Category Archives: Lifestyle

St Pancras International is not just a railway station, it is a permanent home for the high-speed terminus to Ashford thanks to Southeastern, the Continent thanks to Eurostar, and with its accompanying five star Renaissance Hotel, it may well be the grandest railway station in the world.

Dressed in towering and exuberant Victorian red-brick and coloured stone, this dazzling piece of Gothic architecture looks reminiscent of a Cathedral with its clock tower and spiralling turrets.

Its sprawling interior is a hub for transport both overground and underground, but it is also a hub for humanity: around 48 million travellers and visitors per year set off or stay put to enjoy the retail, dining and cultural opportunities.

Originally built as the Midland railway in 1863 it housed Sir William Barlow’s train shed which looked awesome with high arches made of iron and glass and was one of the great engineering feats of the Victorian age. By 1873 the accompanying hotel Midland Grand Hotel was completed.

Once earmarked for demolition, it was restored instead and in 2007 it became the frontage to a vast gateway for High Speed 1 (HS1), the speedy rail service between Britain and mainland Europe and together with Southeastern provides the UK’s first high speed (140 miles per hour) domestic train service from Ashford in Kent to London in just 28 minutes.

As a departure or arrival point, it would be hard to find one more pleasing. Or to experience one with so much sociability. Fortnum & Mason, Hamleys, Gant, Thomas Pink, John Lewis and Benugo are amongst the many retailers and eateries that have a home at St Pancras.

“St Pancras is a station for our times,” said Will Gordon, Marketing Manager at HS1. “This station has become a retail, social and cultural destination in its own right.”

With constant investment, St Pancras has elevated the everyday travel experience into something extraordinary with well-known high-street names and boutique independent retailers. On its upper concourse, The Grand Terrace, is Europe’s longest champagne bar. Downstairs at The Arcade are thirty three familiar outlets including Accessorize, Cath Kidston, Fat Face, Dune and John Lewis and 24 food outlets from Patisserie Valerie to Searcys. By the main entrance there is an authentic Farmer’s market.

The accompanying hotel, the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel adds its own style of glamour with its spa and a clutch of diverse restaurants. It’s a surprisingly serene space.

Had St Pancras actually been knocked down, it’s hard to imagine that anything better than this gorgeous, vibrant landmark on King’s Cross’ Euston Road, could possibly have given this part of London a better boost.

Or indeed the commuters from Ashford a better way into London.

Look at the sunset, life is amazing, life is beautiful, life is what you make it. You see the hedges, how I got it shaped up? It’s important to shape up your hedges, it’s like getting a haircut, stay fresh. Lion! You see the hedges, how I got it shaped up? It’s important to shape up your hedges, it’s like getting a haircut, stay fresh. We don’t see them, we will never see them. To succeed you must believe. When you believe, you will succeed.

The key to more success is to get a massage once a week, very important, major key, cloth talk. The key to more success is to get a massage once a week, very important, major key, cloth talk. It’s important to use cocoa butter. It’s the key to more success, why not live smooth? Why live rough? How’s business? Boomin. You see that bamboo behind me though, you see that bamboo? Ain’t nothin’ like bamboo. Bless up. Surround yourself with angels.

Celebrate success right, the only way, apple. Celebrate success right, the only way, apple. I’m giving you cloth talk, cloth. Special cloth alert, cut from a special cloth. Put it this way, it took me twenty five years to get these plants, twenty five years of blood sweat and tears, and I’m never giving up, I’m just getting started. Always remember in the jungle there’s a lot of they in there, after you overcome they, you will make it to paradise. Learning is cool, but knowing is better, and I know the key to success. You smart, you loyal, you a genius.

I’m giving you cloth talk, cloth. Special cloth alert, cut from a special cloth. Egg whites, turkey sausage, wheat toast, water. Of course they don’t want us to eat our breakfast, so we are going to enjoy our breakfast. Wraith talk. They don’t want us to eat. You see the hedges, how I got it shaped up? It’s important to shape up your hedges, it’s like getting a haircut, stay fresh. We don’t see them, we will never see them. Major key, don’t fall for the trap, stay focused. It’s the ones closest to you that want to see you fail.

A splash of vibrant colour and bold geometric prints bring the Californian sunshine into this LA house. Ali Morris pays a visit.On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.

These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?