Bring on the Pink Paper - Long Live the Weekend FT

Those of you who have read this blog for any length of time (that’s you, Mother) will know I am a big fan of the weekend UK based Financial Times. It takes until mid morning for it to hit the shelves of my two local newsagents and I skip home, clasping it to my chest. It’s very rare I don’t find an article that either interests, amuses me or makes me think – and sometimes all three at once – you can tell when this last phenomenon has happened by the furrowed chimpanzee brow look of concentration on my face.

This week’s edition of the pink paper was a real winner, I found an article on beading in fashion (Thank you from Drama Queen No. 2’s Textiles project) plus an article on Aboriginal art in the Northern Territory that features Lords’s Safaris, run by Sab Lord the charismatic character with whom we had the most fabulous day in Arnhem Land in October, that left everyone from truculent teens to blasé adults open mouthed in amazement at the Aboriginal Art that decorates the rocky outcrops like life blood running through the veins of the land.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/126a99f4-8fd2-11e1-98b1-00144feab49a.html#axzz1u21Ei4Bf

The best thing about the paper is that thanks to last weekend’s edition I now have a new life goal. The article ‘Let’s do lunch!’ by Matthew Engel chartered 18 years of the weekly lunch date between an FT writer and someone who is probably best described as a person of interest, coming from any sphere, from fashion designers to business tycoons to artists for example, this week’s luncheon guest is Anish Kapoor, the British artist. Engel recounts the story of Gavin Ewart a 79 year old British poet, who had such a good lunch with writer Nigel Spivey that as Spivey wrote in his article, “We departed the Café Royal in moderately straight line.” Spivey put Ewart on a bus and wended his own merry way, only to receive a phone call the next morning from Mrs Spivey who said, “There are two things you need to know. The first is that Gavin came home yesterday happier than I have seen him in long time. The second – and you are not to feel bad about this – is that he died this morning.”

So there we are, new goal, to reach such exalted literary heights to warrant a lunch invite from the Financial Times in my comparative old age, and to embark on a fabulously enjoyable lunch such that I expire happy - on second thoughts perhaps the expiration bit should be optional?

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/930857a0-8d3d-11e1-8b49-00144feab49a.html#a