Tonight:
5°c
Do charities really need their own bail-out? Everyone I know is lit from within and bubbling over about their own projects — and they're all either charitable or voluntary. I've heard about inspiring projects for hospices, childhood epilepsy, litter, and all in the past couple of days. Everyone I meet has a pet project they want to share (to the extent that I am wondering whether I have the charitable equivalent of “toilet face”, ie you're the person they ask for directions to the nearest loo).
My favourite so far in a crowded field comes from a woman who'd attended my environmentalist father's recent gig at the Royal Geographical Society or, as she put it, his “illustrated talk on the rainforests and elephants mating”. After she'd recovered from the trauma of his slide show, she told me, she'd stood up and plugged her own baby — the Cool It Schools project, all about children, schools and climate change.
Afterwards, people surged up to know more. She said it was like pushing on an open door. Finally, it's all about giving back, now, rather than taking away. Like lush Christina Hendricks in Mad Men it just seems right for these lean times.
* Speaking of giving back, has anyone spoken to a banker recently? I met one the other day. He told me he worked in services. When pressed, he admitted they were “financial services”. Eventually, he confessed he was a hedge funder. “It's OK,” I said, patting the poor lamb. “I won't tell anyone.”
* There was an unusually awful session of wordplay between me and Kathy Lette in the run-up to last night's launch of In Bed With at the Langham Hotel. For those who have averted their appalled faces in horror from the publicity, this is a collection to which literary ladies have supplied erotica, all under “noms de porn”. A Sunday newspaper exposed me as Minxy Malone and therefore the author of the story about a nightie-clad monarch and a lusty palace intruder. Well. All I can say to that is, one is contractually disallowed to comment.
Anyway, after cracks about “lezzie majeste'” and other rhymes against humanity had been perpetrated, we moved on to the important matter of what we should wear to the launch.
I was thinking my black satin Burberry, belted tight, high heels; then Kathy revealed that the dress code was “ankles behind ears” and that she was going to wear purple Lay-tex.
Help! Entire counties may have run out of salt but there's no shortage of it (or sauce,
or spice) in town, thanks to our favourite Sheila.
