The Lady is a British magazine that was introduced to me by my dear friend Victoria, and something that I’m sure many of you are familiar with already. But oh how my life has improved since reading it. This is Town & Country on steroids. Every sentence in it is beautiful, but these are the most perfect sentences. I have henceforth abandoned writing, as I will never be this charming.
“Tania Kindersley lives in the North East of Scotland with two amiable lab collie crosses and one very grumpy Gloucester Old Spot pig.”
“Many restaurants, in quest of novelty, have dispensed with the long tradition of plates.”
“Virgo: An airy-fairy plan starts to solidify though you may not yet have grasped quite what a change this can bring.”
“The beloved pooch who became The Lady’s canine columnist is struggling in her twilight years, but Rachel Johnson is determined to give her a dignified goodbye.”
“I don’t care about the age thing at all. I just care about being nearer to death, which is something I don’t want.”
“Common sense is sadly not so common amongst humans and comes in spite of, and not the result of, education.”
“I’m eating a chicken burger with a pint of Suffolk Gold ale and Fulham are 4-0 up against Chelsea.”
“At our own dear Treby Arms in Sparkwell, Devon, my mother was disconcerted by the pudding-in-a-jar phenomenon, although not as much as by the pudding-in-a-flowerpot.”
“Two of the blessings of winter in a seaside town are beaches empty enough to give the impression of private ownership and the reduction in the number of seagulls.”
“I was somewhat stunned to receive an email last week that began: ‘Hey, Annie’. Isn’t this rather familiar from someone who doesn’t know me? I have no idea how to reply.”
“Rhubarb, it turns out, has a bleaching quality and has left two pale marks on my good bone slacks.”
“By the time the PDSA pet slimmer of the year is announced in December, a team of podgy pooches, chunky cats, a roly-poly rabbit and even a rotund rat will have had six months to shed their excess weight.”
“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been compared to a Labrador.”
“Next week: Boat painters.”
[Image via]
I read all of these in Fry and Laurie’s Jeeves-and-Wooster voices, as I am sure God intended.
There is an equilvent, online only publication called The Rake which isn’t as good (it’s far too aware of how it sounds) but does occasionally toss of gems like , in a suit guide “if you are a gentleman who wears his prosperity well you may wish a fuller cut”
That is the most beautiful sentence I’ve heard all day and I will from now on be telling people that I’m just wearing my prosperity.
how old is this magazine issue that Fulham are up 4-0 vs. Chelsea??
tbf if you’re going to ‘the lady’ for recent football results you are going to be sorely disappointed
well, I did get that impression, yes
it does actually make more sense in context- here
update: Fulham have literally never been ahead of Chelsea by 4 goals to nil.
But I googled the quote, and it was a hypothetical happiest moment from some actor, so that makes sense and also now I feel bad for him on account of his sad, sad Fulham dreams.
🙁
Although the only Fulham game I have seen involved them beating (the closest thing there is to) my team! It’s not so bad, he could be a Derby County supporter.
Well okay then! Understanding washes over me in waves. But hey, Chelsea are still in some danger of relegation; maybe his sad, sad Fulham dreams will come true after all! (Note that I am not seriously considering Fulham getting promoted as a possibility.)
oh, would I love to see Chelsea get relegated….
but yeahhhh I’d think if anything, Fulham are closer to dropping down another level.
wait Fulham might fall out of the Championship?? Oof. I was a somewhat Fulham fan in the Clint Dempsey days, damn it.
haha not actually! I just checked, and they’re 8 points off the bottom, and in 19th place out of 24 teams. But that’s still… not great.
wasn’t Bolton in the Premier League at some point? And now they are dead last in the Championship? That’s very not good.
*sob* WE ARE DOING BETTER NOW
ish
oh [fun] it all
Poor Fulham, I remember their Fulhamerica days fondly. (Also Moritz Volz.)
Moritz Volz!! of the best website theme song ever !!
I, too, miss Fulhamerica </3
Chelsea getting relegated would make all of my dreams come true, forever. The only thing that would make it better is if Mourinho had still been there when it happened.
I’m not sure it’s happened! If the “Suffolk Gold Ale” they mention is the one from St Peter’s Brewery, which was only founded in 1996 (I’ve thought about this too hard) then I really don’t know what is going on here. Maybe the magazine is from… the future????
my favorite thing about this Wiki page is the fan perception stuff, how Fulham and QPR fans both consider Chelsea their main rival, while Chelsea fans are all “er, we’ve got actual teams to fight for titles with, sorry guys”
I find it endearing how my local(ish) team’s rivals are 40 miles and several counties away. http://www.theguardian.com/football/football-leag…
oh, god, the love i am feeling right now. it is unbearable.
I bought a copy of The Lady to hate-read just last week! I feel like I’m in tune with the zeitgeist.
“Many restaurants, in quest of novelty, have dispensed with the long tradition of plates.”
I hope whatever piece this is from references the We Want Plates Twitter account and/or the John Finnemore “Put it on a plate” song.
Here are my selected highlighed, copied and pasted from my comment in last week’s Open Thread.
– There is a letter from a man who has spent most of his life farming in Kenya and Zimbabwe (he also uses the phrase “colonial Africa”, which feels awkward and also like it’s the 20s) and having a male-orientated and erratic social life; consequently, “going to smart lunch and dinner parties in Dorset” where he now lives made him feel out of his depth. Then he read the Modern Manners column when he found a copy of The Lady at his stepson’s house, borrowed some back issues, and has learned some useful lessons for dealing with tricky social situations.
– One letter-writer claims that “My belief has always been that the only proper place for rice is in a pudding”.
– Hard-hitting journalism: one of the cover stories is “Cats vs Dogs: Which is best?”.
– One of the columnists went to see Hamilton (worlds colliding!) “Hamilton, the musical, uses mostly rap to tell the story, with extraordinarily inventive, catchy music. I doubt it will ever make its way to London, given that it’s essentially the story of the American Revolution, and let’s face it, that didn’t go so well for us over in England.”
– There are adverts for things like fur storage, oriental rug repair, and an eight-seat box at the Royal Albert Hall for hire.
– The job vacancies section is … interesting. Lots of requests for housekeepers/nannies. Includes sentences like “This is a formal but jolly Household, where experience with fine clothing and antiques is a must”. One particularly terrifying one is looking for an “Energetic and smiley housekeeper with loads of experience” for a country home, which is home only to two Labradors during the week, but “When the family are at home the house is run like a hotel and the housekeeper is required to work long hours and to exceptional standards”. Requirements/job description: “Animal and children lover, non-smoker, driver, laundry of delicate fabrics, immaculate ironing, serving at dinner parties, family cooking, basic security, managing deliveries, shopping for groceries. Super references required”. I feel tired just reading it.
Smiling all the time might be the toughest part of that job
…I know someone who got paid in a Brooklyn apartment for taking care of 4 fussy prize winning show cats. Like the cats owned the apartment he was there as thier caretaker.
I am allergic to cats and this is still my straight-up dream job.
This was back when . Kensington wasn’t a hot neighborhood and wasn’t called Kenington tho.
this sounds amazing.
I recently met a girl (also in Brooklyn) whose job was to look after *famous designer’s* cat!! (Not Karl Lagerfeld/Choupette, sadly).
I just think of the naval officer who was required to clean up after the ship captain’s pet capybara on Bob’s Burgers.
Trying to wrap my head around what might be involved in “basic security” that gets it onto the list. Locking the door at night? Changing the wifi password after every houseful of drunk guests leaves? Disarming would-be burglars while ironing immaculately?
I spend a LOT of time reading the vacancies in The Lady. I have an idle dream of being a housekeeper, and I KNOW it would be awful, but I can’t help it.
“Hamilton, the musical, uses mostly rap to tell the story, with extraordinarily inventive, catchy music. I doubt it will ever make its way to London, given that it’s essentially the story of the American Revolution, and let’s face it, that didn’t go so well for us over in England.”
Why do I love this sentence so much
Cats.
It’s not even a question!
The Hamilton thing is probably right, I doubt it’ll come here. *cries*
Me and my fellow Hamiltrash BFF are talking about going to see In The Heights, though!
“I don’t care about the age thing at all. I just care about being nearer to death, which is something I don’t want.”
Same
I especially like that one because… is that not exactly what the “age thing” is?
Exercises with a stick!
Onna stick!
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during the editorial meeting where they decided not only to include this article, but to feature it on the cover
I really want to know what they are! So clearly this does work on a certain percentage of the population.
Clicked through to the Brenda Blethyn interview: “On the day we finished Vera in October I got a new puppy, a cockapoo. He was tiny and now he’s a big walloping thing. We’re trying to tame the lion. ”
Thank you for introducing me to a whole new time waste.
I’ve had the most anxiety-inducing day in recent memory and this is the mostly oddly soothing thing. Thank you.
“I was somewhat stunned to receive an email last week that began: ‘Hey, Annie’. Isn’t this rather familiar from someone who doesn’t know me? I have no idea how to reply.”
She sounds like a blast.
Remined me of this charming email I (an American) got from the dean of my british college.
“Thank you confirming.
Please note that it is conventional to have a more formal style of writing when writing to tutors and college officers. ‘Cheers’ is not a formal, or particularly polite, way of ending an email.
Best wishes,
XXXXXXX”
Oh my!!!! Were you a little bit devastated by it, or were you ok? I think I would be devastated.
I would take to the sea and never return, probably.
I honestly got so stressed reading that email I need to go lie down. How do you come back from that?
(My college advisor chastised me in an email once and I managed never to speak to him again; if I saw him I would leave the vicinity immediately or pretend we’d never met.)
Once one of tutors emailed my class with a very sarcastic email saying that the recent snowfall had clearly rendered us all incapable of walking from [place where most first-years had accommodation] to [building where his study was], a walk of about five minutes. He then sent a very sheepish email a few minutes later saying that one of my classmates had helpfully reminded him that he’d changed the date of our class to the following Monday. Immediately-withdrawn chastisement delivered in error is the only sort I can bear.
HA! Kudos to the classmate who privately emailed him to correct him; I probably would have replied-all and publicly shamed him.
My friends and I were trying to arrange a time to hang out recently, using Twitter as is our wont, and one of them tweeted “tomorrow doesn’t work for me but Saturday does” and I fired back without thinking “tomorrow is Saturday, dipshit.” Nope. Tomorrow was Friday. I have never been so publicly shamed by so many so quickly.
I didn’t go into work once because I thought it was Saturday. (It was actually Friday).
I got a text from a co-worker asking “Where are you?” and I thought it was a joke, until I read the NYT online and saw the date.
The sad thing was that my boss at the time (who was a nice but totally ineffectual space cadet) didn’t even notice I was gone.
So funny, because I always think of cheers as the sign-off of jovial, briskly polite people who are more European than I am.
“Give your mind and body an mot”? What is an mot?
An MOT is an annual check vehicles have to undergo to make sure they are safe to be on the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test
“Many restaurants, in quest of novelty, have dispensed with the long tradition of plates.”
This is even better when compared to a recent WSJ article titled “Bowls are the New Plates,” with this charming lede: “In the world of eating, bowls are big.”
Man, that’s a sports-commentary level of ridiculous.
Reminds me of Olivia Joules, actually: “suddenly you’re seeing more dining rooms everywhere!” in one publication, “death of the dining room?” In another.
Heard last week: “this is the type of game, for the [local sports team], where it’s really important to keep scoring points.”
Or any sport as playoffs approach “X Team really needs to win this game tonight.”
As opposed to all the other games where winning is just an added bonus?
I enjoy watching certain sports, but American sports commentators are a profoundly stupid lot.
Which I would mind less if they didn’t almost certainly get paid exponentially more than I do.
Ah, plates: https://50years50recipes.files.wordpress.com/2011…
I was wondering how best to staff my yacht, but now all my questions are answered.
“I was somewhat stunned to receive an email last week that began: ‘Hey, Annie’. Isn’t this rather familiar from someone who doesn’t know me? I have no idea how to reply.”
I had a stranger call me “Em” in an email and I wanted to reply “bitch my name is Emily” so, apparently I need a subscription to this magazine and/or I AM ACTUALLY THE BITCH HERE
People call me Jess and I want to flip tables at them, so
you’re not alone?
Also if you are unsure whether someone uses a nickname, the best thing to do is use their full given name, and wait to be corrected.
no you are not, people need to think before they assign nicknames! This has had my husband finding his name shortened by people at work in strange ways; he’s Irish, we live in the UK, and what is a very common name in Ireland is unheard of here.
My personal pet peeve is people misspelling my name when replying to an email that I’ve sent. It’s RIGHT THERE! You KNOW it sounds weird, so CHECK! COPY & PASTE IS YOUR FRIEND!
I…may get slightly shirty with these people.
I had an intern who spelled my name wrong in emails FOR AGES despite the fact that it is PART OF MY EMAIL ADDRESS and although he is otherwise very competent I had to resist the urge to strangle him. When I did finally point it out he was suitably embarrassed and apologetic, however, so we’re cool.
Yes! My first name can be spelled with either an “i” or a “y” at the end, and my teenage parents ended it with an “i.” (Thanks, Dad.) One of my friends at work — with whom I have worked for 15 years and with whom I actually am friends outside of work — recently sent me an email, copied to our team, addressing me by name ending in “y.” I replied (to all), “Hey, how long have you known me?” Also, I have an opposing counsel named Mark who constantly spells my name wrong even though it’s in the email to which he is responding. I have started addressing him as “Marc,” but he hasn’t caught on yet.
Yes, it enrages me when people misspell my name in emails. Particularly work emails where my email address actually contains my full first name. I am so very very tempted to passively aggressively respond by mispelling their name.
Friends do that. She is Cathy (not Kathy) and their last name ends with s, though it sounds like it could easily be a z. If, frex, Peter, misspells her name, she spells theirs KPeter until they grovel. If any untoward z is added to the end of their last name, they add a z to yours until you figure it out.
This was not the point of your comment but I have never seen the contraction “frex” before and I now plan to use it at least once a day. So thank you.
any time! I am always pleased to make another convert.
There’s no excuse for misspelling names in a case like that! My email address is my full name, first.middle.last, and my rabbi STILL gets it wrong. (My name is Carolyn; he types Caroline every time.)
One time I got a request for a letter of recommendation from someone who had ripped into me once for supposedly bad-mouthing the show she was directing – and she called me Caroline in it. I couldn’t believe she had the nerve to ask me for a letter of recommendation 3 years later, so I finally got my sweet revenge and wrote back like “I don’t know you well enough to write this letter, and I don’t like what I do know of you so what were you even thinking? Also, my name is Carolyn; it’s right there in my email address.” (The email was longer and laced with more profanity than this summary.)
Turns out my name was similar enough to her former supervisor’s that she accidentally clicked on my name in her contact list.
What’s great (“great”) is that my name actually is Caroline, and I constantly get it misspelled as Carolyn. Why can people not understand that these are two different names??
My aunt’s name is spelled Caroline and pronounced Carolyn. It must be extremely irritating for her.
Wait, seriously?! I thought Carolyn was just a weirder/more unusual name than Caroline and that’s why people always mess it up. Ok, the answer is actually just that people don’t realize there’s a difference between the two names.
I’m a Caroline and it’s CONSTANTLY being pronounced/spelled Carolyn.
I think the rule is that whichever version your name is, people are going to spell it or pronounce it the other way.
Have just now learned that those are not two alternate spellings of the same name.
I get nicknamed all the time and it drives me NUTS. I am not an Abby. I will never be an Abby. Even as a child my mother tried to nickname me and I was straight up too dignified to let it stand. It’s a shock I didn’t insist on going by first, middle and surname in elementary school.
And I am a simple Abbey who gets routinely Abigail’d! I suppose others know best when it comes to what our names are.
Okay, Abs.
Madam.
The next time that I occasion to see your calling card upon my tray, you may be assured that I will ignore it most pointedly.
(a hush falls over the room, broken only by the sound of someone’s monocle falling to the ground and shattering)
Arise, arise, Readers of The Lady!
Fell deeds awake, cards and cutting!
Pearls shall be clutched, monocles be splintered,
a forward-day, a mauve day, ere the sun rises!
sure thing, Abi-dab
My third grade teacher, who was lovely in most ways, decided that she couldn’t have two girls of the same name in her class. Instead of using our middle or last name initial to distinguish us, she decided one of us had to go by a middle name. The other girl was more stubborn than I and so I was Suzanne for a full school year. It left me with a deep and abiding hatred of nicknames. My name is my name dammit!
How long had she been teaching? I can’t imagine that a teacher’s insistence on never having two kids with the same name in her class would last many years. I went to pretty small schools, but IIRC the only year of my schooling where there *weren’t* two kids with the same name in my class was 6th grade, when the class was only 13 kids altogether.
In my all-girls high school graduating class of 66, there were at least 4 Laurens and at least two each of Kates and Katies. I’m Melisa with one S, and rarely encounter another one of those, but there were also two Melissas in that class who spelled it the usual way.
Whoa, sorry, this turned into a long tangent. TL;DR I THINK ABOUT NAMES A LOT
I taught English for two years in a small Peace Corps country where there’s only about a dozen names in common use for each gender. It wasn’t unusual to have a class of 30 kids with 5-6 of the boys or girls sharing the same name.
I was the fifth Elizabeth in my middle school class and the last to arrive, so I got a nickname I hated then,grudgingly came to accept, but that has followed me unto this very day. Rargh.
I had a co-worker who I already hated on account of him being a mind-numbingly incompetent jackass who worked for maybe four hours a day because he was besties with the boss and he started calling me Carol and I just flat-out refused to respond until he came up to me and then I said, ‘Oh, I assumed you were talking to someone else. My name is Caroline.’
Dude. I have students email me: Hi Miss Period Eye!
AND I WANT TO CUT A BITCH.
It is Dr. or Prof. NEVER MISS.
We are not calling to each other across a crowded room.
YOU WOULD NOT DO THIS TO A MALE PROFESSOR, I bet.
NOPE THEY SURE WOULDN’T
Thank you. I said this to a male colleague who (predictably) said that “It had never happened to him, but he didn’t think it was sexist.”
ARRRHHHH.
Where is my misandry tote bag?
I know a lot of people in academia, and it’s definitely not just you! This happens to female professors all the time.
I have told students, “Mrs. Semicolon is my mother. You are welcome to ask her your question if you like, but she has less patience than I do.”
I had a lovely philosophy professor who was just the nicest woman, very gentle, patient. One day a student addressed her as “Miss _____” and she whipped around like a velociraptor and said “EXCUSE ME. MY NAME IS DR. _____. I EARNED IT. USE IT.”
I never loved her more than I did in that moment.
Mr Daki is a lecturer, and others constantly call him “Dr. Daki” and he hates it cause it’s unearned and he won’t let it stand, so he corrects them, and then it’s awkward.
He almost never gets called Mr. Daki.
From friends, nicknamification can be a charming indication of intimacy or, from acquaintances, a sign that they hope to grow closer. A stranger who nicknamifies is A BOUNDER.
Yes yes I said yes
Nothing in this world makes me seethe more than attorneys who email me and call me Liz. I do not go by Liz. I get all four of my goddamn syllables.
You have the name of a queen and should be addressed as such.
Damn right. Diminutives are for friends. My friends know I do not go by Liz, ever.
I wouldn’t have expected to fully understand someone who (likely) has more money than the last three generations of my family, and yet I do. For the better part of a year, a bank-teller called me by a nickname, a nickname that I regard as personal between members of my immediate family (mostly because I can’t stop them from using it), and a stranger was just presuming that was what I liked to be called. I previously had no idea that nicknames was a personal boundary of mine, but there it was.
I eventually got her to stop by telling her a nickname that I preferred, and I suspect I was the bitch in that situation.
I love that they put James Norton on the cover – in costume for “War and Peace.” Somehow, that seems about the right era for “Grand Garden Designs” and being aghast at an overly familiar email. 🙄
THANK YOU for the context of this cover! I was sitting here thinking “so, did they just put out a casting call for a lily-white british dandy or…?”
I for sure was thinking, “So… they dressed up a guy AS Capability Brown, or…”
everyone should go watch him in “grantchester.” what a handsome melt.
I watch Grantchester solely to see Robson Green being gloriously crabby. Can’t quite get on board with James Norton since I saw him first in Happy Valley, but Robson has always been a personal off-kilter crush of mine.
I had JUST closed the tab on the Fug Girls recap of War and Peace when I came over here to see this and I was so confused for just a second.
I’m confused by how much he looks like Josh Dallas.
When I saw James Norton in character and then read things like “Exercises with a stick” and “Grand garden design” I thought it was a parody of magazines like Cosmopolitan for the Regency era. When I went to the webstie I was very disappointed.
I thought it was parody at first, too. How can “Exercises with a Stick!” possibly be a real headline?!?
I have henceforth abandoned writing, as I will never be this charming.
You are a million times more charming than The Lady, Jaya, and you don’t fill me with class rage! You’re not a massive Tory! You definitely come out ahead.
james norton though. when is grantchester coming back?
March 27 (many, many exclamation points)
My grandmother asked me that yesterday. She keeps trying to get me to watch it. I haven’t yet. But apparently I’m still the one who can be relied upon to know when it’s on.
oh my do i wish my grandmother would watch grantchester with me instead of just fox news, forever. lucky you!
My grandmother’s favorite show was “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. She was quite a character…
Why would you put rhubarb on your slacks? Was this in the same article as the restaurants that don’t do plates?
I assumed it was a gardening thing, and your version is infinitely better. #platesnotpleats
Oh my god the mental image of a bunch of incredibly proper, well dressed British people eating food off of their laps.
I’d like to imagine that they buy specially-made gardening slacks from some exclusive Jermyn Street tailor. Each pair costs £600.
Well, why was she gardening, or cooking, in her good bone slacks? Sympathy level zero.
I have apparently recently entered the age bracket where they start randomly sending me free issues of Hello Canada and honestly I AM HERE FOR IT. There was like a whole feature on this jewelry designer I’ve never heard of and her truly ridiculous mansion.
I will be in that magazine one day. You can count on it.
I believe in you.
I LOVE snobby British magazines and I wish Tatler wasn’t so expensive here 🙁
I come from a working class British heritage. Call me over-blunt, and I certainly do not mean to be classist, but the ‘charm’ is somewhat lost among the smell of particually insular, over-priviledged, better-than-thou middle-aged upperclass women.
The romanticisation of people like this is far from the reality of actually dealing with them.
My mother-in-law is outraged by some of her favorite restaurants serving meals on wood cutting boards instead of plates. When we were in Dublin at Christmas she had me ask the server if the steak she wanted would come out on a proper plate before she would order it.
She might need a subscription to The Lady.
Your mother-in-law is completely right.
Are we sure that “Next week: boat painters” isn’t a crossover with Dad Magazine? It seems like boat painting would be an area of interest both for Dads and Ladies.
(Bone slacks and the bleaching effects of rhubarb, not so much.)
The Lady would recommend expensive contractors who paint boats, while Dad Magazine would discuss the art of boat painting, I think.
YESSSS
I read The Lady in the GP waiting room for the first time in December and of course thought of the Toast. Definitely gives Dad Magazine a run for its money. I love it!!! I am considering a subscription….
YES. This is a real life Dad Magazine. Seriously, just read this and imagine that all magazine-worthy dads have been reincarnated as upper class British ladies. The dad qualities are so strong I can’t even tell whether I should be outraged or not. Who could be mad at someone whose idea of a story is “that time when rhubarb ruined my good pants”??
Boat painters, are they house painters for boats or persons who paint pictures of boats? Dare I ask?
Is this an ‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford it’ situation?
Isn’t a painter in the boat context the rope that tows your dinghy? Or maybe a type of dinghy? I have the feeling they aren’t talking about painting a boat but I cannot guarantee this.
What?! Twist! I’ll never fit in high society, will I?
I thought, based on Swallows and Amazons, that a painter was the rope you used to tie up to the dock. If that is what they’re referring to, I don’t know why it needs a whole feature.
The advice section of that magazine is AMAZING
WHERE IN THE U.S. CAN I OBTAIN THIS
WHERE
http://www.lady.co.uk/
You can subscribe for physical issues if you want the full monty.
THESE PEOPLE AND THE SECRET RULES IN THEIR HEADS.
Dear Thomas,
In shops when making enquiries I often find the assistant will turn to a colleague and say ‘She wants to know…’ rather than ‘The customer would like to know…’ The offenders are always of the younger generation.
Still on the subject of poor manners, the hairdresser’s receptionist said to me (after I had been ignored for about five minutes), ‘Are you all right there?’ I’m afraid I snapped back, ‘No, I’m not all right – your computer seems to be of more interest to you than your customer.’ I think the sarcasm may have been lost on her.
Do you think I’m overreacting in either of these cases?
Elizabeth Mueller, Glasgow
Dear Elizabeth,
We’re in what I understand is called the ‘clearance season’ – ie, the January sales, which nowadays start on Boxing Day if not before. How many of us will be subject to this kind of o [sic] hand treatment from shop sta [sic] as we battle for bargains?
You’ve certainly hit on two pronounced contemporary sources of annoyance. It’s always rude to refer to someone present as ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘this bloke’ or ‘chap’ or ‘guy’. I made a fuss during a card game recently when a fellow player said ‘He’s dealing’ – meaning me. ‘I’ve got a name, you know,’ I barked. I have to say the others made fun of me.
continued here: http://www.lady.co.uk/style/9487-the-lady-guide-t…
Imagine being this offended all day, every day. Imagine walking through the world comparing everything to a pedantic mental rulebook, constantly coping with being wronged and slighted in literally every social interaction. Imagine the mind that doesn’t conclude that their rulebook is irrelevant, but instead that everybody else is to blame for being ignorant of it.
I really want thatbadadvice to start covering The Lady. I have never in all my picky existence thought of getting mad at a salesperson for telling a coworker “She needs [thing].” Jesus.
I once read an article where a woman described working in job placement. She recounted witnessing an older female manager at a cosmetology school sniffily reject a young female candidate for a receptionist position that paid about $22K per year because the candidate interviewed well but wore a cotton tank top under a professional blouse rather than a ‘silk shell.’ Vicious.
“I’m afraid I snapped back, ‘No, I’m not all right – your computer seems to be of more interest to you than your customer.’ I think the sarcasm may have been lost on her.”
Where was the sarcasm there? What was there to be lost?
I actually used to work at The Lady…. IT IS AMAZING AND I HAVE ALL THE STORIES https://sweetliesandtrickery.wordpress.com/2011/1…
Covers of The Lady seem to have Kate Middleton on them 98 % of the time, the other 2 % are Downton Abbey actors and the odd Bingey-Bong Crumpetsnatch.
Editor Rachel Johnson (sister of London mayor Boris Johnson) actually published a diary about her first year editing The Lady – it is a truly extraordinary read, from the furious dowager duchess of the Budworth family who own the magazine, to roping in Debo Devonshire (nee Mitford) as advice columnist, to the flurry of cancelled subscriptions when she published a knitting pattern to make reindeer antlers for your dog: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diary-Lady-First-Year-Edi…
And here is a piece by the furious Lady Budworth about editor Rachel Johnson’s decision to invite a camera crew in for the documentary The Lady and the Revamp – if you’re interested, this is well worth a watch, but please don’t think that it’s representative of all British publishing! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/m…
This magazine is referenced multiple times on Downton Abbey: every time someone needs to hire a lady’s maid they place a classified in it.
My family jokes about how much we abbreviate stuff by trying to outdo each other shortening words until we're down to coded head nods and meaningful glances.
Elizabeth clearly doesn't live in the same Glasgow as I do. A wonderfully friendly town, but the fact she wasn't called a c*nt is pretty much the height of manners for some neighbourhoods.
I used to work around the corner and *for some reason* we had an office subscription to The Lady. I cancelled, and they still delivered every issue for 2 more years.
I had no idea this was still in print! I may subscribe, if they send it to the US (bet they don’t…). I first heard of this magazine on the London Underground during my only trip to that city. The train was delayed, and this slightly older side of middle aged British woman sitting across from me with her husband and she was _staring_ at me. Finally, as the train was just sitting there, she leaned over and said, “excuse me, but I just wanted to tell you I really like your coat.” It was January, and I was wearing my Catholic Housewife Grandma’s cobalt blue plush church coat with a fuzzy, furry sort of collar, which had become mine when my mom cleaned out her closet of things that Gramma had given her when she moved to Florida in the 70’s. I smiled at the woman on the train and said, “thank you, it was my grandmother’s.” I figured this would be one of those polite answers you make in public and that’s that, but to my surprise, the woman took an awed breath and said in huge surprise, “you mean, it’s a REAL one?” I had no idea what she meant. Apparently the collar of my coat identified it as a “Persian Lamb coat,” and she proceeded to tell me about a family tragedy in which her mother accidentally shut a panel of someone’s Persian Lamb in the door of a taxi, tearing it in half, and in order to replace it, placed an ad in “a magazine called THE LADY,” which title she said each time she mentioned it with the kind of reverent emphasis you express in all caps or maybe italics. Evidently this story happened during a financial crisis, and the woman’s mother ended up with an arm load of Persian Lamb Coats from all over England with sad stories about how their owners could really use the cash just now, and what a wrench it was to part with them. By this point the train had started moving again, and the woman’s fidgety husband rolled his eyes and said, “so thenow the had to post new ads in The Lady…” , and she turned to him to sort of shush him or something and I reached my stop. The friend I was with kept rolling her eyes at me all the way up the escalator. I have literally never heard anyone else mention this publication since that day, and was under the impression that it was out of print. But I feel oddly connected to it because of my breath taking (oh come on, I’m sure my coat was a good fake, Grandma put everything but the absolute necessities into her retirement!) Persian Lamb coat. Which sits in my closet now, mostly useless in Seattle, but loved too much to be parted with.