When I was the editor of Vogue, my engagements were listed in a large, paper diary by my PA and it sat on her desk. It was only when I left the job seven years ago that for the first time in decades I kept my own diary, and every year since I have bought a wildly expensive candy-coloured leather-bound Smythson page-a-day desk diary.
This January, I have downgraded to a less expensive brand, with the whole week contained on a page, and less room for my to-do lists, on the basis that all this information can be kept on my computer and my phone.
Though I don’t really need a paper diary, I like to have one and even this small change in style has discombobulated me.
During the Vogue days, my diaries were crammed with fashion show dates, half-hourly meetings, lunches, drinks appointments, shop openings. There wasn’t a bare inch of paper.
At home, we had another paper diary, kept in the kitchen for our domestic life – children’s play dates, sleepovers, babysitting evenings, school plays and phone numbers of the mums of my son’s friends, etc.
‘Coco flea treatment’, ‘Pick up 3.15 Cody’ and ‘Sam cricket 5-6’ scribbled in the one at home. ‘Lunch Le Caprice Helen Taylor’, ‘Serpentine Gallery Anniversary Party’ and ‘4.30 coverline meeting’ in the other. One day; two halves of my life.
Looking back through them now, so many memories flood back.
Though I don’t really need a paper diary, I like to have one and even this small change in style has discombobulated me (stock image)
I may not really need my paper diary now but no way will I give it up. It may be smaller, the days a little less crammed, but it’s still my life and I enjoy seeing it (stock image)
As a teenager, a friend’s father told me it would be the small details of the days that would be interesting in the future – not the ‘Dear Diary…’ wails of heartbroken anguish. Flicking through these books, I see he is right (pictured: Alexandra Shulman)
As a teenager, a friend’s father told me it would be the small details of the days that would be interesting in the future – not the ‘Dear Diary…’ wails of heartbroken anguish. Flicking through these books, I see he is right. The reminder to buy a new school uniform is what I cherish.
I may not really need my paper diary now but no way will I give it up. It may be smaller, the days a little less crammed, but it’s still my life and I enjoy seeing it there beside me on my desk, keeper of the memories for the future.
A city of celebrities – and catastrophes
The pictures of the Los Angeles fires are horrific. Many homes lost, countless people forced to evacuate. The terrifying sight of this magnificent city ringed by flames has been all the more startling for the contrast with last Sunday’s Golden Globes in Beverly Hills, the kick-off to the awards season so central to the city’s identity.
Nicole Kidman walked the red carpet in backless silver. Angelina Jolie brought her daughter. Zendaya flaunted a much-discussed new ring. But also key to LA’s identity is the fact the city has long been a place of these two extremes – natural disaster and celebrity. (Indeed, the Oscars ceremony is due in March.)
Fires are nothing new to Angelenos, though they generally peak between September and November. Writing about the fire season in an article for the New Yorker in 1989, Joan Didion described listening to James Taylor’s hit song Fire And Rain playing repeatedly on the radio between updates on the massive 1978 blazes ‘systematically wiping out large parts of Malibu and the Pacific Palisades’.
Such familiar history will be of no comfort to those living through the current disaster but these fires are a reminder that this City of Angels has always had a dark and threatening side embedded in it.
This pay research is utter madness
Recent research suggests that men with higher-earning female partners suffer poor mental health. As someone who hasn’t had a relationship with a man earning more than me since I was 26, I have some experience in this area and haven’t noticed this syndrome.
Alexandra Shulman writes: As someone who hasn’t had a relationship with a man earning more than me since I was 26, I have some experience in this area and haven’t notice poorer mental health in men who earn less than their female partners (stock image)
Recent research suggests that men with higher-earning female partners suffer poor mental health (stock image)
If anything, they’ve been saner than me. My delightful boyfriend of 20 years has never had a twinge that my earnings have been greater than his. Far from it: he loves having been rescued from his spartan life. But I suppose there are those who might say that he’s mad to be with me in the first place.
I have 75 apps on my iPhone. Probably about 50 too many – but as soon as I remove one, I seem to need it.
One is my NHS app which, according to new government schemes, is about to become ever more important in the management of my healthcare. More’s the pity.
It’s all very well for Sir Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting (or whoever else it will be when any changes are actually made) to believe the log-jam in the NHS can be cleared by defaulting huge amounts of activity to technology but I am convinced that the plans to do so are utterly illogical.
Many of those most in need of NHS services are elderly. Using apps can’t be easy for them, having to use smartphones they either don’t have or can’t use, passwords they struggle to remember, and small typography they can’t read.
Recently, I tried to book something medical for my mother using her phone.
It’s all very well for Sir Keir Starmer to believe the log-jam in the NHS can be cleared by defaulting activity to technology but I am convinced that the plans are utterly illogical
It was a hopeless task because at no point did she know the information needed to fill in the forms, let alone have the ability to complete them herself.
And as for getting verification texts to log in – well, forget it.
By the end of an hour, we gave up and I left promising to try to get hold of the necessary service on the phone the next day.
I don’t regard myself as elderly (yet) but it didn’t take much imagination for me to see a time when this kind of activity would be far beyond me.
Trying to avoid the Michelin Man look
Looking chic in the current freeze is tricky and I have huge admiration for the women who manage it without resembling a Michelin Man.
One man who must be rubbing his hands with glee is Tadashi Yanai, owner of Uniqlo, whose Heattech thermal layers are the go-to in these chilly days.
Personally, I don’t like wearing them and recommend silk as an equally effective, and much more attractive, under layer.
Tumbril talk, I know.
