Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

A distorted reality

Sometimes I find that I like the idea of fashion so much more than the reality. Lanvin is a good example of this: the clothes are so touchable, the colours beautiful, satin and grosgrain in jewel colours and my favourite shade of slate grey. But they are particularly expensive and extravagant; dreams, destined to remain unworn, no doubt, and as these pictures from Paris Fashion Week show, wholly unsuited to anyone fatter than a stick (so many folds of material would look ridiculous covering curves; and satin is a very unforgiving fabric).

Looking through photos of the Autumn/Winter 2009-2010 season from the Paris shows on French Vogue (where these photos came from), there are definitely some regrettable things going on: dresses with only one sleeve, for no discernible reason; fur adorning everything, despoiling some otherwise perfect 1940s silhouettes; the aforementioned wayward folds of fabric (beautifully seamed and sewn, often, but peculiar nonetheless); and Alber Elbaz will make his models wear rats' nests in their hair. Once again, what silly Karl Lagerfeld termed "the new modesty" is nowhere in evidence.

Travels with my ants

I awoke at 6am this morning in my Singapore hotel room with a strange crawling sensation on my skin. After lying immobile and sleep-dazed for a few minutes, I switched on the light to discover that my pillow, and a swathe of the bed, was part of the highway infrastructure for a colony of tiny ants which was making its way purposefully and undaunted directly across the room, and accordingly across my body, which happened to be en route. I must have been doing battle with them in the night, because crushed bodies lay far and wide.

I called reception and asked if I could change the room; presumably they'll give it a brisk sweep, change the sheets, scoosh some insect killer around the place, and put some other unsuspecting guest in the room to become an ant landscape in the night.

Over the hump

A humpbacked whale has wandered into the vicinity of Hong Kong island (no whale in its right mind would choose to live here: for one thing there's practically nothing left to eat in Hong Kong waters) and is currently hanging out at Cape D'Aguilar. This morning, I was steering a crew that had fallen behind the other OC6 we were racing. As we came back around Beaufort Island and into Stanley Bay, in completely calm conditions, we saw the whale was right in front of us. Suddenly winning didn't seem so important anymore: we watched the whale surface lazily, rolling in the water, and then jump fully into the air no more than 50 metres away as we gasped like overawed children at a fireworks display.

The government isn't stopping anyone from coming in to the area, even though any noise louder than 160 decibels may damage the whale's hearing and cause further disorientation. I felt conscious enough of this in our little boat but all around us speedboats and police launches sent rumbles through the water that we could feel. The channel behind Beaufort Island and Po Toi is one of the busiest in the world; at night I can hear the mournful sounds of ships' horns, the noise and traffic is constant, and it's got to be a matter of concern whether the whale can actually get out of there to continue its migratory journey.

Our paddle home was considerably more calm; I got everyone to paddle with their eyes closed for four sets, and talked about being in harmony with the boat and each other as we paddle. The timing issues we'd been having seemed to iron themselves out and we ended up racing home, everyone paddling hard. It sounds cheesy but I think we all felt we'd experienced something special together and it seemed to make a difference.

Photo © REUTERS/Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department

Practical magic

From a flat in a rarefied gated community full of expats, who go from house to car to office without ever setting foot in the street, I've moved to Ma Hang in Stanley; a public housing estate, where there's mah jong tables out the back, shaded areas, a big stone dragon, waterfalls, an auditorium where people do tai chi, and, at the bus stop, a row of chairs donated by locals for the old folk.

Cargoes

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedar wood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, ironware, and cheap tin trays.

John Masefield (1878-1967)

On the rocks

Chloé's latest ad campaign, as seen on a huge billboard in Happy Valley which I passed on the bus this morning, shows two waiflike models walking across some rocks in vertiginous heels (heels not included in picture below, but those are some rocks). I'm not necessarily known for my appropriate footwear, and I love wearing heels, for my own, (probably) highly suspect, reasons; but this surely illustrates the utter departure from practicality of current women's footwear. Go into any shoe shop and you'll notice that heels have got dramatically higher (a vacuous video by a "high heels expert" on the Guardian website purports to show you how to walk in heels, but I can save you the burden of watching it: it does nothing of the sort), viz. the six-inch heels by Louboutin that various celebrity no-marks have been sporting. Sometimes it seems as though this is all part of a vast conspiracy; and really it's akin to the binding which Chinese women used to undergo to make their feet look smaller.


I once went on a hike in the fjords of Norway, south of Stavanger (a pretty, and pretty dull, town where I walked disconsolately round the supermarket poking at the whale meat, and where I learned that rural Norwegians shoot feral cats for sport). For once I was sensibly shod, but I remember watching a woman clambering across Pulpit Rock (which was by no means small and was covered in ice) in heels. She was clearly blazing a trail for just this sort of nonsense.

Accessory after the fact

The relentless drive to infantilise women - with, apparently, our eager encouragement - continues with the launch of the Hello Kitty make-up line by MAC. Clearly I am out of step with what modern women want: I find all of this ("über-cute beaded charm bracelets" and "black plastic brush holder in shape of a Hello Kitty head") loathsome. It will go down a storm in Hong Kong.

Thief in the night

Phuket (formerly known as "Junk Ceylon") is only three and a half hours' flight from Hong Kong and, according to the woman I sat next to on the way home, is where everyone from Hong Kong goes on holiday. Although the name apparently means "hill" in Malay, and there is a mountain range on the island, most of the landscape where we were, near Surin Beach, was extremely flat.

Most of the wedding guests stayed at the Chedi, a slightly down-at-heel resort consisting of villas on stilts in the hillside near the sea, linked by a network of wooden steps and bridges. The wedding took place in a curiously bland mega-villa owned by a prominent Hong Kong couple. The sun shone, everyone was happy, and the groom, an Australian, quoted Alasdair Gray to describe how he felt about being with his wife, a Scot: "Work as though you live in the early days of a better nation". When it got dark, we released huge paper lanterns into the night sky; they disappeared twinkling into the distance.

The only small blot on the weekend happened on Saturday night. While I was asleep, some opportunist opened the sliding door of the villa, which was unlocked, and took a few steps to my bedside to find my camera, wallet and phone. The camera was, humiliatingly, clearly found wanting (and to be fair it's seen better days) - that was discarded outside the door; the cash from my wallet was taken too but they left the credit cards. People kept asking me if I was traumatised by the experience. I wasn't: I didn't know any better; I was asleep at the time. If anything I feel lucky: I didn't wake up to see them there, they didn't get much, and no doubt they needed the money more than I did.

Consider the lilies

I am going to a beach wedding in Phuket this weekend, which poses the challenge of what to wear - not too dressy, clearly, but judging by the extremely glamorous women who attended the hen party, I have to make an effort (and I don't look good in crumpled linen anyway). I've just moved to a new flat and so I am suffering from my periodical loathing of the idea of possessions (so many of them! and to what end?); however, unbidden, this Rick Owens Lilies dress appeared to me as if in a dream. The idea of wearing this to the wedding, teamed with what is now tiresomely dubbed "statement" jewellery (I'm making a statement. This is jewellery), is a vision entirely unrelated to reality. First, I'm not buying it. Second, even if I did, and it fitted me, and more importantly suited me, I couldn't get it to Hong Kong, nor to Phuket, on time.

From Net-a-porter.

Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world

The South China reported on Friday that fake eggs, reputedly from Hubei province, have been discovered in Macau (I prefer the term artificial ova myself). Mrs Wong bought them at market; after being cooked the yolk was just like rubber (not just a problem with her technique then?). Locals buying them from street vendors in Xiamen found the yolks bounced when cooked.

Mrs Wong of Macau, meanwhile, with admirable fortitude, ate six eggs that "tasted strange". Since she gritted her teeth and ate the evidence, it might never be possible to determine what the ersatz eggs were made of.

Factory fates

The Chinese government's concerns about social unrest must be reaching fever pitch following the news that 20 million jobs have been lost in Guangdong province alone, where a third of the mainland's exports are produced. A senior Guangdong police official warned that the public security outlook was "grim" as jobless workers could turn to crime. Projections are that the number of rural jobless - people formerly working in the factories in Guangdong, just across the border from Hong Kong, and now returning home - could double. The numbers are mind-boggling.

Ring of roses

I love the simple pleasure of buying flowers at a flower stall where you can pick your favourites and they meld them together perfectly and wrap them in brown paper. These were made by Tennie, at my favourite flower stall in Stanley market. We were all so pleased with this combination that Tennie's fellow florist took a picture of it too. (Not roses, despite appearances and this post's title: to be maddeningly imprecise, some kind of chrysanthemum (the deep red one), and another flower I can't name (the white one) which always seems to last forever, accompanied by tendrils of something with tiny little white buds.)

Surfacing

Out on the water today, we raced three OC6s with novice steerers, from Stanley Main Beach across the bay past the American Club, into Tai Tam and out again, around the buoys near the quarry at Hobie cat Beach, and back to the pier at the Sea School. I sat at seat 5 coaching the novice steerer in the boat (which mainly consisted of shouting back to him "don't paddle, just steer"; "pick a point and aim for it, don't deviate" and "keep the boat straight", it being a classic error of all new steerers to try to paddle too much rather than steer - in a race situation, the crew just want the boat to head in a consistent direction.) My crew were given a minute's head start as we were all women except for the steerer; but after 50 minutes of hard paddling we held off the other crews to finish first, despite the fact that A's steering was erratic: we zigged, and then we zagged...

The water in Stanley Bay was fairly clear, in that looking down, you could see the sand on the sea floor; but there was a strange reddish scum covering much of the sea's surface, which lapped against the boat, leaving a sticky residue as we passed. On arriving back at the pier, tomato-faced with effort (in my case at least), we floated for a while, idly watching a little sampan chugging out diesel fumes and spewing adulterated water into the sea. When they lowered a large test tube shaped object into the water it became apparent that they were taking a water sample. It was all I could do not to remark to them that 1) I could tell them what the water quality was - it was shite; and 2) they might find if they switched their diesel engine off, they would be contributing less overtly to the poor quality water they were purporting to measure.

(Picture from the Around Hong Kong Island Race, November 2008; ©Lydia Ronnenkamp)

Hair of the dog

When we were kids we always had gerbils. There's something a bit challenging about gerbils: they're cannibals, eating their young if they are surplus to requirements (too many mouths to feed); they are, when newborn, pink and hairless and squirming; and their little cage always seemed to reek (cleaning out the cage, ridding it of its sodden kapok and sawdust, was a chore to be dreaded but endured if you wanted a pet). They also bite down with alacrity on the webs between your fingers, given half a chance, and don't let go. But they can be cute and snuffly, and have the advantage of being fairly accessible pets.

They were all too accessible, unfortunately, for a rotten, fat, yappy little Cairn terrier called Kirsty, with wiry grey pelt and mean button eyes, which belonged to some daft family friends: one terrible day I came into the bedroom where they were kept to discover the wire top of the gerbil cage askew and a smug Kirsty knocking back the last gerbil before licking her chops in a revoltingly satisfied fashion.

No matter how much any adult might subsequently explain that Kirsty was just following her instinct as a ratcatching kinda dog, I conceived there and then a powerful loathing for all yapping little terriers and their ilk which has endured to this day. I was more than pleased - I was triumphant when Kirsty subsequently got alopecia and her coat fell off.

Flight from reality

It's all too easy to affect a strong dislike for various designers and nano-celebrities, usually on the basis that a) there may be comic value to be gleaned; and b) they are undeserving aristocratic nonentities (qv "London's Coolest Teenagers" in VOGUE). Matthew Williamson (who's now "creative director" of Pucci, so he got what he deserved with their noxious prints), for instance, always struck me as someone who had, by judicious use of celebrity pals, parlayed his minimal talent into a successful career as a fashion designer in this endless merry-go-round of mutual appreciation and endorsement which the vacuous just gobble up.

Now I have confirmation that I was right to conceive a towering dislike of the man: in an inflight magazine I picked up recently, he was asked what he would be doing in 10 years' time and answered "I'll be flying in my private jet to all my favourite places and hoping they are still unspoiled".

Clearly this is sheer arrogance and stupidity of the worst kind.

Crouching tiger, hidden salmon

Roksanda Ilincic's clothes are always beautiful and simple with something nicely modern about them. This dress wouldn't suit me at all (the colour, described as rose, washes out anyone with pale colouring; a more accurate description would be salmon pink, which inexplicably is not favoured by designers) and what's more it's unjustifiably expensive and dry clean only, words to strike fear into any lazy/thrifty woman's heart; but the simplicity of this dress, and the way it's put together, and the precise way the fabric falls, and the addition of the baroque belt, are an admirable combination.

Hope and despair

Today's taxi driver, Ken, vehemently disagreed with yesterday's (Eric) about 70% of passengers being rude. Ken's verdict was that Eric must be unhappy inside, and projecting that onto his passengers; why, Ken greets his with a happy smile and wave and "then they will be gentle even if they are sad". This conversation also revealed the interesting fact that often people will tell Ken their secrets because he doesn't know his passengers' names.

Ken, the optimist, who learned his English from watching TV, had more reason than Eric to be cynical about human nature. Once he was attacked and robbed by an illegal immigrant while walking with his family in Shek O; and once, incredibly, a passenger he described as "a lunatic" poured sulphuric acid over his head. It was cold that day and he was wearing a hat and thick cream because of his eczema, so miraculously he was unscarred.

I learn so much from taxi drivers (including, again today, guidance on Cantonese pronunciation) that it's a source of some regret that there's such a massive price differential between the bus and a cab fare and no real advantage in terms of speed. I also get travel sick in cabs, especially on the winding and precipitous route back to Stanley, but today it was almost worth it.

The ride

Eric the cab driver drove me home this evening. He was in his twenties, had been driving for about a year, and was eager to practise his English as well as teach me how to use tones properly to give my address in Stanley (Chek Chu). Tones are the hardest part of learning Cantonese; westerners are usually too high-pitched, apparently, and you'll sometimes find yourself parroting a phrase you've learned, thinking it's correct, only to be met with blank incomprehension because the tones are all over the place.

The journey from Central to Stanley takes about 20 minutes in the evening, so he had time to tell me, rather sadly, that he felt that 70% of his passengers - even one bolshy four year old, in the example he gave - didn't respect him or treat him like a human being. In his view mainlanders were the worst. I suggested that he might want to fit an ejector seat for recalcitrant passengers, failing which a bucket of water might do the trick; but he pointed out not only that this would mean losing 70% of passengers prior to payment, but also that in Hong Kong, taxi drivers are legally obliged to accept all passengers, no matter how rude.

Sensoria

Continuing a recent theme of the evocative nature of scent, this website, I Hate Perfume, contains some intriguingly-named perfumes, the descriptions of which, while they often skate perilously close to laughable, are more interesting than, for instance, the revolting cheap knock-offs on sale in a chemist's shop near my flat in Byres Road, Glasgow, in the early 1990s: if you liked Christian Dior's POISON (a late 1980s, overpoweringly strong and cloyingly sweet scent which was unpleasant enough in itself), you could buy the charmingly titled KILL ME in a nasty purple bottle just differentiated enough to avoid a lawsuit; instead of Calvin Klein's OBSESSION, you could buy a classy amber coffret containing COMPULSION.

Christopher Brosius ("CB"), the "olfactory artist" behind I Hate Perfume, can create custom perfumes, but is currently not taking orders, so I'm afraid Childhood tantrum ends in woodshed is out for the moment; but I think Gathering apples may be an acceptable substitute. It's described as "Thousands of ripe red Mackintosh apples and a bit of old weathered wood from the bushel baskets".