A riot of a time in Edinburgh

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.

Pinch me moments and friends from home.

I worked out today it's 32 weeks until LB 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 LB 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 LB 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 LB 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.

This week I....

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, undergarments - 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, LB 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.

A purple letter kind of day

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.

Edinbrrrr and the great London freeze

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 LB 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 LB 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 LB) 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, LB 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 LB 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 LB 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 LB 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...

The lost art of accessorising

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.

Dressing the weekend

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, LB and I took off for the Brixton Academy to see The Cat Empire. I'd never been there before and LB 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 LB'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.