The $2.00 £

This brings back such fond memories of the mid-eighties when the GBP could be purchased for one USD. I was in Harrods Men Shop one day when a gentleman requested their entire stock of Burburies. He shipped them off to America wirh the staff lookibg quite forlorn and crestfallen.

How the world has turned upside-down since then!

DiaryRachel Johnson

In thick of whistlestop tour of the US to promote Notting Hell, so the dateline above this diary should read ‘New York, Dallas, Washington D.C, Chicago, Denver, L.A, San Francisco’ which would be a first — for me, anyway. In the taxi to the airport, I compare schedules with the novelist and leggy beauty Santa Montefiore (also touring some cities with me promoting her book The Gypsy Madonna, on our Great British Blondes roadshow. I love it!). I leaf through the bumf and then decide it hasn’t been put together by my fab team at Touchstone Fireside of Simon and Schuster without a map (NY–Dallas–DC??), but by a sadist. There are 5 a.m. starts on no less than five days. I discover that Santa is not only flying business class both ways, but she has cleverly brought an empty suitcase to fill with all the clothes she will buy at Ralph Lauren in New York at $2 to the pound, and has only two early starts compared to my five. She also brought, she mentions, a pair of open-toed espadrilles.
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