Explore Columnists September 2006
Author Julia Llewellyn on holiday envy; Bill Knott laments the decline of the old-fashioned barber; and Tony Chapman champions the role of good architecture
SPEAKERS’ CORNER
AS YET ANOTHER PERFECTLY-TANNED FRIEND RETURNS FROM AN EXOTIC VACATION, AUTHOR JULIA LLEWELLYN IS MORE LIKELY TO BE GOING GREEN WITH ENVY – AND PACKING FOR ABERDEEN
IT STARTS AS early as February. “So what have you got planned for your holidays this year?” your friend twitters. “We’ve booked the most amazing villa on the beach in Barbados – eight bedrooms, pool, Jacuzzi, live-in maid, chef and nanny. We couldn’t have afforded it normally but Dad said he’d pay for the lot. We thought we’d go for the whole of August – work’s always so quiet then and there’s always broadband if the offi ce needs me.”
Envy consumes every part of my life. Houses, diligent spouses, broccoli-gobbling children, amazing jobs – how come everyone seems to have a better deal than me? But holiday envy is the worst. Stories of amazing breaks can plunge me into the kind of gloom that can only be relieved by a very long and exotic break of the sort everyone but me seems able to afford. And don’t my friends know it? Often I think the only reason they go on holiday at all is to look forward to the return, when they can ruin my day, as well as causing me neck injury by forcing me to peer for hours at tiny digital images of the infi nity pool/ deserted beach/glorious view of the lake/charming staff who took the children off their hands from dawn until dusk/them looking amazing in a bikini.
One-upmanship starts with accommodation. Friends of mine recently went on a long weekend to a boutique hotel in the middle of Kenya, which had just three suites, each with a private plunge pool and unimpeded views of the Rift Valley. The only other guest was Herbert Ypma, author of the Hip Hotels books (did I mention job envy?), who said that this was the most glorious place he’d ever visited.
Although, of course, as soon as Ypma publishes the details, the glory will diminish because the hideaway will instantly be heaving with the kind of people who instruct their secretaries by Blackberry to pick their next holiday out of Hip Hotels.
Which brings me to the next point of holiday envy – exclusivity. There’s no point going to some six-star hotel in Dubai if everyone else has been there already. Dubai? So 2005! Check out this seven-star place in Borneo. Or what about this lodge in Burundi, which has settled down so quickly after the civil war. But hurry, fl ights get booked up fast.
My holiday envy is focused not just on the glamour of other people’s breaks, but on the fact they’re going anywhere at all. Every year we leave our booking to the eleventh hour but instead of netting bargain fares, we fi nd no room at the inn. Last year, we sniggered at our friends who’d reserved their Dorset cottages in January. Then July came and the only place in the world willing to accommodate us in August was my mother-in-law’s in Aberdeen.
Even if we do manage to find seats on a fl ight that leaves at 3am, I spend the entire journey resenting other people’s effi ciency. What a brilliant idea to pack toys to entertain your grouchy toddler in your hand luggage. Why didn’t I think of that? Probably because I was too busy applying last-minute fake tan, while my partner desperately called every mini-cab company in the area trying to fi nd someone to take us to the airport, “Now”.
Still, if anyone asks, we always end up having a lovely time – Aberdeen is the new Borneo, you know, so hip Herbert is surely on his way there right now.
Julia Llewellyn is the author of If I Were You, Penguin (£6.99)
FLYING THE FLAG
HAIR ‘BOUTIQUES’? BILL KNOTT JUST WANTS A PROPER SHAVE
WHEN IS A BARBER shop not a barber shop? When it is a unisex hairstyling boutique, that’s when. Try sauntering in to ‘Have It Off’ or ‘A Cut Above’ (why do hairdressers employ such gut-wrenchingly awful puns?) and ask for a shave. Not a chance. These places are incapable of performing any service that doesn’t involve ‘volumising mousse’, and are calculated to make any man over 35 run screaming for the exit.
The red and white striped pole, once a familiar sight in the high street, dates from a time when barbers also performed surgical procedures: the white and red stripes representing clean and bloodied bandages drying in the breeze. Bloodletting was a favourite practice amongst medieval barbers; in the modern salon, the concept of ‘bleeding the customer dry’ is simply metaphorical, although still rather painful.
I do not, I must point out, advocate a return to the days of Sweeney Todd, but there must surely still be space for a gentleman’s barber in the great scheme of things. Women have ‘stylists’, to whom they can entrust their innermost thoughts and holiday plans. Men, meanwhile, have lost the confessor-fi gure of the barber: ‘something for the weekend’ was not the only service these tonsorial paragons would provide. Sadly, many men now grow up ignorant of the joys of a proper shave with a cut-throat razor, relying instead on the squalid practicality of an electric shaver.
I take heart from the fact that barbers nearly died out once before: when wigs became fashionable in Georgian and Victorian times, nobody much cared about what was under their perruques and the poor barber had to resort to stitching wigs for a living.
The fashion for short hair was revived at the end of the 19th century, however, and by the end of the Second World War a short-back-and-sides was de rigueur for any fashionable young man. May the barbers return triumphant once more – although, this time, I think we’ll pass on the leeches.
BUILDING BRIDGES
GOOD ARCHITECTURE ENRICHES PEOPLE’S LIVES, SAYS TONY CHAPMAN
WHAT MAKES A good building a great one? That’s what the judges in the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) Stirling Prize for the best building of the year have to ask themselves.
This is the 11th year of the prize. Past winners have been university buildings in Salford and Stuttgart, museums in Duxford and Rotherham, a sports building at Lord’s Cricket Ground, a library in Peckham, a bridge in Gateshead, an offi ce building in London (OK, a ‘gherkin’) and last year’s winner, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. There’s no particular sort of building that usually wins, but there is a pattern to the places they are in. Many are in run-down areas such as Salford and Deptford, where they have done much to kick-start local regeneration. Which is something good buildings tend to do: everyone wants a piece of the success, drawing money in, as well as visitors. Architectural tourism is a real growth area.
This year, the RIBA Stirling Prize’s judges have to choose between six shortlisted buildings, which have been whittled down from 500 entries. This month, I will be leading the fi nal judging stage around Europe. What struck me is how much great work is being done by British architects all over Europe and the world.
Good architecture does change people’s lives, whether they live, work or play in it, or are simply passers-by whose day is made better by seeing it. The judges will be accompanied on their visits to the buildings by Channel 4’s cameras – this is the seventh year they have televised the award and over a million people watch – not bad for what used to be regarded as a minority sport. You can see the six schemes in the running for the prize on RIBA’s website, www.architecture.com, and vote for your favourite at www.channel4.com. Then watch the programme on 14 October or, better still, go and see them for yourselves.
Tony Chapman is Head of Awards at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
