MOAARR

New nail polish. Crazy green. I had to apply two coats and a top shiny coat to make it look good because it was shitty £2.50, but, seriously, I think I have found my anti-depressant. I just look at it and I smile.

l'art

In continuation of my summer of free entertainment, I have sought to become more cultured by going to all the free art exhibitions I can find. I love it because there is no educational motive or benefit as I don't study art or plan to study anything very art-related. I seem to be experiencing a mental block about doing any actual constructive work right now, so the lack of benefit is very helpful.

I apologise in advance for the pretentiousness of this post. As I have written, I do know very little about art at all, apart from whether I like something, and how it's making me feel.

Anyway, enough ponderings, back to the exhibitions. Every single exhibition I list in this post was free and I only have superlatives to describe them. They are also all still currently showing in London!

• Jim Hodges at the Camden Arts Centre

A very small exhibition but wowow I was just blown away by the beauty of it. You know how much I love beauty, and the way it has the power to make you feel extraordinarily happy and then extraordinarily sad.

• Picasso at the Gagosian

It's, well, Picasso. Being surprisingly lively and happy. I left this one feeling joyful.

• The permanent collection at the Courtauld. Can I just ask: how have I not been here before?? I have lived in London my whole life, in a half an hour proximity to the stuff of kids' art books, like this:

and for God's sake, this:


And I was completely oblivious. There is also a lot of gothic and early renaissance stuff which I spent a few minutes peering out and trying to identify the saints, but you can skip over that! And a couple of temporary contemporary exhibitions too.

This sort of stuff makes me feel so fortunate to live in a city like London. It also leaves me confused as to how I could ever have been feeling bored here, or at a loss for what to do for free.*

*apart from any purchases I may have made from the shop or food I may have consumed in the café

cash drain

Even if I haven't actually left the British Isles this whole summer, I have still managed to spend a lot of money.

Breakfast, lunch, coffee, dinner, parties, all suck up your cash like a selective black hole.

Falling into a dangerous addiction to a TV show leads to ill-advised boxset purchases which have not yet arrived!

Mainly, I seem to have suddenly rediscovered my ability to shop. Or maybe I just have a lot more time. I still only purchase on average one item out of every two shopping trips, but the trips have been upped to a couple a week.

I even decided to learn to cook properly, and spent a tenner on ingredients for my super special stir fry on Friday.

Basically, time is money and a lot of time means a lot of money.

Click here for a recap on what I was spending my money on a couple of weeks ago. Now envisage more of the same: a dress in exactly the same shade of purple as the nail polish, Mad Men season 3, a pretty blouse I needed like a hole in the head etc etc

I'm getting bored just writing about it. I can't imagine how you could enjoy reading about it. So instead I'm going to try something a little different. How can I carry on wasting my time, without spending any money doing it?

Entertainment
-Read more than the first page of the SIX books sitting on your desk which you received for your birthday.
-E-mail Amazon and ask them to refund your boxset because it is taking so long to arrive. Watch all the episodes online.

Shopping
-Shop your friend's clear-out piles! I discovered treasure in my family friend's trash : a beautiful pastel argyle Pringle cardigan. In another friend's clear-out pile, I also discovered a questionable light blue vest with leather straps and buckles for shoulder straps, but I'm thinking I can make it work.
-Remind your friends that they still haven't bought you a birthday present and they are almost a month late.
-Take your little sister shopping in the hope that your mum will thank you in the form of a pretty new top.

Consumable Goods
-Try to cook a meal out of ingredients already in the fridge. May be a bit of a challenge considering there are currently approximately four meals on my repertoire, but wasn't the whole idea to challenge myself anyway?
Prepare sandwiches or salads whenever I meet people for lunch. I have sunk to picnicking in Starbucks before so I don't see that this will be too much of a problem.
-Find guys to buy me drinks

Sorted

plunge

I have been meaning to write a post for a while now, but whenever I purposefully decide to, I am stumped about what to say. There is plenty I could write about, and at the same time, none of it seems interesting or original enough, or right for an entrance to make after a two week absence.

So instead of choosing one of the vaguely interesting things I have watched, bought or done, I'm going to take the whole lot and put them all up here. I have pictures of a few. Some are from google search, some are carefully composed photographs, others are quick illustrative snaps. But anyway here is my mind blog of the past two weeks: everything I have thought I should post but not had the courage to.

Please pick up on anything that interests you and let me know if you want to know more, or, alternatively, just ignore the ones that don't.

This is what I climbed (x13) and I am still recovering.



My new favourite show, several years too late as always. I got the series 1 and 2 boxsets, zoomed through and am now aching for the third. In the meantime I can obsessively rewatch episodes and read this excellent style commentary.

New cardigan, needed like I need a hole in the head, but it has awesome elbow patches and it's that exact colour of green we talked about.



I lost a pair of shoes and broke a pair of shoes and replaced them with these. They make my feet look like Ronald McDonald's but what else is new. I needed these like a patient suffering from a disease which can only be cured by a hole in the head needs a hole in the head.


I wanted pastel purple. I bought this cheap bottle - £2.95. This incredible colour is anything but pastel.


I saw this last night. Hmmmmmmm.