LONDON: If you caught the kids spooning lemonade up their noses there would be smacked bottoms all around. But it seems many big people in London don't know any better. The funky dinner-party trick of the moment is vodka snorting. Fans of this bizarre new craze admit the procedure is eye-wateringly painful: inhaling a teaspoonful involves screaming, choking and spluttering. But the results - utter intoxication within 10 minutes of snorting a few millilitres - are more effective, less expensive and apparently greater fun than a long night on the turps.
Bar owners in London's square mile are quietly admitting the trend is becoming popular among young professionals, and that the practice has spread from South Africa and Australia. Doctors say the rush of drunkenness is a result of alcohol being absorbed straight into the bloodstream via the nasal membranes, and that it 'shouldn't be encouraged'.
sue quinn PARIS: A new book is rapidly seducing the expatriate community. How To Become A Real Parisien is a chic little tome featuring an impossibly well-turned out dame on the cover sipping an espresso. Alas, the contents fail to match the packaging. Key issues, like how to deal with scary concierges, and how to get a table at Brasserie Lipp on a Friday night, are curiously absent. Instead the book lists shops selling scented candles, paper napkins and crystalware.
There is also a bizarre section which groups Parisien types according to the neighbourhoods in which they live and the cafes where they hang out. Apparently I am no longer an interloper, but a Left Bank neo-bourgeois because I shop at Agnes b, eat at the Cafe de la Mairie and read the tacky scandal-sheet Voici. It's nice to know you belong.
anita chaudhuri NEW YORK: It's just as well temporary tattoos are seen as perfectly respectable, given how quickly fashions change. Snakes curling round arms, Celtic 'bracelets' and, worst of all, the swallow on the shoulder, are now extremely passe, which is bad luck for anyone who had them inked on permanently. The coolest tattoo to sport now is the Chinese character. Roy Zukerman, owner of temporary-tattoo company Temptu, says he is inundated with people wanting them painted on in black and red.
The most popular characters are those for love, eternity, and beauty - and since they don't last long they're perfect for those brief encounters New Yorkers are so partial to. Customers are having to make sure they know what they're getting, however. The last thing they want is to display an announcement like, 'I have a big bottom'.
tessa souter TORONTO: Chicken-pox parties are the rage in parents' circles, according to a report in Canada's new newspaper the National Post. When little Johnny gets the virus, instead of keeping him away from his friends increasing numbers of parents are now inviting friends over to spread the itch-inducing infection deliberately. Calculating? Yes. Deceitful? No. At least not on the parents' behalf. What might appear to be regular parties for their children are really gatherings organised by mums and dads hoping to avert inopportune sick days and cancelled trips by timing the little ones' exposure to the common illness. The report said doctors were divided by the strategy; some said the plan was merely 'odd', others that it was potentially harmful.
