The big thing

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Published: 12:00am, 7 Feb 1999

LONDON: Although it sounds like a major marketing ploy by the capital's estate-agent fraternity, it does indeed appear to be true: an ugly '60s tower block, once used as low-income housing, is now the des res (estate agent's parlance for a desirable residence) in London. The upwardly mobile are queueing - yes, queueing - to live in Trellick Tower, in all its 31-storey concrete glory. It might look dark and dingy with its concrete slabs hanging over a particularly ugly piece of London motorway in north Kensington, but two-bedroom apartments in Trellick are now fetching more than ?150,000 (HK$1.93 million) and a single bedroom will set renters back ?100 a week.

Chelsea council, which administers the sale of the flats, reports that lawyers, designers, artists and musicians are eager for a piece of the action, with the main attraction reportedly the floor to ceiling windows and the unparalleled views over London. It has come a long way since Erno Goldfinger created the building in 1967 and thus enraged James Bond author Ian Fleming so much he used him as the model for arch-villain Goldfinger.

sue quinn PARIS: The French have been rather Luddite about embracing the Internet but finally they appear to be letting the wonders of technology into their sophisticated lives. Until recently, most French householders were happy to stick with their Minitel terminals - an archaic home-shopping system set up by the state-run phone company. Now, though, more and more people are subscribing to the Net proper, and as a result, groovy French Web pages are springing up all over the shop. One of the better ones is the prosaically titled Miam-Miam (French for 'yum yum'), a foodie e-zine which provides details of all the newest, hippest restaurants across France, as well as info about new food stores, the best wines and where to buy them, and gossip from some of the top kitchens in Paris. The site is at www.miam-miam.com but if you want full access you have to subscribe.

anita chaudhuri NEW YORK: The city has come up with a new plan to deal with drunk drivers - seizing their cars on the spot. If convicted, the drivers lose their cars forever. Currently, the cars belonging to people convicted of drunk-driving are held until someone comes to collect them but under the new plan the car would not be returned unless the driver were acquitted. Vehicles that have been confiscated already (under a law which allows the forfeiture of cars that have been used during a crime) are often sold at auction where many members of the public go to pick up miraculous bargains (never mind that the windscreen may sport the odd bullet hole). With several hundred drunk-driving convictions a year, that could release a lot more cars on to the market. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told The New York Times that 'anything we can do to convince people not to get behind the wheel of a car after they've had a drink ... [will] probably [save] them a lot of problems in the future'. Yeah. Like finding parking in Manhattan.

tessa souter VANCOUVER: Do your ears hang low? If so, you'll feel right at home with the local body modification crowd, many of whom are getting into ear stretching. Inspired by certain tribes in Africa and Borneo, this is a fashion statement for the dedicated - it can take up to two years to stretch a hole from the pinprick of a pierced lobe to a centimetre diameter. The owner of Sacred Heart Tattoo and Body Piercing, David Williams, is quite blase about the procedure and claims his clients hail from all walks of life, not just the sub-culture of 'modern primitives'. Williams' two shops have trade-in jewellery for customers as they increase their ear-holes' circumference millimetre by millimetre.

Before acquiring a 'flesh tube' (a hole you can see through) people use ear plugs, hole-enlarging disks which come in exotic woods, tusk and antler. Don't try this at home. While it is a relatively tame procedure in the body-modification world, which includes tongue splitting, subcutaneous metal implants and scarification, a Canadian chat group abounds with stories of sore lobes after jamming in such discount equipment as unsterilised knitting needles and even a nail.