12,000 miles from Bondi...

B is for...

2012-02-06T22:14:00.002Z

BOY, LOVELY

Lovely Boy and I had a date on Saturday afternoon. More an attempt to re-engage with life in London than re-kindle any lost in the early days of marriage romance, we ventured out on Saturday afternoon with a plan....

BRITISH MUSEUM (see also: Perry, Grayson)

First stop was the British Museum. I've been wanting to take Lovely Boy to see the Grayson Perry exhibition since I saw it last year and this week I managed to wangle some free tickets and so we were off. And we were off, dressed in all our finest fleecy layers, anticipating the forecasted snow. But so, it turned out, was everybloodyone else.

As his teddy bear Alan Measles, Perry writes a very sardonic, very funny blog that takes pointed aim at the fatuousness of much of the art/celebrity world and there's a beautiful vase in his exhibition, titled You Are Here (2011) that lampoons the myriad reasons why people might flock to his show. Whatever their reason of choice on Saturday, it was so busy that despite our free tickets we couldn't get in. And so we've had to raincheck it for next Saturday. Which takes care of next week's date....

Grayson Perry, You Are Here, 2011. (detail below)
Image courtesy: Victoria Miro

But because we were there, and because Lovely Boy had never been beyond the gift shop on a lunch break, and because the last time I was there I was an awkward, chubby, homesick teenager, we decided to have a wander. We spent maybe an hour perusing the sculptures in the Greek halls before heading up to the fourth floor to ogle the Egyptian mummies. And then having had enough of that we headed on to the next part of our little London date.

BOOZE (see also: Tate Modern members bar)

Catching the tube to London Bridge we warmed our mitts with a mug of mulled wine before heading on to Tate. One of our wedding presents was a 12 month membership and I lured Lovely Boy there on the promise of a drink at the sixth floor members bar. If we saw any art it was completely by accident. The two hours we spent there were passed sitting in rock star position against the windows where Lovely Boy sipped an ale and I had a fat glass of pink wine while we watched the snow roll in over St Paul's. If it wasn't already one of my favourite London views it would absolutely be now. It was low key and cool and breath-taking all at once. And by the time we left there was snow already settling.

BOROUGH

Heading back to Borough I took LB to Elliot's, an unpretentious, welcoming, busy restaurant on Stoney St a couple of doors down from Monmouth. I've never been for breakfast - Tor has - but she took me here late last year for a pre-wedding, carb-free, supper. We ate four different entrees from a menu dictated by the freshest produce available at the market that day and washed it down with a big glass of wine. It was a great date. And one I wanted to have again - with Lovely Boy. And boy did it not disappoint. Fried squid with mouthwatering black spelt, homemade garlic flatbread, charcuterie and cheesy cauliflower. All before the kind of hot chocolate cake with butterscotch sauce and homemade vanilla ice cream that leaves you both rapturous and lost for words. I'll be going again. I suspect Lovely Boy will be too.

B is for... SNOW?

OK obviously B is not for snow but in the interests of a linear narrative snow needs to come next so suck it up and read on...

Well, really, there isn't much else to say except that it snowed and it was exciting and by the time we got home we looked like a Mr and Mrs pair of snowpeople. Until we started to melt. And then drip. But still, there is something so inherently joyous about snow. I don't know if it's the novelty factor of seeing your street turn into a monochrome canvas of white, if it's the gratitude for distraction from the just-plain-old-grey cold or if it's the satisfying squeaky scrunch of footprints that break that beautiful pervading quiet that comes with snowfall. Perhaps it's just seeing your husband declare his love for you in the middle of the road.

BLUEBERRY PANCAKES

The first time Lovely Boy cooked me pancakes I was so hungover I was probably still drunk. I'd arrived home at 3.30am, unable to articulate and sliding along the walls with a rare lucid gratitude for their capacity to keep me upright. That was Hen's Party Version London. And I think that's where blueberry pancakes as my new breakfast happy places comes from. Even when I'm full to bilious I still have to eat until there's nothing left. But I do draw the line at licking the plate if that's any consolation....

BUDGET

Welcome to Misery Sunday. Try though they might, not even the blueberry pancakes could stave off the depression that came with sitting down to do a grown up version of a budget only to discover that when it comes to my financial situation, income - expenses = balance........ EQUALS NOTHING. The spreadsheet would have cried with me if I'd added in expensive face cream, occasional flowers and my bi-monthly purchase of Chanel's espresso-coloured waterproof eyeliner.

Things are about to change drastically around here if we are to have any hope of travelling anywhere this year that's not simply to and from work. It's kind of depressing. And the kind of grown up that is frankly B for boring and far from fun. So thank goodness for free tickets to Grayson Perry next weekend?..... I wonder if that reason is on the vase somewhere....

Whatever the case it's time to get fiscally creative.

Frigid February

2012-02-04T12:39:00.000Z

So it’s back to London and life as we knewit. It’s been a busy couple of weeks settling back in and I’d be lying if Ididn’t say there were still some readjustments to be made. Not so much tomarried life, funnily enough it feels remarkably similar to engagedliving-in-sin life, but to the absence that is – now was – a building,long-term anticipation for the megalith of home-summer-sydney-wedding-family.

I’m thanking my lucky stars (which may ormay not resemble my mother and sister) that I didn’t turn into a crazybridezilla during the 12 months leading up to the day (small incident with thecream vs. beige vs. off-white vs. white moment aside) but even still, there isa strange emptiness now that it’s all over and a funny wish to go back andexperience it all again – but maybe as a guest this time just to see what itwas like?... Or is that a bit latent bridezilla? Let it go Jo…. Let it go…

So yes. A bit flat, a bit “Wait, that’sit?”, a bit homesick and bit fucking freezing. Phuket was hot – lovely, perfect– London, currently, has a toddler for a temperature. Three is a good day, twoabout average…. Tops of one forecast for the weekend. The last time I felt thisbone-achingly cold I was in New York in 2001. But I was in NEW YORK so who thefuck cares. Trudging to and fromPeckham each day isn’t quite so glamorous. But then glamour never was bulkygreen cashmere socks over tights under jeans with two singlets, a jumper, acardigan and, lately, a cape, all snuggled in under a coat, hat and scarf.

It makes leaving the house completelyunappealing.

Thankfully though, work has been great andthe month away has done much for my enthusiasm and my facility forconcentration. And there’s so much happening to be excited about. I got to meetElmgreen & Dragset last week – the artist duo responsible for the nextfourth plinth commission and the guys behind the hilariously dark Nordicpavilion at Venice in 2009.

Elmgreen & Dragset, The Collectors, Venice Biennale, 2009

Then on Monday I got to see the DavidHockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. I say this was exciting because It’sDavid Hockney At The Royal Academy… but frankly the show is a bit shit. Forwant of a more sophisticated analysis. But there’s something in me that enjoysdisliking it somehow…

In a couple of weeks I get to sit in on aQ&A with Jeremy Deller at the Hayward and next weekend I’m going to schlepout into the cold to see Zarina Bhimji’s new show at Whitechapel Gallery andhopefully Lygia Pape’s show at the Serpentine. I saw her work in Venice in 2009and adored it. So, lots of things to look forward to and more pinch me momentsthan my aching frozen skin can probably cope with.

Lygia Pape, Venice Biennale, 2009

It wasn’t this cold when we left inDecember. It was crowd heavy and grey but it wasn’t this cold. Apparently theyhave four levels of cold weather warning here in the UK. We’re at level threecurrently – where the infirm and elderly are at risk of death. Level four iswhen healthy humans start to die. A temperature drop and an experience I coulddo without for the moment thanks very much.

A pedestrianised Oxford St just before
Christmas. Took crowds to a whole new level...

Being back in London this time around feelsso different to last time. Last January I was unemployed, completely withoutprospects and pretty depressed. Returning this year has brought it’s own set ofcomplications. It’s taken three years but I finally feel like I live in London.I have not quite a gang but a disparate group of fabulous friends, a job thatexcites me, a lovely husband and an energy to just squeeze as much out of thiscity – and this part of the world – that I can. As Tor would say, I’m choosingmy choice. I don’t want to be away from Sydney – but for the first time really,since I got here, I don’t not want tobe in London.

All grist for the over-thinking mill Isuppose.

Collecting stamps in my art world passportaside (Mark Wallinger, Grayson Perry, Elmgreen & Dragset…) my firstSaturday back in London, two weeks ago now, really set the agenda for the kindof experiences I want this year…

East London graffiti

Heading east, my true spiritual Londonhome, I dropped into Iniva on my way to Vilma Gold Gallery in Bethnal Green, just off Hackney Rd.My old stomping ground and boy did I ache to be able to stay. The afternoon wasspent overseeing a writing workshop that we organised through the website forbudding young art critics with the Assistant Editor of Art Review magazine,Oliver Basciano. I’d be lying if I said I too wasn’t taking notes…. And then Iwandered back down Columbia Rd, licking all the windows before meeting Jen atAllpress on Redchurch St for a coffee, some pistachio biscuits and a huge summer/wedding/life debrief. It was the kind of day that ticked all my Londonboxes – friends, art, inspiring surrounds. It was A Good Day.

The new ATM on the end of my old street

And then last weekend Lovely Boy and Ilobbed our way back to Bray – again – for lunch at the Hinds Head pub (anotherHeston outfit) for Katie’s birthday. £27 for a three course set menu thatincluding pea and ham soup and mushroom macaroni. I was pretty happy – andpretty full by the end of it. Bray is such a quintessentially cute Englishvillage but with low ceilings and thick wooden beams in every building, it’s atall persons nightmare.

Last night I had drinks in Clerkenwell atthis quirky bar called the Zettner Townhouse. The aesthetic was old man’ssmoking parlour meets Miss Haversham in a whack anthropology museum. Its lackof Capital C cool was what made it even cooler. That and the cat in the promdress…

This afternoon I’m taking Lovely Boy on a date –Grayson Perry at the British Museum, dinner in Borough and then drinks in themember’s bar at Tate Modern. Culture and food and exploring London - hopefullyit will be fun. Not least of all because it then means I don’t have to leavethe house tomorrow.

A love letter to Sydney. And to love.

2012-01-16T09:31:00.002Z

Sunset at The Surin, Phuket

You know you’re on a honeymoon when the falling leaves and washed up bits of coral are shaped like love hearts. The point needn’t have been laboured but what kind of cynical wife would I be if I didn’t appreciate the gesture.

Reader, I married him.

Nine days ago to be precise and for the last four days we’ve been in Phuket doing not very much very, very well. Breakfast, swim, nap, lunch, nap, swim, cocktails at sunset, dinner. It’s been an abrupt full stop, or perhaps necessary ellipses, between the busy, memorable, emotional, perfect three weeks at home (replete with Christmas, Oliver’s 30^th and the wedding) and our inevitable return to London tomorrow.

Sunset, Sydney-style. On Lovely Boy's birthday no less.

I’m feeling a dazed sort of ambivalence about it – dizzied by the prospects this year holds in terms of work and learning and travel and great times with special friends, but with my heart still firmly rooted in Sydney and now joined by a quiet, gnawing impatience to get home and get on with life. By this I certainly don’t mean babies (not yet, sorry Mum) but a home that is ours for the painting, decorating, entertaining and a life that involves our families and the option of a swim and a coffee before work.

A bit of Bilgola heaven.

It was so freaking unbelievably good to be home. It did take a week to settle in, thanks to jetlag, a delightful case of gastro-enteritis that I came home with (via a pit-stop at Charing Cross Hospital A&E for necessary drugs to get me through the flight. Now that was an afternoon I could have done without three hours before we had to be at the airport….) and then, the usual readjustment to the pace of life that is Sydney summer and not London winter. You don’t realise how pent up living in London makes you until you spent a couple of days moseying around the northern beaches of Sydney. Whiplash from the brake application.

There are so many things I love about Sydney, about being home, about Summer and about family. Curious king parrots that fly in and park themselves on the pool fence; kookaburras sitting in the old gum tree (yes, really); morning swims with my Mum at Bilgola Beach, watching pods of dolphins chase fish while everyone else chased waves; robust, rude conversation amongst my brothers and sisters choked with snorts of laughter; waking up at 7am and crawling into bed with my mum for a gossip and a cup of tea; eating mangoes that send juice streaming down your arms; boxes of cherries the size of grenades; lunch at North Bondi Italian with the best posse of girlfriends (before swimming in underwear because the car is parked in Rose Bay and your swimmers are on the front seat…), ducking and diving and laughing hilariously and remembering This Was My Life Before London; pink wine and cheese at 3pm; warmth on my back and a pervading sense of peace. All this.

And then a wedding. Our wedding. In the garden, with the parrots and the cockatoos and 87 of our most special friends and family members. I think every bride thinks her day was perfect. I KNOW mine was.

The weather was a gift from Nan – bookended by steamy, wet, windy, temperamental days, January 7^th was warm, sunny, gently breezed and in the evening the most divine kind of balmy. Several people commented that the gentle wind that entwined us both with the long white paper garlands that hung behind us was a blessing – literally and metaphorically - from Nan. I like to think so too. We laughed – we managed not to cry – and have been overwhelmed by the number of people who told us, who keep telling us, that it was the perfect mix of romantic, personal, funny, intimate and meaningful. We like to think so too...

Lovely Boy overcame his nerves to deliver the most heartfelt of speeches and we ate and drank and laughed some more as Soph perfected the MC role, LB’s best man did what all best men are supposed to do (read: recall inappropriate anecdotes) and Tori, LB’s Dad and Oliver spoke hilariously and warmly about us both respectively and collectively. It was truly overwhelming to feel so loved and celebrated.

And then we danced. Under the lanterns I have been dreaming about for at least a decade while the garden blinked with a kilometre of fairy lights. As I said the next day – it was just enough of too much. And the music rocked. In fact, it rocked so much that at 11.30 I asked three gatecrashers from the hostel up the road to please leave and at 12.20am the police came and asked us to turn the music down after a grumpy complaint from miserable 94 year old Claude across the street. A rockstar kind of wedding if ever there was….

And for all my anxiety and doubt about The Dress – in the end we wore each other. I felt confident, beautiful, special and yet, still very much me. But the very best version of me. People have to tell the bride she looks beautiful and that they love the dress but even I could tell that people meant it – basically because they all looked kind of stunned. I took that as a compliment too. I felt sad to take it off at the end of the night and sadder still leaving it behind when we left on Thursday.

We left the house for the hotel at 1.30am – exhausted, elated, dazed and overwhelmed, struggling to make concrete all the memories, sensations and moments of the day – and marvelling at the perfection of it all. And the still-then amazing weather. Several hangers-on remained behind, blithely unaware of the etiquette to leave when the bride does, but getting back to the hotel and crashing into bed, all I wanted was to be back at the house – not in any sort of bridal capacity, but just with my mum and my sister, having a cup of tea and the world’s biggest debrief. Not the most romantic of desires to fall asleep to but make of it what you will.

I still feel a bit stunned when I think about the day – the love, the colour, the flowers – god the flowers! – the marquee full of everyone we love. And then I feel flat and a bit sad that I didn’t grasp harder still to take it all in.

It’s not a blur but trying to remember the day in its completeness is like hearding butterflies – scattershot, delicate, beautiful, impossible. I remember crying in the shower in the morning feeling totally overwhelmed, I remember walking up the drive with Oliver, Sophie and Edward listening for the music we’d chosen 12 months earlier, I remember Loris mouthing “breathe” to me during the ceremony, my dad’s impassive face, my mum’s happy tears, the clench of Lovely Boy’s hand on my waist, the slight sense of the ridiculous as we posed for photos, the swaying lanterns, the exquisite flowers, the impossible lightness of fabric against my skin, taking my shoes off so my knees wouldn’t knock when I gave my speech, the garden like a fairy wonderland, Jill careening across the lawn looking for Rob when “Dancing Queen” came on – the song she gave us when we asked for favourite dancing numbers, I remember Tor feeding me mango sorbet while the grass caught my toes, I remember feeling honoured and delighted that so many of my friends were all in the one room, for me no less, and feeling so very loved – and so very in love – with my freshly minted husband.

In many respects this post feels like a love letter – to Sydney, to my Mum, to my Lovely Boy, to the most perfect of married moments. A letter that doesn’t, for now, need a post-script about London.

We’ll get to that – indeed, tomorrow.

Poultry. And Grayson Perry.

2011-11-25T00:25:00.003Z

I haven't felt inclined to write much this last month. Grappling with a series of deep seated, stubborn emotional achilles heels, all of which have been strummed with the urgency of a coked out rocker these last two months, well, it's been the kind of introspective, ugly, basically really fucking depressing stuff that I find hard to share even with my Lovely Boy at times. Never mind manage to write about in a vaguely pithy manner. Sadness, hurt and disappointment are really enervating emotions and not much fun to read about so less conscious decision and more lack of will has meant less of blog. But things are a'changing.

There have been some lovely outings and moments in the midst of it all, and several significant work accomplishments too, but it's been an otherwise quiet time. And as is often my way I've been quietly and inadvertently stockpiling small moments of wonder, beauty and occasional humour as the seasons have done their thing and sacrificed warmth for colour for cold....

Yellow leaves that radiant sunshine
against a rare blue sky...

Proof apparent that I'm not the only cool person who
hangs out in the backstreets of Hammersmith...

A totally bizarre, low hanging, Blue Mountains-esque cloud formation

Home is all but imminent - three weeks tomorrow until we fly out and I Cannot Wait. I really am feeling a physical ache for home and can already feel the regenerative powers of sunshine, light, family love and friends start to stir. I'm just so excited.

Wedding bits and pieces are all coming together. Decorations are now sorted, the ceremony has been written, my name card craft project is under way and the RSVPs are drifting in. We've chosen the music, sorted the rings and my triceps are shaping up nicely...

I went to the gym with Tor yesterday morning and we doubled up on our cardio by talking AND cross-training before she put me through my paces with some serious weights. Every grimace, every stifled whimper was tempered by one very persuasive whisper from the woman with magnificent muscles of her own: "bride arms." "World peace" couldn't be two less potent words compared to "bride arms."

Think of the dress. Be the Dress.

The blooms I bought with the surprise
"flower allowance" Lovely Boy put in my account

The tree in the SLG courtyard with but 10 leaves left.

The other exciting wedding-related activity is the looming party season. The "I'm getting married party" Version London and Version Sydney. I can't bring myself to call it a hen party because it makes me think of a) dumb sluts wearing L plates and sashes and b) a gaggle of noisy idiotic chooks and neither vision is especially complimentary of the female sex. It both baffles and bothers me that men get to be stags and bucks while women get to be a rotisserie meat that has the option of a side of chips.

For me, when I think about my girlfriends, when I think about all the love, support, encouragement, comfort and hilarity they have brought to my life and given me over the last ten years, farmyard animals don't even come close.

"I'm Getting Married Version London" is happening this weekend. Cleo is flying in from Cologne tomorrow and has planned a very fabulous, very fun, very grown up, penis paraphernalia-free celebration for seven of us and I can't wait. I'm hoping it will be the start of a really happy, special next six weeks and permission to finally let myself embrace the whole experience and not feel sad or anxious about wanting to be happy and for it to be happy. It should be a brilliant, very special, highly memorable weekend. Bring It On.

I have tomorrow off work in honour of Cleo's arrival and am looking forward to a three day weekend. Work has been really busy and exciting and as a result, hugely satisfying, and I'm excited about what next year holds and all that I'm going to get to see, do, experience and learn. And who I'm going to meet.

Grayson Perry, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum

Today was a classic case of ilovemyjob. We ran an opportunity last month for people on the website to win a private tour of Grayson Perry's major exhibition at the British Museum by Grayson himself and today we got to go. The sun even shone it knew it was a special occasion.

Grayson explaining that the first feedback he got
from the Museum about the image of the pot for the
poster was that he'd spelled "titillation" wrong...

The exhibition was extraordinary and it was such an incredible privilege to meet Grayson and hear him talk about how he approached the show and about his own practice. And to hear his thoughts on everything from photography to celebrity culture to shamanism and sex. I've always really appreciated his work - for its self awareness, its defiant beauty and magic in the face of ugly themes like addiction and consumerism, and its wit.

Seeing his work in the context of 170 objects from the British Museum's EXTENSIVE collection only enlivened the already sophisticated notions of value, artistry, history, craftsmanship and contemporariness that exist in his work. It could have so easily been glib, or worse, fashionable, but for me it really drew on my understanding of Perry as a sort of visual-social anthropologist.

Little bit starstruck....

It could have gone down hill after that but the rest of the day was productive and I left at six, went to the gym and came home to a clean house courtesy of Lovely Boy. A day for the books really. And there's still the weekend to come. Chickens, hens and all.

BE THE DRESS

2011-10-24T23:00:00.004+01:00

It's been a turbulent, rather distressing, couple of weeks. I suppose it was inevitable.

Wedding folklore dictates that someone, sooner or later, will become a nightmare. I guess I just always thought it would be me. Family dramas have been centre stage the last few weeks and the consequences haven't been pretty. Those that know me (and those with perceptive reading-between-the-lines ability who don't know me but who follow my ramblings), will concur that self-confidence has never been my strong suit. And that while my pale skin belies what is actually a bloody-minded resilience, it doesn't take much to make me wobble, however fleetingly, and question everything I've spent the last five years consciously counter-acting. Basic instincts that whisper insistently that I'm not special, that I'm not beautiful, that people will reject me, that I'm not perfect, that I don't deserve good things and good people in my life.

I don't regret my choices or paths - they have got me to where I am today in however a roundabout fashion - but the muddy path to this point now, where I am overwhelmed and humbled and excited by the love and goodness and possibility in my life, well sometimes it all still feels freshly trodden.

So let's just say there's been an inadvertent detour back down some of those roads the last two weeks. But I feel like I'm nearly back to me. And us. Poor Lovely Boy has been out in his own wilderness while I've struggled with all this emotional shit but thinking about the wedding, talking with friends and family, ticking fun things off our list like "Buy Lovely Boy A Suit" and "Post The Bloody Invitations Already" are helping to bring things back to where they were. That and my new mantra. Be The Dress.

I had my first fitting a couple of weeks ago and it verged on the disastrous. A make up stain that said "someone else has tried on this dress which happens to in fact be mine already so WHAT THE FUCK?!" didn't help, nor did said missing confidence or the overwhelming reality of wearing this dress during an enormously important, highly emotional, very public, almost certain to be photographed moment in my life. It was all a bit much so thank god for the presence of sensible, patient mothers and the supportive, reassuring words of dear girlfriends. Basically the dress out-psyched me. And now I have to be the dress.

Before I even knew what I wanted I knew I wanted a dress that was several things: glamorous, sexy, different, confident and effortless. It was an ambitious brief and to be honest, one I didn't think I'd ever fill. But I have. Effortlessly in fact. And now, I have to Be The Dress. I have to be all those things for myself. Because I'm never going to get this time again and I'm sensible enough (just...) to not let a frock or a family drama get the better of me.

What's funny though, thinking back over the last two weeks, is how much art I've sought out. Let me explain.

Five years ago I was in a pretty dark place. I was also in London visiting my sister. And one afternoon I traipsed all over the city with an old friend who also happened to be in town, seeing all kinds of art at Tate Modern, in the east end and somewhere else I can't remember and the things I saw inspired me - I felt giddy, happy, sad, uncomfortable, inspired, amazed and curious. And the experience set me free. I appreciate it might sound totally ridiculous but realising that art could make me feel these things made me realise that my feelings were just feelings - and not me. I felt sad, I myself wasn't sad. I felt lost, I myself wasn't lost. These were my feelings but these too would pass in time. They didn't define me and they weren't a permanent part of me. It was a ridiculously small revelation but it changed my life. And I sobbed for hours with relief at the realisation. Much to the consternation of my sister I might add.

Inside Frieze Art Fair, 2011

There's been quite a bit of sobbing the last two weeks too but in traipsing around Frieze, visiting the Pipilotti Rist exhibition at the Hayward, sitting in the dark Turbine Hall of Tate watching Tacita Dean's new commission FILM, well it steadied me somehow. It's not art therapy - it's just another way of looking at and coping with life. For me anyway.

Pierre Huyghe, Reflection, 2011. Frieze Projects

Pierre Huyghe's Reflection - a hermit crab taken up residence in a cast of Brancusi's bronze Sleeping Muse from 1910 - was whimsical and strangely poetic, I like the idea of art as a place of refuge, while Pipilotti Rist's chandelier of knickers was cheerful and intimate and celebratory.

Pipilotti Rist's underpants fairy lights on the Southbank

Video art in the loo at the Hayward...

Pipilotti Rist, Massachusetts Chandelier, 2010

And Tacita Dean's FILM was just a lovely visual balm. Gentle, strangely hypnotic, free of intellectual taxation. The perfect place to sit in the dark with a friend and talk of home and homesickness and the restorative powers of accessories and red wine.

Tacita Dean, FILM, 2011, Unilever Series
Commission, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern

It's only Monday but I'm exhausted. A poor nights sleep meant the imbibing of Red Bull at 9.30am this morning and a Milky Way and a diet coke at 4.30pm but hopefully I will sleep soundlessly tonight. No dreams of weddings, no dreams of drama, no dreams of Downton Abbey.

A few of my favourite things

2011-10-14T00:01:00.003+01:00

It's been a difficult couple of days but having resolved that narcissism is only tolerable when it's cheerful I'm going to blithely and merrily reflect instead on some of the lovely, shiny, sunny, happy events of the last few weeks and write myself a list of Things I Like In No Particular Order.

1. Sunshine
The last week of September was unseasonally beautiful here in grubby, grey old London. And by unseasonally beautiful I mean seven solid uninterrupted days of 28 degrees and blue skies and skirts and sandals and sunscreen. It was a gift from the God I don't believe in. Though I have to confess that there was something slightly disconcerting about leaving the house in a t-shirt in early October when it should be covered by another layer or two. I just couldn't shake that strange sensation that something about my ensemble wasn't right - you know, that foolish feeling you get AFTER someone tells you that you've spent the last four hours with your skirt tucked into your decidedly sensible underpants. That feeling.

The inner courtyard at the V&A

2. Art
I am Very Excited about a number of exhibitions here in London - opened, opening and still to come - and have a list (yes, another one) of all the shows I'm going to see in the next six months. Grayson Perry at the British Museum, Pipilotti Rist at the Hayward, Yayoi Kasuma at Tate Modern in February, Gillian Wearing at Whitechapel in March. Excited, inspired, ready to get arty. Recent exhibition loves include Taryn Simon's masterpiece, also at Tate Modern and Ron Arad's Curtain Call at the Roundhouse.

Inside Yayoi Kasuma's The Gleaming Lights of the Souls, 2008
Liverpool Biennial.

3. Art and cocktails
I love great art, I love it even more when it comes with alcohol. The last Friday of every month usually means late night openings at most of the big institutions in London and last month I met my lovely ex-flatmate Katie at the V&A for some sitting and drinking in the balmy weather before a stroll through their new show 'Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 - 1990'. The exhibition was ok. I loved the coathanger gorilla in the 'Power Of Making' show more.

David Mach RA, King Silver, 2011

4. Theatre dates.
I love a good theatre date and the next day in fact I took in a matinee (and some well-earned air conditioning) at the Trafalgar Studios with the lovely Nina. The play, Top Girls, was a recommendation from my mother-in-law-to-be and it was a brilliant production but I did find it disconcerting that a fucked economy, a post-feminist society and a world class education that has set me up to think I can have it all left me confused about which character I empathised most with. I blame a particularly sympathetic portrayal of the Thatcher-esque anti-hero. I love a complex play. I also love dissecting said complexities at Gordon's wine bar with a cheeky half bottle of pink wine in the warmth. Heaven.

5. Pedicures
I love pedicures, I love shiny painted toes, I love decadence. I also love, love, love visits from home. Mum and Max had a week in London at the end of a two-week Spanish adventure, and I took the time off work to spend it with them and Just Because I Could, I booked us a day at the ridiculously fabulous spa at Brown's Hotel on Albemarle St. This place manages to be both super posh and super fabulous. Mark Hix has opened a branch of his restaurant here and the hotel is famous not only as the place from where Alexander Graham Bell made his first UK phone call, but also because Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book while staying here.

But it was the 'seasonal pedicure' that really sold it for me. Changing throughout the year (as is generally inferred by the use of the word 'seasonal'), this magical experience sees in-season and other organic ingredients (ginger, rose petals, sea salt etc. etc.) incorporated into each step of the pampering process - the hot milk soak, the leg scrub, the moisturising mask. All this before what can only be described as the best paint job of my life.

6. Pedicures and cocktails
Did I mention it came with a matching complimentary cocktail? Peach bellini to match your polish, anyone?

7. Paris
We had two days in London (which included a traumatic fitting for The Dress that is another post for another time) before heading to Paris. J'adore Paris. Maman et moi adore Paris. Two years ago we had a decidedly girly trip to the city of love. This time we had Max's company and while not as girly it was just as delightful and thanks to Max's graciousness it also involved no less 'window-licking' than last time.

I love travelling with parentals - it means champagne at lunch and creme brulee for brunch. This time around it has also meant lots of cuddles and talk of Nan and home and a summer I am counting down the weeks for (nine as of tomorrow). We wandered about, we ate good food, we took in the Musee D'Orsay before taking shelter from the rain at the delicious Le Cinq Mars. Even though my laptop got left in the taxi from Gard du Nord and there were four hours where my only consoling thought was one of thanks to my brother and fiancee for teaching me about the importance of backing up before it was returned with a 26 Euro fee, it was STILL a lovely three days.

Notre Dame - five minutes walk from our hotel.

The bridge of locks.

8. Pintxos
I love the kind of travel where you wake up in say, Paris, only to rest your head that night in say, San Sebastian. Lovely Boy joined us for the second leg of Parent Week and we had a flying 36 hours in this totally charming seaside city in Spanish Basque territory where we again ate and wandered and ate some more. We promenaded, we took in the breathtaking view post-furnicular ride and in the evening we partook of a pintxos tasting tour. Two guides, five bars, six Americans, the four of us and some of the most fantastic food and wine I've had in a while. The gin and tonics that came in balloon glasses the size of my head at the end of the night probably were unnecessary but the whole experience was fantastic and just such a great way to get a sense of a city.

San Sebastian old town

Looking down over San Sebastian.

9. Puppies
Ok. I should clarify. I like puppies made of flowers. I like puppies made of flowers made by Jeff Koons. I especially like said puppies when they're tethered to the forecourt of the spectacular Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao. It was like being back amongst friends - Kutlug Ataman's Kuba, Mona Hatoum's Current Disturbance, Louise Bourgeois' big spider and a room full of Richard Serra steel sculptures. This was a favourite. Undulating, perception-altering corten steel structures that swallowed you as you wound your way through and into them but not in an aggressive or threatening way, as you might imagine with such a masculine, heavy material. It felt disconcerting but at the same time familiar and maternal. They were really quite extraordinary - both for their size and the sheer volume of them. It was a puppy perfect ending to a great weekend.

Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992

Richard Serra

10. Lunch with my ladies
Monday just gone and my last day of holidays before Mum and Max left for Sydney. What better excuse than that for lunch with my dear friend and my dear Maman. Another stellar recommendation from Tor, the three of us went to the Ridinghouse Cafe on Great Titchfield Street and talked relationships, eyelashes, weddings and denim. The company, like the sorbet, was exquisite.

11. Weekends
Tomorrow is Friday and I am counting down the hours until the weekend. I have a hair appointment on Saturday, a date to collect The Dress, dinner plans at Gordon Ramsey's new restaurant and a Sunday work trip to Frieze Art Fair. I've always avoided the fair like the plague, there being something unappetising to me about paying 30 pounds to be trampled by crowds looking at art no-one normal can afford to buy. But curiosity - and free tickets - have got the better of me. And I'm quite looking forward to it. And if the need so arises, I may yet write another list.

Revolving doors

2011-09-24T14:27:00.004+01:00

crazy sky over Hammersmith last week

Lovely Boy and I are contemplating the installation of a revolving front door. Or perhaps a listing on tripadvisor. At the very least a guest book. Our little house feels tired - scruffy round the edges and lightly bathed in dust - so god knows what we ourselves look like after what can only be described as a very busy month of house guests. We had LB's sister, her husband, their baby and all the accessories that come with an 11 month old for 10 days, then a friend from New Zealand for a night, then a 24 hour flying visit from Mum and Max. And this morning we bade goodbye to my little sister's boyfriends little sister whose been with us these last two nights between post-school Europe adventures and still-post-school Canadian ones. It's been wonderful to have had so many visitors from home this year but we do live in a one bedroom flat. Waiting to Exhale is not just a bad Whitney Houston movie.

two very tired house guests

Throw into the mix a wedding to finish planning, a dress to start starving for, a meltdown at work, two days in Bristol for a conference, another wedding and a nasty eye infection (a parting gift to LB from his little nephew) and well, we've had finer moments.

Seeing Mum and Max last weekend was just the shot in the arm I needed. Familiarity and cuddles and family gossip and wedding talk ad nauseum. They're back next weekend and then I'm off for a week to play. I'm almost jumping out of my skin with anticipation. I'm all about the countdowns at the moment. Seven days until M&M are back, 10 days until my first dress fitting, 10 days to lose 2kg, 10 days until we go to Paris, 13 days until we go to San Sebastian and 11 weeks and six days until we fly home to Sydney. Some naysayers would warn against wishing time away. I'm not doing that. I like to think I'm compartmentalising my time to offset misery about the impending Great Cold and to manage and minimise the use of my latest work buzz word: "overwhelmed..." Yes, with the ellipses...

Yarn bombing on the corner of Nelson St, Bristol.

Last week I have may have actually been sent home early and told to take a day off such was my inability to keep my shit together. It wasn't the finest moment of my career but this week has been much improved. I went to Bristol on Tuesday for a conference hosted by Culture24 about evaluating online success. Interestingly, and reassuringly, the overarching theme was that when it comes to the culture sector being online, we're all going to fail - it's just about failing often, failing quietly and failing forward. It was incredibly worthwhile, not least because it's completely taken the pressure of succeeding. Whatever the hell that means anyway.

Before I headed back to London I went to check out Nelson St and the See No Evil project. In August this year Bristol City Council invited graffiti artists from around the world to come to Bristol and transform a pretty drab laneway with large scale murals as a way to draw tourists to the city otherwise known as the birthplace of Banksy. It was pretty cool actually. I did attempt to visit the Arnolfini but of course it was closed for installation so the closest I got was the cafe. It could have been worse I suppose.

Nelson St, Bristol

This weekend LB and I are working on overdue wedding homework - a questionnaire from our celebrant with no less than 15 questions about why we fell in love, what our plans are for the future, what we think marriage is etc etc. It's a pretty brilliant exercise to undertake actually but as is I imagine the point, it's not something you can do in a rush. I've been working on mine on and off for a few months now. LB started properly this week. Funnily enough nagging doesn't seem conducive to writing lists of what he loves about me but we have to have it done by the end of the weekend and LB's off to Baltimore next week anyway so he has no choice. I did tell him (albeit no doubt in an irritating, sing songy, know-it-all tone of voice) that it would take him longer than he thought so I'm not brave enough to go in there and ask how he's going. True love is knowing when to stay away sometimes.

It will be strange not to have him around next week, and I'm extremely jealous of the day trip he's planning to Washington D.C. but I'm going to make the most of the week with craft projects, pedicures, appalling television and the kind of meal plan that would horrify him for its lack of carbohydrates, fat, sugar, salt and anything else that generally gets filed under 'delicious'. Thinking of the dress, thinking of the dress.

Three whole years

2011-09-06T00:11:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was my three year anniversary with London. It snuck up on me. If I'd known I would have put a little oomph into it. As it was I spent the day - the rainy, windy, not really very warm day - trailing up and down Oxford Street with my Lovely Boy looking for suits and wondering where our joie de vivre had gone. Even a lunch date in the Food Hall at Selfridges couldn't improve the situation. We're both tired, we're both long overdue for a holiday and we have three house guests at the moment, one of whom is an adorable baby with fangs of snot and an impressive lung capacity that's been getting a workout at regular intervals throughout the night. To say it's not terribly romantic would be underselling the situation somewhat.

To be fair, the night before we did go for a date, 'dinner and a movie' style and had an equally lovely lunch with baby and daddy at the Union Market at Fulham Broadway in a rare afternoon of sunshine. But it's all a bit beige down this here struggle strasse lately.

The weekend before last though I took Lovely Boy to the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm to see Ron Arad's Curtain Call, a 360 degree art/video/sound installation made of 18,000 silicon rods that parted like an old school fly screen to let you into its belly where you could then sit on the floor and watch the animations Arad had commissioned from his friends, including David Shrigley and Mat Collishaw.

Lovely Boy dragged his feet getting there - I had to bribe him with Peking duck pancakes on Wardour Street first, but even he had to concede that it was not in fact the affectation he predicted it would be. In fact, he loved it. And so did I.

We could have sat in there for hours and just let the sound and images absorb us but little sister Sophie was in town and so we went for dinner instead. It was a good day. A new winter coat in the morning (did I mention that bit?...) some duck pancakes in the afternoon with a chaser of art and then dinner with a sibling. A Good Day.

This weekend just gone lacked that kind of certainty but hopefully the week will bring something special. I'm not sure what yet but I'm hopeful. The only way I managed Monday was to book our January trip to Thailand and a wash and blow dry for Friday morning before we head to wedding number three.

I can't even begin to contemplate my fourth year in London. I don't know how long I thought I'd be here for but I don't think I thought it would be for this long. It's funny where life sends you sometimes. I'm certainly not unhappy in London but every day is a conscious choice to be here, at least while I have this job and the promise of travel next year with my Lovely Boy, but the minute I stop choosing my choice we're outta here. But give me a holiday, a cocktail and a decent night's sleep and I may yet change my mind.

My Seven Links

2011-08-31T23:01:00.000+01:00

Some weeks ago my Lovely Friend (also known as Tori of eat-tori fame) tagged me as part of a blog project called My Seven Links organised by website Tripbase.

It's my kind of project - an opportunity to trawl back through the endless reams of my navel gazing to find seven posts I think fit the following categories....

My most popular post
This was a tie between two posts but for obvious sentimental reasons I've decided to nominate this one. A trip to Turkey and the small matter of a proposal...

Turkish Delights

A post whose success surprises me
I have no idea why this post has been as popular as it has. It's a fairly standard post, I mean scintillating, but just regular scintillating with some art pondering, some east London eating and the usual work wobbles and thoughts of home.

Pinch me moments and friends from home

My most beautiful post
This one is very personal to me. Not written for any other reason than to articulate my grief about the death of my grandmother. I didn't write it to be read so much as write it to make tangible and articulate a knot of overwhelming feelings. I still feel her absence and I miss her and love her always.

84 and a day and 31 tomorrow

My most controversial post
This frankly is as controversial as it is nasty. Thanks to a rambling introduction that ranged from Chanel lipstick to caffeine-supported exhaustion and the need to kick my own arse this post came up - repeatedly - when someone typed into Google Arabic - repeatedly - "lipstick on girls arses". Coco would be horrified.

Redbull and lipstick

My most helpful post
This one, like my 'most beautiful' post is a testament to the cathartic powers of word vomit. This post is the written equivalent of forcing my fingers down my throat.

The post too big for a title

A post you feel didn't get the attention it deserved
This one is kind of tricky as I've never really thought of my blog as a means for attracting attention but something about this post has always appealed for some reason. I think I think I'm especially witty or something...

Fit and you know it

The post you are most proud of
I'm going to take liberties here and post three links. I'm not sure why these particular posts appeal to me or why I'm most proud of them but I think they are the kinds of posts I imagined my blog to be when I moved to London to travel, immerse myself in art and write and reflect on everything I learned along the way - about myself as much as the world at large.

A trip down memory lane with my 18 year old self... Brighton Rock(s)!

A trip to Berlin, my most favourite European city... I (heart) Berlin

A trip to the British Library and a little bit of art... Some ish and some art

A riot of a time in Edinburgh

2011-08-22T23:27:00.001+01:00

Saying "the month has got away from me. Again." is like saying "the dog ate my blog." It's lame and it might be true but no one wants to hear it.

The first couple of weeks of August were a write off thanks to an exhaustion-induced sore throat that turned into a chronic cough that came with the free gifts of insomnia and snot. It wasn't fun. But thankfully it did mean I was at home on the sofa in my pajamas when rioters set fire to a bus outside the gallery in Peckham. Even from the relative safety of Hammersmith the air was uneasy during those chaotic, sickening 48 hours. Not that I was sleeping much anyway but the lullaby of sirens and helicopters didn't offer much by way of sweet dreams.

On Tuesday afternoon I went up to the chemist on the high street only to find the bus station full of police officers and all the shops and banks along King Street closing up as a precaution. The rational part of my brain said nothing was going to happen after the Monday evening and that it certainly wasn't going to happen in Hammersmith (thankfully, reliably as uneventful as ever) but still I felt this rising tide of anxiety and couldn't help but look at every teenager and wonder if they were going to mug me. I even found myself slipping my engagement ring off and shoving it deep into my pocket as I strode home without looking back. I think that was what horrified me the most - this insidious, invisible threat of menace that vanished as quickly as it flared up. Because it hasn't gone anywhere. It's just wearing new trainers now.

Last weekend we actually got out of town - not for fear of looters but in search of theatrical enlightenment and a laugh or four. We went to Edinburgh for the fringe festival. In the company of Tor and her Hungry One we flew up on the Friday night and had 48 hours wandering around rainy but still beautiful Edinburgh, dodging people in unitards thrusting flyers and ducking into small rooms above pubs for an hour of hopeful laughs.

Edinburgh was teeming with people, a fairly even mix of festival visitors and amateur street performers and with a keen eye there were all sorts of odd, beautiful, carnivalesque moments to be found amongst the crowds and the chaos.

One noticeable trend in the comedy we saw was young, articulate men plying their trade as a form of self-help therapy. Lots of jokes about divorce. Painful funny really - or not funny at all and hence no doubt the divorce.

I think the highlight was definitely the African American comedian W Kamau Bell's show 'Ending Racism in About an Hour' - razor sharp, rich in pathos and deadly accurate without being aggressive or ugly. And fucking FUNNY. I love smart funny. I definitely don't like sketch comedy troupe's where the returning motif is a dick joke and the comedy is light on funny. That and a skin crawlingly awful play about Take That and cancer (and no, it wasn't a sick joke) were definitely the low points. The point where you say, "Really? REALLY? How about we try a grown up job?"

We had a lovely meal on the Saturday where every member of the party (apart from my self-respecting self) ate haggis and on Sunday we moseyed about and crammed in a last few shows (including the Take That cancer monstrosity) before heading back to London.

It was so lovely to get out of the city, even just for a weekend, but it has made me start to really ache for the time and space to stretch out, not even to do anything, I'd be happy to do nothing, but just to exhale and stop for a while. No such luck yet but we're making up for the lack of holidays by planning ones for next year. I've already mapped out exactly how I want to spend my 26 days of annual leave. I just have to wait until March before I can start...

In the meantime there is a wedding to finish planning, work to be done and The Occasional Sunny Day (what I'm now calling Summer) to be enjoyed, even if it is while at work. It could be worse. I could be on a burning bus. Or employed at JD Sports. Or flogging tickets to rubbish theatre while wearing a beige unitard. Yes. Things could be much, much worse.

Fat Duck Tuesday

2011-08-03T23:29:00.003+01:00

So last night, just for something different, Lovely Boy, his work friend, a friend of his work friend and little old me went out for dinner. To Fat Duck.

The booking was inspired by a minor Masterchef obsession and the lure of a challenge: Can anyone get a booking at Heston's? The invitation when it came was a rhetorical question in the form of a text message from Lovely Boy that read: "Hey sweets, would you be up for going to Fat Duck on Tues 2nd August with me, Chris and Chris's mate? X" Like I said, rhetorical question.

My experience with whacked gastronomy has never really been fully documented. It was two years and five days ago exactly that I went to Barcelona to meet my dear friend Tori and her husband for a trip to El Bulli, then the number one restaurant in the world. It was a sensory, culinary, emotional, artistic odyssey my mind still trips over and one of those "I can't believe I got to do that in my lifetime" moments, the enormity of which meant I was never able to articulate it, then or even really now. Thankfully though my brilliant friend did manage to - here, here, here and here....

I won my place at that table thanks to my art credentials as Ferran Adria was and is the only chef to have ever been invited to participate in Documenta, the prestigious five yearly art event held in Kassel, Germany. He was 'there' in 2007, the same year I happened to go though I didn't encounter Ferran, his table or his masterpieces as unbeknownst to me, El Bulli had been designated a satellite venue with two Documenta visitors a day flown to the Costa Brava for dinner. God only knows what dreadful art I was looking at while someone was handing out those winning tickets but Documenta proved, as El Bulli did two years later, a confusing, exhilarating, at times exhausting, surprising, philosophical, profound experience. People pooh pooh-ed Ferran's inclusion but as the man himself said, "In the end, the visitor decides what is art and what is not."

And so, since we're on the topic, let me say that I think art, great art, is confounded expectations, it's confrontation, curiosity and revelation. What I didn't know, until I sat down at El Bulli, was that it could also be exploding mimetic peanuts.

All of which is a veeeery roundabout way of getting to Fat Duck. Then number two restaurant in the world, it's currently sitting respectfully at number five and for me the appeal, apart from Heston - obviously - is that thrill of the unexpected and the promise of childish delight.

It was a bit of a mission to get there, with a tube to Ealing Broadway, a train to Maidenhead and then a taxi to Brae and so the unassuming frontage was almost an anti-climax when we finally pulled up. Inside, the decor was unpretentious, warm and the kind of relaxed posh that whispers, never screams darling, EXPENSIVE. But we'll get to that.

There were a number of highlights to the meal - the red cabbage gazpacho with mustard ice cream and the roast foie gras among them but for me it was the salmon poached in liquorice gel with vanilla mayonnaise and the lamb and cucumber. Sigh. And then there was the hot and cold tea, which was exactly that - the art and the magic in the brilliance of the hot and the cold being both in the delicate glass cup at the same time - and split perfectly down the MIDDLE. It prompted a gleeful WTF from each of each and it tasted like the delight that it was.

Much is made of the "Sound of the Sea" dish with its accompanying shell soundtrack of crashing waves and squarking gulls but for me, with its tapioca 'sand', fishy fish and pungent seaweedy foam, well, it tasted like low tide after a storm.

Thank god for dessert - macerated strawberries and a 'picnic blanket' of malleable white chocolate with an olive oil biscuit and chamomile and coriander jelly. WITH a delicate earl grey tea ice cream cornet with a bottom filled with strawberry jam. Love it want it could eat it forever.

By the time the sweet bag arrived I was somewhere between full and completely stuffed so I took it home with me to savour this afternoon. Which I did. The Queen of Hearts playing card beyond brilliant - delicate, delicious, hilarious. Yum.

We didn't get home last night until well after 1am so today has been hard work, not least of all because I've lost my voice and an ear infection is now also surely aknocking but I don't care. The insanity and the extravagance (of the gesture as much as the bill) are part of the whole experience and when I think back to El Bulli I have no idea how I ate 35 courses but I remember every bite and every emotion. I suspect Fat Duck will be the same.

Just don't ask me what I ate for dinner this evening.

A month of weekends

2011-07-31T22:07:00.002+01:00

I know absolutely it's been too long since I've written when one of my eight devoted readers called me to ask if everything was alright (sorry Dad - yep, all OK. Just been a little too busy lately but I'm back now and raring to write).

It's been a month of weekends and tomorrow it's August and after next weekend's scheduled nothing it will be non-stop until October with house guests, more weddings, a weekend or two away and just the general chaos of living in London while working full-time and planning a wedding back in Sydney. Is it wrong to be wishing I was already on a beach in Thailand? Or at the very least on a plane home for Christmas? I'm kinda pooped. But the last four weekends have been brilliant and special for a host of reasons so I'm not sorry in the slightest.

Weekend One, July 9-10: Paris

There was something delicious about going to Paris FOR THE DAY with my purse and my passport. The occasion was my dear friend Nina's hen party and while she and the rest of The Girls were there for the whole weekend, there were only enough pennies in my purse to manage a day trip, albeit a decadent one. Grazia got me from Kings Cross all the way to rural France before a nap got me the rest of the way to Paris. I didn't think about packing a map (probably because it offended my alliteration) and so there was an interesting moment of Parisien Marco Polo via text message before I eventually joined the group near Notre Dame for lunch and then an afternoon of vintage shopping and macaroons. It was A LOT of fun. My new 80s Lanvin dress that's just a little bit fabulous and my 50s skirt that LBB is convinced was made from curtain material. And his point exactly?....

A cocktail in the Marais and then I was back on the train and back to London. It was a long day but a truly great one and I still can't get past the thrill of actually being able to GO to Paris for the day. I mean, it takes an hour and a half to fly to Melbourne - it takes a Grazia and a half hour nap to get to central Paris. I love it. And I can't wait to be back in October with Mum and Max.

Weekend Two, July 16-17: Monkey Island, Nina & Steve's wedding.

As is often the case with a hen party, a wedding typically follows and the next weekend LBB and I were off to Maidenhead for Nina and Steve's oh so lovely wedding on Monkey Island in the village of Brae...

You get to Monkey Island via a footbridge. Nina and Steve, being resident of a 18th century Dutch barge houseboat, got there via their home up the Thames. The weather wasn't so fantastic but the rain held off for the ceremony and the setting was so idyllic and so quintessentially rural English that everyone was just charmed - though the love for the bride and groom probably had something to do with that also.

The reception was in this great room with this brilliant chandelier and I honestly had one of the best seats in the house - looking straight out at the happy couple and then out through the glass doors to the river.

The food was delicious, we had the brilliant company of my old flatmate and her partner and for LBB in particular it was heartening to realise that weddings don't have to be scary and that even a nervous groom with an A4 sheet of paper can still steal the room with his heartfelt, hilarious speech. The dessert bar undoubtedly also helped. If this wasn't an idea we were already considering we would have absolutely filched it for our own little soiree in January.

We didn't last late into the night because a week of work hell left LBB literally nodding in his chair before the dancing had even started and so we left, after the vodka shots but before the disco but in time to see the beautiful paper lanterns lit and sent off into the sky. So lovely. And the full moon was a treat.

The next day was lunch up river (down river?) where we caught a rare moment of sunshine before the rain re-appeared and then it was home to London to collapse. Two weekends down two to go.

Weekend Three, July 22 - 23: Friends from Home

Earlier in the week (in fact the Friday before the weekend before) LBB, Tors, her Hungry One and I had dinner and too much to drink with the fabulous Danne, catching up on all things life, love, work and travel and then the following Friday my little Bondi friend Imara came to town. She'd been in Paris visiting her sister and this was her first visit to the UK. She didn't have a phone, she didn't have a map - so I gave what I thought were fantastically precise directions to the Haunch of Venison gallery off New Bond St, where I would meet her once I'd finished my meeting at Louis Vuitton. It turns out my directions were fabulous but til the last street - something I only realised as I myself walked up the street on my way to my meeting. Thankfully she's an exceptionally bright girl and I found her on the front steps of the gallery (a block from where I said it was) and all was well.

Now New Bond St is certainly one way to introduce a person to London and heading to the nearest pub for a glass (OK, bottle) of wine with my boss we walked in to find nearly every man in there dressed in top hats and tails. Obviously they'd been to a wedding but having walked just past Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana et al on her way to meet me, the hilarity of the scene was not lost on me, though I'm still not sure Imara's convinced this isn't a typical Friday in the city.

Moving on to Soho to say farewell to Danne and to collect the Lovely Boy, we then went to dinner in Chinatown, so starving we may have ordered a duck. A whole duck. And we may have eaten it all.

The next day we braved the crowds and went to Portobello Road, via the obligatory stop outside the 'Hugh & Julia' travel bookshop, before then escaping into Hyde Park. After a brief trip through the Michaelangelo Pistoletto exhibition at the Serpentine we took refuge in the summer pavilion, designed this year by Peter Zumthor. It was, as I imagine it was envisaged to be, a sanctuary. Even with the dogs and kids and crowds it was so peaceful and lovely and calm inside, in stark contrast to its rather severe exterior.

Exahusted and foot sore and in need of wine and sofa, we headed home for an evening of food and talk and bad films - all that was missing were the Mint Slices. The next day we headed for Spitalfields for some East London experience before moving on to the Southbank for some sightseeing at the Globe and Tate Modern. Imara is currently working with Bell Shakespeare so there was no way we couldn't pay a visit to the Bard's original stomping ground if she was to go home with her integrity intact. Or without her I Heart Shakespeare keyring, come on, right?

After visiting the engrossing, complicated Taryn Simon exhibition at Tate we then lay on the grass in some rare summer sunshine drinking juice and talking life. I can't articulate how good it was. So good it made me painfully homesick for my life in Sydney where there are lots of friends to lie on the grass drinking juice and talking life with. London has many wonderful things about it - but a gang of brilliant girlfriends....... I miss my gang.

Dinner at Dishoom with OTHER old family friends followed and then LBB and I took her to Covent Garden to spy on the Opera House. For my money though the sky was the most breath-taking thing about the moment. The next day I was back to work and Imara had London to herself before heading back to Paris on the train. I loved having her here and I can't wait to be back in Sydney in December in amongst my gals.

Weekend Four, 30-31 July: The weekend just gone.

This weekend has been remarkable for it's lack of remark. I had a haircut. I finished my book. We had dinner at the delicious da polpo in Covent Garden with Tors and the Hungry One to discuss plans for our upcoming weekend jaunt to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and then we had ice cream.

And then this afternoon, in the sunshine that's still loitering about from last weekend, LBB and I went to Whitechapel to see the Thomas Struth exhibition after wandering through the madness of East London and Brick Lane, where we came across this brilliant mural and another underway:

And THEN we came home and I have been sitting on the sofa ever since, writing while Lovely Boy has been cooking, inspired by the new Simon Hopkinson food show on the beeb:

Grilled eggplant and fetta. Yes it was delicious and yes I am eating off the cushion while I continue to sit on the sofa. It's been THAT kind of weekend.

OK so it's been a while

2011-07-08T22:42:00.001+01:00

But hear me out.

After an emotional birthday week, sweetened by lovely gestures and kind words and teary but determinedly happy memories life kicked up a gear with the arrival of Lovely Boys parents. It was so good to have visitors from home, especially ones laden with Tim Tams and talk of home and we celebrated their arrival with a walk to Putney in the uncharacteristic heat. Rest assured the heat didn't last but it was a pretty glorious day that included lunch at the pub across the road and a collective afternoon nap.

Walking to Putney along the river

The week was punctuated by some truly lovely outings - one a night at the River Cafe and another at the Wyndham Theatre falling a little bit in love with David Tennant's delightfully silly Benedict in the sold out production of Much Ado About Nothing also starring Catherine Tate.

A rare moment of summer...

Dusk after dinner at the River Cafe.

My in-laws-to-be left us on the Friday heading for Sweden and on Sunday I spent the day with my sister's partner's sister, Grace, who was passing through London as part of an eight month post-school, pre-university pilgrimmage to The Rest of The World. It was lovely actually - we met at Tate and wandered along the Southbank before heading up to Trafalgar Square so I could show Grace the Fourth Plinth and the very beautiful living wall that the National Gallery have built to distract from their renovations. A living, growing, blooming Van Gogh anyone?

Southbank bunting love continues...

Just another day at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

LOVE.

Then of course it was down the Mall to Buckingham Palace before doubling back to visit my old stomping ground the National Portrait Gallery. Still love.

This last week has been sluggish. Have been crazy tired and not feeling altogether fabulous so Monday was a sleep and sort it out day with a doctors appointment and an acupuncture session. I was talked into an accupressure/reflexology massage of my feet - apparently brutally executed excruciating leap-off-the-table pain is the ultimate cure all for insomnia. We'll see.

There's lots of things happening in the next couple of weeks to look forward - lots more visitors from home, some exciting work opportunities, like getting to meet Mark Wallinger, Nina and Steve's wedding next weekend and tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'm off to Paris for the day. Ouuuuuuuuui!

A bittersweet birthday

2011-06-19T21:54:00.004+01:00

It's been a tiring week.

Where my tears have stopped the rain has begun in earnest. No, not bad poetry or heavy-handed metaphor but literal, pouring, sobbing rain. It's been fitting if not a little obvious but the melancholy weather has suited my sentiment the last few days as I've slept, pondered, remembered and grappled with the complete sense of unreal that her passing has brought. I can't bring myself to say the D word because I can feel her still here - in the sense that I remember her touch, see her in my Mum, know what she would say and continue to receive emails and cards from people who met her and loved her. I just still can't quite believe she's gone. Perhaps if I'd been at home it would seem more real but for now it just feels strange.

Hyde Park Corner between showers and after dinner.

And so my birthday on Thursday was bittersweet. LBB made the day very special with thoughtful presents and cupcakes and dinner at our favourite Spanish restaurant and a haircut and pedicure improved, if not brightened, the day also.

On Friday I had lunch at Hix in Selfridges with my lovely, dear friend before we amused ourselves with the cosmetics counter and a spin through Gray's Antique Market in search of wedding accessories. The inscribed dessert at lunch was another small, special moment. Last Friday LBB, Tor, The Hungry One and I went for dinner at The Corner Room in Bethnal Green - a joint birthday dinner - that was delicious, delightful and very good fun. I think it was a good idea to get some birthday celebrations in early this year as I haven't much felt like celebrating since then. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disillusioned or anxious about 31, I'm looking forward to a year in odd numbers, but frankly, between work and grief I am completely shattered. I slept until 3.30 yesterday and woke at half past one today so I'm glad the urge to celebrate en masse completely passed me by this year.

Some of the decor at The Corner Room...

So much has happened in the last 12 months - some serious Life boxes have been ticked: incredible job, impending wedding and yet adulthood still feels relative. I'm glad not to be 30 anymore, with all its significance, but mortgages and babies are as foreign a concept to me as ever and I continue defiantly to understand grown up as the right to drink wine on a Tuesday and book an overseas holiday online using my own credit card. Each to their own I suppose but there was something quite serendipitous about my Wednesday morning Oval tube station philosophy lesson which I think sums up everything the last week and last year has thrown at me, from the mouth of Muhammad Ali no less:

And so another year begins.

84 and a day and 31 tomorrow

2011-06-15T23:13:00.000+01:00

That phone came yesterday at 1.13pm and now she's gone and the rest of us are left to juggle feelings of relief, sadness, bewilderment, gratitude and loss - all in overwhelming proportions. The day before was her birthday in fact and for me it was a sad, tearful day - so tearful that on Tuesday I felt the kind of dehydrated that is usually mistaken for a hangover. Too many tears and too much grief, if such a thing as grief can ever be quantified.

I've had a lot of time to think about this moment. In the last 18 months I've said goodbye to her three times thinking it would be the last and now I struggle to try and contain the panic because I can't remember the details of our last conversation. Because I didn't know it would be our last.

Today has been a quiet day. I feel tired and sad but philosophical. I've never really understood what rest in peace means, not really, or perhaps I've never given it a lot of thought, but when I think about my nan and the incredibly strong, dignified, practical, loyal, good woman that she was, amazing in so many ways as a person in her own right as well as a grandmother, well fits of tears seem ill-placed and even a bit selfish. I can close my eyes and hear her voice and I know exactly what she'd say and more than anything I want her to be at peace. But fuck I miss her. And of all the things I inherited from her, emotional restraint doesn't seem readily apparent in the mix. So there will be tears. But there will also be love, reflection, respect and quiet admiration, and tomorrow, on my birthday, some champagne perhaps and a toast. To an amazing woman who I had the privilege to call my Nan.

A recent launch and an imminent departure

2011-06-09T23:41:00.002+01:00

I'm going to try and get in one last naval gaze before an inevitable phone call this weekend about my resilient in mind if not in body grandmother. Wanting someone's misery to end and not wanting them to die are two difficult emotions to reconcile and grief frankly scares the shit out of me it's so huge. But that's another naval gaze.

Mat Collishaw, Ryan Gander.

Today was a lesson in ultimate distraction. The website I've been working on for the last three months was launched today and because it's part of this bigger, brilliant unwieldy beast of a project that brings together five of London's best galleries and because it's been funded and supported by Louis Vuitton this was anything but a soft launch. Unless a soft launch involves a shipping container and pop up art workshop in the north-east corner of Covent Garden Piazza?

Didn't think so.

There was a press launch in the morning, inside the shipping container, with the walls lined with REcreative t-shirts re-invisioned by a coterie of famous artists including Sam Taylor-Wood, Fiona Banner, Mat Collishaw, Michael Landy and Michael Craig-Martin. Throw in hoards of young people, some stencils, fabric glue and glitter and you have yourself one very exhausting, very rewarding day. Staff lunch at Wahaca definitely helped - a margarita would have been more than medicinal at this stage but by the time the day ended and Appropriate Margarita Hour arrived I was beyond drinking and ready only for the sofa and some Peter Andre reality TV badness...

Wahaca goodness.

The day did end on a frustrating note however when one of the 18 year olds who has been involved in some of the website stuffed deigned to offer me some advice on "writing snappily".... I would have fucking "snapped" him if I thought it would have even slightly ameliorated his skin-crawling, delusioned arrogance. Little shit. I'll show you snappy.

Anyway. It was a sour end to an otherwise good but long day and now I just feel a bit flat - post-adrenaline of the last few weeks, post-phone call from home and in need of a solid night of sleep.

Tomorrow will be a day of reflection, organisation and calm, hopefully, before dinner with Lovely Boy and Lovely Friend and her lovely plus one - a birthday mash up for The Hungry One and I, both Gemini's, both facing birthdays in the next couple of weeks but I haven't even really got to contemplating 31 yet. One thing at a time.

Tooth hurty

2011-06-03T08:20:00.002+01:00

It's quite difficult to get an RSVP to a pity party for root canal therapy when you're competing for attendees with advanced cancer, kidney failure, a serious sinus infection and now a knee reconstruction. Not such a fun week for the family on any continent really...

I'm off this afternoon to the dentist in Clapham for some conscious sedation and dental brutality and I'm looking forward to it as much as... root canal? Yep. About sums its up really. According to the nifty brochure they gave me I won't remember much of the procedure but LBB is my designated responsible adult so he has to bring me home and iron, cook and drive all the heavy machinery in our house for the next 24 hours. I'm hoping I remember that.

Work has been capital B busy this week, with the website launch looming like a dentist's needle and Quite A Lot still to be done before next Thursday but I'm reasonably confident we'll get there. As long as the internet at work stops crashing, our email stops breaking and the site glitches get resolved. Not much to ask for really? In the interests of expediency I worked from home yesterday and was non-stop but it felt good to be getting through things after a stultifying few days but I'm hoping these all powerful drugs this afternoon will clean swipe my brain of after hours work thoughts. It is exhausting.

I'm not sure what the weekend holds - I imagine not much. I wanted to go to a jazz festival at Strawberry Hill on Sunday, Horace Walpole's 19th century gothic castle, but after the cashspew that was Greece I can't quite stump to 25 quid this month so we might console ourselves with the Taste of Spain food festival that's overtaking Regent Street instead. That still too though is dependent on how much or little I'm involuntarily drooling after this afternoon.

If I never eat another Greek salad...

2011-05-30T14:40:00.001+01:00

I can't quite believe it's been over a week since we left for Greece. Since then we've come back from Greece, had house guests including a chubby delightful eight month old, I've survived four days of work and two dentist appointments and we've enjoyed a long weekend in spite of the weather.

the hotel against the backdrop of Mt Olympus.

Greece was amazing. Beautiful, rundown, charming and not short on Greek salad. Getting to Leptokaria from Thessaloniki was something of an adventure (as opposed to say hmm, a drama...) with poor to no road signage, a pesky ring road, poor to no GPS reception and a serious lack of u-turn availabilities which meant 40km on the right road in the wrong direction. Thankfully this was Thursday and the wedding wasn't until Saturday or we might have been in strife.

The hotel was an oasis at the base of Mount Olympus. All swimming pools and outdoor furniture with snow covered mountains in the background and palm trees and the calm Aegean Sea out the front. It really was beautiful. Because we'd left the house at 3am that morning we opted for a quiet evening and a quiet Friday before Cleo's parents hosted an intimate dinner for 100 at a taverna in the new village. The old village, which is further up the mountain, is so old it didn't get electricity until the 1980s, the new village beat them to it by about 20 years but there was still plenty of charm and a view to die for. So much food, lots of wine and a handful of new friends by the end of the night.

the view from our seats at dinner...

Saturday the sun came out along with the party dresses but an altercation with a cranky Greek bus driver meant that none of the girls got to partake in the traditions of helping the bride get dressed while drinking champagne and stuffing money into her shoes. Instead we had to mill about until the boys were ready and the bus driver was obliging and then went straight to the old village to wait for Cleo's arrival with Alex. Though when I say straight I should say up, around, up some more, around, around, up, up, up. The old village is also the high village and I'm sure that's a contributing factor when considering how untouched, beautiful and completely picturesque it is. I'm loathe to say it looks like a film set, but with the cobble stone pathways, vine covered tavernas, old church and shady square that's exactly what it reminded us all of.

The old village.

As is tradition, Cleo arrived at the church escorted by all the members of her family as well as a band of musicians and she met Alex at the front door before they walked in together with everyone straggling in behind them. The service was in ancient Greek so no-one except the priest really had any clue what was going on - though he too struggled at times to remember the very tricky "Alexander" - so much so he appeared to have it written on his hand...

Everyone stands about while the service is going on and all the locals fill in and chat idly at the back throughout the proceedings. There was another wedding on in the new village the same day and apparently there would have been twice as many guests otherwise. We got a glimpse of the other wedding on our way back down to the hotel afterwards - well, more than a glimpse. A full on front view as our enormous double decker coach blocked the bride's procession and she, the musicians, her family and friends all had to squeeze past us to get on with their own proceedings. I don't speak Greek but I know a cranky bride when I see one....

The reception back at the hotel kicked off with some serious Greek dancing - I don't think our poor groom, who happens to be German, not Greek, could quite relax until that was out of the way, understandably, and by the time the Greek band got off the stage we were all ready for a bit of top 40/classic rock with optional air guitar action. There's only so much clarinet I can handle on a per annum basis and I've maxed this years quota now and the next.

After complimentary ouzo shots (never a good idea at the best of times) and one two many Guns 'n' Roses medleys I dragged LBB off the dance floor around 1am and home to bed, knowing, if he didn't at the time, that I was doing him the world's biggest favour.

He returned the favour the next day by taking us to Leptokaria Beach for lunch and a somewhat ironic encounter with a dodgy handbag seller offering nasty Louis Vuitton knock-offs (oh to take one of those to my next meeting at New Bond St....) and a trip to the castle near the new village for some token culture and history. Token it turned out to be because the castle shut at 3pm and we arrived spectacularly at 2.45 and the gates were already locked. We consoled ourselves with a walk around the castle, along a wild flower strewn wobbly path that bear-hugged the castle and took in the spectacular views. It was just lovely. And good to feel like we'd done more than simply drink ouzo, eat feta and dance to appalling clarinet music.

That night we met Cleo, Alex and some of their friends at one of the beach bars nearby for a final mojito, where the techno music was at complete odds with the empty-but-for-us bar, before heading to bed and then back to London the next morning. Thankfully the trip back to the airport was completely uneventful with no need for u-turns or swear words.

Back to London, the next day we were joined by LBB's sister, brother-in-law and their chubby, very adorable 8 month old son Archie. It was so lovely having them with us and seeing how much Archie had grown since Christmas. It's lucky I'm not clucky though or the sight of LBB dragging the pillow over his head when Archie howled at 4.21am would have given me plenty to mull over. Thankfully at that moment I had other things to mull over, chiefly the toothache I brought back with me from Greece. I hate tooth-related pain, I hate dentists, I hate anyone coming anywhere near me with instruments that inevitably bring teeth and pain into the one conversation. So it's not surprising I spent the first four days just hoping it would go away. Sadly my cunning plan didn't work and so now I'm booked in for root canal this Friday and am only moderately calmed by the fact that I will be medically calmed while the whole bloody thing is going on.

This weekend has been a long weekend - the last for a while here but thankfully there are plenty of impending visits from friends and family in the coming months to distract from the lack of holidays. The website launches in just over a week so work is going to be I-N-S-A-N-E between now and then so I might just have to ask for some additional sedatives to manage the stress of it all. One day at a time. And some yoga perhaps.

Greece is the word

2011-05-18T23:59:00.000+01:00

We're off to Greece in a matter of hours for Cleo's Big Fat Greek Wedding To A German and I cannot wait. I'm packed, I'm superficially brown and I am hoping against hope that leaving the country will mean the end of my nightly work montage dreams. If I have to drown them in ouzo so be it. What I wouldn't do for a return to my wedding montage dreams. At least in those I got to wear nice outfits....

Last week was one of those weeks that only a margarita, ok ok, two margaritas, could fix. Everything was getting up my nose - work, public transport, People Generally - and by the end of the week I was just over it. Which is a shame as thinking back over it there were actually some genuinely lovely moments, however fleeting. On Tuesday we had yoga after work, which was surprisingly exhausting and not just from the laughter-induced pain of seeing a gaggle of colleagues collectively with their legs in the air and earlier that day we'd had a meeting with all the press and marketing teams from all of the partners involved in the project at the Royal Academy. In and of itself not so exciting but it was held in the same room where Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species papers were delivered in July 1858. Apparently not by Charles himself as his daughter was busy dying of some non-specific 19th malady but the occasion (the papers, not the death) is nonetheless still marked by a plaque. That was admittedly pretty special. Sometimes London does really woo you.

Thursday was margarita madness day. A shitty, irritating, unhelpful day for every and no reason, it was made enormously better both by some Very Exciting News from a Lovely Friend and then dinner (and said margaritas) with Lovely Friend and Bec, in London for one last night. After the margaritas (and in the interests of full disclosure a bottle of wine...) the impending pain of Friday was dulled in more ways than one. Thank god.

The weekend however was just lovely. On Saturday I didn't get out of my pajamas until 2pm, willfully staying in bed and when not sleeping instead watching rubbish television on LBB's computer. It was only the Lovely Boy's baking of Portuguese tarts that got me out of bed and even then it was only to move to the couch to minimise the crumbs. And then on Sunday LBB's sister, brother-in-law and very adorable nephew arrived in London and so we caught up with them. It's always so good to see familiar faces from home. The best kind of tonic really.

West London showing some rare 'urban art'...

This week so far has really been about getting through until today though frankly after the whitewash of beige over most parts of last week this week could only ever be an improvement.

I'm so looking forward to Greece, and seeing Cleo and hopefully getting the chance to dunk myself in the ocean. All of which will be excellent distractions from a looming phone call from home that I am dreading with every fibre of my body.

Pinch me moments and friends from home.

2011-05-08T22:47:00.004+01:00

I worked out today it's 32 weeks until LBB and I fly home to Sydney and the thought rather depressed me as it feels like SO FAR AWAY. Probably, well, because it is. I also calculated it's 10 days until we leave for Greece so I really should try and keep things in perspective but it's Mother's Day in Australia today and I've been thinking about home, and mothers, grandmothers and family generally, A LOT. So thank god for a phone plan that gives me 800 international minutes a month. You know who you are and you know how much I love you.

Sentiment mine but signage courtesy of Southbank

I sound flat, I'm really not, just philosophical as I think about work, career, marriage, living overseas and that thing called a life plan and feel, for the first time in a really long time, reasonably calm that It Will All Work Out. One way or another.

I've struggled to enjoy work this last week. A lack of confidence hasn't helped, nor have external politics and the pressure of a ridiculously stressful deadline but on Friday I was the only one in the office and I managed to get quite a lot done so I'm hoping this week will be constructive and exciting. No pressure.

More bunting love...

One of the highlights of work last week though was a meeting at Tate Britain. Not so much the meeting itself but the walk I took from my exercise class in Covent Garden to the gallery. I walked through Trafalgar Square and then down Whitehall, with a quick detour to cop a look at all the flags still decorating the Mall, past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Silly me, being early, thought I might swing past and stick my head in the door of the Abbey so I could gape at all the beautiful trees and flowers still in situ from The Wedding. Not a chance in hell of making my meeting with a line that looked like this:

On Thursday I had Another 'pinch me' moment after Another meeting, this time on Southbank. My love of bunting has been discussed elsewhere but I so love all the signage around the Royal Festival Hall for the Festival of Britain. I also fell a little bit in love with this work by Gitta Gschwendtner, called The Lion and Unicorn, after the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion from the 1951 Festival. Fifty years ago the Pavilion was designed to show who the British people were, largely to the British people themselves and part of that pavilion was a flight of ceramic birds designed to symbolise migration and freedom of speech.

Gitta Sschwendtner, The Lion and Unicorn, Southbank, 2011

Gschwendtner's work is an ephemeral homage to this work and the result of a collaboration with a number of young people from refugee groups across London. She asked them to write poems that explored ideas of strength and imagination and then re-cast their written poems not as birds but paper aeroplanes. While some thoughts were thus 'set free', the others fluttered in the wind as part of a sculptural installation, where you could go up and read the poems or listen as pre-recorded readings were played. It was just so beautiful, both in its fragility and its power and I felt so heartened by the encounter, the more so because it was so accidental. The metaphorical potential for this work, visually, politically and poetically is just breathtaking.

And from one lovely encounter I headed for another as at home waiting for me was LBB and a dear friend from home, Bec, making her debut on British soil. Bec and her sister had arrived on Wednesday and being a working girl these days I had barely had a chance to see her. Thankfully she came to stay and we've had three lovely nights of catching up, talking friends from home, talking weddings, travel and all about London.

On Friday night we decided that a quintessential London night was needed and so we went east, for a drink at the so-cool-if-it-wasn't-in-Shoreditch-it-would-be-in-Melbourne Commercial Tavern, with its fabulous wallpapers, light fittings and not so fabulous loud music. From here we went to Brick Lane for some Indian and introduced Bec to the cultural delight that is getting seduced or harassed, depending on your temperament, by the smooth talkers touting every restaurant along the strip. One even had hologram business cards.

Interiors upstairs at the Commercial Tavern.

Brick Lane... Yes there really are bricks.

After too much naan bread and just enough wine to make us sleepy we headed home with a plan to tackle Borough the next day. Which we did, via a button shop on Marylebone Lane so I could replace the admittedly ugly buttons on the trench LBB calls my flasher coat. I take such comments as a reassuring sign of his heterosexuality and frankly of all the fashion crimes I could be committing, there are worse out there. Much Worse. (And n.b. I'm not the only one who thinks so. The very clever Amy Sly came up with this handy chart for the Huffpost and I feel it's my social responsibility to share it here:)

By Amy Sly and first seen here

But back to Borough. Being a sort-of-sunny Saturday and frankly, simply Saturday, the market was rammed but we nonetheless successfully navigated our way past every cheese stall with a tasting plate and over a lunch of burgers (mine halloumi, LBB's duck and Bec's lamb) we came up with a menu for dinner that night. Slow cooked leg of lamb and roasted beets, asparagus and vine tomatoes. With Portuguese tarts for dessert. A large part of the recipe's appeal was the three hours it would take to cook, which gave us three hours for Pimms at the pub while the house filled with the intoxicating smell of lamb, mint and garlic. It was seriously delicious.

Sitting under Southwark Cathedral.
Food already consumed by this point.

The fruits of our shopping labour.

Today we've done zero. Bec left for the non-London parts of the UK to visit her mum and LBB and I have dossed about the house, cleaning, TV watching, Thailand googling (honeymoon anyone?) and generally trying not to think about the five day week ahead. It's been awhile since we've had one of those. Spring it may be but holidays it isn't. At least not until next week.

Long and lazy weekend - the second

2011-05-02T23:17:00.002+01:00

So the second long weekend has come and all but gone and I am pooped. Last weekend felt like a mini-break, I think largely because of the weather and impending bonhomie over the then impending royal wedding. This weekend has felt busy. Not bad, but busy. And well-earned after a difficult, distracting three days at work where productivity was hard, hard won. Computer malfunctions and difficult personalities didn't help so much either...

bunting along the Southbank

LBB's long weekend take two didn't get off to the best of starts as he had to go into work to make sure the BBC's websites didn't crash from all the wedding-related traffic. They didn't - just - but my usually unruffled, unfazed lovely boy was all but ruined by the adrenalin, stress and frustration of the day. I usually joke that going to work for LBB is like going to camp - he has his friends and every morning they meet for coffee and then they have lunch and some of them go to photography club and they sit in their little teams and do activities otherwise known as work. On Friday LBB wanted to pack up his bat and ball and leave camp forever. It was that bad.

Chinatown celebrates the Royal Wedding

I, on the other hand, had a lovely morning on the sofa watching the live coverage of Wills, Kate, Harry and The Dress. Thankfully it didn't rain but even if it had poured I don't think the million odd people who flocked into central London would have been deterred.

Heading into Soho that afternoon it took me a good four tube stops - from Hyde Park Corner to Leicester Square - to work out why all these people were boarding the train with suitcases and tents and a slightly stinky air about them.

I didn't take this photo - a friend and former colleague who braved the crowds did. She also managed to fight the throngs to get this classic photograph.....

But central London was awash, not only with the great unwashed, but flags and bunting and people simply revelling in the good mood - the only verb for it really. And I was in Soho to revel too. Not so much in honour of the royal wedding but weddings generally - and my friend Cleo's particularly. Only a girl planning a big fat Greek wedding with 600 guests would have the chutzpah to hijack Kate and Wills day but it was such a lovely afternoon that veered into a hilarious evening - sodden with cocktails and deafened with karaoke. We started at the Dean St Townhouse for high tea and prosecco before heading to Lounge Bohemia in east London, my old stomping ground for lychee martinis and these:

Before heading to Dalston for sushi and more cocktails before heading to Brick Lane for a private booth and concert bill featuring the inestimable talents of Dolly Parton, Belinda Carlisle and The Spice Girls. There may be video footage of seven women hanging from the walls and dancing on sofas while singing at the very top of their lungs but to the untrained ear it sounds like a herd of cats being slaughtered. But it was a lot of fun. And unlike last weekend with my spectacularly poor ability to hold myself upright after copious amounts of liquor, this time I was fine. I mean, my head hurt a little on Saturday morning but I was undamaged and still holding the contents of my stomach so it could have been worse. Never again...

Saturday itself was a bit of a faff before me and my tired LBB took ourselves back to the BBC for a filming of one of the world's guiltiest TV pleasures, So You Think You Can Dance. After Friday night I know absolutely that I cannot dance (or sing...) but god I wish I could. Even with all the pointless standing about you have to endure with live television there is something quite incredible about seeing someone backflip their way across a stage in time to music.

Bills in Covent Garden

Yesterday LBB and I went into Covent Garden for brunch with Cleo at Bills, this cute organic cafe in a hideaway courtyard off Long Acre before meandering through Kurt Geiger and emerging with some new sandals (LBB being now a shoe connoisseur after my weeks of sandal-less moaning and some inspired research in response to my brief) and then to Southbank to check out the Festival of Britain. Mostly I was impressed with the huge sculpture of a fox made out of hay but the Bondi girl in me was touched by the efforts at a seaside, with a mock beach and bunting. I can't get enough of the bunting these days but I suspect that's because my wedding-soggy brain is in decorations mode at the moment.

From Southbank we headed home for some perfunctory housecleaning before my still-tired LBB reawakened his obsession with Masterchef Australia while I cooked him dinner, a surprisingly delicious laksa.

Today we braved the gale force winds for some culture at the V&A - a really fascinating exhibition of contemporary South African photography. LBB found it quite depressing, I found it sad, compelling and quite beautiful in parts so I'm glad we went. Otherwise the high point of my day would have been the hour long nap I had this afternoon.

Street art in Camberwell. Something about frogs and princes maybe?...

Tomorrow it is back to work but the highlight of this week is undoubtedly and already the arrival of one of my dearest friends from Sydney - making her debut on British soil. I can't wait to see her, I only wish I didn't have to work but I'm so looking forward to showing her London. Let's just hope it behaves, starting with the weather.

Long and lazy weekend - the first

2011-04-26T00:09:00.002+01:00

I do so love a long weekend. Religious rites, royal weddings - whatever I can get and this weekend was the first of two consecutive four day weekends here in London and it has been BLISS. Apart from a small freak storm, the sun has shone and with most other Londoners having absconded for more exotic locales, those of us left behind have had plenty of room to move in the parks, on the tube, along the pavement. Love it.

I started the weekend on Friday with a godless pedicure. I say godless because what other kind of good pedicure can there be on Good Friday? The afternoon was spent drinking pink wine in the sun with a lovely new pal until 4pm turned into 10pm and I was what in polite circles is known as totally smashed. So smashed I misplaced my centre of gravity and walked into the kitchen doorframe on getting home. All class....

Saturday my head hurt from the sturdy mix of a frazzled, water-deprived brain and a knock-now-lump above my eye..... Thankfully a hair appointment, some time with the token rubbish magazines and an afternoon BBQ at LBB's BF's penthouse in Chiswick went some way to improving the situation. It was such a beautiful afternoon, hot even by London's usually shite standards, and so when the freak storm appeared out of nowhere the surreal state of London's weather was really hit home. Rain lashed the roof, the trees swayed, thunder, lightning. It was the kind of storm that made you wish you were lying on your own sofa listening to it all and not contemplating a trip home through it.

Thankfully the storm was fleeting and yesterday LBB and I headed into central London for a date with some wedding decorations - Wills and Kate's - not Lovely Boys and mine, but should the municipality of greater Avalon decide to decorate the main street with bunting in our honour next January I probably won't protest...

Paddington Bear getting into the street party
spirit in the window of Hamley's

Liberty window.

Probably not sanctioned by the Palace...

It was quite a fun day, playing Spot the Tat among the windows of Regent and Oxford Streets, and the stroll through Hyde Park afterwards was also quite lovely, in that "Ok I'm getting hot and self-conscious now, can we please find some shade" sort of way. We did find shade - and a view to die for - at the top of the ferris wheel near Hyde Park corner, set up for the celebrations next Friday and there was something so childishly fun to the whole experience. All that was missing was the ice cream really.

Having walked up Regent St, along Oxford St and then across Hyde Park we decided that seeing as our invitation to this week's royal soiree has clearly been lost in the post and hell will freeze before we line the mall with 100,000 others, we should stroll to Buckingham Palace, up Pall Mall and then hot foot it out of central from Embankment. And so we did.

Having seen all the set up being, well, set up, I'm not so sure the best place to watch the whole spectacle won't be from the comfort of my house. Pajamas optional. The forecast for rain also votes for this option... And frankly, if Wills and Kate - The Wedding is anything like William and Kate - The Movie, which I shamelessly watched last night through slightly ajar fingers (in fairness The Guardian did describe is as "So bad it's awful - toe-curlingly, teeth-furringly, pillow-bitingly ghastly" so it's not like I didn't know what I was in for) well, I'm not sure how much of Friday I'll be able to stomach. But by god I'll give it my best. Never mind the dress, I'm just impressed with the hilarious contemporary art it's inspiring...

Rachel House, Royal Pinata, 2011

Lydia Leith, Throne Up, 2011

Today was the last day of the weekend and was spectacular only for its uneventfulness. I didn't quite manage to clean the house, book my flights home, book Berlin for the August long weekend or do anything else I had on my list - including the photography exhibition at the V&A but what can you do? Apart from wait three days and try again on the next long weekend.

Let the sun shine

2011-04-21T08:36:00.000+01:00

I forgot to add these yesterday - irrefutable proof of warmer weather finally upon us. Strange that I dreamt last night of getting lobster red burnt.........

Crazy busy days

2011-04-20T23:20:00.003+01:00

It's midnight and I should be long asleep but as that seems to be the case most nights lately I'm not entirely distressed. The knowledge of an impending four day week undoubtedly helps. I probably would have been in bed an hour ago had LBB not insisted on plugging what he considers to be a major gap in my childhood by having me watch Back to the Future with him...

In truth it was a lovely end to a weekend that couldn't come fast enough after a very busy week. The last fortnight in fact has been huge. And by huge I mean exciting and overwhelming but also exhausting and stressful and non-stop. The learning curve continues to be steep but when I manage occasionally to take a step back from it all I realise how incredible it is that I'm getting to learn about everything from film production to social media and online communities to the politics of big business and big ego. We had a breakfast meeting at The Ivy - The Ivy - of all places last week with one of these said egos and it was just ridiculous. The air was so thick with swagger and the kind of self-assurance that can only come from shitloads of money that it choked the air like a dirty old man's cologne. You know you don't belong in a place like that when you feel the need to photograph the lift as evidence you were ever there. I mean really, can there be anything more narcissistic than a mirror gilded elevator shaft?

This last week has felt like progress though on the work front. I've started to take things on independently and feel more and more confident about my ability to succeed in the role - though we have training this week on the content management system so that might prove a make or break moment for someone whose job title involves two of those three words. This week also involves fun things like meeting Jefferson Hack and arranging interviews with experts at the Royal Academy and Whitechapel and going to meetings at Tate. I just love saying "meetings at Tate" - they could be about re-stocking loo rolls and I'd still get a rush. Retail on Kings Road feels like a lifetime ago. Thank. God.

.......................

Ok. So I wrote all that three days ago. The early hours of Monday morning got the better of me in the end and it is now Wednesday eve and there is one more work day until the Easter long weekend. Things continue in the theme of 'crazy busy' - the interview with Jefferson was yesterday and despite the fact he kept his sunglasses on throughout the entire filming process (we were in a conference room in the basement of his offices) he was thoughtful and articulate and really so lovely to the teenagers we took along to do the interview.

Today was website training and despite my reservations it was really positive and the only time I felt like crying was when I smacked my knee into the corner of my desk. My latent insecurities about doing this job, working in education, having innovative ideas were someone allayed by the resurgence of old IT skills I thought had long since been relegated to the back rooms of my brain.

It hasn't been a terribly social week but after the financial exertions of the last two weeks, with my various girly dinner dates, not to mention an outing for cocktails at Bob Bob Ricard (apple martinis To Die For....) a few quiet nights at home has been just lovely.

Weekend before last Lovely Boy and I took the sunshine with us to Southbank for the Chocolate Festival. The pictures I think speak for themselves but not having had breakfast before we left, churros and dipping chocolate with cinnamon certainly set the tone for the rest of the day....

Chocolate for breakfast, brunch and all in between and then a highly recommended pizza for lunch in Brixton. So good. And trawling the Afro-Caribbean inspired food stores afterwards offered plenty by way of juvenile amusement.

Last weekend was more sunshine and a visit to the Wellcome Collection for a fascinating look at filth...

And this looooong weekend has a barbeque, a lunch, some drinks on the river and I'm hoping a visit to the V&A for a new photography exhibition on contemporary South Africa. Oh. And some work for Artlink, who have a launch in London in June for their Indigenous issue. I finally finished my crush-inspired piece which will feature in the issue and hopefully once I have this full-time work palava a bit more sorted I will be able to do some more writing. But one thing at a time. First up: long weekend. Then: a royal wedding and a visit to London - finally - from one of my dearest Sydney friends. Long may the sun shine.

11.04pm. Definitely time for bed.

This week I....

2011-04-03T23:18:00.002+01:00

So Sunday evenings appear to have become that place in the week where I sit down to gaze at my navel and spout nonsense and First World trivia about the week just gone.

The week just gone has been a big one - first week of full-time work since 2006. Looking back now it's nothing short of impressive that I've managed to build a career based on multiple forms of part-time and freelance work. The audacity in the face of current economic woes both global and very, very local is breath-taking and I wonder if I'll ever again find myself with a work day that involves pottery classes and morning swims again? Without the justification of god forbid small children..... I guess it's just bloody lucky that if the last week is anything to go by full-time work should be most-parts enjoyable and only two-parts "Where HAS my week gone?"

I'm still loving the little team I'm now part of, still getting to grips with the reality of the project I'm working on - not least the not-so-small involvement of a major international fashion conglomerate - and still very much trying to get to grips with finding where things on the server/organising my desk/remembering everyone's name and packing my lunch everyday so as to avoid the buy-one-get-one-free deals from the petrol station down the road. Oh for an Eat or a Marks and Spencer. Convenient location Peckham is not. Interesting it is.

Not Peckham unfortunately. Rather, Kew Gardens...

This week I got to see first-hand some of the work the education department does at the gallery with the local kids, a lot of whom come from the council estate that is literally in the gallery's back garden. On Wednesday we took a group of kids to the Hayward Gallery for a cross-site visit and on the way there it was all cheeky tough talk and adolescent obscenities. At the gallery it was casual conversation about the suggestion of materialism in one work and the detail of another. Then there was dress ups and ice cream. It was brilliant.

We'd actually been at the Hayward earlier that day with the film production company that we're working with to create content for the site - lots of short films and interviews - scoping locations for a chat with the co-curator of the upcoming Tracey Emin survey. It makes me stupidly excited when I think that these are the kinds of things involved in My Job. I feel so ridiculously lucky - even when my lovely boss is reduced to tears after a particularly horrendous meeting and I'm given a rather salient insight into the soon to be my realities of working on this project. I mean, don't kid yourself, I am still hugely overwhelmed and paddling like mad to look like I'm calmly moving forward but every day offers another iota of confidence so hopefully by the time my contract ends I'll feel reasonably capable.

I have no idea what this week will bring but if last week is anything to go by it will be Sunday evening again before I know it.

Daylight savings started last Sunday and it is amazing. The light has changed almost overnight. It's as if someone has removed the filter and everything is now so much brighter, even with the cloud cover. One part of me is delighted and another part is cowering vainly and avoiding the mirror in our window-heavy, light-drenched bathroom. No one needs that real a reflection at 7.30 in the morning. Every pore, every fine line, every fucking freckle. BAM. Hello, This Is What Getting OLDER Looks Like. And it isn't pretty.

What also isn't pretty is this:

Tights are not pants, girls. I don't care how shapely your legs. Stockings, tights, pantyhose - they go UNDER something. They are not worn with converse and a t-shirt. You look stupid and as a consequence I worry about the state of the world. Libya and the Middle East are what can only be politely referred to as pretty screwed, Japan is buried under rubble and sludge, rioters are trashing Fortnum and Masons while more polite protestors take to the Thames and the youth of today are leaving the house without pants. I'm not sure whether or not to be grateful for the fact they left their ugg boots at home but I'm nonetheless troubled by these developments. All of them. If only the Libyans had to put trousers on to solve their problems. How happy would the world be then?

This weekend, me, LBB and our trousers decided to celebrate the tentative turn in weather with a picnic in Kew Gardens. After a detour through Barnes Farmers Markets for tallegio, pesto, custard tarts and all other kinds of delicious goodness, we took ourselves to the gardens for some idling through the flora. It was so lovely, despite the overhanging threat of rain and the daffodils, magnolias, azaleas and cherry blossoms were just exquisite. As was the chocolate we bought at the gift shop on the way out.

It was what can generally be referred to as A Good Day. We'd had dinner with Tors and the Hungry One on Friday night - sloshes of wine and sparkling conversation and this afternoon we met in Leicester Square for coffee and a film. I think the maintenance of Life Outside Work is going to be critical to the enjoyment of work and LBB and I have already booked in a date with a pizza in Brixton next Saturday at the recommendation of a certain food queen. I'm already hungry thinking about it.

I'm not sure what this week will entail but it's sure to be busy. Bring it on. All that's missing is 10 more degrees and a skirts and sandals montage.

Bruised feet, bridal magazines and a girl crush

2011-03-28T22:09:00.001+01:00

Today was the first day of full-time employment and it went quickly and, you know what, actually rather pleasantly. Last week was my final nannying hurrah with three small but charming Aussie kids - same nationality, same school, different family - and lovely though they are I will not miss ham sandwiches, swimming lessons, tennis lessons or spelling tests. I suspect I will miss starting work at 3pm but you can't have it all.

The view from Barnes Bridge

No doubt this week will be quite the litmus test in terms of exhaustion levels but now that daylight savings has started getting home at 7.45pm doesn't feel that hideous, mostly because it's light enough to see the blossoms and magnolias and general floral good sorts that are trumpeting the arrival of Spring, my favourite time of year here in London. I've proselytised elsewhere on why this is the case but the optimism and physical urge to skip that comes with bursts of pink is undeniable.....

On Friday I had a fortuitous meeting with the Australian gallerist Rebecca Hossack that only encouraged my urge to skip. I met with her in Fitzrovia ostensibly for an interview for Artlink magazine but when we weren't talking art and magazines we talked the expat in London experience, weddings, art, art world bitches and the brilliance of fairy lights in gardens. It was such a pleasure to talk with such a warm, successful, generous, honest and enthusiastic professional woman who I took to the minute she walked into the room and exclaimed, "Jo Jo!" We're talking total professional girl crush. Seriously. I am so looking forward to writing the article about her and to keeping in touch. And I would love for her to mentor me in some way. Either way, an art world kindred spirit is not to be sniffed at.

Not such a sunny day but look - blossoms!

After that, the weekend could only be a goodun, despite getting off to a bruised start thanks to a pile of cookbooks finding favour with my foot... On Friday night I met with LBB in Battersea to check out the BBC Photography Club's annual exhibition and sneak some cheeky free vino. And then there was Saturday - momentous not for the 157th Oxford-Cambridge boat race that went past our door but for the purchasing of my very first bridal magazine. A rite of passage if ever there was one.

Now I'm pretty sure I'm not doing things in the right order, having already booked the celebrant, organised a caterer, sorted the music and bought The Dress. The magazines mostly, I think, are designed in this instance to offer a certain level of reassurance. Flicking through 200 odd pages of bridey, frou frou satin hell and ads promoting cartoon illustrated invitations I'm more than anything reassured of my own taste and the absolute crassness of monogrammed tablecloths and personalised M&Ms....

But back to the boat race. I seem to have missed this annual paean to muscles and lycra last year but its popularity is undoubtedly helped by the carnival atmosphere that threads through the pubs along the river all the way from Putney to Chiswick.

Accompanied by a flotilla of motorised boats, it was initially quite difficult to discern the crews until they were literally in front of you but the exhilaration was palpable - or the ego - I can't tell, but it was surprisingly exciting.

And even more so when we returned home to watch the end of the race on tv.... A much better view you'd agree.

I'm quite looking forward to this week. I have meetings at Whitechapel and the Hayward and dinner with my Lovely Friend on Wednesday. A proper grown up week. It's been a while since I've had one of those....

Tripping and skipping

2011-03-20T22:21:00.003Z

While the world seems to be going to hell in a really ugly hand basket life in my little London bubble has been washed freshly clean with a healthy dose of gratitude.

It's been a satisfying kind of week. Work is going really well, though I'm still struggling to accept the reality of my new situation. A month ago and I was ready to admit defeat, suck up the next six months doing all kinds of retail hell and then head back to Sydney with the need for A New Plan. And now, well I'm going to meetings at the Royal Academy and, this week, to New Bond St for a meeting with the head of press and marketing for Louis Vuitton to talk about art and education and websites and creative opportunities. It is a total trip. Intellectually and, so it is too proving, practically. Peckham is not a fun place to get to from Hammersmith every day - in fact it sort of sucks, but this last week getting home each night at 7.30 has meant LBB has had dinner ready and waiting on the table for me. A sure fire stem to my exhausted tears and a wealth of brownie points for him.

On Thursday I stayed late to finish up some work and to check out the event the SLG's young people's group had organised - a video exhibition and Q&A with the main gallery artists. It was so fabulous - the enthusiasm, the professionalism - they even ran a bar offering a bevy of non-alcoholic cocktails. It was pretty fucking cool. And then on my way home I decided to play bus lottery - ie. get on the first one that comes along going vaguely in the direction I need it to and see where I end up. On Thursday I found myself winding through some fairly unappetising parts of south London before crossing Westminster Bridge and travelling up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. I still get a kick out of the incidental history and architectural majesty that living and travelling through London offers. Which is lucky, as three hours of door to door travel every day is going to get dull very, very, soon. Or, like, yesterday.

This weekend has been lovely - in large part because yesterday was gloriously sunny. Spring is set to do just that at any moment now. The blossoms are getting their pink on and the magnolia trees, my favourite, are a whisper from exploding. I cannot wait. Yesterday I went to Notting Hill to meet my dear friend Nina, a fellow bride-to-be, and we enjoyed an extensive word vomit over flowers and table settings and dresses and ceremony plans while sitting in the sun eating cheese and drinking carrot and ginger juice at Daylesford Organic on Westbourne Grove. So civilised. I've already earmarked it as a place to take Mum next time she's in London. She might have to BYO sun though if Spring doesn't hurry up and get here.

And then last night I took LBB out for dinner to celebrate my first pay cheque at our favourite Spanish restaurant, El Pirata in Mayfair. This was the place where, when LBB was just plain old LB, he cupcake bombed me for my birthday.

Oh my GOD it feels good to be employed and to be able to do things like pay for dinner! The world suddenly feels full of possibility and conquerable even and my gratitude for the support of Lovely Boy, the Best Parentals and all my friends while despondency and quiet pessimism have been my accessories du jour over the last few months, god, let's call it a year, well it's bursting like the blossoms.

Exhaustion thy name is Full Time Work

2011-03-13T23:42:00.002Z

I am zonked. I should be in bed right now and know I will regret it in the morning but I've just finished up the last of my NPG work and LBB is cooking us a late light dinner while I fight the urge to rest my head on the keyboard.

So anyway, grown up, full-time work. Well, so far so good. I'm still feeling overwhelmed but overwhelmed in the face of minor progress so I count that as a plus and, apart from the realisation that regular employment is a source of massive time suckage and I already miss the hours I once had to do whatever it was I did when I had them, I'm feeling really pretty happy. Exhausted, but happy.

My last day at the NPG is tomorrow. Talk about a milestone. Who would have thought all those many, many months ago that I would be sitting here, post-50,000 words and 12 months of invaluable experience and research, with a book on its way with my name in it somewhere. Last week on my way into the gallery my eye was caught by one of the posters promoting the latest exhibition, on Hoppe's street and society portraiture. I haven't seen the exhibition yet but someone clearly loved it.

Look closer...

Hilarious, right? If not a little unsanitary....

I'm going to miss going into the NPG every week but the reality is, one less thing to choke my week the better. I had a solid day at the SLG last Thursday (are we loving the new acronyms in my life btw?) before heading to the bar for my last shift there for the foreseeable future. It was a very long 17 hour day so again, good to be simplifying things and crossing extraneous responsibilities off my list. Apart from anything else, my current fix for tiredness is sugar and god help me if I find myself eating my way back into my size 14 jeans. Lately, I've been having a serious relationship with hot cross buns. Easter is still over a month away but why would the good supermarket retailers of the world let that stop them selling carby, fruity goodness that was just born to be friends with a slab of butter. My not so secret secret love affair with the hot cross exploded yesterday when LBB decided to try making some from scratch. The results prompted a groan simultaneously happy and panicked. I may have to go cold turkey - as in give up, not change food groups - but I'm not ready to just yet. Plus giving up now would be an insult to LBB's impressive efforts.

Yesterday was otherwise rather uneventful, notwithstanding the bakery and a small war of the sexes and a round of cheap point scoring over the traditions of marriage (to change a name or, as it might be, not change a name...) and the brutal unfairness of biology when it comes to Concessions of the Female Sex Made Generally In Life.

Thankfully we've recovered from that little disaster, or at least perhaps plotted a safe route through the minefields of expectation and personal philosophy for future reference but there is nothing about an awkward, alcoholically dampened conversation that can't be fixed with food.

Having totally mucked up this morning and not set the alarm correctly to ensure a timely and lovely brunch with Lovely Friend, LBB and I eventually got our act together and at my behest, we headed for Vietnamese in Soho, specifically to a little place called Nam on Dean St that makes fresh summer rolls to die for and a pho laden so with tender beef and crunchy vege goodness that it makes you, me, sigh.

Sated, we then wandered in the direction of Chinatown so LBB could buy some dumplings. I think these Asian groceries are incredible - I have no idea what you're meant to do with 98% of the things on offer but anything you can imagine and everything you can't pronounce is in here. It's the food equivalent of an exotic zoo.

Circumnavigating Trafalgar Square, with its hoards of drunken Irish celebrating St Patricks Day by wearing green felt hats and drinking cheap beer from cans before tossing them onto the steps of the National Gallery (they even had security guards stationed permanently in the fountains to stop any fanciful swimmers), we decided to head to Victoria to catch the tube via a wander down Pall Mall and through St James's Park.

And I'm so pleased we did because it was just beautiful. All the daffodils are out in force and the cherry blossoms are just starting to pop and it all just feels so promising.

LBB and I were even visited by a ladybird this morning at home. Spring is so nearly sprung and I can't wait. I also can't wait for next weekend. Thinking about the week ahead feels like preparing for a marathon. And there's only so much sustenance a hot cross bun can offer.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new pair of shoes

2011-03-07T21:19:00.003Z

I think today has been what people refer to as A Very Good Day. My first day of work at South London Gallery began with some auspicious advice courtesy of Oval tube station:

It was a fairly apt piece of advice given the day I was set to have which was one part fabulous, one part hugely enjoyable, one part enormously promising and five parts overwhelming. They weren't joking when they said I would be leaping in from day one but apart from a small moment of panic threatening to manifest itself as quiet tears I was so into the day and may have resisted the urge to skip with excitement when I left this afternoon. I love the people I'm going to be working with, I'm excited about the challenges to come (which will probably be tomorrow...) and I feel I acquitted myself reasonably well in the face of what was a massive information dump and an expectation of immediate competency.

Things seem to be coming together and I'm not even going to be snotty about it and say "at last".

Last week was a lot of fun, after the interviews and tests and offer of The Job. There was champagne with girlfriend Jen on Tuesday and a charcuterie board to drool over at Fernandez and Wells in Soho with Tors on Thursday. This was before we took in a so-bad-it-was-excellent movie and consequently made the Ashton Kutcher-inspired decision to host a Razziefest, as well as an Oscarfest, next year. And then on Friday, LBB and I had a date with some posh bar food at St John's in Smithfield and some joyous Australian theatre at the Barbican courtesy of the Belvoir's touring production of The Sapphires. Seriously, nothing says happy like Motown.

Before my rendezvous with the Lovely Boy I had a rendezvous with the Lovely Selfridges where I may have done some pre-job purchasing of new shoes and trousers. So Good. Oh I've missed shopping. sigh... Seriously, nothing says happy like a bright yellow shopping bag.

This afternoon I went to the NPG for a meeting and farewell afternoon tea for my lovely editor - a chance, I figured, to have a relaxed conversation with the Managing Editor and the Head of Publications and impress upon them my commitment, my enthusiasm and my so burning it almost needs an ointment desire to see this bloody book published. Boy am I glad I went. Just before leaving my lovely editor gave me something of a parting gift - namely a contract guaranteeing my name in print with all due credit and details of PAYMENT to be made to me in thanks.

It turns out 50,000 words is not an insignificant contribution.

It's not a huge sum of money in the grand scheme of things, but I am beyond happy about it and feel not so much flattered or grateful as honoured really, as strange as that sounds, that the value of my work and efforts have been recognised. I mean, I'm not an idiot, I know the no doubt impending sticky issue of copyright probably had something to do with it but I am so happy and shocked that I don't even care. I'm even happy to wrangle my way through the self-employed tax return nightmare that being paid will no doubt involve.

It has been A Very Good Day. Surprising, satisfying, inspiring, promising. And it's only Monday. God only knows what Tuesday will bring.

A little thing called a job

2011-03-01T21:59:00.002Z

I don't really think anything less than an excess of exclamation marks can come remotely close to conveying the dizzying enormity that is the offer of full-time employment in a role that comes VERY close to ticking all the boxes of My Dream Job. We're talking contemporary art, museum education, writing, fuck off massive brilliant challenges, five of the best art institutions in London-nay-the-World and PAID. Yes, paid.

flowers of congratulations from the ever lovely LBB

The personality test supposedly showed me to have brilliant abstract thinking skills (probably more abstract than brilliant but I'll take what I can get), excellent diplomacy and communication skills and a talent for team playing (again probably more abstract than bat-and-ball but again, I'll take what I can get...)

I'm daunted, exhilarated and the kind of floaty, distracted shocked that only a massive hangover can steady. Me, LBB and the Taittinger and working on it as I type.

I start on Monday and will be swimming all kinds of strokes as I acquaint myself with The Deep End but mostly I am just bursting with exclamation marks. Seriously.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The test of a personality

2011-02-27T21:30:00.004Z

So I got a second interview. I think this is a good thing. It's certainly not outright rejection and it gives me a chance to feel like, if I get offered and then take the job, it was the result of a considered decision - by them and by me - and not a knee-jerk reaction to what has basically been 12 months of unemployment. The interview is on Tuesday afternoon and yesterday I spent nearly three hours completing a psychometric test in anticipation of said "informal" interview. A personality test, basically. One can only hope I don't fail that. I could handle a rejection on the grounds of technical incompetence but not because I'm not a morning person.... We will see....

I've had a lovely couple of days seeing the little sister for snatched dinners and lunches between her mental working demands though London has been typically ungenerous with the weather. Despite the increasing appearance of daffodils, foliage, colour and hope for winter's end it has poured down solidly for the last couple of days. Big fat raindrops that turn into big fat puddles. So boring.

That said though, it didn't rain on Friday when I went to east London with my old flatmate to see a small pop-up exhibition in an abandoned post office that explored the lost art of letter writing. It was incredibly evocative actually and only served to further cement my love affair with east London, despite the fact it's getting to be less edgy-grotty and more edgy-chi-chi - think espresso bars and beauty parlours offering pedicures that involve tanks of flesh-eating fish. Oh and an Urban Outfitters. Oh and a statue of a goat atop several concrete crates.

This should be a busy week, even without the interview. I have six more artists to finish tomorrow, for you know, oh, Tuesday, and then a feast to attend tomorrow night. Galleries plural on Tuesday - the NPG and then the South London Gallery for the interview and then editing like a mad woman to get the book bits finished up once and for all and who knows what that will entail. I may or may not have been brave enough yet to read back over anything I've written to date. Hmmm... I wonder if that part of my personality, the procrastinating, perfectionist part managed to reveal itself yesterday in this test. And what that could mean for my prospects. I think in the interest of self-preservation I might apply for a job or two as well this week. And see ma girls for some drinks and bad movies. It's going to be a memorable week, let's just hope it's for all the right kinds of reasons.

Drunk spaghetti and brownies for breakfast

2011-02-25T12:20:00.002Z

The interview was yesterday. Apparently I should find out today. Who knows. I'm currently in two minds over whether to pick up the phone when it rings or let it go to voicemail. Immature? Sure. Chicken shit? Absolutely. I really would love this job and it would be an incredible experience and I think I acquitted myself reasonably well but I do have form in being completely unable to predict these things. One thing I do know is that if I do get it, I will be thrown in the deep end with no idea of which way to swim or which stroke is going to get me there fastest. We will just have to wait and see.

It's been a distracting kind of week - and I'm not referring to the piles of clothes in need of washing, the sink of "rinsed" plates awaiting scrubbing or the films of dust needing, well, dusting. But they have been distracting me too. I mean there's been less multi to my tasking and as a consequence the last week has been a jarring montage of frenetic interview research, little to no book writing, ad hoc tidying, wedding details and eating. Lots of comfort eating.

Lovely Betrothed Boy is a Good Cook. And a patient cook too, when my inevitable answer to "what would you like for dinner?" is "something delicious." In an attempt to redress the imbalance of culinary contributions in our little household last week I decided to make us a huge vat of Neil Perry spaghetti bolognaise. Going a little rogue on the ingredient proportion front, I accidentally overcompensated for what I felt was perhaps not quite enough red wine by tipping in a generous slug only to realise that meant two-thirds of the bottle was now bubbling away with my mince and herbs. Basically, I got the bolognaise smashed. But you know what, like most things after too much liquor, it was the food equivalent of rather a lot of fun. My cooking stocks definitely rose, if you'll forgive the terrible pun....

This week, LBB made brownies. Dark gooey chocolate brownies with sour cherries. Thankfully he's been taking some to work with him everyday as my complete disregard for the conventions of breakfast has meant a small chocolate "appetizer" on my way back from the shower each morning before even drying my hair. It's lucky the brownies aren't a North African leader otherwise I imagine the porridge, crumpets and contents of the fruit bowl would be planning a messy coup right about now. And I have enough washing up to do as it is.

I tell you what though, when it comes to making sweet things, you know it's true love when someone lets you lick the bowl....

One of my earliest memories is of the jostle for the bowl, beaters and spoon with my siblings after Mum or Dad had finished with some brilliant dessert creation and even though I know myself to be a reasonably unexceptional cook, except perhaps when it comes to desserts (some things are ingrained early...) there is something so inherently satisfying about the hum and mess of a kitchen mid-creation. Never mind the smell of cooking brownies.

Apart from eating and waiting for a phone call that may never happen, there are some fun things on the immediate horizon. Sophie is in town for a couple of days for work at the moment so it will be good to spend a bit of time with her and this afternoon I'm off to Hackney to see an exhibition with my lovely ex-flatmate. The dishes, dust, writing and general attention to Life Plan will have to wait.

A purple letter kind of day

2011-02-18T01:02:00.002Z

I know you can have a red letter day, I'm assuming by right of reply you can then also have a blue letter day... but throw the two together and my question is this: have I just had a purple letter day? A splash of blue, a hint of red and we come out somewhere in the middle?

The day did not start well. After a you-really-should-know-better telling off by my hairdresser last week that I should only wash my hair every other day this morning began with a shake of my not so shiny swishy hair and a brief moment of thanks for the Pantene stocks I never invested in, what with their now significant drop in value... Anyway, the half hour I should have saved from faffing with my hair was wasted on trying to find clothing that would see me through eight respectable hours at the gallery and five rather grotty, beer stained hours at the bar. Basically, I left the house feeling frumpy, grumpy, sans good hair and late.

When I got to the gallery I discovered that the editor who I have been working for, writing slavishly and for free, and who I really like and respect, has handed in her resignation and the book is now captain-less and almost certainly not going to materialise this year as hoped. January maybe. The news kind of threw me, the possibility that 12 months of free love, intellectual labour and oh, about 50,000 cumulative words would be for a big fat nothing..... It all felt a bit shit really. I've been reassured things are still going ahead and I still have my deadline of Monday but I can't help but shake the feeling that it isn't going to end well. Please, bloody please, prove me wrong.

I then spent most of the day in a desultory state - the adrenaline and enthusiasm that had got me through the start of the week deserting me completely - until at 2.05pm I spotted an advertisement for a fabulous job at Tate that closed at 5.00pm. I bashed something out, I sent it off (along with a non-religious prayer) and then at 5.17pm had a phone call from the South London Gallery inviting me for an interview for The Dream Job I applied for earlier this week next Thursday. This would be the red bit if my analogy has long since lost you...

I'm already anxious about it, determinedly fatalistic and not remotely game to be anything close to optimistic. But we will see. Either way I'm definitely washing my hair.

A Cornwall weekend

2011-02-15T21:23:00.007Z

I'm a little bit in love with Cornwall. In part I blame the drive down. Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon - speeding through the English countryside it was all I could do to arrest the Mr Darcy fantasies that seem to go hand in hand with rolling green hills and muddy country lanes. No doubt getting further and further away from London also helped but there is just such a romance to the unavoidably quaint surrounds of everywhere-that-isn't-London-or-the-Midlands. The little cottage we were staying in, that belongs to a work colleague of Lovely Boy's, was built in the 16th century - the gentle slope to the entire structure and the hobbit-esque doors adding a quirkiness to the humbling history of both the building and Boscastle village.

We had three nights away altogether, two in the company of Tors and her other Hungry half, and after a night of genteel introductions to country charm and country food at the local pub on the Saturday we took off for Padstow with fish on the brain. Rick Stein is seriously like the mafia in this little seaside fishing village, which reminded me actually of Honfleur. He seems to have a hand in, and his name on, everything. There is the Rick Stein cafe, the Rick Stein patisserie, the Rick Stein fish and chip shop and the Rick Stein deli, never mind The Seafood Restaurant and his French-inspired bistro, St Petroc's (which, I don't know, is probably French for Rick Stein.) You'd be forgiven for thinking he was a Beatle.

After a walk along the coast we headed for the bistro for a light lunch of fried squid, scallops and prawns. I can't attest to the shellfish, what with my highly refined upchuck allergy to them but the squid was not bad. Overhyped definitely but not bad. The Hungry One lived up to his name with a series of rolling appetizers that included Cornish pasties and a sausage roll pre-bistro and a chaser of fish and chips as we walked to the car. It was nothing short of impressive.

After Padstow we decided to head for Newquay with the hope of consolidating our seaside love affair. Unfortunately, Newquay proved to be what is generally understood as 'pretty fucking grim'. I don't even think sunshine could have helped. It just seemed to be one of those increasingly rundown seedy seaside towns with not a lot of charm. The blighted vista of the Walkabout atop the cliffs overlooking the beach was probably the first giveaway...

Returning to Boscastle and the hobbit doors we took to the local village again for dinner only to find that the only place with a vacancy was the Riverside restaurant, offering a Valentines Day-themed set menu with inclusive red heart helium balloons and a littering of synthetic rose petals. The food was surprisingly good, though low to no expectations undoubtedly helped but we were suitably humbled both by the food and the warm charm of the staff.

Sunday saw a drive to the Lost Gardens of Heligon outside of Truro. Impelled not so much by the gardens (sorry Mr Darcy) but the promise of cream tea, we were a little crestfallen to discover the setting was less quirky charm and firesides and more, well, cafeteria, but The Times weren't wrong in listing it as one of the best places for scones and clotted cream. It's just a shame it came served on a red plastic tray.

Determined to remedy the situation, some speedy research in a rare spot of 3G coverage (food snobs, technology snobs - we've heard it all) sent us in the direction of The Kings Head pub in a village called Ruanlanihorne, so remote even the GPS in our posh borrowed car couldn't find it... what with it being at the end of several "unnamed roads" and all. After a game of chicken down these unnamed narrow country lanes with their view-obscuring hedges that turned the road into a gauntlet, we had a genial sunday roast before Tors and the Hungry One headed off back to London while LBB and I took off for St Ives.

St Ives was the motherload in terms of seaside charm. Fat seagulls, colourful fishing boats in the lighthoused harbour and windy lanes full of fudge shops and ice cream parlours. I like to think the bonhomie is in some small part due to the presence of the Tate in St Ives but lest I also be charged with cultural snobbery I might put that down to mere coincidence. We managed a brief tour of the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden before they closed for the day but managed to miss the Tate altogether - forsaken for ambling, rambling and some staring out to sea. I could very easily spend a week here during the summer.

Our last night was spent most uneventfully - fish fingers and red wine for dinner in front of an exhausted fire and me writing madly to get a job application done before 10am Monday morning. I know it was typo-free, the rest I can't attest to but I got it in and can now only hope for a miracle. It will need a miracle because most Dream Jobs do. Don't bother watching this space...

Anyway, we had a relatively pain-free trip back to London yesterday, even with the usual accident induced delays on the M4 and now it is back to the grind with another huge week of writing ahead. If today is anything to go by it should be reasonably painless and not overly caffeinated. In fact I think most working weeks should start on a Tuesday.

If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.

2011-02-07T17:44:00.001Z

Or in my case. If you can't say anything interesting....

Welcome to the last week of my life. My conversational skills are atrophying at a terrifying rate, thanks in no small part to the all-engrossing, co-dependent relationship I've developed with my computer. I'm struggling to finish sentences, think of words, articulate generally, which would be a bigger problem if I had anything of note to talk about apart from, well, the all-engrossing, co-dependent relationship I have developed with my computer. Thankfully LBB is fast becoming accustomed to my vagaries dressed as cute quirks. If I leave my glasses on I can almost get away with the mad, vacant professor look...

I am rather looking forward to having this finished in a couple of weeks time and regaining some semblance of a life. In the interests of full disclosure, the whole balance thing has never really been my forte but even I'm beginning to realise that all this solitary time in my head is sending me a bit loopy. I cannot wait for Cornwall this weekend. Some fresh air, some quaint English seaside towns and the chance to bust out the six 'mixed tape' CDs we made for our Mallorca road tripping back in the days before Lovely Boy earned his new moniker.

I have about 10,000 words to write before then and a job application to complete if I can manage to change brain gears in time. With any luck I'll have worked out how to re-activate my previously rather sophisticated out-loud speaking skills by Friday too. But one shouldn't hope for too much.

Art and cake and plans ahoy

2011-01-30T23:22:00.006Z

Cornwall coast

It's been a surprisingly fruitful, if not frustrating week. The reality of not having a job is fast becoming annoying, exacerbated no doubt by the unfortunate turn in writing towards a feeling of it being, well, homework. Some not so exciting artists and some works so well-known it is impossible to write anything original about them without six months of intensive research and even then it would still risk sounding familiar. Am pushing through but the rate of productivity has severely slipped so this week needs to be tackled with the sort of bloody minded ruthlessness usually applied to a dessert chasing five courses and a cheese platter. And yes, I probably will end up feeling just as ill at the end of it.

My new resolution is to start each day with a job application - bonus point for virtue - and just churn them out until something, anything, comes along. Last week I applied for an internship with the education department at the National Portrait Gallery, current place of current 'internship' and I would love, love, love to get it. Over-thought thoughts and scribbled mind maps all seem to suggest this is something I should explore and the more I contemplate the old existential headfuck of "what makes me happy/when do I feel most creatively satisfied/what do I enjoy and what do I think I'm good at?" I come back to the idea of museum education. Who knows what will happen but it would be a fabulous way to explore some of these over-thought thoughts.

Whether or not I manage to get any career leverage happening here in bloody London remains to be seen - book notwithstanding - but at least my travel plans are starting to come to fruition, thanks to some savvy early bookings and friend of friend arrangements. LBB, Tors, The Hungry One and I are all off to Cornwall in a fortnight for a long weekend. I have always wanted to go to Cornwall so I'm really looking forward to it. There's the tentative suggestion of lunch at a certain philandering fishmonger's restaurant while we're there but basically I'm just looking forward to some walking, some fireside sitting and some general exploring of the area. It won't be warm enough to swim or frollick on any of the beaches but it will still be lovely to be near the ocean, even with a whipping wind.

Michael Landy, Semi-Detached, 2004. Installed at Tate Britain.

And then, in May, we are booked and confirmed for five days in Greece for Cleo's wedding. It should be hot and hilarious and beyond memorable - 400 guests, a live Greek band and a small church in an ancient village somewhere on Mount Olympus. Add sunshine and school friends and great food and I couldn't be more excited. Now to find a job and book Croatia, Berlin, Istanbul and New York. Yuh.....

We're off in a little while to Borough for some Oscarsfest preparation (read: dinner and a movie with Tor). I was in London for the epic foodfilm moment that was the 2010 edition but thankfully this year the locale is SE1, which may as well stand for Seriously Excited.

Still from Andrew Kotting's film Wake for a Deadad, 2006

There's actually been a few outings this week. My date for one on Wednesday was a talk at the NPG with Michael Landy and filmmaker Andrew Kotting, who were both discussing their unconventional portraits of their fathers. These were, respectively, a to-scale replica of the family home that was created for the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain in 2004 and a film following the artist and a blow up version of his father as they re-visit the significant places from his father's past. It certainly leaves painting with a lot to contemplate.

Gabriel Orozco, Island within an island, 1993

Gabriel Orozco, My hands are my heart, 1991

And because London is the cultural equivalent of cheap and easy (note: in no way is London literally cheap. Or easy...) I had another date with her on Friday to Tate Modern to see the Gabriel Orozco exhibition. I've always loved the work of this Mexican artist. It is whimsical, witty, silly and contemplative and it was, again, such a privilege to stand in front of works I had only ever previously seen in the company of a textbook. I was only there for an hour or so but it ranks as a highlight.

The other highlight of the week was high tea yesterday in honour of my old flatmate Katie's birthday at the Haymarket Hotel near Piccadilly. Expensive champagne, a tiered cake tray laden with crustless finger sandwiches and petite treats of the sugared variety - it was heaven, served on a floral plate.

I don't know what this week will serve up but not so secretly I'm feeling a tad hysterical about how much I have to get done and would like to get done - some art reviews, some serious job applications, some out-of-my-head activities like swimming. And the other half of the book.

Art and pesto... the art of pesto?

2011-01-23T22:14:00.001Z

I don't know where the last week has gone but wherever it went it went quickly.

For the most part I have been at home, sitting at the little desk LBB procured for me, writing diligently if not excessively about portraits, artists and the 21st century. I don't know if it's the magic of the desk, or the submission to total art submersion but I have really got a buzz from the writing I've accomplished this week.

Adrian Ghenie, Pie Fight Study 2, 2008

This is going to sound ridiculous from someone who has too many art degrees to be unemployed and has called herself an art writer for the last near decade, but sitting down to write about artists I haven't known very well, if at all, and having then to actually look at their paintings/sculptures/videos and then articulate what I see, has been the most obvious but satisfying of revelations. It's like intuitive map reading and the journeys I have been taken on and the surprises I have encountered just by looking and asking myself what I see and what that might mean has been a bit like coming home intellectually. And it's been a lot of fun too, chewing through the artspeak gristle to find my words. It could all still turn out to be complete bullshit of course but right now it's inspiring and what I need to keep going. If only the bloody Duke of Edinburgh award in high school had been this satisfying.

Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Dark Stuff, 2008

It's back to being miserable here so it's fortunate I haven't had to venture far the last few days. The sun all but disappeared the moment I posted my last entry - but of course - and the weekend has been pitifully cold so we're back to the delight that is tights under jeans and tight they most definitely are. Undressing at the moment is less romantic foreplay and more pantomime on crack.

Despite the wind chill factor LBB and I decided to brave the outdoors on Saturday and headed in the direction of Barnes Farmers Market. A friend told me about this little nook of deliciousness last year and since our first visit a few months ago, the lure of homemade basil pesto has been enough to get us back there every few weeks. Organic vine tomatoes, cheeses from the Isle of Wight, every part of pig, apple and ginger juice and homemade dips including houmous with harissa and LBB's new favourite, Etna pesto, with 30% chilli peppers, 25% garlic and then olives and all other kinds of sinus clearing, kiss repelling ingredients.

After doing our usual lap we moved on to this cute little pub opposite the famous Barnes Pond for an afternoon cider and some idle chat about everything and nothing. I don't normally drink cider (mostly because someone once told me about the calorie content. Pathetic I know but I dare any girl to enjoy an albeit delicious pink fizzy alcoholic drink knowing it's the calorific equivalent of two McDonalds chocolate sundaes. In terms of value for calories give me the sundaes any day...) But anyway it was cold outside and it was warm indoors and the combination of pink and fizzy was too much to resist and it proved a delightful way to pass a couple of hours. On our way back home along the Thames path we almost tripped over ourselves when we spotted this:

Cherry blossoms. In the heart of winter. (And against a rare moment of blue sky). European summer time is still 65 days away, actual summer, let's be honest, is 265 days away and all these beautiful, naive blossoms do is lean in to whisper hope in your ear only to have a sharp winter gale swoop in and snatch it away before you catch it all. Do Not Get Excited About The End of Winter. This discontent has some time to go yet.

The other thing that made us stop was this:

It's not exactly what you'd calling getting your ducks in a row but it was such a funny sight, delightful both in its unexpectedness and its oddly poetic beauty. Which is no mean feat for a bunch of ratty seagulls.

I'm not sure what this week will entail. Lots of work, lots of art, hopefully some exercise, almost certainly some new shoes and probably the phone call from home that I've been dreading for nearly 12 months now. There isn't enough cherry blossom hope in the world that things will end well for the greatest of grandmothers. But hopefully there's enough for a swift, painless, dignified end. Grief is one fucked up, complicated thing. And cancer ain't so hot either.

London days and dates for one

2011-01-19T20:27:00.002Z

It's been a week now since returning to - gasp, sunny! - London. Note I didn't say "warm" London but sunshine seems a conciliatory gesture, especially at this time of year and so I will simply be thankful. For the sunshine and for socks.

LBB is back to work and I too am hard at work, trying in vain to get my part of the book as finished as I can as soon as possible. Which has meant since I began last Friday, writing the equivalent of an essay a day. We're talking 3000 words and if today is proving anything to go by, just as many calories too, and even at this rate I still don't think I'll be finished by the end of the month. It's the ultimate submersion therapy for my procrastination problem to say the very least...

I do feel inspired though and had a really positive day at the gallery yesterday with some affirming feedback and I just keep envisioning the book, finished, published and in my hot little hand. Paid employment currently escapes me, not for lack of trying, but hopefully something will come up soon enough, especially if I want to get my travel plans shuffling along.

Last weekend was really lovely. LBB and I went to Chinatown for dumplings and steamed pork buns and a series of serious conversations about being Grown Up and The Future (this is not code for babies by the way, fuck no, rather, an allusion to talk about life plans and where to live and how to buy a house when you have no money and, if you're me, no immediate prospects for le cashflow problem. And now that I've explained it, it isn't even an allusion. It's just a long sentence. Sigh.)

Anyway, the weekend. Sunday I left the B at home, because for some crazy ass reason he "hates" East London and I went back to my old stomping ground in search of flowers, flea markets and Antipodean coffee. I can't say it enough but I love the Columbia Road flower market. And I love East London because even with all its grimy grossness there is some stubborn charm in there and I miss it. Loads.

getting arty with the iphone...

I did come home laden with flowers however and a promise to myself that I would take myself on a date each week, just me and London, chillin', hanging out, seein' some Stuff. A necessary social arrangement really if I am to make this year as worthwhile as I want it to be and a date tomorrow night with some girlies from The Retail Job should be just the tonic to my floral gin.

What I do have to do tomorrow, is not eat my way through 3000 words and somewhere in there try to get to the pool for a head clearing, arm toning (?....) swim. At this moment in time a truck full of Snickers bars wouldn't get me there but tomorrow is a new day. Hopefully a sunny new day.

still getting arty...

Redbull and lipstick

2011-01-14T08:45:00.005Z

There can be nothing surer in life than when in the company of jetlag and flattened misery, small doses of a highly caffeinated beverage and a smear of red Chanel lipstick can save a girl's ass. This would be me. Hello London.

The last few weeks in Sydney went by ridiculously quickly and were punctuated by very little in terms of excitement. Just family time, some Pittwater time and a fleeting, rather disappointing, cameo back in the Bondi hood for an honorary dip. I'm glad I didn't hype it up or I would have been epically disappointed, as opposed to just mildly bummed. It was like the Central line at peak hour out there past the waves - shoulder to shoulder with people in your face every which way you swam - and instead of well thumbed now abandoned Evening Standards getting tangled about your feet it was seaweed. Seaweed. At Bondi. It was equal parts disappointing and just plain insulting. Thankfully though the sun appeared after we had emerged from the water....

I hated saying goodbye to Nan. Hated it but she wouldn't be the matriarch she is without some sensible, sage advice, some encouragement, a huge hug and and an all-knowing understanding of what belongs where in the world. Which, apparently, is me in London.

I didn't much like saying goodbye to Mum at the airport either and sobbed all the way through customs. Thanks to a last minute re-pack at check-in because of the additional seven kilos I tried to get away with my jewellery pliers unknowingly ended up in my carry on. Only to then end up in a bin at security. I was all cried out at that point to really give a shit but nonetheless it wasn't helpful. Accessories as weapons of mass destruction? I hardly think so people.

The flight back was fine. If by fine you mean economy and a first leg Sydney to Singapore seat that didn't recline. We both managed a bit of sleep on the second leg but yesterday was a looong day. There's only so much faffing a girl can do to keep herself awake and by 7 o'clock I was so sick of smacking Lovely Betrothed Boy on the arm and telling him to wake up that we just went to bed. I woke up at 11.15pm and then again at 3am and then again at 6am and may have had another little cry.

I've kicked my own butt since then, with the aforementioned help of caffeine-related substances, Chanel, a twirl through the shoe floor at Selfridges (for medicinal purposes only of course) and a ream of lists. I've chased up a job interview, sent my CV to a recruiter or two and bought a calendar for the kitchen. Now to fill it with art dates, play dates, theatre dates and hopefully a holiday or two.

Tomorrow is a new day and I'm hoping that once the jetlag goes the misery and flatness will take a hint and sod off too so I can get on with the year and my list of lists.

Why hello, 2011

2011-01-01T04:40:00.000Z

It's so refreshing to start the new year without a hangover. Or a hungover LBB. New Years Eve was blissfully uneventful but perfect in its mix of good food, ribald family conversation and champagne before fireworks on the television and an hour of bad eighties video clips. Couldn't have been more middle aged. Couldn't care less.

The cicadas are harmonising, the sun is shining and I am contemplating the year ahead. Resolutions for me ultimately become things to berate myself about mid-to-late year for a complete lack of application that has seen any of them materialise but despite being in much the same boat as last Christmas (read: basically unemployed and lacking any real certainty vis a vis The Long Term Plan) I feel excited about this year and am looking forward to seeing what evolves. Short of calling them resolutions, I have some Things I'd Like to Make Happen this year and with any luck I can do just that.

I would like to find a job. Any job will do. As long as it pays reasonably well, does not involve selling drugs to small children and has at least 20 days annual leave attached to it. Any relation to art would be a bonus but at this point, will happily stuff envelopes full-time if someone is willing to pay me 25k a year.

I would like to see more art. And I would like to start writing about it again. Once or twice a week would be nice but I'm prepared to negotiate on the grounds of finding art inspiring enough to write about in the first place. But seeing more art, definitely. And while I'm at it, maybe some theatre too.

I would like to travel. Greece, Istanbul, Berlin (oh Berlin), Croatia, New York. All are on the list. I'm happy to start with Cornwall.

I would like to find the time in my day to read more. So many books, so many spines still unbroken.

I would like to find shoes to match my dress and the most effective combination of bloody-minded wishful thinking and tricep dips to maximise fabulousness for a certain occasion in January 2012.

I would like to cook more, see more of my friends, be a better communicator, better friend/sister/daughter/betrothed.

I would like to look back on 2011 and feel an enormous sense of satisfaction. No regrets. Ok, ok, as few regrets as possible. Let's not start the year completely full of self-indulgent bullshit.

The year that was, what's left of the year that is.

2010-12-31T10:38:00.008Z

There’s literally only hours left of 2010 and as I type I’m sipping a mango bellini, sitting amongst the family in a pretty blue dress. I'm freshly showered after the most enlivening of swims at Bilgola Beach and am looking forward to dinner later and perhaps some dancing on the lawn come midnight with my LBB, under the stars with a beautiful north easterly unsticking the heat from the air. 2011 here we come.

It’s so good to be home. We were lucky to get here actually. There were snowflakes the size of 50p coins falling as we arrived at Heathrow and our connecting flight from Frankfurt was over four hours late getting to Singapore thanks to a blizzard, which meant an extended bout of duty free shopping and some dodgy laksa, but home we eventually got. Thirty-two hours door to door and family en masse notwithstanding we were greeted with reams of international press about the huge snow dumps that brought Heathrow, Gatwick, the underground and London in its entirety to a complete halt. Very lucky to leave when we did and I’m so pleased to be home I’ve almost forgotten about the the cramped reality of a nightmare that is economy class long-haul travel and the ugly baby who wailed the entire 12.5 hours it took to get from London to Singapore. And who had the pleasure of the seat directly in front of us.

I haven’t done much since getting home. Christmas was about too much food and all the family in attendance. LBB had lunch with his family – we couldn’t find a happy medium between new babies (LBB’s little nephew) and dying matriarchs (my grandmamma) so we divided and conquered. I had bellini’s and bacon on toast with the LBB clan in the morning before heading to Av but it was a lovely morning. Among my many gifts - I was very spoilt - was a poem. I won’t embarrass him by publishing it on the internet but I was equal parts touched, moved, amused and impressed. Clever boy my LBB.

There’s been some talk and some planning of all things wedding. We met with our celebrant, Sarah, a couple of days after we got back and she was fabulous and got us both very excited so that was really special and we’ve had some discussions about food and fairy lights so all in all we're pretty excited about January 2012.

One of the things I did back in London when mum was visiting was trawl a few dress shops. With Soph we went to Vera Wang in Selfridges and enjoyed a couple of hours pretending like we had nine grand to drop on a tonne of tulle. We don’t and we didn’t but I enjoyed flirting with the idea of princess dresses for that brief, intoxicating moment.

When LBB caught wind of the excursion he was quick to the google stalking of all things Vera and came back with the helpful proclamation that “I don’t like that invisible material.” After a brief but illuminating conversation we discovered that by 'invisible material' he meant tulle but after another brief but illuminating conversation we agreed that he would love whatever I turned up in...

Before mum left though we visited a shop in Notting Hill (which for the time being shall remained unnamed so as to prevent a certain stalking by a certain LBB) and in fact found The Dress. That’s all I wish to say about it for the time being but it’s the most exquisite thing and I can’t wait to wear it.

I’m excited about 2011. I’m not sure what it’s going to throw up yet but LBB and I have decided to treat it like it’s our last in London and so are planning as much travel as possible – New York is on the list, Greece is scheduled for May for Cleo’s wedding, Istanbul for the biennale in October, Croatia with LFtBC and her husband in late summer, Cornwall at some stage and another visit to Berlin circa June maybe too. It should be a special year. A job for job's sake and - hopefully - the publication of the National Portrait Gallery book I have been working on for nearly 12 months. But one thing at a time. As it is we’ve still got another not quite two weeks left here in Sydney and with any luck the stunning weather will continue.

For now though… some highlights of 2010:

Playing house with LBB...

The Paris weekend for my 30th birthday....

Turkey and The Proposal...

The arrival of Lovely Friends from home.....

The Dress..............

The Snow.........

And as ever at this time of year, coming home.

I’m not interested in re-visiting the lows but I’m optimistic about the year ahead. Long may the sun shine.

Edinbrrrr and the great London freeze

2010-12-05T23:45:00.007Z

It's been a while, I know, I know, but honestly, in the last three weeks our house - and my life - has felt like peak hour at Victoria train station with all the comings, goings, drunk people, delays and destinations sought and departed from. After another similarly crazybusy week the next big event will be home via Heathrow so I'm not going to complain. And frankly, apart from the defrosting limbs and misery that is fleece-lined tights under jeans with two pairs of socks and three cardigans, there really isn't much to moan about.

My week of nannying was exhausting and terrifying but reasonably uneventful if, by uneventful, you don't count screaming fits to the point of paralysis about the fact your brother won't give you HIS jumper to wear to school because you lost yours the day before and fuck logic and reason and Stern Voice because you're now running 10 minutes late to get the others to choir practice. Note to self: screaming and crying and refusing to move will eventually get you whatever you want. I can't remember the last time I experienced such unadulterated rage towards someone barely of reading age.

Really though, the week passed without broken limbs or lost children or accidents to house or car so all in all I'm calling it a success. Though I'm not sure my mother is all that thrilled with my increasing uncertainty-cum-resolve against parenting as something I might like to do, you know, forever. I blame The Jumper Incident. I honestly do not know how my Mum did it.

While I was nannying though two of my three siblings arrived to stay with LBB and I in anticipation of Edward, youngest brother's 21st birthday. It was so much fun to have them here, even better after I finished nannying and even more fun when we surprised Edward at dinner on the Saturday night for his birthday with the arrival of parentals. He was shocked and delighted, we were delighted and despite the fact I remember clearly when he was born, never mind that I used to bathe him, change his nappies and dress him up for my fun and amusement and am thus Officially Old, it was so special to have the whole family together for such a significant occasion.

The jaw-dropping sheer deliciousness of the food at Gaucho Grill where we went for dinner certainly contributed, as did the sight of Mum being offered a shot of Jaegermeister from a girl carrying shot glasses in a gun belt at the pub afterwards. Thankfully the evening didn't go down that path. At least not for anyone over the age of 22...

On the next afternoon LBB and I had what was meant to be a small, civilised engagement party. And from the hours of 2pm until about 7pm it was just that. Glasses of pink wine and gifts of more pink wine and fabulous new saucepans. Until further rounds of champagne were bought and my brothers got control of the music and after that it was a bleery, blurry mess for everyone. Except me. God bless an ability to sip a glass of wine like it's the last you'll ever have. It's just a shame that the other members of the collective household - those on the tenancy agreement (no names mentioned LBB) and certain other assorted guests (no names mentioned siblings all) had no such self-restraint and the post-party party involved a lot of what Edward has termed "talking into the big white telephone." And what I call just plain disgusting.

After the siblings left - Ol and Soph for Sydney and Edward for New York, the next stop on his ridiculous world trip (I'd be more jealous if he and his mates had done anything more cultural than pub crawls....) Mum, Max, LBB and I took off for a weekend in Edinburgh. We flew up there on the Friday night and while we were at dinner, at the Tower Restaurant on the rooftop of the Museum of Scotland, it began to snow. Thankfully by rooftop, they mean enclosed rooftop, but we still had the most spectacular view of Edinburgh Castle and once the snow started coming down it added a certain air of bonhomie to the freezing toes bonanza that was our little travelling party.

We woke the next morning to several inches of snow and, something London has yet to cotton on to at this time of year, sunshine. It was actually beautiful. We spent the day wandering about Edinburgh and in particular the castle, where I introduced Mum to the delights of mulled wine, and then in the direction of Holyrood Palace via a delicious vegetarian lunch, where we attempted to talk about anything but the burning pain that is frozen extremities. It was, literally, f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g. So freezing that I ducked into the first tourist shop we could find to buy some cashmere socks. As luck would have it the only colour in my size were a kind of loch ness green but they worked a bloody miracle and with the tights and gloves and coat and the cardigan so woolly there is nothing short of a flock of naked sheep out there, I felt ok. Enormous and uncomfortable. But ok.

We were staying in this amazing apartment in the New Town (new meaning it was built six centuries after the Old Town but still three centuries before we found ourselves staying there with all the modern comforts of today, including, no less, heated tiles.) And on the Saturday night LBB and I cooked dinner before we all headed for bed while snowflakes the size of 10p coins began to pile up outside.

The next morning. It looked like this: (nb: that is LBB and not me clearing their throat in such manly tones at the end... In case you were worried...)

Super exciting and very very cold. We had planned to head down to Leith, the part of the city where the royal yacht Brittania is docked and then head to the Scottish National Museum of Modern Art but while we were waiting for our taxi someone told us the airport has been closed because of the snow. We were meant to fly out that night with the parentals flying out the next day back to Sydney. So sadly, one way or another, we had to get back to London. British Airways were delightfully unhelpful and so calculating the risks - and the impending snowdump due later that day - we decided to get the train.

Now, normally the train takes just over four and a half hours to get to Kings Cross. But, because of the delays getting to Edinburgh in the first place, the still falling snow, the ice on the lines and a broken down train in front of us somewhere near York it took us closer to eight. We all managed to get seats which was nothing short of a miracle but with all the delays (and thank you London Underground for that most convenient tube strike too), we got home at the same time we would have had we caught the 8.30pm flight. Which, hilariously, was the only flight that did manage to leave Edinburgh that day.

All part of the adventure I suppose. And it was incredible to see the landscape blanketed in white as we passed through. And incredible that LBB and I had had the foresight to pack the half drunk bottle of white in our suitcase. Happy days.

We also seemed to have packed the freezing temperatures and the snow with us though because this last week in London has been frozen solid with inches of snow and icy winds. It's only now that it's rained and the temperature has risen to a tropical 6 degrees that the snow and ice have melted. But honestly, I can't remember it ever being this cold in London before. Snow is fun and pretty and the ultimate novelty distraction but when the cold wind burns your face off it isn't so fun. I was so cold at work this week I was forced to buy some fleece-lined tights. It was the final farewell to last of my sartorial dignity in the hell that is winter dressing but my care factor was much like the temperature. That is, zero.

If I wasn't a dyed in the wool southern hemisphere kind of a girl all the snow and the decorations and the shiny lights would have me well and truly jumping up and down with Christmas fervour by now. As it is I'm still suitably dazzled and LBB and I have got into the spirit with our own lights but come on, Christmas isn't Christmas without a morning swim, yes? That being said, our newly arrived friends, Tors and her husband The Hungry One hosted a tree trimming Christmas dinner on Friday night and with the champagne chilling in the last of the balcony's snowdrift and the tree suitably decorated Tor put on a meal to rival the best of them with everything from pork and requisite crackling to plum pudding and eggnog custard. Great food to match the company and one of many things to be grateful for at this time of year, fleece-lined tights notwithstanding.

This week the comings and going continue with my friend from days of Brighton old staying and me working variously at the gallery as the book cranks towards really, finally, happening and then on kings road and then nannying and then catching up with friends and then going to see the brilliant play Blackwatch at the Barbican on Friday. I'm not going to know which foot goes in which shoe it's going to be that busy but then the week will be done and my most pressing job will be packing for Sydney. Someone mentioned packing gumboots but I'm choosing to ignore that...

Vera, Mum, the rest of the gang, a surprise 21st birthday and a weekend in Edinburgh

2010-11-29T00:22:00.001Z

It's been a buuussssssssssssy couple of weeks.

Between the family visits, the epic week of nannying, the date with some serious princess dresses and a just ended trek home from Edinburgh via eight hours of train delays thanks to some rather lovely but bone chilling snow.... well, it's been hard to find a moment to myself.

If it kills me, I will find one this week. Somewhere......

The lost art of accessorising

2010-11-07T21:15:00.002Z

It's been a breakthrough week. Since my sartorial breakdown a fortnight ago on the back of months wandering in the equivalent of post-Christmas sale changing room confusion I have found my way back to somewhere resembling me. And all it took was getting back to basics. And by basics I mean beads.

I think every girl at some point in her primary school education goes through a phase of making strings of basic bead jewellery. It was a hobby I never quite got done with and when I packed up my Bondi life to move to London in 2008 I had nothing short of two enormous plastic crates full of every imaginable bead in every imaginable colour, cut and material. Never mind metres of stringing leather, ribbon, broken chandelier pieces, feathers and all manner of other trinkets and ephemera courtesy of a dark moment in my life otherwise known as That Small Addiction To Ebay.

Add to this over five years working in the auction industry before vintage became "fashionable" and costume jewellery a la grandma was made in China and sold on the high street and and my bauble collection was built with job lots of 1950s Czech crystal, marcasite brooches, princess rings (their actual title, not mine), opera length pearls and anything else that sparkled, dazzled or generally caught my eye.

I brought most of this jewellery with me to London. Little works of art that tell stories: the 1960s brass Finnish necklace that I found in an outdoor antique market in Munster, Germany while on my solo art pilgrimage. The blue spinel dress ring set in a silver shank that cost me the astronomical sum of $150 when I was 17 years old but have loved every day since. The rose quartz beads that my grandmother gave to me when she was cleaning out her jewellery box 10 years ago that swing rhythmically when I walk. And the jade butterfly necklace she wore to my Mum's wedding five years ago and that she gave to me when I was home in April. To name but a few.

Since moving to London I've added to my collection - handmade fabric earrings from Mallorca, green bakelite earrings from a little antique shop on the Left Bank in Paris that Mum and I came across, art deco necklaces from LBB for Christmas. I love it all but strangely, mostly, it's remained artfully arranged on my dresser and only tentatively, conservatively, worn.

My beautiful, unique, sparkling engagement ring, with its diamonds and little rare green garnets (LBB's birthstone as it turns out and a sign of constancy - auspicious indeed) has oddly only confused things. The question being, how to wear such a grown up, important piece of jewellery and still find a way to keep my other baubles from early retirement? That has been the challenge. Especially, as a customer at an auction viewing 10 years ago observed as she spied me trying on an inordinately large, garish dress ring, I've never been a delicate sort of girl....

The answer, I've realised, is to just wear it. In the last week I've been out in (diamonds and) pearls (thank you Prince) and crystals, and large rings and big earrings and anything else I've felt like. Strings of green beads with strings of more green beads. My days now start not with questions about the weather or jackets - but about which piece of jewellery I want to exhibit and how I might curate an outfit around it.

This all sounds spectacularly trivial but you have no idea how, in a world otherwise filled with job uncertainty, financial uncertainty and, incredulously, two pairs of skinny jeans, some fabulous time-worn, time-trusted accessories can be a girl's best friend. It's been like the bead version of the bread trail out of the fashion forest. I just can't believe it's taken me this long to realise the answer was staring me in the face the whole time.

Sadly there have been few other revelations in the last fortnight but there's been a wildly optimistic job application, some delightful girl dates for mid-morning bellini's and midday movies and, since Friday afternoon, an extended and still ongoing stint nannying in Barnes.

I honestly love these kids but anything longer than an afternoon school run and it's like psychological warfare with a tamigochi. But one - or in this case, four - that have the ability to press your buttons, never mind demand the constant feeding and entertainment. I am exhausted. And in a week's time I'll be back here for a week while their parents are in Australia. I'm psyching myself up by the thought of the huge cash injection it will mean, comforting myself with the thought that between 8.40am and 4.10pm I will have my days to myself and generally focusing on the end of week delight that will be the arrival of family. Assuming Qantas gets their act - and their engine - together....

There's little else happening here at the moment. It's cold and by 5pm it's dark and what's left of the leaves is a breathtaking mix of reds and yellows. It's beautiful despite the chill factor but I can't wait to replace the falling leaves with some crashing waves. It's six weeks until LBB and I will be back in Sydney and I can't wait. I have so many summer outfits to accessories, it's going to be fabulous.

Dressing the weekend

2010-10-25T21:47:00.012+01:00

The week is off to a productive start. If, by productive, one means intermittent attention to work between the hours of 10 and 4, new shoes and too much manchego and pesto while waiting for LBB to finish the culinary masterpiece that will be boeuf bourguignon in two hours time.

I'm feeling rather tired by all the exertions. Though it could also feasibly be the cloudy, snuggly warmth now tucking into the nooks and crannies of our apartment courtesy of the radiators that's actually making me dozy. Whatever...

The week is begunneth and the countdown to all things year end is on. It was 3 degrees here this morning. It's three weeks until the siblings arrive for Little Brother's 21st birthday and seven weeks until LBB and I fly home for Christmas. Cannot wait. Though thankfully there is plenty planned to amuse and distract between now and then.

Weekend being case in point. Tors and her husband, known generally as The Hungry One, took LBB and I out for dinner on Friday night to Hibiscus - a belated birthday present from They of the Recently Arrived. Intense, flavorsome, heavenly food with a white wine from somewhere in the Alsace region that I made a mental note to remember the name of, only to promptly forget. The Wedding may be in excess of 12 months away but I'm already doing some mental filing of Useful Things To Remember and Good Things to Include. The white wine being one of them.... Oh well. I have 12 months to perfect this whole bridezilla thing.

Anyway - back to the weekend. So dinner on Friday was great friends and good food and a turn in the green dress I bought in Berlin last year and love love love but have far from worn worn out.

In truth I'm having a style crisis. Working in retail does not help.

And living in London only confuses the matter with the multiple layers and excess of skinny jean hipsters and my beloved jewellery drowned by cardigans and scarves and indecision. And it's now that jeanstuckedintoboots time of year and it's very upsetting for a girl of my decidedly pear shape. Even confronting the possibility of such a get up guarantees an inner running dialogue (once we've confirmed of course that jeans are the trouser of choice for the day) that goes something like "No way. But it will keep your toes warm. But it will make your legs look like chicken drumsticks wedged into footwear. But it will keep your toes and your feet warm. But you will look fat and a bit ridiculous and don't pretend you won't feel self-conscious. But it will keep your toes and feet warm AND dry. Oh fuck this. Just wear a dress."

Like I said. Identity crisis. At least in Bondi I had a vague understanding of my sartorial sense. These days my wardrobe has a sort of schizophrenic vomit thing going on. It's very confusing. And basically means that without fail I leave the house loathing what I'm wearing, uncomfortable, self conscious and completely unsure what I can do about it. God only knows what will happen when the time comes to look for The Dress.

But I digress. Back to the weekend. On Saturday night, after a day spent mooching about at home avoiding any direct contact with the cold air outside, LBB and I took off for the Brixton Academy to see The Cat Empire. I'd never been there before and LBB had never see them live before but it was so much fun and the music was just insane. Sunday was again spent mooching about before a trip to Chiswick for house stuff and groceries before dinner in Covent Garden with LBB's Kiwi friends. I had planned to see an exhibition of some sort at some stage - Ai Wei Wei at Tate was crossed off the list last week before visitors were crossed off the exhibition - but it didn't eventuate and I wasn't too sad about it. One less outfit to worry about apart from anything else.

Art failing aside, all in all it was a successful weekend with a healthy mix of activity, eating and bludging about in tracksuit pants. This week I'm hoping there'll be some culture amidst the crappy grind of nowhere jobs and maybe also some exercise and a date night. Right now though there's boeuf bourguignon.

Welcome back woollens

2010-10-13T20:48:00.008+01:00

It's cold. The clocks don't change for another two weeks, winter doesn't officially start until November 1 but today was the first day I felt it in my toes. That numbing, achy cold that says, "Hello, I think I need socks. And probably some sensible leather shoes in the form of smart boots." I was anticipating this day. Last week I pulled out all my woollens - the chunky knits, the cute cardies, the accessory scarves, the functional scarves, the v-necks, the roll necks and my three pairs of knitted bed socks. And still I left the house today in fabulous but totally inappropriate slip ons...

The grey is steadily making itself known, mopping up the last occasional blue days and sunshine with a moody sort of melancholy that will eventually see it settle in until March. Which feels like forever away and too soon at the same time. Not too soon for sunshine mind, more too soon for a new year with an old broken plan. But one thing at a time.

LBB and I had a lovely weekend, armed with little more than a plan to do "Something" that involved leaving the house. Something turned out to be a stroll through Portobello Road Markets, the purchasing of an exquisite, totally insane necklace (for me, not LBB) and a visit to Hyde Park to see the new Anish Kapoor sculpture exhibition. It's been a while since I dragged LBB somewhere in the name of Art but we had a great time and I am now earnestly in love with Kapoor's work. His Sky Mirror appeared to me like an alchemic dish of lost souls and moments, with the stainless steel disc angled skywards and thus reflecting the shifting grey clouds and silent thoughts of the world above. It was just exquisite.

To write about it or not write about it however remains the question. Pithy, self-indulgent observation is one thing, sitting down to extol my MAsterful opinion on contemporary art is quite another. I still haven't written anything for myself since the knee-capping of my confidence and honestly, it feels just like that summer in 2006 when that stupid big wave at South Bondi landed on me after a moment of hesitation (FYI dive, don't think) and I came away with a mouthful of sand and an inability to go beyond knee deep for the rest of the summer without having a serious anxiety attack.

I'd like to imagine that my triumphant career version of the conquering of my oceanic panic by successfully swimming the Bondi to Bronte 12 months later was somewhere in the non-wave near pipeline but I'm not holding my breath. Basically, my convoluted point is that I think I have to learn to swim again, artistically speaking. And without the help of that patient Bronte lifeguard.

I'm trying not to over-think overthinking it but giving up on my career - momentarily, temporarily or forever, whatever it is I'm doing right now - is basically me on the beach, refusing to get my feet wet. Or unable to. I don't know. Whatever the case, Anish Kapoor on a cold, grey day in Hyde Park made something inside me want to get back in the water.

I guess I just have to trust that whenever I'm ready, I won't sink, despite the conditions. Though speaking of conditions, I probably shouldn't be waiting for a warm day either.

For the love of girls

2010-10-02T14:48:00.010+01:00

LBB is currently in Munich indulging in that annual paean of all things male excess otherwise known as Oktoberfest. Beer, schnitzel, pork knuckle and more beer, where atmosphere means a roller coaster and an oompa loompa band and civility doesn't necessarily mean the use of cutlery. I struggle to envision anything less appealing than an overcrowded tent full of drunk men and rotisserie meats but then perhaps I'm just a snob. I prefer to think it's that I'm a discerning female but whatever floats your boat... Either way, I've had a lovely couple of days.

In the absence of all things sausage, my lovely friend Tor, who also lost her husband to the lure of the lederhosen, and I opted for the ultimate girls night in on Thursday. Cue white wine, chicken salad - expertly cooked by Tors - and several hours on the sofa discussing everything from flower arrangements to the misunderstood genuis of Gossip Girl. In a tribute to our feminist foremothers, the girl even worked out how to download the new season's first episode from the internet. An accomplishment recognised with another glass of vino and maybe even a small high five...

Then, yesterday we took off for Mecca, otherwise known as Westfield White City, in search of warm woollens, a good meal and some well-earned afternoon trash courtesy of Julia and Javier. Tors is not a food goddess for nothing and at her suggestion we took to Jamie's Italian for pasta and a sneaky glass of wine out of the rain. I'm not sure if it was the pinot grigio, the robust sleep I'd had the night before in the absence of LBB's melodic snoring, the reclining chair or the warm fuzz of happiness that is having one of my bestest most dearest friends now in London but bloody hell, not even Julia Roberts having some quasi-religious orgasm over a bowl of pasta could keep my eyes from closing. Eat, Pray, Love? More like Eat, Nap, Love.

Tonight I'm off to see Arthur Miller's All My Sons at the Apollo with an old family friend, with dinner at Hix in Soho, before coming home to finish a job application (don't hold your breath) and another article for Artlink.

The house is tidy, there are flowers in a vase, diet coke in the fridge and freshly purchased woollens stacked tidily in the drawer. Ignoring the lack of serious income for a moment, life could be a hell of a lot worse.

Turkish delights

2010-09-23T13:13:00.021+01:00

Lovely Boy's and my trip to Turkey was The Best Holiday. Undoubtedly this was aided by the fact that before we left things for both of us were collectively pretty shite so anywhere with alcohol and sunshine would have seemed heaven-sent. But even sans context, especially sans Luton Airport departure, LB's and my trip to Turkey was The BEST Holiday. I'd even go so far as to say ever.

There's something to be said for a sudden change in environment and the relocation from hectic, chilly, misery-inducing London to hot, sunny, breezy Kalkan was a slap in the face in the form of a warm, embracing hug.

Turkey charmed the pants off us. The hotel we were staying at had guests who'd been returning for a decade and it wasn't hard to see why, with fabulous staff and jaw-dropping views of Kalkan old town, and the hospitality we encountered everywhere made us feel like new best friends or long lost old ones with everyone we met. The fact that every restauranteur addressed us collectively and repeatedly as "Lovely couple" also didn't hurt.

We had seven days of hand-in-hand wandering, gourmet food, cocktails and swimming at some of the most beautiful beaches and it was resolutely a relaxing holiday. Even before I decided that I hated art and history and culture and everything intellectually stimulating we had agreed that this would be a holiday on a holiday. I even had LB in the habit of afternoon naps by the time the end of the week rolled around...

Our days were spent swimming, dozing and reading. Our evenings were spent at rooftop restaurants with warm breezes, pink wines and views over the harbour. Even the excessive Celine Dion soundtracks couldn't dint the ambience, try though it might.

There were some exquisite highlights. We had one day at Caretta Beach Club, a totally fabulous little place cut into the cliffs out along the bay from our hotel. Think sun beds, sun bed service, large pillows and a floating pontoon out in the ocean. We had another day at Kaputas Beach, down in a big gorge that just spat out into the sea. Now I have swum in some breath-taking places before - Spiaggia della Pelosa in Sardinia certainly comes to mind - but even with the hardarse pebbles at Kaputas I've never swum in water so blue that even when you're in it the colour remains so vibrant. It was honestly like swimming in bright blue paint - but arguably more refreshing. It was just gleeful.

And then there was our last full day. LB, in a bid to find one swimming hole not wracked with pebbles, insisted on a trip to Patara Beach - 18km of assured white sand. And so we went. Me, LB, my freckles and enough factor 50+ to slather the entire navy. We had a guy one evening say that he could tell it was our first night in Kalkan by the colour of our skin. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was our fourth, or that I would be going home this colour. But I digress.

So we went to Patara. We had our sun beds, we had our umbrellas and I had my complex about being hideously ugly in such brutal natural light with its neon-esque effect on my freckles. Basically, I was nothing less than a joy to be with.

LB wanted to go for a walk along the beach. I really didn't. LB said he thought it would be fun and that we could get away from all the people. I said I didn't mind the people. LB said, I would really like to go for a walk and it would mean a lot to me if you came too. So me, my guilt, my freckles and LB went for a walk. And yes, it was beautiful and the scenery - natural and not so natural...

... was highly memorable. Once we were away from all the people and the matching leopard print we stopped and LB turned to me and I honestly thought, uh-oh here comes my talking to. And this was what he said: "You need to stop being so mean about yourself because I think you're beautiful." And then this is what he did: he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

If it was a diversionary tactic to stop me thinking about my freckles it sure as hell worked because I sure as hell said yes. And so LB has been promoted. To LBB. Lovely Betrothed Boy.

The rest of the day was a blur of giggles and perma-smiles and funny looks and a feeling of contented exhilaration unlike anything I've ever felt before. Being betrothed is, frankly, awesome.

And after an afternoon of phone calls and text messages, LBB and I took to the old town for our last dinner and, in a serendipitous sign, had the best meal of the entire trip. Delicious food, fabulous view, jaw-dropping old building. It was truly special.

Getting back to London the next night was something of a mission and we finally got in the door close to 3am, startling our house guests who were expecting us at the same time the following night. Exhaustion (and current possible throat infection) aside, being back in London feels ok, great even if I think about two of my dearest friends now living here (said startled house guests) but it has been so heart-warming to experience the joy of all our family and friends at the Big News.

And as for the utterly beautiful antique ring on my finger, that we found at Gray's Antique Market, well words can't do it justice - but my much improved touch typing skills are certainly testament to its distracting, eye-catching ability.

Love is indeed in the air and on my finger and sitting next to me on the sofa. All that's missing is some baklava. Screw the job.