Passport to Pimlico
The Daylesford dream is coming to London — savour it, says Victoria Mather Last night I dreamt I was at Daylesford again. It seemed to me as I drove up the winding drive, through the parkland, the sun glinting on the 18th-century facade of the house that . . . damn, I woke up! Actually, the last time I went to Daylesford it was less Gothic novel, more nightmare. Having parked in front of the house one exquisitely frosty, midwinter Sunday, thinking of a delicious drink and perfectly matched cashew nuts, a gardener popped up from behind a clipped hedge and told me I had a slow puncture. This is not information that thrills a woman on her own in the deep midwinter. 'Oh, please don't worry, madam, we will deal with it while you have drinks with Lady Bamford.' And thus it came to pass that, two glasses of Ruinart later, my tyre was mended and my car had been washed.
This is the B-level. Forget the A-level; the B-level, Bamford-level, is about brilliance. I had previously only heard of washed cars at house-parties from my mother, tullewrapped echoes of her past as a debutante in the Thirties. The 21st-century application of chamois leather to my disgusting Volvo demonstrated once again the fearless perfection of the Bamford ethos. As if I needed to be reminded.
I imagine you have been to the Daylesford Organic Shop in Gloucestershire. It is the epicentre of chic wonky carrots. I suspect property prices have rocketed near Moreton-in-Marsh because of the Glos-sy posse's proximity to Daylesford's butternut, sage and honey soup (commended at the Soil Association Organic Food Awards 2004). Houseguests fresh and wild from Notting Hill beg to go on a Saturday morning pilgrimage to the shops, the spa, the café (winner of the Soil Association's Organic Restaurant of the Year 2004). My dear, it is even full at breakfast.
Now all this loveliness is coming to London. Lady Bamford is going to suffuse her new shop in Pimlico with rus in urbe. The vegetables, fruit and herbs in season, grown organically at Daylesford, will be sold from white marble counters, together with cheeses (Daylesford organic cheddar is a gold winner of the British Cheese Awards 2003, 2005 and 2006), meat that has led a happy life on the Bamford estates in Staffordshire with its on-site abattoir for happy death. The scent of seven-seed sourdough bread will waft from the organic bakery; a food gallery will stock Daylesford's homemade tomato ketchup (so it must be healthy), chutneys and chocolate pralines (a bronze winner in the Soil Association Organic Food Awards pantheon 2006). There will be a café spilling out into global warming on the Pimlico Road, so fabulously thin women can nibble rocket that may have been personally grown on Carole Bamford's face flannel, and then ascend the white marble staircase to homewares, clutching in ecstasy at Daylesford's very own willow handrails, to buy steak knives with handles crafted from Daylesford's organic stag horn, an ornamental byproduct of Daylesford venison (Daylesford is the Food and Farming Industry's Retailer of the Year).
With one visit to this lustrous emporium, one buys into a lifestyle. It is healthier, fitter, more contemporary and lean. 5: It is a modern taste sensation. Good taste. As a g lifestyle goddess, Carole Bamford leaves Martha P;.. Stewart way back in the 4 last century. Lady B does not want you to knit your own snow at Christmas; she can do it for you. Lady B is the hedgefunders' wives' goddess. Lady B (winner of Food and Farming Regional Personality of the Year Award 2006) is the pin-thin perfectionist every aspirational modern woman wants to be (possibly without the hard graft required to win the Organic and Natural Food Business Vision Award in 2006). She's changed lives in the Third World sourcing artisan craftsmanship. The one fault I can find — after tireless searching — is that I can't fit into her creamy clothes range. Otherwise, she's even faultless on vulgarity: pre-Christmas at the Gloucestershire shop a lifesize reindeer made of Daylesford twigs was threaded with tiny pin-lights. I so wanted him on my lawn for a Chrissie Eve Rudolph moment.
I hear you say that it's all very well to be tasteful if you're married to wealth and own a private plane. Isn't it what we all want? I'll settle for the plane, but I'll never be able to do as much as Lady B to offset the carbon footprint.
Daylesford Organic, 44B Pimlico Road, London SW1W 8LP. Telephone: 020 7881 8060. www.daylesfordorganic.com
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