RENT August 25, 2011 Director of Central London lettings firm Draker Lettings Q. I have several rental properties in central London and want to see if I can maximise my return next year by letting some or all of them for the Olympics. What should I charge and should I look for shorter tenancies now to ensure that they [...]
Homes still pay on the Cote d’Azur August 25, 2011 WHAT with European economic chaos, earthquakes and hurricanes pummelling the US and the most valuable company in the world losing its CEO, one rather can’t help but recall Benjamin Franklin’s saying: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Well, perhaps Franklin missed one thing in his list of [...]
Barnes thrills with English storytelling at its terse best August 24, 2011 THE SENSE OF AN ENDING BY JULIAN BARNES Jonathan Cape, £12.99 IN the past, I have found Julian Barnes – most famously author of Flaubert’s Parrot – less tractable than his contemporaries. If given the choice between Ian McEwan – of whose even-shorter novella On Chesil Beach this book reminds me – or Martin Amis, [...]
My boyfriend gets drunk so often. Does he have a problem? August 24, 2011 SOLVING YOUR WORK-LIFE PROBLEMS My boyfriend works as a broker and booze is a big part of his (and our) lives. We all love a drink or two with mates after work, but he drinks at lunch and gets smashed at least three times a week. He comes home at 4AM and wakes me up, [...]
For the best in-car sound system around, go British August 24, 2011 IT would be easy to assume that having a spectacular in-car sound system would mean having a spectacularly loud sound system – the kind of pimped-up, bass-heavy bulldozer of a system that occupies the entire boot and can shake a whole neighbourhood. But that would be wrong. Instead of volume and bass thump, consider a [...]
Watch out for the mobile apps that hide malware August 24, 2011 TECH TALK IT would be crass to describe smartphones as the new rock and roll – but they do make beautiful music. But like many top, none-too-reliable performers, your mobile can’t handle money, everybody wants a piece of it and it’s incredibly insecure. Which is dangerous enough in a musician but fatal for a computer [...]
Taking soundbars into orbit August 24, 2011 IT looks like the looming black monolith from 2001, A Space Odyssey, but the speaker system on the left is a deft spatial stereo gizmo constructed by another plucky British company, the sci fi-sounding Orbitsound. Announced this week and coming into shops next month, the soundbar (which has the not-exactly-charismatic title of T12v3) is able [...]
OUT OF OFFICE August 24, 2011 TOULOUSE LAUTREC AT THE COURTAULD A contemporary of the Impressionists and a troubled, dissolute patron of the Moulin Rouge, the stories of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s life can sometimes overshadow his achievements as an artist. The current exhibition at the Courtauld Institute tackles this by shedding interesting light on both. It looks at his relationship with [...]
No frills and certainly no thrills August 23, 2011 THE name Bipper Tepee promises a fun, nifty little car, something with quirky styling and even quirkier personalisation options on the inside, perhaps. And, while it’s no Nissan Cube on the styling front, it’s fair to say that Peugeot’s Bipper Tepee is a reasonably fun-looking car. That said, it does bear more than a passing [...]
CAR TALK August 23, 2011 VW CITY CAR The is Volkswagen’s tiny city car which is being launched at next month’s Frankfurt motor show. Small but as spacious as possible inside, the four-seater will go on sale with a 60PS or75PS three-cylinder petrol engine capable of up to 67mpg with less than 100g/km of CO2. An electric version is coming [...]