It was hard not to smirk upon reading news of a battle to end all battles : the Notting Hillers, inordinately proud of their pastel-coloured cottages, grand white villas and local Portobello Market, versus the preening Instagrammers, who’ve decided this is the perfect location for their perfect-life shoots.
Young women with perfect hair and coy smiles keep turning up in droves on W11 doorsteps for impromptu photo-shoots, with a range of pretty dresses and even pop-up tents to get changed in. Grumpy notices have started appearing telling them to f-off. One resident has complained of being “hounded by the paparazzi”. What a face-off.
If Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill made you want to heave, don’t search for #nottinghill on Instagram, as you’ll find a cutesy gallery of pink and lavender, blossom on cherry trees, and girls trying to look as vacuous as possible for the camera, lest we think they have a care in the world. “Be thankful for your life, spend time in nature, breathe deeply, let go of your worries,” says one girl in a ballgown against a set of iron railings.
Notting Hill: once the most famous slum in London, home to the Windrush incomers and poor white working class, where Oswald Mosley stood for election, and where photography was most likely show kids playing on street corners because as Alan Johnson — postie-turned-Labour Home Secretary who grew up in the area — noted: “Here it was better to be outdoors than in.” Imagine if the Instagrammers went out not to smart, modern day W11 but to our poorer districts — could they create socially useful media? Just a thought.
And as for the Notting Hill residents who’ve spent so long choosing a Farrow & Ball colour for their front door, I fear that this Instagrammers’ invasion has caused such rage because it has struck their deepest anxiety: that the lives they lead are a cliché.
Battle of the gurus on my bedside table
A conflict has arisen on my bedside table. Two books sit side by side. Josh Cohen’s Not Working: Why We Have To Stop got there first. The new arrival is one by Bruce Daisley, a vice-president of Twitter. Its title: The Joy Of Work.
Cohen is meditative on the virtues of indolence and creativity. Daisley is full of zing and enthusiasm for transforming work culture and creating happy and motivated team players.
Who to choose as a guru? And why has no-one commissioned a book with the title: “Look, we got ejected from the Garden of Eden: just deal with it.”
Ocasio-Cortez could see off Al Capone
The show-stealer at Michael Cohen’s hearing on Wednesday was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District. At 29, she is already being talked about as a future leader of the Democrats. She was on the team questioning Trump’s former lawyer.
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Her line of questioning would have had Al Capone quaking. She queried how Trump had a taxpayer-funded golf course in the Bronx, and asked where all the financial documents were buried.
And then came the Trump-sized question — not on his hands but about how he valued his assets according to whether he’s trying to get on the Forbes Rich List or talking to the tax man. It varies, it seems.
Someone on Twitter asked whether AOC had in fact been a prosecutor in her earlier life rather than a bartender. “Bartending + waitressing (especially in NYC) means you talk to 1000s of people over the years,” she replied. “Forces you to get great at reading people + hones a razor-sharp BS detector.” And I’m sure you can tell a lot about a supposedly high roller by the way they tip.
Secret behind Ed’s hushed-up wedding
How did Ed Sheeran do it? A secret wedding to his childhood sweetheart in this day and age — with said secret only just out.
Hello! magazine must be furious, and royals might be wondering if their organza bonanzas are now naff.
But as one who had a small private wedding and managed to keep it a secret for two months, let me tell you that it has a certain charm.
I could say something soppy about it just being between two people. But in reality, the less fuss over the wedding, the less fuss over the divorce, should it come to that.