Two days at home and cabin fever sets in. Michael managed to dislocate his shoulder (playing frisbee, truly) and we spent most of the bank holiday Sunday in Homerton Hospital A&E. Watching him suck in a quarter of a tank of laughing gas was amusing though. "Look around you, everything’s hilarious," he says, handing me the mouthpiece so I can have a go. It was at the point he said, "Bill Murray in Broken Flowers. I see him everywhere," that I grabbed the thing away from him.
Anyway that was the bank holiday weekend gone. Which is ok because sometimes I need to be forced by circumstances beyond my control to do nothing. We had a lovely brekkie with the first watermelon of the year. But by Monday afternoon I was going crazy, so took myself off into London. I realised I never do that. Walked from Holborn through Covent Garden, found an amazing shop Happie Loves It. Countless versions of one of my favourite species of top - bright flowery pattern with sash around the middle that ties at the back. Gorgeous. Much to the shop girls' extreme joy, I took about 16 tops and several skirts into the only changing room they have. I bought three of them though. Partly out of guilt.
Then sauntered off to the National Portrait Gallery, marvelling at the wondrousness of people who can draw stuff. And people who can drain themselves of blood and mould it into the shape of their head (a la Marc Quinn). I felt so awful watching a mother and her young daughter right up close to his big red head saying things like, "What is it?" "Look, feel the cabinet, it’s cold!" I left the room quickly before I had to watch the mother read the little explanation card. In my euphoria of being set free of two-bed flat, no outdoor space, I fell in love with Alex Katz's portrait of Anna Wintour and his pop-up book style portrait series, One Flight Up. I even begged the guy at the shop to let me in after it closed so I could buy the book...
...which, after popping in to see David Cameron in his new home, I sat and read by the river. The peaceful side opposite the Southbank. Heaven.
I resisted all foodie temptations put before me in preparation for Michael's promised one-armed beef stroganoff (with bonus artfully arranged tomato and mozarella starter). Which was indeed lovely. Much as he tried to tell me reasons it wasn't. God bless Jamie Oliver's iPhone app for giving men a reason to cook. God bless days off too.
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