Lost in the US of A

Wow, have I been off radar! Apologies lovely readers. Frantic work followed by some serious family drama and then off on the trip of a lifetime that the Boy and I have been plotting for quite some time.  My lax posting has largely been to the fact that I have been travelling for the past two weeks with rather sporadic Internet. We flew into LA and will fly out of there too but the rest of the journey has been a road trip - we clocked over a THOUSAND miles today.  I will be posting hotel reviews, restaurant write-ups and general travel notes over the next few days but for now, I wanted to brief you on our itinerary. There have been many highlights and hopefully even more to come. If you follow me on Instagram, I've pretty much been keeping a picture diary of the whole trip so far...All recommendations welcome, we hit Carmel today...

Los Angeles

Las Vegas

Yosemite National Park

San Francisco

Carmel

Big Sur

Santa Barbara

Los Angeles (Santa Monica)

Making new friends in Sin City

Rankin on Desert Island Discs

Photography is he says "like a seduction. It's a relationship compressed into a moment."

Any regular readers will know that I am a TINY bit obsessed with DID and have long been enamoured of Rankin's photography so imagine my delight when I heard that he was going to be on the programme. If you missed it, it's available here and also will be repeated on Radio Four at 9am this Friday. I won't ruin any of it for you suffice to say that he's made some corking music choices (Morcambe and Wise anyone?) and seems like a thoroughly lovely chap.

John Rankin Waddell born 1966, is an English portrait and fashion photographer and that's putting it mildly. He's been photographing the great, good and interesting for over two decades ( deep breath - Britney Spears, Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, the Spice Girls, Madonna, David Bowie, Björk, Juliette Binoche, Lily Allen, Cheryl Cole, David Gandy, Kevin Spacey, The Rolling Stones, Vivienne Westwood, Cate Blanchett, Damien Hirst, Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair - could go on!) started Dazed and Confused with Jefferson Hack and in December 2000 launched his own quarterly fashion magazine, RANK. He also publishes Another Magazine, Another Man and more recently HUNGER. As well of all of the above, he does heaps of charity work, has his fingers in some very well known ad campaigns (Dove's Real Women for example) AND makes documentaries and music videos. Phew! Enjoy listening.

Hermione Granger

Monica Belluci

Lizzie

Dove's Real Women

All images OBVIOUSLY by Rankin.

Dance Pony Dance!

Mondays aren't always the best so if any of you missed this fabulous ad, I guarantee you it will brighten your day. It’s by ad agency Wieden + Kennedy for mobile company Three. An TV spot of such excellence that I laughed my head off, immediately attempted to moonwalk then promptly you tubed it straight away afterwards. If this wasn't enough as a genius add-on to the main film, you can go to theponymixer.com, and in seconds art-direct your own dancing pony film…and it can even involve UNICORNS. Yes, UNICORNS!

Because the silly stuff matters guys. Have a good Monday!X