The Lady In A Sari With A Fag
She was standing in Leicester Square watching people with a partner.
It just didn’t go!
Farewell! Mary Quant!
This is a true story I heard, when I worked for ICI.
Do you remember those horrible drip-dry shirts, that men used to wear in the 1960s?
I suspect I took some to University, as my mother felt I could wash them.
Did you know that Mary Quant was partly responsible for their demise?
Mathematics tell us, that a pair of tights need a lot more nylon, than a pair of stockings.
As Mary Quant got a lot more ladies wearing tights to go with mini-skirts, there was a shortage of nylon.
ICI, who made much of the UK’s nylon, decided unilaterally to divert nylon from men’s shirts to ladies’ hosiery.
Bye bye! Nylon shirts!
RIP Dame Mary
H&M Move Partners With Lanzatech To Launch Capsule Collection Using Captured Carbon Emissions
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from H & M.
This is the sub-heading.
This is the stuff of science fiction: LanzaTech diverts carbon emissions heading for the atmosphere, traps them, and turns them into thread. In a leap towards innovating sportswear, H&M Move partners with the breakthrough material science company for a drop arriving at hm.com/move on April 6.
And this is an H & M image of some of the clothes on a young lady.
Not bad considering that the polyester thread was made using carbon emissions from a steelworks.
Lanzatech’s Process
This paragraph from the H & M press release outlines the process.
Using three simple steps, LanzaTech captures carbon emissions from steel mills, traps them in bioreactors and converts them into the same building blocks that conventional polyester is made of. This revolutionary solution helps reduce pollution and limits the use of virgin fossil resources needed to make new products.
So does this mean that lots of products made from polyester can use the polyester made by Lanzatech?
As I worked for ICI Plastics Division, who had a polyester plant, that was used to make Melinex film, I suspect the answer is yes from the knowledge I picked up at the time.
Out of curiosity, I typed “polyester underwear men’s” into Google and there’s quite a lot of it about. Including some from Marks and Spencer that I own. Marks and Spencer also do a similar product for the ladies. Both products have a high proportion of polyester and could best be described as everyday.
I must find mine comfortable, as I have been buying them for some years now!
So it looks like it might be possible to replace a proportion of the fossil fuel-based polyester with one made from captured carbon dioxide.
And this can this be used in the same way as the fossil fuel-based polyester.
The Wikipedia entry for polyester is full of useful information and is very much a must-read.
This table gives world PET (polyethylene terephthalate) production for 2008 in millions tonnes/year
- Textile – 39
- Resin, bottle – 16
- Film – 1.5
- Special – 2.5
Note.
- Bottle includes, the bottles used for soft drinks, washing up liquid etc.
- Film is high quality and was used as recording tape, but now it’s mainly for packaging.
- Special includes engineering plastics.
Wikipedia has this section on recycling, where this is said.
Recycling of polymers has become very important as the production and use of plastic is continuously rising. Global plastic waste may almost triple by 2060 if this continues. Plastics can be recycled by various means like mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, etc. Among the recyclable polymers, polyester PET is one of the most recycled plastic. The ester bond present in polyesters is susceptible to hydrolysis (acidic or basic conditions), methanolysis and glycolysis which makes this class of polymers suitable for chemical recycling. Enzymatic/biological recycling of PET can be carried out using different enzymes like PETase, cutinase, esterase, lipase, etc. PETase has been also reported for enzymatic degradation of other synthetic polyesters (PBT, PHT, Akestra™, etc) which contains similar aromatic ester bond as that of PET.
Note that PET is one of the most recycled plastics.
So it looks like the LanzaTech process can not only use carbon dioxide, it can also create a product that can be recycled.
Elizabeth Line Bond Street Station And South Molton Street
South Molton Street is one of my favourite streets in London.
- It runs between Bond Street station on Oxford Street in the North and Fenwick’s department store on New Bond Street in the South.
- Many times, I bought my late wife; C’s Christmas or birthday present on that street, on New Bond Street or in Fenwick.
- One of her last purchases had been an Armani suit for work on New Bond Street.
- She also usually bought her shoes in Salvatore Ferragamo at the Southern end of New Bond Street.
- I would usually travel there by taking the Central Line to Bond Street station or the Victoria or Piccadilly Line to Green Park station.
C and I spent many hours happily shopping in that small area of the West End of London.
- We used to shop together for clothes, shoes and many other things.
- One day at a party in her barristers chambers in Cambridge, one of her colleagues expressed surprise that the following day, I was going clothes shopping with her in London.
- C replied to everyone’s amusement, that I was a transvestite-by-proxy. In other words, I am a man, who likes dressing ladies in appropriate clothes.
- I am also lucky, that my mother taught me to sew and in the early years of our marriage, I used to borrow my mother-in-law’s sewing machine and make some of C’s clothes.
- When long coats became fashionable in the 1960s, C had the first of any of her friends. Because I had made it!
So today, I just had to go and see how the new Elizabeth Line Bond Street station fitted in with my favourite shopping street.
I travelled to the new Davies Street entrance of the station.
- I walked through the tunnels to the original Underground station.
- I emerged onto Oxford Street.
- I walked down South Molton Street to Fenwick, with a couple of diversions.
- I then walked through Medici Courtyard to the Hanover Square entrance to Bond Street station.
Finally, I took the Elizabeth Line back to Moorgate for a bus to my house.
Note.
- There are two banks of escalators to the surface at the Davies Street entrance at Bond Street station.
- The tunnel between the Davies Street entrance at Bond Street station and the original Underground station has a seat at halfway.
- South Molton Street connects to Oxford Street.
- South Molton Passage connects the Davies Street entrance at Bond Street station and South Molton Street.
- C had her unusual wedding dress made in Haunch of Venison Yard.
- The Medici Courtyard sign also says it leads to the Elizabeth Line.
- I couldn’t find a coffee shop selling a cappuccino and a gluten-free cake in Medici Courtyard. That is poor!
One of the station staff at Hanover Square indicated, that there may be additional passages to the West of New Bond Street, that will connect to the Davies Street entrance at Bond Street station.
I feel this could make the area even better.
All I wanted For Christmas Was A Short-Sleeved Dressing Gown
If it is one thing that annoys me, is a dressing gown, with long voluminous sleeves.
So I asked my son and son-in-law to get me one with short sleeves.
I have worn it to do the washing up and I’m wearing it, whilst writing this post.
The Lady In High Heels
As I walked along the travelator to the Jubilee Line, I was passed by a lady walking fast in the space between the two moving walkways.
She was striking from behind in a short leather skirt and very high heels. Almost as if to show herself off, she was carrying her lightweight coat over her arm.
It got me thinking about C; my late wife.
In the 1960s, she wore skirts, as short as any girl does today, but she never ever wore heels higher than four or five centimetres or so!
She even got married to me in flat shoes!
But she did show herself off and would deliberately click her heels as perhaps she walked between tables in a high class restaurant. I remember her doing this in a Michelin-starred restaurant in London and when I told her how all the mainly-male diners had followed her with their eyes, she was obviously pleased.
Environmentally-Friendly Dry Cleaning
In the late-1960s, when I worked for ICI, the company was very worried about the effect of dry-cleaning chemicals on the health of workers and was constantly looking for better chemicals.
I suspect as that was fifty years ago, that the dry-cleaning process itself is very much more envionmentally friendly.
But look at these trousers, that I have just brought back from the dry cleaners.
There are two things wrong with the packaging.
The awful wire coat hangers, which are a nuisance to deal with and go straight in the bin.
The plastic wrapping over the top, which I assume is not recyclable.
Years ago in Suffolk, we had a man who collected and returned our bed linen from the laundry, once a week. I can’t remember the company, but I hope they’re still going, as they did an excellent service.
They then started doing dry cleaning and they gave you the choice of having it on hangers or neatly folded in tissue paper.
I remember we chose the latter, as it was so much more convenient.
C would then put things that needed a hanger on proper wooden ones.
With the worries around plastic getting into the oceans, surely we should stop this needless wrapping of dry cleaning with plastic and fold things neatly in tissue paper!
I look forward to seeing a dry-cleaners, that says that we don’t use plastic!
Dressing To Win!
I am not being sexist in this post, as I think it applies just as much to men as women.
My late wife, C was always immaculately dressed for her appearances as a barrister in Court. I know too, from a lunch I had with a retired judge, who she regularly appeared in front of, that she would dress appropriately for the case and those in Court.
The judge also said, she made sure she was the centre of attention and as the judge said, she dressed to win.
C was considered by her peers to be a very competent lawyer, but several times she expressed doubts about her skills to me, so I do wonder, if she used clothes to give herself confidence.
I think that both Theresa May and Hillary Clinton don’t dress to win and both of them have lost!
How many times in their campaigns were they seen in plain bog-standard clothes, that made them look ordinary?
I can hear the words of C, in my ears, as she criticises their dress sense.
Incidentally, she always made sure, I was well-turned out!
Is The BBC Dropping Its Dress Standards?
I clipped this picture of sports reporter, Sally Nugent on BBC Breakfast this morning.
Sally Nugent On BBC Breakfast
I couldn’t quite get a picture that showed the striped shorts fully.
Why not?
After all recently, in an article on a swimming pool, the presenter (male!) was persuaded to strip off and do a report from the water.
An Encounter With A Latex Lady
As I descended in the lift in the Ibis hotel in Dresden to brave the weather and explore the city, I was joined by a couple aged about forty, who as he was carrying a folded umbrella and she was wearing a short black, buckled and belted, expensive-looking mac, were obviously better prepared for the weather than I was.
She man was beside me and she stood opposite us on the other side of the lift directly facing us, pulling poses at her partner!
It was then that I noticed that the mac was exceedingly short and that I couldn’t see any skirt or trousers beneath. I did think to myself, that that was sensible given the foul weather and it was then that I noticed she was wearing shiny black latex tights . On her feet were a pair of absolutely flat lightweight black leather shoes. Nothing fetishistic at all!
Leaving the lift they walked straight out of the door to wherever they were going, whilst I walked downtown.
It all reminded me of an evening about twelve years ago, where C had handled the divorce for a lady, to whom fetish clothing was no stranger. Although, C did say, that their sexual habits and preferences had contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. After the case, the lady gave C a pair of latex tights, that she said C might like to try.
As in Dresden that evening was very wet and let’s say it was very enjoyable.
The Anonymous Widower 