Every time I fly British Airways
I can vass the opinion of some of my fellow passengers and the cabin staff on the new graffitiencrusted tailfin designs. With the exception of two giggling sixyearolds, the unanimous verdict has been that they are vulgar, ugly and a complete waste of £68 million, which could well have been spent elsewhere like on the mirrors. The first class lavatory mirrors are a particularly dull shade of smoky brown, so one sees one's face through rosecoloured spectacles while within, but out in the
cold fight of day one looks a jetlagged mess. Bob Ayling, the chairman of British Airways, claims to be colourblind, so he obviously hasn't noticed the hideous cacophony of mismatched colours and patterns that we poor travelers are subjected to, not to mention the varied cultural themes, few of which seem to rep resent Britain today. The whole plane takes on the look of a Disneylandish ride for juveniles. Is this extravagant caprice the reason why BA tickets to many destinations are so much
more expensive than those of other airlines? If not, I'd like to know why.
As I spend a great deal of time on aeroplanes, I've often wondered what is the correct etiquette when confronted with someone sitting within ten feet of me who starts to cough or sneeze. As a fully paidup member of Hypochondriacs Anonymous, I immediately feel panicstricken that I'm on the verge of contracting a virulent strain of antibioticresistant tuberculosis. I bury my face in my small airline pillow until
I feel the bugs have passed over me. Maybe I should always travel with my own oxygen tent, or sport a Michael Jacksontype surgical mask. Perhaps this is one for Mary Killen.
Some mornings I scoot off to my local supermarket for provisions sans maquillage and dressed down in a raincoat and a sensible dark head scarf so like the ones worn by our own dear Queen. I appear suitably anonymous and consider that I blend in with the madding crowd of shoppers reasonably well. Last week,
whilst I was browsing through the biscuit section in M&S, a woman similarly attired approached me. 'Salaam aleikum,' she said with conviction I looked at her blankly. 'Salaam aleikum, she repeated. 'I'm sorry, but I don't speak Arabic,' I said. She seemed surprised and stepped up for a closer inspection. 'You are Arab?' 'No. 'Fraid not.' I backed off into the custard creams, but the woman, obviously bonkers, came nearer. 'You look Muslim,' she said. She moved her face still closer to mine
accusingly, and continued, 'You have Arab blood.''Alas, not a drop,' I said, now making a hasty getaway. I hailed a cab in the King's Road, gave the driver my address and whipped out my compact to inspect my face. To my surprise an Arabic countenance stared back at me. My head scarf had fallen forward, and was now resting on the bridge of my nose, giving me a distinctively Muslim look. Then the cabbie chirped up, 'Everything OK then, Joan?' 'How on earth did you recognize me?' I asked. 'You
can't fool me, luv. Saw you on Parkinson last week, I'd know that voice anywhere.'
If fashion isn't yet dead, it's terminally ill. A leading couturier recently revealed on television that many of his couture dresses are bought by transsexuals who 'wear them at home'. He also admitted that his fantasy, and that of several other designers, is to see women who look like men dressed like women. This reinforced my theory that many style gurus must loathe women
not the anorexic, androgynous teenagers who stalk the catwalks like heroin addicts in search of a fix, but real women with real bodies. Their contempt for us is so glaringly obvious that it is amazing that so many women allow themselves to buy into it. The other arbiters of fashion, the editors of glossy magazines, encourage women to emulate extraterrestrials or decadent vagabonds, photographed in transparent dresses which if worn in public would get the wearer arrested for indecent exposure. I've watched these dictatorial ladies of fashion at the collections dressed in the height of trendy hideosity: goosepimpled bare legs in sandals; droopy cardies trimmed with frayed velvet; shapeless coats with mangy fauxfur collars, or black, black, endless boring black. Standards of style have deteriorated rapidly in the past decade, and 'shabby chic' and 'frump fashion' have been extolled as the way to go. Like lambs led to the slaughter, too many women have fallen for it. It's time to stop. I dread to think what the millennium will bring: models wearing plastic binliner trousers fastened with welders' rivets; hair tortured into wirewool spirals to rival the Bride of Frankenstein, with faces surgically enhanced to resemble the Bride of Wildenstein? Coco Chanel and Christian Dior must be turning a paler shade of pink in their graves.
A notsonew but deeply unattractive habit is retaking America by storm and, of course, finding its way to these shores
namely, the constant mastication of chewing gum with an alltooopen mouth. Jack Nicholson was at it when he bounded on stage to pick up his Golden Globe, and will no doubt be chewing away madly when he collects his Oscar next week. Jack the Lad is an inveterate smoker, and since America is a total nogo zone for those who like the weed, perhaps this is his substitute. Now everyone's at it. What next, the return of the spittoon? I'm reminded of the line Norma Desmond rawled in Sunset Boulevard: 'And must you chew gum?'
When London cabbies say to me, 'Bet you're missing that lovely, hot Californian weather,' I immediately think of Sinatra crooning, 'She hates California, it's cold and it's damp,' and I agree with him. Having divided my winter thus far between so called sunny California and our green and pleasant land, there's no contest as to which clime I prefer. The infrastructure of Los Angeles seems to have been designed in the misguided belief that it seldom if ever rains. Wrong. It rains a lot.
Minor details like a modem drainage system apparently didn't concern California's founding fathers; consequently more than a couple of inches of rain and the place is awash, becoming a disaster area. Last month, driving over Coldwater Canyon in a torrential downpour, I bravely attempted to negotiate the mountainous zigzag road. Chunks of saturated hillside, rivers of mud and rocks came hurtling down in front of my car. The gutters were overflowing so much that the canyon became a raging
torrent with everyone trying to drive down the middle of it. I felt like an extra in Titanic, and couldn't wait to get back to England's relatively gentle drizzle.
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