Brighton Rock(s)!

Yesterday was a very special day. Ignoring the "mild" hangover that came with two accidental cocktails and a bottle of wine over dinner, and rugged up against a bracing 4 degrees, I spent yesterday in Brighton with my dear friend Kirsten.

10 years ago a slightly chubbier, arguably less sarcastic, definately less worldly version of myself made this very same trip - for my gap year. It was while working at Roedean School that Kirsten and I met and it was yesterday that we went back for the first time. Such a good day - despite my apparent amnesia when it comes to remembering a number of the things we did and saw and drank while living here...

Our first port of call was a little village called Rottingdean - for a morning tea that starred scones, clotted cream, jam and pots of tea. We caught the bus there, ogling out the window at Roedean as we drove past...


(I don't think the resemblance to Colditz Castle is in anyway accidental...)

It's just bizarre to re-trace the paths of the ghosts of our former selves and to reflect on the enormity of a decade and the distances, literal and otherwise, that have been travelled since then. It's certainly been fascinating to ponder what advice I might retrospectively offer my 18 year old self, given the opportunity. To be honest it's oddly reassuring to realise that apart from "Resist the urge to cut all your hair off when a boy breaks your heart" and "Read the fine print - you didn't have to do all those pointless Gen Ed subjects" - well, it would simply be to stop worrying so much because actually it will all be ok. But maybe go easy on the clotted cream, yes?...

Waddling out of Ye Olde Tea Rooms in Rottingdean we decided to take the coastal cliff walk back to Brighton.


Such a beautiful day - despite the freezing temperatures and just so good to be by the water again. Though Brighton can keep the pebbles - I'll have my Bondi sand thanks very much.


Huffing and puffing our way back into Brighton we had a delightful afternoon wandering through the Old Lanes and the North Laine - lots of street markets and cafes and bric a brac antique shops just begging to be relieved of their fabulous jewels... On our way there we passed the Royal Pavilion. Built in the early 19th century, it was the destination for some of the earliest and most scandalous dirty weekends in history - the Prince Regent, later King George IV, enjoyed using the place for flings with his Catholic mistress while bathing occasionally in the sea water to alleviate his gout...


As with 10 years ago - I walked past but didn't go in...

After spending the afternoon wandering and shopping and reminiscing we headed to the Palace Pier - via a photo opportunity with a breathtaking sunset:


The Palace Pier is kind of like Vegas, but on water and with rollercoasters. It is tawdry and garish and crass and yet, strangely, so much fun.


After much dithering we decided, for old time's sake that while in Brighton.... while on the Pier... well, we really should ride on this....


And then on this...


Despite the fact my internal organs are still trying to find their way home it was a great way to wind up the day - and a great thing we did rides first, dinner second. It was such a special thing to be able to spend the day with Kirsten reconnecting to this huge adventure we had 10 years ago. Sentimental value aside, I do genuinely adore Brighton and in the words of my new canvas bag, "Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!"

If they'd had a bag that said "Oh I do like to spend Sundays in my flannelette pajamas because it's too cold to get out of bed - and is that rain or snow or some slushy combination of the two that's falling outside my window?" - well, I probably would have bought that too.

Grey... meet Beige...

Beige has never been my favourite colour and yet colour me miserable that's exactly how I've felt this week. Everything has been an effort - fighting off a good dose of homesickness, pretending not to be disconsolate or upset - about boy specifically or boys generally. I suppose I should be relieved that the adolescent malcontents who thought it hilarious to squirt me in the face with water when I walked past the other day opted for that and not an old school mugging. But I can rain on my own parade thanks very much.

It's a sad (and I fear terribly boring) indictment of my inadvertent maturity that I've found myself with no choice but to suck things up and get on with it the last week because a) there's no appreciable audience for the toy drop I yearn to have and b) it's not like it's going to change anything so why wreck my mascara.

So I have done what all sensible girls do when feeling pitiful and gone out and spent money. Not much of it because, well, I don't have any, but enough to make me feel marginally better. Yay for the Columbia Rd Flower Markets.


Not to be confused by the multidinous calls of "free for a fiver!" - three for a fiver is not a bad deal - except that when you end up with six bunches of flowers, among them lilies and irises, and they start to bloom in the delicious hothouse that is your bedroom, well the effect is unfortunately a little funereal. Fuck don't get me wrong - I'm all for mourning the death of pathetic daydreams involving what you thought were emotionally available men but it does feel a touch OTT... even by my melodramatic standards.

It is nice to have a bit of colour around though - especially when all things East London are grey, rainy and so utterly devoid of romantic possibility. It's dark every day now by 4pm - which is probably why all the Christmas lights in central London are starting to appear. Oh. That and I suppose it's nearly four weeks til Christmas. WHEN did that happen?!


Today notwithstanding I've been pretty good at getting out of the house (the fact such trips have largely been instigated by a lack of diet coke is besides the point) and on Monday night I took myself off to the Tate Modern for a lecture on the history of the Avant Garde in Exhibitions. Unfortunately the lecture itself was kind of uninspiring but walking through Trafalgar Square on the way there, there was this huge video art project taking place called Under Scan by the Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Somewhat spookily, as you walk by or under the lights, a computer tracking system triggers all these interactive video portraits of anonymous people that are then played out in your shadow. This is a blurry action shot...


This is a better image - not taken by me and clearly not taken when dark and raining...


Was pretty cool actually - and I'm on the record as being all for inadvertant art encounters. Yesterday in fact was another good day for all things art. We has a visit to Camden Arts Centre in North London - for a discussion about curating in public galleries but there was a work there called The Library of Secrets by Serena Korda. Not a new concept but it was so engaging and tactile and sentimental, I couldn't help but like it. Back to back shelves of old books, at each end was a booth where you were invited to scribble down your secret and then leave it in the pages of a book for others to then open and read, depending on which book you pulled from the shelves.


Tragic really how many of them had to do with unrequited love but they ran the gamut from this...


To this...
And I thought I had problems. Anyway - I'm off to see more public sculpture later today - I have to give a presentation in my seminar tomorrow on a particular work near Monument, which of course I haven't seen yet. So should probably get out of my pajamas and get on with the day. It is nearly 3pm. Could be time for another tarot card reading...

If I had a dollar....

... for every instance where a boy has told me I am brilliant, fabulous, special, a generally all-round-tops-one-in-a-million-kind-of-person - oh - but they only want to be my friend - well I would now have five whole dollars. Actually - let's be fair and make it four - the sociopath with mother issues is a cheap dollar won...

Nevertheless. The one day I really do need to be ignored as I cry my way home and how many people should stop and ask me if I'm ok? THREE. Well - one kind man and two morons who leered and yelled "What's up love?" from their car as I walked past. Fuckwits in automobiles notwithstanding here's a question for you - why is that when some kind stranger asks if everything is alright we reply "I'm fine, thank you though" - despite clearly being anything other than. Life Mystery #374. Comes right after Life Mystery #373 - Why are most boys stupid?

And dammit the day started so well. I had my second tutorial this morning - turns out there is something to be said for last minute all-nighters... I got 78 (70 is a distinction) for my essay on the absconding brush mark and topped the year. The words "brilliant" and "exceptional" may even have been used. Clearly not a discussion about my way with men.

Guten tag aus Deutschland

My ambition to write is clearly larger than my ability to conjure cogent thought at this moment in time. I've been sitting here for a full five minutes struggling to come up with a coherent (never mind vaguely interesting...) way of beginning to reflect on the art orgy that has been the last four days. And I still don't know. And there is still one day to go. Welcome to Germany kids.

We arrived in Koln offensively early on Tuesday morning - when I left London it looked like this:


Dark and misty and cold. And 4.30am. By the time we got to Stansted, flew to Germany, arrived in Koln and dumped our bags the last thing any of us wanted to do was spend six hours at the Ludwig Museum, I don't care how fabulous their Pop Art collection is. Well, OK, I cared. But the point is we were tired and hungry and the last thing we wanted to do in said state was to have to find the energy for rigorous intellectual discussion.

A pinch and a punch

1st of November. Wow. Thanks to the world's best parents I will be heading Bondi-way in seven weeks time for Christmas and a month of family fun and frivolity with friends. Scary to think how quickly Christmas is approaching and scary too to realise it hasn't yet been two months since I arrived.

It's been an emotional couple of days. Yesterday I went to the funeral of a good family friend in Nottingham, who died suddenly and unexpectedly two weeks ago. I've never been to a funeral on my own before - and it's not something I'd like to do again, despite being adopted by two lovely old women who shared their tissues and memories with me. Shock and grief and a profound sense of unfairness make for a heady combination and while I truly believe grief is but a measure of our capacity to love - it doesn't bring them back, does it? The world is certainly a little less lovely for her passing.

Thank goodness for friends - and the comfort of pajamas on cold, wet, miserable, grey days as has been today. Turkish food to beg/steal/plot for and a bottle of wine last night with a friend on her couch and today in situ on my own couch in the company of my best and oldest Peter Alexander's, my similarly-clad and so so lovely flatmate and the Home and Away omnibus. So very sad. So very true. But I like to think an effective antidote to the increasing stabs of longing for warmth and sunshine and sand between my toes.

So YAY for all kinds of distractions - and I don't refer here to five impending days of hard core art in Germany next week...

I am heading out of London again tomorrow - for a walk, no less, through the English countryside.


Hmm. Doing my best to wrangle those latent Mr Darcy fantasies into check and think thick woollen stockings should do the trick. The kind that cover your ribs. Nothing like killing any vestiges of allure with a method actor-esque attempt to understand what it's like to be a fat sausage.