"A leisurely breakfast" their mother would admonish, "aids digestion and builds strong bones..." so what with the imposed inactivity every morning, boredom broken only by Sockeye the family Spaniel, whose want of table manners coincided very conveniently with mealtimes... as he paced restlessly under the table, slobbering indiscriminately in his daily scramble to devour every dangling morsel before supply and demand shut up shop for the night and went home, far tastier... he gobbled down the latest offering of egg white, than the remnants of his own dietary allowance, they just had to get the timing right that was all, or risk loosing a finger, or gaining one depending upon who was doing the dangling, or who was doing the gobbling... he gave an indignant sneeze, not so much a hint but more of a... 'what's with the pepper malarky...'  So that it was only with a good deal of snappy hand coordination, lengthy digestion and sturdy bone building that Rocky was finally able to extricate himself from the table and make the most of what little time remained until lunchtime, meagre time indeed for the Rocky's of this world to hang around with their dogs, leaving their little sisters to help mums do, whatever it was that girls usually did when they should have scooted out of the kitchen faster, when it would have been all so much simpler just to grab a handful of biscuits instead...  Meanwhile, laying in wait in the room above, flat out upon the bedroom counterpane, having recently had their insides stuffed to bursting with a full English breakfast's worth of beach and holiday apparal... and that was just the luggage.    

     The contents of which, up until a week last washday had been snoozing fitfully behind 'Do Not Disturb' signs, cautiously peeping out from the gloomier, more remote recesses of the bedroom dresser, or carefully concealed in cupboards and closets... and being in every other respect by no means readily accessible to public scrutiny of any kind... had been left to their own devices some twelve months earlier with a clear understanding to skip bath nights from that moment on and henceforth immerse themselves in the heady, camphorated pungency of mothball, vowing once and for all never to darken portmanteau lids again... but now, after many hours of arduous laundering and de-fumigation... were now being squeezed and unceremoniously shoe-horned into what had recently become nothing short of an overcrowded sanctuary for the dispossessed.  
              
     Meanwhile, all the luggage asked from life other than be detained under section four of the Mental Health Act, 1983 and be found cosy padded accommodation elsewhere... was to have their interiors vacated, their tranquility reinstated... and with a questionable wink from a dodgy Customs official, have their travel permits invalidated... irrevocably, for despite throwing a double six for a spot of well earned convalescence back on top of the wardrobe some twelve months ago, basking in the shade of a warm Summer Sun, striking up the occasional conversation with the floral decor, third bloom from the left currently answering to the name of Petunia, the still over extended luggage, seemingly with little hope of R & R this side of the letter Q, faced the perennial disquiet of vacational therapy, of being knelt on, sat and bounced upon and be specifically manhandled in ways that matching sets of co-ordinated luggage should not...
                                        
     Tina could be heard quite distinctly in the next street concerning her husbands lack of competence, whilst Red it appeared had become just as outspoken as his wife in that particular direction... as the local self appointed busybody, who lived well within earshot of the address in question would bear witness to as she put feverish pen to paper, writing to what had become a regular... and some would say hot bed of intrigue in the local tabloid concerning how vociferous the once tranquil neighbourhood had become of recent and how certain undesirable elements within the community were to be heard carrying on alarmingly at all hours, day and night... and as she diligently weighed her civic duty against simple household economics as to whether to send this latest block busting eye opener by first or second class post, their parents could now be heard broadcasting, if anything to a wider listening audience than the previous newsflash, some of the more sensational episodes of the previous twenty-four hours as to who was pulling whose suitcase zipper now... although in which direction it should be pulled, they both agreed, wasn't for public disclosure at that time... vowing to draw blood well before the day was out, as three lacerated fingers would later testify and that it was only because of the children that they were going at all... but God willing, they would be setting off very shortly with rosy smiles on their faces for the sole benefit of the neighbours, even if it killed them. 

     Spurred to fever pitch  by this latest 'stop-the-press' newsflash, the same public spirited busybody now threw herself wholeheartedly into further award winning journalism and for the second time that morning took to pen and paper, only now directed to the gossip column in the local Parish Gazette, followed by grievous lamentations of impending bloodshed to the incumbent Chief Constable as to how they'd all be murdered in their beds ere long before nightfall.

     By devouring his water bowl, thereby dispensing with the need for it to be washed and by its abrupt and mysterious absence, disposing of all further incriminating evidence as to where the abundant supply of liquid, now surging copiously across the kitchen floor had sprung from... the flash-flood was hastily making its own getaway beneath the kitchen units, leaving Sockeye to his own devices to carry the can on his own, ankle deep in what up until earlier that morning had been sloshing around quite contentedly in Eccup reservoir.

      Having inadvertently released the handbrake in a boyish gesture of bravado, thereby placing himself in sole charge of a runaway vehicle, Sockeye it appeared was not the only member of the Salmon family to have dropped himself right in it that day as Rocky, having unwittingly placed the following ten years pocket money well out of reach and back into the pockets of his parents dwindling resources, had to a far greater extent nominated himself for the same Earth moving experience as the one his mum would shortly be giving Sockeye...

      Having just been granted licence to do whatsoever it pleased, the vehicle began its leisurely rearwards perambulation down the long garden driveway and by way of small thanks for its new found independence took Rocky along for the ride where due to a certain lack of stature on Rocky's part, at no point had he ever been in the slightest position to influence the Holiday threatening train of events which now engulfed him, never thinking to reapply the handbrake... that would be too easy, he perched on the edge of the seat clutching the steering wheel and stretched out his sturdy little legs in an heroic, but futile attempt to reach the pedals as the family car, which up until any second now had been his fathers pride and joy, pitched backwards at what seemed to Rocky, breakneck speed and directly into a very severe and unforgiving brick wall.

     Almost missing this latest round of entertainment above that of her parents most recent exchange, River accompanied by Sockeye scampered outdoors and slap into what could only be described as the most fun she'd had all year as an unsuspecting "what was that noise" muscled its way through the open bedroom window and fell flat on its face in the garden below and which, if that morning to date was anything to go by, then the neighbourhood would soon be tuning in to the latest Salmon family's 'hot-off-the-press' breaking news bulletin.

     Opening her mouth River hesitated as she fine-tuned the speech centres of her young and delicate synapse into full vocal alignment, then adjusting shutter speed from f8 to automatic she closed her mouth... then opened it once again and informed her brother that if the tip of dads size 9 was an Olympic gold, then Rocky would be sure to take first in the 110 metre hurdling event with 'team GB...' and could she have his autograph... with those words of solid encouragement rattling around his ears like the last biscuit in an otherwise empty tin box, River went skipping back into the house to announce the latest newsflash of her parents next financial happening... which she felt certain would prompt further rounds of thought provoking front page journalism.

     A steady two hours drive away, over on the east coast, the inhabitants of a sleepy fishing community were gainfully employed, pretty much as any other, going about their daily business, one such denizen... a baby crustacean, currently marooned by the tide had taken up temporary accommodation in a beachfront rock-pool property of certain distinction, was as yet unaware of a completely different and obscure set of circumstances that would shortly be rearing his slobbering jowls and bring all four paws, the size of dinner plates, crashing down upon the unsuspecting seashore fauna... was determined while she waited to catch the next high tide home, that until such time that the right wave rolled along, would potter about in the little rock-pool, perhaps indulge herself in a leisurely bathe... and catch up on a spot of therapeutic knitting.

     So, placing the days events since breakfast into perspective...  [i]  the vehicle indemnity provider, henceforth to be named 'the party of the first part', who currently weren't cognisant of an impending claim to date, would shortly be laying eggs attempting to squirm out of all liability, due to  [ii]  the automobile, driven by a minor, fortunately for Salmon senior on private land and henceforth, the aforementioned to be called 'the third party, to the party of the second part...' which urgently needed rigorous cosmetic attention to the rear tail light cluster and surrounding bodywork so as to maintain a favourable resale mark-up price.  [iii]  Having been dragged kicking and screaming from the top of the wardrobe, the luggage had rapidly developed cold feet and cried sudden illness in the family, but were being taken to the Wake anyway.  [iv]  Wrapped around the hot water cylinder since the previous Summer, the various sundry items of holiday apparel stood united, resolute as a Union Picket line not be seen dead looking as though they'd never so much as seen the bottom of a flat-iron.  [v]  Both Red and his wife, Tina, despite wearing the same anaemic smile as the one show to the neighbours as they departed, travelling counter clockwise along the crescent so as not to unduly advertise their recent misadventure with the garage wall, were only going for the sake of the children, whilst  [vi]  River and her errant brother didn't want to go anyway dismayed at leaving the television set behind, were already missing their favourite programs, which only really left  [vii]  'mans-best-friend' who, when he wasn't actually hanging over the front seat giving dad big sloppy licks as though... 'are we nearly there yet' or perhaps... 'I need to stop and spend a penny... or you'll all know about it if you don't,' was more than content to be taking up the majority of the rear seating arrangements and with a delinquent wag of his tail, was deliriously happy to be wherever his family were.**

                                                        ­                             ...   ...   ...

a work in progress.                                                        ­                                                                 ­  1862

Ten minutes is all Sabyasachi Mukherjee has. “Can you keep the interview short,” I’m asked, as the announcement of his participation in the finale of Lakme Fashion Week’s upcoming Winter Festive show is made. Is ten minutes enough to recap the 14-year journey of this master of colour, cut and construction, I wonder. But I realised that Sabyasachi in rapid-fire mode can make ten minutes seem like twenty! Excerpts:

What is it about LFW that made you return?

It’s here that I first made a mark as a designer. I’m familiar with the format, and know the people. It is like a homecoming. The good thing about LFW is that everything is taken care of – from building the set to inviting people. So I have the freedom to focus on the clothes. It is like putting together a complete show, but doing only half the work!

Finales are a challenge – given the expectations of people in the fraternity, profiles of attendees and the intangible themes created by Lakme for interpretation into garments…

Well, it’s not at all difficult for me. This is my fifth finale at LFW. Once the make-up and hair are set, it is easy to imagine the look and what the girls must wear. I’m way too senior to worry about pre-show stress. My biggest pressure comes from whether I will like what I create. Beyond that, even the critics’ reaction doesn’t really concern me.

Will this line too be about Indian-ness?

Whether I do Western, Eastern or a combination, I always use Indian handcrafts, and all my clothes are handmade. Traditional textiles, block prints, weaves and embroidery are a constant in my collections. The theme being “Illuminate”, this line is about red-carpet clothes with a strong shimmer quotient.

Sunday was National Handloom Day. Considering our diverse range of homespun textiles, do you think everyday must be celebrated as handloom day in India?

Absolutely. It is mandatory at my stores. My staff wears only handloom saris or kurtas made of hand-woven fabric. My Instagram hashtag says ‘Wearing handloom everyday.’

Social media plays a significant role in promoting tradition. Smriti Irani’s ‘I wear handloom’ campaign on Twitter and the 100 Saree Pact are recent examples. Isn’t it time designers too found new ways to promote heritage?

Yes. As more and more Western brands enter the market, our designers must first establish an identity of their own. The Zaras of the world are bringing active prêt into the country, so it is important for us to revive the market for Indian clothes. Reinventing tradition and rethinking marketing strategies are critical at this point.

Has the hustle of today’s business taken fun away from fashion? How do you strike a balance between creative expression and commercial viability?

Oh, that’s very simple. I set my own rules. For instance, this year, I had too much on my calendar. I didn’t do ramp shows, I only had a showing on Instagram. Established designers must create new templates that suit their creativity instead of allowing the market to set the pace for them. Because, at the end of the day, only if you have the time and space for creative expression, can you create beautiful clothes that determine the durability of your brand.

If you were to spell out two major problems faced by the fashion world, what would they be?

Lack of originality. Lack of self-belief.

Fashion has evolved into a glamorous industry, and today, many youngsters want to be part of it. But most of what we see on the ramp and in the retail space are risk-free repetitions.

Well, for designers to evolve, the market has to evolve. But the mood is changing. There are designers who are willing to push boundaries and clients who are ready to experiment. Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are changing the way people see and respond to fashion. The horizons are widening. This is a wonderful time for young designers to launch their labels and sustain their inventiveness.

Very few Indian designers have taken the effort to document fashion. What about you?

Yes, I will at some point in time get down to writing about my brand. But for that, I will first have to find the right publisher!

Many corporate players are keen on collaborating with designers.

I receive so many proposals for collaborations that I refuse one every day! I am collaborating with Asian Paints, Forever Mark and Christian Louboutin. Another huge one is coming up – but I will not be able to speak about it at the moment.

Do seasons really matter any more in the world of fashion?

Global warming is making designers understand the importance of season-defying clothing. And people too, I feel, don't shop for seasons any more. They just want beautiful clothes.

Can you update us on your forays into jewellery design and interiors?

I have collaborated with Hyderabad’s Kishandas & Company to create some iconic pieces that are hugely popular — and of course, plagiarised! I have a line coming up for Forever Mark. As for interiors, I wanted to design homes, but people did not seem to have enough confidence in me! (laughs) So I ended up doing up my own stores. I have also done up the Cinema Suite for the Taj in London. Celebrities who have stayed in the hotel have appreciated it. A significant collaboration in interiors is happening in October.

Your suggestions to keep traditions going…

People need to be educated about handmade textiles and crafts. A time will come when China will lose out to India because as people become aware, they will only want to support products that are ethically sourced and foster craft communities. Surprisingly, the new millennials are in favour of luxury that is completely handmade. I see that as a positive sign.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/backless-formal-dresses

Through the country paths, I lazily loitered,
watching Nature in its changing hue
straying farther into the interiors,
sundry and sublime vistas came into view.

in response to zephyr’s warm embrace,
the silvery leaves joyously fluttered.
the bees busied themselves collecting pollen
and birds on tree tops merrily chattered

it was the *** end of verdant spring.
summer’s sun stood behind my head.
bleat of sheep was heard from far.
‘Good day to you’….. Someone said.

There stood on the hill, a boy around fifteen
obviously he was of tribal breed.
with a beaming smile, he greeted me
but on walking to him, he ran like a steed

I saw him disappear behind the trees
and enter into a hut tiny as a nest
he lived in the lap of Mother Nature,
far from the city and its sooty dust

being coaxed, he hesitantly came out.
my tone of assurance and pleasing smile,
seemed to have won his confidence
as to a friend, he shared his eventful tale.

pointing to the sheep grazing in the *****,
he said, he earned a living caring the flock.
he stayed in the woods all day long,
feeding and tending his master’s sheep.

from dawn to dusk, through woods and meads,
he leads his sheep, calling them by their name.
un vexed, with simple pleasures he is content
and with a nomad’s life, he seems to be tame

he said, at home he has his invalid mother.
bringing her back to health is his mission in life
on referring to his mother, I watched his eyes glitter
nothing other than her illness posed to him a strife

from every utterance, I could sense his filial love.
even in abundance, while shadows line many faces,
on his visage, hope lingered as a dancing flame
to me he seemed above many, rich in other graces!

While parting, I handed him a little money
pausing unbelievably, with moist eyes
he accepted it, when a breeze passed caressing us
as if over a kind gesture, Nature seemed to rejoice!

Aimons toujours ! Aimons encore !
Quand l'amour s'en va, l'espoir fuit.
L'amour, c'est le cri de l'aurore,
L'amour c'est l'hymne de la nuit.

Ce que le flot dit aux rivages,
Ce que le vent dit aux vieux monts,
Ce que l'astre dit aux nuages,
C'est le mot ineffable : Aimons !

L'amour fait songer, vivre et croire.
Il a pour réchauffer le coeur,
Un rayon de plus que la gloire,
Et ce rayon c'est le bonheur !

Aime ! qu'on les loue ou les blâme,
Toujours les grand coeurs aimeront :
Joins cette jeunesse de l'âme
A la jeunesse de ton front !

Aime, afin de charmer tes heures !
Afin qu'on voie en tes beaux yeux
Des voluptés intérieures
Le sourire mystérieux !

Aimons-nous toujours davantage !
Unissons-nous mieux chaque jour.
Les arbres croissent en feuillage ;
Que notre âme croisse en amour !

Soyons le miroir et l'image !
Soyons la fleur et le parfum !
Les amants, qui, seuls sous l'ombrage,
Se sentent deux et ne sont qu'un !

Les poètes cherchent les belles.
La femme, ange aux chastes faveurs,
Aime à rafraîchir sous ses ailes
Ces grand fronts brûlants et réveurs.

Venez à nous, beautés touchantes !
Viens à moi, toi, mon bien, ma loi !
Ange ! viens à moi quand tu chantes,
Et, quand tu pleures, viens à moi !

Nous seuls comprenons vos extases.
Car notre esprit n'est point moqueur ;
Car les poètes sont les vases
Où les femmes versent leur cœurs.

Moi qui ne cherche dans ce monde
Que la seule réalité,
Moi qui laisse fuir comme l'onde
Tout ce qui n'est que vanité,

Je préfère aux biens dont s'enivre
L'orgueil du soldat ou du roi,
L'ombre que tu fais sur mon livre
Quand ton front se penche sur moi.

Toute ambition allumée
Dans notre esprit, brasier subtil,
Tombe en cendre ou vole en fumée,
Et l'on se dit : " Qu'en reste-t-il ? "

Tout plaisir, fleur à peine éclose
Dans notre avril sombre et terni,
S'effeuille et meurt, lis, myrte ou rose,
Et l'on se dit : " C'est donc fini ! "

L'amour seul reste. O noble femme
Si tu veux dans ce vil séjour,
Garder ta foi, garder ton âme,
Garder ton Dieu, garde l'amour !

Conserve en ton coeur,
sans rien craindre,
Dusses-tu pleurer et souffrir,
La flamme qui ne peut s'éteindre.

In English :

Let us love always! Let love endure!
When love goes, hope flies.
Love, that is the cry of the dawn,
Love, that is the hymn of the night.

How does the wave tell the shores,
How does the wind tell the old mountains,
How does the star tell the clouds,
It is with that ineffable phrase: "Let us love"!

Love dreams, lives and believes.
It is to nourish the heart.
A beam greater than glory
And this beam is happiness!

Love! That one may praise them or blame them,
Always, great hearts will love:
Join this youth of the soul
To the youth of your brow!

Love, in order to charm your hours!
In order that one can look into your beautiful eyes
With those voluptuous interiors
Of mysterious smiles!

Let us love always and more!
Let us unite better each day,
Trees grow their foliage;
That our souls should grow in love.

Let us be the mirror and image!
Let us be the flower and the perfume!
Lovers, who are alone beneath the shade,
Feel as two and are but one!

Poets search for beauties.
Woman, angel of pure tastes,
Loves to refresh beneath its wings
These large blazing and dreaming brows.

Come to us, touching beauties!
Come to me, to you, my own, my law!
Angel, come to me when you sing,
And, when you cry, come to me!

We alone understand your ecstasies,
For our spirit does not mock;
For poets are the vases
Where ladies send their hearts.

I, who has not found in the world
That single reality,
I, who lets flee like the wave
All that is only vanity.

I prefer rather than that which enervates
The arrogance of the soldier or the king,
The shadow that you place upon my life
When your brow inclines to me.

All ambition kindled
In our spirit, that subtle brazier,
Crumbles to ashes or flies in smoke,
And one says: "What will remain"?

All pleasure, a flower hardly in blossom
In our dark and tarnished April,
Sheds it's leaves and dies, lily, myrtle or rose,
And one says to oneself: "It is finished"!

Only love remains. O noble lady,
If you want to remain in this base state
Guard your faith, guard your soul,
Guard your God, guard love!

Conserve in your heart, without fearing anything,
If you should cry and suffer,
The flame that cannot be extinguished

And the flower that cannot die!

Don’t take them at face value. Several leading actresses in Mollywood have shown themselves to be keen businesswomen too. So, if Poornima Indrajith, a fashionista in her own right and designer-in-chief of fashion store Pranaah, was the lone name in the list till recently, Kavya Madhavan, Lena, Kaniha, Shwetha Menon, Rima Kallingal and the like too have joined the fray to establish their credentials as entrepreneurs.

While Kavya owns Laksyah, an online fashion store, Rima runs Mamangam, a dance school in Kochi. Lena is busy with Aakruti, her weight-loss centre. Kaniha’s focus is on health care, as a franchise partner of Medall Diagnostics in Chennai. Shwetha, meanwhile, has opened a restaurant, Shwe’s Delight, in Dubai. Mallika Sukumaran owns Spice Boat, a restaurant in Doha, Qatar… The actresses talk at length to MetroPlus about why and how they went about it, the lessons they learnt and what lies ahead.

For Kavya it was the realisation of a long-cherished dream; of starting a business venture while she is at the peak of her career. “I zeroed in on a fashion boutique from several other options, such as dance school, beauty parlour, restaurant…,” says Kavya. “It was the safest and best choice because my father had been in the textile business back home in Neeleeswaram for nearly four decades. My brother, Midhun is a graduate in fashion technology and my mother and my sister-in-law too share the same passion. Laksyah is really a family-run enterprise,” she adds. Laksyah, which sells a range of one-off designer saris and daily wear and based out of Kochi, will be celebrating its first anniversary next month.

It was a photoshoot that lead Lena to open Aakruti. She had to lose a few kilos to get in shape for the shoot and her childhood friend, Louisa David, a physiotherapist, helped her achieve that goal. “I was happy with my weight loss and so we decided to launch a physiotherapy-based slimming centre. Louisa has been running her centre at Thrissur for five years and she helped me start Aakruti, in Chevayur, Kozhikode, in September last year,” Lena says.

Kaniha, always a multi-tasker, has a solid reason for taking the health care route too. It was the closest she could get to her childhood ambition to pursue medicine! “After coming back to India from the United States, my husband, Shyam Radhakrishnan and I wanted to start something. Since I couldn’t fulfil my dream of becoming a doctor and had to study engineering instead, I thought I should do something related to healthcare and that’s how Medall happened,” says the actress.

In Shwetha’s case, her restaurant was a venture waiting to happen. “In fact, those who know me for long are not surprised with my decision to open a restaurant. I am an absolute foodie. I am so very careful about what I eat that my cook always travels with me on my shoots. I also love hosting family and friends and often hold pyjama parties at home. That’s why a restaurant was the obvious choice when I thought about starting a venture,” says Shwetha. Shwe’s Delight [“I was called Shwe by my friends in modelling circuit”], which opened its doors last month, is a North Indian fine dining restaurant. “I wanted to give expatriate Malayalis in Dubai a different taste from the usual fare. We dish up a bit of Chinese food too,” she adds.

Being a celebrity helps, most of the time, especially to get publicity, say the leading ladies. For instance, Kaniha says she could bank upon her celebrity status to get corporate tie-ups. They also talk of brand value going up when a known face opens a venture. “There is a certain level of trust with potential customers because you are a known face,” explain Shwetha and Lena. “On the flipside, you are always under scrutiny. At times, I feel acting is much easier,” adds Shwetha. Kavya says it is not easy being the face of Laksyah. “I can’t go wrong with what I wear!” she adds, with a laugh.

Celeb status and a pretty face, though, is no guarantee for a successful business. All the actresses say that they put in a lot of hard work to get their businesses up and running. “The execution part was not easy, be it finding the right location, getting the interiors done, purchasing the machinery, appointing qualified staff, training them and even finalising the colour of the uniform. But I have become more confident now that we are opening a new branch in Kochi,” explains Lena. Kaniha, meanwhile, admits that she has learnt to be “more patient and be diplomatic.” Well played.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/cheap-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/****-formal-dresses

The wind speed of thought, is handy vehicle; on it mind flies.
To familiar places, where no map is needed, I journey by foot.
A car, a coach or a train, some times air planes to long hauls.
But nothing takes one far like poetry, to interior landscapes.

As he walked through the maze of streets from the tube station he wondered just how long it had been since he had last visited this tall red-bricked house. For so many years it had been for him a pied à terre. Those years when the care of infant children dominated his days, when coming up to London for 48 hours seemed such a relief, an escape from the daily round that small people demand. Since his first visits twenty years ago the area bristled with new enterprise. An abandoned Victorian hospital had been turned into expensive apartments; small enterprising businesses had taken over what had been residential property of the pre-war years. Looking up he was conscious of imaginative conversions of roof and loft spaces. What had seemed a wide-ranging community of ages and incomes appeared to have disappeared. Only the Middle Eastern corner shops and restaurants gave back to the area something of its former character: a place where people worked and lived.

It was a tall thin house on four floors. Two rooms at most of each floor, but of a good-size. The ground floor was her London workshop, but as always the blinds were down. In fact, he realised, he’d never been invited into her working space. Over the years she’d come to the door a few times, but like many artists and craftspeople he knew, she fiercely guarded her working space. The door to her studio was never left open as he passed through the hallway to climb the three flights of stairs to her husband’s domain. There was never a chance of the barest peek inside.

Today, she was in New York, and from outside the front door he could hear her husband descend from his fourth floor eyrie. The door was flung open and they greeted each other with the fervour of a long absence of friends. It had been a long time, really too long. Their lives had changed inexplicably. One, living almost permanently in that Italian marvel of waterways and sea-reflected light, the other, still in the drab West Yorkshire city from where their first acquaintance had begun from an email correspondence.

They had far too much to say to one another - on a hundred subjects. Of course the current project dominated, but as coffee (and a bowl of figs and mandarin oranges) was arranged, and they had moved almost immediately he arrived in the attic studio to the minimalist kitchen two floors below, questions were thrown out about partners and children, his activities, and sadly, his recent illness (the stairs had seemed much steeper than he remembered and he was a little breathless when he reached the top). As a guest he answered with a brevity that surprised him. Usually he found such questions needed roundabout answers to feel satisfactory - but he was learning to answer more directly, and being brief, suddenly thought of her and her always-direct questions. She wanted to know something, get something straight, so she asked  - straight - with no ‘going about things’ first. He wanted to get on with the business at hand, the business that preoccupied him, almost to the exclusion of everything else, for the last two days.

When they were settled in what was J’s working space ten years ago now he was immediately conscious that although the custom-made furniture had remained the Yamaha MIDI grand piano and the rack of samplers were elsewhere, along with most of the scores and books. The vast collection of CDs was still there, and so too the pictures and photographs. But there was one painting that was new to this attic room, a Cézanne. He was taken aback for a moment because it looked so like the real thing he’d seen in a museum just weeks before. He thought of the film Notting Hill when William Thacker questions the provenance of the Chagall ‘violin-playing goat’. The size of this Cézanne seemed accurate and it was placed in a similar rather ornate frame to what he knew had framed the museum original. It was placed on right-hand wall as he had entered the room, but some way from the pair of windows that ran almost the length of this studio. The view across the rooftops took in the Tower of London, a mile or so distant. If he turned the office chair in which he was sitting just slightly he could see it easily whilst still paying attention to J. The painting’s play of colours and composition compelled him to stare, as if he had never seen the painting before. But he had, and he remembered that his first sight of it had marked his memory.

He had been alone. He had arrived at the gallery just 15 minutes before it was due to close for the day.  He’d been told about this wonderful must-see octagonal room where around the walls you could view a particularly fine and comprehensive collection of Impressionist paintings. All the great artists were represented. One of Van Gogh’s many Olive Trees, two studies of domestic interiors by Vuillard, some dancing Degas, two magnificent Gaugins, a Seurat field of flowers, a Singer-Sergeant portrait, two Monets - one of a pair of haystacks in a blaze of high-summer light. He had been able to stay in that room just 10 minutes before he was politely asked to leave by an overweight attendant, but afterwards it was as if he knew the contents intimately. But of all these treasures it was Les Grands Arbres by Cézanne that had captured his imagination. He was to find it later and inevitably on the Internet and had it printed and pinned to his notice board. He consulted his own book of Cézanne’s letters and discovered it was a late work and one of several of the same scene. This version, it was said, was unfinished. He disagreed. Those unpainted patches he’d interpreted as pools of dappled light, and no expert was going to convince him otherwise! And here it was again. In an attic studio J. only frequented occasionally when necessity brought him to London.

When the coffee and fruit had been consumed it was time to eat more substantially, for he knew they would work late into the night, despite a whole day tomorrow to be given over to their discussions. J. was full of nervous energy and during the walk to a nearby Iraqi restaurant didn’t waver in his flow of conversation about the project. It was as though he knew he must eat, but no longer had the patience to take the kind of necessary break having a meal offered. His guest, his old friend, his now-being-consulted expert and former associate, was beginning to reel from the overload of ‘difficulties’ that were being put before him. In fact, he was already close to suggesting that it would be in J’s interest if, when they returned to the attic studio, they agreed to draw up an agenda for tomorrow so there could be some semblance of order to their discussions. He found himself wishing for her presence at the meal, her calm lovely smile he knew would charm J. out of his focused self and lighten the rush and tension that infused their current dialogue. But she was elsewhere, at home with her children and her own and many preoccupations, though it was easy to imagine how much, at least for a little while, she might enjoy meeting someone new, someone she’d heard much about, someone really rather exotic and (it must be said) commanding and handsome. He would probably charm her as much as he knew she would charm J.

J. was all and more beyond his guest’s thought-description. He had an intensity and a confidence that came from being in company with intense, confident and, it had to be said, very wealthy individuals. His origins, his beginnings his guest and old friend could only guess at, because they’d never discussed it. The time was probably past for such questions. But his guest had his own ideas, he surmised from a chanced remark that his roots were not amongst the affluent. He had been a free-jazz musician from Poland who’d made waves in the German jazz scene and married the daughter of an arts journalist who happened to be the wife of the CEO of a seriously significant media empire. This happy association enabled him to get off the road and devote himself to educating himself as a composer of avant-garde art music - which he desired and which he had achieved. His guest remembered J’s passion for the music of Luigi Nono (curiously, a former resident of the city in which J. now lived) and Helmut Lachenmann, then hardly known in the UK. J. was already composing, and with an infinite slowness and care that his guest marvelled at. He was painstakingly creating intricate and timbrally experimental string quartets as well as devising music for theatre and experimental film. But over the past fifteen years J. had become increasingly more obsessed with devising software from which his musical ideas might emanate. And it had been to his guest that, all that time ago, J. had turned to find a generous guide into this world of algorithms and complex mathematics, a composer himself who had already been seduced by the promise of new musical fields of possibility that desktop computer technology offered.

In so many ways, when it came to the hard edge of devising solutions to the digital generation of music, J. was now leagues ahead of his former tutor, whose skills in this area were once in the ascendant but had declined in inverse proportion to J’s, as he wished to spend more time composing and less time investigating the means through which he might compose. So the guest was acting now as a kind of Devil’s Advocate, able to ask those awkward disarming questions creative people don’t wish to hear too loudly and too often.

And so it turned out during the next few hours as J. got out some expensive cigars and brandy, which his guest, inhabiting a different body seemingly, now declined in favour of bottled water and dry biscuits. His guest, who had been up since 5.0am, finally suggested that, if he was to be any use on the morrow, bed was necessary. But when he got in amongst the Egyptian cotton sheets and the goose down duvet, sleep was impossible. He tried thinking of her, their last walk together by the sea, breakfast à deux before he left, other things that seemed beautiful and tender by turn . . . But it was no good. He wouldn’t sleep.

The house could have been as silent as the excellent double-glazing allowed. Only the windows of the attic studio next door to his bedroom were open to the night, to clear the room of the smoke of several cigars. He was conscious of that continuous flow of traffic and machine noise that he knew would only subside for a brief hour or so around 4.0am. So he went into the studio and pulled up a chair in front of the painting by Cézanne, in front of this painting of a woodland scene. There were two intertwining arboreal forms, trees of course, but their trunks and branches appeared to suggest the kind of cubist shapes he recognized from Braque. These two forms pulled the viewer towards a single slim and more distant tree backlit by sunlight of a late afternoon. There was a suggestion, in the further distance, of the shapes of the hills and mountains that had so preoccupied the artist. But in the foreground, there on the floor of this woodland glade, were all the colours of autumn set against the still greens of summer. It seemed wholly wrong, yet wholly right. It was as comforting and restful a painting as he could ever remember viewing. Even if he shut his eyes he could wander about the picture in sheer delight. And now he focused on the play of brush strokes of this painting in oils, the way the edge and border of one colour touched against another. Surprisingly, imagined sounds of this woodland scene entered his reverie - a late afternoon in a late summer not yet autumn. He was Olivier Messiaen en vacances with his perpetual notebook recording the magical birdsong in this luminous place. Here, even in this reproduction, lay the joy of entering into a painting. Jeanette Winterson’s plea to look at length at paintings, and then look again passed through his thoughts. How right that seemed. How very difficult to achieve. But that night he sat comfortably in J’s attic and let Cézanne deliver the artist’s promise of a world beyond nature, a world that is not about constant change and tension, but rests in a stillness all its own.

Arriving, I find her briefing three press assistants on her upcoming catwalk show while simultaneously rifling through her closet — a dressing-up box filled with animal print and lacy confections — to choose her outfit for our shoot, while Desert Island Discs plays in the background.

Tucked at the end of a row of terraced houses close to London’s Portobello Road, Temperley discovered the six-bedroom property was on the market two years ago through her close friend, the designer Jasmine Guinness. The unique two-storey villa has a studio-style extension on the back of the property designed by the Victorian architect, Richard Norman Shaw.

She moved in 18 months ago with her son, Fox, 7, and her boyfriend, Greg Williams, 43, a portrait photographer, along with his two children from a previous relationship. ‘I’ve always been a Notting Hill girl at heart. I love that it’s so green, I love the market and my offices are around the corner.’

Temperley cites the interior designer Rose Uniacke (the creative genius behind the Beckham’s Holland Park home) as inspiration for fashioning her own interiors: ‘Rose has beautiful taste, sleek, clean but still really soft.’

The house’s all-white interior provides the perfect backdrop for Temperley to hang her beloved antique cut-crystal chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling mirrors sourced from Golborne Road’s Les Couilles du Chien — famous for its historic bric-a-brac — and the Clignancourt flea market in Paris. The most striking of these is an intricately etched diptych of French brasserie mirrors that sits proudly over her living room sofa.

For colourful accents, she looked to her archive of textiles, which ranges from heirlooms from her great-grandmother’s travels around the Orient to remnants of past fashion collections: ‘I have big haberdashery drawers, which are used for storing my collection in a warehouse in Greenford,’ she says. Having such a vast collection gives her the chance to indulge in some serious upcycling; a Mexican rainbow throw livens up a plain cream sofa while a wedding cloak from Turkmenistan makes a quirky wall-hanging.

Despite the global influences, the Union Jack is a recurrent motif: ‘When I worked in New York [in the mid-Noughties] I was called ‘Little Miss English’. I loved using materials such as lace and lots of references to Victoriana — all very British.’ Look closely, and you’ll find red, white and blue accents everywhere — on teacups, Roberts radios and on silk cushions.

‘To me, being British represents being able to be individual, eccentric and not taking yourself too seriously.’

Temperley was born and grew up in Somerset on her family’s cider farm in Martock, before moving to London aged 18 to study fine art at the Royal College of Art. The countryside has an ineluctable pull for Temperley and she carves her time between her office — ‘probably 80 per cent of the time, 10 per cent of the time here, 5 per cent in Somerset at the moment, and 5 per cent everywhere else’.

But if her west London home is all breathy shades of Farrow and Ball, Temperley’s country pile — a sublime 5.6-acre regency property called Cricket Court that was once the media magnate Lord Beaverbrook’s home — is the opposite: ‘In Somerset my sitting room is dark burgundy, we’ve got black bedrooms and an ochre-coloured library.’

To bring a little of the country back to the capital, Temperley peppers her house with beautiful bunches of wild flowers, sourced from florist Juliet Glaves, who grows her own blooms in Shropshire: ‘I always loved The Secret Garden and as a child I spent hours collecting flowers and drying rose petals on every surface. I am a hopeless romantic at heart and I love British country gardens and their flowers.’

Another great passion of Temperley’s is reading and no corner, staircase or table in the house is complete without stacks of books and fashion magazines: ‘Sally Tuffin [the British fashion designer-turned-ceramicist] has got an incredible fashion library at her home in Somerset and my dream one day is to have a room lined in books.’

As for the rest of the London house? It’s very much a work in progress, ‘especially being a working mum. It’s more collecting things and putting them together in a very relaxed way. Like in fashion design, when it comes to interiors things either work together or they don’t. I have a good eye and don’t like to be constricted to just doing clothes — I’d like to go into interiors. That’s the next chapter’.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/red-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses

Can I explain this to you? Your eyes
are entrances the mouths of caves
I issue from wonderful interiors
upon a blessed sea and a fine day,
from inside these caves I look and dream.

Your hair explicable as a waterfall
in some black liquid cooled by legend
fell across my thought in a moment
became a garment I am naked without
lines drawn across through morning and evening.

And in your body each minute I died
moving your thigh could disinter me
from a grave in a distant city:
your ******* deserted by cloth, clothed in twilight
filled me with tears, sweet cups of flesh.

Yes, to touch ******* made us worlds
stars, waters, promontories, chaos
swooning in elements without form or time
come down through long seas among sea marvels
embracing like survivors in our islands.

This I think happened to us together
though now no shadow of it flickers in your hands
your eyes look down on ordinary streets
If I talk to you I might be a bird
with a message, a dead man, a photograph.

my memories are con men
spinning fibers into thread
for forging famous tapestries
sewn sweetly in sugars of lead-

smelting dead language
into covers for their feet,
they run through broken glass
just to hear a phrase repeat.