Ladies, it's your big day — is that burger really wise?
Ladies' Day at Royal Ascot, a parade of perspiring men in penguin suits and women wearing dreadful hats. Why do so many women think it might be 'fun' to put a straw cheeseburger on their heads, or a raffia teapot? Wouldn't you rather look lovely on your big day out, not like someone with a cheeseburger on your head?
Which brings me to the Queen, who went to the first day of the races wearing a walnut whip. It was white, it was huge, it was dated. Day two, the hat was like a feathery ocean liner. Goodness only knows what she'll have plonked on her head today. They look like the sort of the thing the mother of the bride wore in 1998. Then again, in a hat-free world, even at weddings, there's sport to be had in clocking all of them. Well, except for the cheeseburger. I draw the line at burgers.
Driving my nephew to visit his grandparents, I asked about his search for a new job. He groaned. 'Eight interviews is standard,' he said. 'It's a full-time job.' 'Eight?' I said, incredulously, 'what happens in the seven after you've met your new boss and they've decided if they like you?' Turns out meeting someone you might actually work with is now the last thing that happens, not the first. Before that, you have round after round of exam-style testing and brainstorming.
The whole process seems designed to remove the human being from the equation, minimise interpersonal skills and downplay the fact that most jobs are basically about people getting along. It reduces people to the sum of their parts — a skillset, not a person. Is that progress?
Rarely a day goes by without some hapless PR emailing me. 'Hi Rose!' they begin, winningly. 'I'm just checking you got my email about National Cupcake Week/National Potato Week/National Elbow Health Week,' before asking what features I plan to write about potatoes and cupcakes and elbow health.
This week, however, is a rare gem: it's National Independent Bookshop Week, the Booksellers Association's attempt to highlight all the many ways in which independent bookshops are brilliant and we would be bereft without them.
I don't need any convincing, because some of my best reads have been the happy result of random displays in Daunt and John Sandoe (Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces by Robert Clark). But buried at the bottom of the press release is a shocker: 'There has been an increase in booksellers facing violent and intimidating behaviour, often linked to books stocked.' Booksellers are being attacked, it goes on, because they sell books 'that represent a wide range of viewpoints'. Seriously? What sort of a moron has a meltdown in a bookshop? For heaven's sake, get a grip. And do you realise that if they all close down, all we'll be left with is National Potato Week? Is that really what you want?
To Northolt in far northwest London for a new front door. My builder informs me that Northolt is where new front doors come from, and six months into him renovating my house, I've learned not to argue. He always wins anyway, so I might as well smile sweetly and say 'Yes, dear.'
What I'd forgotten, though, as I headed deep into an industrial estate somewhere off the A40, is that I'd turned on location tracking when I was meeting a friend a few days before. Now yes, he has an overactive imagination, but in his defence, he also knows that I rarely venture far from an SW postcode. UB5 was a billowing red flag.
'Are you OK?' he called. 'Are you being kidnapped and driven to your death? Are you chained to a radiator?' I explained that I'd gone to Northolt to buy a new front door. 'Is that code?' he asked, confused, 'a cry for help?' After six months of dealing with builders, I think it might be.
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