My friend Queenie invited 40 of her closest friends, all women, to a charming Italian restaurant in north London. The table settings were a study in pink with candy-coloured heart sponges, crowns, and wands.

Queenie’s husband Nick made a surprise appearance, gave a loving roast and then skedaddled home before the singalong got going – yes singalong.

Queenie, a psychotherapist and no, that’s not her real name, knows what makes her happy, what fills her cup. She’s confronting this transition to old, as Nick tactfully put it, by celebrating her birthday with only women – her 40 besties– and singing ‘You’re so Vain’, ‘Sugar, Sugar’, ‘Jolene’ and ‘Cecilia’ at the top of her lungs.

Queenie shows zero  signs of slowing down – she works really hard, follows all the latest fashion pages and is always making new friends. Her personality is as big as she is small. Here she is with Stretch last June.

When Stretch heard that not a single male made it onto Queenie’s guest list, he  made me promise that I wouldn’t do the same thing when I turn 60 in a decade or two. Maybe Stretch should take a leaf from Maurice’s book.

Maurice is married to Jessica, one of my long-time besties.

She turns 60 in a few days. Maurice insured that he was on Jessica’s guest list by throwing her a surprise party. Hard for her to argue with something she doesn’t know about. And what a surprise party it was.

Not only was it really fun hiding in the dark and shouting ‘Surprise’ to a stunned birthday girl, but I learned a lot about rocks, a secret passion of mine. The party took place in gorgeous, but trés hilly Dartmoor.

So while Queenie hosted her friends in a cosy, warm, wind-free London venue, Maurice chose to toss us out into the elements, more of a sink or swim feel, in south Devon, about a four hour drive from London.

Prior to our arrival in Dartmoor, Maurice had promised us- mostly middle-aged, not particularly in shape city dwellers- that there would be a choice between two hikes, one easy and one hard. We all knew which one we were choosing.

Sadly, there was a slight miscommunication, and only one hike was on offer- the hard one. Our tour guides for the day Debbie and Amanda led us  up hill after windswept hill, with Debbie (the chattier one although I wouldn’t call either chatty unless it was to do with rocks) – stopping frequently to point out a rock here, a rock there, an invisible rock in the horizon  and the story behind those various rocks or tors as they are called in Dartmoor.

Debbie also pointed out a significant ditch dating back to the Bronze Age or maybe the 18^th century, it was hard to hear with the gale force winds whipping past. I wasn’t quite sure if Debbie said this was a Norman ditch, or Norman’s ditch, but apparently, it was a must-see ditch.

I wouldn’t say this merry group of urbanites was ideally prepared for the rugged tors of Dartmoor. I had to borrow waterproof boots – two sizes too big- thick socks and a shell jacket. My city boots and cute red coat weren’t going to cut it on the muddy, windy terrain of south Devon. However, the hand warmers I found at the bottom of my handbag did prove useful.

Here’s Sandy using one to prevent hypothermia.

Maurice planned quite an elaborate lunch for us mid-climb at a lovely pub with a huge crackling fire, delicious roast chicken, gravy, fries and chilled Chablis.

Just kidding- we lunched  on ‘nature’s picnic basket’…

feasting on…

As we climbed the umpteenth hill, I asked another guest, Arabella, who had planned on taking the non-existent easy hike option what her favourite part of the day’s climb was:

Tea and I haven’t had it yet.

To be fair, Maurice’s itinerary was perfect for Jessica. Jessica is my one true hardcore athlete friend, the steeper the incline, the happier she is. And I wouldn’t call Jessica a foodie- Costco’s lasagna has been served at a dinner party or two. Like Queenie, Jessica is very curious, always up for a challenge, works hard and is a glass half-full kind of person.

She’s thrilled about this for example….

If this is the new face of 60, where do I sign up?

February, 2020

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Whoa, there’s a lot going on in the Big Apple over the next six months – Denzel Washington in An Iceman Cometh, Aaron Sorkin adapting To Kill a Mockingbird to the stage, Bette Midler tackling Hello Dolly.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted and I hadn’t left my chair. After a successful meditation, I calmed down and cherry picked. Women take centre stage.

On the small screen, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays savvy platinum blonde prostitute Candy  in The Deuce.  From the creators of The Wire, the fast-paced TV series is set in Manhattan’s seedy Times Square in the 70’s when the billion-dollar sex trade was on the rise, and Candy wants to get in on the action – without the help of the bejewelled, not always sweet as pie, pimps in her hood.

Battle of the Sexes starring Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs is a sport I will be spectating.

Like The Deuce, this film resonates now; earlier this year tennis legend and sports commentator John McEnroe claimed Serena Williams would rank 700^th if she played on the men’s circuit. And let’s not forget Trump’s comments about women – there to be grabbed.

Leaping from screen to stage, get your Downton Abbey fix with the revival of J.B. Priestley’s 1937 Time and the Conways at the Roundabout Theatre. Actress Elizabeth McGovern can’t wait to be a bad mom.

 I’m just so blatantly loving being this woman. She’s not somebody who is very emotionally intelligent or developed or mature. She’s not really grown up herself, so she’s an absolutely terrible mother. And you see the damage that she wreaks on her children, all done in the most unconscious fashion, never meaning to tear them down, to break them apart”,

Mc Govern tells the NYT.

Warm, foul-mouthed feminist Amy Schumer is starring in a new comedy by Steve Martin and directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks. Also starring will be fellow American comedian Keegan-Michael Key (of Key & Peele fame, also played “Luther” – Obama’s anger translator at White House Correspondent’s Dinner)

Meteor Shower takes a coastal Californian dinner party and lets it go very, very wrong.

I can’t wait to devour culinary queen Alice Waters’ long-awaited  memoir Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counter-Culture Cook.

The celebrated chef moved from a repressive household in suburban Chatham, NJ to UC Berkeley in 1964, the height of the Free Speech Movement. The bohemian lifestyle she discovered there formed the basis for Chez Panisse’s fresh and in season culture, revolutionary then, commonplace now.

I was a freshman at UC Berkeley in 1980, the same year Waters’ introduced her baked in-house Californian pizza drizzled with local ingredients. My boyfriend used to take me to  Chez Panisse’s cafe for pizza on  Saturday nights. The restaurant on the ground floor with its set menu was far too expensive and adult for us. But the homemade thin crust pizza upstairs was novel, mouthwatering and definitely impressed me.

I hadn’t grown up going to restaurants, no one did.  As a teenager I went to diners for a hamburger or grilled cheese sandwich. The only pizza I’d ever tried was from a NY chain called Ray’s where we burned our tongues gorging on greasy slices off of a paper plate. Then all of a sudden I’m being taken to this nicely designed cafe (I remember a lot of wood interiors)  with a pizza oven (!)  fresh mozarella and organic vegetables. On the same Berkeley street as Chez Panisse was a gourmet cheese shop and a homemade ice cream spot called Vivoli’s where we’d go post-pizza. It was a dazzling street for the times.

September 2017

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Miami is the ideal  long weekend break from my new second home, Manhattan – it’s a direct flight to clear blue skies and sandy feet. The city has great restaurants, throbbing nightlife, eye candy Art Deco buildings

and a whole cool Design District.

So what’s not to like? I suppose the woman in neon gold open-toed platforms, painted black toenails, glued-on lycra leggings, platinum braids and bubblegum lipstick on my dawn flight to Miami  might have something to do with it. Miami attracts all sorts of Americana, the good, the bad and the very tacky. I feel like an uptight alien or just someone who has lived in London too long. My existential crisis goes something like …

Who are these people?

Where are my people?

Do I have any people?

In moments of  panic, I seek counsel from Shomit Mitter who is much broader skilled than his therapist blog label attests. Nothing phases my West London-based guru who has degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge universities. I would recommend Shomit to anyone who has something troubling him (check out his on-line talks). Once I was so stressed out that instead of chanting my mantra, my gmail password kept popping into my head. Shomit’s instruction on how to be both “ruthless and obsessive” when stressed solved my problems quickly.

I emailed Shomit for some advice  on Miami, and here’s what he said.

 Everything has a soul, only sometimes it is very well hidden. The secret is to keep judgement out.

Hmmmm, I think I’d need longer than a four-day weekend to find Miami’s soul. I might be better off following  my boyfriend Stretch’s advice:

Don’t take Miami seriously. Miami is a place to go wild and crazy, throw caution to the wind. That’s what it’s all about. Frozen Margaritas in the afternoon, dancing on tables at night.

I think what Stretch really meant by going “wild and crazy” was what we actually did, namely Uber to the Everglades twenty minutes away, meet a total stranger in a gas station that sells big knives

and is surrounded by bored looking bikers, then have that stranger drive us to the shores of the Everglades where we meet another total stranger – Captain Ray – who then takes us out on his fan boat

for the next several hours to look for alligators. That’s what Stretch meant by going wild and crazy –  Fifty Shades of Green not Grey

Ever since we booked this weekend away, all Stretch could talk about was our Everglades Safari tour.

Meanwhile, I pretended it wasn’t happening. I even slept well the night before- that’s how good I am at pretending. Seeing alligators up close and personal has never been on my bucket list.

He’s got some serious teeth on him, says Captain Ray about Psycho Jack below.  I did not ask how Psycho Jack got his name. Funny, neither did Stretch nor his 15-year old son or teen friend.

Alligators can eat anything they can swallow whole. (this was supposed to comfort us/me) Now if that was a crocodile, we’d be in a whole heap of trouble.

A bit further on Captain Ray jumps into these alligator-infested waters to take  a photo of us.

My exact thoughts at the time:

Is he totally crazy? What happens if  Captain Ray gets snapped up? Where exactly are we? Stretch, do you know how to drive this boat? Does my cell phone work?

As usual, no one else on the boat seemed troubled. Or they’re all good pretenders, like me. I’m happy to report that Captain Ray did not get eaten. He jumped back on the boat, took us to another remote spot and then pulled out a knife. I wish I were kidding. He then started to trim some ‘sawgrass’ for us.

This here sawgrass, Captain Ray explained, the Indians loved it. They’d eat it like a Snickers bar. Here, try a bite. Stretch nibbles obediently

But this grass is real strong too. Its ridges are like a saw. The Indians, they’d use it to kill people.

At this point, it would be fair to say I wasn’t sure about Captain Ray.

But then he put his blade away and we went on a very pleasant boat ride home –  Home! Four letters I love. One thing I will give the Everglades is they are beautiful, vast and peaceful (if you can overlook what lies beneath).

The Everglades provide a welcome break from crowded South Beach.  It’s the largest subtropical wilderness in the US, a slow moving marshy river up to 60 miles wide, 100 miles long, flowing into Florida Bay.

Captain Ray may have scared me a tad at first, but once I realised he wasn’t going to kill me, I liked him a lot more and would recommend him and his tours.

Have lunch at century-old  Joe’s Stone Crab to complete the Floridian water-creature theme.

As soon as we got back to the 1 Hotel South Beach  I had a deep tissue massage at the zen Haybarn Spa, its first foray outside the UK,

to wash away any remnants of post-traumatic alligator disorder.

I like the 1 Hotel – its chic, eco-friendly (sublime wood surfaces throughout) and has an expansive fun roof terrace bar and a gorgeous pool.

My only quibbles – I was born with a silver quibble in my mouth – the hotel is too crowded (7am to reserve lounge chairs during peak times) and you need a PhD to work the elevators. But in my Goldilock‘s test of Miami hotels – the Edition too shiny white, Soho House too scene-y and claustrophobic, the 1 Hotel wins hands down.

Next on my wishlist is the Setai, which I have heard has good service and is the most serene of the South Beach bunch. The new Faena is super OTT opulent and exclusive. not to mention expensive. But if price were no barrier (Wouldn’t that be fun!) then the Faena would be fine, if only I could follow my daughter Kate’s advice;

Every time you see red imagine that it’s white.

and in the words of Shomit,  keep the judgement out.

March, 2017

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Herrera painted in relative obscurity in New York City for about seventy years. She’s quoted in one article complaining that the Museum of Modern Art kept going to Cuba to find artists.

 I was right here in New York. Why go to Cuba, for God’s sake?

Loyal to her throughout her career was Herrera’s dedicated husband of 61 years Jesse Lowenthal, an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School. He died before she’d sold her first painting.

There’s an old saying, Herrera is quoted as saying, if you wait for the bus, the bus will come. And I say yeah, I waited almost a century for the bus, and it came!

Herrera developed her distinct trademark style of sharp lines and contrasting chromatic planes in the late 1940’s. Her minimalist geometric signature style is recognisable by its simplicity and superb use of colour.

Herrera’s male contemporaries in the fifties and sixties – Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Barnett Newman – were getting lots of attention, attention that eluded her.

The fact that she was a woman and an immigrant played against her. But Herrera was undeterred. She loved what she was doing, she was and is dedicated to her vocation.

Herrera initially studied to be an architect which she credits with teaching her how to think abstractly and draw like an architect. She learned how to take away everything that was not crucial.

It wasn’t until her friend artist Tony Bechara put Herrera’s work in a group show in 2004 that people started to take notice.

Herrera who is now wheelchair bound still paints most days in the same Gramercy Park studio apartment that she has lived in since 1954.

Her day begins with  a cafe con lecche in the morning, drawing at her table by the window, breaking for a noonday skotch and water and returning to work after lunch. Reading through past interviews with Herrera, it’s clear that she is feisty, funny and wise. Here are some quotes I liked:

I never met a straight line I didn’t like.

Since I am famous my life is hell.

When death happens it will happen – it can’t be that bad if everyone is doing it

Don’t be intimidated about anything.

The Whitney is showing The 100 Years Show on Sunday, October 16th. It is a 30 minute documentary on Herrera that was a 5-time winner of Best Documentary Short when it aired last year. Or if New York is not on your itinerary this autumn, download it on Netflix.

Also not to be missed are the Herrera-inspired silk dresses from Narciso Rodriguez available in the museum shop or on-line.

They cost $330 and can be shipped fed ex int’l economy which takes 7-15 days depending on customs. The stunning exhibition runs through January, 2017.

September, 2016

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You sure that’s a good idea- we don’t speak Spanish? Stretch asked.

The place is supposed to be phenomenal. It’s the only fun thing I’ve booked. It’ll be great.

Not if we sleep through it it won’t. Never book a special meal – the kind you want to nonchalently boast about when you get home – after a long flight, especially where a non-refundable deposit and an inflexible maitre d’ are involved. Then Stretch evened things out by forgetting to rent a car. And then Stretch evened things out even more by telling the taxi driver in his best Spanish where to take us. Suffice to say that while the National Art Museum of Catalan on the outskirts of town was not where we intended to go, we liked it nonetheless.

It’s always good on a holiday to be prepared and have a just-in-case mantra – the one you learned when things weren’t looking so peachy.  ‘Life is a journey’ is my failsafe fallback. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve used it. Nora Ephron’s “Everything is copy” is another saviour.

Barcelona is a beautiful, vibrant city by the sea with glistening architectural eye-candy.  I really wish that I’d known Antoni Gaudí, genius master builder of Catalan Modernism – I think I would have really liked him. As he’s no longer around, I made do with his fab buildings which look as fresh and original today as they did a hundred years ago.  Below are a rooftop and a gate from Gaudi’s La Pedrera.

And that’s Stretch below, not Gaudi descending from the heavens.

The Cathedral of Barcelona began construction in 1298. Its central tower was not finished for another six hundred years. Builders!

The line snaked around the corner of  Gaudi’s most famous building, the Sagrada Familia. In the future we’re booking ahead.

Next stop was Mallorca where we stayed at one of those hotels that I’d go back to in a second. Owned by a Swedish-couple, Hotel Portixol overlooks the sea, has a stylish poolside restaurant, contemporary, clean, light-filled bedrooms,  and a laid-back, bohemian-chic vibe. Plus, it’s a pleasant 20 minute walk along the coast to Mallorca’s bustling capital city, Palma.  Be sure and request a room with a terrace facing the Mediterranean.

I had planned to do a bit of shopping in Palma in the the charming Old Town with its ancient buildings and leafy squares.

One shop leading  my list was Rialto Living, touted as one of Europe’s top lifestyle stores with 2,400 square feet of interior design, fashion, art, gifts, books and accessories all under one nifty roof.

Then Stretch told me about his five minute rule.

Why is it that straight men hate shopping, especially when it’s browsing, i.e. no set goal involved? Stretch looked like he should have been in Rio doing the 100 yard dash he was so speedy at Rialto Living. These pics were taken on the fly – literally. (try and spot lanky bf darting ahead.)

I pointed to a whole line of men waiting patiently outside a huge impressive looking Zara on Passei del Born. I’d heard good things about this particular Zara. Stretch glanced at the men sympathetically as if they were sad lions at the zoo.

When I saw how happy Stretch and his son were doing man things like bouncing behind a boat,

or hurling themselves off of a cliff  (Stretch’s back hurt from the boating adventure so he abstained)

I decided to channel my inner goodness from deep, deep inside me. As long as I didn’t have to commit hari-kari, I was happy to spectate. Life is journey, and here is the copy.

An area where our interests do align with the stars is the sport of eating and drinking. Our favourite night spot was La Bodeguilla, a chic wine plus food spot on Carrer de Sant Jaume,

the same cobblestone street as our next favourite dining discovery, Tast Club.

La Bodeguilla is a cosy restaurant with delicious food and an extensive, affordable wine list, while Tast Club (tip from my friend designer Willie Yeoward) is more about the chic interiors and hip atmosphere. The iberico jamon is delish at both.

While in Palma don’t miss the Miro Museum. Check out the Spanish artist’s perfectly preserved studio next door and contemplate how he created his magnificent works.

September, 2016

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