we plan to…
Hans Holbein the Younger, Derich Born, 1533
…visit Holyroodhouse to see the exhibition of Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein. Over 100 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, miniatures and manuscripts have been gathered together from The Royal Collection – including works by Dürer, Massays, Memling, Cranach the Elder and Holbein the Younger – to give a great insight into Northern Europe’s 15th and 16th revolution in art, scholarship and religion…
When Neil Ansell moved to a deeply rural Welsh cottage at the age of 30 he was prepared for a secluded life, but had not anticipated that he would all but disappear from his own story…
The sun drops behind the brow of the black hill that looms over the cottage from the west, and dusk begins to settle over the fields below. I throw a log on the fire, fetch through a gallon jug of water, and add another S-hook to hang the soot-blackened kettle so that it swings into the heart of the flames. When my mug of tea is ready I take it out with me and sit on the doorstep. The valley is in deep shadow now, but on the horizon the western flanks of the Brecon Beacons are still lit up by the sun’s last rays…
One of our daily internet rituals (one that accompanies our regular checks of facebook, news sites, twitter, google reader… the list goes on) is a visit to NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. One of the simplest websites we’ve ever come across, it presents a single new picture of the universe and brief explanation of the picture each day. It has no home page and does not have a particularly handsome design. Yet, unusually for the world wide web, it manages to create a moment of space and perspective each day. A chance to sit and wonder at, to learn about the world (and beyond) without leaving your desk…
Last week we packed our bags and moved to the Wilderness. We arrived on Tuesday, with two vans full of our favourite outdoor things – deckchairs, firebowls, storm lanterns, blankets… – to install ourselves near the lakes of the Cornbury Park Estate, and in the tents of the very first Wilderness Festival. We hefted boxes and carried piles of blankets, attached lanterns to bamboo poles and hung them from trees, arranged deckchairs, put up bunting and washing lines, decorated stages and projection screens, and late at night allowed ourselves a swim in the lake (four girls in matching polka dot swimwear) then warmed ourselves around our very own firebowl…
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs have long captured our attention. We gazed for what seemed like hours at his seascapes, the frame always divided equally between sea and sky, water and air. The sea always calm, but the horizon sometimes blurred by mist or darkness. They were wonderful, calming, elemental.
Sugimoto’s new photographs are still elemental though this time they are brittle, full of contradictions. Crackling with energy they are somehow still calming. They are of violent electrical charges, but could be of frost on a window, patterns caught in ice or creatures in the deepest sea – they are of fire, light and heat, but can be seen as water, darkness and cold. They are beautiful.
If you’re visiting Edinburgh any time soon you should go and see them here. If you can’t make it to Edinburgh then you can see more of them here and here. Otherwise, here are a few more…
Next year marks the fifteenth anniversary of ‘Moro.’ The Moorish Mediterranean restaurant was started by husband and wife team Sam and Sam Clark in 1997 in what was then a ramshackle, partly boarded up Exmouth Market. The street has since become a thriving and vibrant parade with plenty of independent shops and many competing restaurants (surely in no small part because of Moro’s success)…
For those of us based in London our forthcoming trip out of this wild city and into the Oxfordshire countryside will come as a welcome relief. The cause of our exodus has been planned for some time however – Wilderness, a new festival run by the same people as Secret Garden Party, asked if we wanted to join them in their celebration of arts, music and the outdoors, and we saw no reason to refuse…
