Author Archive: Lesley Jakobsen
Crochet Crotchets
I admire that craftiste who, upon finding the pattern of something which she desires to make – (say, for argument’s sake, the crocheted jacket on page 10 of Margaret Hubert’s “Runway Crochet)” – opens the cupboard containing her yarn stash, frowns a bit, then says “yes, that’ll do nicely” to some skeins of something and, just like that, starts to make the (again, just as an example), close-fitting long-sleeved Juliet Jacket. I admire her because she has made up her mind about the pattern , she has the right amount of the right yarn, she knows the right size, her tension is good, and she just…
Continue Reading →Old School
Image by W. A. Fraser, 1901
(by Tobias Wolff) Imagine! A school of boys whose role models are writers! Where is this youthful intellectual paradise? Somewhere in the USA of the 1960s. But beware, boys. Literature is a wolf and your morals are its prey.
Continue Reading →Wheels and Dollbaby Get-Togethers are Evil
At the Thrift Shop Bar. Image courtesy of Natasha Buccella
If you do not know that ‘Dita’ is both a burlesque artist and a cardigan; if you do not believe in cleavage, and if you think that leopard-print is old-fashioned, read no further. This post is for Annabels who say “yes!” to black satin pencil skirts and plunging necklines, who want a mermaid tattoo and love faux fur. Wheels and Dollbaby is an Australian women’s clothing brand with an instantly recognisable, sexy and sleek look, a retro vibe, a rockabilly hint. The brand’s creator Mel and her muse (the Dita von Teese) know their audience and do the same thing season after season with panache. I had only two Wheels items –…
Continue Reading →Peter Allen – Not the Boy Next Door
A match made in Heaven
The final stages of this TV two-parter are a salutary reminder of that dreadful scourge of the homosexual world in the 1980s – the music of Peter Allen. Oh yes and that AIDS was, in those days, suddenly rampant and absolutely untreatable. This is a paint-by-numbers production. But that doesn’t mean it is bad – just mediocre, glitzy, watchable and non-threatening. Like Allen himself. The audience is told what to think at every stage, from the obligatory hard-scrabble childhood (cleaning Dad’s brains off a wall), to fame, fortune and an opportunistic marriage to American music royalty. Sigrid Thornton looks surprisingly like Judy Garland but is stretched by a script which…
Continue Reading →The Seed Collectors
Walking Palm photo by JimfBleak
(by Scarlett Thomas). Copy the Gardener “Family Tree” at the opening of this novel and keep it close at hand. Perhaps you will be more successful than I at keeping the characters apart, remembering who is married to whom, who is whose brother and whether or not this sweaty encounter is adultery. The characters all seem to have the same name and hip “lifestyle”. The confusion is confounded by the chop-change style – in case the reader is not confused enough, incomplete passages of pop-psychology, dialogue and cogitation are interlarded without attribution. Is it Oleander, Clem, Charlie, Ollie, Bryony, Holly, Ash, Pi, Fleur, Skye or Pondscum this time? Bryony’s drunken shopping and eating…
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