A few of my favourite things

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.

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

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.

April? Did anyone see April?

... It must have run off with the end of March. Bloody hell it's been a while and if the year keeps up at this rate, never mind 30, I'll be 45 before I've even had time to get a haircut.

I had visions of myself, finally, having now the time and the headspace (and the internet connection), sitting down on my new sofa in my new house to catch up on the last six weeks. Only, well.... my sofa, delivered this morning.... currently looks like this:

All roads lead to Palma

Am barely unpacked from a glorious week in Mallorca and if it wasn't for the strange sense of calm that has descended over me and my little friend, who I'll call Dissertation, well, it would be as if I'd never left. Stunning sunsets one day:


And the next, drunk girls pissing in doorways and German shepherds wearing sunglasses. Oh east London I really didn't miss you at all.

While it's oddly good to be back and re-attending to the sagas of post-graduate study, getting away for a week was just the tonic to my gin. Despite nearly missing our flight. A sartorial mission to find sunglasses for LB that ran too long and an unfortunate quick glimpse at the departures board and we were off, running for a gate that couldn't have been any further from where we were. Thank god though for a complete lack of fitness, otherwise I would never have stopped to wheeze/cry/gasp for air and seen we were running for the wrong flight at the wrong gate. Yes our flight was making a final call - and yes, it was at the absolute other end of the airport. If I hadn't been so bereft of breath I would have cried.

We did make the flight but the nervous adrenaline didn't really subside until we were ensconced in our little red rental car and on the road with warm, sunny Mallorca welcoming us with blue, blue skies and a gentle breeze. Heaven.

We were staying in a resort town 20 minutes out of Palma and though we'd been warned of crass tourism and Irish bars en masse I don't think we were fully prepared for the flocks of English football jerseys and lurid coloured board shorts, never mind the bus loads of OAPs that greeted us. We'd booked this hotel because it was near the beach and being so close to Palma meant we'd be able to get about the island easily. Still, it was a bit depressing:


Thank god for the maps and the guidebooks and a sense of adventure. A sense of adventure that kicked in around lunchtime after epic sleep ins and a sneaky diet coke to grease the wheels... I know, I know, but the thought of going cold turkey was more than I could bear and it's not PC to get into the sangria before 2pm.


After a Sunday spent slothing and swimming, Monday saw us taking to the open road, heading up the north west coastline in search of feted swimming holes and stunning landscape. And we weren't disappointed - by our discoveries or by the epic six CD compilation 'mix tape' we'd made for the journey.

This was our first stop:


It took 12km of nausea-inducing winding roads to get to this little spot but we swam and frolicked and ate gelato before congratulating ourselves for being in the Mediterranean under 30 degree skies and getting to wander along little beaches like this one:


It was really, really tough.

Navigating our way through little villages and olive tree plantations, LB at the steering wheel, me with the map and DJ hat on, we were rather pleased to discover that despite the at-times perilously narrow roads in Mallorca, the island is extremely well-signed and that you can be driving in any direction, on any road and come to an intersection and there will always be a sign to Palma. It made my job getting us home obscenely easy...


Tuesday was a visit to the capital, Palma, where we gawked at the enormity of the port and the deeply beautiful cathedral and wandered through the little alleyways in search of tapas and sangria and a pair of earrings I didn't know I couldn't live without until I spotted them. Palma is really charming and I can see why people refer to it as a mini-Barcelona. It's not quite as hip or eccentric as the mainland city but it is thoroughly charming and the gelato isn't bad either.



Following another epic sleep in, on Wednesdy we took off for the north east coast in search of a stretch of undeveloped beaches we'd read about, the shockingly pot-holed roads holding back the hoardes of coaches. Not a little Hurrah! Stopping along the way in a lovely little village called Arta for some obligatory tourist photos...


...We made our way to Cala Torta, a stunning beach with nothing but a small cafe/shack selling fish and an unfettered horizon of nothing but turquoise ocean. Our excitement though soon turned to prudish horror when we realised the southern end of the beach was something of a naturists playground. Having now seen what naked water ping pong involves (and no, I'm not struggling for an analogy - they really were playing ping pong. Naked. In the water.) well, I think I'll stick to reading as a hobby. It was like watching a car crash - a strange mix of horror and fascination, that people could be so comfortable in their own bodies and wondering what on earth they're going to do with all those photos they were posing for, appendages flapping in the breeze as they lounged on the rocks for all to see.


Eventually getting sick of people freeing their willies we made off for the next cove, Cala Mitjana, where LB's expert rally driving skills in avoiding the crater-sized pot holes led us to this:




And we had it all to ourselves. Hello heaven.

That night, on the recommendation of the lovely girl at reception, we had dinner in a little village called Genova. Totally tiny place but the restaurant was fabulous, with authentic, delicious Spanish cuisine, including, because we had resisted so long, a serving of Iberian ham. We understand the hype now. Oh yes. Oh yum.

Thursday was designated by me to be a sloth day. READ: sleep, read perhaps, sleep some more, drink, snooze, swim if so desire, nap, drink, swim, sleep. In the end I even canned the swimming. LB sat by the pool and read his book (the male equivalent of holiday trash chick lit) while I attempted to catch up on some of the many hours of sacrificed sleep. Short of winning the lottery or waking up to find my sun-seared freckles had evanesced, well, I couldn't have been happier.

It was at about this point though in the week that I started to get a little antsy about returning to London and my as-yet-not-once-thought-of dissertation. Not quite guilt, more mild anxiety and not wanting to wish away our last day, it was terrifying to realise just how quickly the week had flown - and by extension, what that would mean for the next two weeks (read: last two weeks) of school. Concrete boots could not slow down my impending deadline at this rate.


But I'm getting ahead of myself. Friday was perhaps the mildest day we'd encountered - a warm 24 and a little overcast (me and my factor 50+ were perversely delighted) and for our last adventure we headed north, to Cap de Formentor, the northernmost point of the island, with dramatic sheer cliff drops and a lighthouse. Passing not quite through, but past, an amazing rain storm...


... we wound our way to the headland to take in the breath-taking views.


Stopping for our final swim at the so-beautiful-the water-was-still-turquoise-when-you-were-standing-in-it Platja de Formentor we then began our journey back to Palma, with a detour through the lovely Pollenca.


A small town with medieval history, the narrow lanes and charming plazas led us to an epic flight of stone steps. LB, ever enthusiastic, assured me the view would be worth it. Me and my shaking legs still aren't sure about that but 412 steps later (824 if you count the descent) it was certainly a moment.



For our last night we determined to find a decent tapas bar, the task having somewhat eluded us until this point. Getting lost and frustrated, and by this time beyond starving, we ended up in Peguera, another depressing little resort town, only this one over-run by Germans. Thankfully though we found a charming little place, on Eucalyptus Street no less, away from the main drag and had ourselves a proper tapas feast. Calamari, spinach and fetta, ham, chicken wings, salads, something else and something else. It was divine. And the red-wine heavy sangria just hit the whole thing out of the ball park. Happy. Campers.

Making our way back to London on Saturday, actively avoiding the stress of our last airport encounter by being there hours early, it was with a strange mix of panic at no longer having LB's company 24-7 and clear-headedness about what needs to be done with my dissertation that I struggled back to Shoreditch with my suitcase and my earrings and my duty free liquor.

Pending a thorough edit, a re-written introduction and a conclusion (phew!) the guts of my dissertation is now done. I have 12,987 words behind me and a visit from my brothers to distract from what will still no doubt be a rush of panic about "What next?!" come 4.45pm on October 30. But one thing at a time...

Some ish and some art

I've started August in earnest... Ish.

Tidied my room? Ish.

Started the arduous process that is researching my dissertation? Ish. With a dash of tick.

Returned fervently to my exercise regime of twice-weekly swims? Cough. Next?

Vowed to be a better writer, better ponderer, better Bondi girl when it comes to being 12,000 miles from home? Too early to say but I'm feeling optimistic.

The last time I wrote the parentals had just left and I was about to depart for Barcelona for The Meal of My Life at The Number One Restaurant In The Whole Wide World. That is a tale that very much needs to be told - a gastronomical, emotional, artistic(al) journey through 35 courses and some bloody fabulous wine. See previous point about being a better writer. To be honest, I don't yet have the words. But they're coming. Ish.


So to August for now and all things school and art and heavy intellectualisms. It's Dissertation Day Two and god bless Diet Coke - the ultimate fix all for hangovers, headaches and a curious affliction called Brain Fry. I popped my British Library cherry today and despite the curious fuzzy-headedness that resulted from six and a half hours churning through books on politics, monuments and the problematics of collective memory in artistic representation, I left feeling rather virtuous and too tired for tears.

As part of my Earnest August month - and because, you know, I'm doing a Masters degree in Contemporary Art - I have resolved to make more of an effort to see more art. It sounds silly I know, but in all my years as an art journalist, the more I wrote the less I actually had time to see. I am turning over a new leaf.

In truth it started last month, dubiously enough, with a visit to the Wapping Project in east London. A fabulous old building, the former Wapping Hydraulic Power Station in fact, it's been converted into a killer art space for exhibitions and performances but that also includes a chi chi restaurant and a cute-as little book store in the garden - inside a greenhouse.

What a total shame the exhibition we saw was utter shite. I hate feeling like art is taking the piss out of me, because I'm normally such a staunch defender of all things weird and ugly and challenging and silly. But this was, well, it was crap. An exhibition about the cultural history of eels, yes, eels, in Japan and the UK. There were some lovely sound installations, recordings of the daily kerfuffle at the Billingsgate Fish Markets, but otherwise, it was a room full of vitrines holding paraphernalia about eels - everything from fishing baskets to those naff patches your brother sewed on his football jumper. Yes. The Parramatta Eels got a mention...


So thank god for a wheatfield in the middle of Dalston.


Part of the Barbican's Radical Nature exhibition, the architectural collective EXYZT turned an abandoned railway line in east London into a functioning mill, with its own power-generating windmill. You could go and bake bread or simply lounge in a deck chair by the wheatfield and revel in the sheer delight of this little pocket of oddness.


As part of the off-site project, American land artist Agnes Denes was invited to re-create her famous 1982 work Wheatfield - A Confrontation. Twenty-seven years ago Denes planted two acres of wheat in Battery Park landfill in New York. Interrogating ideas about food, energy, economics and waste, it remains an iconic work:


Falling a little shy of two acres (by about 1.9 acres...) Denes' Dalston wheatfield is nevertheless a thought-provoking and in this instance, quite charming, interruption in an otherwise pretty drab industrial site. I liked it. No ish about it.

And then TODAY (earnest, earnest) I finally managed to get to Trafalgar Square to see Antony Gormley's take on the Fourth Plinth Project. Now I'm not sure what I think of Antony Gormley (shades of Artist-as-God complex perhaps?....) but his work for the Fourth Plinth was interesting, loath though I am to use that word because it says everything and nothing at the same time. The intellectual equivalent of a Milky Way bar.


But well, it was. The Fourth Plinth is, as the name suggests, the fourth plinth in iconic Trafalgar Square. The other three bear historically significant monuments dedicated to well, I'm not entirely sure who, but I'm sure they're important. Anyway - the fourth plinth, in the north west corner, was built in 1841 and intended for an equestrian statue that never eventuated. It was empty until 1998 when the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce commissioned a series of temporary contemporary art works to sit on the plinth. Rachel Whiteread, Thomas Schutte and Mark Wallinger are just some of the big names to have plonked a big piece of sculpture on it.

And now it's Gormley's turn. For his 100 day work, One and Other, the artist invited members of the British public to sign up for a roster, an hour at a time, to sit on the plinth. Well, to sit, paint, sleep, dance, mime, protest - whatever the hell they wanted really. I'm not even sure it has to be legal. 2400 people - 24 hours a day for 100 days - are living the dream, immortalised as living, moving pieces of sculpture in one of the coolest locations in town. I imagine the view's not bad either.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, British Library Brain Fry and all. Maybe it was the hours of reading about monuments and democracy and the individual versus collective experience, but it turned out to be quite breath-taking seeing this tiny woman atop this huge plinth, just sitting and drawing. It was lovely too to just sit myself for a while and let my brain cells re-coagulate. While it wasn't terribly exciting up there on the plinth, there was still something quite impossibly cool about it, in the great tradition of anti-establishment gestures perhaps. And then the hour was up. And the crane came. And the lady with the sketch pad was replaced by a young girl with a banner that read "Happy 5th anniversary Sarah-Jane and Phil". It wasn't Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination - but I think that's the point.


Speaking of Shakespeare though and funnily enough El Bulli comes to mind. Laughter, tears, confusion, strange nonsensical words and a period in the middle when we thought it would never end. Never mind being transported to a magical otherworldly place. And no, I don't mean the Costa Brava.

But that is a tale for another day. Soon. Ish.