Thursday 4th April. Outside, the bitter easterly wind continued to savage awnings, umbrellas and most people's spirits. We'd had snow flurries and sleet all day, and London's pavements spattered a thin muddy muck on everyone's boots. In the downstairs bar of Cotton's Caribbean Restaurant in Exmouth Market, nearly 30 women writers, plus friends and supporters, …
Category: writing
humour me
It took me a very long time to realise it's possible to be a serious (dedicated, life-committed), writer/artist/creative person and also to be funny, humorous, light-hearted (some of the time, at least). This doesn't seem such an astonishing discovery, but for years I was Very Serious, and the flip side of this was to be …
a packed week off – part two
I think this packed week off is catching up with me. Deep breath... So, Wednesday night to Loose Muse at the Poetry Café. I wavered, feeling tired and a kind of non-specific low-level anxiety, and then the intermittent flurries of snow did little to improve my mood. But I convinced myself to go, and the …
a packed week off – part one
which began, on the evening of Thursday 7th March, with a trip to the Barbican to experience The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns. Quite a mouthful. The exhibition focuses on Duchamp's interaction with and influence on four key American creators after he moved to New York in 1942. The main …
what I didn’t do this weekend
I didn't go to the community roof garden. I didn't go to Publish and Be Damned at the ICA. Damn. I didn't see the Judy Chicago exhibition at the Ben Uri gallery. It's been on since mid November, closes next week. Typical. I didn't ring any of my family in Melbourne. 11 hour time difference …
Well Done Bryan!
To the British Library on Friday evening for B.S. Johnson: His Life and Legacy. The event, marking the 80th anniversary of B.S. Johnson's birth, also tied in with the publication of a new collection of his prose and drama, Well Done God!, edited by Jonathan Coe, Philip Tew and Julia Jordan. The evening began with …
magic, danger, fear
magic, danger, fear: the first words I jotted down last night, sitting in the hushed gallery space of the Parasol Unit, listening with intense concentration to Ian MacFadyen talking about the Third Mind. We were there for On beat, an event billed as exploring 'some of Beat culture's most evocative moments and its ongoing legacy …
how’s my navel?
Two excuses to indulge in a little navel-gazing: another year drawing to a close, and this being my one hundredth blog post. My navel was quite well travelled this year, accompanying me to Melbourne in late February, the Dordogne in July, and Paris in autumn. We hosted a small antipodean invasion, and my navel and …
and then there were two
My visitors have departed. The airbeds have been deflated. The flat suddenly seems remarkably spacious, and strangely quiet. There's a new mark on the back of the kitchen door, recording the current height of my niece. She's grown 34 centimetres since the last visit 5 years ago. 34 more centimetres and she'll have outgrown me. …
full house
I have guests. Family from Australia, over for a few weeks. Which is fun, exciting, fantastic, and just a little stretching in terms of living space. Five adults and one lively seven and a half year old in a two bedroom flat. Finished reading Patrick White's The Aunt's Story while my niece played downstairs. And …
Hilaire 