Category Things I love
That extra hour
One of my favourite days of the year: when summer time ends and we’re back on standard. Because I never bother to check the date in advance, it’s always a surprise. I wake up at the ordinary hour and discover that it’s actually an hour earlier. That blessed miracle of an extra hour in the […]
Ceramics and rain in Oxford
Remember how last year I brought that (allegedly) 18th Century Chinese dish home from the Cotswolds and used it for eating burrito bowls until I broke it by tapping it gently on my granite countertop? Well, it occurred to me (and some of you — Susan!) that this might be an interesting opportunity to try […]
Lungs and late at the Tate
Sometimes a play’s title sheds light on what’s to come. Sometimes it doesn’t. Last week I saw a play that fell into the latter category: Lungs, at the Old Vic. I still have no idea why it’s called Lungs. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it! Ninety minutes of Matt Smith and Claire Foy […]
Translations, Ham House, and Petersham Nurseries
What to do in London in the middle of October? The weather’s not great, certainly not reliable. All the gardens are past their peak. But the theatre season has begun! So pop down to the National Theatre to see Translations, a play about language and identity and British-Irish relations and history. There was a costume […]
Look what came today…
Art! It definitely seems bigger in my living room than it did in the gallery — which I think is actually a good thing because hopefully that means it will be the right scale for my living room back in Seattle. But here’s something I didn’t know about Real Art: it doesn’t come ready to […]
More art! Wandering around Frieze London
Now that I’m a fancy art collector I have to hang out with other artsy people and cultivate my “eye”, if that’s the term that I want. Where better than at Frieze London? I had never heard about Frieze London before two days ago when I read an article about how it was a major […]
Art! I may have bought some…
The James Freeman Art Gallery is a little gallery just around the corner from my flat. I walk past it every day, and it almost always has something that draws my eye. But, you know, galleries are intimidating and art is expensive — and, well, how am I going to achieve my life goal of […]
Seattle!
Back in the Emerald City for a week of work… and Justin and friends and house and garden and feeling like a human being with a context. The autumn leaves are turning outside my window… …and my Mexican daisies are still blooming on the roof. Sometimes I think this might be all I need.
El Alcazar
I think Islamic architecture may be my spirit animal. It just speaks to me in ways that nothing else does. The patterns and colours and elegant shapes laid out symmetrically and with water everywhere. It feels both maximalist and minimalist at the same time. Balanced and beautiful. That’s what’s behind the walls of the Real […]
Seville!
Praised be that I had the foresight a few weeks ago to tack on a weekend in Spain ahead of some meetings in Madrid on Monday. After one of the crappiest weeks in recent history at work, I need a mini break (and this just after a 4-day weekend in Ireland!). I left London a […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 