Community Profiles
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Individual Profile:
Deborah Mills
United Kingdom
(Planner)
Fav URL(s):
http://Howies - the inspirational bits, http://Netaporter - I like to drool at the designer clothes, http://Amazon.co.ukLovemarks:
Origins, BBC, Carluccio's, Jo Malone, Liberty, John Lewis, Leon Restaurants, Net-A-Porter, Everyman Cinema Club, Grazia, Howies, Thorntons Chocolate, Veuve Clicquot. -
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Makes me feel just a tiny bit Italian!
Carluccio's
12 July 2007
This is a chain of Italian cafes/restaurants and delis in and around London. I must go there at least twice a month, to have a good strong cup of coffee, people watch or even sometimes work. What I love about these restaurants is that the experience is consistent, reliable, the pricing isn’t too high, no one minds if you hang out there all evening. It’s just as easy to be there on your own as with a group of friends, the portions are generous, the wine is good, but more importantly than all those good reasons, going in there makes me feel just a tiny bit Italian!
A joy to eat
Leon Restaurants
12 July 2007
Leon is a relatively new chain of restaurants based in London offering real fast food - so the menu is deliberately seasonal, fresh, healthy and very, very tasty (their brownies are fantastic and since they’re low GI I can kid myself they’re good for me). They have a very distinctive style and look and are scrupulous about sustainability. I love going there for lunch because although the food is healthy there is nothing po-faced or punitive about it. It’s a joy to eat - if everything that was good for you tasted this great, we’d all be superheros! The food takes very little time to be served from the front counter but you have all the time in the world to enjoy it. In the restaurants are books, chess sets, old family photos (I believe Leon is the name of one of the founder’s Dads!) to keep you busy. There’s a loyalty card system which rewards you with a treat when you’ve filled your card. Eating at Leon’s is like being cooked for by a friend who really can cook and wants you to enjoy the experience. You rarely see food being left or thrown away. When I walk out I feel my hair is shinier, my eyes brighter and my mood better - and for the next couple of hours it probably is!
The ideal Chick Choc
Cadbury
12 July 2007
Something magical happens to that delicious, fruity (am I alone in detecting a topnote of strawberry in it?) Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate when it’s stamped into small round shapes. All that chocolate in such a small hit is particularly moreish - especially the ’twins’ (two buttons back to back) which you have to eat together. Personally I am seldom without a small pack somewhere about my person, and when I can get hold of them the Giant Chocolate Buttons (highly recommended) have a permanent place in my freezer (I know it sounds a bit odd but they’re fantastic very cold, and when frozen you can smash them over ice-cream. Plus, sharing a house with a bunch of ravenous chocolate-lovers, no one thinks to look for them there). Of course, like most British kids I grew up with these. I didn’t love them back then because they seemed like the kind of confectionery Grown Up’s bought you as a compromise - not as bad for you or your teeth as the chewy, fizzy, lurid coloured stuff you would have chosen yourself. But not any more. Now I feel it’s short-sighted of Cadbury to target them at kids. These are the ideal Chick Choc - they’re such a feminine product - portion-controlled chocolate in the perfect dosage for functioning chocoholics! - Love them!
A classy act
Everyman Cinema Club
13 July 2007
Once upon a time, ooh sometime in the 80’s, London was full of small independent cinemas, where film nerds lurked watching what were known as ’oeuvres’ - subtitled films long on length and short on narrative. Gradually they died out as more commercial entities took over. But in or two independents like The Screen chain and my Lovemark, the Everyman Cinema Club, that fim-loving ethos lives on. But now you no longer need a PhD in the semiotics of Japanese film to feel at home there. The Everyman is, it’s true, a tad more expensive than your average multiplex (and that’s even by London standards) but it’s a classy act. The seats are essays in comfort and if you’re feeling smoochy they even have double sofa seats you can share. They serve great snacks out the front and (the real deal-clincher for me) the Everyman is licensed which means you can buy wine at the bar and drink it during the film. And these people love film. A typical Everyman season is a varied programme of current blockbusters, hot cult films and themed seasons sprinkled with golden oldies. They even run Mum and Baby screenings during the day so that the exhausted mothers of North London can catch some culture or, more likely, snooze while their infants are mesmerised by the giant screen. In these days of DVDs at home and films on demand, The Everyman makes it worth my while leaving the house, parking the car and paying good money to see a film, because it transforms catching a movie into a special night out.
I'm a Grazia-holic
Grazia
13 July 2007
Hello. My name is Deborah and I’m a Grazia-holic. Don’t get me wrong - I consider myself a bit of a culture vulture. I love reading, always have, real books too, good long ones, preferably by dead people. Henry James, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy - I’m your gal. But (and I hang my head in shame) I have recently spent less time with those old friends. My new reading buddies are far more exciting. Now I hang with Kate, Paris, Lindsay, Jennifer and Angelina because now I have become addicted to Grazia magazine. Grazia is a weekly publication in the UK - it’s glossy, packed with celebrity stories, fashion tips, shopping and...er...that’s it. It’s not so much Low Brow, as No Brow - and all for £1.80. Every Tuesday I await the new edition and the cover that’s going to grab me - will Kate be back with Pete? Is Lindsay off the wagon again? What’s the Must Have item I simply, well, must have? Like a true addict I love to share the experience (I pass on my copy to a friend) but I like the first hit on my own. Not that it’s exactly a challenging read - 20 minutes on the tube is all it takes to get from cover to cover. But for that you get enough fodder for a whole week of water cooler conversations - and you can’t say that about Henry James!
A company with a heart
howies
13 July 2007
This is a company with a heart. What other clothes company has pages on its website encouraging you to bake bread or make the perfect cup of tea? As you sit in your city office, stressing about meeting yet another deadline you won’t remember in six months time, take a moment to check out the Howies site. You’ll find the second life you’ve always thought you’d lead is happening there. With some quite nice clothes too.
I could never wait to come back
Venice, Italy
13 July 2007
Some time ago I had friend who fancied himself as an aesthete. He found London unbearable and went off to teach English in Italy. I think he’d read too much Thomas Mann for A Levels. He wandered around for a while and ended up in Venice on a year’s contract. That was twenty years ago - he never came back. Over the years I spent a lot of time visiting him and while it was always nice to see him, it was Venice that I could never wait to come back to. It is a magical place - part town, part mirage. On my last visit I treated myself to a boat taxi from the airport. There was an impenetrable, low Autumnal fog lying over the lagoon and I was disappointed. But as we drew closer, Venice rose up out of the mist towards me, San Marco and the Doges Palace on the waterfront wreathed in grey like a city of ghosts. It can be a maddening place - the heat and stink of the Summer, the cruise ship hoards, the sheer cost of spending time there can drive you mad. But, warts and all, Venice is above all a human city. It is after all, manmade: born out of human ingenuity, built by human acquisitiveness and the site of some of our most prodigious artistic achievements . It is human-paced. With no cars, all you hear are voices, the rattle of wheels on cobbles and the swirl of the Adriatic - you can feel your pulse slow and your stride lengthen as you walk its streets. And that’s when you start to sense that other Venice, the deeper, darker, older place that has inspired and even disconcerted so many authors and artists. If you were being pretentious you could say it was a city with an ’Id’. And how much more human can you get than that?
The sweet taste of the Seventies!
Thorntons Chocolate
15 July 2007
When I was an inquistive little girl growing up in a Lancashire mill town, the biggest treat of the week for me was to go ’round the shops’ with my Mum and my Grandmother. Preston was a smallish town back then with all of two shopping streets and a market, but we always managed to make an afternoon of it. Since I was one of those irritating children whose idea of fun was listening in on adult conversations, those Saturday afternoons were heaven: there’s nothing that gets a conversation going beween women better than wandering round the shops together. So while my Mum and Grandma discussed family members and acquaintance, arcane details of foundation garments and other people’s (disastrous) outfits, I followed, ears wagging. About halfway round - the top floor of St George’s Shopping Centre to be precise - we would pass Thorntons Chocolate Cabin, a place of barely imaginable exotic treats like "continental chocolates" and "chocolate ginger": all of them way out of pocket money price range. We never actually managed to pass it. My Mum and Grandma would exchange a look and one or other would say, "I could just fancy some of that Brazil Nut toffee" and we’d soon be sharing a bag. It had to be that particular type - we never considered any other flavour and for many years I don’t think I knew there were any. It slowed the conversation a bit, because none of us could resist going for the really big lumps; and now I can realise it’s probably also responsible for some rather nasty root canal work, but I loved it then and I still do. I don’t live in the North of England any more, but whenever I go back, no wander round the town is complete without a bag of Thorntons Special Brazil Nut Toffee.
The funny thing is I could buy it in my local Woolies in London any day of the week. But it just doesn’t appeal. My Saturday afternoons these days don’t include slow companionable ambling round the shops. For me Thornton’s Special Brazil Nut Toffee is the taste of those slow, simple, structured times when the two main streets of Preston were the edges of the universe; when family and relatives were my whole social world and when getting to be 10 (double figures!) was the greatest excitment I could imagine. Ah, Thorntons Special Brazil Nut Toffee - the sweet taste of the Seventies!
Truly fit for purpose
Lamy
19 October 2007
I love Lamy pens. They don't cost a fortune so they suit someone like me who needs to have their possessions lashed to them, because I can afford to have several of them. They are truly fit for purpose - they have great nibs, look pretty and help my horrible handwriting look presentable. What's not to love? Lamy pens transform my scrawls from jottings into prose.
Their emphasis is all about service
EOS Airlines
29 February 2008
EOS is a small, business class only, airline flying from London Stanstead to New York. They have few planes but those planes have very few seats in them and their emphasis is all about service. I have flown with them a couple of times and each time I have been treated like a celebrity - ushered through security, made to feel important from the moment I get to the check in. They are such a contrast to BA who make business class passengers feel like also-rans because they're not First Class and who frankly can't be bothered to make you feel special. Better still, their fares are a third of the price of either BA or Virgin.
High quality, reasonable prices
John Lewis
13 June 2008
There is something quintessentially British and understated about John Lewis. When I was younger I found it indistinguishable from any other slightly boring British high street store. But while the UK high street has become as brash, noisy and exciting as any other high street in any other city in the world, JL's approach has barely altered. Yes it has evolved - it's a great place to shop - but those quiet, sensible, stolid values haven't changed. On the "bigger, cheaper, faster, brighter" modern high street John Lewis shines like a beacon of high quality, reasonable prices and good, old-fashioned fairplay.