Farewell, then, Tyler Brûlé
Weekends in the New Year will not be the same. You see, Tyler Brûlé is ending his hedonistic "Fast Lane" column in the Financial Times. How often have we shared his airport horrors (he hated Dublin just as much as we do), how often have we envied his pedicures and manicures and makeovers? The more one reads of Brûlé, the more one wants to ask: Is he, like, for real?
I reckon I'm the cleanest person in the world at the moment — perhaps not in mind but most certainly in body. After a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) weekend spent at the Gora Kadan in Hakone and the Horai in Atami, I'm glowing from all the scrubbing, kneading, polishing and buffing.
A week later, wearing his uniform of jeans, desert boots, crisp shirts and v-necks, he'd slide effortlessly into a different culture:
Summer holidays are not a time for experimentation, which is why I've been charting the same course through July and August for almost a decade — a little bit of Palma, a weekend or two in Forte dei Marmi and a lot of Sweden.
Best of all though, was the surpassing effort he penned on the weekend of 9/10 December. He's having his dream breakfast. (Hyperlinks courtesy of Rainy Day):
"I'm in a bright space high above the city and sitting on a bench alongside a well worn table from Truck Works in Osaka, on one wall there's a Morgens Koch shelving system heaving with the best reference library (also a pair of flatscreens running France 24, the new French 24-hour news service, and BBC World) and on the table there's my MacBook Pro, my third cappuccino of the morning, soft boiled eggs in yoghurt and chilli oil and a glass of fresh orange and grapefruit juice, mixed. Not far away Mats is reading a Swedish daily and under the table a Shiba Inu and French bulldog are fighting over a piece of toast. This week the city could be London, San Sebastian or Paris."
Enough! Enough! Every week Tyler Brûlé reminded us of our failure to do breakfast in Ruby's in New York, Bills in Sydney and Providores in London. How come we never managed a weekend in Copenhagen buying presents in the Greenland shop and eating kanelhorn? While we contemplate our porridge, made, to please Brûlé, with plain medium ground oatmeal from the Golspie Mill in Sutherland in Scotland, we wish Tyler a very, merry Christmas and a happy New Year outside the Fast Lane.
