I'VE BEEN...

...Wearing this silver feather brooch. It was my mum's, or possibly it was my granny's - anyway I dug it out and have been playing how many ways: on the neck of a thin white t-shirt, on the end of a long silver chain or two, as a hair accessory, possibly even as a ring, though it's the size of my finger - haven't worked that one out yet.

...Like everyone, falling in love.

...Catching the last day of the Andy Warhol exhibition Other Voices, Other Rooms. Even with a free ticket and the promise of Diana Vreeland footage I only managed to drag myself along to the Hayward Gallery at the last minute, where it was mobbed with queues of other lazy last minute people. I can see how the whole reality TV/blogging/myspace/facebook/etc thing is relevant to him and like, really, TERRIBLY IMPORTANT, but as one critic noted, "He may have been right about everybody being famous one day for 15 minutes, but what he did not factor into his equation was the amount of time needed by the rest of us to watch everybody being famous for 15 minutes." It was lovely to see and hear La Vreeland - red cigarette holder aloft for emphasis - in full voice; "Mahhvelous, yeeeesss" - the full, high quality version of the interview you can see here in really bad (almost unwatchable) quality. There was also some footage of Tina Chow and Sonia Rykiel that I noticed, but it was all so overwhelming (well, actually also underwhelming) I flitted from one video to the next, not really taking much in, and not really feeling drawn in because not much was happening of interest. Talking of drawn - in the bizarrely hung first room, where some of the exhibits were hung 25 feet high on the wall, I noticed a series of what I thought must be Andy Warhol's childhood figurative pencil drawings. Until I reached it and saw that they were from 1963. I don't want to be too rude, but it all suddenly made sense, the delving into so many other mediums that weren't reliant upon him being able to draw. So that begs the question: does it matter? To me, yes. And since we bloggers are in the business of recording and documenting the daily minutiae of our lives it made me want to tread more thoughtfully there as well.

...Being a bookworm. I'm going to do a reading list this year; I've almost finished Mrs Dalloway and A Room of One's Own (prompted by the discovery that not one of my English friends has read any Woolf, yet friends from other countries rave about her), re-read The House of Mirth, started Something Wholesale and The Bell Jar (one of those books I'd always avoided for being depressive, but now I can't believe I've lived so long without it.)

...Going on a sentimental journey. I visited the former houses of my grandparents on both sides (who are all no longer with us), due to an overwhelming desire to connect with my roots. It may have been triggered by the news that the house I grew up in (that my dad sold two years ago) has been extended on all sides, the big tree in the front garden cut down and garden paved over, and the whole house generally "Dallas-ified" - as tends to happen in the London suburb I escaped from. Why it should be upsetting when it has nothing to do with you anymore I don't know; people are pretty much entitled to do what they want with the homes they own. But I can't describe the relief when I saw my granny's lovely Arts & Crafts house still intact - not a UPVC window or out of proportion extension in sight.