the northern front

What a joy this frizzen frozen weather is for those of us who live in a town and don't have to get anywhere. I haven't even looked at the car since the week before Christmas. Outside activity is walking the dogs either in the sparkly fog, greeting other dog-walkers looming ghostly through the gloam, or shuffling up to Waitrose under the momentary magic of a ice-blue sky. Waitrose, by the way, is itself still magic in Glasgow. It probably costs more, but it's a bit of a joy! Having spent much of my childhood waiting outside the greengrocer for my mother (several obligatory tons of conversation before the purchase of several tons of vegetables), only to hear her say 'I've just got to nip into the chemist' (for a medicine cabinet of chitter-chatter before emerging with small bottle of Milk of Magnesia) I'm a fan of supermarkets. In my view, shopping in the UK should be quick and painless, as opposed to shopping in France, which should be lengthy and leave all British people feeling faintly inadequate.

I've been deep into Victorian fashion for my new book. I love all those chemisettes of snowy lace and tippets of swansdown. I also learned, from the introduction to Nancy Bradfield's lovely costume book (1968), that in the undercroft of Westminster Abbey, there are wax effigies of dead grandees, life-sized and fully dressed in their own clothes. She writes: 'For hundreds of years it was customary for these life-sized, fully robed figures of wood or wax to be borne through the streets, on the coffin, at the funeral of kings or queens or other great persons ... The last effigy to be actually so carried was that of Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham, in 1743'. I suppose it was to reassure the dead blue-bloods that heaven wasn't entirely full of riff-raff ...