2. I am yet to remember to take a pack of cards on holiday, and so I have accidentally started a collection. 'Greek Ancient Lovers' and 'Bulgaria: Holiday Destination' are amongst my favourite designs...
Lockdown games include 7up-7down, shithead, rummy and backgammon. I like to sketch my opponent - always the same opponent during quarantine - as he sits still, otherwise engaged, thinking about winning rather than shading or proportion.
1. Having dragged hundreds of magazines from flat to flat, despite protests from flatmates and boyfriends
alike, lockdown has afforded me the time to trawl through them all once again.
New York Times Style Magazine, from 11 April 2015 had a feature on the house that Victoria Press owned on Cheyne Walk. Charming, opulent, dishevelled - Press decorated one of the many bedrooms entirely in violet, with a matching silk taffeta-swagged bathroom, complete with an18th-century commode.
Frilly interiors have no function - they are silly by definition, but totally irresistible. I have only spotted curtains like these hanging in stately homes, Italian palazzos - and SE London council estates. I like that they cross that divide, and that no one in the middle - middle ground, middle class, middle of the road - has the nerve to decorate their homes like this.
N.B. Rewatch The Slipper and the Rose
3. Trips to Hastings, Glasgow and Tel Aviv were cancelled in April. Holiday plans for the future seem frivolous or futile - plus, in any case, there would be no sitting at the bar, no eating the free - and unhygienic - olives, no mingling - and no atmosphere.
Without plans for the future, I have been rifling through old photos - reliving friends' weddings, family gatherings and summer holidays. By condensing these events, flicking through them in quick succession, patterns begin to emerge, things I photograph over and over: draped fabrics, half-drunk drinks, and fish.
Fish suppers
Fish markets
Fishing nets
Fishermen
***
Neatly stacked tins of Portuguese sardine paste - the exact brand we ate so much of on our last trip - were in abundance at the 24-hour Turkish supermarket, a happy accident of the food shortages and panic buying. If travel is unlikely, then sardines on toast and cheap Portuguese wine will have to transport us instead.
4. An exercise in efficiency rather than exercise - I run from place to place, rather than for the pure pleasure of it.
I store my phone in the pocket on my right hip, and - uninvited and unprompted - it has taken to documenting my runs from this strange vantage point. The images remind me of flat-bed scanner experiments: jolting and digital.
6. Tinned sardines through the letterbox were swapped for a bunch of wild garlic that was left in the watering can; 'What Should I Do With My Life' by Po Bronson in return for homemade biscotti and a bunch of tulips; quarantine-friendly birthday drinks on either side of the window - for fun.
7. If you put on jewellery, you can't also put on yesterday's outfit. Particularly if that was leggings and a jumper you've had since you were 12.
On FaceTime meet-ups, M noticed that I had often been wearing the wishbone necklace that D had given her when they were first dating - she wondered if I was wishing for anything specific...
"You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it - it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk."
Be Drunk, Charles Baudelaire
5. Margaritas for Two:
Half a mug of Tequila
4 tbs Lime Juice
1 tbs Honey
Shake over ice for longer than you'd think.
Italian Gimlet:
3 parts Gin
1 part White Vermouth
Some Lime Juice
8. The hours melt together; each day follows the same structure as the previous one; and the weeks are no longer punctuated with events and people - just meals.
And endless Houseparty notifications.
9. Morandi still lives have become more beautiful than ever, examining the ordinary and the every day with curiosity and vigour that is typically reserved for the exotic, unusual or rarified.
Morandi's objects look pleasingly solid; you sense the texture of glass or ceramic, enamel or glaze, bread or butter.
The explicit textures, weights and densities are balanced with an overall blurring. Shimmering outlines and a grainy quality create a painterly fog through which you feel around - sensing the objects rather than simply looking at them.
10. Now that no one can see me, I paint my nails lime green/nicotine yellow
11. Easter egg hunt in the flat
12. After a day of quiet - sharing our small space without often bumping into one other, occupying different worlds – I rest my head on his chest, curling inwards towards the sofa to read a book, whilst he looks out over my head, watching a movie with his headphones on, twiddling sections of my unwashed hair between his fingers.
Marriage, 1952
Tracey Emin, I was wishing for you, 2017