Pistol and Boo – Safe?

Posted on May 20, 2015 by volpeadrian

Dear, Dear Johnny and Dear, Dear Larry,

It’s a slightly old story, but it seems that ‘Boat People’ are not the only immigrants to fall foul of Australia’s anti-immigration stance.

Whether you arrive on a boat or private jet it appears no matter who you are, you may not be welcome if your paperwork is not in order. However if you are the rather cute Yorkshire Terriers belonging to Johnny Depp and Amber Heard the fate could be a lot worse.

So Johnny was there filming yet another Privates of the Caribbean extravaganza, this time aptly called Dead Dogs Tell No Tales.

I don’t how he could stop such small creatures climbing aboard a private jet, dogging security, hiding under the seats before arriving undetected in the land of Oz. You can’t blame dear, dear Johnny for that.

They they bypassed passport control and security, and headed off to a grooming salon, in Brisbane? Is that some kind of joke? Surely someone must have noticed these little chaps with their diamante collars skipping off across the tarmac to freedom, a spruce up and a blow dry!

Little did they know that Barnaby Joyce was on their case, he’d catch the slippery little suckers, incarcerate them and euthanize (KILL) them if they didn’t high tail it out of there by Saturday night.

Luckily the story has ended well for Pistol and Boo, by strange fortune they managed to escape from gaol, dash to the airport, and with moments to spare clamber aboard the last flight to LA by climbing up the retracting wheels as the plane left the tarmac.

Phew!

However if you are an extremely tired, migrating bird and are desperate for landfall, your tired wings unable to bear you any further, be warned if you are going to touch down in Oz.

Make sure your biosecurity passport is in order, your feathers freshly preened and please try to avoid the anti-aircraft batteries now being set up along the coastline by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Pistol and Boo

Of course there was plenty right and plenty wrong with this, but it did give me something to write about in the middle of the month!

Made to Measure

Posted on May 12, 2015 by volpeadrian

Apparently some of you would like to be reminded that we make garments to measure….

And a bit of eye candy, no, no, no, not Emi, it’s all about me, me, me!

Volpe Night Out

I mean around all my travelling, ducking and diving, you want me to work as well. I’ll have you know I didn’t get into this to have a job it’s more of a role according to Boris, and only a couple of hours a fortnight at that.

A few days in Ibiza here, a weekend in Rome there, it’s as if you are trying to cramp my style!

Anyway, talking of style here are some photos of some outfits that I have put together, in order that you might have some idea of what I will mainly be wearing this summer.

These photos have already made an appearance on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for those of you who stalk me in such places.

We finally have a full range of summer fabrics for suits, jackets, shirts and beach towels. As it’s not warm enough for beach towels I’ll post those later. I know I’ll only get a slew of “out of office” from those of you who spend more time reclining on a beach than I do.

I’ll keep you abreast of my exploits and travels at another point as we are only a few days in, and don’t worry I’m storing it up.

Goodness, if I have to put up with Neil and Eugene fighting who has the greater column inches each time I write one of these things. Luckily neither on them would be seen dead in any of the things I am posting here!

And so you know it’s not just about jackets, because dahlinks they are so on trend! Heavens I must leave the little green fairee alone!

Look I’m only trying to sound down, and trendy with the kids, and their social media.

I wouldn’t want you to think that we’d forgotten about the suits…. the one above is particularly natty.

Finally here is a photo to show that I can sew. I know you only have my word for that, but I can and have in the past.

Me and the elves are capable of anything, suits, jackets, trousers, shirts, ties, socks, underwear, coats and anything else including beach towels, just ask!

I will defer to Bill Murray to finish, more or less.

When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Pimlico and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.

Marie Eichner

Posted on January 16, 2015 by volpeadrian

I’d been mulling over how I was going to write this for a while, but it seems that for the second time in a short period I am the barer of sad tidings.

After losing Kathleen in November; unfortunately Marie my breakfast partner of many years passed away a couple weeks ago. She hadn’t been well for much of the last year, but we tried to breakfast together as regularly as possible.

It all started about 10 years ago, when Marie was in her mid-seventies.

One morning I was sat at breakfast in The Wolseley reading “Corriere della Sera”, trying to improve my Italian, when Marie approached me. She said how nice it was to see an elegantly dressed young man sat, relaxing, reading a newspaper and enjoying his breakfast without fiddling with his phone.

I was flattered and this approach completely disarmed me. The fact that I had been ‘fiddling with my phone’, and had put it down only a few moments before had escaped her. I asked her if she’d like to join me, she accepted and our friendship began.

Initially it would be coincidence that we would both be there at the same time, but in more recent times we’d phone each other to make sure that we would be about and I suppose we would meet up a couple of times a week.

Often she’d wonder what people thought of the two of us, nattering away at breakfast, a modern day “Harold and Maude” perhaps.

Even after her bypass operation we’d joke about her pills; how she’d keep tabs on what she had taken, and what she hadn’t.

I know that she was treasured by everyone at The Wolseley and that feeling was mutual. She made an effort to get to know everyone and with her husband Kurt, they were regulars at several of Chris and Jeremy’s restaurants, and she made friends in all of them.

The last time I spoke to Marie was just before her birthday which fell on Christmas Eve, she wasn’t feeling great, but was looking forward to spending Christmas surrounded by Kurt, her daughter Sally, her husband Harry and the grandchildren.

I was, moved to write this after breakfast at The Wolseley this morning. I like eating there, especially breakfast, and whether it is alone or with a friend, when I had Marie for company I always felt privileged.

Like Kathleen, I will miss Marie dearly.

Unfortunately Marie never accepted my request to have a photograph us taken together.

Marie was wonderful to be around and she loved being surrounded by people, making friends everywhere she went. We would joke that I’d end up pushing her round in a bath chair, Marie waving regally as I pushed her down Piccadilly from The Wolseley to Fortnum and Mason, covered with a cashmere blanket. Sadly, in the end I never had that pleasure.

For Aunt Kathleen

Posted on December 9, 2014 by volpeadrian

Kathleen Phelan

The other morning my phone buzzed at 5.30am; I was half-awake, and I rolled over to see who the email was from.

But it wasn’t an email, it was a reminder that it would have been my Aunt Kathleen’s 97^th birthday. It would have been, but she died peacefully in her sleep the day before.

Kathleen was my mum’s sister, and those of you who know me well will have heard me tell of her bizarre and interesting life, and lifestyle.

She had always lived a nomadic existence and until she died, lived in a caravan and travelled around by hitchhiking, even if was just to go into nearby Cheltenham to place a bet on a horse; that was her life.

We were a close family, but as Kathleen got older the chances to see her became less frequent. She no longer really liked the hustle and bustle of life in London, as she had done in her youth. The Coach and Horses in Soho was her local, hanging out in Ronnie Scott’s or The French House, friends with Picasso and always staying with him as she hitched through the South of France.

Here are a couple of stories to try to explain how she lived her life, and hopefully there will be more stories that she will have written down and my brother, my mother and I can uncover to tell you in the future.

There was a time when you were required to list your occupation on your passport. Whilst I always dreamt of putting down astronaut, racing driver or secret agent, Kathleen’s occupation was described as “storyteller”.

Having this in her passport gained her access to all sorts of strange and wonderful places. During the time of the Shah in Iran, she turned up to register at the British Consulate in Tehran and was asked to explain what she meant by storyteller. Word got back to the Shah of this strange English woman and she was summoned to the palace to explain. My brother and I still have the book that she was presented with, a gift from the Shah.

Life was not all palaces, she just loved talking to people and being on the road where one story often led to a new one.

She could make going out for a pint of milk an adventure. Sometimes when staying with my mother this could be inconvenient and a tad frustrating.

Mum asked Kathleen as she was going to walk down in to town one morning to get the newspapers; The Daily Telegraph and The Racing Post, if she wouldn’t mind picking up a pint of milk.

So off Kathleen wandered, at the end of the road she stuck out a thumb and rather than walk the half mile into town, she’d hitch a lift.

As luck would always have it, a car soon stopped and offered her a lift. Conversation followed and as the driver was going to Exeter, some 60 miles from Minehead, Kathleen thought she’d go along for the ride.

She wandered around Exeter, bought the papers, the milk and hitched a lift back to Minehead although it would always be out of the driver’s way, she would keep them spellbound with her stories and they would always drop her at her required destination like a taxi.

By this time mum’s tea had gone cold.

I will always remember the moments sat spellbound as she recounted one story after another. We spent last New Year together with my mother and all got drunk together.

At the weekend we cleared her caravan of a lifetimes worth of objects, enough Elastoplast to stretch to the moon and back, pens so that one was never out of arms reach and most importantly more than 20 lever arch files full of stories and documents that will tell a remarkable story.

Her various caravans that served as home have been parked in fields and caravan parks all over the south of England, but in the last few years she couldn’t have found better friends than Peter, Jan, Adrian and June who ran the park where she lived.

As she would like to be remembered.

Italian Wine Evening

Posted on June 19, 2014 by volpeadrian

A very big thank you to everybody who participated in what was an excellent evening.

We ~~tried~~ drank 5 different wines, and I would like to say a special thank you to Geoffray Bénat from BeMyWine for bringing the wines and giving us all a pleasant introduction the each of the different wines.

We have planned to do more of these evenings, so please keep your eyes peeled for notifications.

Italian Wine Tasting

Free Wine 17th June

Posted on June 13, 2014 by volpeadrian

Free Wine- Tuesday 17^th

Now I have your attention.

Just a quick email to let you know about our wine event next Tuesday 17^th June; we have room for about 12 people on each of these occasions.

This first one is a bit of a ‘Dry Run’ so to speak. The wines featured will be supplied by my good friend Geoffray Benat of BeMyWine, and the five featured on this occasion will be from Italy, and there will be a little food to go alongside it.

We aim to start at 6.30pm and run for a couple of hours or until the wine is finished, which will be unlikely! It will give you time to stagger off to the footie afterwards.

The downside is you will have to spend a little time in my company and that of my friends, some of whom purport to be weirder than me. There will be no charge for the alcohol and Geoffray will start the evening with a little talk about the wines.

Because numbers are very limited, we will run several more of these events and there will plenty of opportunities to come and sample next time, or the time after that, or the time after that….. Yes, you get my drift. This will become a regular event alongside a couple of other things I am trying to plan.

I am just attempting to draw you into the weird and wonderful world where I live and breathe.

Please contact me if you are interested in coming along.

RSVP: to the Volpe email address: volpe.adrian@talk21.com

Very best

Adrian

Italian Fashion and Cinema 5th -13th April

Posted on April 5, 2014 by volpeadrian

A little plug for a friend.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fashion-Cinema/308238032564908

Diana the Huntress has been involved in a little project. Well she has to do something when not wining and dining. Not always with me I hasten to add.

The Italian Fashion & Cinema events start with Ferragamo at the Victoria and Albert Museum today and runs until the 13^th, with something fashion darlink happening every day.

Here is the link: http://www.fashionandcinema.com/

If you would like to go to any of the events, here is her email: diana@fashionandcinema.com

She is charm personified, even given that in the Tinder generation you guys are all snapped cuddling a tiger, Diana on the other hand has her profile picture giving a huge Rhino called Sudan a back rub…..

Diana and Sudan

Go to these events, you will of course, see me there.

“Italy is known for its centuries-long culture of la bellezza and a style which has come to be identified by its people’s creativity and highest-quality craftmanship. Italian Fashion & Cinema looks at some key highlights from 1960 in the country’s extremely intricate and rich story of style.

We will explore the allure of two key films, L’avventura and La dolce vita. Both of them released in 1960, they meant a change in the perception of Italy by international audiences, showing a newly sophisticated style and fashion. After the post-war gloom and the realism portrayed in the most appreciated cinema of the 1950s, Italy would now be perceived as a country with a style and a beauty of its own.

Ferragamo Museum’s Director, Stefania Ricci, will introduce us to the House’s 100 year long relationship with film as well as film stars in a seminar with Dr. Giuliana Pieri at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Led by Matt Tyrnauer, a regular contributor to Vanity Fair magazine, we will have a glimpse at Valentino’s legendary world of glamour and beauty in his film Valentino: The Last Emperor. Plus, in a unique on-stage interview with Costume National’s Creative Director, Ennio Capasa, fashion journalist Hilary Alexander will explore the world of the creator of what was described by the New York Times as the “cool and chic modernism” of this mens and womenswear label.

We are also proud to offer London audiences a very special premiere of Christina Voros’s The Director: An Evolution in Three Acts. The film, which will be preceded by an on-stage conversation with Voros, is a documentary about Frida Giannini, Creative Director of Gucci, one of the most successful fashion houses in the world, with a tradition going back to the 1920s.”

Joana Granero, Director

Ennio Capasa

The Wedding between Danie and Tom

Posted on January 31, 2014 by volpeadrian

Thank you Tom. Finally we are starting to get some audience participation on the wedding front. Another lovely couple who got married last year.

So if you could keep them coming, I would be grateful.

However as you will quickly notice, apart from the beautiful brides, they have one thing in common.

The impeccable nature of the tailoring.

The Wedding between Amanda and Simon

Posted on January 29, 2014 by volpeadrian

I do wish more of you would send me your wedding photos so that we could celebrate all these happy events. However Amanda and Simon have kindly sent me theirs, and are happy for me to share them with you.

Simon is soon to be a Headmaster and Amanda has her own very specialized school:

http://www.amandamcleod.org/dyslexiamorning-school-1/