Surviving February

Slogging my way through this miserable fucking February I’m realising now just how important it is to leave. Normally this would be for a Sydney summer – an extended ellipses of sunny days, swimming and family to punctuate a grey, cold December and a biting, hope destroying February. Not having gone to Sydney this Christmas, Mexico was meant instead to be that break in the weather, albeit a briefer one. How that didn’t go to plan is well established elsewhere…

Getting over the disappointment of Mexico – and finding ways to make bearable this seemingly unending grey/snowy/windy/wet/sub-zero weather has meant making plans. Plans for other holidays, plans for cultural outings, plans to get out of LB’s tracksuit pants and back into the world, even though that’s meant making tights and thermals and two pairs of socks the necessary building blocks of every sartorial decision.

So, to that end, last Sunday I went to see the Juergen Teller at the ICA (I really don’t want to be that person who wrinkles their nose and says, quietly, this is sleazy and brash and while occasionally witty and beautiful, I’m not sure calling this art doesn’t mean it’s not still porn. I was that person)

On Friday I’m off to see Light Show at the Hayward. Cannot wait. Anthony McCall, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Flavin, Ceal Floyer, a whole host of others and this work by Leo Villareal:

Image courtesy: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre

We’ve booked tickets to see Kate Nash in concert in early May and tickets to see Helen Mirren play the Queen in The Audience on the West End two weeks later.

Easter is six weeks away, Mum and Max will be here mid-May and we’re off to Provence for a week before driving to Venice for the Biennale, then the Lovely-in-laws will be here and we’re heading to Reykjavik with them for a long weekend.

We’re still tossing up between Lisbon, Stockholm and Copenhagen for the first bank holiday weekend but the last one, in August, has Berlin written all over it.

There’s loads more on my list – hopefully enough to distract us until the sunshine arrives. The daffodils are here so the warmth shouldn’t be too far behind, surely?