Jane Bradley

Something of a Domestic

See you there... I'll be the one lurching around in some ridiculous shoes and a vintage frock, cockail-tipsy and sugar-frazzled from eating too much icing.  If you play your cards right I might share some cake with you. But only if you behave.

I promise I will chronicle our adventures in Paris at some point soon.

And I haven’t forgotten all the other bits and bobs I haven’t told you about yet, like reviewing restaurants and the Love & Madness production of Macbeth for the London Word, the Manics two nights in a row at the Camden Roundhouse, and squealing with excitement because I’m interviewing Amanda Palmer next week.

But in the meantime, here are some photos of my boys and I at their exhibition in Zadig & Voltaire last week. And some pictures of Z and I slurping hot chocolate in Café de Flore, pretending to be Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. 

(Polaroids by François Séguin)

The Walpole Bay Hotel

Last weekend, in desperate need of an escape from London for a couple of days, Z and I packed a picnic, boarded a train, and set off on an adventure to the sunny shore of the Southeastern coast. 

 Before we go much further, perhaps I'd better set the scene. My main reason for selecting Margate as our destination was the Walpole Bay Hotel, which I'd been desperate to visit since I read about it online. But I'd never been to Margate before, and wasn't sure what to expect. The only Margate trivia I knew was that its station overlooks the only remaining rollercoaster of abandoned amusement park Dreamland, and that it's where Tracey Emin had her much-maligned childhood.

On our arrival I was somewhat concerned. There's no denying that the town has been hit hard by the decline in tourism since the advent of cheap air travel. The promenade is lined with dilapidated and closed-down shops and restaurants, the seagulls were almost as big as dogs, and the concrete steps down to the seafront covered in mad mis-spelt chalk-scrawled graffiti.

But anyone who knows me well will already be aware that I’ve had a love affair with Blackpool ever since my grandparents drove us there when I was little to see the illuminations. I love the romance of places like that; even though it’s been decades since their heyday, there’s definitely a decayed glamour about seaside towns that I can’t help but be enthralled by.

And despite the boarded-up buildings and sad-looking boarding houses, the remaining tourist attractions did not disappoint. Since our visit I've developed a bit of an obsession with the hauntingly sinister Shell Grotto, and Z is still sulking after I trounced him at Strokes Adventure Golf. At the Turner Contemporary Gallery we had a good old natter to a very sweet lady named Sadie, who told us all about the artistic community that seem to be thriving behind the scene in Margate, and the plans in place for its regeneration.

 Apart from sightseeing, crazy golfing and wandering for miles along the beaches, we spent most of our time eating lots of cheesecake, drinking lots of wine and guzzling lots of tea from old-fashioned china teacups with saucers whilst sitting in the sunshine on our hotel balcony.

The Walpole Bay Hotel could not have been a more perfect mirror of my idiotic and whimsical obsession with all things old-fashioned if it’d had been kitted out specifically with me in mind. (Despite my searches, I’ve never yet found another hotel with an actual museum in it.) For the entire weekend it felt like we were much further away from London than the two-hour train ride, which was exactly what we needed. The fact that the vintage furniture and décor at the hotel (including a 1920s trellis lift in the reception, Edwardian-style restaurant, gentleman’s lounge and ballroom) made us feel that we’d been zapped back in time by several decades too was an unexpected but wonderful bonus. The only slight hitch was that I didn’t want to leave….

Want to know what I've been up to over the last few weeks? It's been a whirlwind, but an abbreviated version of my activities includes:

Ice Cream at The Cockpit

The most wonderful clubnight in all of Yorkshire (and maybe even the world), DJ'ed by two of my favourite chaps and involving copious amounts of gin mixed with wine, the hotpants playsuit, daisy barrettes, and day-job meetings deliberately scheduled to coincide so my train fare and hotel were taken care of. Losing my voice after Amy and I shrieking the lyrics to Ballroom Blitz at each other at maximum volume, and finding a dozen tiny plastic monkeys stolen from a pub board game in my underwear the next morning. Peanut butter sandwiches at three am and realising how amazing my friends are. Dancing until my feet were sore and my stockings in tatters. Knowing that although I'll never live in Leeds again, I do adore those types of visits.

Other news: last Saturday in Manchester, two of my best friends got engaged:

Emma & Leanne: "IT'S A RUBY!"

GHB and I convened in Salford to get dolled up for celebratory Canal Street drinks:

Me & GB in Eden

 Early on Easter Monday morning GW (My big brother, only not really. But of all my current friends he's the one I've known for longest) collected me from Salford in his shiny red sports car, and drove me to Didsbury with the top down, blaring obscene glam rock for the entire journey. Including the part where the traffic lights stopped us right outside the church my Mum used to drag me to in days gone by, and I slunk as low as possible in my seat and tried to hide my bottle of revoltingly cheap white wine and surreptitiously turn down the song about spanking whilst my chauffeur cackled and sped us away as soon as the lights turned green. Once we arrived in East Didsbury almost the entire old gang assembled and we picnicked like nobody's business until it got cold and dark.

 It's taken me a while to recover from my jaunt to the North, not least because this past weekend I had a visit from Amy. This included a wonderfully quaint tea party and cake feast at Jess' 'Primrose Palace', cackling in the Fox until last orders with Z and quoting Guy Pearce in Factory Girl until I had to go to bed because my stomach hurt from laughing too hard. Then there was the Prodigy at Brixton Academy, dancing until 2 and nattering for the length of 2 night bus journeys across South London about how much we want to fuck Keith Flint.

After an action-packed March and April, this week me and Z will be concentrating on fussing over each to make sure we’re both shipshape and back to top form in time for our jaunt to the seaside this weekend. I can’t wait!

March, you sneaky devil. How the heck did you get in here? You’ve shown up far too early. Haven’t you any social etiquette? It’s bad manners to fluster me like this. Please wait outside, I’ll tell you when I’m ready. Then you can come in and make yourself at home. But not a moment before.

As you might have guessed from the brevity and frequency of my latest updates, I feel like my toes haven’t touched the ground since the start of 2009.

Cocktail Time!

But, it’s not like all this labouring has been in vain. Oh, no. Because today Sian’s latest lovechild, Domestic Sluttery, went live. I’ve been helping with this, and I have to admit that it’s looking good enough to eat. Even if I do say so myself. It’s a home and lifestyle blog for women with better things to do than cooking/cleaning/fussing, but that still have something of a fetish for fancy design, furniture, cocktails and homewares. And since it’s far more aesthetically delicious than any of my ramblings, maybe you’d be better off over there. At least until I get a minute or two to order my thoughts and update properly here. But that isn’t likely until at least April, so you’ve got plenty of time. And I’ll be here whenever you get back. Trying to flap and shoo March out of the door, and rewinding my calendar back to the start of the year.

(Image via HallieElizabeth)

Hi, Vox!

Jane Birkin, back in the day

I know I’ve been neglecting you, and for that I can only apologise. But I know you’ll forgive me once I tell you how busy I’ve been. Unfortunately, for now even that will have to wait, because my Mum’s in town to visit me, and tonight we’re off to the Barbican to see Jane Birkin.

I promise I’ll update properly soon, but in the meantime, you can read my latest articles over at BitchBuzz, or my review of Chicago for The London Word.

And now I’m going to go back to listening to filthy French pop, and crossing my fingers that tonight Brian Molko might come onstage to do his duet of Smile with Jane Birkin live.

How did it get to be almost March so fast?

(Jane Birkin pic from justagigolo's Flickr photostream)

I know it's hopelessly corny and self-indulgent, but this photo of Z and I in Berlin is my new favourite picture ever:

Smooching in the snow

And now I'm done with Vox for the day, and will let you get back to business. Promise.

So, given the chaos that the blizzards have unleashed, it looks like I timed my return from Berlin just right. We got home late last night, and at the moment, my garden looks like this:

The Ladywell Deep Freeze

With all flights in and out of Heathrow cancelled today, we made it just in time. Even though our epic journey from Heathrow airport to home took double the time of the journey from Berlin to London (including the hour we were sat on the runway at Tegel). But, could not be happier to have an excuse not to go into work today, and as long as I can spend the snow day in my pyjamas catching up with emails and writing, long may the severe weather conditions continue.

You can watch a video of my ever-talented housemates’ speaking about their Berlin exhibition here. Or, if you’re snowed-in and want some reading, my latest Bitch Buzz posts are about Melissa Panarello, and my massive crush on Jamie Babbit (the director of But I’m A Cheerleader).

The prettiest site you've ever seen...

At the start of last week, I launched my latest project: Aimee & Alicia. After almost a month of secretly beavering away on it, and even longer of letting the idea percolate and keep me awake at night, it’s now online for public viewing. It’s an ongoing fiction project, with the narrative alternating between the two title characters. Although it would of course be wonderful if people want to read it on an ongoing basis, hopefully it should also be helpful to me, and my methodologies when writing.  I’ve mentioned before how I am far too obsessive for projects like NaNoWriMo to ever work for me. I’m neurotic about editing. So, the idea behind Aimee & Alicia is that it will force me to keep moving forward with the narrative, and avoid getting bogged down in constantly going back to re-write the tiniest details. If you’d like to have a read, the first entry in the series is here. Any feedback gratefully received, but please be gentle; this is my baby and at the moment she’s only a few weeks old, so please play nice!

Did I tell you that I’m going to see Chicago next week for The London Word?

Or that later this month I’ll finally be meeting Cathi Unsworth in the flesh, at an event she’s doing at the Barbican?

I know I’ve mentioned Berlin on here already, but I can’t wait, so I’ll just say once more how excited I am. Fancy black and white photobooth pictures, cocktails at King Kong Club and Vietnamese noodles at Monsieur Vuong’s ahoy. Oh, it’ll be good to be back.

It’s a shaping up to be a busy month. And that’s without all the demands of the day job. But it’s all positive and exciting things that I’ll be up to. Maybe it’s because we’re now we’re almost two weeks into 2009; I can stop being such a scrooge about New Year and get cracking on the good stuff.

Berlin photobooth posing, Spring 2006

I haven’t mentioned yet that Poppycockney has closed. This is sad, and Sian has explained it better than I can over at Sianyland. But I’m not too upset, because during its short life I made some cool and fascinating new friends, and achieved a lot that I’ll be proud to link back to. And it’s closure does mean I’ll have more time to devote to other projects Some of which you’ll find out about soon.

I probably haven’t told you lately how much I loved Francesca Lia Block when I was younger. You can read about that over at BitchBuzz. And I haven’t told you yet what the ideal soundtrack to my life would be, like I promised Sian I would. At some point I will, promise. But not right this second, because I can’t stop listening to my latest obsession: Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen. So, for now, you’ll have to wait. Instead, here's some photos of me posing like an idiot in Berlin. Don't say I don't spoil you.