If you’re at the Met Gala –– the single most important event on the fashion calendar –– wearing a red column, (Reese, I’m looking at you) then perhaps you shouldn’t be there. This is the night for flamboyant and frivolous, for daring and audacious. Yes, this is the night for a canary yellow dress with a fur trimmed train that chugs on for miles. Bravo Rihana. Bravo SJP. And bravo to anyone with chtuzpah enough to be ridiculed and revered, from here to Shanghai.
Sometimes my children ask me if I know any witches. “Yes. Your Yiayia.” My mother and her girlfriends are these brilliantly eccentric, bonkers mad women that would have totally been burned at a stake were they living in medieval England. They’ve known each other for decades, cackle like crazy and share a loyalty that is fierce. We, their daughters, are sadly nowhere near as weird. But with 25-years on us, we’ve time to cultivate it.
Aunt Polixene made really good cakes. It didn’t matter that they came out of a box. It was the love that she poured into them that made them taste good. Like my great aunt, I’m a big fan of the add an egg and water brand of baking. Unless it’s one of my children’s birthdays, on which occasion I’ll pull out all the stops, put on a pinny and make a cake from scratch. What frustrates me though, as they get older, is how different our taste in cakes are. While I picture layers of vanilla sponge smothered in buttermilk frosting and topped with fresh peonies and macarons, they see pirate ships and Disney princesses. With Iole’s birthday coming up, I showed her a Victoria sponge cake with piles of mascarpone and fresh strawberries sandwiched between each layer. She scoffed at that. How about this lovely cake, I suggested. Non. She has her heart set on a candyfloss pink princess Barbie cake. Which is what most little girls want when they’re a smidgen shy of six. It will take me a week, and make her day. Auntie P. would be proud as punch.
Send me an invitation to a fancy dress party and I’ll be there with sequins in my hair and feathers around my neck. The 20s is a great era for costume –– glittery and theatrical. But really, I’ll dress for any decade, even them brash old 80s. Once, my friend Antonella and I, who both grew up singing Papa don’t preach into a hair brush, raided the Value Village for acid wash denim and white leather pumps. We even wore lace socks with said pumps as we strutted down Spadina to the sky dome where Madonna was in concert. This was our chance to dress the way we could have only dreamed of at age-eight when the album True Blue hit the radio. We looked so great, or at least we thought we did. And that’s the thing about a costume. You get to step out of yourself. You get to be Madonna.
It’s rare that I check the weather forecast. And so it happens that I get caught in rainstorms with no brolly or send children to school wearing wooly sweaters on unseasonably warm days. The flip-side is that I never let a bit of drizzle get in the way of a good plan. Imagine how many picnics have been cancelled due to a rainstorm that never comes. When you grow up in a town where it rains (or there’s a chance of rain) almost everyday of the year, you just accept soggy toes and damp hair, and get on with your day. But a pretty brolly, is never a bad idea.
There is a lot to be said for taking ones time. But if there’s a way I can get something or be somewhere fast, I’ll typically tick that box. Years ago, Jason and I were travelling from Thailand to Laos. At the border, we had the choice between an old tortoise of a boat that would get us to Luang Prabang in two days, or a skinny canoe with a souped up engine that could bomb it down the Mekong at lighting speed. Scrunched and cross-legged on the boat floor with bike helmets on our heads and two kamikazes manning the tiller, Jason and I, plus three Israeli tourists, whizzed down the river. Eight-hours later, soaked and deafened (the engine was impossibly loud) and with cramps in our legs, we all wobbled onto a beach in what felt like the middle of nowhere. We had arrived. This was the dock for Luang Prabang. These days, we’d spend the money on a flight. But oh, what a ride it was.
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