I am an avid reader of beauty press - well, everything in The Times at least and also Hannah Betts in the Daily Mail - and I kept reading that Nars Creamy Radiant Concealer was the absolute master chops so I thought I had better try it out. So I did and everyone is right, it’s very good. It is both creamy and radiant and doesn’t look dry, even if I’ve been overdoing it on the retinol and am a bit dry. The colour is hard to get right as department stores are always lit in such a completely insane way. I went once to the counter and got one colour but then had to go back and get another. As it happens, I use both, just on different bits of my face. But definitely do not guess on a website.
More on the face: this by Dr Jart+ is absolutely wonderful stuff if you suffer from redness in the face. I am so red, it’s awful. Particularly my nose, I’m like an old drunk (like an old drunk?) . This serum is absolutely the business for seeing off redness, while also being an actual skin-feeding serum and it has an SPF in it. If you are looking for such a product, do not hesitate to buy this. It is very pale green in the bottle but spookily matches to your skin tone once on the face, I don’t need to use any other coverage if I have got this one and I think it might even replace my bareMinerals Complexion Rescue Gel in my affection, which I did not think was possible.
I absolutely love my new jeans from H&M, which are these. I saw a woman on the train last year and she was in a pair of white running Asics trainers, a light jean that was medium-loose with a slight flare over the trainer and she was willowy and beautiful and I just fell madly in love with her. It happens, sometimes. I have been looking for that sort of jean ever since I clapped eyes on her. Although I look nothing like her when I am wearing them, I feel the part and that’s 90% of it.
I recently very much enjoyed The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, which is a very meta-book, a plot-driven read about a stolen plot for a novel. I’m usually a bit allergic to twisty whodunnits but this was quite jolly - by the same woman who wrote the book The Undoing was based on - that’s the one they made that hilariously bad adaptation of, with Nicole Kidman. One of those easy reads that it’s good to read if you’re in a bit of a reading rut.
Laterally to Prince Harry, I became fascinated with the translucent American news-person Anderson Cooper, (who did one of Harry’s 450 interviews for his rat-infested book). I listened to an audio version of Anderson’s book about the Vanderbilts (his mother, Gloria, was the “last” Vanderbilt). If you like wild stories about hugely rich people being crazy, this is for you. Then I got thinking about The Age of Innocence, which is about Vanderbilt-era New York and then I got to thinking about my friend Francesca Segal whose book The Innocents (an updated version of The Age of Innocence) won the Costa First Book Award and is very much worth reading if you haven’t already.
How about you? Have you read, seen or bought something recently that you can recommend to the group? Please leave a handy comment in the box below.
zumba is great - you properly sweat, feel deeply uncoodinated and ashamed by silver surfers who 'know the moves' but as long as you keep going you actually do 'work out'.
i also believe in 'village hall yoga' nice streching with all ages, mums/grannies/dads/teens and nobody ever considers a headstand and most people wear a dog walking fleece.
Thank you! I meant ‘run’ as shorthand for ‘burn more calories than I eat by whatever means’. I do not run. Ever. I was thinking more like a nice mid-morning Zumba class with a bunch of silver surfers. Don’t think I could do the not eating until 11; I’m up at 6ish and usually feeling sick from hunger by 7. I could and will eat anything for breakfast - those extraordinary country-house brekkers of chops and half a turbot etc? Bring ‘em on. Currently we eat essentially a continental breakfast of cured meat and cheese, so no sugar there, though I confess to 1/2 tsp of sugar in my coffee. Whittled it down to that in my teens but have never quite ditched that last pinch, especially as I now drink coffee strong enough to strip paint.