Back to life? I'm certainly back to reality...

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since my last post. The last few months seem to have gone by in a blur of writing, an activity which it is quite difficult to measure in normal temporal terms. I am now peaking my nose over the top of the parapet of the book-writing world I feel like I have been slightly trapped in, and reminding myself there is a world (and a life) out there...

So, against all expectations, the rewritten book chapters got sent off to the editor at about 7pm on Friday 29th May. When I had a meeting with him a few days later to talk about scheduling the next few stages, he didn't have anything prepared because no-one had ever actually sent him a manuscript on time before!! We agreed I could have until 18th June to submit the end-matter - footnotes, bibliography, captions, all the other little bits and pieces (map locations, acknowledgements...) - as well as the 'signed-off' text, in the sense that my boss has read it and agrees it's ready to go. Herein lies the rub. My boss is not the world's most efficient person at scheduling his time, and he is also always immensely busy. I also returned to the Department (bidding a regretful farewell to that hot, stuffy but calm office in Research) at a particularly busy time - just as my colleagues were at panic-stations, wrestling with the logistics of shipping artworks from various international destinations which are going to be shown in the Jameel Prize, which opens in under a month. So instead of having time and space to think about footnotes, I got thrown into the deep end of liaising with art shippers, which involved conversations about artists I had never heard of and artworks I knew nothing about! Well, we need to be adaptable in this job, and it was nice to be back around people, in a thriving environment (one of the reasons I love working where I work) but this has meant for the last two weeks I have been ending crazy days in the office with trying to get as much work on the book done in the evenings and weekends as it is humanly possible to do when you are already running on empty.

And then eventually I managed to have a conversation with my boss about whether or not he had looked at my chapters, and he of course said he did not have time to do that before the day it was all supposed to go off to the copy-editor. Sigh. I let the editor know and haven't heard from him since - I don't think I'm in his good books any more. Annoying too, because I am actually taking a day off on 19th June, and flying to Berlin for the weekend to spend time with my friend Glaire, who lives in North Carolina, but will be over there for university meetings - so I am taking the chance to see her, and the idea was we'd also have fun celebrating my getting the book all done and dusted.

While it means that potentially I now have time to calm down a little on my work on the end-matter, I still want to get all this done by Thursday. I want it to be ready to go as soon as I get the go-ahead. I also want to have the satisfaction of knowing that I have fulfilled my sides of the bargain. But I just could not face working today. On top of all the book work, I had to give a paper yesterday! At a study day we held on Owen Jones, to accompany the display my colleague has curated, to commemorate his bicentenary, and to draw long overdue attention to this extremely versatile and influential design theorist, in the run-up to the international touring exhibition I will be co-curating later this year. I was talking on 'The Alhambra in the 19th century', drawing largely on material from Chapter 4 - but I still had to draw it together into half-hour paper length, put my Powerpoint together, then go and give the darn thing!

Still, it seemed to go down well. Luckily, I was second, so I could get it out of the way early on, then relax and enjoy the rest of the day - the other papers were all really high quality, and very interesting, though not directly relevant to my research, which made it more relaxing! We went out for drinks and dinner afterwards, and then more drinks - ending up with just the 'hardcore' at an appropriately Victorian pub, The Bunch of Grapes, on Knightsbridge, listening to anecdotes about the museum and past curators from one of our company who was a retired curator with an endless supply of such amusing tales, of times when fellow curators were known to their colleagues as 'Dirty Dingle', for example!! We all wished we'd been curators fifty years ago!

So, despite the good intentions of spending this sunny Sunday working on image captions for Chapter 4, I just can't be arsed. I think a day off at the weekend is not too much to ask! We got up late, I caught up with a few emails, started to put my mind to thoughts about Berlin next weekend, and then K and I went out for a leisurely lunch at Negril on Brixton Hill, a great little place that does fantastic Caribbean home-made food.


Any visit there is perforce leisurely, especially on a sunny day like today when their front yard gets really busy, and it can take absolutely aaaaages for your food to arrive. But if you go there in full knowledge that you will not eat soon, it's very relaxing! We got a table outside, read the newspaper, drank mango juice, and waited for jerk chicken, rice and peas, and homemade coleslaw - yum! Going there feels a little bit like going on holiday - their yard is surrounded by trees and plants (this picture is an old one), and if you don't look up too far, you can't see the double-deckers and terraced houses of Brixton Hill. It feels like the cool kind of place you normally find on holiday in trendy European cities. Well, that just goes to show that London is one!

K is doing a bit of research for the conference paper he has to give next month, and in a while we thought we'd go and have some tea outside in our communal garden. I might read my book - I'm now onto the second Stieg Larsson book, The Girl who Played with Fire. I was going to wait until it came out in paperback, since I only read in bed at the moment and I'm usually so tired in the evenings these days that a big sharp-edged hardback book can be a dangerous undertaking! But my colleague who lent me the Camilla Läckberg had borrowed it from a friend and lent it to me before giving it back! I do like that I now exchange Scandinavian crime fiction with one of the Senior Curators of Textiles...!

But before I go, I have been remiss at posting this month's calendar picture:

Lonja de la Seda, Valencia, Spain © MRO

This is actually one of my photos! This was taken a year and a month ago in Valencia. These rather beautiful medieval angels supporting the coat-of-arms of the city of Valencia are on the corner of the Gothic building called La Lonja, the 15th-century silk exchange, which is one of the city's oldest and most beautiful buildings. A very impressive, cavernous interior space as well, an appropriately grand monument to one of Valencia's most important industries. Ahhh, makes me want to go back to Spain... (It doesn't take much!)

Well, there are many, many other things to say - but a cup of tea and a Viennese whirl in the sunshine is beckoning. I hope it won't be so long next time.

Back in the Big Wide World - for now!

Well, I have re-emerged from the world I have been immersed in for the last two weeks, of the international influence of Islamic Spanish art in the 19th century, while I have been writing Chapter 4 - but as of 9.30 last night, I sent that off to my readers, and took the rest of the weekend off! That's the last chapter of the book - so, nearly there. Just the small matter of the rewrites to incorporate comments and corrections from my readers, finding some time to write the introduction, and whipping my image needs into shape - not all of which I am going to be able to do in the next two weeks, which is how much more research leave I have. I will try and do what I can to keep focused when I get back to the 'day job' in early June, but I know it will be difficult, so I'm feeling a little bit of pressure there.

I'm starting to chafe at the confinement slightly too - whole days at the desk when you don't go outside or (since my office in the Research Dept has no window) even see the sky. When I was writing Chapter 3 I closeted myself in the flat and didn't go out for about three days. This is all bringing back memories of writing up the PhD. I have also been remembering the difficulty of finding music to write to - you need something that makes the background fade away (especially in the Research Dept, where there is quite a lot of background) but is not itself distracting. I can't write to Bach for example - the music is so complicated that it engages your brain too much. Trouble is, you find something that works and then over-listen to it - I haven't been able to listen to Satie's Gymnopédies since I finished my thesis. This time round I have been listening to a lot of Max Richter, which is great but is now also starting to drive me slightly crazy. It's time to put this book to bed and get on with the rest of my life!!

This is a random picture to show the kind thing I have been writing about - this one of the pavilions built for the International Exposición Iberoaméricana in Seville in 1929, in a 'neo-Mudéjar' style, i.e. reviving a form of medieval Iberian architecture which adapted Islamic styles to Christian functions. The style was revived during the eclecticism of the late 19th century, when nations were looking for an architectural style to encapsulate their national identity, and which could represent their culture and aspirations at International Expos. At that time, Islamic styles became Spanish. The pavilion still stands, in Seville's Parque de María Luisa - along with various other structures built for that Expo.

Still. Today was a carefully-planned lazy Sunday, beginning with a cooked breakfast at the Vera Cruz on Brixton Hill, with Lindsay, followed by a short cycle ride over to the Clapham Farmers' Market, where we haven't been for aaages. It's not the biggest market you've ever seen, and I think stallholders were put off by the gusty, chilly, rainy weather we've been having over the last week - so there were only about ten stalls today, but all the same, it was nice to wander and think about buying things you would never otherwise buy. I got some rhubarb! I have no idea what to do with rhubarb but I plan to find out! We also bought some game pies (one venison and one rabbit), K picked up some homemade cider, and somehow the guy on the bakery stall managed to persuade us to buy his last two slices of pear and chocolate cake for a £1 each - he drove a hard bargain!

I don't care all that much about the fact that the food is organically-grown, I just like the fact that it is grown as it should be, and when, and that it's not flown in from cash crops in Zimbabwe. I'd love it if we could get a veggie box, and you just get what you get, cos it's in season that week, and you have to work out what to do with it - but where we live, there is nowhere for the delivery guy to leave it. Tescos was doing it for a while, in partnership (apparently) with local farmers in Kent, which seemed like the ideal solution as they could deliver it with your other groceries - but I got annoyed with it, because most of the stuff in the box was freighted in from distant lands, and that was not my idea of supporting local farmers. I guess other people objected to this too because they stopped it. 'Grow your own' is a big thing now, especially on community gardens - with people turning common garden areas in council estates into kitchen gardens, and the government proclaiming 2012 new allotments in London in time for the Olympics (it's not just Michelle Obama and her organic garden, though that is obviously fantastic!) - and that's something I have wondered about us trying to do with some of the unused common garden areas in our block of flats, though I have never had a garden in my life and wouldn't know what to do with it, let alone have the time....

But in terms of 'green lifestyle' for now we're contenting ourselves with composting - thanks to our neighbour Lisa, who actually went out and bought a compost bin, which nestles under a tree round the back, out of everyone's way, and which about five flats share now, including us. I got fed up with how much organic waste we were throwing away every week - and it's amazing what a difference it makes. It is so satisfying putting the peelings and the offcuts in our little compost bin then once a week taking it down to the big bin! I am sure some nice juicy compost has developed by now - Lisa has had the bin for about a year - but we have to work out how to get to it and what we're going to do with it! Hence the momentary thought about community gardening, when we were in the pub one night... Hmmm.... What I get annoyed about now (!) is how much plastic packaging there is - on almost everything you buy! There is so rarely an option not to buy something covered in plastic - I hate it! Our rubbish bin is just full of plastic bags and wrappers now. There was some horrible statistic I heard once - on a Jon Stewart interview I think - that plastic will outlive the human race, or some such. That's the monster we've created! The truth of this was visible everywhere in Syria last autumn, especially out in the countryside - plastic bags everywhere, just awful.

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I've accidentally finished The Gormenghast Trilogy. I didn't have another Swedish crime book lined up after I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Bookthrift didn't have anything in that jumped out at me, so I reverted to Titus Alone, and after a few pages a night here and there, I discovered I was most of the way through, so I just went for it! It was very different from the previous two books - written much later, and completed after Mervyn Peake's death from his notes, but there is also such a contrast between the world of Gormenghast, which seems so remote from the real world in time as well as in space, and the sort of Brave New Modernist World which Titus encounters during his adventures in the last book. It all becomes a little bit weirdly hallucinogenic as well. But the writing is so beautiful - I've had a bookmark in this passage almost since the start of the book:

Suddenly and unexpectedly the last of the cedars floated away behind him as though from a laying-on of hands, and the wide sky looked down, and there before him was the first of the structures.

He had heard of them but had not expected anything quite so far removed from the buildings he had known, let alone the architecture of Gormenghast.

The first to catch his eye was a pale-green edifice, very elegant, but so simple in design that Titus's gaze could find no resting place upon its slippery surface...

Titus sat down by the side of the road and frowned. He had been born and bred to the assumption that buildings were ancient by nature, and were and always had been in the process of crumbling away. The white dust lolling between the gaping bricks; the worm in the wood. The weed dislodging the stone; corrosion and mildew; the crumbing patina; the fading shades; the beauty of decay.

I love that! The idea that buildings "were and always had been in the process of crumbling away", of not being able to find a resting place for your eye on the plain surface of a Modernist design - I can just imagine what it must have felt like living through the development of those new architectural fashions, how stark that contrast must have been between the heavily-decorated Victorian constructions of the previous century, and the move towards new, sleek, undecorated designs and their machine-made materials... It must have been exactly like how Titus experiences the unnamed world he is travelling through in that passage. (A by-the-by - we went to the Le Corbusier exhibition last Sunday - another disappointingly put-together exhibition with fabulous material)

Now I am reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Bookthrift came through this time, and I set aside my snobbish reaction to the 'Richard and Judy book club' sticker on its cover) which I'm really enjoying - I hadn't realised it is an account of a true-life country house murder mystery, investigated by one of the earliest ever detectives, which was sensationalist at the time and inspired a wave of Victorian crime novels, not least Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone - well, we like those kinds of books, so it's got to be a winner. Really pared down language, which is refreshing too, somehow - after Gormenghast, and my own florid literary creations!

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Quick plug before I go. On Thursday night I joined my family to celebrate a friend's book launch - The Iraqi Cookbook, by our great family friend Lamees Ibrahim. Lamees is an Iraqi who has lived most of her adult life in England. The recent war in Iraq really hurt her, and she's been really driven to do something to raise understanding about the Iraqi people and their culture - she's been instrumental in setting up the new International Action for Iraqi Refugees. She's also an amazing cook, and the book started out as a way to pass on recipes to her children. She started throwing in memories and anecdotes about her childhood, and researching the history of Iraq and its cuisine, and the book was born. In her little speech on Thursday, she talked about why Iraqi cuisine is so different from that of its Middle Eastern neighbours - even from one end of the country to the other (all the fresh fish that is cooked and eaten in the port cities of the south are not known in the north, for example), partly because of all the empires and rulers that have passed through Mesopotamia during the course of millenia and left their mark on the food. She paused and said, "I don't think the current regime is going to have the same influence!"

(A brief aside on the British "draw-down" from Basra - there's an article here about my cousin, Dickie Head, who won the Military Cross for leading the force which went in to recover the bodies of the British soldiers killed in that helicopter crash in 2006 - proud of him)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to browsing the book and learning to cook some Iraqi dishes. I wonder what they might do with rhubarb...?

P.S. You can also check Lamees and some of her recipes out on the Guardian 'word of mouth' section, here.

Spring Cleaning!

Hard to believe, as housework is probably the Thing I Hate Above All Else, but gently over the course of the last week we've been having a clear-out and a clean-up - K has gone through all the clothes in his wardrobe and binned or charity shopped about half, and I actually hoovered the flat (well, Dysoned, to be strictly accurate) on Saturday morning. It is one of the few activities in life where you see immediate results - not that this makes me want to do it any more often, but it is rather satisfying when you do. I picked up a fridge magnet somewhere a few years ago, which says - "Dull women have immaculate houses". I immediately connected with this concept, and the magnet is still going strong, stuck to the boiler! Anyway the weather has certainly been springy, so it is obviously something in the air - but it still hasn't made me want to clean the oven...

We've been relaxing over this May Day bank holiday weekend - K has a week off work now, spending some of the time off in lieu that he has accrued on the Henry VIII project. I decided to relax too, though the last week's work has not been exactly rigorous, and I have not got very far at all with Chapter 4 - quite a lot of urgent last-minute sorting of papers and "I had just better read this one last article..." Anyway I have to pull my finger out and really get into it this week, since it is now MAY and I suddenly only have a month of research leave left, which is somewhat terrifying, considering how much there still is to do - and who knows how much reworking to accommodate my readers' comments...

Anyway, we're relaxing today. We have been very fortunate to be invited round to friends' houses every day this long weekend, so we have eaten some very fine meals, and had some very fine conversation, and a very nice time all round! Lunch on Saturday with Kirstin in Pilgrims' Cloisters, the always unexpectedly gorgeous oasis of Victorian residential architecture which is the only remotely old thing still standing in a sea of tower-block estates in Camberwell... Yesterday in Guildford, with Alison and Steve, meeting Nate for the first time (though I can't believe he is already 8 months' old!) and being introduced to the world of Rainbow Magic books which Ellie and her 4-year-old friends absolutely love! There are nearly 80 of these books, and there's a fairy for everything you could possibly conceive of in life - from Alice the Tennis Fairy, to Tasha the Tap Dance fairy (this was the first one I read to Ellie, so will always hold a special place in my heart!) I was amazed - something about these books utterly mesmerised little Ellie... Whoever came up with this idea is clearly raking it in!!

Today we had lunch with Cornelius in Kennington (I do like it when we can travel to and from friends' places just on the bus), followed by a film at the Ritzy. We often go and see films with Cornelius, and it's really nice as a way to see things you would not otherwise think to go to. We suggested State of Play, he suggested Let the Right One In - which I have to say I knew very little about but had gathered that it involved vampires and was, according to the poster, a "chilling fairytale", which was enough to put me off wanting to see it, and avoiding reading any reviews. Normally I only watch 'horror' movies (though it defies that categorisation) under extreme protest, though Salem's Lot, to which this film nods in at least one memorable scene, was once a favourite film, but most recently, the closest I have been to vampires is watching the last few series of Angel, the friendly vampire-with-a-soul who crusades against evil, which is all rather outlandish and amusing TV, in a Joss Whedon kind of way. But when Cornelius suggested this film, I looked up Peter Bradshaw's review, whose critical opinion I utterly trust, which made me think it could be interesting - not quite Rainbow Magic, but certainly another way of taking my mind off my work...! In the end, we flipped a coin (when was the last time I did that?!) and Let the Right One In was the winner.

And I loved it! It's an achingly beautiful film - set in snowy urban Sweden, with a quiet but beautiful soundtrack, not much dialogue, and quite minimalist when it comes. I liked the fact that the subtitles were quite minimalist as well - there was a lot more Swedish on screen, in newspaper cuttings, and notes between the young protagonists, than was translated, and I thought that was a sympathetic way of respecting the lack of spoken word. I won't tell you the story - read the review, if you want to know, it won't give too much away. If you're worried like I was about the horror movie aspect, don't be - it is gruesome in parts, but won't wake you up with nightmares (I hope!!) But it's hauntingly memorable, and as other reviews have said, it's a "major addition to the vampire genre", and "infinitely superior to Twilight" - which I have not seen, and quite frankly don't wish to after this! Though my heart sank to read just now that a "wholly unnecessary" American remake is in pre-production... Why do they do this?? Is it that taxing to read subtitles? We'd gone to an afternoon showing, and it was odd to re-emerge into daylight - everything seemed slightly disturbed, not quite normal. Cornelius seemed quite shaken, so I think we'll be going to see State of Play next time!

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It being May, though, it must be time to share the picture from our home-made calendar! This does not cease to bring joy by the way - it was an excellent thing to do!

Iglesia de San Antonio, Aranjuez © KR

This is another photo from our trip to Spain last May - nearly a year ago, which is unbelievable... K joined me in Madrid halfway through my month's trip, and the next day I made him go to a palace, which was hardly a fun holiday activity for him, considering he works in one - and one that has the best preserved set of royal rooms in the Baroque style in Europe, apparently, so dragging him to Aranjuez, a day-trip outside the capital, which was the Spanish monarchy's summer palace, remodelled in the 18th century to be fashionably Baroque, was, in retrospect, a bit cruel. But he seemed to love it - he went into photography mode, and took a few thousand images that day I think! No pictures allowed inside the palace, though, which was annoying since my reason for wanting to go there was to see the 'Moorish' smoking room that had been added to the royal apartments by Isabel II in 1850, commissioned from Rafael Contreras, the man who was working for her as restorer at the Alhambra palace, and was built and decorated entirely in the Alhambra style. It was pretty fantastic and worth putting up with the Baroque enfilade of rooms, and the truly monstrous chinoiserie porcelain room. We also had some very fine strawberries and cream, which is the thing to do at Aranjuez apparently.

Anyway we had some time to kill before taking the train back to Madrid, and had a wander around the very small town, which was all remodelled at the same time as the palace. K got particularly carried away taking photos of this church and a barrack block next to it. I am used to having to wait for him to take his photos and catch me up, but usually there are nice things to look at, so it doesn't matter, but I had had my fill of Baroque for one day, and I think it was starting to rain. Anyway I had to phone him to see where he was! But now he has seen the Baroque exhibition, and like me, was frustrated about the lack of a definition of what the Baroque style actually is, according to K, this church is typical Baroque because it's bendy. So there you go.

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Today is the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher coming to power as the first female prime minister. I'm not celebrating, and I always think it's slightly debatable how much of a woman she was, but it is still remarkable, when you look around at our international politicians and see how few of them are women. When we had the G20 summit in town a few weeks ago, there was all this coverage about the meal that Jamie Oliver was cooking for the presidential spouses, and which talented British women were going to be invited, and who was going to sit next to who... And I just thought, hey, does Angela Merkel's husband come to that dinner? Turns out he stayed behind in Berlin!! Why? Because it's too humiliating for him to be one man among all those women at the patronising spousal dinner?? One coup for women I am happy to celebrate in the news this week is the appointment of our first ever female Poet Laureate - not that I am sure this is an institution I entirely support, though it sounds like Carol Ann Duffy has a strong sense of the good that poetry can bring to peoples' lives and of the good she can do in this role. So good luck to her. And I also appreciate the way that the discussion this week has not been all about her sexuality - which it certainly would have been in Thatcher's day.

Radio Silence

Well, howdy! It's been a while. Sorry for the radio silence - I have been wrangling with Chapter 3, and have been avoiding email, and pretty much anything that is not in some way influenced by the art of Islamic Spain. Apart from Henry VIII - though he was influenced, but this is not the time or place for that discussion. All the big Henry VIII launches have been happening in the last few weeks - the opening on Wednesday evening at the British Library, of their exhibition Man and Monarch, was on the actual 500th anniversary of Henry officially assuming the throne - marked by K and his fellow Tudor historians all wryly commiserating each other on the death of Henry VII... I'll have to defer talking about that exhibition until I've been back to look at it properly.

The previous week was the party to launch all K's work at Hampton Court - details here. It all looks fantastic - they have re-presented the Tudor palaces, including hanging the 'Haunted Gallery' (a long corridor which is used as a paintings gallery, hung with fabulous portraits from the Royal Collection) with rich fabrics, as it would have been in the Tudor period, and bringing together in Henry's council chamber (never before open to the public!) a small exhibition of contemporary portraits of Henry's wives (the first time that's ever been done!) and daughters, together with an object of significance from their lives - and much much more ... The conceit is that the palace is 'dressed' for the wedding of Henry and Katherine Parr ("survived"), which was held at Hampton Court in 1543, and you are the courtiers in attendance: there are staged events throughout the day, when you can meet help the bride and groom prepare for the wedding, or be the first to congratulate them after the ceremony... They have hired three actors to rotate playing Henry every day for a year, and I must say it really brings everything to life, when you're just wandering around the palace and then everything stops to make way for the King ... You get caught up in the scenario and really believe it's him!


I could go on and on - but you'll just have to go along and see for yourself! It is certainly enough to fill a fun day out, which has been one of the main purposes. Hampton Court is just that little bit too far away (though it is really easy to get to - when the trains are running!) for people to automatically think of going there, but amazingly, they had 16,000 visitors over the Easter bank holiday weekend!! We were some of them - K had to go in anyway, so we arranged to go with friends on Easter Sunday. The range of projects that K was involved in for this was so wide that I really had not that much idea what he was working on, as it was too much to talk about after he'd been hard at it at work all day, so that was the first time I really got the chance to find out, and to see it all in action, and people enjoying themselves. Visitors are encouraged to dress for court, by putting on these fine velvet(een) robes - here's K and our friend Az pretending to be Holbein's Ambassadors!


Not that K can relax now it's all open - he's been involved in a whirl of media coverage, including his spot on Today a few weeks back, and the Time Team special on Tudor palaces on Easter Monday! There's also a documentary going around on the History channel, but no-one we know has Sky, so we have to wait for the DVD to watch that!! And this week he has had to give two study day papers, so ended up working through the night on Monday to get the first one written...

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As a result, we're desperately planning to 'get away from it all' and have a holiday this year, so we're planning a retreat to the Outer Hebrides (literally) for mid-July - the earliest 'window' in both our schedules... But we did make sure to take Easter Monday off, and had an absolutely wonderful day out at Bexhill. I wanted to go to the seaside and see some nice architecture, so we decided on Bexhill because of the De La Warr Pavilion, built in 1935, the UK's first public building to be constructed in the Modernist style.


You just can't take a bad photo of it. There was also something truly amazing about the contrasting colours - of the sea and the sky and the pavilion, and the lawn out front which seemed impossibly green. This picture doesn't do it justice.

We got up reasonably early (considering how tired we were!) and managed to get a 9.30 train, and somehow I'd been organised enough to prepare a thermos of coffee and some hot cross buns for breakfast on the train. We read our books and dozed for the two-hour journey (already sounding good, eh?) Beautiful weather had been forecast for the Easter weekend, which had so far failed to materialise, but the clouds burned off and the sun came out as we sat on a perfectly-located bench overlooking the sea, with an easy view backwards to the pavilion, eating what I am reliably informed were the best fish-and-chips on the South Coast (from Louis's Fish Bar on Sea Road - go there)


We literally spent every last penny we had on this feast and it was worth every one of them!!

Quite a number of boats came out as well - it turned into a gorgeously beautiful day.


The thing was, we had absolutely no mental energy left, so it was the perfect day out, because it was all just so beautiful to look at and soak up, and we pretty much just wandered and sat and gazed all day, without having anything at all to say.

This picture sums up my mental state that day!

We sat on the shingle and K found it endlessly rewarding to throw stones at the sea. He took this picture while lying on the beach!


The added bonus was that while I had known pretty much what to expect from the Pavilion, I was totally unprepared for the gorgeous Victorian Orientalist sea-front cottages - we're seriously considering moving there!


Here are some gratuitous gorgeous views of Bexhill and the Pavilion (it's an exhibition venue, but we had absolutely no difficulty in avoiding looking at any of the art - tea on the terrace was much more the order of the day).

View from the terrace

Up the stairwell © KR

Down the stairwell © KR
I love the colours - though they seem to be slightly flattened here

A meditative view out to sea...

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So it turns out I have an inflamed ulnar. This is compressing the nerves which run down the left side of my body and giving me numbness and tingling sensations in my arm and leg - and making it not so easy to type for long stretches. At least it is that and not some other more worrying cause of numbness and tingling down one side ... it induced some anxiety for several days until I decided to be grown-up and go and see the doctor yesterday. I have to take ibuprofen for two weeks to help the swelling go down and hopefully the symptoms will subside. It is probably caused by how I tuck my arm under my head while sleeping, aggravated by the intensive typing I'm doing while I write my book, and by cycling - apparently this condition is quite common in cyclists, and is also known as "handlebar palsy"!!! What is it with me and oddly-named nervous inflammations?? I had plantar fasciitis in my heel last year!!

I am also under doctor's orders to relax this weekend! Which fortunately coincides with that slight fallow period between finishing one chapter and beginning the planning process of the next - which will also be the last!! (apart from the Introduction) Chapter 4 is about the 19th-century rediscovery of Spain's Islamic past and the revival of 'Moorish' (if you must, though I don't like to) styles in art and architecture... So I plan to do some gentle reading about that today, to get me in the mood - and then my sister is coming over tonight (hurrah!) and we're going to see In the Loop at the Ritzy - the first film we've been to see since Frost/Nixon (oh dear!) ... And tomorrow we're going to plan our holiday, over brunch. Doctor's orders.

Pedal Power

I have been enjoying the cycling. What was it I said about the lovely weather?? Of course I knew at the time – shouldn’t have tempted fate like that. It was probably all down to me that the Indian Premier League chose South Africa instead – weather too unreliable in England? Er, yes. Anyway after a week of early spring loveliness, we had gale-force winds last week! Now it's "changeable" (read, "windy"). I am remembering what I used to hate about cycling in Oxford – wind. All those wind tunnels between the colleges. Well, this time I cycle over one common, where the wind does occasionally literally knock you sideways, and through one park where enormous whooshing plane trees seem to create their own supplementary wind microclimate. But it’s all good for the fitness, I tell myself.

Since I was last cycling - early last summer - they have finally resurfaced the cycle path across Clapham Common, which makes life a lot easier! There are a few other roads I have to go along which are still riddled (what a good word that is, and under-used!) with pot-holes - as I am juddering along over them I always think "I must write to the Council about this", and then always forget by the time I've turned the corner.

I had forgotten how enormous the cars are now. This was the main difference I noted with Oxford, when I started cycling in London - the cars were all bigger. I don't just think it was being in The Big Smoke - when I was in Oxford, SUVs hadn't been invented, and a bloody good thing too. "Chelsea tractors" they're called - well, they have them in Clapham too! (I think some of them actually are tractors!) There is absolutely no reason that I can see to drive one of these gigantic cars in London - apart, that is, from an ostentatious display of wealth. They take up so much room, that it can't make your life any easier if you drive one of these - how hard must it be to find a parking space? My biggest gripe with them is that they are too wide to leave you any passing space, and their drivers always seem to want to play 'chicken' with cyclists - driving right down the centre of the road (to leave enough space between them and the parked cars on either side).

Still, some good moments – I'd forgotten that when I turn the corner onto Silverthorne Road, when I am at the highest point of my cycle, I can see on the dome of my museum on the horizon: that's always a pretty nice moment, knowing that I'll be cycling to the horizon. Also, coming up on Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common the other day – scene of that fateful marriage in Atonement (and what a good book that was!) – just as the bells were tolling at the end of Mass… Today someone was flying a kite on the Common – a pretty big one, and he was standing on a little wheeled trolley, and it was pulling him back and forth across the grass! I thought he might take off! The blossom is out everywhere, and in Battersea Park they have been fertilising, so there is quite a pungent but somehow really refreshing smell of manure!

This evening I have mapped my ride with the aptly-named mapmyride.com – though I had once worked out a general route with the Transport for London journey planner, I was curious to know how far I actually cycle to work, now that I’ve refined my route. It’s just over 6 miles, one way! 12 miles a day – not bad! If you’re interested, you should be able to get to the route map I created by clicking the button below.



It's not the fastest way I could go - because of not being the world's most confident cyclist just yet, I decided to mainly go through parks and residential roads, though there are a few busy (and occasionally slightly hairy) moments. I tried a few different routes when I started cycling and this turned out to be the nicest one. I like watching the world go by, as I go by - you notice little things like the social and geographic divide between Clapham and Brixton, through such things as the grocery delivery vans you pass along the way - Tescos in Brixton (who deliver weekly to us as well!), Ocado in Clapham - of course!!

Where's Obama today?

Turns out he's just arrived in Baghdad!! He's really packing it in on this round-the-world trip! There's a headline in K's Economist (April 4th-10th, p. 59) that says, "If atmospherics were all that mattered, the American president would be well on the way to curing the world's ills". It was good to have him in London, and I loved the fact that he gave the Queen an iPod!! There are some amusing track suggestions for her here. Michelle seemed to go down a storm at the inner London secondary school she visited - we heard some very eloquent teenage girls talking on the radio about how her visit had inspired them. (Talking of radio, did you catch K on Today??) I did not go on any protests, and to be quite honest, I really did not see the point of them. "Jobs, Justice and Climate"? Plus the usual add-ons that you get at protests like that. I tried it over Iraq - it didn't work. Its absolutely shocking, though, about that guy who died of a heart attack, on his way home - especially since it seems like the heart attack was set off by police assault.

Call me shallow, but I was frankly more interested in watching the footage of the Obamas meeting the Sarkozys at Strasbourg - Nicolas looked like a cartoon character next to Barack!! And what was Sarkozy doing with Obama's tie?? There was some fascination with the "sartorial battle" between Carla and Michelle ("two fashion titans"!), which is always amusing to read - though I am not sure I approve that you can now post comments at the end of stories on the Guardian website. I find myself reading them almost against my will, in a sort of morbid fascination, though very rarely do you get anything actually worth paying attention to - and how is it that people have time to participate in this kind of online conversation, sometimes several times??

Anyway, book update. I have finished Chapter 2, and sent that off to my readers, but I am having some difficulty getting going with writing Chapter 3. I have decided it's PMT - well, I've got to have something to blame. It also feels like a holiday - all the schools have broken up, and many of my colleagues have taken the week off, so there is a holiday air which is rather effecting. I also feel it's ok to have a little break between chapters - but there's just no time for that, I keep having to tell myself.

I spent this morning in the Baroque exhibition - classic work-avoidance activity. Now, I really do not like baroque as an artistic style - but I liked this exhibition. It is really well laid out, with a simple but effective design - like the section about secular spaces (ie. the palace) being laid out like an enfilade of rooms in a baroque palace, culminating in the king's bedchamber - as you would if you were a courtier visiting. It feels quite empty - though there is not a shortage of objects, though some of them are BIG, but they get a chance to breathe, and so do you - I always find if you're in an original baroque space it is just too overwrought and overwhelming that you just can't appreciate its individual elements, whereas you can here.

The one let-down was that nowhere does it actually tell you what baroque is, or how it develops, or why it spreads as widely as it did - why did it appeal so much? They imply it was through the patronage of the Catholic church and the absolute monarchs of the 17th century - though it doesn't ever really say what they were trying to use this style to express, apart from wealth, and power, which is self-evident. It was also slightly disappointing that - though much is made of this being the "first global style" (because it is the first style to travel out of Europe, though I am not sure this is necessarily something to be proud of, since it's imposed on colonies by European imperialists) this was only represented in a rather tokenistic way, with very few objects (though one of them was, admittedly, again, very large) and just there as "examples", rather than objects in themselves, if you see what I mean.

The theatre section was great - they had found this 17th-century castle theatre in the Czech Republic, which has retained its original stage set and furnishings, and it is obviously still used, since there was a short film of performances underway, and the guys under the stage turning pulleys to change the set. Fascinating. Opera was invented at this time, and much was made about the "total work of art", so that a baroque setting was multi-sensory, and included musical as well as visual stimulation. I really liked the use of music in the spaces, though at certain points these clashed with each other, but I think this experience would have been rather lost on you had you been going round with the audio guide (and you know how I feel about those...)

Anyway I think it has opened this week because of Easter - being, perhaps, the most Baroque of church rituals. And nowhere is it more Baroque than Semana Santa in Seville - of which there were some more film clips. In all my years of visiting Spain, I have never witnessed this, and is something I would really love to do sometime - though I am not sure I could get past been terrified by the penitents in their pointed KKK-inspiring hoods... Some seasonal photos I have enjoyed from the Guardian website (is it obvious which newspaper I read?):

Barbie and Ken go to Mass!

April Fool

Lordy, this has been a busy March! Somehow I find it slightly inconceivable that I have actually managed to draft the first two chapters of my book – though Chapter 2 is still a little rough, and a little long (though 3000 words less too-long than it was this morning), and I have given a work-in-progress seminar on it all, yesterday. Phew. I feel exhausted! And sadly there’s no let-up – Chapter 3 needs to be drafted! I am aiming to have something down on paper for all four chapters by the end of April. A chapter every two weeks. Am I mad?

So, time to post the calendar image for the month.

Descent from the Cross, Catalonia 12th-13th century, MNAC, Barcelona © KR

This is one of groups of monumental wooden sculpture from medieval Cataluña, among the fantastic collections of Spanish Romanesque art in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona – taken last May, when K joined me for two weeks in Spain, after I had taken my group of Museum Patrons on their guided tour of ‘Islamic Spain’, and was staying on for the rest of the month to do research, museum and site visits for my book. We always try and fit in a visit to Barcelona, to visit Sarah and Julius, and their children Leila and Isaac – this was our last visit to their lovely (tiny!) old apartment just steps from the sea at Barceloneta. They were just in the process of sorting out a mortgage when we were there (they beat us to it!!) and have since moved to a larger place, just a few streets down, which is even easier to stay in than the last one, by all accounts – must go and find out some time soon!

We’d been to MNAC before, but K didn’t seem to remember (it was a fair few years previously, and I had been back on my own a number of times since then), and he just went crazy for the Romanesque. I phoned him at one point from Gothic Spain (and got stern looks from the wardens) and he was still halfway through the Romanesque period! That stuff is just absolutely fantastic though – we both really love it. There is something so – human – about its artistic naivety. The architecture is pretty fab too. Anyway we chose this photo for the calendar this month, because of its Easter-related theme, of the death of Christ.

And, in case you’re wondering, K has been doing very well at the not-drinking-alcohol-for-Lent. He has been taking Sundays off – this has obviously helped. I think last year he spoke to actual Christians about it, and apparently Sundays are not counted in the number of days for which Lent lasts – they’re a religious feast day, ergo you don’t have to give up what you gave up. He has been known occasionally to rather over-compensate – when Nick was here a few weekends back (so wonderful to see him! Was it really three years since the last time…?), K awoke on Monday morning with something of a headache. A whiskey too far, I fear.

And one last by the way – Stieg Larsson is excellent. Still a little way to go, but it has definitely been the thing to switch the brain off from The Book last thing at night. Highly recommended.

Another thing that has kept me sane the last couple of weeks - watching back issues of Brothers and Sisters. Gaaaad, I love that programme! I am not sure exactly why it is so good - on the surface the characters seem quite stereotyped and the idea of it doesn't sound that interesting: a big ensemble cast (12 main characters!), a loving but explosively expressive family and their escapades through daily life, all revolving around the personality and the absence of the husband/father, who (brilliantly) died right at the beginning of the first episode. But the writing and the acting is just fantastic! Welsh actor Matthew Rhys is so watchable as as Kevin Walker.

Another last 'by the way'. K has just informed me that he might be interviewed on the Today programme on Saturday morning, talking about Henry VIII! Be sure to listen!!