Monthly Archives: April 2012

On…. NARS Carthage

Confession.

Despite owning more makeup than I could ever, ever wear (so much in fact that it’s slightly shameful, and friends of friends sometimes say ‘can I see your makeup drawer?’ when they come over, because they’ve heard through the grapevine just how excessive it is), I just bought a new lipstick.

NARS Carthage.

My first thought, after ‘oooo I look nice!’ was ‘hot damn, this would look great on my friend Amy’. Then I thought how great it would look on Susan, and Sarah, and Catherine, and Kirsty, and Lydia, and Andrea, and Trini and Maddy and Eleanor and Victoria and Kat and Fi and my sister and my mother and my agent and oh my God pretty much every woman I know.

Allegedly Emma Stone is wearing it in this shot. She is cool.

It’s a bright hot pink with red and coral in it, super-opaque, smooth, long-lasting. Yah, it’s bold, and yah, it takes a smooth chap-free lip (Lansinoh or Vaseline and an old toothbrush will sort you out). The kind of lipstick you would wear if you were one of those bathing beauties in an Esther Williams movie. It’s incredible with pale skin (I am still pre-fake-tan this year, so I’m milky-white. You know, the kind of white with a bit of blue in it? Yah that’s me), and I saw a very bronzed girl trying it on and she looked breathtaking. It would look amazing on Asian skintones and phenomenal on darker skin. It makes your teeth whiter and your eyes brighter. It’s hopelessly devoted to you. Like a young Olivia Newton-John.

So for Pete’s sake stop reading my stooopid blog and go and buy it. Or at least try it on.

PS Yah I am a writer. Yah I have no right to talk about cosmetics. Yah I’m going to do it anyway.

PPS The other day I found this photo of James Spader on my desktop. How did it get there? I don’t know. I like to think that it found me. Let’s just run with it and bemoan the fact that in this day an age it’s almost impossible to find a man who will rock a sockless loafer, pale grey suit, open-neck shirt, Lady Di hair and come-hither eyes, a lit cigarette and a glass ashtray balanced so perfectly on his knee. I need to re-do my website this year, and get some photos taken, and honestly, I’d be delighted if I could pose EXACTLY like this.

On…. hello New York

I was going to tell you guys every detail about our first week in New York, about jetlag and flights and writing stuff and baby admin and you know, all that sort of thing. But do you really want to hear about my lost morning in Buy Buy Baby? I think not. Let me sum it up: we’ve spent the week settling in and New York is just big and beautiful and sunny and gorgeous and generally double-fist-pump-in-the-air perfect. I feel very happy and lucky and thankful. And hungry.
I shouldn’t be hungry, we’ve eaten ricockulously well since arriving. And as you probably know, I like restaurants. I like bars. I like eating. I like drinking. I like talking to people whilst eating and drinking in restaurants and bars. (You see where I am going with this.) And I thought you guys might like to know where I’ve been so far…

The Mermaid Inn

Met up with a lovely friend Susan. We sat at the bar, drank prosecco and ate blackened catfish. Highly highly recommend.


Saxon + Parole

Dinner with Fox and two of our guy friends in NYC. Mike was thrilled to find out that I’m using his last name in my next book. He was less thrilled to discover that it’s a girl’s last name rather than a totally awesome dude. Anyway, I had beet and goats cheese salad followed by an excellent pork belly.

Elsa

My new favourite cocktail bar. I drank Two French Sisters. I’m not the biggest drinker in the world since Errol was born, unsurprisingly, so after one I was a giggly wreck.


Peels

The fried chicken sandwich. I DIE.

La Colombe

Best coffee I have ever tasted in Manhattan. Errol likes the brioche.


Gemma
Cool Italian in the Bowery Hotel. We had breakfast there. Baked eggs. Apparently you can bake them. Who knew? (And yah, it was totally named after me. Shh, don’t tell anyone.)


Cookshop

Went with BFF Sarah and her husband. Sarah is preggers, by the way, and I hadn’t seen her since she got preggers, and in fact we haven’t even lived in the same country for about nine years, so I thoroughly embarrassed myself by bursting into happy tears when I saw her for the first time. I am tres uncool. The company was exceptional, but the food was meh.

Coming soon: food adventures in Brooklyn.