It was so lovely to be at the John Lewis Christmas do yesterday. It really made me feel I’d gone horribly wrong at the dingy careers office at my school 400 years ago. If anyone had told me it was possible to get a job decorating a beautiful listed building in shredded paper and covering it with Christmas baubles in July, I would never for one second have gone in for my current ardous career of loafing around blogging and eating canapes whenever a chance presents itself.
We got to see a wonderful preview of what’s in store for Christmas 2010. I can disclose that this involves a Russian military look, with optional pin-on medals (I saw this with Potty Mummy, appropriately enough, who can rock that whole Moscow look for real these days and was eyeing the sheepskin-lined Doc Marten boots rather lustfully). There is also a Hitchcock heroine strand or ‘story’ as the lovely JL fashionistas called it, involving cinched in waists, a lot of jewellery and a flock of paper birds hanging from the ceiling by see-through threads. Damn, if only I had ever been any good at origami …
I’m not sure if John Lewis intends us to hurl out all our furniture so we can get in new stuff to be bang on trend for its Scandinavian-red-meets-woody-and-citrus-tones interiors, but I would certainly prepared to dump my sofa so I could get JL’s totally gorgeous patchwork velvet one instead. I felt quite tempted to try to smuggle it into my handbag on the way out. I also loved being told, with great certainty, that ‘wallpaper will be very big this winter.’
Intersperse this with sneak previews of the hot toys for Christmas 2010 – I can exclusively reveal that they are fab and your children will have tantrums if they don’t get them – and a very happy time was had by all. Oh, and there was a certain amount of chatting involved – I met loads of lovely bloggers I’d never seen before, and bumped into old friends too. I’m terrified to do a name-check in case I do that dreadful thing of leaving someone out, and everyone was so lovely.
Best of all, adorable John Lewis gave us all a Flip camera-video-mebobble thingy. ‘Don’t worry, a child of two could use it,’ I was told arily. That’s fine then. As soon as I find a child of two, I’ll get them to explain it to me. As it was, I took the usual out-of-focus, wonky shots on my iPhone for your delectation.
Have fun, and see you at John Lewis at Christmas. I’ll be buying the really big wallpaper.