Tino at Tate

A while back I wrote a list of all the shit I wanted to do once I had finished writing and updating the book. Some of those things – washing, a pedicure – I have managed, others – the Ai Wei Wei pavilion at the Serpentine and Queen Art and Image at the National Portrait Gallery – I failed abysmally to accomplish.

And so damn it if I was going to miss Tino at Tate.

I’d had FIFTEEN weeks to get to Tate to experience the Seghal and to check out The Tanks before they closed for ongoing renovations and even the night before it was odds-on we mightn’t get there. But get there we did – with 24 hours to spare.

A mini-break to Greenwich

It's been a lovely weekend - a perfect see-saw of activities and outings and frocks at one end and fuck all at the other.

This weekend Lovely Boy and I had a mini-break to Greenwich.

Oh Frieze

So I went to Frieze on Friday afternoon.

Last year was the first time I’d ever gone and the experience was timely for a number of non-art related reasons. 

But the truth is, I really grapple with the whole art fair circus. I mean, I understand its place in the wider ecology of the art world and the commercial art world in particular, and am not such a socialist as to say art should only be that which is available and accessible and interesting and rich with transformative potential for the average punter. BUT, well, I kind of don’t really like the commercial art world. And mostly, that’s because I think its values are a bit screwy.

An Istanbul fling

Istanbul has been near to the top of my ‘list’ for I don’t remember how long. It’s been on Lovely Boy’s list really only since I added it for him. And even then, it fell somewhere on the second page. So a plane ticket to Turkey for my birthday back in June felt especially special.

The 5am start to get out to Heathrow was mollified by the exceedingly happy memories of our last trip to Turkey and the chance to watch the sunrise over the runway over my bowl of Pret porridge in shiny terminal 5. And against the odds of a non-reclining chair (tut, tut BA…) I slept like one of those nodding ducks most of the way there. 

Girls gone mild in Cornwall

Such is the life of a jetsetter - we're just back from four days in Istanbul but that blog post will have to wait - because four days before that I went to Cornwall. And first thing's first.

Tor and I had been talking about a girls weekend for months - one that would conveniently coincide with beery weekends away for the other halves. And besides, we figured, all four of us have been to Cornwall before so the guilt about going again was basically negligible. And I mean really, what self-regarding boy wants to spend a weekend in bucolic surrounds by the ocean eating great food with a library of tabloids to read, pink wine to drink, gossip to extol and an idyllic eco spa to exploit?

Watergate Bay, Cornwall