Letting Go of the Glitz
The True Story of One Woman's Struggle to Live the Simple Life in Chelsea
Published on 18. June 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-84590-142-4 (ISBN)
Description
"Help! I'm Married Alive!"
Julia Stephenson, struggling to cope with life as a Surrey housewife, grimly welded to her electric floor polisher and fed up with her golf-addicted, BMW-driving husband, bolts to the fleshpots of London.
Here she forges a new life as a single girl about town in her Chelsea eyrie, a short walk from Peter Jones. Bemused to find herself an 'It-girl', life soon becomes a ritzy blur of parties, popping corks and flashbulbs, while handsome aristocratic boyfriends come and go.
Realising she isn't cut out for this she reinvents herself as a femme serieuse, representing the Green Party at the general election and begins to convert her flat into the first carbon-neutral dwelling in Sloane Square. Giving up her usual dating fodder of Old Etonians and bankers she embarks on a tempestuous love affair with her builder.
Who wants to be driven around in a Porsche when you can be ferried about in a spacious white van that runs on waste cooking oil?
Life is so much better in every way when you let go of the glitz.
Julia Stephenson, struggling to cope with life as a Surrey housewife, grimly welded to her electric floor polisher and fed up with her golf-addicted, BMW-driving husband, bolts to the fleshpots of London.
Here she forges a new life as a single girl about town in her Chelsea eyrie, a short walk from Peter Jones. Bemused to find herself an 'It-girl', life soon becomes a ritzy blur of parties, popping corks and flashbulbs, while handsome aristocratic boyfriends come and go.
Realising she isn't cut out for this she reinvents herself as a femme serieuse, representing the Green Party at the general election and begins to convert her flat into the first carbon-neutral dwelling in Sloane Square. Giving up her usual dating fodder of Old Etonians and bankers she embarks on a tempestuous love affair with her builder.
Who wants to be driven around in a Porsche when you can be ferried about in a spacious white van that runs on waste cooking oil?
Life is so much better in every way when you let go of the glitz.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 123 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
270 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84590-142-4 (9781845901424)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Julia Stephenson
Letting Go of the Glitz
The True Story of One Woman's Struggle to Live the Simple Life in Chelsea
E-Book
06/2009
Crown House Publishing
€10.79
Available for download
Person
Julia Stephenson is a journalist and author. For many years she wrote the Green Goddess column in the Independent, which detailed her struggle to turn her Chelsea flat into the first carbon neutral dwelling in Sloane Square. She has since sold her flat and now lives the good life in a 27 acre wildlife sanctuary near Guildford from where she is running a dog sanctuary, primarily to rehabilitate and rehome abused Romanian dogs. She hasn't given up on the green dream and by 2015 anticipated that the sanctuary would be running mainly on renewable energy. She is particularly excited about her new methane digester which is able to transform the many tons of dog poo, currently carted off at great expense by Surrey County Council, into electricity. When life at the sanctuary becomes too much she likes to escape to her pied-a-terre in Parsons Green, leaving things in the capable hands of her boyfriend-on-a-short-fuse and her second in command, Bagdat, the Boudicca of the dog rescue