Life has been very busy. In a good way. This festive period has been one of many firsts.

:: We have celebrated Xmukkah with our housemates, ex housemates, new housemates, and dear friends, and with amazing food, new Burt Bacharach and Roxy Music records, and an assortment of fine cheeses.

:: I cooked xmas day dinner for the first time ever for three friends, and, i kid thee not, i cooked the most amazing rosemary roasties the world has ever seen! Trust me: not one element of that statement was hyperbolic. This is somewhat miraculous as i am the first person to admit that i am not the best cook and that often my ambition outstrips the quality of my actual culinary achievements. I was also cooking for two dear friends who paid me that compliment the previous year and who had delivered amazing results. Gah. The pressure. I was having anxiety dreams about sprouts around two weeks beforehand. Yet, lo and behold!, what i presented wasn’t half bad. My xmas menu was thus: Roast squash and mushroom wellington with rosemary roasties, honey and orange roasted carrots, maple roasted parsnips, and sprouts sauteed in butter, sea salt and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Albeit i used ready-made pastry {and successfully fibbed about it – mwuhahahaha}. And for dessert: my own special take on Eton Mess – resplendent with silver balls and indoor sparklers {sophisticated}. I thahhhnk you veh much.

:: Yesterday, m’boy and i once again proved, and secured, our place as the true and repeated victors of Cranium {The Game For Your Whole Brain!}, which is absolutely my favourite board game {mainly because it has whole sections on linguistics and factoids, and includes Playdoh which is surely the nicest smelling toxic substance on the planet}, in a poorly fought series of games against his immediate family.

Orkney Slippers :: Plumo ::

:: I have spent today braving the shops as best i could and swapping all my unwanteds and unfittings – result: i finally purchased the slippers i’ve had my eye on from Plumo and a year’s supply of comfy new socks in assorted grays {thank you, tiny sister!}.

:: I am now sat before our Christmas tree, draped in the paper wreathes i made it, and the artificial fire that has kept me warm{ish} throughout this bloody freezing festive period with some salted caramels and a stolen copy of Nathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I intend to read sections of this aloud to my boy – which makes his head “Go fuzzy. In a good way.” – because i am one of those really irritating people who giggle and frown along with the narrative, and then speculate upon possible names for our own imaginary child with Aspergers and an immensely impressive intellect. I like [Boy:] Oskar Finn {after Oskar in the film Let The Right One In, my favourite from 2009, and Extremely Loud… and Huckleberry Finn – because Huckleberry would just be silly} and [Girl:] Finn Sprout {after Huckleberry Finn – which is one of m’boy’s favourite books – and a Bean Sprout}. Fingers crossed i’m never given the responsibility of actually naming a Real Life child because they’d be bullied for sure.

:: We wait to hear any day now that both our dear friend’s wife and our close friend’s sister has gone into labour and that there is a new little person in the world. Very nerve racking. Very scary. Not happy with the realities that this implies: Oh dear, we are now Grown-Ups.

:: Escapism: I have recently found this rather useful resource and intend to plan a couple of good walks for us to tackle. By way of luring John-Dave across the moors in the freezing weather, i’m hoping to match them up with a couple of real ale pubs along the way.

Spike Jonze ::

I have returned from The Big Smoke unscathed! Huzzah. Well, with naught but a slight sore throat and my boy assures me that this is normal because London is so very polluted and that i should be feeling grateful that i am not blowing black gunk out of my nose, as often happens to several of his friends {oddballs}.

My trip was flawed from the start, really. Ma and i were both heading towards the capital to see my little sister before xmas and before she disappears to France to work for a short while in the new year. Unfortunately, these plans were somewhat scuppered by the fact that she’d caught Swine Flu and would therefore be unable to leave the house. Rubbish. But ma and i, being the troopers and skin-flints that we are, adventured forth anyway so as not to loose our train fair, which we’d paid in advance, and thinking a trip to London would be rather jolly with or without my sickly sister.{Fools: London is never nice during xmas shopping season}

I arrived at Nottingham train station to discover that i was traveling on the one day that Nottinghamshire police had advise people to stay indoors  – the day the fascist group EDL were protesting in our square and the day Leicester {a notoriously naughty football team, i gather – shrug} were playing Nottingham Forest. Fifteen police vans full of yapping dogs lined the side of the station and over 200 police in florescent riot gear formed a rather intimidating barrier.

And it turned out that mine was t0 be a day of police visits and thuggish fascist football twatfucks; i also encountered a bunch while on the train home who drunkenly banged, chanted, sang and heckled – yeuk – until they were dragged off.

Shelf & Labour and Wait, Cheshire Street ::

My whirlwind trip to London, however, was relatively jolly. Ma and i visited the shops on Cheshire Street {Labour and Wait and Shelf being my favourites} and grabbed some tea on Brick Lane.

I then met my ol’ friend James and dashed across town to the Apple Store to watch a Q&A between Spike Jonze {Where The Wild Things Are director} and Adam or Joe from Adam-and-Joe.  Adam or Joe {i think Adam} was very amusing  and has a rather attractive beard, and Spike was, well, inarticulate and used the syntax of a toddler – lots of conjunctive strings and ‘ummmm-ing’:  ‘And…er…then i did this…and then i did this…and then i did this…and then i did THIS!’. And he wore bright pink socks.

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Today, m’boy and i dashed out to grab our xmas tree. It’s enormous and takes up half of our living room. I’ve spent the day decorating it with paper wreathes while watching ANTM. Jolly. Nothing beats the smell of spruce. Tra la la la laaaa la laaa laaa laaaaa.

M’boy and i are both pretty bad when it comes to battling through the winter with energy and good moods, and we’ve noticed that our adventures have started to disappear. So, in a fit of admirable enthusiastic motivation, we jumped in the car and went to Yorkshire Sculpture Park at the weekend to see what we could see.

Unfortunately, the weather was absolutely shocking and therefore we couldn’t actually see much at all. Despite wellies, hats and woolly coats, the heavy and icy sheet rain meant that it really was impossible to do anything outdoors. We were restricted to browsing the indoor exhibitions – such as Rob Ryan’s latest exhibition of his papercuts.

Still – good adventure.

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Good things ::

:: My frosty morning work to walk

:: Bordeaux, mustard, cement opaque tights :: {want}

:: The Studio Mug from Heath :: {want}

:: Exciting xmas cupcakes for my housemates & i from lovely Trina

:: Visiting my friend Amy at KioskKiosk with cups of hot tea

:: Newsy letters from my nanny brewin

:: Labour and Wait’s Enamel Teapot :: {want}

Recipe maybes ::

This Christmas it’s my turn to cook for myself, Trina and Dave, so i’m keeping my eyes peeled for suitable recipes. Meep. Nervous.

:: Saffron and vanilla poached pears

Apples and Pears and Crafty Wares: The Hockley Christmas Arts Market in Sneinton, Nottingham::

One of the great perks of working in a media centre is that one gets to attend fantastic meetings and see great films under the guise of work.

Yesterday, this event was the Hinterland Symposium. Hinterland is led by independent curator, Jennie Syson, and my hoosemate is their latest intern. They work with local artists to examine geographical areas that surround the River Trent in Nottingham and put on a series of great events throughout the summer – including a collaboration with Annexinema to produce a cycle-powered cinema under a fly-over by the river {click here}. This was most definitely one of my favourite adventures this year, if not my favourite Nottingham adventure to date.

The Symposium brought together a great bunch of people to discuss ‘The evolving relationships between artists, the changing climate and new responsibilities’ and the specificities/relevance of their own practise within this over-arching theme.

Highlights for me were certainly:
Joy Sleeman, a lecturer in European aspects of Land Art, who gave a succinct history of Land Art – which, it turns out, i knew very little about.

Joy Sleeman

Land art has been at the heart of Sleeman’s research since the early 1990s. Her PhD thesis, Landscape and Land Art (Leeds, 1995) focused on work in Britain and this emphasis continues through to her most recent projects and publications. Other publications with a land art related theme include the essays ‘1977. A Walk across the park, into the forest and back to the garden: the Sculpture Park in Britain’, in Sculpture and the Garden, edited by P. Eyres and F. Russell, London: Ashgate, 2006; ‘a Twilight Place: Land Art: a short history’, in King’s Wood: a Context, Stour Valley Arts, Challock, Kent, 2005, and ‘More and Less: The Early Work of Richard Long’, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 1997.

I also really enjoyed the segment devoted to a discussion of Barcelona-based curatorial office ‘Latitudes’ who collaborate with artists to design and produce exhibitions and public commisions – in particular, their ‘Portscapes’ comission in Rotterdam seemed interesting.

Latitudes
Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna run the Barcelona-based curatorial office of Latitudes.  Recent projects include ‘THE CREST OF A WAVE’, with Lawrence Weiner and the group exhibition ‘Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities’. Latitudes were guest editors of the UOVO/14: ‘Ecology, Luxury and Degradation’ (Summer 2007) and the publication ‘LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook’ (2006).

And Rebecca Beinart who lead foraging trips down to River Trent with her cycle-kitchen. Despite booking myself on several of these trips, i manage to miss each and every one and really regret it.

Wallace Heim in conversation with Rebecca Beinart
Wallace Heim writes on performance and nature, on the philosophical, ethical and aesthetic dimensions of how nature-human relations are performed, through art-making and everyday life. She teaches on the Arts and Ecology MA at Dartington College of Arts and is a co-editor of the Ashden Directory.

my boy & i at Attenborough Nature Reserve::

Goodness ::

:: Hot rooibos {my favourite} and Clipper’s beautiful new packaging
:: Dos white hot chocolate {reminds me of winter at General Store}
:: Lillies from my boy to cheer up our icy bedroom
:: Successful part completion of my xmas present list in good time this year {& so many exciting bobs!}
:: Plans afoot

Badness ::

:: Icy rain
:: Sleepless nights due to my noisy sash windows in the wind
:: Untidy eyebrows {lazy}
:: Heavy eyes
:: Un-ironed laundry piling up
:: First smear test tomorrow {trying to be terribly blasé and mature about it – but argh!}
:: Diminishing squid

After boasting smugly and patting myself on the back perhaps a little too zealously on not having fallen to the bastardly sickness that is creeping through my office, building and household, i am having to admit defeat at last. My sniffing and aching and whinging would suggest that i am not so immune after all.

Saturday was grand. I was still in pretty fine health and met Jeffers’s family for a stroll around the newly-opened Nottingham Contemporary and for tea and cake at our house, which provided the perfect opportunity for me to whip out my hideous teapot collection and cake stands.

Though i attended the opening party and have made a couple of subsequent visits, i still haven’t really properly checked out Café.Bar.Contemporary. or the Frances Stark and David Hockney exhibitions. Despite a pretty critical Culture Show review, i have been pleasantly surprised by the building itself. Sure, it’s hideous from the outside, looking like a mouldy egg box, but it’s much warmer, more tactile and more comfortable than i’d imagined. Situating the CaféBar on the third lower floor was an interesting {and perhaps foolish, in my view} decision. The gallery spaces seem an adequate size – much smaller and more intimate than anticipated. In fact, they seemed almost crowded by the large Hockneys. Its success will be determined by its future funding, local buy-in and the success of its subsequent exhibitions, so i’ll be watching that space…

Sunday was a day mostly of hibernation and watching greatrubbish films – an Antonio Banderas dance movie and a J-Lo flick – in front of our fire surrounded by my tutting and tisking couch-critic housemates and with a slimey trail of vicks vapour rub burning my filtrum.

And yet despite my ailing, i have come into work today. Mainly for the promise of pie. Today, my boys and i are going to The Cock and Hoop after work for pie-and-pint-for-a-fiver day. Nothing cures what ails ye like a crispy, crusty, hot pie. Also, The Hock and Hoop, with its wood panelling and poor lighting, makes one feel like one’s stepping into a warm, comforting womb full of comfy nooks and ale. Snug. In fact, perhaps i’ll just eat pie and nap and leave the pleasant conversation to the others.

i love these necklaces from Brevity…

First Bloom of Spring necklace by traceface at etsy ::

Small Buckhorns necklace by SkylarkStudio at etsy ::

Small Sterling Silver Twig necklace by twigsandheather at etsy ::

Softspoken Bubble Beret in Grass by sofspoken at etsy ::

blue reconstructed top by supayana at etsy ::

apple ring by ashhilton at etsy ::

Last night, me ol’ friend Trina and i went to see Romanian flick Katalin Varga {dir. Peter Strickland}. Beautiful Transylvanian countryside. Harrowing. Slow. Drawn-out. Great score.

{Guardian review by Bradshaw {ek!} here}