So, farewell, old blue cardie. I have finally accepted that my midnight blue cardigan has passed over from the realm of garments to that of rags. I bought it from Benetton on King's Road sometime in early 1985, when I first came to London. How many gigs did I wear it to? The Smiths, at …
Category: London
a week in December
A packed week, which started, startlingly and hilariously, with James Naughtie's now infamous slip-up just before 8 o'clock on Monday morning. Then the gratifying announcement that Susan Philipsz had won the Turner Prize (see my post about her installation Surround Me). Also tickled to hear about the campaign Cage Against the Machine, which aims to …
Diaghilev at the V & A
On Friday afternoon, we ventured out to see the exhibition Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes at the Victoria and Albert museum. This proved to be a thoroughly absorbing exhibition, bringing together so many different elements - theatre, music, art, choreography, strong and creative personalties - in the same way that Diaghilev …
surround me
What better way to spend a crisply cold Sunday afternoon than tracking down ethereal sound installations in obscure alleys and corners of the City of London? These temporarily deserted streets are the site for Surround Me - A Song Cycle for the City of London by Susan Philipsz. We start in Change Alley, where three …
Triptych Poets – London launch
After much angsting (what should I wear? will anyone come along? will I sell any books?), the London launch of Triptych Poets turned out to be a very enjoyable event. In a dimly-lit below-stairs bar, round the corner from the Friday night madness of Leicester Square, a good group of friends and acquaintances gathered to …
lushness, sublimity and more
Summer is coming to an end. So are the Proms. Last night, we sat high up in the circle at the Royal Albert Hall to watch and listen to the Berliner Philharmoniker perform some sublime music. First up, Wagner's Prelude to Act 1 of Parsifal - love those lush strings. Then, the extraordinary soaring, immensely …
Lydia Davis at the London Review Bookshop
To the London Review Bookshop on Tuesday evening to hear Lydia Davis read and discuss her work with Kasia Boddy. My interest was piqued by a recent enthusiastic review in the LRB of Davis's Collected Stories. The collection runs to over 700 pages, yet I'd not come across her work before. Many of the stories …
autumnal leanings
It's only the second week of August, yet there's a definite sense that we're on the cusp of autumn. There's a nip to the air in the mornings. The sun is lower in the sky, the shadows are longer, more angled, and by 9 p.m the last light is draining from the sky. Most of …
the week that was
was rather high on stress and somewhat low on culture. The stress arose from a little spate of domestic/technological crises (yes, they do seem to come in threes), and the mundane but wearying frustrations of earning a wage. Still, I did manage an early-ish morning swim at the lido on Thursday, twenty lengths, beneath a …
dawn chorus
How long did it take me to adjust to the level of noise in London? I can't remember now. I think about this as I lie trying to sleep on another warm, muggy night, the windows open for the bit of breeze which shimmies through the plane trees outside. For about five hours, overnight, there's …
