Hashtags and gladrags

I am ashamed to say I have only just realised how the whole hashtag thing works. For the fellow uninitiated, it's a Twitter thing, where you put the hash symbol against words that have been pushed together #abitlikethis to talk up a topic. This is known as trending, it has nothing to do with being trendy, although I like to think I'm now capable of both. My ignorance meant avoiding Twitter as apart from not being acquainted with hashtag, I have also forgotten my password and username, leading to fruitless half hours spent inputting every username and password I've ever had on any account from Amazon to Topshop in the hope one might work. A few weeks ago, it finally did, but by then I'd inputted so many combinations that I forgot which one was successful! If I could just have a password with no uppercases or figures or minimum lengths all would be well. Luckily I am permanently logged into Twitter on my Blackberry but a change of handset is looming which means being locked out altogether. This afternoon Livvy informed me that I had to put new security questions on my Apple account to prevent fraud. I have to say fraud on any of my accounts is highly unlikely given that I can't remember the answers to my own security questions so what chance does anyone else have? If you should try to hack into my Apple account, apart from the obvious you'd also need to know all about my first car and where my mum and dad first met. The first car I really and truly owned was a sporty BMW Z3, in which I had many fun days out and drives to interviews and location visits with the roof down. When baby number two came along I considered converting the footwell to a babyseat so I could ferry them both around but common sense prevailed and I bought a Mercedes CLK instead. Oh happy days. And that's enough about that as I've now given that one away completely. If I had been a bit cuter on Twitter I could have trended like crazy last week about crowd surfing at Coachella...where my best acts were the Black Keys, Kasabian and Arctic Monkeys...and proper surfing at Venice Beach with Sarah, the pair of us high fiving every wave we caught. A little bit of shopping and brunching on Abbott Kinney and Melrose might have been done too. As was a lovely supper at Simons LA and the Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica. And above is Niagara Falls, from the week before. So now I'm back in sunny Bar sur Loup, which isn't quite the 110 degrees we had at the festival in Palm Springs. If I was worried about life getting a bit dull, I really should have known better. The historic Classic Grand Prix in Monte Carlo looms, where we will be watching our great veteran racing friend David hopefully beating the opposition into a cocked hat from a yacht in the harbour. And then it's Cannes Film Festival where I shall be #atallthebestparties.

LA and Palm Springs

So we did Niagara, which was amazing apart from the mini theme park and fast food hell which has sprung up around the falls. Why an area of outstanding natural beauty has to have a mini Disneyland beside it is beyond me.  We arrived at Toronto airport four hours early but Andy, the lovely BA check in man, made it better by not only bumping us onto the earlier flight but also bumping us up to business class, and the best seats in that cabin. Thank you BA and Andy, too kind!  And so a few days in cold and rainy London before LA beckoned on Wednesday. An 11 hour Virgin flight with no sleep meant a very careful drive from LAX to the Sofitel in West Hollywood.  Sarah brought her surf board and there were only minor problems strapping it to the roof of the jeep with jet lag in 25 degrees of heat using a whizzy high tech roof rack purchased especially for said surfboard. There was also only minor consternation from Virginia and Norma in the back at the prospect of hanging onto the roof rack straps while the board skidded across the roof on every bend.  The valets at the hotel did a rather better job of securing it than we did, to the point that it will now be impossible to remove when we finally get to Venice Beach next Monday. It does however come in handy when iding the car in a multi storey amidst a sea of other identical SUVs. And it stands out even more now we are in the desert in Palm Springs, where surfboards are about as common as hens teeth.  So the girls hit West Hollywood yesterday in some style, it was a bit like an upmarket supermarket sweep as we swooped on my hotlist of favourite stores...yes it's you Madison, Wasteland, Vanessa Bruno, Kitson et al....despite jet lag and a 5am wake up.  The journey to Palm Springs was enlivened by Sarah playing with the buttons as we drove on the freeway, managing to activate the hazard lights and turn off the air con in one fell swoop.  It's day one of Coachella, it's 11am and already touching 100 degrees. Above should be the view from my sunbed as we decide which bands to grace with our company later, but I cannot work out how to download it on my ipad so check it out on Facebook instead. Top of the list today is Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys, Madness, Pulp and Swedish House Mafia. BRING IT ON. 

Fashion Rocks

The grand tour, which has kept me going for the last few months, started on Saturday morning when I Ieft Nice to spend the day at Sarah's in Sussex. We went to Marco Pierre White's newly refurbished restaurant The Rainbow in Cooksbridge. The decor was mellow gentleman's club, it was like stepping into St James's, and the food, just like Sheekey's and The Ivy, was top notch fish, seafood and hearty meat courses. Angelo and Ed make a great front of house team and the service was fantastic. 

A seven hour BA flight to Toronto went smoothly, I watched George Clooney in The Descendants, a poignant tale of a woman whose fractured family come to terms with themselves and their future as she lies in a coma in hospital. Do not watch if even slightly depressed. 

We arrived at the Windsor Arms, which is Madonna and George's favourite hotel during the Toronto Film Festival, and it's easy to see why. Discreet friendly service in a historic townhouse in the heart of Yorkville, it boasts a rooftop gym and a butler's pantry straight from the room to the kitchen. You call room service, and they leave your order in it and switch on a light to let you know it's there. Dangerous. It's also where Gloria Swanson, Richard Burton and Katherine Hepburn hung out in the golden age of Hollywood. So I fit right in.

I did 50 lengths in the saltwater pool followed by my first cycle in six months in the rooftop gym. What a way to start the day, and my training for the Piste to Plage Challenge. I've got five months and no excuses to put it off any longer so I did 10 miles and although thats a sixth of the p2p daily target, it's a step, or pedal, in the right direction. 

Feeling refreshed I met the others and we headed off to explore Toronto in gale force winds ahead of meeting Elle Macpherson and the finalists in B&INTM.

Chatting to Elle, with her lush blonde locks, golden tan and never ending limbs is a sobering experience as she makes mere mortals like me feel like a fully loaded dumper truck. It was a great interview and while the content has to remain a secret for the time being, all I can tell you is The Body might be approaching 50 but she is still The Body. 

The joy of lunch

There is nothing quite like going out for lunch on a weekday. It ranks top of the list of decadent things to do with your time, except for perhaps sneaking off to a beach club midweek, which is another thing I never do, and is far more of a treat than dinner, because you really should be doing 20 other more important things. No matter how good your intentions, it's impossible to do anything vaguely pressing for at least an hour after, as you digest the fantastic food, delicious wine and scintillating conversation.

I just had a working lunch at the Hostellerie du Chateau I say 'working' lunch with the full knowledge that many of my dear but faintly cynical readers might suggest that a Friday lunch at the newly Michelin starred restaurant in Bar sur Loup with Shan and Fiona may not constitute working in the truest sense of the word, but trust me when I say it was, I was, we were.

Whether you are working or not, it is a memorable experience. The views, even on a mediocre March day like today, are spectacular and the food is remarkable with attention to the tiniest detail. The amuse bouche of spinach and sheeps cheese cannelloni in a delicate jus was sublime. The roasted leeks in creamy foam with herbs and fresh tomato was a party in the mouth and the catch of the day with carrots in ginger was a worthy follow up. A deconstructed tarte au citron meringue, with broken biscuit base, citron sorbet coated in something I can only describe as citron-y custard and stabbed with fine sticks of fresh meringue and chocolate may have looked like it had an accident en route from kitchen to table ( I think that was the idea) but tasted wonderful. Giles Coren I am not, hence no restaurant column, so this blog will have to do instead.

On the walk home, having secured a lunch for two kindly donated by the Sangoy family who run the restaurant for the upcoming Journee de Nature Partage on May 27th, I had to take a photo of this house just a few minutes walk from mine. The sign is protected heritage, saving the owner a fortune in paint and raising a smile among residents like me at the irony of having a retro Martini sign to admire but no bar in which to buy one, despite the name of our village being le BAR sur Loup. But then where would we be without the odd idiosyncrasy?

The earth moved on Sunday night. You might think this would be cause for celebration...or Handyman at least punching the air with macho glee. For once, it was nothing to do with him and everything to do with the epicentre of an earth tremor in Barcelonnette, 100 km north of here, which measured 4.9 on the Richter scale.

We were asleep in bed when I awoke to the sound of a low rumble, which is not an unusual sound in our bedroom after he has partaken of a Kashmir curry. But the doors started to rattle and I assumed the cats were playing a particularly vicious game of cat and mouse, with the mouse on the losing team. Handyman woke with a start and shouted out 'what the @&£! is that?' as doors shook, windows rattled and Livvy rushed into the room in terror to say that the whole house was moving.

Thirty seconds later it was all over and my chief concern, having spent five months renovating the pool was that the entire pool terrace might have collapsed and fallen down the valley. Because that is the kind of thing that happens chez Kershaw. Last time it rained heavily, we lost a wall in the garden but fortunately this time there was no damage.

If there is ever a good reason to buy a house on a steep hillside that has been underpinned, this is it. We stood firm in the face of adversity. It's the second tremor in a month, so we have to hope that there isn't a biggie waiting in the wings.

With the snow pretty much gone and temperatures reaching 22 degrees in the last week, spring has truly sprung, the skis have been put away for another year and the pool terrace is days away from completion (I keep saying this but it really is true) with the grand refilling planned for Saturday. The tiling is finished, the plants are planted, the loungers have been dusted off as you can see above, and the water levels should be perfect just as the first rain for weeks moves in on Sunday, so any idea of laying beside it admiring five months of blood, sweat, stress and tears will have to wait a little longer. Am excited beyond belief, which illustrates just how dull my life is at the moment.

The highlight of my week, apart from an illuminating chat by Chris France at Premier Mardi, was a chat last night with the singer Anastacia, who seems like a very down to earth girl, and who has been through hell with her health but come out fighting and still smiling. Oh and the re-opening of Michelangelo tomorrow after their season closure, which is music to Handyman's ears as it puts the bar back into Bar sur Loup and means Friday night off supper duty.

The death of journalism

Last weekend, a great friend of mine was arrested. Twelve police officers carried out a dawn raid at his house, waking him and his family at 7am and searching their house, removing PCs, his mobile phone, passport and documentation. An officer accompanied him to the shower in case he tried to dispose of 'evidence.' Then he was driven to a police station where he spent a whole day being questioned before being released without charge on police bail. His arrest was the lead item on all the weekend news bulletins.

By now you are probably thinking, well, if he is a suspected drug dealer or terrorist, fair enough. My friend is neither. He is a law abiding journalist of some 30 years standing, over two decades of which has been spent writing world exclusive scoops and putting his life at risk reporting from the front line in Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones around the world. He is considered by his colleagues and fellow reporters at rival newspapers to be one of the very best in the business. His work has helped to sell millions of newspapers, making many millions in profit for a certain Mr Murdoch.

Meanwhile the cosy relationships between David Cameron and certain high level Murdoch employees have been elbowed out of the spotlight while the witch hunt at grass roots level continues. It is already part of the biggest police criminal investigation in British history.

'Journalists pay for stories' alert has now been replaced by 'journalists arrested for writing stories' so we had all better hope that there are no more scandals like thalidomide, cash for questions and MPs using taxpayers money to pay for private moats lurking in the establishment shadows because we have now created a toothless gutless press which is too fearful of prosecution to publish.

Two days later, in another part of the UK, Islamic extremist Abu Qatada, described as the spiritual head of the mujahideen in Britain, is released from prison despite warnings that he poses a dangerous and very real threat to national security.

If this was the plot of a Hollywood movie, it would be deemed too far fetched to be true. You really couldn't make it up. The next time I'm asked to mentor a young idealistic student who dreams of writing for the national press, my advice will be to steer well clear of a profession that hangs its own out to dry when the going gets rough and try banking instead.

Snow at last

There has been no snow all season, which seemed to signal a relaxing non-skiing ski weekend of spas and bars for Handyman at beautiful Foux d’Allos, pictured, in the Var. So you can imagine his distress at reading the snow forecast last Thursday to discover it was due to blizzard from Friday lunchtime onwards. In the words of that old disco classic I Haven't Stopped Laughing Yet (or was it dancing?)

We left Bar sur Loup kitted out with snow socks(a treat for the Jeep,) leaving a huge vat of Thai chicken curry so the girls didn't starve as they opted to stay at home in the rain rather than join the oldies on the slopes. I filled the fridge with appealing foods and not so appealing oven chips and left strict instructions on walking the dogs, feeding the cats and dogs and refilling their water bowl. The last time we left the girls home alone, the dog bowls were bone dry, pardon the pun, when we arrived back and the poor mutts drank for five minutes without stopping. I'm more worried about the survival of the pets than the girls, who will languish in PJs, unwashed, snacking on pizza and chocolate and watching Celebrity Big Brother until we get home.

We arrived to find the sparsest snow in a decade but by Saturday morning, the white stuff was gently falling and it didn’t stop all weekend. Handyman was quietly gutted at the prospect of actually skiing. Some of the printable comments I heard muttered behind me on the slopes were: ‘I feel like I’ve just hiked up the Eiger with a Mini on my back,’ ‘Welcome to hell’, ‘My thighs feel like they have been smashed with giant mallets,’ and on spotting the bodies of powder virgins strewn across the piste below us, ‘It’s like a scene from Casualty.’

He only needs the tiniest incentive to quit skiing for a glass of red in front of a roaring fire at a bar. In fact as we ate pizza and drank wine (him) and champagne (me) at lunchtime, he confessed that if he was with his friends he wouldn't even venture out of the restaurant until closing time. But he was with me. And I came here to ski. At least he remembered his ski jacket this time.

We arrived back at the hotel pleasantly pooped to hear that there had been an earthquake in Liguria which measured 5.3 on the Richter scale and the tremors were felt as far afield as the Var, the Alpes Maritimes….and Fenelon School! Livvy rang to say that her building was shaking so much that a projector fell to the floor and smashed, causing major panic among the students. They evacuated the lycee but poor Issy, who is at the college building down the road, was forced to continue playing ping pong in the gym as everything shook around her! French teachers don’t get fazed by much. I wanted to laugh but given that I was 100 km away from my babies while they endured a minor earthquake, that would make me a very bad momma indeed.

We spent Saturday on un-groomed reds and perfect off-piste powder with virtually no visibility due to continuous snow and low cloud. It was like skiing with a black bag over your head but it was amazing nonetheless and although I was shattered by late afternoon, the hammam and steam room restored me in time for a scrummy supper at the Dahut in town.

The journey home was another story. Three and a half hours in blizzards along snow packed passes and narrow cols with sheer drops to be exact. I’ve experienced some dramatic journeys over the years – hanging off the edge of a sheer drop in Meribel with my precious 15 month old Livvy strapped into her car seat as we teetered precariously and navigating from the Grand Canyon to the Rockies in Colorado in an open top Porsche Carrera on the Bull Run are right up there – but this was something else.

The sat nav inexplicably bypassed snow-free Castellane to take us on am icy climb through medieval villages at the top of the world which would have been gloriously picturesque in the summer but in failing light and snow storms was anything but fun. As we slowed down to put the car back into four wheel drive mode near Greolieres, we started slipping backwards towards a snowy ditch. The signal on our phones went kaput and despite gentle acceleration, the car kept slipping backwards off the road. A very stressed Handyman had to get out and wrestle with the snow socks before we finally managed to get back on the road and creep along the scariest pass of all, some 1000 metres high in driving snow, with a sheer drop on skating rink style roads with not a snow plough in sight.

Fifteen minutes from home, the snow gave way to slush. I have never been so pleased to see rain in my life.