THERE ARE TIMES when you want a small quiet place for dinner that only you know, but then there are other times when you want a busy, trendy place, perhaps for a late lunch or an early dinner, to see and be seen. CoCo restaurant falls into the second category.
BRIE AND PEARS at a picnic by the seaside at sunset; wicker lamps and wicker bags and sun umbrellas flapping in the breeze; Lisbon kitchens and wide-legged pants; summer sweaters with city shorts and trolleys full of lemons... These are the things of far-flung places but also of summertime, our very favourite time.
If you’re an overthinker, you’ll know exactly how it goes. A problem keeps popping up in your mind – for instance, a health worry or a dilemma at work – and you just can’t stop dwelling on it, as you desperately try to find some meaning or solution. Round and round the thoughts go but, unfortunately, the solutions rarely arrive.
Well, that was fast. In November, the public was introduced to ChatGPT, and we began to imagine a world of abundance in which we all have a brilliant personal assistant, able to write everything from computer code to condolence cards for us. Then, in February, we learned that AI might soon want to kill us all.
IN GERMAN, the word lebensfreude refers to the joy of life, the love of living and enjoying life's pleasures, and the appreciation of the beauty of existence. An optimistic and positive term, the word reflects a happy and contented attitude towards life.
TUCKED AWAY on the Côte d'Azur (the Mediterranean coast of southeastern France) lies Château Saint-Victor-la-Coste, one of the most idyllic places to while the hours. A vacation complex comprised of three cottages and one suite (in a 16th century castle), all available for rent, the Château is situated in the old village of St Victor la Coste (an equal distance between Avignon in Provence and the market town of Uzes in Languedoc) where you will find a boulangerie and épicerie
THIS WEEKEND was all about the tennis: the Women's Final on Saturday (heartbreaking), and the Men's on Sunday (thrilling). Before all of that, on Friday, we made our way to Kensington to meet a old mate of P's from another lifetime.
THIS INSTALMENT of Style File features model Sara Ramén, who was born in Australia to a Swedish father and a French mother. She credits her heritage for her affinity with these cultures, despite growing up in Perth. Ramén began travelling on her own around the world as a model in her late-teens with Marilyn Agency and Storm Models, living many different places, including Paris, London and Sydney.
In recent months, the signs and portents have been accumulating with increasing speed. Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links. Twitter is being abandoned to bots and blue ticks. There’s the junkification of Amazon and the enshittification of TikTok. Layoffs are gutting online media. A job posting looking for an “AI editor” expects “output of 200 to 250 articles per week.” ChatGPT is being used to generate whole spam sites.
THERE is a word in Greek—meraki, (pronounced may-rah-key) that translates to “essence of yourself.” There is no English equivalent, but it means doing something with soul, creativity, or love; to put something of yourself into your work.
AFTER WHAT meteorologists have been calling the wettest May in 160 years, the rain finally stopped, perfectly in time for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend. We spent as much time outside as we possible could, both of us getting blinded by the sun, which we hadn't seen in months, both of getting a little sunburned, so unaccustomed was our skin, despite being coated in SPF30 ...
It's 9:00 o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm listening to P's grandmother on the phone telling me about a program she's about to watch on channel 5 called Meghan: The Climb to Power (or something like that). We've just had the most wonderful dinner of cod filets with a parmesan parsley crust and Moules-frites. There's a bottle of cava chilling in the refrigerator ...
LA POSTA VECCHIA is a five-star luxury boutique hotel located in the coastal town of Ladispoli, about forty minutes outside of Rome on the historic Via Aurelia, a Roman road that was constructed in approximately 241 BC. House in a 17th-century villa and surrounded by 15 acres of Italianate gardens, the hotel overlooks the Tyrrenean sea and shares a coastline with villas and castles, small towns and beach clubs ...
ALTHOUGH I am never awake for them, I prefer sunrises to sunsets. Sunsets are an ending, and I love beginnings. Sunsets mean the end of another day, which means time away from all the things I love to do, at least until the next morning. I guess it’s a FOMO of sorts, a constant fear of missing out when my eyes are closed.
I AM WRITING to you from my brand new desk, which is actually an enormous solid oak dining table that arrived from Paris this morning. It is enormously heavy and makes a dramatic statement in the dining-area-turned-office and I’ve been googling how to make the back of a computer look nice (or at least tidy), as that’s what you see when you first enter the room, when your dining table is now your office.