Name: Blake Lively.
Age: 26.
Appearance: Thin, blond, beautiful, etc.
Don't I remember her from the glossy teen TV drama Gossip Girl? You do indeed. She played Serena van der Somethingorother.
That's right. Had a dark secret. Got and lost several boyfriends. Married one of them. Looked good all the time. TV's not difficult, is it? Not at all. But now Gossip Girl has ended, Lively spends most of her time modelling, cooking, acting in unsuccessful films and marrying Ryan Reynolds.
Gosh. I wish I had her life. Well, as a matter of fact … you can.
Fantastic. I've always wanted to be thin, blond and beautiful. Ah, sorry. For those, you'll need a better diet, regular exercise, bleach and surgery. I meant that you could live like her by buying things from her new website, preserve.us.
Oh. Does it sell jam? No.
Good. I already have jam. Congratulations.
What does it sell? "Sometimes we walk proudly. Other times we stumble gracelessly. Yet we take each step with a generous measure of never-ending curiosity and wonder."
What? "People, stories, essays, videos and goods which hopefully inspire your home, your style and your tongue."
What? Pretentiously unpretentious knick-knacks. And a sort of free online style magazine about them.
You mean a catalogue, a free online style catalogue full of adverts. Yes, I suppose so.
Do you have any embarrassing examples of these knick-knacks? Well, there's the $95 wooden crate. "Caboose it onto your bike to carry the day's produce, impromptu flowers for your sweetheart, or whatever you need to transport in a stylish manner – emission-free!"
No pillock should be without one. Or there's the wonkily made cup, at $49. "Its blue lines seem never-ending, stretching round a cylinder of smooth white clay."
So they're circular, these blue lines? Is that what she's saying? Never-ending like a doughnut or a nostril? That's right. There is an awful lot of prattle. Still, Lively does promise, for the first year at least, to give 5% of all the website's sales to charity. And it is cheaper than Gwyneth Paltrow's.
Do say: "How wonderful it is to discover something that has been cast aside, to pick it up and restore it to its original beauty."
Don't say: "And yet it is so much more wonderful if someone else discovers it for you, and then you pick it up from their website."
