THE SOUTHBANK VINTAGE FAIR 31st JULY, 2011

A TRULY “VINTAGE” VINTAGE FAIR

Sunday, 31^st July – we repair to London’s South Bank to attend the Vintage Fair. What larks! A staggeringly beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies, making all those drenched 50’s colours just sizzle!

I went with an Italian friend, Cinzia who has a faux fifties fashion shop in Milan (and another in Sanremo run by her sister Barbara) to show her what – in my humble opinion - she should be showing in her bottegas next season. She was, like me, absolutely gob-smacked (I don't know what the Italian for "gob-smacked is - must find out)  by the hundreds of vendors displaying their wares with such humour and obvious delight.

As many of you will know, I am seldom without my trusty Cannon Ixus, and I was much amused by some of the attendees who turned out in styles of the period as some of my selected pictures below show, which I hope, will amply illustrate some of the delights of our day.

She has balloons in her hat! She's "Balloon Lady" - no, really!                         

His moustache was fake, but his style was real!

Now that's a helluva fascinator!  And there has to be a cherry joke around here somewhere....

Thiis is my favourite photo of the day....She did all the talking, he just smiled. He's got her well-trained. Great US Army outfit, sir! Are those medals for real?

A stand selling old radiograms, wind-up gramophones (some well over £300.00, but “fully restored” I was assured!), and miscellaneous “lo-fi”,  played music that only accelerated one’s senses back to the times when this was the Festival Of Britain in 1951 which the event was celebrating.  

Behind the Royal Festival Hall, the weekly organic food fair was in full swing, so off we went, purchases bundled under arms to sample – sitting with other fair attendees – scoffing dishes from the Levant, Poland and the Indian sub-continent.  A completely sublime and blissed-out day!

Can’t wait for next year to do it all over again!

FANCY FLIGHT & A FLIGHT OF FANCY...

Last week, I had one of the most exciting rides of my life! A journalist friend and I had dinner on the South Bank and afterwards we went to see the new passenger terminal at the upgraded London Heliport. This is next door to the equally remarkable and luxurious Hotel Verta, but that's for another time. Today I shall only discuss the exhilarating - and let's face it - uber-romantic, half-hour helicopter ride over London at midnight.  My photo shows us over the Thames passing the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.

It was a stunningly clear night and I felt an enormous amount of pride as we flew over all those familiar landmarks that gives my city such a powerful impact.

By coincidence, this week’s copy of New Scientist has an important story on the very real prospect of us one day, in the not too distant future of owning our own mini-helicopter. You can read more about this remarkableaircraft, The Terrafuggia (an Italianism for ‘escape the earth’) can be seen here: http://www.aircraftcompare.com/helicopter-airplane/Terrafugia-Transition/289

This wasn't what we were up in (that was an altogether bigger thing).

Now, if they can just make them affordable, we’ll all be whizzing off to Waitrose in our personal helicopters, or will we? They said Ocado wouldn’t work, but now they are in profit, maybe we don’t have to ever leave our homes ever again. Well, not for a  pint of milk.

Such prospects of future life were discussed at a friend’s recently when I learned that her daughter is involved in predicting – if that’s the word – future trends.

‘Futurology’ and its associated study groups have so often got these things wrong.

After all, who could have predicted ten years ago, that we would shamelessly flaunt and share our deepest and most personal details with everybody else in the world? Think Twitter or Facebook. I can’t help thinking that somewhere, employees in the FBI and MI5 are constantly rubbing their hands with glee at how we’re all doing their spook-work for them!  And here in the UK, we deplore the prospect of carrying ID cards!  No worries - ‘They’ already know too much about us.

Right now, I think one of the most important predictions problems we face, is to foresee what the climate is going to be like on our little planet. Even the [London] Met Office can’t get it right 24 hours ahead!

A very happy 4^th July to all my friends in our former Colonies! If I could just get my Learjet started.....