Roland Garros Predictions

I don't usually make my Grand Slam predictions this early in the tournament. I'm fleetingly more accurate around the last sixteen, but as I just packed my Lacoste gear in preparation for heading to Paris for the tennis tomorrow, I'll give it an early go.

Continuing with my trend of not choosing Federer to win, because it's just too easy of a prediction. But I truly don't think he'll crack the clay this year - the tournament is Nadal's to lose, so I'm backing him. Watch out for Baghdatis and Canas though, they're both playing well.

As for the women, I think Justine Henin will defend her title (which is too bad, simply because I dislike her). If Sharapova wasn't still dealing with her injured shoulder, she'd be in with a good chance, but I think she'll have a better tournament at Wimbledon. Dark horse is Serena Williams; she could surprise here at the French Open...again. Will be smelling the clay on Saturday.

Things I Currently Love v.5

• This past Friday night was all about Jack Daniels and dancing and cheap Chinese food. It was a much needed break from work monotony and I managed to allow myself a full day of recovery (because I'm old now, apparently) without feeling guilty about all the work I should have been doing instead. My new favourite quote was also born during this night out when my good friend said, "Sarah, most people find our personalities abhorrent. I choose to celebrate them."

• At the British Library, there are staff members who walk up and down the aisles of desks checking for banned materials or improper use of the collections. I am currently writing about fetishism and photography, so my desk was covered in books and photographs of pornography. Every time a staff member walked by my desk, they sloooowed down. Snicker.

• I think I was the last person on earth to see The Lives of Others. I'm not averse to seeing films by myself in the theatre, I do it all the time. But I kind of wanted a night out with wine and a good flick and interesting conversation. What to do? Ask who wanted to see it on my Facebook status, of course. I couldn't stop laughing that I was arranging my social life via Facebook - what a terrible cliché. But alas, it worked and the film (as you can see from the sidebar) was tremendous.

• It finally feels like summer is gearing up! I'm booking tickets to summer theatre runs, soon it will be time for tennis and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, fresh strawberries will be at the Borough Market and fruit pies will be offered in the bakery, and it will be time for Pimms on the patio.

Cygnets in the City

How about some cuteness today? I took this video a couple of days ago as I walking through Hyde Park, on my way home from the library. After a day of filling my head with academic nonsense, spotting these cygnets with very protective parents (only slight alarm when mum came out of the water towards me...have you ever seen a swan attack?) was such a treat.

Reading Stack

Boing Boing pointed out this cool Flickr group called Reading Stack. Here's my first one.

Place: Bedside table in Toronto loft

Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. New book by my favourite writer. Reading it very slowly.
Lonely Planet Cambodia. Researching for potential trip. Travel reading excites me, but also makes me sleepy, and isn't a huge intellectual investment. Great for bedtime reading.
Complete Plays by Sarah Kane. I saw Crave over the weekend and was re-reading it before the performance.
On Photography by Susan Sontag. Still reading it and using her ideas for my thesis.
Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill. I picked this up a couple of days before I left London - it was my transatlantic airplane reading. Short stories are good for this.
Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin. A signed copy was waiting for me in my loft when I walked in from the airport. A gift from a friend. Except that it is signed to both of us, so it's a shared custody kind of situation.

The Best Of Both Surfaces

They called it The Battle of Surfaces. A tennis court made of half grass and half clay to host the world's best grass courter and clay courter. It was played today with Nadal just beating Federer, in what looked like a very cool match.

I just love that this was played - it's one of those moments where someone must have thought: Wouldn't it be cool if we did this? And then this fun concept was actually turned into reality. It has also heightened my excitement for this summer's tennis. For the first time I'll be playing my own version of Battle of the Surfaces, as I'm attending both Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Such different atmospheres at these tournaments - it will be interesting to do them just weeks apart. Predictions to come, as usual.

I Hate Banksy

I've blogged about Banksy and his book previously. Not everyone loves Banksy, however. I took this photograph on Brick Lane - awesome. In other Banksy news, one of his murals was recently painted over by Old Street tube station. The BBC reported that an "iconic Banksy" was covered up. Banksy iconic? Ummm. Caravaggio? Yes. Picasso? Yes. Banksy? Really pushing it.

Spa-aaahed in Montreux

What to write about a weekend at the spa in Switzerland? It kind of speaks for itself. But to describe it briefly - it was two days of going from sauna to massage to steam room to facial to swim to lying in the sun under the Alps.

And then wandering along the shore of Lake Geneva, stopping to smell the flowers and eat cheese and escargot and drink copious amounts of French wine. It was a weekend of convenience - meeting with good friends who happened to be in Geneva - that turned into a weekend of blissful convalescence. (I promised them that I would write that we were convalescing.) More self-explanatory evidence in these photographs. The lake, the mountains, the remanents of our breakfast in the midst that view. Life is too good sometimes.

Week in Wonders

Wonderful: Equus by Peter Shaffer at the Gielgud Theatre. I expected the play to be good, but I didn't expect to be completely blown away by the production, which I was. That Harry Potter kid sure is good. Really, Daniel Radcliffe gave a virtuoso performance which is even more remarkable given that it's a rare feat to upstage Richard Griffiths on stage. The play was worth seeing just for the horses, which were performed by some wicked dancers. Gorgeous costumes and some pretty amazing fancy footwork - it made for a spellbinding couple of hours.

Not so wonderful: For the first time in seven years, as I walked down a busy London street, one of those bus tour operators tried to hand me a pamphlet. He thought I was a tourist. The horror.

Even more wonderful: Heading to Montreux, Switzerland tomorrow for a spa weekend with good friends. Wine, massage, good conversation, and the Alps. Not to mention Swiss efficiency, which I love.

Love Is In The Air

Do you ever have one of those days? One of those days where everything feels good? You wake up after a good sleep, the weather is to-die-for gorgeous, you burst into life with a delicious coffee and with the whole day ahead of you, think: What would be wonderful today?

So you head into East London and wander around Spitalfields Market and buy pretty jewellery and some brilliant art, sampling every olive and chocolate brownie on offer. Then you stop next to the sign that tells you Love Is In The Air and The Espresso Smells Fabulous for another coffee and watch the crazy world walk by. Heading over to Brick Lane you don't buy a peacock feather from the man with the wicked dreads, but you do stop to admire them, and then the smell of sizzling curry becomes too much and you gorge yourself on the best Bangladeshi cuisine in town. And now before your dinner plans with friends you sit in a sunbeam in your flat and have a cup of tea while the stack of Sunday papers sits at your feet, still waiting to be read. Do you ever have one of those days?

The Lady From Dubuque by Edward Albee

Tonight I saw Edward Albee's The Lady From Dubuque at the Haymarket Theatre. Reviews for the play were really mixed, so much so that had Maggie Smith not been starring in it, I probably would have given it a miss. Which would have been such a shame, as I thought that the production was excellent. (I wonder if the fact that the original run of The Lady From Dubuque on Broadway in 1980 only lasted twelve days still affects reviews of the play today.)


Michael Billington wrote that he was "simultaneously tantalised, intrigued, and entertained" by the play. I would agree and also add "irritated" but this is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean irritated in the way you sometimes wish George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would just shut up and calm down and stop making their guests squirm, but really, you don't want the chaos to stop. I'll call it the "Albee Irritation" and will admit that I enjoy it. And Maggie Smith was brilliant...of course.

My So-Called Life v.3

A different city and a different desk, but the same old story. Still dependent upon the nalgene water bottle and the loosleaf pads. But I have a glorious window to work next to at the moment and I have the finish line in sight. Still a couple of months away, but I can now start letting my mind wander toward post-PhD themes. (And I can envision a time I will not be covered in papercuts from all of these articles and chapter drafts and file folders.)

I Read, I Hear, I Watch

Reading the brand spanking new novel by Dan Rhodes, Gold. Rhodes wrote one of my favourite books, Timoleon Vieta Come Home, which is probably the book I give most often as a gift. If I had his talent for making the reader cry with hilarity and then continue crying a few pages later from emotional nausea, I would give up my day job. (That is, of course, if I had a day job.)

Listening to Jarvis Cocker's solo album. With a song title "From Auschwitz to Ipswich" and another song with the catchy refrain "Fat children stole my life" - how could you not love it? And also, thanks to John's best-of-2006-mix, I was introduced to Hello Stranger and their self-titled album is spinning furiously on my ipod.

Watching Friday Night Lights. A show about high school football in Texas, you scoff? I'm telling you - this show is wonderful. Don't believe me? Give 'er a google and see all the critical acclaim for yourself. It reminds me a lot of My So-Called Life: that sort of angst that doesn't seem pretentious because it's layered, and still has humour in its pain, and presses your own buttons. But unlike My So-Called Life, will Friday Night Lights last more than one season? I'd love to see more, but maybe its brilliance would then be lost. Tough one. Watch it.