“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
Looking for ways to relax to the max? Now we’re all staying at home more and the clocks have changed, here are ten ways to cheer yourself up on these dark days for the ultimate blissful bedtime.
Hand sanitiser is now a major part of our lives. Anything with over 60 per cent alcohol content and a great smell gets the thumbs up, says Caroline Phillips. These are the best hand sanitisers on the market.
Caroline Phillips puts an electric and a pedal bike through their paces, plus some elite cycling gear tips…
View Web pageMeet the people who can get you home in a hurry, says Caroline Phillips. Read on for the lowdown on private air travel.
View Web pageIf you want a masseur with magic fingers who’s bookable throughout the year, Esther Cato is your lady. It’s not just that this healer-meets-ultimate-stress-buster-meets-masseur is so available. It’s also that she’s so good. So thank your lucky stars that government restrictions have just lifted, and book to see Esther in your London home for a deep tissue therapeutic massage. Or bag her for a pregnancy massage. Or a Swedish one.
Sam Ashton-Booth is newly redundant, so his venture The Outside Oven gives a new meaning to Eat Out to Help Out, whilst also giving a new spin to home-cooked meals. Plus, in these uncertain times, his feasts costs far less than any Michelin meal in a restaurant. The average food spend at The Ledbury was £125 per head, without alcohol. Caroline Phillips tells us more…
View Web pageExpect everything from a deluge of divorces (those already unhappy couples who were holed up during the pandemic) through to a mass exodus to live in the countryside, far from the madding, (masked) crowd. Anticipate dealing with your tubby Coronatummy – and body hair (that’s you, ladies) – and possibly finding a new career too.
Here’s our guide to the top dozen services and practitioners for the next steps. Whether you’re after the world’s best off-Zoom yoga, the ultimate post-lockdown facial or mouth-watering new foodie experiences, read on.
It’s like disappearing down the best of rabbit holes and arriving at a Scottish baronial version of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. The skew-whiff clipped topiary on the sloping lawn looks as if it’s been cut by a drunken gardener or the March Hare; the 240-acre estate is dotted with water-sprouting mermaids, characters from Robert Burns, Robert Burns himself and Ossian, the mythical Scottish Bard. The Queen of Hearts must have shouted, “Off with their heads” because there are decapitated heads (AKA stone busts) on the garden walls.
Meet the people who will get you shipshape in mind, body and soul.
Deep under Regent Street, you’ll find yourself immersed in the Hotel Café Royal’s specialist Watsu pool with small floats attached to your shins. Here, Steve Karle guides you in an hour- long underwater dance of stretching, shiatsu, joint mobilisation and craniosacral work. You’ll feel weightless, and will leave the pool deliciously spaced out, your aches eased. Then you’ll bliss out again with the other parts of this Four Elements treatment: a body massage, hot stones and scalp massage.
From high tech to a high fort. This is what you get in Hyderabad and Secunderabad the joint capital of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in India. It’s located between the Deccan Plateau and the Western Ghats. Hyderabad, the historic city, has Muslim monuments aplenty, thronging bazaars, and museums. Meanwhile, dear reader, Secunderabad – the modern admin city founded by the Brits – is of almost zilch interest.
The opening scene of The Welkin, a world premiere by Lucy Kirkwood, is visually compelling. The audience is presented with what could almost be a bank of enormous television screens inside a broadcasting studio. But inside each frame, a live woman is doing housework: changing nappies, beating carpets. It’s not the only thing that makes this such an aesthetically pleasing play (with design by Bunny Christie). The sober and muted palette — of olive, fawns, creams – gives the feeling of walking into a Vermeer or 18th century Dutch painting, although the play takes place in East Anglia.
View Web pageYou can buy a new Jimmy Choo handbag for £130, a Belstaff parka for £150-£600 less than the RRP, or a Roland Mouret coat reduced by 85 per cent to £250. But this bargain world is accessible solely to those in the know. Luxury brands tell only a select few about the dedicated sample sale venues that aren’t in designer outlets and that typically discount by 50 to 75 per cent.
I am onstage in front of 65 strangers who think I’m a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why have I agreed…
I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs.…
As we stepped off the Dodekanisos Pride ferry onto the Greek island of Symi for our late August beach holiday, our thoughts were on sunbathing…