By Harnessing the power of “word-of-mouth” advertising Patti Ainalis has driven her fashion label a long way from its humble beginnings in a spare room.
As a 21-year-old, Ms Ainalis decided that the three-by-two room opening onto a footpath, was perfect to display her women’s suits to the public.
“I thought, ‘Well, we’ll open the doors and [...]

I went out sans jacket last week for the first time since October. That evening it snowed. Again.
Never have I seen so much of the white stuff. Its been good for the skiers and mostly Ive enjoyed it but now I want some real consistent warmth.
My baby girl, Ella, is 5 months old and sitting [...]

Astonishingly beautiful and extremely varied, the seven islands and various uninhabited islets of the Aeolian archipelago were designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2000. Their volcanic origins left a dramatic legacy of black-sand beaches, smouldering craters and splintered, rocky coastlines. Island-hoppers can discover their individual charms: from the spartan conical Alicudi, where donkeys are [...]

‘Mummy, I’ve just uncovered a bone that’s never been seen before.’ My eight-year-old son, who had never handled anything more dangerous than kitchen scissors, was scraping away at the sandstone with awl and scalpel, brushing away loose dirt with a toothbrush. ‘I think mine’s the femur of a tyrannosaurus,’ shouted his 11-year-old brother, working [...]

What’s the connection between an MP3 player and a Stone Age flint knife? Spare us the jokes about cutting edge technology – the answer is that by using the former, you can now visit the time of the latter. Simply download an audio [...]

It’s a curious thing that the many excellent attractions in the lower reaches of a recently published national visitor league table are, almost without exception, to be found in England ( 10 Unsung UK Attractions). The inference, however, that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are somehow deficient in the hidden gems department is very far [...]

Blackpool Pleasure Beach has done it again. With 5.5m visitors in 2007, the north-west’s favourite stretch of coastline has held off strong challenges from the British Museum and the Tate Modern to claim the title of Britain’s Top Visitor Attraction. The league table, published last week by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA), contains [...]

The bike.
I cant claim all the credit; the bicycle was invented by Pierre Lallement to replace the horse, and in turn was replaced by the car, the mistake that has contributed to heart disease, the road toll and global warming.
To put the theory into practice I decided to bike to work.
My daughter found three objections.
%26quot;You [...]

I used to think that the C%26ocirc;te d’Azur was one long private beach where you had to wrestle with naked Germans for the right to lay your towel out on three square inches of pebbles. The sea, I imagined, was warm fish soup [...]