Recent trips to London have been very arduous to say the
least. We find ourselves leaving Tetbury
at 7am for an 11am appointment. After
Slough the volume of traffic on the M4 slows the journey down – then there is
worse to come in central London – just bumper to bumper. The other drawback is the £38 parking fee,
£10 congestion charge – makes it an expensive trip. Friends had suggested it might be more cost
effective & much quicker by train.
Having decided to let “the train take the strain” I checked out the
website of
Raileasy and found to my amazement a return ticket travelling from
Kemble to
Paddington for £40 – an offer I took up! Kemble is only ten minutes from Tetbury &
parking is easy. Kemble has a great
independently run station café serving bacon/sausage baps and really good
coffee – perfect while waiting for the train which was departs at 09.19. We arrived in Paddington at 10.37 – much quicker
than driving.
The purpose of this trip was a mix of business and
pleasure. From Paddington we travelled
by tube over to Holborn – pretty packed with visitors going to the Olympic Games
at Stratford. We left the tube and
walked over to
Lambs Conduit Street, Bloomsbury to our first appointment at the
“
Oliver Spencer” showroom. We have
admired this label for a long time – his signature is ‘seen but not heard’
which sits perfectly alongside our ever growing menswear brands.
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| Thornback & Peel Rugby Street |
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| French's Dairy |
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| Interior of Ben Pentreath |
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| Interior of Ben Pentreath |
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| The French House |
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| Lambs Conduit Street |
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| Lambs Conduit Street |
After placing the order for spring/summer 2013 we decided to
explore the area. The atmosphere is
slightly bohemian – no boring lack lustre chain stores, but interesting diverse
shops run by like-minded people. There’s
a great choice of café/restaurants with pavement seating – perfect for people
watching. Just of Lambs Conduit Street
is
Rugby Street which has a good selecting of interesting shops
French’s Dairy
now a costume jewellery shop run by Maggie Owen, from who we have bought wholesale
when we sold jewellery. Her jewellery
brands always had a point of difference.
Two doors down from Maggie is
Ben Pentreath a small shop crammed full of
carefully chosen products and a variety of antiques. We bought a set of sturdy robust ‘Perigord’
wine glasses as we are forever breaking glassware. Ben has an excellent blog that is well worth following.
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| The Courtyard Royal Academy |
It was time to head over to central London for an
appointment with
‘Nicole Farhi’. We have
rested this label for two seasons. The
spring/summer collection is strong and back on track, aware that our customers
would like to see it back in store; we placed an order for 2013. After Farhi we had engineered some free time
by booking a later train home and went to
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition -
a must each year. The first work you see
is in the central courtyard ’From Landscape To Portrait’ by
Chris Wilkinson RA. An extremely strong arresting
statement made from timber, stainless steel & concrete. Inside the central Wohl hall has been painted
a rich red, perfect backdrop for the abstract paintings. We made our way to The Associates Gallery, which was
hung with smaller works in a wave design.
Personally the large gallery didn’t work as I prefer to see the smaller
works hung in the small ‘Weston Room’ it’s a far more intimate setting. The show is extremely divers with work by both
talented young & old. We particularly
like work ‘no: 623’ (£66,000) by
Martin Creeds a green neon sign the word ‘Dogs’
which could be interpreted in a manner of many things. A more affordable price bracket was ‘Street
Painting’ of Bath by
Francis Callaghan at £380.
One work I really coveted was ‘Larousse’ a book sculpture by
AlexanderKorzer-Robinson at £2,000 – clever use of defunct old encyclopaedia book.
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| The Atrium at Fortnum's |
En route back to the tube we hit the tourist trail and went
to ‘
Fortnum & Mason’ to view the gorgeous food and confectionary on
display. To avoid the crowds on
Piccadilly we took the more refined route back to the tube via Jermyn
Street. Here you will find
Paxton &Whitfield Cheesemongers who have been trading for 200 hundred years, also
English perfumers ‘
Floris’ who have been trading for 280 years. The tube was packed, at Paddington we met up
with a friend
Jo Clark (photographers agent) for coffee and a catch-up at ‘Paul’
French bakery – staff very friendly but the coffee and hot chocolate was pretty
awful – so don’t bother. The train
departed at 19.48 and we arrived at Kemble 21.19, definitely a much easier way
to travel to London.
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| Fortnum's Confectionery |
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| Fortnum's Clock |
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| Jermyn Street |
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| Jermyn Street |
