Tonight:
9°c
The posh recession is upon us. I discover this on my yearly pilgrimage to the children's clothes shop, Young England, in Elizabeth Street. If the name sounds eerily familiar - apart from to Disraeli admirers - it's because the nursery that employed the young Princess Diana had the same name, and the same founder as the shop. They shared an air of charming ease and a dash of entitlement. Top-notch sale, too. But horror! It's gone.
In these days of quantitative easing, even Elizabeth Street, in plutocratic Belgravia, isn't immune. I discover it is still on the net, for dressy and bespoke clothes, at www.youngengland.co.uk. You might prise some of the lovely old stock out of them if you ask nicely.
It's not alone in closing its upmarket doors. For 10 years, I have scavenged productively in Emma Hope's shoe trove in Amwell Street. Her end-of-season lines ended up there, and very well shod we Clerkenwellians have been as a result. Last weekend, it too closed its doors: Emma is taking her velvet trainers and basketweave slip-ons off to Westfield. So sweeping too were Rachel Riley's discounts that my daughter's godmother - who is keeping the UK retail sector afloat single-handed - started stockpiling velvet frocks in case it too proved unable to withstand the chill.
For those of us who love shopping as well as buying, closing-down sales are equivalent to funerals. We like the bargains but they don't compensate for the feeling of lasting loss. A glamorous city needs windows for us to press our noses against. So here's the perfect excuse for a treat: go out and support your favourite posh shop before it's too late.
* "When will it snow?" our three-year-old has asked plaintively since she discovered the idea from Christmas cards. I told her bedtime stories about growing up amid snowdrifts, having to dig our way out of the house and the great North-East blizzards I have endured. It was as distant to her, child of balmy London, as Narnia. "But when will we see the snow?" she persisted. "It doesn't really snow in London, darling," I said. Authoritatively.
* The riotous Die Tote Stadt is at the Royal Opera House. Erich Korngold wrote it at the age of 23, having been spotted as a prodigy by Gustav Mahler at nine, when he wrote his first full ballet score. A depressing thought for anyone prodding their children through music exams.
The result? An opera about pathological mourning and oedipal urges, concluding with Paul dreaming of strangling his lover with his dead wife's hair. Maybe he would have been better adjusted if he had struggled with his B minor scale as a lad.
