THE KISSING BOOTH

This little film won a short film competition Divine chocolate ran with Birds Eye View last year. What do you think? Is a bar of chocolate better than a snog?

MORE RED LIPSTICK

I know I'm obsessed by red lipstick, but I think this new Tom Ford one is a game-changer. The colour is a rich ruby red, neither too pink nor too orange.  It's very densely pigmented so it stays and stays yet it doesn't dry your lips but remains glossy (unlike the otherwise wonderful Bobby Brown red). It looks expensive, to boot, which is just as well since it's Tom Ford and thus costs eleventy three billion pounds.

It's not an everyday red like the Dior Addict 'New Look' one I mentioned a few posts ago, it is quite an emphatic shade. But by God, I love it.

I think it could be the red lipstick against which all other red lipsticks should be judged.

Tom Ford, Scarlet Rouge, £36

CHILDREN'S PARTIES

When I was a child, birthday parties took place at home: my mother kicked off with children's party games - pass the parcel, of course, pin the tail on the donkey, musical statues - you know the drill - and then we'd have tea - cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, cocktail sausages,  jelly and icecream and a home-made birthday cake. Then, at home-time, off everyone would go with a balloon and a slice of cake wrapped in a paper napkin.

Fast forward nearly forty years and this kind of party seems a rarity - clever mums play it as a retro-riff and get away with it, but once the infants are primary school age, it seems one is expected to make the kind of effort appropriate to offspring of Oligarchs, or to the launch of a new beauty product. A venue must be hired, with an entertainer - possibly two - or alternatively, one might do what a friend of Trefusis Minor does every year, which is to hire an entire cinema for a preview screening of a hot-ticket children's movie. It seems that these days the food must be kiddie-lavish too - I remember a splendid party where the children were presented with the tiniest possible smoked salmon sandwiches, vast amounts of quails eggs, and a croquembouche of Ladurée macarons, but I suppose that's West London for you. Don't get me started on the awesome contents of party bags - I swear the infamously high-grade GQ Men of the Year goody bag has nothing on some of those Trefusis Minor has come home with.

Of course, these kinds parties are very lovely and the children have a marvellous time: I'm sure that if we were very well-off we'd pull out the stops too but we really can't run to that kind of opulence chez Trefusis: I do wish that someone brave would come out with a Party Non-Proliferation Treaty, and we could go back to the low-fi approach of the 1970's.


I'm old enough to know that I don't need to compete with the hiring of a cinema, or having a flower-fairy themed party with 'real fairies' in a West London garden square and until now, we've had parties at home similar to the ones i had as a child. However, if one has to invite the whole class even something very modest gets shockingly expensive - now that The TT is about to turn five and every single person she meets seems to be her 'bestest friend in the whole world', I've had trouble capping the guest list at school friends only. I can't see how I can get away without hiring the church hall and the thought of trying to keep thirty children happy for a couple of hours with me as the 'mum-tertainment' fills me with clammy-handed dread, so there will have to be someone hired in for a side-show too. I can manage the food on my own, and bugger the party bags - they can have cake and a novelty pencil - but still, it's working out at about £100 per hour. Yikes.

Does anyone have any suggestions about giving a fun children's party without busting the budget or a blood-vessel?

SIX ESSENTIAL COCKTAILS

The Grey Goose Le Fizz, made using proper cocktail equipment

I'm very fond of cocktailing: the very act of ordering a Daiquiri or a Manhattan in a smart hotel bar makes me feel as if I am, despite all appearances to the contrary, a heady fizz of Jazz Age glamour and Bloomsbury loucheness. Every sip contains the promise of an evening at Jay Gatsby's or an invitation to Mrs Dalloway's Party.
You see, it's the myth of the cocktail, rather than the sum of its alcoholic parts, that's so incredibly potent: More than an amusing way to drink alcohol, a well-made cocktail is a sign that you recognise the possibility of a more sophisticated, less frantic world - at least until you slide inelegantly off your bar-stool having forgotten Dorothy Parker's maxim: 'I like to have a martini,/Two at the very most/Three and I'm under the table/Four and I'm under the host.'

Anyway, whilst cocktailing at Claridges or The Connaught is to Town what Bunburying is to the Country, it's the kind of treat one ought to reserve for when one really needs it, in the manner of a peculiarly expensive yet speedy rest-cure. But perfectly acceptable cocktails can, and should, be made at home too: I don't think I've ever managed the full F.Scott.F experience in my own kitchen, but there's something I rather like about making guests a pre-dinner cocktail rather than cracking open the usual bottle of champagne.

People talk a lot about the genius of the mixologist - I'm sure this is true when it comes to conjuring up a spectacularly novel molecular something like they do at Purl, but when you're simply after something with a little retro-elegance and a strong kick, you need neither skill nor a vast selection of arcane ingredients - if you have a decent gin, vodka, a white rum and a whisky or bourbon, some ice and something to measure the booze with, you're off to a good start. You don't need sugar syrup - caster sugar does perfectly well as long as you get it dissolved in the alcohol or citrus, if you're using it, and nor do you need special kit: I used to measure the alcohol in an old baby bottle and shake over ice in a (thoroughly cleaned) Dolmio jar, with a spare lid punched with holes for straining the liquid from the ice. However, although this approach scores ten out of ten for resourcefulness, it does rather ruin the Mad-Men effect - far better, as the marvellously knowledgeable and very kind Dan Priseman of Bitters and Twisted pointed out, to have the proper equipment.

Anyway, here are six classic cocktails everyone should be able to make without going further than Waitrose for the ingredients.

The Claridges Champagne Cocktail

Angostura Bitters
Sugarcubes
Remy Martin VSOP
Grand Marnier
Laurent Perrier
An orange

Put the sugarcube on a paper napkin or bit of kitchen roll before dropping the Bitters onto it - I find that if you lob the sugar in the glass first, it's all too easy to end up with a great, overpowering lug of Angostura. Drop it into a champagne flute and add 2 teaspoons of Remy Martin and one of Grand Marnier. Top up with Laurent Perrier (Claridges house champagne), and then pare a slice of orange peel over the glass so the oil adds a tiny hint of citrus.

Chez Trefusis, we don't usually run to Laurent Perrier and so I've most often made this with cheap champagne - the kind on offer at a supermarket, and an own-label brandy: it's not Claridges-perfection, but then nor is it thirteen quid a glass. I've also used Cointreau instead of Grand Marnier, depending on what's in the cupboard. The slice of orange peel is very pretty, but I like to pop a maraschino cherry in the glass as well. Growing up in the nineteen seventies has left an indelible mark.


The Trefusis Whisky Sour

Trefusis Whisky Sour:
please excuse it being in the wrong glass

I love whisky (and whiskeys), and have a cupboard full of single malts: I rather loathe that hushed reverence that seems to be attached to the drinking of single malts - I want to drink the damn thing, not write a poem to it, but I probably wouldn't make a whisky sour with The Macallan, or one of the older Glenfiddichs - the very slight smokiness of The Famous Grouse, however, does marvellously well. Anyway, a whisky sour is a cold toddy, by any other name. I also ignore people who go on about egg white in a whisky sour - it's fine in if you're in a bar, but chez Trefusis, if there are any egg whites around they go straight into a meringue.

I call this the Trefusis Whisky Sour because I think I may be making it with the wrong proportions of whisky to lemon. Never mind, it works for me.

2 measures of whisky
1 measure of freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp of caster sugar
a maraschino cherry

Stir the sugar in the lemon juice until it's dissolved, or at least until you can't be bothered whether it's dissolved or not, add the whisky, shake over ice, strain into whatever glass you have handy and add a marachino cherry.

I've also made this with Drambuie - I was given a bottle once and it's a very flexible cocktail ingredient. It's already sweetened with honey, so just add lemon and shake over ice.


Grey Goose Le Fizz


An incredibly refreshing alternative to pre-dinner champagne

35ml Vodka (Grey Goose, since it's their recipe, but again, unless you're a super-taster, I challenge anyone to be able to pass the pepsi challenge if voddie's mixed with other ingredients)
15ml Elderflower cordial
15ml freshly squeezed lime juice
60ml soda water (mostly when a recipe states soda water, I use sparkling mineral water, rather than leg it out to the nearest off-license, but I think I've established I'm not a purist)

Serve in a champagne glass.


Classic Daiquiri


When living in Cuba, Hemmingway would write between 8am and 2pm and then hove off to El Floridita for the first of a zillion Daiquiris. He liked them so much, he had his own made for him, the Papa Doble, but I prefer the original, which is deliciously sherberty.

60ml Bacardi (or any white rum)
25ml freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tsp caster sugar
Ice cubes
Crushed ice ( put ice cubes in a plastic bag between two teatowels and bash with a rolling pin)

Mix the lime juice and sugar together to dissolve the latter, add the rum, pour it over a combination of crushed and cubed ice and shake for about twice as long as you would normally. Strain it into a chilled martini glass.


Cosmopolitan

God, I hate Sex and the City for reasons too complicated and long-winded to go into here, but the Cosmo was made popular by the show and people seem to like it.

60ml Vodka
25ml Cointreau (I've also used Grand Marnier, no one said anything)
10ml fresh lime juice
25ml cranberry juice

Shake over ice, pour into a chilled martini glass


Gin Rickey

Ah, who couldn't love F.Scott.Fitzgerald's favourite drink? Apparently F.Scott loved gin because he thought it undetectable on the breath, which it isn't, of course. Anyway, the Gin Rickey is simple, exceptionally refreshing, very low calorie and after three I have no idea how he managed to finish writing The Great Gatsby.

60ml Gin
15ml freshly squeezed lime juice (call it the juice of half a lime)
Soda water (see above)

Put lots of ice into a tall glass (a Collins glass, if we're getting technical), pour in the lime juice, pour over the gin, throw in the squeezed out lime half and top up with soda water.


Old Fashioned

When Don Draper said 'Make mine an Old Fashioned' in series one of Mad Men, I thought, yes, to hell with your Roger Stirling martinis, bourbon is infinitely more devil-may-care and a lot more palatable than neat vodka with a hint of vermouth.
It's a cocktail that deserves a decent bourbon like Woodford Reserve: like a good martini, it's a drink that can't hide behind the other ingredients. Anyway, this is my favourite bourbon cocktail, possibly because of the Mad Men link, but also because of what it has in common with the classic Claridges champagne cocktail.

Sugar cube (or a tsp caster sugar)
Angostura bitters
60ml bourbon
Orange
Ice

Use a short, straight sided whisky glass. Put the caster sugar or a sugar cube into the glass and add a couple of drops of bitters. Carefully pare a long skein of orange over the glass so you catch the oils, then muddle (which is posh bar-man speak for giving it a good old mix around with a spoon or special muddling thingy), add bourbon, ice and stir.


There are, of course, zillions of other cocktails that are perfectly suited to making at home - the naffly named but delicious Flirtini for one, and the mis-named but easy-drinking French Martini for another. The cocktail I most often claim I want to drink is a Hemlocktini - invented by the lovely Waffle and I as an elegant solution to extreme situations - but since a martini glass rinsed with hemlock and filled with iced vodka would be as toxic as it sounds, it's just as well the Hemlocktini exists only as a metaphor.

But whether real or imagined, home-made or bar-bought, a cocktail is always a perfect treat: and as Fitzgerald expert and fellow cocktail-afficionado, Sarah Churchwell, is wont to remind me, 'cocktail' is also a verb. So then, when shall we next cocktail?

SEE SHERLOCK HOLMES & DR WATSON, LIVE AT THE SOHO THEATRE

Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez are Holmes and Watson

Sherlock Holmes is having something of a moment - the second Guy Ritchie film was out before Christmas, of course, and if the twitterati were to be believed, it was merely a gun-toting amuse-bouche for the second series of the much acclaimed BBC series. I'm rather fond of the agreeable Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson  - if you have yet to catch it, here's the first episode which aired last Sunday. But the vogue for everyone's favourite literary detective does not stop there - you can also catch more Holmes and Watson action this coming week at the Soho Theatre in an hour-long show.

Penned and played by award-winning comedy duo Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez, Max and Ivan are... Holmes and Watson has done something infinitely more daring than even the BBC's Aldiss and Moffat:  rather than re-imagine Conan-Doyle's stories for the twenty-first century, they've written their own breathtakingly original and utterly hilarious final chapter in the Holmes saga. Taking up some rejuvenating years after Sherlock Holmes' final outing as a bee-keeping spy-catcher of the last Conan-Doyle story, Max and Ivan put our hero's famous powers of deduction to work in a prohibition era tale of revenge, whiskey and javelins set in Chicago's criminal underworld.

Quite clearly, this isn't a Holmes and Watson for purists, but it is one of the funniest thing I've seen live on stage for ages. It's quirky, witty, fast-paced and, whilst unmistakably irreverent, manages to tug its forlock in the direction of the Conan-Doyle creation on which it depends.

I first saw the show when Max and Ivan previewed it before taking it to the Fringe last summer: they are - as it says on the play-bill - Holmes and Watson, but they also play about eleventy-three other characters, including a rather chilling Voldemort-esque Moriarty, and the shifts between are deft, convincing and terribly, terribly funny. It's gifted physical comedy as well as cleverly scripted and I can't think of a better, quicker way of catapulting oneself out of the January slough of despond than to spend an hour in Soho watching this unique show.

If you want more Sherlock Holmes in your life - and really, can one ever have enough - then hot-foot it to the Soho Theatre : Max and Ivan are... Holmes and Watson plays from thursday 12th January to Saturday 14th and again from thursday 19th to Saturday 21st January. The show starts at 8pm and tickets are £10.

Max and Ivan are... Holmes and Watson, Soho Theatre, from 12th January.
21 DEAN STREET LONDON W1D 3NE 
BOX OFFICE 020 7478 0100 
Follow Max and Ivan on twitter @maxandivan

IN PRAISE OF RED LIPSTICK

When I wrote about The Plankton back in September, it sparked much debate with friends about whether or not women over forty became suddenly invisible. 

But every conversation about sex appeal - were we still desirable, beautiful, attractive, we asked ourselves anxiously - inevitably turned into a broader discussion about the forty-something state:  Suddenly, I became appallingly paranoid that I would wake up one morning and discover myself wearing purple with a red hat that doesn't go? 

'We simply have to work harder to make ourselves visible, particularly at work' said my friend Basista, and I think she's right - one does lose the effortlessness of youth in one's mid-forties. Sometimes it's the small things like having to think twice about wearing an A-line skirt with a chunky heel - what looks hip on a thirty year old can easily look frumpy on a fortysomething, particularly if you remember the look first time round - I mean, God knows what havoc the coming Thatcher-inspired trend will wreak. All I'm going to say is, if you're old enough to remember her as Prime Minister, steer well clear of the clothes unless you're achingly hip and very obviously working in fashion. 

Anyway, sometimes it's also the bigger stuff, like realising that life isn't the rehearsal it once was, and you've got to get on with the Next Big Thing before it's Too Late. 

However, since this is supposed to be a post about make-up, I shall stop myself segueing off into some psycho-drama about a dawning realisation of one's mortality/career shelf-life etc etc, because I've remembered that what my friend Basista went onto say - not entirely flippantly - about how the antidote to mid-life invisibility was to wear bright lipstick. She's right, of course but it's not just about making a bold statement, it's also about the subliminal sophistication conferred by a really good red lip. 

Although I'm madly keen on my shiny Dior Addict one, if it's done perfectly, a red lip should be matte and it should also be expensive - not Tom Ford spendy, necessarily, but definitely something bought with due ceremony and sense of occasion from one of the more intimidating beauty counters in a department store. Chanel, of course, is the gold standard when it comes to sophisticated glamour and there are several marvellous reds in the Rouge Allure range, but I do wish they had Rouge Premier - a copy of the first ever red lipstick Chanel produced -  as part of the permanent offer: it came out as a limited edition about ten years ago along with a killingly beautiful gold eyeshadow, and I only wear it once a year because I can't bear to think of using it all up.  

Finding one's perfect red takes time and a lot of experimenting - it's all about nuance - I had fourteen at the last count (six of which are badly photographed below) in every shade of red from vermillion to crimson.

Now that I add up the approximate cost, fourteen red lipsticks is a rather lavish investment. But of course, I wasn't just buying a lipstick, I was investing in the whole idea of myself as elegant and well-put together.

I don't think the search for the perfect red is finished by any stretch of the imagination - I've yet to try the Bobbi Brown red that everyone says is a classic- and as I write this, I've just rummaged in my desk drawer and come across a very serious red I'd forgotten I even had (make that fifteen red lipsticks) - Dior Addict in Red Carpet. Possibly it ticks the 'get you noticed' box a little more emphatically than my everyday red (which I'm wearing in the Dior taxi), but that's all to the good.

Is Basista right? Is bright lipstick the perfect antidote to mid-life invisibility? It certainly seems to give one a much needed confidence boost. However, I'll offer one small warning: the distance between groomed glamour and looking like Bette Davis in 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane' is little more than a sharp jog of the elbow.

BAZAAR, BASTYAN & A SHOWSTOPPING DRESS

At least half the fun of going to a party is in the anticipation: it's not just the hours spent getting ready, it's endless debate about what to wear.

The big event in the Harper's Bazaar calendar is the annual Women of the Year Awards - and the sartorial stakes are pretty high - I'm pretty sure we talked of nothing but party dresses for weeks beforehand. I had thought of wearing a very nice strapless 'MadMen' style dress I bought for a party not long after the Tiniest Trefusis was born until I came across this from my absolute favourite label, Bastyan. I hadn't thought of wearing long, but since it meant I didn't need to slather my blue-white legs in fake tan, it was pretty tempting, and as ever with Bastyan, the fabric drapes in a wonderfully flattering and luxurious way.

This is me at the party - it's not a very clear picture, but the mirror shows how nice the back is too

This is me just before we left - I've rubbed out the grim office from the background - magazine offices are much closer to The Office than they are to the Devil Wears Prada. One shoulder has a beautiful gold clasp, and the other is designed to drape - I wanted it slightly off the shoulder, so I stuck it in place with some tit tape (I'm sure there's a more elegant word for it - but you know what I mean).

The jewellery is from Carat* - they're simulated diamonds, but they're set so beautifully I defy anyone to be able to tell the difference - I wore the Pear Exquisite necklace, a pear drop tennis bracelet  and an incredibly covetable pair of drop earrings, which shivered and shimmered and caught the light most gratifyingly whenever I turned my head. I don't seem to be able to find them on the website, but these are similar.

Sometimes partywear needs to be a bit of a disguise, doesn't it - it's about costuming oneself appropriately for the occasion: and for once, at Bazaar Women of the Year, I felt appropriate.

The Mormo Maxi dress I wore is on sale in the Bastyan pop-up shop on Regents Street - if you're in the market for a party dress (or a beautiful coat like this one -  the tweed it's made from comes from the same mill as Chanel gets theirs from) then you must hurry to this oasis of loveliness and calm toot sweet because the stand-alone only exists until 24th December.

I asked Tonia Bastyan for her buys of the season - this exquisite lace 'Dia' dress [above], with jet beads that button closely up the wrists promises to be an heirloom piece: I can quite imagine putting it away after a few seasons and saving it for when the Tiniest Trefusis grows up - it's utterly beautiful and absolutely timeless. It has a very elegant wool crepe skirt, but the back is absolutely sheer lace - I've not seen anything of the quality in most Bond Street designer stores. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a better picture. It's sold out online, however, there were plenty of sizes at the pop up store.

Tonia also picked out this pony-skin coat as one of her favourite pieces - as ever with Bastyan, the devil's in the detail -  it has long woollen gauntlets under the bracelet sleeve - I don't know if they're detachable, but fortunately this is on the website so you can get a better look if you want.  Here's my snap of Tonia with the coat.

London Bastyan Pop Up Boutique 288 - 294 Regent Street W1 Tel: 020 7323 5978