Tag Archives: life

sunday

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.

birthdays

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!

 

 

nothing to say

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.

 

paris in the spring

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!

dress dysfunction

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!

 

breath

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

just add sunshine

So the sun was out yesterday and it would seem rising from all of the hotels and hostels were rows and rows, hundreds and hundreds of tourists.

So just like the daffs who are appearing in all of the parks we seem to be also seeing the blossoming of the tourist season!

shoes …. the musical

Okay – so something called “Shoes. The Musical” could go only one of two ways. Either unbelievably terrific or cringingly horrible.

The reality… something in between.

Sadlers Wells is the main dance theatre (there is probably a more correct term) in London. And all over the tube for months has been this enticing poster of legs and red shoes….so last night I went along to see if this was going to be the Shoe event of 2011. I should have taken more notice of the “hens party’s will love it” endorsement in the Telegraph but well… sometimes you just have to see for yourself!

Nuns singing about Manolo Blanhnik, Jimmy Choo and Patrick Cox while men in flesh coloured pants and  corsets moved liked cogs in a machine about them probably gives you some idea about why the audience split was 60% women, 30% gay men and 10% long suffering partners-boyfriends-husbands. We also had people dressed in lambs skin vests and espoused the comfiness of the aussie uggg and then a rather fantastic moses in Birkinstock sandels. Whats not to love or well cringe at really.

So would I recommend it….. nope but I am pleased to have seen really fit dancers complete a tap dance in 6 inch platforms!

 

potential peak?

Last night I made my way through the glooooom to The School of Life to consider my potential! They run all sorts of course and even conversation dinners, all done in a slightly quirky but thought provoking way. They are generally interesting as you meet people, complete strangers who challenge you as only strangers can. And with any luck you walk out with a small germ of an idea to mull over at least until you slide your key into your front door.

Yesterday eve though I couldn’t find my Potential. It had appeared to have got up and gone! I couldn’t do anything but feel cynical about the books they recommended, many of which I had read or were really people who had made shed loads of cash in their 20′s and could now make you feel guilty through their virtuous life spent recycling motorbikes or something similar. You will be relieved to hear that I kept my mouth closed, and did not rain anyone else’s blossoming potential.

There were people who were clear about what they dreamt of doing, what they need the push for by a group of strangers. Sadly I had nothing….. nothing to get a push for really. Primarily I think this is because I have made so many fundamental changes in the last few years – MBA, 3 jobs, a different country, new friends. It made me think that I had been busy and maybe it is okay to “chill out” or at least to chose a more simple and less work focused thing to sink my energies into.

The problem is what on earth would that be? How and where is that next potential peak? 

bathroom battles

It would seem that I am locked in one of the most baffling of bathroom battles. One that certainly requires persistence to be the final champion, the dominant user perhaps.

There are many battles to be had in the bathroom ..many that we are all to familiar with……. the Toothpaste Squeeze (some believe squeezing from the bottom is superior and have in the past been most disturbed by my random squeezing in my desire to be minty fresh), there are those that divide genders (the toilet seat goes up first and then down fellas!), the scrunch vs the  fold, the finger pointing about who needs to replace to toilet roll! Most certainly there are too many to mention here.

So, at the moment I am engaged in the over-under toilet roll battle with my house guest. I pop into the smallest room in the house and put the toilet roll so that the  paper comes over the top – so that it is easy to grab. Not tucked behind, near the wall. He heads in, sometime later, and switches it!

So I do feel somewhat surprised that my house guest is being quite so…… insistent…. in his preference for the under position in my bathroom. Continuing to make the switch despite my correction!

However, I guess I should be relieved that I have yet to go to the loo in the middle of the night and find my nether regions in contact with the chill of porcelain!