Drink more: wine glass holders and other outdoors excellence

You reach the end of summer and belatedly stumble across the thing that would have made the unexpected hot evenings in the park or garden just a tiny bit more civilised. 

The wine glass holder you can spike into the grass on a picnic or other outdoor drinking excursion is hardly a new product.

But simply because this one (from Stripey City on Etsy) is rather nicely made and photographed well, it suddenly seemed like the kind of thing it would be good to have.

This one is also rather pricey: it costs £16.41 – it's also only available for delivery in the US and Canada.

Which got me straight over to Lakeland, checking out their versions afresh. Made from recycled, brightly coloured plastic they are not quite so slick to look at, but then they are only £4.49 for a set of four. Find them here – and maybe we'll be lucky over the next few weeks and not even have to wait till next year to get them out.



Inevitably sucked into the Lakeland website – the retail equivalent of crack – I also noticed they have an exclusive range of equally useful Thermos things which, we must brace ourselves, will be more useful very soon.

This nice set, in old-school racing green, includes a big and not-so-big classic drinks flask, and also the clever, and pleasingly shaped Thermos Food King Flask, which will keep last night's heated up leftovers hot for seven hours and comes with a folding metal spoon and everything. This and the smaller flask are £19.99 each and the big flask is £29.99 and they come in red, too.

Check out, too, another excellent drink-holding solution in this previous post – it's useful all year round. There's a link there to some other ingenious products you never knew you needed.

Words: Kate Burt

Old-school sound systems

This weekend, my youthful lodger looked at my music corner (below) and commented: "Stuff for playing music was big in the olden days, wasn't it?" 

And he wasn't even looking at the admittedly chunky record player, which really is quite olden-days (read more below) but the amp and CD player above. "Yes," I thought, smoothing a wrinkle in my face, "and that's what makes it so brilliant." The equipment was once a prominent and important part of music enjoyment.

The record player, which has flashing lights that go on and off in time to the music, is possibly one of my favourite possessions, though it has a troubled past, but the ex-boyfriend involved in that story probably wouldn't thank me for airing it here (it should have been his, you see). I found it in a charity shop in Penzance and amazingly it worked. I took it to an enterprising repair man who cunningly wired it away from its internal speakers (very tinny, as you'd imagine) and gave it the facility to be plugged into my amp (bought, along with the CD player, bought in a ritual ceremony at Richer Sounds).

So when I saw these new music playing gadgets at Urban Outfitters, I came over all nostalgic...

Crosley Stereoluxe speakers, £190
Isn't this iPhone/iPod dock and AM/FM analogue radio a beauty? Perfect shade of 1950s pistachio green (which would go well with my newly painted stairs). Shame there's no digital hidden amid the old-school stylings (I need my BBC6 fix) but then you can always listen online via your phone, if you have a good tariff of course.

Boombox, £260
This has a nice bit of function hidden inside its 80s New York hip hop stylings: the flap where you'd once have stuck a cassette will take your iPod, and it also has a remote control. Most importantly, it has two 15-watt speakers. If only it really would play old tapes though... I have two big drawers full of the things that I haven't listened to in years. If, like me, you could do with the real thing – try the Vintage Cassette online store.

Crosley portable Tweed turntable, £160
This gorgeously boxy, totally portable turntable is a bit more modern beneath the 1960s exterior: it has USP capabilities, meaning you can spruce up the sound of your vinyl by plugging this baby into your Mac or PC. Though that warm, vinyl crackle is a big part of a record's charm so I'd be tempted to leave it unplugged for playback – but it will revive dusty old records if, of course, you're old enough to have any dusty old records...

Analogue heaven

So. This morning I dropped my stupid big phone on the pavement. That was the end of it. I always knew I shouldn't have chosen one that is too clever for its own good, and way too big for my little hands. More than anything, phones these days are just too delicate for every day life. My now dead phone's idiotically massive screen and show-offly slim shape (a Samsung Galaxy SII in case you're wondering – don't get one unless you have massive hands and can attach it on string inside your sleeves, like children's gloves) may have looked sexy. But where did that get it?

Where it got me (after I'd got over the torment of not being able to catch up on Twitter on the Tube home), was lusting after a bit of old-school solidity and proper design. I'm not usually into reproductions, but these heavily pimped 1970s telephones (above, £68 a piece) are such luscious colours I couldn't resist. Not to mention the satisfyingly solid curve of those heavy, bulbous receivers. The yellow one would look lovely in my new home office (which has a tiny flash of bright yellow inside my freshly painted shelves).

Though I rather like this very modern variation on the cordless landline (above, £70) too (as I work from home a lot, I'm part of the one percent of people who still use such devices). Now... if only I could just fit one of them in my pocket...