On Friday evening, we went to see the Pipilotti Rist exhibition, Eyeball Massage, at the Hayward Gallery. 'See' is not quite right; 'experience' is more accurate. And what a joyous, enriching and somehow also calming experience it was, and a wonderful transition out of - far away from - the working week. I'm worried now …
a few dread words
Goals. Targets. Prioritising. Career. The language of business and the grown-up world. I resist, buck against it, my contrary side fights through. I think I can safely say I have succeeded (watch it!) in my stated desire not to have a career (with all its overtones of ambition, monetary motivation, seriousness, achievement over integrity). Writing …
masks and wings
On Tuesday night, we found ourselves standing in a street in Shoreditch with a hundred or so others, all sporting plastic Alfred Jarry masks. The occasion: a group photo to mark the launch of Alastair Brotchie's handsome and indispensable tome on the great 'Pataphysician. Inside The Griffin pub, the pool table had been temporarily transformed …
no boundary condition
I've been twice so far to see the current exhibition at the Lisson Gallery: No Boundary Condition - paintings and sculptures by Shirazeh Houshiary. It's the paintings I'm most drawn to - shimmering, shifting, mirage-like pieces, with their captivating titles ('Wither', 'Sigh', 'Ebb', 'Between'); the intense, bruised colours; and the surfaces, which appear to have …
a crumb of literary comfort
On a lunchtime wander this week, I came across this plaque: There I was, dragging about in a fog of head-cold and office blues, and suddenly I'm connected to Eliot - his 'lonely cab-horse steams and stamps' only a few streets away from where I earn the crust that keeps the wolf from the door. …
how to save eight hundred and ninety-five pounds
You find yourself, on a weekend away from London, in the rather randomly chosen town of Lewes (but what a good choice it turns out to be), on the Saturday morning, after a superb breakfast of eggs Florentine in the swishy hotel you've indulgently booked - you find yourself at a book fair in Lewes …
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heat wavelet
I can't help it. I know it's superficial but I'm revelling in this late, short blast of summer weather. Those uninterrupted blue skies over London make me happy. I love the strange sense I have of my childhood Australian summers revisiting me in London in October. I never thought I'd be lowering the blinds to …
notes from yesterday
A breezy, summer's-last-hurrah day. A rare lie in, cups of tea, Radio 3. Late breakfast: wilted spinach and poached eggs on toast, to set us up nicely for the day's cultural exertions. First stop, the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair at Exmouth Market, organised by the excellent CB editions. An inspiring, if slightly overwhelming, event …
an array of pencils
Here is my current selection of pencils. I like to have a few on hand, two or three in each room and at least one in my handbag. There is something pleasing about using a pencil. It's modest, workaday, unpretentious. There's nothing to go wrong; they'll last as long as there's lead in the casing. …
worrying about my reading habits
Am I reading enough? Am I reading enough contemporary fiction? Have I read enough of the classics? Do I read enough literature in translation? Is it a problem that my reading choices are scattered, random, unstructured? Dare I confess that I have never been a voracious reader? That I never read under the bedclothes with …
Hilaire 