Princess Diana and Other Obsessions

Doesn't Princess Diana look amazing here? Anyone seen that new movie about her starring Naomi Watts? (Sorry, am way over-posting this week, work deadline avoidance; I just finished arranging the fruitbowl into a pyramid and next I'll be folding the ends of the toilet paper into points). Princess Diana remains to this day my No. 1 Friend I Don't Know, fascinated by everything about her. And like our dog Teddy, you Could. Not. take a bad photo of her.

Princess Diana wearing Catherine Walker

The thing about Diana was that she disobeyed all the fashion police rules - she matched handbag to shoes, she curled her fringe-bangs, she wore blue eyeliner and pale pink lippy. And she wore shiny tights. And she always looked fantastic.

Oops just read Tina's review; the film is a lemon apparently, does not capture Diana's cunning and clever. One thing that annoys me about biopics is when the actor doesn't look anything like them. Naomi Watts is a great actress but looks nothing like Diana -  same with Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe, the difference in looks and figure was really distracting.

I worked for years in Kensington High Street in London, just across the road from Diana's palace-apartment and we'd get sightings of her walking down the street in her Ralph Lauren cap. A photographer at work told me she would keep him updated on her whereabouts and whenever she exited a restaurant she would stand on the steps and do a couple of good poses because he or a colleague was out there. And actually he said that (unlike Tedford our dog) you could take a bad photo of Di, there were loads in the files, but early on newspapers realised that no one wanted to see a bad photo of her.

One day my editor had lunch with Diana and came back very excited about all her revelations (funny asides about Charles and Camilla apparently) but in the end none of it amounted to a headline. The woman may not have been school smart but she was a media genius; she called the shots.

Another day when I was eating at a restaurant round the corner (can't recall the name) I saw Di leaving the private room with Clive James. She stood in the middle of the room and smiled and looked around for a while. She was a dressed in a lemon yellow knit sweater and skirt that would have looked hideous on anyone else. She was even taller and slimmer that she appeared in photos with a much longer face and the most enormous blue eyes. She was the most light-shining stunning person I've ever seen (and I had covered a couple of things with top models.)

More obsessions this week:
Kombucha, a fermented liquid (you have to ignore the communities of floating plankton in it) made in Beverly Hills (!) My go-to in the morning. To my horror some of the flavours now have warnings that it contains alcohol. I found this out when recently when I send on one my kids into buy it and they weren't allowed to. Jeepers, no wonder I felt refreshed afterwards.

Kombucha: stocking up for those mornings you need it

Pican Fried chicken. Food-wise I'm extreme. It's either clear 'Pho with lashings of hot Sriracha sauce (which is nearing extinction apparently) or anything that would delight a truckdriver. On the fried food end of things, none better than the crispy yet softy chicken at an Oakland restaurant called Pican. You can pour truffle honey over it too, the sweet over meat sounds odd, but trust me on this one. My husband took me here the other night as a perk me up. Can a cocktail and fried stuff make me instantly happier, oh I am so much more complicated than that...but yeah, kind of.

Nostalgic photos of Oakland at Pican, via

Pican's fried chicken with the truffle honey, via

Goop: Clarins, Clarisonic and Brazilian hair products. I know what you're thinking: "What? All that and she still looks shite?"

Clarisonic buzzer and other bloppy stuff

Shiny tights: We went to watch the Warriors, (a basketball team) Wednesday night and I was totally transfixed by the cheerleaders' shiny tights, in an anthropological way. Tell you, those tights are very flattering.

"Warriors Girls" in their shiny tights

I'm not the first to notice the Middleton gels have been doing all they can to bring back the controversial shiny tights. (Here, here and FF's place) (please don't call them pantyhose, nails on a chalkboard)

Kate rocking her shiny tights, via

But who wore them best?

Which begs the question. What would Diana have done if she was still around when the Middleton beauts hit the scene?  Would Pippa's bum have sent her into overdrive? I would have given anything to see that...Diana posing on beaches and walking the landmines like nobody's business.


What are your obsessions this week?