New Somerset House restaurant will put a Spring in your step

London's Somerset House continues its transition from grand office building to entertainment complex with a new restaurant in its northwest corner.  You'll fall in love with Spring, the latest venture from Australian Chef and food writer Skye Gyngell, before you taste your first bite ... because this is one of the most elegant, soothing and refined dining rooms in all of London.

From the potted trees in the hall, leading you to the front door like a trail of arboreal bread crumbs, to the garden room ahead of you when you come into the reception and bar area, to the colour pallet of light, fresh whites, green and greys, the look evokes the name.  Add a forest of stately white columns holding up the roof, massive, arched Georgian windows and modern art that looks like colonies of abstract butterflies have settled on the walls, and it's hard to believe one of London's busiest roads is just outside.  The whole place feels marvellously pastoral.  That extends to the staff, who wear a range custom-created linen outfits in those delicate spring colours.  Frankly, they're missing a trick not opening a clothing boutique next door.  I've often envied a restaurant's china or crystal; this is the first time I've wanted the maitre d's dress.

The food lives up to the surroundings.  Light, fresh, locally sourced, elegantly presented.  The menu's classic European with an in Italian bent.  My salad of burrata, san daniele prosciutto and baby greens showed off how good their sourcing was.  The cheese was so fresh it had hardly completed it's transformation from cream.  The ham was of a quality un-obtainable in regular markets and the greens had the sharp bite and clear flavour that fades soon after harvest.  Around the table, everyone else's eyes widened and lips curved into a smile as they moaned appreciatively over delights like crab ravioli and nettle risotto.

The mains kept up the excellence.  My rabbit ... which I contend is the hardest of all meats to cook well ... was succulent perfection.  Game birds and fish of the day underpinned the seasonality of the place.  On to some soul satisfying chocolate.  The details of which, I must admit, I can't really remember because we were pairing everything with some stunning wines.  Kudos to a wait staff who could sensitively and helpfully steer us from our original choices to something just a little more perfect to match the dishes.  Including a range of dessert wines and after dinner drinks to seal the warm afterglow.

There's only one problem with Spring:  it's solidly in "expense account" territory.  I was the guest of some very special colleagues who were giving me a send-off from my last job.  With sta
rters averaging £15, mains £30 and desserts £12 ... with an accordingly-priced wine list ... you're not going to be popping in here every day.  Although there is a set three course lunch for £29.50, which would give you a taste of the place if not the full indulgence.

As more of the Inland Revenue packs up and abandons Somerset House, I look forward to the Spring boutique and then, please, the Spring Spa.  With this combination of design, food and drink, I never want to leave.

Uninspiring architecture makes British Library treasures a bitter disappointment

It's been 17 years since the British Library moved into its purpose-built facilities next to St. Pancras Station.  I must admit, sheepishly, that I'd never been there.  In my earlier years living in the UK, and as a tourist before that, I regularly strolled around the treasures of its collection.  They were stored in several magnificent rooms to the right of the main entry hall at the British Museum, which was a required stop on any visit to London.  The new building is only a mile north of the old display rooms, but in a part of town I rarely traverse.

With some time on my hands, I decided to make it a priority.  What a crushing disappointment.  A large part of me wishes I'd stayed away, polishing and embellishing my original memories from the British Museum.  No such luck.

The building is a graceless, multi-level sprawl of red brick, evoking the architecture of a 1980s shopping mall.  Where, I wondered, was the John Lewis?  In the front door, the mall feeling continued.  There's a large, sunlit atrium, stepping up in terraces to the only majestic decorative element.  This is the King's Library, where thousands of exquisite, leather-bound tomes gathered by George III are stacked in a tower rising six stories from basement to roof.  Sadly, it's screened from your view from the front door by white concrete columns, and you have to get close to it to even realise it's comprised of real books.  It's a design background rather than a highlight.  Scattered around it, on multiple levels, are cafe tables packed with people meeting and working, fuelled by a restaurant at the back of the atrium.  No august, majestic temple to wisdom here.  It's a giant Starbucks.

The treasures are in a room off to the left.  It's a low ceilinged, darkened room with all the manuscripts in similar glass cases.  I could argue that the austerity of design forces attention onto the manuscripts, thus making them the star of the show.  Sorry.  It didn't work for me.

These treasures are precious relics of English civilisation.  And, given the role English literature has played in the education, entertainment and myth making of the rest of the English-speaking world, they're equally awe inspiring to foreigners.  I found it hard to breathe, the first time I saw them.  The world's only surviving manuscript of Beowulf.  Jaw-dropping illuminated manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels.  Shakespeare first folios.  Handel's Messiah, in his own hand.  Manuscript drafts of great novels by Dickens and Austen.  Just as the relics of saints are elevated and bring on holy awe (even if they're manufactured!) by the setting of the magnificent cathedrals around them, so these treasures once were by the lofty Georgian architecture of the British Museum.

The great libraries of the world are palatial temples to books.  The architecture elevates what they are built to house.  More than words, pictures or notes on a page, awe-inspiring settings remind you that  these documents are the building blocks of human intellect.  They are our culture.  All that is fine and noble, comforting and inspiring, is represented in a core library.  The headquarters of the New York Public Library in Manhattan does this beautifully.  But libraries like Philip II's magnificent example at El Escorial have been doing this for centuries.  And though I prefer the grandeur of classic styles, I believe modern architecture can create the same drama.  The "core" library at Northwestern University, with its stacks of the essential texts in each discipline radiating starburst-like from a hushed, multi-story centre is a wonderful place.  Despite being a blatantly modernistic fantasy of concrete blocks.

Nothing at the British Library celebrates its treasures, or gives them the respect they're due.  They're a forgotten appendage on one side of a bustling cafe, and a bit of wallpaper cutting through its middle.  It was a bitter disappointment.

Admittedly, the building succeeds on other levels.  It's a triumph of efficiency.  In the British Museum years, its functional collections were scattered in buildings all over the country.  Now, they're all together, and people can quickly get what they need.  If you need a place to work or meet people in this part of town, the atmosphere's better than a commercial coffee shop and the prices a bit cheaper; though the free WiFi creeps sluggishly.

But as a showpiece to celebrate the majesty of literature, it no longer works.

You'll find a far more pleasing setting in the building next door, where I had lunch.  St. Pancras Station is on the other end of the architectural spectrum from the Library.  Its facade is bombastic, detail-rich Victorian neo-gothic from the same George Gilbert Scott who designed the Albert Memorial.  It was mouldering and unpopular when the British Library was being designed in shopping mall chic.  Now, it's been renovated and the hotel at its front restored to splendour that reminds you of the Palace of Westminster.

The old Booking Office, a vaulted cathedral of a room between the station platforms and the hotel, is now a trendy restaurant with comfortable leather chairs, an impressively stocked cocktail bar and a bustlingly-efficient staff.  If you like dining in impressive rooms, the Booking Office is one for you.  It's a classic bar and grill menu, with prices about 15% over the average to account for location.

I had  planned for great literature to be the best part of my day.  Instead, it was a hamburger and a glass of wine while catching up with an old friend.  There's the power of architecture for you.

Butterfly in-the-round is a feast for the eyes, less successful on the ears

I'll start with a confession:  I've never liked Madame Butterfly.

I can't bring myself to care about any of the characters.  Pinkerton is a craven, spineless oaf.  Butterfly is a misguided, irritating teenager without common sense or self-worth.  The most interesting character in the whole thing is the American consul, Sharpless, who sees a train wreck coming and tries to avert it … to no avail.  I'd like to see a rewrite with him as the main character.  Or, better yet, with Kate Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San coming to the sisterly understanding that Pinkerton's an ass, conspiring to kill him, and then vowing to work together to raise his son to be a decent human being who knows how to treat women.

I doubt Puccini considered either of those angles, and the operatic world has been satisfied with his original for more than a century.  It's packing the Royal Albert Hall at the moment for one of those "in the round" spectaculars from Raymond Gubbay productions.  Visually, it doesn't disappoint.

Cio-Cio San's house sits in the middle of a Japanese water garden, crossed by irregularly-spaced bridges.  Flowering wisteria and cherry blossoms in pots, lanterns, floating candles, wispy curtains, rock formations and a votive figures add to the atmosphere.  The costumes are lushly traditional, with the women in a spectacular parade of floral silk kimono.  For the second half, the water drains to better reveal the precison-raked gravel and stones of a harsher Zen garden, which is supposed to reflect the dwindling of Cio-Cio San's money and hopes.  I confess I didn't get this until I read it in the programme.  Having read about a malfunction of the waterworks and ensuing flooding early in the run, I mistakenly thought the waterless second act was a technical issue.

With water or without, it's a beautiful production to look at.  Puccini's music … especially in the second half … is lovely, and the orchestra delivered it well.  But the acoustics in the Royal Albert Hall aren't very good, and opera "in-the-round" is challenging at the best of times.  No matter how good the singer, wherever he's projecting his voice, it's not at two-thirds of the audience.  Translating the libretto into English without providing surtitles exacerbated the problem.  I caught a few words out of every hundred, the odd word or phrase coming through in every minute or two of singing.

This means that you lose all of the subtlety of plot, and are left with only the broad-brush overview in the programme.  Worse, you're straining so hard to make out the words that the fight for comprehension overtakes the ability to appreciate the music.  (Only the singers who delivered Sharpless and Goro had the tone and clarity to overcome this trap.)  It was only after I abandoned any attempt to figure out what they were singing, and just accepted the unintelligible voices as a part of the music, that I enjoyed it more.

This, in general, is why I hate opera translated into English.  Keep it in its native language, let me read a translation, and free me from the effort of trying to figure out what's going on.

I was deeply disappointed, because the lavish traditional sets I like are rare these days.  The big opera houses aren't taken seriously unless they put on modern, revisionist interpretations, and the smaller companies generally can't afford them.  Last night's set and costumes on the Royal Opera House stage would have delighted me.  In the echoing cavern of the Albert Hall, it left me wondering seriously if we'd wasted our money.

Certainly, the pre-theatre dinner was as enjoyable as the opera itself … which isn't necessarily a good thing.

We booked in to the Elgar Restaurant, which occupies a big, high-ceilinged space with vast windows on the third floor of the pavilion that juts out from the west side of the hall.   It's musically themed, of course, with a bright red piano on a dais in the centre of the room and big photos of stars who've performed there in the past on the walls.  There's a pleasant, wide-ranging menu I'd categorise as modern posh gastro-pub, starting with a fun cocktail menu of options named after famous tunes.  They're proud of their wood-fired grill and promote it heavily for the mains.

We both started with fish: both my swordfish carpaccio and Piers' home-cured salmon were excellent.  Our shared chateaubriand was OK, but didn't live up to the expectations raised by the waitress' enthusiastic description of the grill.  Bearnaise sauce with a touch too much vinegar didn't help, though the course was elevated by a smashing Malbec and some perfectly cooked green and snow peas that were springtime in a bowl.  Booking here gives you the table for the interval, so we ordered pudding and coffee to have at the break.  Fortunately our seats were on that side of the hall, which is an important consideration when booking here.  Between a relatively short interval and a very big hall, you lose much of your dessert time in transit.

As with any of these in-venue restaurants, you're paying about 20% over the odds for the convenience of location.  At the Royal Albert Hall, where there's a dearth of restaurants in the immediate area, there aren't a lot of other choices.  The meal rounds out a pleasant evening but significantly increases the overall bill.  Especially if you're drinking.  They do at least give you plastic cups into which you can transfer your wine to take back to your seat … a homely touch you won't find at the more formal Royal Opera House.

Bottom line:  I would have given up my go cup for surtitles and better acoustics.  But, failing that, the portable Malbec made the second half more enjoyable.

Two Temple Place is a hidden London gem demanding your attention

The English don't like to admit it, but there's a long and illustrious tradition of American expats settling here and doing traditional English culture better than the natives.  Sadly, it's much more fun to trot out the passport-less, gun-toting stereotype than to remember the cultured, well-travelled citizens who typify those who actually visit and stay here.

Marianne Caton, a granddaughter of a signer of the declaration of Independence, married the 1st Marquis Wellesley; her money and charm carried him though a challenging stint as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and her friendship is reputed to have had a huge positive influence on her brother-in-law, the Duke of Wellington.  We can credit Consuela Vanderbilt with rescuing Blenheim Palace and injecting a burst of fresh attitude into the Marlborough family.  Lawrence Johnston created what's now considered the quintessential English garden at Hidcote.  T.S. Eliot's poems became one London's iconic musicals; he started life in St. Louis.  England's first sitting female MP, Nancy Astor, was born in Virginia.  American expats have been making rich cultural contributions to England for almost as long as there's been an America.

Nancy's father-in-law, William Waldorf Astor, provides one of the richest examples of this tradition, as you can see for yourself until 19 April inside London's Two Temple Place.  This magnificent building is only open to the public for 11 weeks a year, and it's well worth making the effort to get inside.  Even better, admission is free, and the art exhibit on display is just as fascinating as its setting.

Astor moved to England at the age of 43, naturalised as a British subject at 51 and spent the rest of his life here, becoming a peer thanks to his charity work during the first World War.  You're probably familiar with his family estates. At both Hever Castle and Cliveden, he used his vast fortune to gather the finest craftspeople available to create a luxury mash-up of the best of the English decorative past.  Snobs dismiss it as Disney Tudorbethan with some Hollywood stage set Georgian thrown in.  But I love these beautiful crowd-pleasers that show off a magnificent range of craftsmanship.


Two Temple Place was Astor's purpose-built estate office, with an apartment on the top floor for nights when he needed to stay in town.  The location is extraordinary, on Victoria Embankment with a fabulous view of the river between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges.  Though a relatively modern building, constructed from scratch near the turn of the 20th century, in architecture and design it's a medieval merchant's palace.  Outside, it's all towers, gothic windows and decorative stonework; indoors, it's a rich mix of woodwork and stained glass complete with a magnificent hammerbeam roofed great hall.

It's worth the effort for the main stair hall alone.  Waldorf was a literary man who loved The Three Musketeers; the carving here includes the main characters as jaunty, magnificently-detailed newel post toppers.  He recalled literature of his native land by commissioning high relief carvings of scenes from Rip Van Winkle, The Last of the Mohicans and The Scarlett Letter around the top of the room.  Elsewhere there are 82 characters from Shakespeare.  You could do a whole semester of English literature here.  Gorgeous stained glass allowed light through the roof. The floor is multi-coloured inlaid marble inspired by St. Mark's cathedral in Venice.

The literary mood continues in other rooms, where you'll find treasures like nine silver-gilt panels depicting women of Arthurian legend, a frieze of 54 notables from literature and history and enormous landscapes created in stained glass filling two massive oriel windows.

The current exhibition is icing on this architectural cake.  Extraordinary Collections from the Industrial Northwest brings together a quirky array of items assembled thanks to the fortunes made by the captains of the industrial revolution.  The late Victorians were cultural omnivores, giving this exhibit something for everyone.  There are illuminated manuscripts, Roman coins, Japanese prints, pinned beetles, taxidermised birds, Tiffany vases, old master watercolours … even a South American mummy.

I may need to get back and wander through again before the exhibit closes.  There's so much here, and it's all so rich in visual detail, that your ability to fully digest what you're seeing dwindles before you're half way through.

The rest of the year, you can only get into Two Temple Place if you're invited to one of the lavish events hosted here.  Or if you're on a film set.  You might have seen it without knowing; this was the venue for the wedding of Downton Abbey's Lady Rose.  Get there soon, or you'll have to wait another year.  Find details here.

V&A's "Architects as Artists" reminds us of the glories of free museums

There was troubling news on the museum scene this week.  The BBC reported that while overall visitor numbers to London's free museums had gone up, foreigners account for more of that growth than the natives who pay the taxes to keep the doors open.

The numbers were particularly bad for the Tate and the National Gallery, which have seen British attendance drop by 20% since 2008/09.  The British Museum, Natural History Museum and the V&A can celebrate growth in both domestic and foreign visitors.  Commentators opined that it's probably because those three have bent over backwards to be family friendly, and have spent plenty of marketing money establishing themselves as great places for a family day out.

You couldn't have seen a better illustration of this than the South Kensington tube station at 11am last Friday.  It was half term holiday, and half the Southeast seemed to be heading for the Natural History Museum and the V&A.  The mass of humanity pressing towards the exit turnstiles, 30 people deep and packed solid from one side of the station to the other, was a claustrophobe's worst nightmare.  It made morning rush hour on the Waterloo and City line look like a blissful day out; suited city commuters don't whack your shins with errant baby strollers, and the irritating buzzing of a few too-loud headphones has nothing on the din of hundreds of shrill children in the echo chamber of a tube station ticket hall.  Once clear of the crush, however, I had to smile.  There's nothing like seeing children heading for museums to give you faith in the future.

There were no kids where I was heading, however: a thoughtful, serious and intriguing little exhibition on Architects as Artists.

The V&A often feels like two museums.  There's the ground floor and the British galleries, heaving with visitors … and everywhere else.  Generally, the higher you climb, the fewer people you encounter and the more likely you are to stumble into galleries you never knew existed.  The architecture gallery is one such, up on the fourth floor of the front building.  The main room is filled with a collection of fascinating architectural models that will make you feel like Gulliver stomping about an eclectic, globally-inspired Lilliput.  Architectural drawings, material samples, photos and well-written, informative explanations round out the experience.

There's a long, thin gallery off to the side for temporary exhibits; this is where you'll find Architects as Artists for the next year.

Is an architect an artist?  Or a professional delivering a technical service?  It's a more complicated argument than you'd think, and it's been going on almost as long as there have been named purveyors of the craft.  If a professional, they can charge more and be taken more seriously.  If an artist, however, their work gains a gravitas and is less likely to be meddled with in the future.  (Think of all the glorious buildings that might not have met the wrecking ball had people seen them as "art" rather than derelict homes or offices.)  This exhibit combines archived materials not usually on display with others from the Royal Institute of British Architects to confidently assert the artistic argument.

I was lucky enough to have a wander around with the curator, Roisin Inglesby, so got a bit of extra
insight into the show.  It's a long, narrow gallery with no room for architectural models, so she was mostly limited to works on paper, with one video.  They tell a compelling story well worth a wander.

She breaks up the space into themed chunks, where you can examine various aspects of art.  There are expected plans and drawings, where some architects clearly excelled at draughtsmanship more than others.  A sketch by Raphael studying the workings of the Pantheon is a little gem.  A detailed elevation of one of Edward William Godwin's artists' cottages is a beauty you'd want to hang on your wall.  And if I were a billionaire I'd rather buy something like the Pugin sketchbook on display here (pictured top) than an Impressionist painting.  Further along are architect's presentation drawings, where prospective buildings are imagined and populated to give potential buyers a sense of what they'd be getting.  Both these categories are very obviously by-products of an architect's trade.

I enjoyed the exhibit most, however, when it left the purely professional realm.  In the "pure art" section, there's a luscious watercolour of Egyptian ruins that drops you into the heat and colour, a fabulous comic-book style recording of a European tour by an architectural student in the 1960s too poor to afford a camera, and an intriguing work of punched, layered paper by a German architect making a statement about the Berlin wall (above).

Most magnificent to my eye, however, were the flights of pure imagination.  Never meant to be built, these architectural dreams freed the creators from the reality of clients, budgets and physics.  There's a "capriccio" (basically a mash-up of a variety of buildings, never meant to be together) by Robert Adam that seems a radical departure from his bright, clean neo-classical style.  Yet the moody, Gothic castle on a promontory will strike a familiar chord with anyone who's seen his Culzean Castle near Glasgow. Even more fantastic is a video animation of Piranesi's imagined prisons which magically swoops you in, out and around these iconic fantasy-scapes.  These drawings have obviously influenced everything from Lord of the Rings set design to Hogwarts' swinging staircases.  You can check it out for yourself here.

Like the rest of the museum, this little exhibit is free.  Take note, Brits.  This, and all the other treasure houses that are London's public museums, are yours for the wandering as a taxpayer.  There are few other places in the world where museums are free.  There's no other city where you can see such staggering variety, of such global and historic significance, without opening your wallet.  Come on, Brits!  Appreciate what you have.  You can start with a wonder through this fascinating little show.

Wanamaker Playhouse and L'Ormindo are a match made in heaven

What if you had the opportunity to nip back in time to see a Baroque opera in the year it was performed?  A sensuous, candlelit evening of fine music, rich costumes and virtuoso singing, performed in an exquisite gem of a 17th century-playhouse so new its wood was still seasoning?  You could laugh, cry, be close enough to the performers to share a wink, and still make it home to your 21st century bed before midnight.

Sound too good to be true?  Time travel is reality at the newly-opened Sam Wanamaker playhouse within the Globe Theatre complex, where they're currently working with the Royal Opera House to stage L'Ormindo.  This is one of the most magical, completely joyful cultural experiences I've had in a long time.

Just as the Globe strives to give us an exact reproduction of the open-roofed, circular venues of Shakespeare's day, the Wanamaker takes us forward a few decades to the intimate, jewel-box theatres of the high Jacobean age.  The Globe's fantastic, but you can never completely maintain the illusion of time travel.  It's too big, so the modern audience is always in your line of sight.  And the open roof looks onto a light-polluted sky crossed by planes on their Heathrow approach.

The Wanamaker is tiny, with just 340 seats spread around two levels of horseshoe gallery and a small pit.  The stage and its players fill your vision.  They're picked out by the beguiling golden glow of the six chandeliers filled with beeswax tapers, and more candles in wall sconces and on the stage.  There are no electric lights.  I don't know how they managed it with Health and Safety, but there aren't even any obnoxious neon exit signs to break the mood.  There's a strict ban on any kind of camera or phone coming out of your pocket. The illusion is complete, and lushly magnificent.

Seeing anything in this space would be a treat.  Seeing an early opera, written to be performed in a space exactly like this, and staged in rich historic costumes glittering under the candles, was a complete delight.

I'll admit, I approached this with a bit of trepidation.  We'd seen our first baroque opera, Handel's Rinaldo, last summer at Longborough, and loved it so much we wanted to try another.  I'd never heard of the opera or its composer, Francesco Cavalli … but why not take a punt?  It was only after I booked the tickets that I read that the opera had debuted in 1644, had a single run in Venice, then hadn't been revived until 1967.  Oh, dear.  How good can something be that was immediately dropped, and forgotten for 300 years?

I need not have worried.  The highly-entertaining if lightweight plot sees two heroes fighting to gain the
love of a young and nubile queen in an unsatisfying marriage to her very old king.  The setting is a mythical North Africa, allowing for dramatic Moorish costumes.  (And creative.  One, which is designed with upward extensions to provide the illusion that the standing queen is actually in bed, is magnificent.)  There's ribald humour, a bit of sorcery, adventure, trickery, unlikely plot twists, and everyone ends up happy.  It's a merry romp, in other words, and the cast clearly enjoy themselves throughout, able to work brilliantly off an audience that's so close it's practically part of the action.

The music isn't particularly memorable, and there are no big hit arias, but it's perfectly pleasant and gave the performers a chance to show off some vocal pyrotechnics.  While I didn't walk away humming anything in particular from this show, I ended up with the duet from Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea in my head for the next day.  The music is similar in style and, in fact, the two operas were written within a year of each other.

I can't imagine L'Ormindo carrying a big opera house, but it was perfect for a setting like this.  The production team used the space to maximum effect.  The chamber orchestra provides music from the balcony above the stage.  Prologues for each act are provided by "spirits" lowered from the ceiling to hover in mid-air, just like in those grand 17th-century court masques.  The cast uses the whole auditorium, entering from side doors, walking through the aisles, hanging off balconies, interacting with audience members.  This works particularly well when they're playing it for laughs, which this opera affords aplenty.

The biggest effect, of course, is the candlelight.  It's as much of a cast member as any of the singers, with chandeliers being raised and lowered to create different moods, and more candelabra being moved on and off stage as part of the action.  One of the best scenes, both dramatically and musically, is a duet between lovers who believe their end is coming, with black-clad spirits extinguishing the candles one by one as their energy and hope drains.  Of course, the stage is blazing with renewed light by the end, as three sets of lovers prepare to live happily ever after.

You won't be able to see this production, sadly, as its run is sold out.  With so few seats, I figure pretty much everything in The Wanamaker will be.  So if this sounds good to you, make an effort to see what's on, when, and get tickets as soon as they come on sale.  This has to be one of the most magical and unique experiences you can have in London right now.

The beauty queen proves it: Expectations are best when they're frequently challenged

Pay too much attention to the news media these days, and you can't help but despair for the fate of Western Civilisation in the hands of the next generation.  Youth, we're led to believe, are feckless sofa dwellers, unable to communicate beyond social media unless they're drinking themselves into a stupor.  They're probably on benefits, or, if employed, too lazy to contribute much.

Happily, that conventional wisdom gets challenged every time friends' children send me thank you notes, I meet candidates for my university or I work with any of the bright young things that enter my company through its graduate scheme.  And there's another example right out my back door.

Nicola Ascroft runs her own business in the community centre at the heart of our housing estate.  Her one-room spa was one of the most pleasant discoveries about life here.  She does all of the massages, facials, manicures and pedicures you'd expect from a "proper" spa, but for much less than the established players in their big complexes charge.  She's built a following of regulars and pursues more through monthly specials and flyers she distributes around the area herself.  And rather than taking it easy in her unbooked time, she holds down a second job at a hair salon.  So much for expectations of feckless youth.

Nicola counters another expectation.  She's a beauty queen, in the running for Miss Hampshire.  If I ever paused to think about beauty contests I doubt my impressions were positive; but then I'd never had any exposure beyond lampooning films and the odd glimpse of girls parading in bathing suits on TV.  Miss Hampshire, as I've learned from Nicola, is about far more than good looks.  It's a hunt for a young woman who will be a role model and PR representative for the county, and nabbing the prize requires effort on a variety of fronts worthy of a stint on The Apprentice.

She must demonstrate her green credentials and her creativity by designing a dress entirely of recycled materials.  There's a PR component, in which she competes against her opponents to get the most media coverage.  On the popularity front, she needs to deploy social media skills to get as many people as possible to like her photo.  Singing a simple song won't do for the skills contest: Nicola brushed up her childhood figure skating to deliver a full, choreographed programme.  Finally, contestants compete on the charity front to see who can raise the most for the contest's official charity, Beauty with a Purpose.  And, of course, they need to look good, too.  All while working full time.  Clearly, the beautiful but lazy need not apply.

Nicola's charity efforts bring us to challenged expectation No. 3.  I've had major events as part of my remit at work for more than a decade, run galas costing a fortune and had some brilliantly talented events people work for me.  But if I told any of them to dream up an event with NO BUDGET, get people there and raise money on top … while working full time on other projects … I suspect they'd say it couldn't be done.  Nicola just started knocking on doors.

Her Valentines' night formal event in our community centre featured a DJ and performances by two singers, plus a lively exhibition from a local dance troop.  Guests could graze a cold buffet before moving on to a cupcake tower, buy drinks from a cash bar or make a little madness with the costumes in the photo booth. She even pulled in decorations and lighting to set the mood.  All of this was donated by people Nicola approached with determination and cheerful cajoling.  On top of that, she pulled together a raffle with about 20 different prizes, including bottles of wine and champagne, Jo Malone candles, salsa lessons and season passes to Wellington Country Park.  Again, all prizes were donated, meaning the raffle tickets she organised her personal network to sell brought in pure profit.  She was pushing towards £1,500 as we left the party (happily carrying two raffle prizes of the alcoholic kind).

So let's review the expectations that Nicola's tumbled.  English youth are actually determined and energetic types with entrepreneurial flair.  Modern beauty queens are intelligent, determined young women with broad marketing skills.  And it's possible to whip up a good event with no budget, and make money out of it, if you're creative and unafraid to ask for help.  That's a very pleasant trio of lessons learned.

Nicola's spa, D&D beauty, is located in the Sherfield Park Community Centre.  If you want to get in touch with her or book treatments, check out her website.