It has been a long time since I left Australia behind for what was planned to be a year and has now almost ticked in to 7! Not at all what I intended. It seems no matter how much I plan for the minutiae of life it is the big life decisions that I completely fail to have any impact on.
At the moment I am truly trying to answer the question: time to be home?
How do you know when it is time? How do you know what the next job should be?
Any advice gratefully received!
Posted in Living in London
Sundays come with such a bitter sweet edge that develops over the course of the day. I don’t think it is just me.
The mornings are lovely. You have had over 24 hours to do as you please, to see friends, to read the newspaper and sip coffee. As the day goes on you get ever closer to this very time that I am tapping out this blog.
Outside is black, dinner has been had and you start to think about the week ahead. The list of meetings that will consume, the tasks that aren’t fun but need to get done and all those other things that will suddenly become important.
It is not inspiring.
Ever had the feeling that you have missed the detail in the invitation, slightly misjudged the dress code or possibly laughed at a joke that no body else thought was funny?
The first birthdays, and those that follow, feel just like this. I come without any of the requisite accessories. No husband-partner-boyfriend. No 1-2-3 year old. No sign of pregnancy. No gross stories about bodily fluids or advice about mothercare bargains.
My friends are lovely, they make me feel welcome and goodness knows there should be an event to mark the survival of both the parent and the child!
But…It is just like turning up at a football match in 6inch heels and a ball gown!
I smell like a football team – not because I have been working up a sweat, or have been wearing my lucky socks for a season….. but during my slumber last night I appear to have strained some vital muscles and twisted those facet joints just a little to fast. And now can I not twist, turn or tilt my head!
So I have been popping the ibuprofen and slathering my neck in deep heat. It is interesting…. I had a tube of none stinky cream but really it is not quite the same. There is definitely a placebo effect just in that smell. Menthol. It is like comfort food for the muscular strain!
With any luck I shall be back to full range in the c-spine in two sleeps time….
It is amazing the way we combine and create words nowadays isn’t it? Twenty years ago the caramel-latte didn’t exist nor the e-mail or pretty much tonnes of words that we now splash about in our sentences on a regular basis.
Well I have a new one for you… cardio-lates. It is an hour of action and sweat , where your legs end up quite wibbly and you think it is quite possible to have your heart explode from your chest.
The Cardio part is a tortuous 30minutes on an exercise bike turning up the resistance and being told to “go-faster-stand-up-sprint-sit down-1-2-3-4- up-sprint”…… and then if that wasn’t enough you move across to do the “lates” part on some giant rowing machines (reformer beds) with ropes and weights…. yikes! However, the worst part, and there is a worst part, is the mirrors. Generally they are not my friend in a whole bunch of situations – bathers shopping, jeans purchases, the hairdressers when your hair scrapped back and your nose looks enormous… these mirrors are the pits.
Not only do they appear to make your thighs look GIANT they make your head look tiny! You appear to be a bright red sweaty Henry Moore sculpture.
Anyway, I am pretty certain that this new word and its associated actions are going to deliver me abs of steel and maybe a gravity defying rear end! Well we can all but hope that something good comes out of it!
……it was honestly….. hot hot hot in London… well for at least 36 hours I think.
I have learn’t in the last few years, that it is important to grab that sunbeam. Strip off. And expose all of that blotchy white skin to the world! It is truly horrific. All of that white flesh and wobbly bits spread over ever green space imaginable.
It would also be true though that men in this country don’t seem to mind! It is as they are so pleased to see those legs reappear, that cleavage plunge and bare arms that they twist those cervical joints to the absolute limit. And by some miracle don’t see the veins and cellulite!
The sun has now gone. Bummer. However, I have now also living here long enough to hope that the cloud will lift, and I will be able to dive into my bikini and bask in the sun in the local park at least once more before the end of August!
So, it has been an age since I have made a little note on this page. Mainly this is because I have been working, working, working. And that makes me boring, boring, boring!
It is important to say that what I do is not boring but goodness when it becomes the main thing that you do, the definer of your person it is not a nice place to be. We are all like this – some just have another dimension which is a husband or baby. But basically I think we all work to hard and absorb the things we miss by numbing ourselves with busy-ness.
Sad.
Goodness Paris is such an amazing, pretty city. The Land of the 3 Cs – cafes, croissants and calories!
One of the greatest joys of living in London is the ability to pass beneath the channel and pop in Paris in a matter of hours.
Compared to London everything feels so much calmer and in fact more uniform in a way. The houses all match, the bridges are all very symmetrical (no crazy Millennium bridges here) and there is not one blade of grass out of place in the many sun filled squares. The women are generally very chic and the whole world is designed for strolling. Even the police sirens have a slower tempo as they move about.
The reason for this little sojourn is that my DC cousins are over for a few days with their little people. So tomorrow we are hitting La Tour de Eifle – well why not – and probably sneaking in more than one Crepe and at least deux boules of glace. Yummy!
It is great to be away from work and not connected at the hip to my computer… must dash sunshine and calories to be consumed!
Last night I went along to a rather posh event held at The Mansion House, host by the Lord Mayor – goodness knows how it happened but who can turn down such a fancy request!
It took a significant degree of coordination to turn around normal post work mood into glam black tie affair. Although it was achieved in a speedy 30mins. However, it did not go completely smoothly…… For this occasion I had snuck into the shops and bought a new little off the shoulder number which had a zip of industrial proportions that ran all the way down the back of the dress……
What I hadn’t realised is that the zip was capable of unzipping as I walk….. so there I am pleased I have morphed into something resembling presentable heading for the tube…. and slowly but surely the zip is unzipping…. from the bottom up…. now normally the giant winter coat would hide this but last night it was mild, sunny and it was possible to carry the coat! About 200 metres from the flat I thought people were looking at me funny, felt around the back and that little zip had unzipped all the way to my waist! Joy. There I was flashing my sensible undies to all in Lupus street and the spanish restaurant on the corner!!
After a quick contortion the zip was tamed, the coat was on and I had retreated to do some quick safety pin placement….. and the dress dysfunction was solved!
How Embarrassing!
Bloody hell – life has been busy. A neglected blog is but one symptom! I have had a lovely stream of visitors from Canada and Ireland – I have shopped and shopped, and have been to films, plays, musicals. And last weekend managed to skirt some riots! Went along to the Sanctuary with my Canadian and floated about the day spa in bathers, robe and 2 bottles of fizz.
It has been lovely but goodness good to be back and able to breath
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