142nd Post - February Overview

Finally, here are my recommendations for February, hope you enjoy them and find them interesting to watch, listen and eat. In the meantime, February has a lot to offer especially in London, so head this month and take in all the best new events, exhibitions and best events in the capital.

There’s an old poem by Neruda that I’ve always been captivated by, and one of the lines in it has stuck with me ever since the first time I read it. It says “love is so short, forgetting is so long.” It’s a line I’ve related to in my saddest moments, when I needed to know someone else had felt that exact same way. And when we’re trying to move on, the moments we always go back to aren’t the mundane ones. They are the moments you saw sparks that weren’t really there, felt stars aligning without having any proof, saw your future before it happened, and then saw it slip away without any warning. These are moments of newfound hope extreme joy, intense passion, wishful thinking, and in some cases, the unthinkable let-down. And in my mind, every one of these memories looks the same to me. I see all of these moments in bright, burning, red. To me, love is one of the most powerful feelings in the world, it makes you crazy, its makes you do things you never thought you would do, it makes you feel things you never thought you could feel, it can make you so happy, confused, sad, beautiful but most of all love to me is RED.

Kew Orchid Festival

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is taking a voyage to China this February, courtesy of the latest annual mind-bending orchid display that takes over the iconic glasshouse each year. As ever, the exotic display will celebrate the natural beauty and biodiversity of its subject country: China is home to thousands of varieties of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides.  

Look out for sculptures of dragons and Chinese lanterns, as well as intricately woven plant installations. There’ll also be  ticketed after-hours events with live Chinese music, food, cocktails and dance performances.