Back in London

I’m back in London for another course with the big leapers.  This one should provide ample blogging fodder and no doubt at my own expense.  It’s an Image (verbal and non-verbal communication) Seminar.  After last month’s fiasco of having to pitch Julesritter.com, I have come back for more.  Needs must.  

Love the Dress – I’ll take mine with wellies

If Boris Johnson can be London’s Mayor then I can become a public speaker.  We are supposed to turn up at the seminar in an outfit that makes us feel our best.  I have gone for what the Americans call a pant suit – no guessing the colour – a smart white blouse and a pair of Sarah Jessica Parker killer stilletos.  It must be mid-life crisis time as I hardly ever wear high heels during the day but as tall people are more successful I’ll take the height, I have a feeling I’ll need it.  We are also supposed to bring with us our worst outfit, or clothes from our wardrobe that we hardly ever wear.  Now this was a revelation.  I have realised that I think I am Wallis Simpson: That my life is one long cocktail hour on one long cruise dreaming of becoming Queen.  I have a wardrobe full of evening wear: Strappy numbers in silky material, that get to go out and play half a dozen times a year at the most.  Life in my little Swiss village with the cows and Marie-Thérèse (the real power of the village) in the local shop with her disapproving eyes, just doesn’t live up to my wardrobe unless l move or turn into Vivienne Westwood and team all my evening wear with a pair of wellies.  A look that will cause a constitutional crisis in the Uk and the Dominions?  Hardly.

Did you know that Wallis Simpson’s birth name was Bessie Wallis Warfield?  Not a name you would give up a throne for but what a reinvention success story.  Bessie?  to Duchess of Windsor?  Brilliant. 

The other day I went looking for sandals.  A nice pair of sensible every day sandals for walking the dog in.  I bought a pair of gold strappy diamanté heels - that make even my ankles look arabian stallion-ish.  Wallis had won yet again.  So they are with me in London as a symbol of that redundant half of my wardrobe which means I wear my dressing gown a lot.

But all that is tomorrow.  Today I have a full day in London!  I am meeting a commissioning editor of a Sunday paper this morning at St. Katherine’s Dock which I intend to walk to from Covent Garden as part of my quest to get to know London properly and then I am going to find a large bookshop and decamp for the afternoon. 

Wish you all were here.

Copyright Jules Ritter June 2008