Hello Could I be better at planning ahead? Yes. For instance: I have a solo show of my magnolia pics in London next week, and only now am I announcing it. “Save The Date!”, he says, with two days to go. Cue hollow laughter. But there we are.
I’ve been planning this for years. Each spring - more or less before anything else comes out - the magnolias go ping! with their great prehistoric lightbulbs and I wander around the streets of Hampstead making pictures of them. I think to myself: I should put on a show! But then comes the wind, and the rain. The magnolias lose their flowers. And my attention wanders to the next thing. ​ This year, I decided to Do Something About It. I went to Burgh House, in Hampstead. It’s a beautiful old Georgian House with a gallery at the back. It happens also to be the place where I had a party to celebrate my engagement, four and a half billion years ago, so it means a lot to me. The nice people at Burgh House said the gallery was available either in mid-Feb or late April. And for FOUR weeks I procrastinated. ​ Should I do the show TOO EARLY (before the magnolias flower) or TOO LATE? Last Wednesday (with six days to go) I said, Yes, please, I’ll take it next week. ​ One of the first things I did was invite the local magnolia keepers whose trees have given me so much pleasure. I wrote a note, stuck a photo of their own particular tree on the envelope, and went out with beloved schnauzer Peanut to hand-deliver them. More soon. ​
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This woman, in this room? Unimaginable just four years ago. She was in prison, in Iran. And - more trivially - I couldn’t have dreamed that I would be doing a solo show of my art. (Hello Reader. This is my newsletter.) You may recall that in 2021 Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard went on hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in London. He was protesting at the UK government’s failure to get his wife released. I went to see him. I wasn’t on assignment or anything. It was just me,...
A weird thing happened after I booked the venue for my solo art show: blood drained from my fingers, turning them yellow. They tingled painfully. I took photos to show my wife: After an hour, the blood rushed back and the fingertips went purple. (Hello Reader. This is my newsletter.) If you don’t know already, I’m doing my first-ever solo art show, at a gallery in Hampstead. I’ve loved it, but also panicked a lot. I think that must explain the fingertip thingy. Tomorrow is the last day....
I got some terrific replies to yesterday’s email. Thank you for being so kind, and funny, and wise. I’ve done a lot of the things I need to do. Other things will simply have to remain undone. I’m taking the pictures to Burgh House shortly, where I’ll probably write a description of them all by hand and stick that on the wall too. I may make some videos, probably for my Instagram, but who can tell. Great News This morning I received a Whatsapp message from K., a reader of this newsletter who...