I haven’t written in forever because I’ve been madly pleasantly busy. We have delightful houseguests at the moment, a good friend of Steve’s and her husband, people so much fun to be with that it’s like having the best flatmates in the world, people that you want to hang out with as well as live with. It’s especially nice because Steve and Zoe ( Read more... )

Our week in Zurich, Lucerne, Lugarno and Venice was fantastic - nothing but eating, sleeping and walking. We got very serious about the baked-goods rule, first instituted in Venice in 2005. The rule is that any time you're walking somewhere in Europe and you see a bakery/confectioner's, you go in and buy one thing you haven't eaten before. And oh ( Read more... )

We’re in Portree, Isle of Skye, having just been to one of the most beautiful places on earth, a place I didn’t even know existed till a couple of years ago. In 2007 my friend Jane married Alasdair from North Uist, Outer Hebrides, and this weekend they christened their son Harris (named for the Hebridean islands, where Alasdair’s father was born ( Read more... )

Just back from Paris - what do you say about Paris? It’s Paris. It’s difficult whenever you go to a place which has such mythology surrounding it to experience the ‘real’ place - not the tinsel-bedecked plastic-model faux-‘culture’ hung in the window for tourists ( Read more... )

Hello invisible blog friends, it’s been ages! Steve and I just got back from two weeks in the US, and are just about over our jet-lag. We arrived home to find the vege garden growing triffid-like and our little house just as we left it. And let me tell you, I’ve never been so glad to come home. I have a bit of a love affair with the USA - the mad ( Read more... )

So my sister Jo and I are taking a shopping trip to Sydney in early May. Cleverly, we managed to book and pay for these amazingly cheap non-refundable non-transferrable flights for the weekend that her husband graduates from his Masters and my father-in-law has his 60th. Good times! Great planning ( Read more... )

I’ve just come back from a lovely weekend in Sydney - busy, but lovely. We were over there for the wedding of one of Steve’s relatives, and you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting some distant cousin or other. For me, who grew up with only six other people in her family, it was quite eye-opening. As was the wedding - the single most extravagant ( Read more... )

It’s good to be home. Steve and I got back from three weeks in the States yesterday and I was up at 6am today, to get to work, not realising that daylight savings happened while we were away and it was 5am. Hence I’m dizzy with tiredness and a bit incoherent. Lots of stories but too many to pull out all at once. Here’s one of my favourites though ( Read more... )

Well, it's been an interesting week. Last Friday Steve and I flew to Queenstown for the launch of an art book I edited a while ago. This event drew some of the richest people I've ever met... and it should, considering the book cost $28,000. It was a black-tie affair and there was a roaming camera crew, interviewing some of the richest-looking ( Read more... )

Something happened to me a few weeks ago in NYC that I wanted to write about. It may not sound like much, but it was quite a profound experience. We were staying in a backpackers hostel on the Upper East Side, in a private room with bunk beds, a TV and an aircon unit - all you really need in the Big Apple. One night I woke from a deep sleep to ( Read more... )