is a problem that we hope will never afflict us. Karen Arthur explains how arts and crafts can provide a creative solution for the many sufferers

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ine million of us are lonely.

Let’s just sit with that fact for a moment. How many are willing to admit it? There is a common misconception that lonely people are of the elderly variety who can’t get out much. Research shows that this is, frankly, nonsense. However, as society has become more fragmented and older people are less likely to live with their families or experience daily human connection, loneliness can hit them hard.

The government has woken up to the facts and in October, Theresa May launched its first loneliness strategy. We now have a Minister for Loneliness. It is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time.

Studies show that people who are lonely, depressed and isolated are three to five times more likely to die prematurely than those who feel some sort of connection in their life.

It is linked to a range of health problems such as heart disease, strokes and Alzheimer’s Disease. About 200,000 older people in the UK have not had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month.

Can crafting and creativity help? The short answer is a resounding “Yes”. Crafting and making can be enormously powerful when it comes to challenging mental health issues.

Arts and crafts and other creative projects can help to alleviate boredom, keep ageing minds busy and may even help to prevent depression. Added to that, arts and crafts help with hand-eye coordination, cognitive abilities and concentration.

There are some wonderful initiatives. The

Knit for Peace project has shown that knitting (which can be done into extreme old age) can reduce depression and anxiety, slow the onset of dementia and help to improve long-term health, both mental and physical.

The University of Oxford is conducting a study called the Yarnfulness Project, which aims to engage with local and online communities who practise yarn-based crafts to understand more about the reported benefits to mental health.

In London, the Loneliness Lab has been created to bring together business, government and civil society to explore how we can reshape and reimagine our cities to design out loneliness and isolation.

Its playbook outlines several new ventures including Craft Moves, which hopes that craft activities on the commute can connect people and help to end loneliness.

Stag and Bow, a haberdashery and vintage fabric shop in South East London, runs craft workshops. Pascale, the owner, began her weekly craft social eight years ago when she opened the shop. “I believe that making is fundamental to who we are,” she says.

“You have to use your hands to survive. You should do things together and share. It’s easy to break down barriers with people if you’re using your hands creatively.” The popular gathering serves tea and treats, often baked by some of the participants. Many say that they have been helped through tough times while attending the craft social.

As we age, our lifestyles and priorities change and ageing well is vital. According to a study published in the Journal of Aging Studies, participants aged between 60 and 93 identified six aspects of successful ageing: ¢a sense of purpose ¢interactions with others ¢personal growth ¢self-acceptance ¢autonomy ¢health A sense of purpose is significant, especially if our younger years have been defined by a career or by raising children and running

a household. Once those responsibilities are lifted, we can sometimes develop an uncertainty about our purpose. Taking part in creative activities boosts problem-solving skills and the satisfaction that we can take into everyday life. When we are able to share handmade gifts with friends and family, we develop a sense of pride in our creations.

My go-to craft is sewing. My attempts at knitting have been, shall we say, interesting.

I learnt to sew in my teens thanks to the patience and expertise of my Barbadian mother. Newly single and working to a tight budget, she would turn her creative hand to most things out of necessity. I became a dance teacher and years later, after an injury, began to focus more on my sewing skills, eventually moving from education to fashion design.

I started my Tuesday Thrills Craft Social after leaving teaching at 53. I experienced a dip in my mental health and felt extremely lonely, especially when both my daughters left home. I thought I would relish having the house to myself and not having to look for my vintage-but-new-when-I-bought-them clothes in their rooms. How wrong I was.

Crafting with others in a safe space, even only once a month, helped me to improve and regain my confidence and introduced me to a new circle of friends.

The advice for the millions experiencing loneliness or depression is well documented.

A great deal of it involves getting out and “doing” things. In the spirit of “doing” you can’t go far wrong with trying a craft. My experience has always been that when the going got tough (cue the opening bars of THAT Billy Ocean tune) if I could just get to my sewing machine, or pick up a crochet hook or teach myself to knit half a sock (glances feebly at half-knitted sock), then I’d be moving in the right direction.

Search out a craft club nearby by contacting the Crafts Council in UK. Or join a friend to start one yourself either at home or even at your local café or favourite meeting place. To those of you who say “I’m not creative!”, I say “Try”. There’s a craft project out there for you and the benefits as we age are boundless. You just have to give it a go. ¢

group of friends...

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HEIGHTS of adventure Andrew Harvey joins an expedition to the Peruvian Andes – and makes a coachload of new friends

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ou’re not going on a holiday, you’re going on an adventure,” our guide, Sebastian, told us as we began the climb to the Andes of Peru. He made us feel like a team of explorers preparing for a challenge. And, talking of the unknown, how would it work out with a random group of 18 people? It was the first time VA and I had signed up to travel with a tour party.

Ahead of us were early-morning starts, winding coach miles, hours on the road; plenty of opportunities for loudmouths, moaners and high-maintenance individuals.

There were six couples and six travelling solo. There were teachers, a police officer, health and social service people, an engineer, a surveyor. How would we get along? If we had one thing in common, it was a willingness to prospect for new experiences.

Introductory exchanges went well. Everyone seemed a little tentative, no one pushing for leadership.

The first bit of bonding for me came, perhaps inevitably, via football. Our first day

on the road was a Saturday. The lunchtime restaurant beside the sparkling Pacific had working wi-fi (a rarity) and back home the games had already been played. A few of us checked the scores. What joy – wins for Tottenham, Norwich and Raith Rovers.

Three blokes at any rate had something in common.

That night we were in the city of Ica. This is Peru’s wine-growing centre and at dinner another ad hoc trio shared an excellent bottle of locally produced Merlot. Peru makes good wine but, surprisingly, most wine lists were dominated by reds from Chile and Argentina.

There was often no Peruvian wine on offer – although, when there was, we rather ostentatiously made a clamour for it. On the other hand, every bar offered pisco sour, a gently alcoholic mix with frothy egg white. I thought it tasted like the dreaded limoncello, but some travellers lined them up.

Shared interests were beginning to emerge in what was a mostly English crew. An Australian woman was travelling solo, ditto a male nurse from Dublin, while Scotland was represented by an adventurous couple who were later taking a catamaran to the

Galapagos Islands.

Coach travel is unavoidably sedentary and confined, none more so than the day we spent five hours stationary on a desert road that the police had closed to give priority to a car rally. This had caught hundreds of truck and car drivers unawares. The rally, when it eventually passed through, was a puny event, but it effectively ruined the day for those in our group who had booked a plane ride over the Nazcar Lines, enormous patterns and etchings in the desert sand, because it was dark by the time we got there.

Remarkably, despite the standstill and the traffic snarl that followed, nobody made much of a fuss – and that included a couple who had planned to celebrate their wedding anniversary with the flight and then with a champagne supper...

We were climbing higher up the Andes each day, with awesome scenery which turned gradually from desert to lush green, fed from melting snow and the rainy season.

With altitude came thin air – you didn’t want to hurry. Even so, we were surprised when we reached Cuzco, at 3,400 metres, to find several of our group gasping in the

hotel lobby with face masks and an oxygen cylinder. It was like a scene from A&E. Others preferred treatment in the form of coca tea from a permanent dispenser.

The broken green leaves produce a hot and comforting herbal infusion which is supposed to be an antidote to altitude sickness. You wouldn’t know it from the tea but, given a different treatment, these leaves are the starting point in the cocaine process.

Cuzco, a former Inca capital, has sprawled outwards from a historic city centre and is the gateway to Peru’s most famous site, the ruins at Machu Picchu. Although this is now one of the world’s most visited attractions, it retains a majesty and mystery that thousands of grockles a day cannot diminish. Little is known of this Inca citadel, which was never found by the conquistadors but was discovered beneath rampant undergrowth early in the 20th century. Restoration took years and around 70 per cent of the original stonework still stands as a reminder of the skills and brilliant organisation of the Incas.

Our group duly joined the procession to Machu Picchu; first by train and then by bus, winding up the mountains to the entrance.

More vigorous visitors often take the Inca Trail, hiking for several days, but we were content to be delivered to the front gate.

Apart from the ruins, we were treated to nature’s weather show. It was powerfully sunny at first, before dark clouds massed over the mountains. Soon, thunder roared and rain cascaded and we rummaged for our ponchos.

We looked like a bunch of pantomime ghosts posing for larky pictures in the downpour.

On our way to Lake Titicaca we reached 5,000 metres, and Sebastian said we were now higher than the summit of Mont Blanc.

On a Titicaca island we were divided into three groups for a simple overnight with local families who live without electricity or plumbing. It brought back childhood memories of simpler times for all of us.

Day by day, the camaraderie within the group developed into an easy companionship.

We found out about each other, exchanged anecdotes and, back in Lima, email addresses.

Never mind the mountains, this had been an uplifting experience in getting on together.

Will we keep in touch? I wonder. Perhaps it was just a high-altitude holiday romance. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 73

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. She’s delighted to be able to combine her academic background with her long-standing personal interest in and (more recently) her lived experience of ageing. She lives in Devon with her family. In her spare time she enjoys writing, country walks, working out, and taking part in activities that help dismantle outdated prescriptive stereotypes about how people ought to age. Louise is on a mission to embrace age and to get the word out that growing older is more than OK.

Slacktivists or Activists?

“I learnt years ago not to allow myself to miss out on things because of my age. Much ageism is unconscious and part of a scornful, scapegoating attitude toward the elderly, so I believe it is up to me to set these young pups straight.”

(The late blogger Hattie, from Hattie’s Web)

Research into the use of social media by the older generation shows rebellion against ageism is stirring across the world, writes Louise Pendry

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ittle is known about the extent to which older people are engaging in collective action online, despite statistics suggesting that there are many more of us going online in the 50+ age group (Pew Research Centre, 2018).

The prevailing stereotype of the older person is probably not one in which the protagonist is an enraged activist, fingers feverishly flying over the keyboard, rallying the troops to action. Often older people are depicted as technology-averse and politically passive. Is that so? I want to share what we know about how members of this burgeoning online activist subculture (myself included) are attempting to make rebellious inroads in one particular area: the fight against ageism.

Let’s start with bloggers. Research indicates that blogs are traditionally viewed as the platform older people prefer to use to express personal opinions rather than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram because of concerns over privacy and anonymity.

Amanda Lazar and her colleagues researching in the field of human computer interaction studied 189 older (50+) bloggers active between 2004 and 2016, mostly in the US and UK. They examined 4,150 blog posts that featured words such as ageism, ageist, bias, stereotype and discriminate, and pulled out common threads.

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Four core activist strategies emerged: ¢Negotiating individual views and forming community - discussing and sharing how we articulate shifts in our identity as we grow older and how ageist messages can underlie our self-stereotypes ¢Articulating a collective narrative of ageism - comparing for example “stock” stories that reinforce existing ageist stereotypes with “concealed” stories that provide anecdotal accounts of how such views can be resisted and challenged ¢Taking action and discussing change - raising awareness of ageism and age discrimination and increasing the visibility of likeminded older adults by sharing guest posts and interviews ¢Sharing strategies for navigating ageism - for example, how to counter workplace age discrimination, blocking offensive ageist ads from Facebook feeds.

Lazar and her colleagues found that these bloggers were generating a powerful collective narrative that challenged ageism,

building a strong community of like-minded followers and discussing how to dismantle outdated societal stereotypes around ageing.

These findings represent only a microcosm of what’s potentially out there. In my reading and research, I’ve been uncovering a range of other blogs/vlogs that seem to serve a similar function. This online “Subvert Ageing” subculture is huge and varied, though it seems from basic Googling that there are more women than men actively participating.

In a previous article in Goldie I spoke of my decision to go grey and mentioned how I’d found private discussion groups on Facebook a source of inspiration and support.

My motivation to join them stemmed partly from research with Jessica Salvatore looking at online discussion forums on topics ranging from parenting to the environment to depression. We asked members about their experiences of belonging to such groups. Two findings emerged. First, online activity did not seem to occur at the expense of offline activity, as social commentators such as Sherry Turkle have argued. Indeed, where members were quite engaged online (such as debating environmental issues), they seemed keen to also work on behalf of the issues offline (campaigning). Secondly, in groups embracing sensitive topics such as depression, the more they were involved and identified with others the better they felt.

I recalled this when struggling with going

NORDWOOD/UNSPLASH

grey. As Anne Perkins recently wrote in The Guardian: “Of all the choices women … make about their outward appearance, going grey has assumed the role of signalling to the outside world that you don’t care that you’re getting old; you are ready to be invisible, to advertise your shrivelled ovaries, to be in some way ready for insignificance.” I went in search of forums - I typed in grey/gray/ silver hair into Facebook and found loads of groups.

I joined a few and enjoyed getting to know other women. Whether they were based in New Jersey or New Zealand, and whether they were teachers, stay-at-home mums, paramedics or opticians, we shared a common goal, chatted about growing older and happily bonded along the way. I was totally and happily grey for my 50th birthday.

Without consciously trying, I had cast off many of my fears and preconceptions about getting older and felt more at peace with (and excited about) tackling this next phase of my life. How did that happen? Did the groups play a part here? I needed to know more.

I felt this was a research project in the making: do online groups empower us to age more positively or was I just an anomaly?

Along with my colleagues, Jessica Salvatore

and Tim Kurz, and my postgraduate student, Vanessa Cecil, we approached members of two going grey groups. We asked them about their experiences and whether and how the forum helped, but also about their thinking about ageing more generally. We found that within these safe and fairly private online spaces, women were opening up about and debating their ageing fears more generally.

And some of them reported a positive shift in their perceptions about growing older. They felt empowered. And that’s fantastic, but it’s a movement that exists in a private, moderated space.

Getting the word out requires more public platforms too. So I’ve joined Instagram (@silverserenity4). This has opened up a new arena of online ageing subculture and activism. I will admit I had reservations, fearing trolling and unwelcome approaches.

I’ve been surprised – a few rogue messages notwithstanding – at how friendly and supportive this more public space is. It’s about way more than sharing pictures. I’m enjoying posting about my research and my observations about ageing and making connections. I sense a hunger for information and advice about ageing. Some of the topics include: subverting ageist stereotypes;

gendered ageism; going grey (men and women); relationships; healthy ageing lifestyles (e.g. fitness and diet); style and fashion; and menopause. And I’m realising that being in the public domain and debating these issues is actually pretty cool. Because, much as I love my safe and private Facebook groups, I think to really tackle ageism we need to also be out in the open.

But lest I get carried away, will any of these online initiatives palpably affect the way the world views ageing? Are those of us blogging and posting about the issues around ageism really just being “Slacktivists”, smugly pontificating from behind our laptops without really getting our hands dirty, or might we instead be contributing to a real change in how the world views ageing? In 2010 Malcolm Gladwell suggested that the weak ties that form on social media “seldom lead to high risk activism”.

Perhaps it is too soon to tell. But returning to some of my earlier research with Jessica Salvatore, I recall that we did find evidence of a link between forum members’ online and offline activities. In particular, when members’ online experiences had exceeded expectations (the forum was even better than they’d hoped), they reported that their experiences in the group seemed to spill over into their offline activities in a positive way. So, for example, those promoting environmental issues were motivated to get involved offline in events associated with this (campaigning, volunteering). And crucially, this motivation was influenced by how well they identified with their fellow online group members (when they identified more, it made it even more likely).

Importantly, we found that identification with other group members was high, especially for those groups that existed to support members through stigmatising issues such as depression. In our later research on going grey groups too, results suggested meaningful bonds had formed between group members. There was a strong collective identity. Weak ties they may be on paper, separated as we often are in time and geography, but I think many of us feel a genuine connection with like-minded online folk around the world.

I’m keen to research this topic further.

And - along with a number of my online connections - I’m starting to get more involved in campaigning on these issues offline too. A bunch of us have recently met up and formed a group to champion and challenge outdated ageist stereotypes in industry: the 50+ Industry Influencers Group (the idea of The Bias Cut’s Jacynth Bassett).

And maybe, given time, these virtual ties that bind us will also empower us to make subversive offline headway that ultimately influences perceptions and policy around ageing. To arms, my online comrades!¢ GOLDIE magazine | 75

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Refusing to be invisible Being LGBTQ+ and growing old can leave people doubly marginalised.

But one man tells Tim Boddy why it doesn’t have to be this way

dward “Ted” Jacobs has over the past few years undergone what he describes as a “second adolescence”. His eyes light up while he recounts the rich and somewhat complex story of his life and this recent transformation.

At 80 years old – a notably youthful 80 years old – Ted has only recently completely come to terms with his sexuality in a public manner. Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, he has spent his life between his home country and London. He ran away from his “dysfunctional family” during the 1960s to London, when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK. During this time he led a “double life”. He explains: “I was a respected, professional doctor by day, and a promiscuous, chaser looking for sex at night.” This interview with a rather dapper Ted was conducted at the Golden Lion in Soho, a highly relevant location, given that it was one of the locations where he used to come looking for these anonymous pick-ups.

After retiring and following the death of his mother (“She dominated me,” he says soberly), he went back to South Africa as a volunteer at a large theatre in its marketing department, where he worked with “all kinds of people, all kinds of orientations, ages, and race. I was there for eight years – it really did change my life in a good way.” Then it was back to the UK where he has lived ever since.

While Ted’s story is perhaps far from quotidian, many older people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transexual do have varied, poignant and sometimes distressing stories to tell; and they have differing needs in relation to growing older. One million LGBTQ+ people in Britain are now over the age of 55, in what is an often overlooked and marginalised community, even within wider LGBTQ+ circles (a community often with a sharp focus on younger gay people). A double prejudice, of sorts.

Society in this country (and in many Western countries) is at a consequential crossroads, where people of retirement age have lived through a time where homosexuality was illegal; in the UK it was not decriminalised until 1967. There have been numerous cases cited where LGBTQ+ people who have received domiciliary care, or moved into residential complexes or care homes, feel u GOLDIE GOLDIE magazine magazine| |77 77

TIM BODDY

“In general, if one is independent, I would say a specific majorityLGBT residential complex is the ideal situation.”

u

that they have had to go back into the closet after living a life of predominantly being “out”, and true to themselves. There have even been documented incidents of abuse directed at gay patients, both by by members of the public and support staff.

While Ted is not in need of care yet and is in good health, it is something he is mindful of for the future. Growing older as an LGBTQ+ person has crept up as a significant social issue in recent years, with various institutions and support networks not prepared for this moment and the specific needs of this section within the gay community.

The statistics that back this up are startling; in an in-depth survey commissioned by YouGov on behalf of Stonewall, 50 per cent said they would be uncomfortable in being “out” to care staff. LGBTQ+ people are three times more likely to be single than a heterosexual person, and an estimated 90 per cent of them do not have children: a vital point given that people’s care is often found for them by their children or family.

Numerous organisations are now active in this area and doing excellent work. After Ted’s stint in the theatre in Cape Town, he returned to London in an effort to heal and “make myself a whole person”, so joined one of these organisations, Opening Doors London (which is part of Age UK), a charity that offers support services specifically for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people over the age of 50 in the UK. Ted says that he joined not only to address the issues of growing older as a gay person, but also to broaden out his contacts – since he is without children and immediate family (a familiar tale for LGBTQ+ people). A third and deeply personal reason is in relation to what he candidly calls his “rather unsatisfactory way of existing” some years back, during his cruising days; the experience of being at Opening Doors – and “out” – means he has finally “seen gay people as people, and not just as sexual beings”.

He’s now part of the LGBTQ+ community, and has left behind his double life of the past: “I’ve been to three Prides in a row, and in the most recent Pride I featured in the promotional film which I was very proud of – considering the journey I’ve travelled.”

Another organisation working within this area is Tonic, founded four years ago, which is currently looking for sites to develop the UK’s first LGBTQ+-specific residential complex – aimed at people aged 50 and over. The idea of LGBTQ+specific housing, or integration into the existing system, is one that many charities, housing organisations, care homes, and the LGBTQ+ community are currently working through.

The Marie Curie organisation has said that “many in the LGBT community were putting off accessing care at the time when they ‘needed it most’”, with trust in carers often low. Although companies

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such as Anchor (the largest not-for-profit provider of housing in the country) are making huge strides via means such as providing staff diversity training and raising awareness of lesbian, gay and bisexual residents using their services, there is still a long way to go.

While Ted agrees with this training approach and promoting visibility within the current system, he is hugely supportive of what Tonic is trying to achieve and is on its waiting list. He says: “In general, if one is independent, I would say a specific majority-LGBT residential complex is the ideal situation. There could be space for community and LGBT-orientated events – not all exclusively LGBT, but that would be its primary purpose. It’s important for me to have a place that I would like to live in, and not somewhere I’d be forced to live in. And so the idea of a Tonic residential complex is very attractive, because it would be socially orientated to my needs and my personality and people like me.”

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hile there are certainly difficulties in broader terms within society, many LGBTQ+ people over 50 lead a rewarding life, and are often industrious within the community. Ted continues to remain active, walking every day (the images with this article are taken on one of his long walks near Alexandra Palace), taking part in Opening Doors events, and going to the theatre two or three times a week (“mostly fringe theatre and new types of theatre”).

A new arrival in his life is that of films: not just watching them, but actually taking part in them.

He says: “I’ve become a film extra. It’s not something I anticipated would happen – it happened by accident. It’s a whole world which to me is something new and strange, and which I’m starting to like, even though one has to hang around for hours on end, and get up at 3 o‘clock in the morning.”

Two weeks, he says, were spent on the set of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. You can spot him in King of Thieves (starring Michael Caine), and he had high hopes that footage of him would appear in Mary Poppins Returns.

While there are clearly far-reaching issues for your average 50-plus LGBTQ+ person and still much to address, there is a lot to be hopeful for, as society shifts and begins to recognises the needs of those in this community. Ted’s awareness of issues, his articulate nature and active lifestyle as an “out” and older gay man are cause for optimism – and there are many like him.

As he says: “I think socially we [older LGBTQ+ people] have been a neglected community; invisible, shunned.

But we deserve to spend the last of our days in comfort and recognition, enjoying ourselves and our lives.”

Who can argue with that? ¢

GREY MATTERS

early everyone I spoke to in the last week of 2018 touched on that old chestnut, New Year’s resolutions. And for the most part they fell into a small number of categories, mostly the usuals: lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking and/or drinking, read more, travel more.

Of course, when you take on so much in your busy life, failure at trying to do all of the above is inevitable. So why do we saddle ourselves with these huge lists of things that even as individual tasks are gargantuan enough? Just losing weight is a full-time obsession, if you do it right to get results. Keeping fit requires a gym membership, which if it’s expensive, entails a visit more that three times a week.

Don’t even talk to me about quitting smoking!

I decided to take a different perspective on all of this. A new year comprises 12 new months, 52 new weeks, and 365 new days in which to make a change. So why try to do it all on day one? I was always taught that when looking at a new task or project, such as learning a script or writing an essay, it’s better to break it down in to So here we are, 1st January 2019. I bite size chunks. It also is said that it takes only 30 days to change a habit or behaviour. slept happily through the festivities So, here I sit on this new day in new week of a new month to wake briefly at 2am, much to my at the start of a new year ready to look at making changes in a less mountainous way. Why not start today with just dismay. I’ve never bothered cele- one thing, such as cutting down on dairy? I shall look at my fridge and remove the high fats from it: butter (yummy), brating the passing of time, as it’s cow’s milk (so many options now as an alternative). This really only a reminder of regrets at I can do very easily, a small but very useful dietary change which I know from past experience will make a vast things not achieved, of frustration difference. Excellent. Your taste buds change very rapidly when you begin to eliminate a flavour. I used to love loads and procrastination. I did, howev- of sugar in my tea, but years later it tastes disgusting. One er, look back at the achievements small change as a diabetic, but the rewards were great.

So, day one taken care of. Nothing else to think about or and amazing events that filled obsess over. But what about the rest of the list? I took a look at the various monthly campaigns, because taking on just a 2018, one of which is writing this month of a new practice or behaviour is less daunting and more attainable. 30 days is nothing, and if the behaviour column. truly changes, then the new habit is born; you may never want to eat meat again!

GILL MANLY Now, I can see you rolling your eyes already, but wait a minute this can be fun. Looking at it this way you can create a diary of new habits, especially if you know they can be short-term and still provide you with benefits.

This is my plan for 2019; chunks of small changes staggered over time. Here is a guide I plan to use. Get your new diary out, mark these in, and don’t worry about them until you get to the relevant page; they will flag themselves up at the given time. Of course, if you are of the school of thought that totally eliminating everything and starting new projects at one time and it works for you, then bravo and good luck. But I give it three weeks tops before you get fed up.

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GREY MATTERS

Here are some helpful landmark dates that I plan to use to change habits and introduce new hobbies and practices:

Vegan month. So many alternatives exist now, you will have no trouble with this one, and you’ll save a lot of money too.

Try giving up alcohol now, as Dry January and Veganuary at the same time is a big ask. 7th February is Time to Talk day, so if you are feeling blue or know someone who is struggling, then there is help available through your GP and a wonderful charity called Mind.

No smoking day is 13th March this year, so why not get a head start - there are plenty of resources online to help.

January

February

March

Time to reward your efforts so far. Review the changes you have made. The quality of your life and health will have improved, and so what if you fell by the wayside with some things.? You have much more to look forward to in the second half of the year. No punishments are recommended! 7th July is World Chocolate day, need I say more?

12th August is National Allotments week. Why not find out if there is one near you? They are brilliant as a form of exercise and you get fresh veg as the reward?

They are often very cheap to rent at £100 a year or less. You will also be part of a community of other gardeners who will no doubt lend you tools and give you seasonal growing tips.

Organic September is fantastic, and another opportunity to review your diet. Have you slipped into old ways by eating too many take-aways and microwave meals? It happens too easily. Shop local and shop organic and seasonally – you’ll enjoy it.

July

August

September

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If all of the above is working thus far, then well done keep it up! But don’t punish yourself if not. National Walking Day is the first Wednesday in April and 5th April is Walk to Work day, so get yourself a small, cheap pedometer - once you see the steps increase you will love it and start challenging yourself each day to do more.

Are you still vegan? No problem if you fell by the wayside, you can renew your commitment by looking at a vegetarian diet instead.

It’s National Vegetarian Week from 13th May.

It’s Pride Month, so look out for the celebrations and marches; they are always fun, and you can show your support to the LGBTQI+ community.

April

May

June

Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Check your breasts and encourage others to do the same.

Get screened if you are invited to do so by the GP. It might save your life.

Movember, or men’s Health Awareness Month. Our fathers, partners, brothers and friends face a health crisis that isn’t being talked about. Men are dying too young. We can’t afford to stay silent about prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention.

5th December is International Volunteers Day. In the lead up to Christmas, make a commitment to giving your time and skills as a volunteer. Charites such as Crisis at Christmas and local charities that feed those in poverty and distress are always looking for help over the season.

Having done this for many years, I can say it’s the most rewarding work and made me feel like I have contributed something good at the end of the year.

October

November

December

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DOUBLE DECKER ICON Lee Bender, cofounder of the 1970s Bus Stop boutiques, recently had an exhibition of her illustrations at the Chelsea Arts Club. The iconic designer and artist talks style, inspiration and why the discotheque was everything, with Wendy Rigg

emerge from the underground at Notting Hill via the Portobello Road exit to see Lee parked in her racey, stylish red and white Mini Cooper – and have to pinch myself. I am transported straight back to my teenage years, and a yearning for the Bus Stop clothes which were a passport to the sophisticated grown-up world. Fast forward to now, and I’m being driven through the streets of Notting Hill by the renowned designer I so admired. My teenage self would never even have dreamed this would happen.

The first Bus Stop boutique, which opened in 1970 on Kensington u High Street, was part of the fashion revolution of the time. It GOLDIE magazine | 83

u was the place to go for young, exciting, trend-led style at affordable prices.

Over the next decade, business boomed, with stars such as Debbie Harry, The Beatles, David Bowie and Charlotte Rampling among its customers.

Bus Stop went on to be a national and international success story, with shops in 12 cities across the UK, and in August 1978, Bloomingdales, New York opened an in-store replica of the London boutique. Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and Hong Kong followed.

Fittingly, Lee’s home is an Aladdin’s cave of artwork and interesting artefacts gathered on the extensive travels where, commissioned by the United Nations, she advised manufacturers in developing countries on adapting for the UK market.

Everything is stylish (even the loo roll, which has stars printed on it).

Over afternoon tea, we 84 | GOLDIE magazine

discuss her latest project.

Where did you get ideas from for your latest collection of fashion illustrations and prints?

“I’ve got fashion in my bones. I come from a fashion family, and so it’s not difficult for me, it just always comes out.

My father was a designer who had his own company and made couture coats and suits. Being creative is just something I’ve always done. My latest work reflects my fashion designs - bold, graphic use of colour, and simple silhouettes.”

What’s your favourite social media platform?

“Undoubtedly Instagram. I use it to look at fashion photographers’ work - Nick Knight, Patrick Demarchelier, Rankin and Peter Lindberg are favourites. I also follow Vogue and various fashion insiders, to see what’s up and coming.”

Vintage 1970s images from Lee Bender’s personal archive

Why do you think the 1970s is the decade that provides constant inspiration for designers today?

“The first thing I learnt at college was that nothing is new. Everything comes back every thirty years or so. You just change it with a twist. When I was working in the Seventies, I looked at the Forties - fitted jackets, elegant silhouettes, femininity and tea dresses. I designed lots of tea dresses, and they were hugely popular.

As fashion follows world events, and everything is so upside down at the moment, all fashion is relevant today.”

What are your style tips for older women?

“I like simplicity, as it’s flattering, and sharp colour. The majority of women tend to put weight on as they get older, and that has to be a consideration. I have always designed for real women and different figure types.

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“I’ve got fashion in my bones. I come from a fashion family, and so it’s not difficult for me, it just always comes out.”

u I was slightly pear-shaped and the minute I put something on that was over-designed, it made me look bigger so I’d pare it back immediately. Even slim women don’t want anything that makes them look bigger.

Enhancing, and giving women confidence, is what a designer should always be thinking about.”

Who do you think looks good now?

“I think Helen Mirren, Diane Keating, Charlotte Rampling and the supermodel Carmen Del Orifice all look stylish and attractive.”

Why do you think Bus Stop was so successful?

“When we started, high fashion had always been for people with money. I wanted to make fabulous clothes available for everyone. The young, exuberant crowd wanted a fun style that expressed their

individuality. It was designer looks at high street prices, with a trendy Bus Stop label.

People were after a total look and I made co-ordinated collections. They wouldn’t just buy the skirt and top, but the coat, jacket, and all the accessories, too. Accessories were key. I used to have young designers coming in to sell their designs. Adam Ant was at Art College at the time, and he made beautiful resin brooches for Bus Stop. I sold hats and floral hair accessories too.

I wanted the clothes to be all about occasions, because that gives people a reason to buy. Everyone went to the discotheque on a Saturday night, so I designed clothes for people who wanted to go out. They’d come into town, do the food shopping and buy a new dress for £3 to wear out that night.

We expanded all over the country, but I was always based in London as it was so important to be inspired by what was going on in the capital and u GOLDIE magazine | 87

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u taking it to the rest of the country.”

Do you think there’s enough choice on the high street for older women?

“Absolutely not. We need better, easier to wear collections, and interesting, high quality fabrics. I see a lot of fashion features where the older women wear ridiculous young clothes which look awful on them. That’s a mistake. They should be modelling something which suits them, and makes them look elegant.”

How do you feel when you see that there is a demand for your vintage designs now?

“Vintage is in and I think it’s great. Lots of young girls love vintage because they want to look different, and older women love to buy into nostalgia and bring it up to date. It’s about the beauty of the fabrics, which people can’t get now. Sizes can be a bit limited though - garments tend to be in smaller sizes. I only have a couple of original Bus Stop pieces left now - I got rid of everything.

You put a collection to bed and you don’t want to see it any more. That’s fashion!”

The fashion industry is going through challenging times, what’s your advice?

“Designer collaborations, such as those at H&M, are a good idea as they offer the customer something collectible and unique. Zara is a success because they are doing the right clothes at the right price. They respond quickly to trends, and there you have it - they are doing well.”

What would you like your next project to be?

“I’d like to design collections for a big high street retailer. I think I could bring something exciting and fresh to the market that would draw women of all ages into the stores. I’ve always loved street style; I’m not interested in high end. I want to make things which are fun for people who don’t have lots of money. And that’s what I’m doing with my art - making it available to all.” ¢

All illustrations Lee Bender Illustration & Design GOLDIE magazine | 89

QUANT PORTRAIT BY MARK O’BRIEN

Researching Mary Quant for a V&A exhibition allowed Heather Tilbury to revisit both a distinctive brand and her happy time working for it, as she explains to Rebecca Weef Smith 90 | GOLDIE magazine

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Today, Heather Tilbury lives in an idyllic rural setting, with sheep grazing in her front field - it’s a long way from Chelsea in the Swinging Sixties, where she played a pivotal role in the expansion of the quintessentially cool London label Quant.

Heather was one of the driving forces behind Mary Quant’s London exhibition at The London Museum, Kensington Palace from November 1973 to June 1974. Fittingly, she has recently been appointed as advisor to the V&A on the forthcoming exhibition and book celebrating the achievements of Mary Quant which opens to the public on 6 April 2019 and continues until 16 February 2020.

The day I meet her she is wearing a Daisy necklace and a dress made from an original Quant design which she has Quant’s sketch of on her wall, entitled Heather. As she shows me her collection of illustrations, we discuss the clothes we had which have disappeared over the years.

A child in the sixties, I was too young to wear real Quant, but my outfits were Quantesque and I was a proud owner of Daisy Dolls, eventually progressing to the brand’s make-up. Heather still has a box of Quant eye crayons in the distinctive tin which I remember wanting so badly for a Christmas when I would have been about 12 years old. Mary Quant with Vidal Sassoon, photograph by Ronald Dumont, There is something about the brand which was able to connect with a 1964 Getty Images wide generational reach; the marketing, much of which Heather was responsible for in the early seventies, was as original as the product.

By this point in the brand’s evolution, the young women of the sixties had grown up and were becoming homemakers; Heather worked closely with ICI Fibres to allow them to decorate their interiors with distinctive Quant textiles and wallpapers in shades of navy blue, red and brown; today, it is easy to underestimate how exceptional this was. The Daisy logo was prolific in the seventies. That distinctive design stemmed from the doodles that Mary covered everything with; “she would do a flower shape that just became known to symbolise the brand instantly, clear and strong and sharp. Also, universal, which was necessary as the brand became global. It still looks good today.”

Heather initially approached Jenny Lister at the Victoria and Albert museum with the idea of a book celebrating Mary Quant but it soon became apparent that a full scale exhibition would be an appropriate way to share the achievements of this innovative woman and her legacy. She has spent the last four and a half years talking about and researching Quant for the exhibition and accompanying book. When I ask her what has driven this project of love, she explains the gratitude she feels towards Mary. “I have been extremely fortunate in my life and career; I am certain that without Mary I wouldn’t have had the chances I had. I owe a lot to her and I wanted to be able to put her story straight. Mary has always been quite shy; she was never one to push Mary Quant and Alexander Plunket Greene, herself forward or court publicity.” photograph by John Cowan, 1960 Courtesy of Terence In her quest to track down Quant stories, Heather has reconnected Pepper Collection Image ©John Cowan Archive with colleagues and models from 40 years ago and it seems that everyone has loving memories of Mary as a person and the label which became synonymous with London in the swinging sixties.

In fact, Mary opened her first shop in Chelsea in 1955, while the exhibition will feature Quant collaborations from the 1970s with manufacturers such as Kangol hats, where Heather first met Mary while working on publicity including that for Quant berets. Before long she had been invited to join Quant at Ives Street in Chelsea, the u 92 | GOLDIE magazine

Models outside the V&A to launch ticket sales for the Quant exhibition

The Mary Quant Beauty bus, 1971 ©INTERFOTO Alamy Stock Photo GOLDIE magazine | 93

“ The reverberations caused the ceiling to come down”

Mary Quant and models at the Quant Afoot footwear collection launch, 1967 © PA Prints 2008

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u company’s headquarters.

She has fond memories of office life there. “It was a smaller organisation than I had expected; like a big family. It wasn’t always calm; there were frustrations. But there was a feeling of support. My office connected with Alexander’s and Mary’s and there was always interaction going on all the time. Mary would wander in and ask for one’s opinion. We were all bouncing ideas of each other and she wanted everyone to feel included.”

“It was such an exciting time. Alexander could always make us laugh if it got too stressful. He was a great one for naming new lines. Cry Baby for waterproof mascara – what a gem!” The cosmetic line had been launched in 1965 - before Heather’s time - but the company continued to innovate and shake up the market all thorough the seventies; to this day you can still purchase Quant cosmetics from the shop in Chelsea. Mary had wanted to create a make-up range which matched the ethos of the clothes: bright, modern, and carefree. “She had strong ideas about the colours and textures that she wanted and when she was told it wasn’t possible would say she was sure a way could be found,” Heather explains. “Mary didn’t want to accept a compromise and it was that probing which encouraged the manufactures to be more innovative.”

The Quant Daisy and Havoc dolls introduced the brand to a younger market, with the 9-inch fashion dolls wardrobes’ closely resembling the full-size garments on sale in the stores. At the Harrogate Toy Show where they were launched, Quant took real models and literally bought the house down, “Havoc was a tomboy character who drove a motorbike; as the model arrived on stage on her life-size bike, the reverberations caused the ceiling to come down on the heads of all the

male buyers in the audience. It was one of our best publicity stunts!”

It was Mary’s attention to detail which revolutionised the high street and took her from a tiny boutique on the King’s Road to a wholesale label available in department stores across the UK and into the USA, where her designs were made for chain stores and mail order companies. Quant’s designs became fashion which captured the spirit of a whole generation and the forthcoming exhibition is anticipated to bring back memories of that generation as well as introducing a younger generation to the brand.

A

fter Heather leaving Quant to set up her own agency, she was involved in many high profile launches, including the exhibition programme and initiation of The Portrait Award for the National Portrait Gallery; “the project I am most proud of.” As well as relaunching Charlie and Natural Wonder cosmetics for Revlon and Harris Tweed, Heather launched Country Living magazine, established The Good Housekeeping magazine Awards which were presented at the Guildhall by the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, and introduced Scenes de Mode, Scenes du Monde, the spectacular international fashion exhibition at L’Arche de la Defense, Paris.

Since retirement Heather has been actively involved in supporting The Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds; Dance East; art Suffolk arts organisations, and Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury. This doesn’t look like retirement. The day I visited her in her Suffolk home her table looked suspiciously like a working from home scene – laptops, notebooks, phoning pinging, emails needing dealing with now. With the Quant exhibition and book imminent it is unlikely that Heather will be spending much time with the sheep in the future. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 95

SARTORIAL STORIES

QUANT

memories

Josephine Halbert’s fictional characters would certainly be Quant Girls

I

was born in the early 1960s but have an older sister, so I grew up with Mary Quant and remember the glamour that it brought to our young and awakening teenage years.

I still have a Quant black patent leather vanity case that now lives in my bathroom, once a birthday present to my sister in the late sixties, and now, happily, mine.

Receiving Quant presents was always an event. I’ve recently bought the gorgeous glossy, black, daisy-shaped handbag mirrors from the new Quant shop in the Duke of York Square as presents for friends of all ages and everyone has loved them. And a couple of years ago I bought my sister Louise a white Quant lipstick to evoke the memory of those times, and the excitement of opening Quant make up and tights on Christmas mornings and birthdays of yesterday. Louise remembers the first lipstick she ever had, a Quant gift set of pale frosted pink lipstick with matching pink frosted nail polish, encased in glossy black plastic with the iconic Quant daisy design, presented in a see through perspex bag. She particularly remembers the lipstick was frosted and pale pink. It was new, it was ‘with-it’; shiny and super-modern. Swinging London and its future girls had entered our Northumberland country home and imaginations, a world away from the 1950s British dressing tables of our mothers with their trousseau-matching vanity sets of Italianate sea green enamels and mother of pearl, Joy perfume and gold compacts. Things would never be the same.

In the north of England where I was brought up, Newcastle Upon Tyne was our nearest shopping city, with the era’s chain stores, Fenwicks Department Store and trendy boutiques. The boutiques were fun to visit, a fantasia of colour, run by savvy buyers who brought the London scene to the North. Biba and Quant were extremely

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Charlotte Quita Jones, photos: Josephine Halbert, hair and make-up: Jenna Treat

popular, created by two visionary women designers who caught the imagination of the youth of that amazing era and to whom we owe a lot. We treasured the few things we had from them. We did have some things from the Biba shop in Newcastle and from special trips to London, but they were expensive to buy and we were young, so the makeup was more affordable. My vintage Quant vanity case represents my teenage years. (Well, we’ve always believed it to be Quant. My mother remembers buying it in Newcastle but we don’t remember a Quant shop there.)

As the Sixties merged into the Seventies, our Aqua Manda hippy-girl cologne joined the collection on our dressing tables alongside Quant cosmetics. We had clothes from Bus Stop, Snob and Clobber. But the Quant magic endured and multicoloured tights and eye shadow were a part of dressing up for

years. I remember the white square packets of tights with the daisy design and a Quant publicity picture of a Vidal Sassoon bobbed haired girl, naked, seated, hugging her knees, her image tattoo-stamped with that unique, iconic daisy; a cutting edge, daring image in the 60s that became a classic only a few years later in those exciting, fast evolving, creative years.

The 1960s have inspired my work as an artist and filmmaker. When I made my short film, Time Travel Boyfriends, a fantasy love letter to a line-up of historical heartthrobs, we had fun creating a set for a 1960s London bedroom scene, a single girl’s playground for the girlfriend of a 1960s rock star. I didn’t consider the set design complete without a Quant accessory. We were delighted to find a pair of original white tights with the black daisy design on Ebay which I wanted in shot, spilling out of one of her bedside cabinets to illustrate her Chelsea “It” girl, liberated life.

Sadly, the shot never made the final cut.

I recently revisited the theme of the 1960s London “It” girl, in my audio drama, Jim, a fictional story about a rock and roll romance set in 1968, told to us by Laura, the story’s heroine, a young aspiring writer and the lover and muse of a famous American musician, Jim. I don’t mention Quant in my radio play but Laura’s a girl about town with a job on a happening magazine so she would definitely have been a Quant girl. Jim is currently free to download on Apple Podcasts and is performed by actors Charlotte Quita Jones and Cesare Taurasi, with an original soundtrack written to evoke the era. I’ve plans to adapt it for the stage in 2019, so my love affair with the 1960s continues, and perhaps the vanity case will be a star of the show. ¢ Jim, The Audio Drama available on Apple Podcast.

Time Travel Boyfriends is available to view on Vimeo.

PICTURE CREDIT

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London Fashion Week Men A/W 2019 Why don’t you….

GERALD WILHEM

…combine checks and leopard print

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SUZANNE MIDDLEMASS

…wear a V-neck without a shirt

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MIKE MARCHANT

…get out your old patterned sweaters

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SAMMY BAXTER

…put on a pink suit

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THE SCENE I Love Yellow You Love Yellow We All Love Yellow @ LFWM19

Images: Gerald Wilhem Mike Marchant Sammy Baxter Suzanne Middlemass

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THE SCENE Classics and Suiting London Fashion Week Mens 2019

Images: Sammy Baxter Suzanne Middlemass

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THE SCENE London Fashion Week Mens 2019 Did anyone say women weren’t allowed?

Images: Gerald Wilhem Mike Marchant

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THE SCENE Leopard Lovers on and off the catwalk Images: Gerald Wilhem

Mike Marchant

Sammy Baxter

Suzanne Middlemass Trendziine

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LEOPARD LOVERS Hilary Alexander OBE was formerly the fashion director of the Daily Telegraph.

She is currently editor-at-large for Hello Fashion Monthly.

She lives in London

Fashion’s most powerful print From the catwalk to covers, Dior to Versace, rock stars to First Ladies, Leopard includes the most iconic and arresting images of leopard print. But how does Hilary feel about leopard print personally?

Why leopard print for your first book?

I’ve always loved leopards and leopardprint and when an editor at Laurence King asked if I would like to do a book, I leapt at the chance. Once I started doing the research, I discovered it went back as far as the Ancient Egyptians; the women would stencil the leopard “rosettes” or spots onto cotton shifts. And I was thrilled to unearth a really early photograph of a captain in the Texas Cavalry wearing leopard trousers.

Do you personally love leopard print?

Yes. I’ve been a fan for many years. I have masses of leopard-print clothing leggings, dresses, trainers, socks, scarves, shoes, bikinis, a coat, sweaters etc., plus leopard-print cushions, sheets, statues and pictures. I have a friend, former Telegraph colleague, who is just as much a fan and every Christmas for about the past 20 years I have given her something leopard-print for Christmas - even a broom and a rubbish-tin! Nuts I know!

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What is the first leopard print item you remembering own/wearing? ` Probably leopard-print leggings or a bikini.

Do you have a favourite leopard print moment in fashion?

Not really; for me it is always in fashion.

Which designer do you think of as synonymous with leopard print and consistently inspires us to revisit our love of the print?

Either Dolce & Gabbana or Versace; but I can’t afford either, so almost all my leopard-print pieces come from Topshop, ASOS, Debenhams, M&S, or Converse.

How do you think we can balance the chic with the ‘Bet Lynch’ when we do leopard? Should we even worry?

Is there ever too much leopard?

I’m not a fan of leopard-print overload.

I wouldn’t wear leopard-print shoes with a leopard-print dress, for example.

Depending on the colours of the print I usually put it with black, grey or brown. And I don’t particularly like leopard-print with neon or strong colours.

I don’t think Bet Lynch comes into it.

It’s all about how you balance it.

Do you have a favourite leopard print piece in your wardrobe currently?

Probably my leopard-print leggings; I have about six pairs. Or the leopard-print coat I got from Debenhams in September.

The book has so many amazing pictures but is there one which really stands out for you - perhaps which sums up what it means to wear leopard as part of a fashion identity?

I agree with you - so many fabulous pictures.

I love some of the early Hollywood movie shots - but the fact many of them are real leopard makes me cringe. I do love the ones of Rod Stewart and Keith Richards - and those from John Galliano’s shows for Dior.¢

“My mother thought that anybody who wore leopard was rather vulgar… so naturally I automatically loved it!”

“Why do we love to wear leopard print? So we can feel closer to something that is breathtakingly beautiful, graceful and precious… and just a little bit dangerous.”

Donatella Versace, Artistic Director & Vice President, Versace

Stephen Jones OBE, milliner

Leopard: Fashion’s Most Powerful Print Hilary Alexander £16.99 Laurence King GOLDIE GOLDIEmagazine magazine | 111 | 111

Fierce book party June 2018 courtesy strikerposie

“I’ve never meet a leopard print I didn’t like.”

Diana Vreeland (1903-1989) editor 112 | GOLDIE magazine

LEOPARD LOVERS

Purrfectly fierce

Jo Weldon has been researching leopard print for over five years and presented her first illustrated lecture on the topic to a sold-out audience at New York City’s Wild Project in 2014. Since then she’s toured the world encouraging people to wear leopard print, conserve leopards, and feel fierce.

What made you decide to write a book about the history of leopard print?

I’ve been obsessed with it all my life!

When I started working on it six years ago I found some articles about it, but no one had ever done a book about it, so I decided to write the book I wanted to read.

I know you personally love leopard print, but why?

I associate it with so many things I love, including leopards themselves. In the 60s and 70s it was campy, in the 80s I associated it with pop music and rock n roll, in the 90s with both retro/rockabilly and high fashion like Alaia and Versace, and now that it’s everywhere I associate it with playfulness, self-expression, and pleasure.

What is it about the print that resonates with you?

The leopard herself — smooth, powerful, warm blooded, and nocturnal.

What is the first leopard print item you remembering owning/wearing?

I’m sure I wore the print before this, but my mom’s elegant chiffon leopard blouse that I borrowed in 1979 and wore with black shiny pants to go see the Ramones.

It’s a great example of how what you wear with leopard print can change its impact. I still have it and often wear it when I do my illustrated lectures.

Do you have a favourite leopard print moment in history?

There are too many to count, but I think Eartha Kitt ruling in her leopard den on the

1960s series Batman is high on the list.

Who do you think of as synonymous with leopard print and who consistently inspires you to revisit your love of the print?

Too many! But there are some true aficionados I come back to over and over, like Naomi Campbell and Giovanna Englebert.

Do you think we can balance the chic with the tart when we do leopard? Should we even worry?

Is there ever too much leopard?

I think there’s a way to wear leopard for every style. People who are shy about showing their wild side can wear just a hint, perhaps only on an accessory or in a subtle version of the print, while people who are more expressive in their clothing can do head to toe leopard spots and look purrfect!

Do you have a favourite leopard print piece in your wardrobe currently?

I have so many, but I’m partial to my Trashy Diva Courtney leopard coat dress. I bought it when I got my first book deal, for The Burlesque Handbook, in 2009, and I still wear it regularly. The print is a version of the one Vanity Fair created for the lingerie line they launched in 1953, but updated for outerwear. It travels beautifully and is great for three out of the four seasons.

It also celebrates my love of independent women-owned small fashion lines. I also love kaftans, and my favourite is probably the sequined leopard print one I made and wore at the launch party for Fierce.

The book has so many amazing pictures but is there one which really stands out for you - perhaps which sums up what it means to wear leopard as part of a burlesque/sexy identity?

There’s a two-page spread where I show a lot of modern women wearing leopard print, and the image of Janet Mock looking happy and outgoing in a leopard print gown on the red carpet really resonates with me.

How does wearing leopard print make you feel?

Like I can do anything! I feel confident, full of life and ready to chase down my goals.

My own love of leopard print correlates to my fly-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth attitude to life and the speed at which I expect to get results! Do you think that those of us who love leopard print share a connection more than print-deep?

This is fantastic! Leopards are fast, strong, and independent so they are perfect animals to identify with!

I’ve been hosting leopard print events in New York and around the world for over five years now, and everyone has so much fun when they all show up in leopard print together. One time all of us went to lunch together in New Orleans and when we walked along Royal Street everyone thought we were a mini parade! But even in everyday life I often see people on the street who are also wearing leopard print, and we give each other a little grin and nod of identification. There’s just something so funloving, but also quietly powerful, about it. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 113

Jo Weldon

by Bettina May

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Joan Collins courtesy of Everett Collection

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Marc Bolan 1970 courtesy of Everett Collection

“You have to have courage to wear leopard” Rachel Zoe designer 116 | GOLDIE magazine

Fierce: The History of Leopard Print Jo Weldon £19.60 HarperCollins As a sex workers’ rights advocate, she’ll be presenting her one-woman show about sex workers and what they wear in New York in early 2019. You can find out more about her leopard research at historyofleopardprint.com.

LEOPARD LOVERS

The psychology of leopard print Professor Carolyn Mair is the founder of consultancy psychology.fashion, which provides behavioural insights, bespoke training, courses, and workshops to industry and the wider public

“To wear leopard you must have a kind of femininity which is a little bit sophisticated.

If you are fair and sweet, don’t wear it.”

Christian Dior’s The Little Dictionary of Fashion, published in 1954.”

What is it about leopard print that speaks to us?

Historically leopard print has had many varied associations. It has been worn by hunters, royalty, designers and musicians.

It has been written about in multiple books and exhibited in museums. The New Yorker reported on a photography exhibition of work by Émilie Régnier, which was held at the Bronx Documentary Center in 2017. From Mobutu to Beyoncé presented portraits of men and women from diverse cultures (from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Senegal to South Africa, France, Texas, and New York) wearing leopard-skin print and fur to portray political power, aristocracy and cultural distinction, as well as sex and seduction.

Leopard print fashion has come to be associated with both class and trash (think of Pat Butcher’s outfits). Because leopards are wild, fast, powerful and independent, leopard print is sexy. Women wearing leopard stand out, not necessarily as predators, but definitely not as prey. You don’t mess with a woman in leopard print Animal print arouses multiple sensations as well as these sociocultural connotations. Leopards would feel soft to touch, their skins smell sweet and pungent, their markings are beautiful.

These characteristics add to its appeal for clothing. Seeing wild animals would arouse anxiety as they threaten our survival.

Interestingly, Dutton and Aron found that anxiety creates heightened sexuality. Taken together, these connotations explain why wearing leopard print makes the wearer appear and feel sexually attractive.

In addition, many people now consider it unacceptable to wear real fur, and even fake fur is getting a hard press at the moment for its environmental footprint, so wearing leopard print on other fabrics is a fantastic way to get the look without causing offence.

Do you personally love leopard print and why?

I love all animal print, but my favourite for clothing is leopard. When I wear it, I make more effort with the rest of my appearance and definitely feel more glamorous and more confident as a result. This could be through the subconscious socio-cultural associations described above, and conscious desires to enhance my self-image by manipulating my identity and the impression I have on others.

What is the first leopard print item you remembering own/wearing?

I’ve probably owned a leopard print version of every item of clothing from underwear to footwear, coats to bikinis. My first item was probably a leopard print bikini in the 70s.

Do you have a favourite leopard print piece in your wardrobe currently?

I love my leopard print coat. It’s an original 70s Astraka that I bought it in a charity shop.

How do you feel when you wear it?

I feel very special in that coat.

It gets lots of comments.

Has anyone researched personality types and wearing leopard print?

Not as far as know, but I would guess that leopard skin would be favoured by more extrovert types. ¢

The Psychology of Fashion, Carolyn Mair £9.99 Routledge GOLDIE magazine | 117

THE POWDER ROOM

Winter beauty

H

ello, my name is Glossy AF and I am here to talk about beauty. Shall we have a chat?

Anti-aging is a con. There, I’ve said it. Sunscreen will shield you from damaging UVA rays that cause your skin to age prematurely and should be your No.1 purchase.

But the only thing guaranteed to stop you from ageing is …drum roll please… death. Liking the face you have now, with no caveats, is the only way to go. Like your face, love yourself and treat yourself like you actually give a damn. To me, that is radical self-care and I am all the way here for it.

The beauty industry extols many wonders with the science to back usage: Retinol!

Anti-oxidant serums! Hyaluronic acid! But it takes careful navigation, lest you end up shipwrecked on a sea of useless fripperies, empty-of-purse with only a jar of snake oil between you and the wrinkles of tomorrow.

There are honest beauty brokers out there, but there is also a whole lot of anti-women, and anti-science; a load of old phooey.

Nowt out of a bottle is going to turn back the years sufficient to make you look younger, although you can, of course, go down the non-surgical (or surgical) route at a respected

dermatologist or surgeon. But I promise that it is possible, with the aid of a few expertly chosen products, to make your skin look better and behave in a more balanced way in order that you need wear less makeup, if you so choose.

This is the modern skincare holy-grail: looking and feeling your best at whatever age you actually are, rather than wishing for a face that belonged to younger you.

Currently, the orthodoxy suggests cleansing, essence, serum, moisturiser, sunscreen, primer, and thence to colour. We are to buy vitamin C/antioxidant serums, face wipes, sheet masks, day moisturisers and night moisturisers with added Retinol.

And laser resurfacing or micro-needling via facialists whose services cost as much as the weekly shop? Well, it’s too much, even for the devoted skin aficionado.

Here’s what I suggest as it gets colder.

Cleanse your face with whatever takes your fancy but an oil or balm will leave your skin feeling coddled and not stripped. If you are super sensitive, Cetaphil has a good rep but I find it stripping in the extreme.

Superdrug do a smashing Vitamin E cream cleanser that you can use with a cloth wrung out in hot water.

Add more moisture with a serum packed

with hyaluronic acid and antioxidants to protect against the outside elements. Add a layer of moisture to keep things juicy.

By the way, don’t imagine that a wipe is doing anything other than smearing makeup/ sunscreen around your lovely face. If you must use them, rinse with water after – you don’t want those detergents sitting on your face, drying it out.

If your skin needs more exfoliation – if it feels a little lumpy and bumpy – you could try a peel pad, that is, a pad steeped in ingredients that helps to slough off the dead skin that your flannel misses. Dr Dennis Gross and his Alpha Beta peel pads are my favourite with different strengths depending on your skin tolerance. Nip + Fab do a number of excellent versions, as do a lot of the higher-end beauty brands including Radical, Elemis and Zelens.

Pixi Glow Tonic and Alpha H Liquid Gold are both excellent toner versions that you wipe with daily.

If you are a fan of the aforementioned hot cloth cleanser, the need to add another exfoliating step may be unnecessary. My best advice to you would be to always assess your skin and the products that you are using. Add in one product at a time, and that way it’ll be obvious what is working for you and what you can give away. ¢

BEAUTIES I AM CURRENTLY CRUSHING ON: Lumity is one of the most expensive supplements I have ever used. It is also the most efficacious supplement I have ever used. I sleep better, feel noticeably calmer and less like I’m living on my last nerve.

I’ve tried not taking the twice-daily tablets Choosing carefully each part of the puzzle that makes up your routine is what will pay dividends for you in the long run. I am a big fan, huge, of Oskia especially the riotously expensive Super 16 serum, £85. But my god, talk about results after four months of use: plumper, lush skin where wrinkles seem to have been gently relaxed. If you are after a cosmetic heavy hitter, forget a pricey moisturiser and investigate a serum like this.

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because at £76.50 for a subscription they are super pricy. But I found not taking them to be more expensive as I returned to my super-reactive, meltdown-incoming ways. If you can, you should give them a whirl.

Hourglass Vanish, £42 This full coverage foundation stick is brilliant; add a few swipes where you need it and work in with your fingers – or a brush if you are extra. Beautiful, perfected finish while still looking like skin. Magic.

CUTTIN’ EDGE

Sharp as you like it

S

moddy Sharp of London’s male grooming rooms opened on the Dartmouth Road in Forest Hill at the end of 2017. The vision of business owners Rohan and Marie was to create a time-honoured environment for hairdressing, grooming and styling which also doubled as a cultural hub for men to socialise, network, unwind and de-stress in a relaxing space - the ultimate male grooming experience.

Rohan explains: ‘We view this place as a gift that we want to use to bless our clients with a truly unique experience for the betterment of their well-being. It’s much more than just a business. I suppose it was an inevitable result of good, from a not-so-good experience.

‘When I lost my brother to suicide several years ago, I started to question how men deal with stress and how they express themselves when dealing with stressful situations. So SmoddySharp was born from a place that transcends trends or fashion. The questioning around male-related issues led to deeper cogitations around the male identity. What does it mean to be a man? How do men look after their minds and bodies?

‘Fast forward a few years later and me and Marie both lost our fathers, which was the spark that ignited the SmoddySharp fire. It compelled us to create a culture, a lifestyle and a place that nourished and enveloped a new perspective on the male identity; we wanted to redefine the norm.

‘My grandfather had been a tailor, and both our fathers were definitely Smoddies! There are some different views about the spelling of the word, but “Smoddy” is a variant on a

Keen to demolish the myth that pampering is just for women, Rohan Spencer launched an innovative south London lifestyle brand pioneering the way for men’s wellness Jamaican word for a “somebody” with class, style and panache who stands out from the crowd. Our fathers dressed impeccably well – one could even say sharply – with hats, suits, pocket squares and pocket watches. So SmoddySharp was the ultimate phoenix from the ashes.

‘We see it as a fresh take on the classic male grooming experience: a member’s club, a bar, a tailor and a barber, as well as somewhere for massages and facials. We wanted SmoddySharp to be a stylish social hub where one can network with like-minded individuals, engage in intellectual discussion and even have a game or two of chess, backgammon or poker – as well as being fitted for a suit. The range of services we offer have been enjoyed by fellow business owners, long-term residents and the new influx of people to the area, dovetailing with Forest Hill’s regeneration and adding – we hope - an injection of class and style to the area.

‘I’m happy to be addressing the misconception that men don’t need pampering. Taking pride in your appearance enhances wellbeing and life prospects, but in spite of this, some of us men really do not have a clue about how to look after ourselves, from what products to use for our hair or skin to how to dealing with insecurities like hair loss.

‘In keeping with this commitment to wellness, we consciously designed an environment that promotes relaxation, prioritising this in everything from the colour tones to the décor to the late weekday opening hours and investing in the belief that we can help men to achieve a healthier and longer life. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 119

“I’m not brave. Brave is a fireman rushing in to a burning building” Jane Devonshire has risen to many challenges, not least overcoming cancer.

She tells all to Linda Galloway

I

If you wanted to put Jane Devonshire in a box you’d need a Big Yellow storage container with a life’s worth of labels: Mum, cancer survivor, Masterchef champion, author, wife, charity fundraiser, party animal.

But she took her time finding herself. As a teenager she was shy and withdrawn, she says, watching the world from between her fingers. “I always thought I’d end up being a teacher.”

A Londoner through and through, the 1980s – haunting the Hammersmith Palais in white boots and purple hair, dancing to David Bowie, Madness and the Specials – brought her out of her shell.

“It was an amazing time to live in London.

I got a job in marketing and events, and realised I loved talking to people.”

Describing herself as “not conventionally creative or intellectual, or even technical,” she nevertheless has the smarts, and at 50 she won the 2016 series of Masterchef on the BBC, bouncing the whippersnappers Billy Wright and Jack Layer into second and third place.

Challenged in finals week to produce a dish in homage to someone she admired in history, Jane chose another mum, Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving American First Lady, for what she represented. “She was inspirational; she fought against

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Cup cakes(above), courtesy of Hassle Free, Gluten Free (below), Jane and her mother Pam Martin

discrimination and for equal rights. She did not do what was expected of her.”

Jane did the same, by putting a pinch of chilli in her dessert that the judges were not expecting.

Life hasn’t always dealt her a winning hand, but the tough times only made her stronger, and standing in the Masterchef kitchen with John Torode, Gregg Wallace and the trophy, was her way of closing the door on cancer and walking in to a new decade and a whole new life in the public eye.

It was as she progressed through the Masterchef series that viewers got to know her better, and she revealed that her children had entered her in the competition not long after she’d been given the all-clear after a second round of cancer treatment.

“I’ve spent so much of my life being ill.

After five years of being clear of breast cancer, it came back and spread to my liver. I was told it was over, that no one would operate, but I had to fight. I found the only surgeon in the country who was doing the surgery, and I hounded him until he agreed to treat me. And I’m still here. When your back’s up against the wall you fight to survive.

“I’m not brave. Brave is a fireman rushing in to a burning building.”

The cancer and the recovery is now just part of who she is. “Everything changes you.

I don’t know what I’d be if I hadn’t had it.

“On Masterchef I was always labelled as the ‘stay-at-home Mum of 4, Jane … ’ and a

“My nan was a brilliant baker and used to make fantastic cakes, toffee apples and honeycomb. And we didn’t have a lot of money so everything was made from scratch.

Really good, basic family food.”

Jane with her Masterchef title

lot of people took offence at that but being a mum is the most amazing job and why would anyone think less of you for that, or that that was all you were? I don’t understand that thinking.”

Down to earth, quick witted and funny, Jane is a firm believer in having fun, “without being snobby about it”.

Growing up in Hammersmith with three brothers, her mum was her best friend. And she has created the same family dynamic for herself with husband Mark, their three sons and a daughter. Although they moved to Hampshire when the kids were small, London is still home. “We’re always in and out, we saw ELO at the O2 recently – so we have the best of both worlds,” she grins.

She learnt to cook with her mum and her grandma. “We were always in the kitchen growing up; the knowledge filtered through like osmosis. Dad was a market trader, who brought home weird and wonderful ingreidents and mum cooked them. She’s a great cook.

“My nan was a brilliant baker and used to make fantastic cakes, toffee apples and honeycomb. And we didn’t have a lot of money so everything was made from scratch.

Really good, basic family food.”

Her son Ben, now 16, was diagnosed as coeliac when he was two years old, and so gluten-free cooking became a way of life in the Devonshire household.

“It wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity and we got on with it. No special diets or opt-outs, we all ate gluten free and barely noticed. That’s the point, isn’t it? Not to make a big deal out of it. It is really important to me that gluten free does not have to be about expensive processed foods but can easily be just part of everyday life.”

With the Masterchef champion title secured, Jane went on to do internships (stages) with some of the best Michelinstarred chefs in the country, including Marcus Wareing and Michel Roux Jr, to cement her culinary knowledge. It seemed an obvious next step to write a cookbook. Hassle Free, Gluten Free was published by Absolute Press last year and shot straight in to the Top 10 on Amazon. It’s backed by the charity Coeliac UK and features a great variety of recipes for family friendly, gluten-free cooking.

A whirlwind promotional tour followed, including appearances at food fairs and festivals around the UK and a stop in the Middle East as well as a gluten-free pop-up on the South Bank.

She also supports the work of Ark Cancer charity www.arkcancercharity.org.uk, which is raising funds to build a cancer centre of excellence in North Hampshire.

“I may be mad, but I’ve agreed to jump out of an aeroplane this year to raise money.

Life is busy but I love it. You have to celebrate getting older. The alternative is rubbish.” ¢

Jane Devonshire Hassle Free, Gluten Free £22 Absolute Press GOLDIE magazine | 121

LIFE LESSONS

Recalling when I lost my memory

A

When Chris Campling had a stroke, life changed dramatically.

Here he describes the bizarre dreams, strange acquaintances and confusion he encountered on his road to recovery

t the beginning of January 2015, I had a stroke. No need to sympathise. I couldn’t have been luckier.

Unlike so many others, I’m practically fine. The toes on my right foot seem frozen and I can no longer drive because I lost my licence. But who cares? I’d given up driving anyway. I was always a bloody awful driver. So I’ve got a bike instead.

I had the stroke on my way to work. I can remember going to work but I can’t remember getting there. I know now that I collapsed at London Bridge tube, 70 miles away. I was put in a couple of hospitals. Neither was the one I woke up in. No, that was back in Bury St Edmunds, where I lived.

In between I had the most vivid dreams. There was one featuring the royal family in a box. When I woke up it occurred to me that it might make a rather clever short story. I went back to sleep again. When I woke again, further thought made me realise it was garbage. Another dream made perfect sense. I was in an ambulance because I was in ambulance. But why was my bed halfway down a railway station platform? Then I dreamt (twice) about an ocean liner. There was no one else on the ship, but I seemed to being having a good time until I had an urge to pee. I went looking for a lavatory. Did I find one? What do you think?

One my favourite dreams was the one in which I was desperate to watch The Voice. Why? I have never watched The Voice or any talent show. My brain had bizarre taste.

Back in real life, I knew I was in hospital at last, although I couldn’t remember the name of it. And why did it keep changing? One minute it looked like a normal room - eight beds - but it wouldn’t stay the same. Why was the roof so high? It looked just like a church. No, it was OK. It suddenly looked like a ward again. Instead, the view out of the window changed. Every morning I woke to a different scene. It was as though, when I slept, the ward had changed to a different part of the hospital I didn’t recognise. But then my brain had been fried, so I wasn’t surprised.

Things got better. I couldn’t live in a Dali landscape for good. I had decided that my brain was empty - I couldn’t type and even now I’m down to two fingers - so I decided to read. Slowly. Always going back a couple of pages to remind me of the plot and the characters. Another good thing - I’d forgotten all my books. I had an entirely new library.

And my brain was three-quarters full.

I was in hospital for three months and in the end was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Ely where I met a man who believed that he had been told by a doctor that reading was bad for you. He also forgot which room he was in. Not once or twice, but every time.

I admit I felt terribly guilty about feeling pretty good while there were others in a far worse state than me. Like the 25-year-old in a

wheelchair who couldn’t speak. And my friend, who could speak but was in a wheelchair as well. Sad story: he came home from work, poured himself a glass of wine, took a sip and keeled over. When he woke, he found that his left arm looked like a pretzel and his legs had gone. Not literally, but they might just as well have been.

In my three months at the rehabilitation centre I never spoke to the smiling Madonna who seemed to be severely burnt, was learning to walk again and was also silent. What had happened to her? She was seen only at meal times, then she was back in her room again.

Although she lived in a world of silence, she was frequently visited by her family. I passed on encouraging messages to her through them.

In the room to the right of me was the woman who had had a stroke at the age of 49 and would scream every afternoon; wheelchair-bound, with claws for hands, silent but screaming when she saw her face in the mirror. On the other side was a woman who had lost her mind.

She thought that I was her husband and I had to lock my door because she had a tendency to come in at night. Then there was the sparky old bloke who just wanted to get out.

He would wander the corridors all night, looking for an un-alarmed door; there weren’t any, so the alarm would go off three or four times a night. He was so cheerful we forgave him. Besides, he thought he had a boat outside and wanted to bring it out of the rain.

There was also an old woman who had been at the centre for 11 years before they found another home for her. I couldn’t see what was wrong with her, but they got rid of people only once they’d decided that there was nothing they could do for them. I rather suspected they’d had enough of her habit of always wearing a dressing gown. She didn’t want to go. She’d been inside for so long the outside frightened her. When they came to pack her stuff she lay on her bed and had to be carried out.

I was more than pleased to go. I felt as though I was the only healthy person among so many sick ones. I thought I’d be going home. But when the NHS has you in its grip it likes to know that the first thing you do when you get out is forget where you are and walk under a… what’s the word? Bus. Every day I was looked after by a carer. I made friends with some of them. At first they were there to make sure I took my meds, to write down my blood pressure, take me to the doctor and accompany me when I walked into town. That annoyed me because I knew the way. But they have their orders. At first we walked side by side but then it was decreed that she would have to walk 15 yards behind me. Time passed and I was allowed to go out by myself two days a week, and then catch the train alone.

After about a year this bird had flown. And every time I go out by myself, or make a phone call without somebody there to help me, or realise that I no longer have to write down numbers because I know them, I practically laugh.“Simples”, as the meerkats would say!¢

“Another good thing - I’d forgotten all my books. I had an entirely new library”

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LIFE LESSONS

Rules of the game

I

Embarking on sex after divorce can be an eye-opener.

Lucy Shaw learnt that first she must love herself

am the only divorcee among my girlfriends so had nobody to ask when it came to navigating sex once I was single again.

Chuck in a post-baby body, a good decade or so of ageing, navigating dating apps for the first time I had no idea what to expect – or what expectations there would be of me. In a world of intense oversexualisation of EVERYTHING, I wondered if I should invest in plastic surgery before anyone would agree to take me to bed. This should have been my first warning that I wasn’t quite ready.

I made a decision to get back in the saddle, so to speak, quickly after separation: to quash the fear, to know that I could, that I wanted to, and that someone else might want to with me. I can see now that my self-esteem was in a shockingly bad place. I do fundamentally believe that a woman has the right to enjoy her body, but perhaps just make sure first that you’re not leaping in to escape the pain. Recovering from divorce or loss is a long process that requires constant self-care.

My first encounter was not one of self-care.

We met in an upscale bar in central London and went on to have a date or two. On THE night, I utilised expensive cocktails to relax me, was wearing new undies and had trimmed and shaved as much as I felt necessary. Back at his place, the natural return of my sex drive meant I didn’t overthink things too much, but I was nervous, and it felt very strange having no idea about this person’s body or he about mine. If you’re lucky, you click and it works well and as sex goes, it was fine, to a point. We were attracted to each other and knew we didn’t want anything beyond it so the ground rules were established. However what followed was technically rape. Not rape in the sense you’re thinking but if you consent to protected sex with someone and they remove said protection without your knowledge, this is now recognised as rape (if your immediate reaction was to ask why I put myself in that situation, check yourself). My reaction at the time was confusion over how I felt about what he had done. The sex itself was fun; it made me feel good about my body and (ironically) empowered, but sex without emotion, for me at least, just highlights a lack of connection and that makes me feel lonely. I then had to launch into the world of sexual health screening, with a huge question mark

over what had happened. I only understood what he’d really done to me a year or so later from a magazine article. The current media conversation around consent was long overdue.

Would I go back and do it again? I’d hope not. I want to give that woman whose self-worth was already on the floor a big cuddle and tell her that she’s got a long road to go of picking herself up and that it’s not going to be found in the bedroom of a man who can’t see who she is. But it’s a tangible marker of where I was at and how far I have progressed since. I was at my lowest and although I don’t feel shame, I do feel sad that I didn’t wait to feel more valued by someone, and myself.

Still in the midst of that journey and about a year later, thinking I was doing well, I met my ex-boyfriend. He was from a confused world of working for a wealthy family, widowed young, out of a recent polyamorous relationship and ex-special forces (I know, I can pick them!). I was ready to have my eyes opened after what had been a fairly sheltered sex-life. It didn’t happen. Hand-in-hand with a highstress job comes a low libido. This was an unimaginative stage of my love-life and I had made too many assumptions.

Thankfully, I can report that following those muddled first couple of years, I discovered that whatever you look like, whatever you’re into, there’s someone for you, so there is no need to settle if the sex side of things doesn’t suit you. I have discovered the ones who like to remove all their body hair (fine if the thought of making love to a dolphin does it for you.) Then there are the ones fixated on porn (showing me the

“Whatever you look like or you’re into, there’s someone for you” perfect body of a 20-year old isn’t a turn-on, but thanks for asking).

The ones in their late 40s and 50s still caning it on booze and drugs meaning minimal longevity (cocaine wasn’t clever in your 20s and is even less so beyond middle-age), the big burly men who like to be dominated (was not expecting that). And the quiet ones, who should never be underestimated. The difference between the encounters I have enjoyed and those I have not is simply communication. If you don’t get brave about saying what you like or don’t and asking the same, the likelihood of having consistently satisfying sex has the potential to be quite low.

My advice is this: get comfortable with your body. Get busy loving yourself. Find your confidence and your voice so you can thoroughly enjoy sex with someone when the time comes and feel strong enough to say when it’s not for you. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 123

GETTING ON

The choices we make may have unfortunate consequences, says relationship expert Sue Plumtree, but the bitter lessons of life can lead to happy endings

R

ecently I decided that it would be interesting to look back at the choices I made over the years that helped me become the woman I am today. There were three things I wanted to understand from this exercise: why I stayed in unhappy situations and relationships as long as I did; what kept me stuck in my comfort zone for so long; and what progress I had made over the years. I also had to accept that, if I was to do a proper review, I had to be honest with myself. I haven’t always been. Self-deception used to be my coping mechanism when things got tough.

Perhaps if I’d been aware sooner why I made such poor choices, I could have saved myself quite a bit of suffering along the way. But you don’t know what you don’t know, do you? Looking back, I had clung to situations and relationships well beyond their sell-by date. I realised that one reason I’d done so was because I was afraid I’d end up alone. Another was because I thought that if I tried hard enough I could make things turn out better. But I also knew that we don’t make choices out of thin air. Choices are often driven by our beliefs and feelings and I was riddled with limiting beliefs.

The worst of the lot was the belief that I wasn’t attractive enough. So when I first met Jim, I decided to see if I could make him fall in love with me. I guess I succeeded because we got married. That must rank among my very worst choices. The result was a marriage where I felt unloved, unimportant, taken for granted, lonely and resentful. I made many poor judgements during my 37-year marriage, one of which was to think that I could improve our relationship single handedly. When I finally allowed myself to see the emptiness, it took me another two years to disentangle myself, first emotionally and then practically.

With the benefit of hindsight, I recognised other limiting beliefs such as not being worthy of being loved, not being capable enough to live on my own, feeling that I needed to be strong and independent to be loved when, as I discovered years later, the opposite is true.

Although it took me 37 years, I did eventually take the plunge. I was 60 when I finally left. It is fair to say that if I hadn’t had the help and support of a life coach, I might still be there – a thought that fills me with horror.

Look back Why am I telling you this?

Sometimes, we can save ourselves a lot of pain and aggravation by learning from other people’s experiences. So here are some pointers from my past to help you get started: If you’re feeling disappointed, lonely or unhappy in your current relationship, ask yourself: “Am I trying to carry this relationship all on my own?” To succeed, relationships have to be reciprocal.

Be clear about what you need in order to feel happy and loved in your relationship. ¢Do you need loving words? ¢Do you need actions from your partner to do what they said they would – in other words, keep promises? ¢Do you need to know that they’re there for you when you need them? ¢Do you need them to listen to you, understand, accept and value you? ¢Do you need to feel that you matter, that you’re ‘up there’ in their list of priorities? ¢Do you need physical tenderness?

If you and your partner have become distant and no longer seem to care about each other, ask yourself how you are contributing to the situation. Here’s how I contributed to my own unhappiness and in the end to the breakdown of my marriage. ¢I nagged, criticised and blamed him for things he said or did not say and things he did or did not do that made me feel unhappy. ¢I tried to control and manipulate him to get my own way. I rarely succeeded. ¢I always needed to be right and he had to admit to being wrong. Needless to say, that never happened. ¢I tended to focus on the things that irritated me about him instead of the things I liked and loved about him when we first met. ¢I can’t tell you how painful these insights were but they turned out to be hugely empowering.

If you want to change your partner you will need to change the way you communicate with them so they can hear you without becoming defensive.

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to move

forward

your partner might not respond, that they might not care enough, that it might be too late.

In my own marriage, I left it far too late; once I began to realise from Jim’s behaviour that he was feeling resentful about something, I would ask him directly. Unfortunately, he swore everything was all right. Since then, I’ve learned that if you care enough about your relationship and finally decide to say something, an effective approach is to make yourself emotionally vulnerable. For example, by admitting what it was that had stopped you for so long from bringing the subject up.

Watch out for critical words and tone of voice. Avoid wagging your finger, actually or metaphorically. This is an all-too-easy habit when you’re feeling angry, frustrated and resentful but it gets in the way of narrowing the emotional distance between you.

Sadly, I only learned this long after I left Jim. I’ve often wondered whether if I knew then what I know now, it would have changed anything. Looking back, I don’t think so because our differences were far too fundamental. The truth is, Jim and I should never have married in the first place, but given that I pursued him the end result was inevitable.

If you feel unhappy and you want to do something to put that right, it’s likely that an important need of yours is not being met.

Once you’re clear about what you need most, talk about it. But be sure to stick to that issue alone. Don’t bring up anything else however tempting this might be. I never resisted the temptation to throw everything at Jim. No wonder our conversations, or rather my tirades, never resolved anything.

Before asking for what you need, I suggest you face your fear that

If you still care about your relationship it’s up to you to take the initiative. If you wait for your partner you may well be waiting a long time.

If you feel you made poor choices in the past, review them and learn from them. Ask yourself, if you knew then what you know now, what could you have done differently? This is probably the best advice I can give anyone.

I now bring to my relationship with Paul everything I learned from my marriage, not only about how I recognised he was the right man for me but also the things I learned from my mistakes.

So here’s the thing. To make different choices you need to know yourself.

You need to know what you really need, what matters most to you, what makes you truly happy, what makes you deeply sad and what makes you feel unloved. If you want to change your future, you need to start making different choices from now on.

Perhaps you have made choices you regret but, whatever the consequences, there are lessons to learn even if they’re only: ‘I won’t do that again in a rush!’

I suggest you revisit some of your mistakes and see what you learned from them. One outcome might be that in the light of what happened you now know that you deserve to be loved, valued and appreciated. Another might be that it’s time to forgive yourself.

Whatever you discover, self-examination is never wasted.¢ 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 | 125

D

uncan Baker-Brown is cofounder of Lewes-based BBM Sustainable Design and a senior lecturer in Architecture at the University of Brighton.

In 2008 he was involved in designing The House that Kevin Built for Channel 4. This prefabricated house, made out of organic materials - timber, straw, grasses, hemp, and paper – subsequently turned into The Waste House project based out of Brighton University.

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Duncan Baker-Brown began The Waste House Project build in 2013. Rebecca Weef Smith paid a visit to find out what has changed in the last five years What is The Waste House?

In 2014 the UK generated 202.8 million tonnes of waste, according to a recent report from the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Construction, demolition and excavation (CDE) was responsible for 59 per cent of that.

However, The Waste House, officially opened in June 2014, is a different kind of build; over 85 per cent of its construction materials were obtained from household and construction site waste. This includes bricks, plywood and other timber; not least 360 sheets of damaged ply that was about to be turned into woodchip.

In December 2018, I had a chance to visit the house. It is built with a unique frame structure with ply “boxes” positioned between the structures. Each box is a cavity for insulation stuffed with items including (amazingly) floppy discs; cassette cases; rolls of wallpaper, 20,000 plastic single-use toothbrushes from a sustainable cabin service company at Gatwick Airport; 10,000 DVD cases discarded by a chain of movie rental shops; and 1.8 tonnes of denim legs cut off from jeans to make shorts. There are holes to view the contents of each wall and the insulation qualities of these scrap materials are constantly monitored with probes and scientific-looking instruments. It all looked very Heath Robinson to me but according to Duncan, “they are being monitored with electrical sensors measuring levels of condensation, temperature, etc. and the information is sent to a Ph.D. student’s computer, which is collecting data daily.”

The exterior of the house is covered in black wall tiles which look quite normal, but are in fact 2,000 carpet tiles with the waterproof rubber back turned outwards.

Everything is a work in progress and is “a real live research project that University of Brighton academics and students and other interested parties will be able to research and develop ideas from.”

RWS :What kinds of ideas are being developed there at the moment?

DBB: A student city like Brighton throws away tens of thousands of duvets a year, all of which have to be buried in landfill or burned, as duvets can’t be reused for health and safety reasons. Once something is designated as waste it must be disposed of so we are working with

a waste disposal company to get hold of duvets before they are labelled waste and insulate walls with them instead. We haven’t any data to test the effectiveness of them as insulators as yet so we will have to see.

In my own practice, if we have to demolish anything we reuse the materials; we crush the bricks on site if they can’t be reused and remake them into other building materials. One of my colleagues at The Waste House is going further and mixing ground bricks with waste oyster shells from a local restaurant to create beautiful stone tiles.

All the recent experiments at The Waste House are to do with how to supply the construction industry with recycled and reusable materials.

RWS: Is recycling the way forward for the construction industry?

DBB: Material efficiency is a key term in the industry; the creation, production and distribution of materials should not deplete non-renewable resources, have a nominal adverse effect on the environment, and create the least waste possible. A sustainable strategy needs to be thought about at the planning and design stages.

Basically, this is about creating a circular economy for construction. This means taking into consideration materials that use fewer raw resources and whose production processes produce less pollution and waste; sourcing materials locally and/or closer to home; selecting sustainable materials and products that do not wear out quickly or need regular upkeep such as repainting and retreating, and disposal practices like reclamation, reuse and recycling.

Communication and collaboration is essential. Some construction sites already swap unused resources but I expect that this will become more widespread and organised. The Amsterdam Economic Board has a Circular Data Platform to store data about resource and waste flows in Amsterdam, ensuring the city can make the most efficient use of each resource. The final goal of a Circular Data Platform is to provide every material with a passport so supplies of raw materials are not lost to landfill and to create a database of buildings in the city and their material composition, so there is a possibility for mining these resources in the future.

Can The Waste House shape the future of sustainable buildings?

GOLDIE magazine | 127

The Netherlands is a pioneer in circular economy solutions. By 2050, the Dutch government wants the Netherlands to run completely on reusable raw materials. The country, and Amsterdam in particular, are creating innovative collaborations. ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank, has a circular build at its headquarters in Amsterdam. Almost all the materials used in the build are recycled; insulation made of employees’ old denim jeans and window frames from demolished office buildings. When the building is eventually taken down, it can be easily disassembled and all the materials reused.

Innovation in the circular economy has also led another Dutch company, vanPlestik, to build a 3D printer that can use mixed and impure plastics to upcycle waste into furniture and other products. This is a real milestone when you consider that conventional 3D printers use plastic that must be refined back to nearly pure “virgin” form.

Another idea is for companies to lease products rather than sell them. So the company that leases you a mobile phone would be responsible for its maintenance and repair, as well as re-use of the materials when the product reaches the end of its life.

There are human elements to consider as well; ethical working practices make up part of the story.

RWS: What can individuals do in their own homes to make a difference?

DBB: Firstly turn down the thermostat on the heating at home to 18 degrees.

You’ll need to acclimatise, so do it in incremental steps and buy second-hand jumpers from Oxfam to insulate you.

When you shop at the supermarket leave the packaging at the till; they can deal with the recycling, so make it the company’s responsibility. Do your own bit to disrupt! Small-scale activism shouldn’t be dismissed 128 | GOLDIE magazine

– it’s because of actions like that this Walkers Crisps have been forced into recycling crisp packets. The Royal Mail told them something had to be done as grease from the tens of thousands of crisp packets being sent back to Walkers in protest was contaminating other post.

Consume less, reuse more, be aware of one planet living. Sign up to an app or website such as Freegle so you can swap household stuff you don’t want.

And be aware of policy changes concerning waste disposal and how they will affect us all.

RSW: What next?

DBB: In the last ten years the construction industry has almost halved the quantity of waste it generates; it is also exceeding EU waste reduction targets. However in future, companies will be legislated to have to be resource efficient.

There will be more digital platforms where materials can be logged and swapped. This is already done but there will be a financial incentive to do so; landfill tax is already costly addition to a build but will become more so. But we can’t wait for governments to make up their mind so cities must take the lead. In 2017, the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) identified that by 2036 a circular economy could provide London with net benefits of up to £7bn per annum, including 12,000 new jobs.

The ideas being generated in The Netherlands will be more widely adopted; demolition companies are already re-labelling themselves as deconstruction companies.

All of these ideas will be on show at Futurebuild exhibition at ExCel, where I am coordinating the Waste Zone showing how waste can be a valuable resource for the construction industry. The ideas we try out at The Waste House will become accepted as the norm in the very near future; we just need a Blue Planet moment for them to spread. ¢

BBM’s Brighton Waste House, a “live” research project and design workshop focused on sustainable development.

Futurebuild 2019 takes place 05-07 March 2019 at ExCeL, London

HOROSCOPES

By Jennifer Angel

^ ARIES

d LIBRA

Put your high energy (or irritable tension) to good use: don’t get distracted. You need to focus. A sudden surprise can have you rearranging your life. That could take money, and lucky for you, more cash heads your way, but don’t be a spendthrift.

It’s all systems go! You have a golden opportunity to work on a creative project. Make a plan and make it grand. Don’t be concerned with others’ opinions. But be smart, have the facts on hand. It’s time you took care of yourself, for a change!

_ TAURUS

e SCORPIO

Set high expectations, and why not, you deserve it! Don’t let a killjoy tell you anything else. Keep your mind on the positives of life, not the negatives. When communicating, you have an opinion, voice it. In the end, follow your heart.

You never stop learning. The more knowledge you gain, the more power you have. And when it’s about money, with an everchanging market, the more you understand, the better position you will be in. Be confident and strut your stuff!

` GEMINI

f SAGITTARIUS

Are you on your best behavior? Trying to impress a certain someone? Venus heads your way. Just keep smiling, and no one will be able to resist your charms. Be smart with money, do your research, and don’t try to keep up with a ritzy neighbor.

Mind control and affirmation boost your self-assurance. The worthier you feel of manifesting what you want, the more power you have to achieve it. Keep company of those successful people who are on the same page and mimic what they do.

a CANCER

g CAPRICORN

Love and money get a positive injection of energy! Stay close to good friends who accept your “irrational idiosyncrasies” as an endearing quality. Don’t worry, with all that eclipse energy, you’re allowed to be a bit crazy. Blame it on the Moon – really!

You have a dynamic new start. No matter what age you are, you still possess the ambitious gene, so in one way or another, it’s time to get back to business. You can reinvent yourself, and why not? It’s never too late to follow your dream. Go for it!

b LEO

h AQUARIUS

Love is on your mind! Your romance zone runs hot so get your mojo going! Stay clear from carbs and sugary treats, put a lock on the cellar, and move that body into motion. This quarter the focus in on you, as it should be!

Love and money have your attention, and it may mean you need to do some soul searching. Don’t sweep a matter under the carpet. If it keeps coming up, there’s a reason; deal with it and get past it. Build solid foundations with people of substance.

MARCH 21-APRIL 19

APRIL 20-MAY 20

MAY 21-JUNE 20

JUNE 21-JULY 22

JULY 23-AUGUST 22

c VIRGO

AUGUST 23-SEPTEMBER 22

Family and friends demand attention. But don’t let them intrude on your affairs. You are, after all, a very capable person. You managed to get this far without their interference. Take charge of your life and dance to the beat of your own drum!

SEPTEMBER 23-OCTOBER 22

OCTOBER 23-NOVEMBER 21

NOVEMBER 22-DECEMBER 21

DECEMBER 22-JANUARY 19

Jan 20-Feb 18)

i PISCES

FEBRUARY 19-MARCH 20

The cosmos aligns for you to win with business or money, or both! Take note of chance meetings with friends, colleagues or acquaintances as they can be influential in some way. Love is also on the agenda; make time for romance!

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

LIVE OUT LOUD

It took a jolt from her coach to make Rona Steinberg realise that creativity is wasted effort unless the results are shared with others

I

STEPHEN COTTRELL

spent a good deal of last year writing a book. It represents the culmination of everything I know (so far) about being Out Loud and although it was challenging at times, mostly I felt proud of myself for sustaining the writing. I realised that I was fulfilling one of the key criteria for living an Out Loud life - I was expressing myself. I felt fully on purpose. Not only was I engaged in writing that I love, I was also busy bringing my thoughts about how to live an Out Loud life to the world.

So far, so good. But then I started to falter.

You would have thought that after all that work, I’d be eager to get my book out there and read by everyone. But while on the surface I expressed that as my intention – busily looking for agents, and even finding one, deep down I was quietly hoping that no publisher would pick it up. The idea that people might actually read my book, and not just any people, but people I knew and cared about, had me fantasising that after a decent interval, I could file it back in the recesses of my laptop. Once hidden there, I could tell myself I’d had a good try but clearly my book wasn’t destined ever to be read by anyone.

So far, so safe.

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Stepping back from the summit.

I wonder if you’ve ever had a similar experience, where you’ve happily set about on a creative endeavour, even produced something pretty decent and then, just as you see the summit in view - the one that will mean everyone will see the product of your labours - you hesitate. You step back.

Perhaps you tell yourself it’s probably better to keep your work to yourself. Who wants to read what you’ve written or see what you’ve drawn or painted or sculpted? And anyway,

Take courage!

The world needs you to be visible you reason, the main thing is you’ve done the work and that’s what’s important.

Or is it? You might argue that the joy of the creative process is just that – it’s the process that counts.

But I’m afraid that in the Out Loud world, we need to call ourselves out on that kind of thinking. For sure, when you set out on a creative endeavour, it’s not just important, it’s vital to do the work for its own sake. It’s a special kind of wonderful to translate the thoughts and feelings that you have inside into material form. It’s what we humans are programmed to do from way back – you only have to see primitive cave drawings to know that we have an ancient urge to make sense of our world and we do that through expressing ourselves.

Fear of being visible But then there’s another important stage – the one where we joyfully choose to share our self expression with the world; when you display your work on the walls of your cave. That’s where I think it can get sticky.

If you can agree that creative expression is a reflection of yourself at your most naked and therefore your most vulnerable, then surely it’s the thought of being judged that has you stepping away from the light.

I wonder if this thought becomes more pernicious as you get older? Particularly if you’ve held yourself back through your life as I have sometimes done. It’s common to get to a point where it might seem as if it’s all a bit late for you to start sharing yourself with a critical world. You might even feel there’s no point at this stage, that you should make way for the young who have an eye on the zeitgeist; that everyone wants things that are current and modern.

I know that I had such thoughts as I

Be Visible.

Out Loud Steps.

Consider: Where in your life have you stepped away from being visible? Those moments when you’ve had the chance to come out from the shadows but you’ve shrunk back at the last minute?

Ask yourself: What made you step away? Was it fear? Of what?

Embarrassment? Shame? Feelings of not being good enough? Take a good look at yourself. Get it all out and ask yourself truthfully what do you really want? Did you write that book or poem or paint that picture so you could store it away in your attic? Or was it to express yourself to the world? Wouldn’t it be amazing if people saw what you’d achieved and liked it? If not, does that really matter? The main thing is the trying and the joining in and the fun of it.

Try being Out Loud. Allow yourself to be seen. Take a risk. Know that whatever you’ve created is worthy and it does you no credit to keep all your brilliance to yourself.

Live Out Loud tip: Don’t wake up on your 70th birthday and wish you’d had the confidence to publish your book when you had the chance.

wandered around the Mind, Body and Spirit section of Waterstones in Piccadilly. There were so many books; so many shiny, inviting covers enclosing important, coherent words.

Who needs yet another book about selffulfilment?

Despondent, I trudged home and emailed my writing coach that I was off the whole idea. (Of course, I didn’t exactly put it that way – I burbled something about wanting to find another way to present the book).

But then something rather marvellous happened.

Get A Grip!

My coach responded that she’d be disappointed not to see my work in print and while I have no problem in disappointing myself, I find it quite hard to let others down.

Then I got a grip. I had agreed to do an interview about being Out Loud so I thought I’d better have a quick read of the book just to see what I wanted to say.

Lo and behold, it told me that quite often what we are most scared of is not failure but success. In other words, if I become visible, that is if I publish my book, the chances are that people might read it and see me for who I really am.

Granted, that’s scary – but not half as scary as looking back in ten years’ time when I’m 70 and wondering why I didn’t get my book out there when I had the chance.

Because surely if I do that, then maybe I’ll write another book. And another. And maybe they’ll get published too. Which will be amazing. And if I’m absolutely honest, what I’ve always wanted.

Incidentally, the book is coming out next spring. So now you all know. And this time there’s really nowhere left for me to hide. ¢ GOLDIE magazine | 131

PUB TALK

I drink therefore I am Andrew Harvey finds fundamental questions to be asked – and answered – down at his local

W

hat are we doing here? The existential poser has engaged brains across the centuries, ever since Aristotle started asking awkward questions. But we are not in a learned library nor a university lecture hall; we’re in the public bar of the White Swan.

That’s not to suggest that a reasoned response to humanity’s self-examination can’t emerge from discussions on licensed premises. It’s just the wrong way to look at the question.

We ask ourselves often: “what are we doing here?”. Meaning, why have we gathered in this most basic of boozers when plenty of others offer so much more? Crisps or peanuts; Reg doesn’t even sell pork scratchings. He tried a few times with ham rolls, then pies, before he learnt, like us, that there was no

132 | GOLDIE magazine

appetite for second rate snacks in the age of the gastropub.

And yet, take a look at the place. It’s busy. There’s a bunch of builders at the far end; there’s a table of managers, even an accountant, by the window - and then there’s us lot assembled at what we like to think is our end of the bar.

We are locals and this, for better or probably for worse, is our nearest pub. I remember a few years back when Jim tried to lead a breakaway group to the much smarter Sun but it meant crossing the London road and waiting at the lights. Hardly anyone followed.

Just occasionally a pub bore comes up with something so simple and blindingly obvious that you feel all the philosophers throughout history couldn’t have said it better. “We’re just friends who like to hang out together,” says Felix. “It could be anywhere.”

“He keeps his beer pretty well,” says Richard, making another point on the plus side. Reg overhears and boasts: “This is the best real ale pub in south London.” Patently a wild exaggeration, it nonetheless sets us off on a scoring game of for and against.

“Take a look at the place, it’s a dump,” drones Fat Tony, whose glass is always half empty. He wants to list the negatives that are all too familiar. Reg, once a roadie for a punk band, is rude and unreliable. You never know when he’ll be open, especially on Sundays. The bar is gloomy, and never has all the light bulbs working; the carpet is vile, while the radiators haven’t been hot for years.

“The economics of running a pub don’t work in his favour,” I offer in his defence. “Why should he spend money on improvements when he only gets a short lease?” To make it a nicer experience, comes the chorus – and think of the money we push across the counter.

“Okay, let’s turn over the charge sheet,” says Nick, who is some kind of lawyer and therefore willing to defend the indefensible. He’s also the only drinker who actually likes the house red. “I’d start with location,” he says. “This is a beautifully sunny spot and it’s out of the way. We can stand around and get a suntan for the price of a drink.”

“Reg is lucky about that,” says Tony.

“He’d be dead in a town centre.”

“He’s kept his prices down and that’s a big deal,” says David, who worked in Fleet Street in the days of generous expense allowances and extravagant drinking. “The public are price sensitive. I remember when I was at the Times we ran a readers’ offer for cheap weekend breaks. The hotels were two star at best and yet we got an avalanche of coupons.

Proved that even posh people will go anywhere to avoid being ripped off.”

“Don’t forget Sharon,” Jim chips in. “She’s the best reason for being here.”

He is right. She’s smart, middle aged and wickedly conspiratorial.

She clocks the regulars in a crowd, keeps a confident balance between warm welcome and cool authority and skewers with a sharp put-down anyone who thinks they might like to get familiar.

“And Reg isn’t all bad,” says Richard. “Do you remember that time he closed the pub as a mark of respect when Alan died?”

Fat Tony can sense there’s no majority for a rebellion. We come to the Swan because... we all come. A few of us head for the door.

“See you tomorrow.” ¢

“We can stand around and get a suntan for the price of a drink”

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?

You’re not alone.

While it’s no compensation, feeling an outsider is an experience clients often bring into therapy.

In the longer version of your letter, you mentioned you were the second of three children. It’s a classic experience of middle children to feel excluded. The first child is more likely to receive privileges and responsibilities by virtue of being the oldest and the last to receive indulgences as the youngest. The middle child is in competition with the other two siblings; this child tends to get overlooked and the process of alienation begins.

Of course, this doesn’t always happen to the middle child. “The Middle Child Syndrome” can be used as a excuse by mental health professionals to explain away your your pain.

Feeling you don’t belong is painful and I’m sorry that’s how it is for you.

Middle child stuff could be causal in how you feel but what I’m getting is a heavy duty whiff of “dissociation”.

This is a psychological tool to shut off external “noise” when you’re studying or trying to concentrate on anything. We all do it from time to time.

However, used consistently, particularly in childhood, it becomes a defence mechanism which helps you cope with the unbearable; abuse and/or trauma of any kind including

physical, mental,and emotional. When you dissociate regularly it usually results in feeling disconnected from the world around you and, indeed, from yourself.

So you can cut off from emotional feelings, bodily sensations or thinking. In extreme, people report leaving their bodies. Then, from the outside, they’re able to see themselves going through whatever was unbearable for them in a detached way.

It’s nigh on impossible to engage fully with others when you’re cut off from yourself. If you don’t have an internal sense of belonging, it’s hard to create one with other beings.

So how do you get to feeling as if you belong? There’s the rub. The whole thing is a very personal journey of re-connecting with yourself which lead you to have “joined-up” feelings about yourself and others. I can’t give you a cure-all recipe. The best way forward is to find a therapist who’s familiar with reversing self-alienation – contact the BACP to find one.

In the meantime I can give you an old, well tried and tested tool to help you break the habit of feeling dissociated and re-connect you with yourself. It requires a strong elastic band which you wear loosely around your non-dominant hand’s wrist 24/7; to change things you need to use the technique consistently whenever you feel disconnected or disconnecting. At that point, hook the dominant hand’s index finger in the band, pull it out from your wrist as quickly as you can, then let it go. Yes – it will hurt. Rub

vigorously and say “right now, I’m absolutely joined up/engaged/belonging” (whatever word feels right for you), and repeat as needed.

When you’re dissociating, you are not present. The pain of the band snapping against your skin grabs your attention and pings you out of your dissociating trance into this moment now. The positive phrase at the end helps re-programme your brain towards feelings of belonging.

A younger Sharon used to dissociate big time. I felt like an alien from outer space.

This technique helped me break down the “not belonging” habit and re-connect with myself and others. It also helped me to learn how to dissociate when I chose. Very handy in boring meetings.

Please note that it takes time to master your dissociation. Quick fixes don’t last in general and, in any case, this stuff doesn’t lend itself to a quick fix.

But there’s good news, too. I always encourage “outsiders” to be proud of the condition; you’re more sensitive to things and can see dynamics at play. You might well be more sensitive to the issues of the day and how to resolve them. Most outsiders I know, through going to the different layer of consciousness that dissociation is, can access internal places (and maybe external ones) that others don’t. If you’ve recognised yourself in this column, you know exactly what I mean.

Despite how seductive it is to diagnose yourself with a disorder, don’t. There’s a high probability you don’t have one. Disappointingly, there’s a lack of understandable material out there about dissociation, but Trauma is Really Strange by Steve Haines talks about how it results from trauma in a delicious illustrated way and is a really interesting read. ¢

Find me at www.daretobeyouuk.com and www.facebook.com/sharoneden.biz While Sharon wishes she could reply to all correspondence, regrettably she’s unable to clone herself.

Issues with the widest appeal will be answered whereever possible.

GOLDIE magazine | 133

SIGNING OFF

Rebecca Weef Smith Serial fashion entrepeneur, positive psychologist and Goldie co-founder, she also runs Facebook group WearingWellbeing and has never been one to shy away from controversy How do you want your death announced – The Times or Twitter?

I would really like a black-edged Instagram square, followed up with a week of IG posts celebrating my best looks from the previous ten years. I shall have pre-organised them so no one will have to disrupt their mourning to get the filters right.

I’m holding out for a platform which allows me to upload my own Obit-Vlog.

Cremation or burial? Religious service or gong bath?

Selfish as it is, I would like a burial at The Brompton Cemetery.

The happiest times of my life have been in Kensington and Chelsea so I would really like to end up there. It is so beautifully photogenic; I can just see everyone standing around waiting for my cortege to appear - a bit like the scene in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (2009). Plus if I come back as a ghost with geographical restrictions I will at least get to see Chelsea FC home matches. And of course it’s easy for visitors to pop by for a chat – I would hate to be stuck out in the country; no one would ever make the effort to visit my grave if they couldn’t get a tube.

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

Goodness, it would be the more-the-merrier. I’m not adverse to those ladies who always turn up at funerals looking suitably sad but I’m sure are really just there for the tea and sandwiches. If it looks as if everyone is too busy to attend I’d be very happy for it to be padded-out with paid extras. They all have their own chic funeral outfits so it would help with the correct dress code as well.

I don’t have any skeletons-in-my-closet so can’t imagine anyone turning up who would cause problems. I hope by the time I toodle off I will have made my peace with anyone I may have annoyed in my past; well, I had better, or the mourners will be thin on the ground.

Last musical requests?

Something dramatic and profound for the outdoors scenes; booming cannons and symbols, that kind of thing. I have a feeling I will die in the depths of winter so don’t want the atmosphere disturbed by anything light and sunny. Then for the wake I want full on 70s and 80s club playlist. At some point I want Johnny and Mary by Robert Palmer followed by You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties by Jona Lewie.

134 | GOLDIE magazine

What would you like people to be saying about you?

“She was no good at chatting up and always got rebuffed” “Enough to drive a man to drink, she didn’t do no washing up” “She always let the stuff pile up, pile up in the sink…”

“But you could always find her in the kitchen at parties.”

How are you hoping to be remembered?

That silly cow who thought she could save the world by making everyone wear happy outfits. The woman who invented the Chessex Girl and re-introduced the fashion for wearing the highest heels possible at CFC home games because you can move a girl to West London but her Essex roots will always triumph in her footwear.

Dress code?

Black.Black.Black. Dark Glasses. A flash of pearls. Very chic, Chanel-style. Then as the music cranks up at the afterparty, revellers will begin to disrobe and reveal gloriously inappropriate full-on club gear – leather, leopard print, gold, Gucci-excess. There will be dressing up boxes available for those who didn’t get the dress code IG update.

A room will be set aside for quiet contemplation and tears for those who required a more sober way to celebrate my demise, winceyette pyjamas and housecoats will be handed out at by nannies dressed in starched uniforms.

Tea and biscuits or Jaegerbombs all round?

Every guest will be given a black lacquered basket at the entrance to Brompton Cemetery containing a mini bottle of Moet with a straw, a packet of Twiglets, Chocolate Hobnobs and a monogrammed silver hip flask of Remy Martin. By the time they get to the revelling stage they will be nicely warmed up and ready for a total full on culinary extravaganza: cakes of every hue and tone…endless sugar…cream… pastries…over-the-top-baking-send-off. Then of course there will be bacon sandwiches and tea for those in need the next morning.

Can we expect any surprises?

I’m hoping for a good headline act or a bad tribute band, but I think I should leave something for my daughters to organise so the surprises are up to them…

Describe where you are going to end up Heaven on a Thursday night in 1981. ¢

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