Alain and Jane at the opening:-

If you head past St Tropez to Le Lavendou you will find a lovely coastline and stretch of beach:-

Alain has opened the hottest new restaurant in the area and you really must go. He was the youngest French chef to receive a Michelin star and therefore you won’t be disappointed with the food:-

(no idea which one he is – they all look the same)

Here he is in his new restaurant:-

There is a beautiful terrace with gorgeous beach views:-

The terrace:-

It’s interesting how an established company like John Lewis are targeting bloggers. Quite progressive I thought.

Anyway, I was most interested in their new fashion range. Apparently they are in the process of doing a £10m refurbishment in order to become the premier destination of the high street.

Two gorgeous girls talked us through what we were all meant to be wearing this winter. John Lewis are aiming to improve their fashion department, collaborating with many more designers and aiming to be more trend lead. I like that idea because I’m clueless when it comes to what to wear next season.

They highlighted each main trend for winter 2010 which hugely helped focus the mind for me:-

WOMEN

HITCHCOCK HEROINES

Gorgeous, sumptuous grown-up clothes that my children would be horrified if I started wearing. Although I am sorely tempted.

PRINT DRESSES

I love this Celia Birtwell print dress:-

ENGLISH ECCENTRICS

Not really my thing – lots of lined Barbours and Hunter Wellies and tweed – a shabby chic look.

RUSSIAN MILITARY

Cossack style heavy coats and chunky fur lined boots and lace-up high heeled boots.

REBEL REBEL

Rock chick-esque although my daughter would nick anything I bought from this range I suspect.

SHEEPSKIN

Lots of lovely sheepskin coats

EMBELISHMENT

Gorgeous evening wear.

I really want this dress:-

MEN

Sorry, absolutely no idea – wasn’t listening.

Andy is now 17 and leaving for college. The most heart-wrenching bit for me was when his mother stood in his empty room preparing to face the prospect of the dreaded empty nest syndrome…..my son is the same age and it really hit home – just how fast they grow and move on….although having said that, in the UK I’m not sure we can expect (hope?) to lose our children at such an early age – they move back in or simply don’t leave at all these days. I’m quite sure if I dared strip his room and move another of my children in the minute he leaves for his gap year or university he’d kill me.

The characters were as fabulous as ever. The new ones, an evil care bear called Lotso provides wonderfully mafia-esque drama and a menacing baby that I thought would give children nightmares comes good in the end. A thespian Hedgehog is brilliant and the scenes featuring Ken are just hilarious.

The main theme appears to be how to accept change, let go and move on in a mutually agreeable way. A good life message as ever and one that resonates, judging by the amount of sniffles I could hear in the audience at the end of the film.

Looking forward to Toy Story 4 – the midlife crisis years.

Just a few years later and she now has the best selling board game in the UK according to The Financial Times. I texted her on Sunday – she’s in the US for the summer “buy the Weekend FT – amazing article and yr game got No.1 slot!!”. She hadn’t seen it. ” OMG PLEASE keep me a copy”. Just an amazing story and I’m so pleased she’s done so well.

I was having coffee with another friend this morning and it’s made me realise that she too may well find herself with a best seller on her hands in a moment or two. Having had 20 years experience in the drinks industry she has developed a new drink of her own. Her main focus was on a gap in the market for women. She has invented a new girly sparkly light alcoholic wine that is very fruity and tastes a little like an alcoholic Schloer – just so easy to drink and my daughter LOVED it, rather worryingly. Being one of four sisters her starting point was finding something lovely to drink whilst being around a table surrounded by other women: -

“I’m a passionate believer that women are women’s greatest allies; women need other women – in good times and in bad. A strong girlfriend or group of girlfriends can get you through things you’d never quite manage alone, and if you mess up along the way, they’ll still be there for you afterwards. What’s more – you’ll get to laugh about it, and those laughs help keep everything in perspective.”

They’ve just launched in both Britain and Ireland and I think it will do very well. There isn’t much for us women to drink at lunchtime or early evening that isn’t too heavy. We don’t want beer or cider but wine makes us too pissed to pick up the kids. So this is perfect. She said she’s got a few bottles to send to anybody who wants to try it. Why not send her a message via their website – or let me know and she’ll send you a sample bottle: http://www.carnabybrown.com/

This is a worry for Eminem fans because when the parents start to want to buy it – it’s surely not very cool anymore.

Commercial though.

Here’s his new single. He’s doing a Superman/jumper thing and looking pretty good:-

He and his mates, outside the shop:-

They got to decorate their own bars and make their own moulds:-

Then they designed their own wrappers:-

What a great idea for a party. Loved by all of them. Rococo very kindly gave me a discount as I had done the Valentine’s promotion with them but it is still an expensive party to take children to.

Personally, I would have liked them to have been told more about how chocolate is made during their time in the kitchen and also perhaps been given one of Chantal’s Coady’s lovely chocolate cook books – maybe it’s time for her to bring out a chocolate recipe book for kids??

ANYWAY. Best plan is to ignore the problem for a minute and quickly show you some FAB pictures from last nights amazing event. I went to a fundraising festival at Chiswick House .  Just lovely – loads of friends and all the food and drink you could consume whilst listening to bands:-

Paloma Faith:

Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen in the crowd:-

Very blurry picture of Richard Bacon:-

Mumford and Sons:-

A very hot Paul Young:-

Ant and Dec:-

The Feeling:-

The gorgeous Sophie Ellis Bexter:-

Lawrence Dallalglio:-

and the very cool Jo Whiley:-

I can see the appeal if you can vaguely sing – you don’t have to do an audition or even read music. The songs are learnt by ear. You just pay a £90 a term fee and go along and sing your little heart out. 95% of the members are women unsurprisingly.

But look at this video – the entire audience are part of the choir. This particular song “Something Inside So Strong” is their charity song with the proceeds going to Refuge:-

Their debut album was released yesterday and is already top of the Amazon chart.

Here is the video of their new song. Very strong for a first single I think. Going to be big:-

My daughter loves them and is deliriously happy because she trapped them at the Clothes show and managed to get a very good photo of them all with her:-

The whole production was just immensely cool.  The actors played and sang their parts amazingly well with Tam Ward as Frank Sinatra, Mark Adams as Dean Martin and Giles Terera as Sammy Davis Jr.  We got to imagine we were actually part of the original audience, listening to them sing all those enormously popular songs including “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “My Way”, “New York, New York”, “What Kind Of Fool Am I”, “That’s Amore” and “Everybody Loves Somebody”.

The trio just swaggered about the stage – drinking and smoking and laughing and generally taking the piss out of each other.  It was funny to watch with lots of non PC jokes you could relax and enjoy and an extraordinary reminder of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin’s total lack of racial discrimination which must have been quite something given the era.  Of course they called Sammy Davis Jr “smoky” and made lots of jewish jokes, but they also made very rude mother-in-law and girlfriend jokes.

Mark Adams as Dean Martin was particularly good.  He introduced himself by saying “Hello, I’m Dean Martin and I’m an alcoholic” and “do I look blurry to you?” and proceeded to slosh his way through his set with a huge amount of style and charm.  It just made us all yearn for that lifestyle back in a time when everybody enjoyed themselves hugely without worrying about the consequences of over-indulgence.

Three gorgeous women wearing dresses that oozed sex appeal made up The Burelli Sisters and they added the extra touch of glamour required.  This talented cast was backed up by a very tight 15 piece orchestra.

My father would have loved it.  I took an older couple who thought it was brilliant  - “a damn good show” was their summing up of events.  I slightly expected not to love it myself, but it was FAR better than I thought it would be.   I think we should all take our teenagers.  They’d learn a thing or two about life.

It is only on until Saturday July 3rd in Richmond but I see they are then moving on to Whitley Bay followed by Leeds so try and go if you can.