So Long Ingmar

I can't even begin to tell you how exhausted I am...what a night!

As you will see there are two Issue 13 1/2 covers, this is because our favourite gloomy Swede, Ingmar Bergman just passed away at the age of 89 (weep) and we decided, 3 hours before the print deadline, to change not only the cover but the whoooollllle magazine.
Off came Werner Herzog (Graziella is devastated, she put a lot of work into her Aguirre: The Wrath of God photo story, but no fear, we shall reinstate him next month) and on went Bergman.

We dedicated the whole issue to him, a loony idea and commercial suicide I know but sometimes you have to follow your heart and I know, Weekend Birdie's not exactly OK, but if we lose a few readers this month it shan't matter, I shall just throw a bit more money at it next month and we shall be back on form.
Big sigh...we are all in mourning here at Weekend Birdie HQ. Ho-hum.

Gasp!...Just realised something...calling it issue 13 1/2 didn't make a jot of difference after all, what bloody bad luck.

Original draft cover

Pippa's Icons #3 - Jean Seberg

Need I say more...

Tagged by a bunny!

The divine (but ever so slightly cuckoo) Fifi Lapin (she’s a rabbit you know) tagged me, which means I have to reveal seven random facts about myself on this here, my personal weblog. Ho-hum…here goes…Gosh! I really don’t know if there’s anything I haven’t already told you…ummm…

I was the under 12s ukelele champion of Great Britain 1978. I was on Blue Peter. I got Lesley Judd’s autograph and Shep pooed on my shoe.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with the Mitfords and used to imagine I was a long lost sister.

I have a small collection of early Picassos that I keep in a vault in the bank. Don’t tell anyone.

Jake Gyllenhaal once asked me out for a drink. I said no because Kirsten (blimey!) is a good friend of mine and I know she’ll never truly be over him.

My middle name is Genevieve, after my mother’s favourite film. Not very romantic to be named after a car but hey-ho.

I’ve been featured on The Sartorialist like 17 times.

Oh yes…I’m having a boy!

Doctor's orders

Been overdoing it lately so my baby guru said I need to take a week off. Plus, topshop are having a sale and it'll take at least a week to go through the racks.
Back soon, ta-ta. x

Wowy!

Wowy! as Maribel would say...what an amazing wedding that was.

It was a two-tier wedding which seems to be all the rage these days...no-one has a one hour wedding in a church anymore. So, first we all flew to Morocco to Ouarzazate for the small evening boho desert wedding; I say small, we were 130. They'd set up these huge Bedouin tents and Maribel and Esteban appeared over the dunes on white horses. We all clapped and fireworks went off. They stayed on the horses for ages. They had to do all their vows up there and everything. Maribel said she had a very sore bottom afterwards. Luckily it was an evening do or else we would all have died of heat exhaustion. My blessing was not happy.

The next day we flew to Madrid for their official wedding (700 people). It was at the Catedral de la Almudena, which shouldn't strictly have been allowed but her husband Esteban is a distant cousin of the Royal Family or something, plus the Pope said it was OK so hey-ho.
The reception was at the Casa de Madrid, which is only in Conde Nast Traveller like every month. We had a right old knees-up...Gwen Stefani jumped out of a cake! And I don't mind telling you, the Olsen Twins were hammered!

Anyway, feeling muy retro since I saw some dear little Italian school children on the tube with Invicta rucksacks (my, they still really love those things), so I think I'm going to go to bed, listen to the Betty Blue soundtrack and weep a little.

Email from mdlc

To:pippa@weekendbirdie
From:maribel-de-las-casas@vavavoom
RE:besitos!


hola p
you can believe i am married at the weekend? so sorry i am so quiet at the moment but so busy with esteban and his mother - ooh la la - planning all the things.
anyway you must to come to the chicken night (so strange this term) i have on friday. my friend blanca will to telephone you to say you the details but will be so especial night. how is your stomach - i'm sure so big now.
anyway all is perfect. celine will sing some jazz and weather is so sunny and hot now. my dress is so beautiful pippa i can't wait you see it.
o dios mios pippa, i am too busy now with massaje and pedicure and hair etc etc.

besitos
bel

x

Interlude - Graziella's Top Pop Picks!

Blah

Everything's a bit blah. Had a few meetings at the ICA recently and they're all 'Wow!' about the show but I don't feel it's working, it's just not cohesive, you know? I thought we had everything straight, Parker Posey Eating a Strawberry on the left, Mark Ruffalo Doing Sudoku on the right, Lou Doillon Walking Her Cat on the far wall...all fabulous. Then Vanessa Paradis Chasing a Bagel Down a Hill threw it all out of whack and since then, nothing's working.
Plus I've got Nancy emailing me about whether I'm using one of the pictures from her Lovely Legs shoot (um...no!) and even Natalie, who is so over-exposed at the moment it's crazy, asked me if her Vanity Fair shoot is gonna be in there! The cheek! Then I'm soooo behind with issue 13 1/2 it's ridiculous and it's MDLC's wedding at the weekend which I know will be physically exhausting, if from the air kissing alone.

Ho-Hum...I need a little Pippa time...and that doesn't include doing my birth rehearsal because if I have to visualise my cervix opening one more time, I think it actually will and my blessing will pop out all over Ludo Jansdotter's new Paul Smith rug.

I seem to be complaining a lot at the moment. For that I apologise. I'm going to bed with a large mug of Charbonnel et Walker and a Radio 4 podcast. Postmodern.

And a hoot at that!

What a show, what a show and a hoot, at that!
Had a lovely time with Ma and Gracie; a super lunch at LUNCH* and then a glorious spa , followed by a hot stones massage, flotation and Indian Head massage at Glo(w). By the end of it, my dopamine pathways were so open I was utterly drunk, all of which added to a fabulous evening at Loretta's new show, which again is soooo clever. Who else could turn an unknown beat poet's short story about a gas station romance into an interpretative dance? And not just one dance mind you; there was classic disco, street jazz, the polka, highland fling, pagan flag-waving and of course the pogo...and then we all joined in during the audience participation 3-legged merengue. Nancy's soft rock ballet stole the show of course...I simply cannot understand how she hasn't been snapped up by the William Morris Agency or something.

Then we all dashed over to Voltaire for Vodka Highfalutins (alcohol free for me please) and more polka. I don't mind telling you I was absolutely done in!

The poster

Loretta's new show opens tomorrow.

Oh the ennui

Well I've been absolutely snowed under. Issue 13 1/2 (I know it's a gimmick but I can't face the worry about unlucky number 13 and all the boring comments) is vaguely underway.
I've had to give Graziella more responsibility and so far she has been to three Werner Herzog films and a Slovakian ballet so there's hope. She's completely in love with my typesetter Toby Van Cleef, which is a slight distraction but I've decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Oh yes, I passed Progressive Urdu level 3 with flying colours! What a relief.

I am starting to feel a tad heavy and unattractive (oh the ennui) so Ma and Ptolemy's girlfriend Grace are coming up at the weekend to take me out to lunch and then for a pampering somewhere. Divine with a capital D!

Weekly planner

As I said, I'm taking this blessing very seriously indeed.

Lovely

What do you think of 'Lovely'? As a name I mean. Do you think it's a bit much? I don't think Ludo will like it since he's stuck in the 'old Norse' section of 1000 Baby Names. I wonder how we will ever agree. Lovely is for a girl by the way, not a boy. No, that would be silly!

Anyway, of to meet Natalie for a room temperature water at the Brick Lane greasy spoon.

Issue 12

Gazpacho

I'm in one of my tizzies! Having people over for gazpacho tonight, then we're all going to a Folk-Thrash bash in Tooting of all places (where the hell's Tooting?). So I've got to go down to my Spanish deli in Soho to pick up ingredients. Then I've got to swing by B-Store to pick up my Karen Walker playsuit that'll be ever so comfy-cosy for my growing bump this summer and I've still got to fit in half an hour self-hypnosis for Gowri, my baby guru, and she'll know if I haven't been practising.
Ahhhh!...Soup spoons! I knew I'd forgotten something.

Oh barnacles!

Hmmm...so much for Ludo massaging my sacral iliac, I spent most of last night massaging his calves after the Marathon. So glad it's over. He ran it in around 3 and a half hours which is a little slower than he'd hoped because he passed a darling little antique shop somewhere near Greenwich and stopped to have a look. And I'm currently scraping barnacles off a bit of old driftwood he picked up by the Thames that he's going to turn into some kind of distressed sculpture.
Very distressed if you ask me.

Who's Jorge?

TO:pippa@weekendbirdie
FROM:loretta@yellowclog
RE: Who's Jorge?

Who's Jorge? You know, my Romanian beau. I know his name is Bogdan, but we really can't have that and he doesn't seem to mind being called Jorge, so hey ho.

Loretta x

Jorge

TO:pippa@weekendbirdie
FROM:loretta@yellowclog
RE: Jorge

Having a gay old time with Jorge. I've managed to squeeze him into The Gay Guy Drinks Coffee - an interpretative dance. He's going to play the balalaika during Nancy's soft rock ballet.

Loretta x

Cleansing

Well, I reluctantly did Nancy's Wyoming shoot. Got paid a pittance but it's nice to do a friend a favour every now and again and it wasn't exactly a stretch.
Off to see Gowri my new baby guru later. She thinks I need to cleanse my uterus so I've had to cut out my triple whipped double choca mocha vanilla lattes. Bums. Then Ludo's got to massage my sacral iliac for half an hour. I'm taking this blessing ever so seriously, in case you hadn't noticed.

Ouch!

Ouch! Keep bumping into Ludo's Mies Van Der Rohe Barcelona chair. Oh well, it's not all bad, I've just spent an hour in the spa downstairs while Ludo's out training with his best friend Giovanni and Jaarko...only 2 weeks till the Marathon!

So guess who was at antenatal yoga today? No, not Zooey Deschanel, although I am meeting her later at 1920's Photo-montage Propaganda (intermediate). No, it was Margot! I didn't even know she was with child but I suppose it has been a while. Anyway, you wouldn't know, she's still stick thin and not a little odd. There was some chit and then some chat and then some chit-chat...I do hope it doesn't get awkward.