Forget The Shrimp, Honey

For those of you watching in black and white, the brown ball is next to the pink

2012-02-04T03:47:00.000-08:00

I've long been a fan of snooker. Don't ask me what the rules are because I don't know - it's the serenity of the game; the toc-toc of the white ball on coloured; the silent awe of the crowds and the true personality of the players - something lacking in many other sports. Well that and the fact that it's usually on late at night which helps lull me into a blissfull state of slumber.

It all began when I was a little girl. I was always a bad sleeper (I have the eyebags to prove it) and I suppose I used to wake up at 10:30pm or later and go bother my mum in the living room who would be watching a movie or some such thing. She would put the snooker on (or in the summer it was baseball - which I also like for the same reason and know as little about) in the hope that it would bore me to sleep. In fact it had the opposite effect.

So anyway, snooker has this warm childhood thing about it that stayed with me over the years and with which I have become slightly obsessed. I used to love the personalities like Hurricane Higgins or count dracula klone, Ray Reardon. Today the latest icon has to be Ronnie O'Sullivan. The Liam Gallagher of the game and he plays like a bastard. When I heard his father was in jail for murder, I needed to know more.

Count Dracula

So the Silverback got me his autobiography. And I was not disappointed. Turns out there are a lot of spooky coincidences - not so much between Ronnie and me, more circumstantial. For example, Ronnie and his dad run a lot of the sex shops in Soho. I work in Soho and spend every lunchtime picking my way past these very shops to get to Berwick Street for lunch. I work on the road where one of Ronnie's shop is - I've been in and bought a coaster - nothing too saucy. And no he wasn't there.

Ronnie also suffers from depression and is, as anyone who has watched him in the past, very open about it. Put it this way, you don't want to be playing him when he is in this mindframe (or rather you do since he tends not to play well at these times). But he seems to have tamed that side of himself. He is fiercely honest about his upbringing and his internal battles. It's inspirational.

Plus he's a bit of alright which always helps.

Maverick

Ignorance is bliss, even if it is a cop out

2012-02-04T03:18:00.000-08:00

Let me preface how I'm about to describe myself by saying, I have slayed the demons. Truly I have. I mean it took a lot of self delusion and other mind tricks but I haven't had a slump in well over a year and that to me means progress. However that doesn't mean I don't have depressive tendencies, it's just that they are no longer dangerously despondent, which is nice. What a lovely way to start a Saturday morning blog post. Bet you can't wait to read on. I mean if it's this uplifting at the outset, goodness only knows how much higher it could possibly take you.

It's just that lately I've been making the mistake of reading the newspapers and boy are they ever filled with despair and suffering. I stopped reading them a while back and now I remember why. Stories of child abuse, animal abuse and human suffering of unimaginable depths. I do sit there after reading these awful stories and think about how it makes me feel - how alien it all seems and try to look at the flipside of this. The fact that it's alien means it's really not part of my day to day existence and I'm grateful for this. We really do live in a sort of paradise in the developed world for the most part. Don't get me wrong, many of these awful stories are perpetrated by people who live in the luxury of the West. That just pisses me off. But for the most part, we don't know we're born.

For example, I was rumaging around my favourite vintage shop in Soho when I overheard the salesgirl (I say overheard, she was broadcasting it) telling her colleague how her mother was bi-polar and her father had abused her as a child - in lurid detail. I looked at her to see what an abused child grows up into. She was the size and shape of someone who has "issues". I felt terrible for her but I also knew she was lost to the part. She was enjoying telling the story. This is what you need to do to make the whole sordid thing palatable to yourself and those around you. I'm sure her guilty parents too had their fair share of childhood abuse - it's a well understood vicious circle and it takes a lot of courage to break the cycle because it means facing up to your reality. When it's that ugly, who really wants to?

So what can the rest of us do? The ones who have really done OK. Well, we can live our lives in an attitude of gratitude is what we can do and never miss the opportunity to be kind to someone. And I personally need to stop reading the news.

As I like to joke with my PR colleagues, I don't read the news, I MAKE THE NEWS...if you read the more niche publications of the technology trade press...sort of....ahem.

Operation Greenhouse

2012-01-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm having a retro moment - it's all in my head of course - where I might add, the best sensations live. It's Saturday night, I've come in from the cold which has come to whoop our asses from the east; The Beast from the East to be exact and it ain't in a partying mood. Bitterly cold winds from Siberia are menacingly whistling around the damp streets of West Hamstead; We're lucky to have made it home at all. Hair still wettish from the swimming pool - where The Lish has turned a watery corner and is now able to jump into the pool without aid (Hooray!) - we open the door to a roasty toasty home. I stop to check I am actually at the right address. Then I hear it: a supremely self-pitying sound of a sniffle. The Silverback is unwell everybody. Call an ambulance! Call the BBC! Get the editor of The Times to hold the front page! And when he isn't well he turns into the polar opposite of his usual Tundra temperature-loving self. No, tonight you can happily sit in a G-string and vest in any room of the house such is the average current inside temperature. Under no other circumstances would I ever be allowed to have a house warm enough to grow pineapples in. But hey, I am not complaining. I'm in heaven. It's shitty, dark and damp outside and I'm sitting tapping this drivel out in my shorts.

Adding to the lusciousness of it all is The Lish herself, come to join us in the humid tropics. Not one to waste the hot occasion, The Silverback has put on a load of washing which is now steaming in the heat. Since he isn't well - did I say? The Silverback is ill, he is too weak to fight his TV corner so Lish Losh gets to watch old school cartoons (Frosty The Snowman....how ironic!) while Sausage Fingers languishes on the couch as if just having awoken from a coma. And all of a sudden, I'm transported to my own childhood when Saturdays were all about sitting around together each sort of doing our own thing but united in silent comfort and familiarity.

Many a weekend I have sat in my jim jams watching Tom & Jerry while mum ironed in the glow of the lights shooting out of the TV. I didn't know it then but those evenings, it turns out, are some of the happiest days of my life!! And tonight for 5 minutes - I'm transported back there. It feels nice.

I guess, in the simplest way, the best things in life really are (almost) free (electricity and gas bill aside).

Make January stop please!

2012-01-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

My god January is dragging isn't it? I don't remember it being quite as drab last year but then I don't remember what I did this morning. I think everyone is aware of how utterly loathesome this month has been so far with its shitty sideways rain and pus coloured sky. What is the point of this month? I ask you? Mind you, people are trying their best. Just today the management (of the place where I work) sent an email round announcing lunch would be on them until payday - that's 3 days away and it may not seem like much but it is better than a kick in the teeth no?. We are to collect a five pound voucher from HR for each day whenever the fancy takes us. I guess watching staff slowly wither away on a diet of toast and baked beans was too much. This is in a company that provides free bread...so actually it would appear people are down to a budget of 23p per day; the price of a single portion sized tin. Jesus! Could it BE any more depressing?

Well yes it could. People continue to starve in Africa, others are being blown up in the Middle East and Asia and the number of homeless in Piccadilly alone has very visibly risen since last year. Christ only knows what other suffering is going on. So you know, it's worth still being aware of all the things we do have on our half of the hemisphere. And be grateful.

I do have to keep going back to the value of the simple pleasure. This evening for example I managed to get just the right measure of olive oil and lemon juice for a vinaigrette that I found so delicious I didn't bother with the salad - just simply mopped it up with a metre of bread (so the diet is coming along gloriously). I also managed to hold a crow position (nightly yoga practice) for the longest time to date and higher than ever before. The aim being to eventually be able to push up into a hand stand...sure...For those of you who don't know what a crow pose looks like - well it's looks like this:

And when you get really good, it can transition to this:

Until eventually you can get really cocky and do stuff like this:

Me? I'm about here:

which is still better that sitting around eating pizza right?

On the subject of doing ok - I've managed to keep the weekly swimming ritual going since announcing I would be stepping the parenting up. I am proud to say that The Lish has come a long way since that first Saturday where she practically severed my arms with her vice-like grip. Now she doesn't want me anywhere near her (as long as she has her noodle and two floats) but this is progress indeed. This week I'll be teaching her to put her head under water. Wish me luck.

Another wonderful side benefit of the whole swimming - active thing is - well actually two things are: 1. This whole thing of conquering fears etc...has caused a massive step change in Lish's overall levels of confidence which was at a cripplingly low level (hereditary I'm told...her father, yes The Silverback - if you can believe it - was the same) and 2. I'm just having so much fun with her and creating lasting memories. Even if I do have to consciously avoid thinking about the amount of child piss I'm wading through.

See, I really don't think I ever did anything with my poor over worked mum (outside of watching telly) but to be fair she was always too tired to do anything at the weekend and I do totally understand. Besides I can't miss what I never had and so I don't. She gave me so much more in other ways.

So now, Lishy looks forward to our Saturday swimming mornings at Swiss Cottage and it's great too for me to know that I am relied on to make this happen. It's nice to be wanted so obviously.

Even if it does involve other children's urine.

Push to activate

2012-01-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

So this is what responsible parenting feels like. I took the Lish swimming today - well I say swimming, it was more flapping on a foam float. See she doesn't know how to swim and isn't too keen on water generally (my fault entirely for relying on DVDs and TV too much). But I decided that 2012 was the year to undo the damage of infant sloth. I've been selfish. In my pursuit of a "quiet" or "easy" life I shamefully allowed Lish Losh to notch up hours and hours of TV. But it occurred to me recently, especially when school called to say she could do with extra coaching to get her reading up to scratch that I was in fact raising a "hoodie". It's ironic because reading and writing are the other two passions of my life (after yoga) and actually truth be told reading and creative writing were my first loves and my best friends growing up an only child in a single parent family. I'm making myself sound so cool right now it hurts to be me. Her dad too (not the only child weirdo thing). He's more of a book geek.

In the same way Jimi Hendrix's son is tone deaf I guess kids don't always inherit the bits you like about yourself.

Luckily punk music came along and saved me from myself and a life of total exclusion though I will admit to absolutely loving my own company still. Lishy I doubt will be that lucky. First off "music" and its related "scenes" have been replaced by reality TV and the cult of "celebrity". I can't allow Lishy to fall into that "something for nothing" culture.

So it was swimming today and there will be skating next week. I'll make an upright citizen of her yet. That's two things, the very thought of which used to send her into a catatonic rage but now she can't get enough of.

This has also mobilised my mind too. I get up with a purpose on a Saturday - none of this faffing around in a towelling robe until midday followed by aimless high street commercialism (the sales don't count; Sales are sensible).

As for Sunday - well now that's a different matter.

I don't need to win, I just need to place

2012-01-03T03:49:00.000-08:00

In stark contrast with the last couple of years where I have seemingly had nothing better to do than update my blog over Chrimbo and New Year's Eve, this year, I guess I had something better to do (either that or I'm clearly handling having nothing better to do ...better). Which is good. Really good. And another sign that I've been making good decisions lately. Can that be true? Time will tell I suppose.

And so we wave goodbye (or more likely give the finger to) 2011. Personally I did very well last year- all things considered. I managed to stay employed the whole year, I even won an award for it and if the dire forecasts about 2012 are to be believed - and they are truly vile - going by the past year's formula, I could be looking at my best year ever. So roll on 2012.

This is the year I make director and if not, then I'll take the fork in the road and cut down to less time in the orifice and more time 'on the mat' and with The Lish. All or nothing. Make or break year. No (more) time to waste - think I achieved that goal in my 30s. Anyhow, these are my professional goals for what they are worth.

In the meantime, life goes on. As it always does whether you like it or not.

On a personal level, I'm setting a very straightforward goal. Aside from love and world peace I'll be laying groundwork for a future that does not involve weekly trips to the headmistress. Let me explain. It has become evident that I have a very headstrong daughter who will avoid anything that requires anything but the most minimal effort and even then, it's a struggle. So this year will deliver a little motivational injection of self-drive (even if I have to administer it with a taser gun). The Lish will shortly start weekly swimming , gymnastics and ice skating lessons in a bid to reverse the effects of 5 years of Nickleodeon.

By the same token, I'm also hoping to nurture a creative gene in The Silverback. I got him a Ukelele for Christmas - cruel I know for someone with such large sausage fingers and so little natural rhythm. Still, if Sid Vicious could do it.....you have to start somewhere. Unbelievably he does seem to have fallen under its plinky plonky spell though that could be down to sheer post Christmas boredom.

Ok, enough cogitation for now - I have places to force people to go.

Happy New Year Y'all!

Food Glorious Food!

2011-12-18T13:45:00.000-08:00

So I chose the holiday season or as I prefer to call it, Christmas - to go on a calorie controlled diet. I started out strong, very strong in fact mainly because I had miscalculated my weight in kilos leading the online programme to categorise me as 'marginally obese' and setting me up with the corresponding daily calorie limit - LIMIT being the operative word. Of course what ensued was an uncontrollable obsession with food and hunger. I lived for legitimate sustenance times. Bedtime couldn't come fast enough because the sooner I was asleep - well the sooner breakfast would come. And so on all the live long day. Until, one day, I just didn't feel as hungry. Ah, I was beginning to see how this whole diet thing worked. Then came the lethargy, then the short fuses, then the temptations.

It was by pure chance that I met an Italian fellow at a friend's art show who explained that if he (at 6 ft 4 inches) weighed 94 kilos I (at 5 ft 1) could not possibly weight 155 kilos and that on that basis, I was probably not eating enough which would explain the whole feeling hungry all the time. Rocket science. Needless to say the man saved my life. I promptly updated my profile - ready to make up for lost Kcals - only to find it gave me the exact same calorie limit. Hello Stupid!

I've since been told these websites will all basically just recommend the average daily recommendations to everyone - regardless...which I think is a bit fresh really because if I (and I'm really only looking to lose 5-10 lbs) was delirious with hunger, imagine a proper ten tonne Tessie. It strikes me as terribly dangerous No?

Anyway none of it mattered in the end because within 2 weeks from starting this weight loss lunacy, the office, friends and client Chrismas lunches/dinners began - which was not so much a slippery slope as a gullet avalanche with me standing at the bottom of the hill, mouth wide open.

Yesterday was the last of those binges at my delicious South African mate's house who is partial to a little tipple of white wine and doesn't like to drink alone (aside from alchys - who does?)

So it's back to celeriac soup and Yoga. Actually, I can't live without Yoga and the last few days of not being able to do it have left me feeling a bit shyte - hey! there are worse things I could be addicted to.

I'm aiming to not touch the sauce now until Christmas Day and even then I might get all anal about it. I can be like that when I really want to - ask any of my old friends, it's probably the one thing they hate about me (she says deludedly).

Actually, it's very possible I may not drink until New Year's Eve...and then again I may hit the bottle in the next half hour.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Even flow

2011-12-07T15:01:00.000-08:00

Oh my Christ! Christmas crept up on me this year. Woefully unprepared as I am - I do feel that it will be a great Christmas all things said and done. What a year it's been my delightful supportive friends. This time last year I was pretty much in the depths of despair wondering whether I had bitten off more than I could chew in what was then my new job. Crippled by the push-pull of work-parenting and unclear really on what it was I wanted from life now that I'd managed to drag my family back over the Atlantic to London. Things with The Silverback were as you might expect them to be when you find yourself adrift in the sea of guilt and resentment.

Today - a full year later (you need to take a deep even breath here....and exhale) Oh it's like the difference between night and day. To say it is much improved would be to do the evolution of it all a great injustice. To put it in moronically simple terms: Happy has come home.

A combination of even flow, persistence, resistance, reluctant maturity, massive amounts of yoga and - hell yeah - a truck load of karma and luck has brought me to this place of content. Jesus, I don't think I've ever known calm that has felt this sustainable. But it did take hitting Rock Bottom first.

It's the only way, I guess, for someone as famously (among my circle) fickle as me will ever commit to long term decision making. Wow - could it be that at 40 I've finally overcome the crippling case of arrested development that has plagued my adult life so far? Could be my friends, could very well be.

Back to where I once belonged

2011-11-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

I had my office Christmas party on Friday at the Paramount bar in Centre Point (the heart of London) - this is the view that greets you when you step out of the lift:

Pretty spectacular eh? The night started on a literal high and ended on an emotional one as I was singled out for an award - the first and only award I've ever been given in the whole of my working life. That to me is the best validation I could ever ask for and proof positive that I am in good shape professionally. What a nice feeling after a decade of floundering and 5 years of what I can only describe as career wilderness - albeit self inflicted.

The last time I really felt like I was in control was 2002. I had just turned 31, was doing really well at work but in retrospect not so good in my head. I made a now or never decision to go travelling. Travelling at once released me from the career stupor I was falling into and at the same time eventually derailed me. I checked out of conventional society and for a while had no intention of returning to it. Then of course I met my husband and the rest is, well the rest is a tale of the unexpected.

And since then, I've never made a secret of the fact that I have found life a little bit of a struggle until quite recently if I'm perfectly honest. I'm not sure when the 'a-ha!' moment actually happened, I just know that I reached a point where I decided to restrict making decisions for anyone other than myself and all of a sudden I found my stride again. My mojo. Don't get me wrong, I get bored every now and again, forget to live in the moment, forget to be deliriously grateful for everything I have, but those moments are fleeting these days. Thank god. And I'm sure the Silverback, if he is reading this will no doubt be catching flies in his mouth, incredulous at the hypocrisy as he recalls with complete clarity how I pretty much lost the plot over a cordial juice stain on the wooden work surface in the kitchen... people with stride and mojo can still be neat freaks no?

Don't get me wrong, I'm still occasionally crippled by the drudgery of some days - the utter monotony of the same old routine but I do fairly quickly snap out of it with thoughts of how much worse it would all be if I didn't live in the relative sanctuary of tedium. I do not want drama - that much I do know. I still harbour many dreams and I send out cosmic orders all the time to have these fulfilled - before you go thinking I've had liposuction of the senses or something.

No so, unlike many of the past few years, as I stare at the horizon into 2012, I look forward with anticipation at how much more I will achieve next year. It's been a long time coming.

The Month of Blah

2011-11-16T14:59:00.000-08:00

If February was the month of BLAH in Canada - and it was - then November is definitely the UK's very own delightfully quaint version of it. Both have one thing in common, death inducing boredom - albeit for very different reasons.

Every November in the UK, my motivation slips down the back of the settee. Last Saturday, granted I went to see The Damned, but for a while I wasn't sure I'd make it (long story involving planes, trains and automobiles) so the day had initially started like most weekends - early, wretchedly and centred on The Lish. Usually the most we'll manage is a trip to the park (when the park was a 6 minute walk away, you know - in 'dream area' home) but we now live in 'it will do area' home where we're not really walking distance from any nice parks...which sucks donkey balls. Or is that the Month of Blah talking? I mean, I should point out that the nearest nice park is Hampstead Heath, so can we have a little perspective here? Ahem. And I bet that when the sky finally changes colour from suicide grey to Om Shanti blue all of this will seem a little silly.

Still, last weekend after dragging myself, knuckles and chin scraping the pavement, to our nearest high street I slept walked through the usual routine of charity, coffee and nik nak shop browsing (I hate this feeling, I know it too well), you know the type of thing. Anyway, the point comes when you either decide to DO SOMETHING or go home and usually I'm really good at doing something but on this occasion, I couldn't move. It was like a form of thought paralysis. Urgh. The park was too far, Kensington High Street too twee, Oxford Circus WAY too manic and my usual mainstay - a good museum - just too much like hard work. Luckily I was saved by the sudden arrival of tickets to this Damned gig.

Still it beats the shit out of the Month of Blah in Canada - and we're back to my favourite subject: Canada bashing. February is the coldest month after 3 months of cold. It is the bell-end, no, the frozen cheese under the foreskin of the knob of winter. It was too cold to do anything except drink and plot ways to kill yourself that didn't require you having to leave the house.

I turned to Yoga in the end which is lucky because I could very easily have fallen into alcoholism. Very easily indeed and on occasion I did turn to Manhattans on my really low days. But that's ancient history beside I'm way too vain to be a proper alcoholic. All jokes aside - it was the lowest of times.

Yep, I just need to snap out of it and I will soon enough. I know how much more I have today then when I was stuck shaking up cocktails in The Tundra. I also have yoga which I continue to do every day and is I might add my secret weapon because as I write this, I already feel that heavy cloak of sad lifting - and I've also just remembered I have a box of After Eight Mints in the fridge.

Punk not dead...but it ain't about to run a marathon either

2011-11-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

Fresh from having been to see The Specials playing at Alexander Palace a couple of weeks ago, I barely caught my breath before it was time for another trip down memory lane with a gig at The Roundhouse to see The Damned. From the rude boys of ska to the bad boys of punk/goth in almost seemless fashion - except that punks have not appeared to have aged quite as well (and I make this comparison with many MANY caveats) as the fattie bum bums who now make up the legions of ska fans that attended The Specials gig.

Vanian and Sensible with the godfather of punk - Joey Ramone

A couple of things struck me about the aged Punk/goth crowd too that I had not ever noticed before (t's not my first punk gig but it was the weirdest thing). It appears Punk of this gothic ilk is apparently a man's domain. How do I know this? Well, I saw something I've never in my whole life seen before - a queue for the man's toilets. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It's not myth or legend - it simply is not part of the real world we live in...unless you are at a Damned gig. I have to say, this was THE highlight of the gig for me. A queue for the men's, NO queue for the women's - I said WHAT? And at a punk gig - HA! the irony of it all. Actually, when you think about it, Punk is totally made for women. I can't think of a better scenario at a gig than to not have to queue for the loos. YA HOO!

Dave Vanian (lead singer of The Damned) - the original Twilight

As for The Damned...well, Captain Sensible lived up to his name probably for the first time too. The only thing missing from the stage was an armchair. And Dave Vanian? Well, he still has the big voice but playing an album of obscure B sides was possibly the biggest mis-step of the night. Apart from Eloise - which is less Punk than it is New Romantics, I didn't know any of the songs. They didn't even play Smash it Up... I mean what is the world coming to? Or maybe I just need to listen to more music.

Captain Sensible - his royal punkness

Old punks not dead..but about to win medals at the Olympics

Hey listen - that's not bad for 35 years in the business - that's a lot of hairdye.

Not so simple pleasures

2011-11-04T14:42:00.000-07:00

The TV is finally here and I got to say, there is no better way to mong out than to wedge oneself into a nice firm corner of the sofa and zonk out to some bollocks or other at a 90 degree angle. I'm talking TOWIE, Jerseyshore and any cookery programme going. Let me put a little context around this. We moved house, as you know and in anticipation of all the cage style fights that would otherwise happen without a TV for distraction, we ambled to John Lewis well in advance of vacating "dream area" home to place an order for a TV so that it would arrive BEFORE we moved in to "it will do area" home. Clever eh? And it worked. The TV and sofa were both ordered at the same time with this genius strategy in mind and they arrived just in time. Happy happy, joy joy.

The TV broke within an hour of connection. It broke. Inexplicably and in the most heartless manner, halfway through one of The Silverback's most favourite mong out programmes, Mantracker. This is a programme where real people are dropped in the middle of the harshest terrain in Canada with nothing but a compass, a granola bar and the kind of directions you get in India - no, not racist, anyone who has spent any time in India will have a truck load of logic defying stories - so nothing personal unless you are India itself and then yes, I mean YOU - but I digress.

So this programme - a couple of imbeciles are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness of The Tundra with the aim of getting from point A to point B whilst being hunted by a man on a horse - - The Mantracker. There is no prize for winning by the way - I did warn you it was utterly pointless viewing and that's the way we like it around here.

So the Silverback lives for the programme. And after the ball-ache of moving and the 6 hours of hanging around for Mr. Cableman, Mr. Dump Truck and the one and only Mr TV and Sofa (we worship the very poop that curls out of your noble bottom) he settles in the firm corner I was telling you about only to have the TV malfunction in the unluckiest turn of events ever. It just stopped working. Just like that, no explanation, no calls, no goodbyes. Then it just sat there...watching us. Laughing. And there it remained, taking the piss for a whole 10 days before John Lewis was able to bring a replacement by which time The Silverback and I could not be in the same room for more than 3 minutes without wanting to smash each other's faces in. So whoever said TV is bad for you lives alone.

Anyway, I forget where I was going with this. Oh yeah - so the new TV is here and it rocks out with its cock out. Harmony has return to Silverback Gables. Ahhhhhhh.

Now all we need is another sofa cos frankly we don't like each other enough to perch this close together when we're trying to unwind.

Welcome to my new abode

2011-11-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

I apologise for this appalling dereliction of duty...a whole month without so much as a fleeting look in on this here poor little blogspot. However, in my defence a shed load of stuff involving cardboard has been taking place and it ain't over yet but I have now cleared a space on the floor of OUR NEW FLAT! to spend a little time updating all 4 of you on the recent tedium that makes up my day-to-day. The time will come when I will turn this blog into a resource, a positive repository of really useful information - but until that day comes you are going to have to settle for this monotonous crap. Count yourselves lucky you don't have to live it.

So let me start by saying - saving money and being able to invest (such as in a home) is over-rated. Everything feels too far, too small, too dirty or too crowded...by comparison. Warwick Avenue has become the idealised ex-boyfriend that you find yourself measuring every new boyfriend against - even though there must have been a good reason you broke up in the first place.

See I was very spoiled in Warwick Avenue and I never for one single second took it for granted. I one hundred per cent appreciated that I was living in one of London's most prestigious areas, that I was a mere stumble from the tube and that it took me 18 minutes door to door to get to work. So, with this all front of mind, I knew there would have to ensue some sort of psychological concession; an emotional resignation that I was not going to be in Kansas anymore once I moved to West Hampstead.

It's crazy. We own - finally (again), we are paying ourselves rent essentially, we no longer pay storage and we're generally better off all round - and yet...and yet.

Maybe it's the dark nights drawing in that are causing this immaturity. I'm in the best place mentally, emotionally and professionally I've been...well since I can remember. I can remember actually but the point is, it's been a long time. Sheesh. And I'm sure when the cardboard is gone and all the lights function properly and I have figured out how to work the shower - which currently only has two settings - hypothermic or broiled in your own skin - things will seems very different.

Christ on a cracker, with cheese - what is wrong with me? It's everything I've wanted since I got back to London and by the way might I remind myself that two years ago I was living in a freaking hotel near Paddington. A little perspective here. So, I take it back. It's all good. I'm just a big tool.

But not so big a tool as to bore you with the dreariness of the unpackingdetail . Let's say it was a royal ground-to-air ball ache and leave it at that.

And now, leave me please to fantasize about my old place for just a little longer.

Theatre as therapy

2011-10-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

I went to see Ruby Wax's show - Losing it - which is a very candid and very funny confessional cabaret about the conditions that led to her mental illness. After the interval the women (she is accompanied on piano by Mrs Hank Azaria - Judith Owen) engage in a dialogue with the audience. Only then did I feel we began to get close to the reality of the subject. And also realised depression is a far wider reaching condition than you might imagine - such is the stigma. So much depression in the world! So many articulate people in the audience whose lives are or have been blighted by this crippling brain disease. And it is a disease. And like any disease it doesn't discriminate.

One woman in the audience who had suffered from depression pretty much all of her adult life and who was also a cancer sufferer said she preferred the cancer to the depression.  If that doesn't give you a clue as to just how incredibly paralysing the condition is - well, then you are just a very lucky person - don't waste that luck.

The whole event felt a little like what I imagine an AA meeting might. I doubt anyone was there just for the fuck of it and while Ruby Wax is a very talented comedienne, she has long had her comic day - so that can only mean that every single person in that theatre (full house, I might add) had some interest in or connection to the topic of depression. I say! What a lot of sad people. Me included.

The show was like nothing I'd ever experienced. Stephen flipping Fry was there - himself very well known for a very public case of bi-polar. Our very own Britney.

In poignant contrast, it did take a comedienne to demonstrate that depression is no laughing matter. It can literally destroy your life and any potential you might have if you leave the condition unchecked.   I certainly will never try to battle through another episode without professional help though my aim is to avoid. avoid, avoid!!! That's possibly where all the eastern spirituality comes in.

And that's when it hit me - I can't remember the last time I felt myself sliding into a dark phase. I used to get that horrible sinking feeling every couple of weeks but now that I think about it - and more to the point - ever since I started doing yoga every day, I haven't felt down. I get stressed, yes - who the fuck doesn't? but that awful slide into oblivion? Not for a while!! Oh JOY!!

If yoga can help me with my depressions, perhaps it can help others. There's a thought.   I might be onto something here. No-one understands a depressive better than a depressive - I could do some real good here. And that's why I'm now seriously determined to get out of the office and into the studio fulltime.    I know I've said it before and I even have a logo! But you know I fell at the first hurdle maybe because of my own problems with the flipping disease.

That was then. I've never felt so driven. Thank you Ruby. I'm thinking yoga therapy through the national health service. I'm thinking working with schools. I'm thinking working with young people.

It's going to take a while, but I'll get there. Always do. You better believe it.

London Calling

2011-09-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

221 2704 - this was my telephone number growing up. No area code, well not unless you were calling from outside London when you were required to dial 01 in advance. I remember the ad campaign's strapline was "don't forget the 1".   That was bad enough but then they introduced the 07/08 area codes and with it came a certain smugness if you happen to fall within the 07 catchment area since this was considered central London whereas 08 was for the provincial backwaters of zone 3 and beyond (for the long suffering Canuck readers of this drivel, I advise you look at the London Underground map for the meaning of zone 3).

And if all that malarkey wasn't enough to twist your melon, the authorities decided to mount a scaremongering campaign warning Londoners that unless more numbers were added to landlines, well, we'd simply run out of lines. And like the playground bully that was British Telecom at the time - in glorious monopoly, in came the 0207 and 0208 codes. Of course since then they've also added the 0203 to this mish mash of numbers (the latter popular with businesses in central London). Of course by then no-one really had landlines anymore. Oh the irony.

You're probably thinking what this is all about? Frankly, I'm not sure. I just happen to have the day off and am currently doing what I enjoy most in life - daydream - and I found myself thinking about my old telephone number and about 10 others that I still know off by heart, though I haven't dialled them in 19 years. And then I got to thinking about how I don't know anyone's number off by heart any more and whether this is a reflection of the state of society or whether it's just a sign of progress but most of all I wondered what would happen if I dialled that number, my old number today. Would my mum pick up? Wouldn't that be lovely. Yes, I'd like to think my mum would pick up and say "Ay mi chicha!" (rough translation - Oh my little sausage). Of course I know it would never happen - she died in 1993 - but for today, let me have this one concession, let me have this one indulgence.

I have a few hours to kill before I indulge my other passion - picking The Lish up from school and all I really want to do is to check out the biography section of the local library. I guess that is what working fulltime does (to me at least) reminds me of life's simple pleasures.  Is that boring?

Ok so maybe it is. But this isn't. On my other day off I went to the crown court in Snaresbrook (Zone 4 - definitely not an 0207 area code) where one of my Wum (working mum) chums works as a barrister.  She's currently prosecuting an attempted murder trial...how's that for boring? I can tell you I've NEVER been so overwhelmed by the venerability (this is a word - I checked. It's a noun. So shut up) of it all and to see my friend donning a barristers wig, was almost too much. I actually went to the toilet so I could squeal with excitement. Then the judge spoke.  I would have admitted guilt there and then, except I've done nothing wrong - but that is the effect this austere man's voice had on me. I was less than 2 metres from a person who held the future of the defendant's life in his hands and I was less than a metre from the witness box.

I noticed the defendant looking over at the public gallery where I was sitting and my blood froze. What if he thinks I'm there to gloat? What if his family and friends decide to teach me a lesson later? I tried to look all studious - my cover would be that I was merely a lowly law student - nothing more. Yes, that would be my ruse, just as soon as I've managed to pick my chin up off the floor. Formidable. No other way to describe this or my barrister friend.

But let's not get carried away here this is still a girl who couldn't handle her drink the other night. In that department, I rule.

And that's why she's the barrister and I'm not.

In which I give myself a double hernia

2011-09-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

As you may know, we bought a flat (well the bank bought it, we're paying it back at length and leisure) and into this flat must now go a shyte load of "effort" - a task I am straining at the leash to get started on NOT. But first, as they say, the place needs a little lick of paint. Nothing too extravagant, a simple whitewash to cover evidence of past owners - otherwise the place is in very good nick - well apart from the "significant subsidence" which the solicitors have assured us is historical. The Silverback will have to live with the fact that the master bedroom is...well...on a slope. I digress. The place is fabulous in every other way not least because it means we are no longer pouring money into the black hole of rent, though technically speaking if the world economy continues in the same vein, the status quo remains. Nobody likes change - unless you're begging on the underground.

First things first - we paid someone to do the actual painting but the least we could do was provide the paint - (I'm unhinged not certifiable). That said, I got it into my head to go to the local hardware superstore and get said paint (plus all the accessories that go with) on my own, you know because I could. Have you ever tried transporting a 10 litre bucket of paint? in heels? And without a car. Well don't - unless you need longer arms and don't trust surgery. Oh, and I took my 5 year old daughter with me. What larks!

After popping an intestine and sweating a kidney out, we did eventually make it to the bus stop and with the bus nowhere in sight, I conducted a little stock take not that I had any intention of returning to that warehouse EVER again. In dentist spit bowl fashion, the blood drained from my head when I realised I had in fact picked up the wrong colour paint. Instead of white - Magnolia. The colour of old age and piss. I contemplated for a long time whether I could live with this colour wagering with the bus that if it came in the next 30 seconds I would learn to love this colour.

It did not. I was forced to lug the dead weight back to the shop and then go through the rigmarole of exchanging it for an identical product but in a different colour. And good job too. I would not have been able to live with magnolia. Nor would it have taken less than five hours to paint the whole place - THAT is the beauty of white. Life is too short for edging. The Lish spent the next day shouting "pure white!, pure white!" I think I may have been murmuring this in my sleep.

I say it again: Life is too short for edging.

Spoke too soon

2011-09-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

Why, when I so know that thought precedes action, did I go and jinx myself by harping on about how great things were; how smoothly everything was going and how I needed it not to so I could have a few issues to keep me awake and deliver those oh so attractive dark circly bags under my eyes. Yes, well it serves me right for not living in a simple attitude of gratitude - the result? I have just had one of the most stressful weeks this year - an I can tell you there have been some corkers since Christmas. In fact it's been so bad, I think I will make sure I delete this week out of next year's calender. I won't bore you with the detail but the pressure of it all has sent my antibodies packing. I've ended up with a slight eye infection, bloated stomach, tension headaches and a feeling that in trying to do to much, I've ended up doing nothing at all.

Actually that's misleading - it's the sheer amount of things I've had to do this week that had led to my current state of mania. I've been mummy, daddy, career woman, mediator, cleaner and property mogul all in the space of 4 days and I'm fucking exhausted. I've said it before, if "having" it all means doing it all - I want no part of it. My priority has to be The Lish and yet by allowing myself to get caught up in the business of life I really fear that her life will simply pass me by. Next thing I know I'll be down to seeing her every other Christmas . Oh god, what a depressing thought.

So here I am again, fretting about my decision to go back to work. I see it two ways - I want to work (does that make me a bad mum? well it hasn't exactly made me a good mum this week) and secondly, I want to provide for Lishy in the future be it to get to college or on the property ladder. I want to leave her a legacy and that means accumulating wealth now before I'm too decrepit. It's weird because as I write this, I can see immediately that none of this matters. None of it. What matters is finding peace of mind and being kind and loving. So before I jerk that knee and jack in the job - I must come back to my truth. I like working. The Lish is doing great. And yes - there will be weeks like this one when you just want to chop off your own head but ultimately I'm not doing too bad a job.

There is a balance, I know how it can be achieved and I need to work towards that goal. So I'm going to employ the old thought precedes action by putting that thought into my head. I will find the perfect balance.

I owe it to myself. I owe it to The Lish. And I always pay my debts.

So, what now?

2011-09-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

The build-up to my 40th over, I've steadily sipped through the bottles of champagne generously given, made a good dent in the Lush products gratefully received, John Lewis vouchers spent in one fell swoop (on one single product - it's well worth it I guarantee you). There are just the Space N.K vouchers to go. I shouldn't imagine it will take more than 15 minutes to dispose of those.

What else? Well, school's started and I've miraculously sorted out the childcare dilemma with the help of my godlike friends; we get the keys to the flat in a week...pffff...I really don't know what to do with myself now. I guess I'll just slip quietly into old age?

God, now that is a depressing thought. I read that Monday 12 September is the worst Monday for complaints. So if you work in customer services, don't take it personally, apparently it's all do to with seasonal cycles. But what do I have to complain about? Do you think I could be at that stage in life when nothing much happens anymore? Oh god - is this the mid-life crisis thing that parents and other adults talk about? And to top it all off, I'm addicted to Jerseyshore.(http://www.mtv.co.uk/shows/jersey-shore). What next - a Feng Shui consultation?

Then the other day I found myself thinking about winter. In my youth, I'd be planning the 2 week break to India right about now, but instead all I could think of was how much better TV gets and how now, as the nights draw in, would be the perfect time to watch the director's cut of The Lord of The Rings. Again. Does that make me old? boring? or just happy?

I think I'll go with happy. It's the yoga folks - I know it. I do it everyday. I do a head stand every single day (I almost broke my neck a couple of nights ago but goddamit, I do a goddam headstand everyday). It's better than trepanning. So I guess what I'm saying is that if I wasn't doing yoga I'd be a fucking mess or a drug addict.

I might get botox.

Ah, that's more like it. Issues. Can't get enough of them.

What it takes to raise a child

2011-09-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

So we made it through the first year of The Lish's schooling as working parents. No small or cheap feat but you can't put a price on good childcare right? Well, not quite, and especially not when the childminder 'forgets' to pick up her charge but we'll get to that later.

We even made it through the yawningly long school summer holidays thanks to the most amazing and hell, why not? cheap adventure playground (about time parents were thrown a bone). I don't mind telling you that I did not sleep the night before Lishy's first day at this place with its open door and no roll call policy.   Scenes from 'Missing' tortured me all night long and the next day I was so on edge I started a fight with the childminder for no good reason (I apologised immediately and profusely) but I was scared shitless at the prospect of leaving a 5 year old in a place that was not allowed, by law, to stop your kid from walking out of the front (or back or side) gate into the waiting arms of a psycho.

I considered doubling the already ludicrous amounts we were paying the childminder to take Lishy fulltime knowing this was obviously not possible, I even thought about jacking in the job - we all know what I really want to do is teach yoga (but yoga won't pay for the Lish to go to college) - so there it was, the stark reality - I was was going to have to live with the situation - at least for now.

I fretted all morning until I could stand it no longer and cracked calling the place demanding the manager put Lishy on the phone and then I called again at lunchtime. To be fair, they were very understanding. And when picking up time came, I texted the childminder for an update.  What can I say? Mummy feared for her cub's wellbeing.

As it turned out it wasn't the adventure playground I needed to worry about. The place turned out to be the very best thing about the summer break with The Lish looking forward to it every day and more than a little sad when the inevitable end came and she had to go back to school.  And the open door policy? Brilliant! Genius! It makes the kids feel all the more responsible. We were just one day from the beginning of school, breathing a sigh of relief that despite it all, we had made it through one full academic year, holidays and all with no real childminding headaches when the childminder pisses off on holiday, doesn't tell me, leaves her 15 year old in charge who promptly forgets to collect The Lish.  It's ok, Lishy was thankfully spared the trauma of knowing the truth by the wonderful staff at the playground who hung back until I could get there, playing with her as if it really wasn't long after the end of the day and she really wasn't the last child there.

When I got the call, my first thought was that something bad had happened to the childminder - I was actually almost more concerned for this person than for my little sea cucumber, generous fool that I am. To top it all, there was a signal failure on the underground meaning I was stranded in a tunnel unable to communicate with anyone and pretty much pulling my hair out by that point.

When I finally made it to the playground, I was close to nervous collapse but there she was my smiling angel, unaware of the frantic race I'd just run. Mania subsided into relief to be replaced by anger. WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE CHILDMINDER? I guess she thought a couple of paranoid fools didn't deserve to be consulted.

When confronted, she accused us of over-reacting about something that could have happened to anyone, that could have happened to us. So just to be clear, this person thought that it was possible a parent could forget they had a kid.

- Honey, what's for dinner?
- Oh I don't know, what do you fancy?
- Uhm, something light. Say, I can't help feeling we've forgotten something...

Where is the accountability? WHERE! I suppose some people actualy believe the world owes them a living. Well, let's just say that childminder is no more. One day before the start of another school year. So close! but no cigar.

Lost for what to do, afraid that I would afterall have to leave my job, I discovered I have THE most amazingly supportive network of mums who pulled together to help a sister out and proving that it really does takes a village to raise a child. I offer up thanks daily to these women.

We have a wonderful new woman now looking after our little pencil who I might add would sooner forget to breath than abandon her duties towards a child. I believe she was literally sent by god.

The dog days are gone.

Eat me

2011-09-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

I have just got to show you this. That's me. On a cupcake. I had 40 made for my birthday. Yep. Not at all egocentric.

I was born under a wandering star!

2011-09-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

If you are wondering what it's like to turn 40, I gotta tell you - it rocks. And I know this because I am 40 today. I think it may well have something to do with the fact that by the time you reach 40 you've probably already done quite a bit of living (for better or worse) and quite frankly at this point, you're on the age equivalent of the "night bus" (next milestone marks your ticket to a place on the mobility bus) and you pretty much just want to get home - in other words: Am I bovvered? No, not really. Least not as bothered as I was when I turned 30. In retrospect, I have to say, 30 was my scary age and I spent the rest of my 30s bemoaning that age. I have no intention of wasting my 40s on that sentiment.

Besides which I'm in great shape. Don't take it from me - see for yourself:

(that's me on the right - the 25 year old Romanian au pair I borrowed is on the left...)

Tell me I don't look ravishing at 40! And that's the other thing that happens at this age - self-esteem appears to peak because...yep you guessed it - 40 year olds (for the most part) don't give a monkeys what anyone else thinks.

I want to take a moment to thank the Silverback (so you can go ahead and add "humility" to the list of new sentiments that begin at 40) for organising the dog's bollocks of a birthday party yesterday at the local tennis club where a constant stream of friends, old and new and all cherished, just kept on arriving. I had friends from primary school there and friends I've just met this year.

Old ties like these that tether us to the happy innocent days of our early youths are so incredibly special, they verge on the mystical. And that is what I have with this special lady:

and this one:

But by the same token my working mum chums who are brand new friends are equal in stature to me for all the support they have given in the short few months I've known them - in fact this motley crue, one hopes, will join the league of "old" friends when I'm celebrating my 50th.

And these are just the ones that posed for piccies. There are more! Yes, it does seem like a lot of bragging over a few friends. Big deal - we all have friends, right? Actually no, we don't all have good friends and even when we do have good friends, they should never ever be taken for granted. I should know I've F-ed this up in the past and learnt the lesson the hard way. So all the more reason to rejoice in gratitude for these and let's leave it at that. (Note to self: add " get all preachy" to that list of stuff that happens).

So, this is what it feels like to turn 40.

No but in all seriousness...take care of yourselves...aaaaannnn eachother.

The Silverback - cheers!

Milestones and miracles

2011-08-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

Flippin' eck it didn't take long to go from "I wouldn't say I was missing work..." to doing nothing but. Still, I like to remind myself when the going gets tough and I start to obsess about the Euromillions, that it felt far far worse to have nothing to do and little money to spend on women's fripperies.

So, we got the flat - did I say? After 5 months of to-ing and fro-ing with the solicitors about "stuff" we finally exchanged. We get the keys in mid September and so we must bid farewell to this unbelievable area...for now at least and move into the NW2 postcode - the last postcode lived in by UK's most prolific serial killer, Dennis Nilsen. Which is just marvellous. No joke. Still, he is behind bars and he lived 2 full streets away. (Note to self: stock up on karma purifying incense).

So with contracts signed and bank account emptied, I feel I can rejoice. A home owner again with that all important anchor in London. For the silverback it's a nice investment, but for me...it's home. And here it is: (well the front room, kitchen and couple of the bedrooms)

Nice ennit? Sadly this isn't my furniture but I'm taking note. Usually at times like this, you know milestone markers I would normally not be able to resist a little melancholia and think about another thing I can't share with my mother who has been gone 18 years this month. Hard to believe, even harder to accept. But you know, whether it's the yoga, the enormous amounts of Vitamin B Complex I ingest daily, the 'maturity' that finally comes with turning 40 ( as I'm doing this Sunday) or maybe it's knowing what rock bottom really feels like (thanks Canada - I owe ya) that I'm just grateful. No more no less.

It's a fucking miracle.

I wouldn't say I've been missing work...

2011-08-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

No, your eyes do not deceive you. Yes this is a scene of a hotel pool in the UK...and it's sunny!! Scorching in fact. I would post a picture of myself but I fear it would be one brag too far, the brag that broke the blogspot's back, however do take my word for it when I tell you that I am roasty toasty brown and it's mainly due to the last week spent lolling about the pool you see above. This is the pool of The Redcliffe Hotel in Paignton, Devon. Credit to The Silverback. I had my doubts about his choice of destination and don't get me wrong, we were the youngest people by ooohhh 40 or so years and outside the talcum powdered perimeter of this 100 year old hotel exists a world inhabited by fag smerking, chip scoffing, oxygen cylinder carrying, motorised wheelchair-using, tracksuit wearing, donkey riding folk who haven't seen an honest day's work since the end of the second world war - but that only served to make the surroundings that much more relaxing. I mean, you can let that depress you or you can accept that this is life outside of London and let it mellow.

And once you've learnt to live with this, you just need to make peace with the doddering pace of a septuagenarian waiter and you're home free - conquer the hand trembling, pigeon step speed of service and you very quickly found the mood shifted from one of irritation to one of relative zen. It's a bit like being in the Dominican Republic except there you might wait forever for a margarita that would never come. Here at least, the British sensibility dictated that while you might well be checking out by the time you get it, your vodka tonic would eventually come.

I have no bone to pick with this endearing generation. In fact I have the address of one and I intend to keep in touch with the delightful great-grandmother to be and her effeminate male friend. Yes sir, I do.

Rewind to a week earlier, to a much more bohemian week spent at the Kawan Camping village in Mesnil Saint Pere, Champagne, where a week was spent bunking up and bonding with a group of like minded people and our respective herds of children. It exceeded all expectations and ok, I had my doubts about camping...but I'll let you into a little secret, while we were at a camp ground, this dog did not camp. Did you really think I would contemplate a holiday in a fart filled bag? What do you take me for? No darlings - this is where we "camped".... ahem. I mean really!

But more to the point, it turns out The Silverback is a proper "Mr. Group Activity" and I have to say, after a week of al fresco eating with everyone pitching in and kids living like free range chickens, Devon was a rather lonelier experience by comparison. Still, we managed.
I for one, hope this is the beginning of a long group tradition. For now, it's back to the old grind tomorrow and you know what? I'm looking forward to it. Jesus, how much cough medicine have I had?

So the moral I think of this story is...dare to step out of your comfort zone you might just be dazzled by the results.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

2011-07-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

With one day to go before holi-woks for two whole weeks, I'm remarkably calm considering these are contenders for the most random destinations since the time I decided to go to Helsinki...one November... but that was before the lobotomy. The first week promises a commune-like week at a campsite in Champagne where we are hooking up with my circle of Wums (working mums) and their offspring. I'm keeping an open mind about group activities though I draw the line at naturism. I mean this is France. Last time I looked, the French weren't big on shaving. And besides, I don't have any accessories that go with nudity. No. So we'll see. I have bought a vintage kimono for the occasion. It will be my multi-purpose garment and if nothing else, should distract from the Cesarean scar.

I have a romanticised vision of hazy, lazy days and cool evenings with a perfectly behaved child and a charming husband. Yep. Pass the beernuts.

But it doesn't end there, hell no. Then we're coming back to the UK and heading down to Paignton in Devon. Boo-yah-kah! P to the A to the I to the...Brrap! The English Riviera! I'm expecting a week of dodging mobility chairs and pikeys; little toothless simpletons with their Shetland ponies - but I might be wrong. I gave The Silverback free reign to choose a destination, and he chose Paignton. The last time the sausage-fingered destroyer of all manmade things - A.K.A. The Silverback chose a holiday destination, we ended up in Brussels. So, every cloud....

At the end of the day, it's not where you are but who you're with and the effort you make right?

Yeah, I think I'll go horse-riding in Paignton...in my kimono.

#6 - Perfection and beauty and...wood

2011-07-16T05:25:00.000-07:00

Well, The Silverback and I have made it to our 6th wedding anniversary. I am told it's the year of wood, and puns aside - yep, wood is as good a description of last year as anything. Sometimes we've worked with the grain and sometimes against. Sometimes we've had to work hard at not beating the shit out of eachother with the wood and other times it was only the wood in a stripped back frame that kept us together. So all in all. Yes, wood is about right. That said, the number 6 in the Tarot also symbolises perfection and beauty. And there is much of that too in this last year of marriage though, I suspect those moments have very subjective interpretations. Perfection for me is being back home, in a job I like, in an area of London I love and looking at the very imminent prospect of becoming a homeowner once again. Beauty is seeing The Lish become a confident and happy child, in a good school with a great bunch of friends.

And as we enter the 7th year, I'm hoping to avoid the itch that tears people apart to instead scratch the itch that propels people into new adventures. But let's not get ahead or ourselves.

For today, the day we tied the knot 6 years ago, we plan on just being nice to eachother. Not as easy as you might think when there's a broth of resentment bubbling away in the background. Resentments that stem from bad life decisions in the past and a whole lotta immaturity. Slowly the broth is evaporating but it has taken a lot of 'wood' to keep that fire burning and no doubt will continue to do so. Lucky then that 6th anniversaries are symbolised by the stuff.

In many ways I do believe that The Silverback and me are destined to live our lives in reverse. Getting pregnant on your wedding night doesn't leave much time for a couple to bond and enjoy that part of the journey. We will have to wait until the other end, when the kid leaves home and we're into the winter of our lives. I'll admit it's a huge risk. So many variables at play, but this wasn't exactly planned so the least I can do is go into this with a completely open mind, and heart. Having made it this far despite the turmoil and continent hopping, I don't think it's overly ambitious. Is it?

Today then is all about spending it together, as us. You know to make up for lost time.

Getting a complex

2011-07-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

...a B complex that is. For years, pretty much since I had The Lish, I've never really felt right, for want of a better word. At first I just put it down to post baby stuff, I have to say, it took me ages to lose the baby weight, so long in fact that to be honest, I never really did. I mean, I'm not frumpy or anything, but I was for a while. I was also anaemic for the longest time and I guess it must all take its toll. Then I moved to Canada and I know this is going to sound really weird, but I felt like I was walking on foam for most of the time I was there. Heels were out, trousers looked wrong and nice dresses has to be flowy to hide the rolls!. It was the oddest feeling all round, like I was in a bubble walking on foam. That said, it was actually in Canada where I lost the worst of the baby flab with a personal trainer but because I never really followed a diet - although I was fit and firm, I could have been slimmer. The same goes for me today, though now back in London I feel the ground beneath me in a way I didn't in Canada. I'm not talking metaphorically either, I mean literally. It's mad isn't it? What can I say?

See the thing is I just can't seem to resist carbs and sugar and my metabolism isn't what it once was. I've also always suspected that my moods were most definitely connected to diet but I never did anything about it. Call it laziness, denial, call it what you want I finally decided to do something through what I eat. I'm now following a special diet that starts with a cocktail of vitamins and minerals designed to boost your neurotransmitters and balance hormones and enzymes. 8 pills daily (1 x B Complex, 1 B6, 1 x B3, 3 x calcium, magnesium and Vitamin D3, 1 x Gingko and 1 x St. John's Wort. This means, in theory, I shouldn't get the sugar lows that usually lead me by the nose to the nearest newsagents for a bag of Skittles or Maltesers. And by balancing the hormones in the body, the idea is to also banish the mood swings and depressive episodes. Early days yet to say whether it's worked. Today for example, I stayed off the sweets but did blow up at my boss over something...

Wonder if there is a pill that makes the boss disappear?

39 Steps

2011-07-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

I turn 40, yes my dears FOUR ZERO in September. Do not pity me for I am in fabulous shape, mentally and physically. In fact, I'm feeling positively excited at the thought of this milestone. Of course, long gone are the days when I could get away with wearing polyester mix material and my teeth don't quite fit the old gums as snuggly as they once did. I've even found 3 grey hairs in my unmentionables (to add to the gagillions on my head - thank god for modern hair dye) as well as the stray whiskers on my chinny chin chin (though with modern technology those too have been exterminated)...gosh don't I just sound an absolute catch? It's a pity I don't have a sister, since I'm married (don't you just envy The Silverback?)

But by the same token, I also have an inexhaustible supply of healthy self-esteem. I am secure and sure of myself and happy in my skin. I am doing exactly what I want to do, living exactly where I want to live surrounded by an ever increasing circle of mummy entrepreneurs and making only the sacrifices I want to make. Sickening isn't it? Well, not really, since this is all bourne of the experience that comes with being 39. So you could say, I 've earned my stripes in this sense and now I am looking forward to the lookout point the next 39 steps may offer. And if they produce the wisdom, friends and experience of the last 39 - I reckon I'd be quite happy to hang up my clogs there and then. I think 80 is a very respectable age to check out. The Lish will be 45 and hopefully have had the same rewarding experiences - none of which I hope should come too easy - because of course by definition, they wouldn't be rewards.

So back to turning 40. I am going out in style. Cheese style. The Silverback is organising a party at the local tennis club (I know sounds very chic - and it is - proper Mannequin chic). To which I am inviting old friends and new. Including one girl I went to primary school with. The icing on the cake will be a mini break to New York City. I am aiming for a proper 80s flashback time of my life. I've been gearing up for it by watching all the 80s cheesoid films like Desperately Seeking Susan, Ferri Bueller's Day Off, Dirty Dancing, About Last Night, Pretty in Pink...oooh I could go on...WHAT? I have a 5 year old!! I don't get out as much.

Sadly the second hand shop that features in Desperately Seeking Susan, Love Saves The Day, no longer exists in NYC...BOO! but there will be other cheesoid locations. All ideas welcome!!!

I will end with the wise words of Ferris Bueller: "I've said it once and I'll say it again; life goes by pretty fast, if you don't stop to take a look around every now and again - you're going to miss it."

One more day, one more hour

2011-06-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

If having it all means doing it all, and I believe that is exactly what it means, then I'm sorry. Not interested. When you work, have a child and your other half is away on business and half the team at work are on annual leave, time doesn't fly - it transponds. Last week was so incredibly manic that between school runs, frantic news generation (I work in PR) and you know, a little thing called life (shopping, cooking, eating and maybe fitting in the odd shower and yoga session), Monday became Friday in the blink of an eye. In fact I was convinced it was only Thursday on Friday because I needed one more day to fit everything in. That will be my epitaph. Just give me one more day.

Of course come Saturday morning, all I wanted to do was loll around in bed - preferably asleep - but the chances of that, with a 5 year old (seemingly into paganism) around are pretty slim and this morning was no exception however I knew that in order to buy myself an extra hour in bed, I'd need to get Lish Losh set up with breakfast and children's TV. It sort of works in that you do get to stay in bed a little longer but once you've been roused from that beautiful state of REM sleep, it's pretty much Game Over. So I got a coffee and reached over the side of the bed for my book. I'm currently reading about the life of Isabella Blow - stylist, icon and fashion guru.

The rest of the day did take a much more laid back flavour. Library. Park. TV.

Here's a curious thing. At the library I went to check some more books out - I admit to being a total book junkie. I read two, sometimes three at the same time - always have. It's weird I know, but I can't help myself, and the librarian points me in the direction of what looked like a soft drinks dispenser.

Piss take

Turns out it's a self service customer point. A nice way of telling you to: Do it yourself! So now you can check out, return and pay overdue fees without the can need of a person. Already you can reserve and check for books online. You can renew books online too. Am I the only one here worried about the fate of the round-shouldered, tofu eating, bicycle riding, leather patch wearing humble librarian?

I have a librarian friend, who sometimes reads the drivel I post here and I wonder what she makes of these machines? Whatever next? Reading circle via Skype? That's what I remember most about my childhood library - weekly visits with my school class for reading time followed by the mad rush to borrow the handful of copies of the book the librarian had just read to us from.

Anyway, tomorrow is Sunday and I'm hoping to get a proper lie in. I hope that having allowed Lishy to stay up a little later than usual, she will be so amazingly exhausted, she won't wake up until oohhh at least 8am tomorrow.

I wonder when the tipping point happens? - you know - when kids stop acting like Pagans up at the crack of dawn like they're celebrating the summer solstice or something to the scornful, loathesome bags of hormones that can't get out of bed before 11?

Actually I'm not sure what's worse; sleep deprivation or life with a teenager?

The Staff Jolly

2011-06-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

And just like that two weeks have gone by with very very little to report. I say very little - it depends what constitutes "news" to you. I mean, if hangovers and overindulgences are of interest, then perhaps I might be able to oblige. The head of department decided it was high time to get the Tech Team, as we are known, out for a jolly around Soho. This was achieved with the ease of a hot knife going through butter. Since you can't flick a bogey without hitting 10 pubs in Soho, a pub crawl is a) the obvious choice and b) with the exception of a show at the peelers, drinking is pretty much the only thing worth doing.

It was a night with multiple choice endings. The first ending (should you choose to select this one), was at "Byron at The Fox"a burger place in Wardour Street, today an upmarket diner that serves posh burgers and is located in what was once The Intrepid Fox pub. OH THE IRONY! If that wasn't once the greebiest pub in London. I do believe I spent my whole 16th - 17th year loitering in the general vicinity. It was a legendary punk pub on the street where the original Marquee Club used to be before it moved to Tottenham Court Road and then finally went the way a lot of the old school cultural landmarks - up in a puff of gentrified smoke. It sure was weird to sit at a table in a place where furniture was once banned and the closest thing to food was crisps. The carpets (or what was left of them) were so sodden with beer and vomit that standing in one place for too long was as difficult as walking in quick sand and almost as dangerous. But....

That was then...

This is now...

...today you won't find a tattoo or piercing within 10 metres of the place

You could choose to end the night there. You could. But you don't. Instead you say your goodbyes to the boss and the out-of-towners and then there was 3. We slip down a side street to fit in a couple more pints, because we just can't help ourselves. We just don't know when to stop. We're just having too much fun and we're feeling way too sober.

But not for long. And then the morning after pays a rude visit and you want to die. We all make it into work - though I dare say very little of the stuff (work) got done. Still, if the aim of the Tech Team jolly was to bond with work colleagues? I think I can safely say: Mission Accomplished.

And just as soon as we bond, the first casualty. One of the team resigns and of course, we must celebrate, Soho style. Can you guess what we did?

So that's really the long glass and shot glass of that.

(A belated) Day 4: Browning the Beef

2011-06-04T03:03:00.000-07:00

I had high hopes for today, it being the last and the sunniest of the half term week. I wrestled with my conscience over not taking Lish Losh to the jungle jim but it was more than I cold stomach. The connection between indoor playgrounds and the frosty years in Canada was too disturbing. In fact it all made me realise that there is a real possibility I might never be able to visit that place ever again. The Silverback will freak. On second thoughts I might have to go. I'll walk that plank when I need to.

Moving on - please. The day began in a leisurely fashion. Midday I think it was before we actually set off. So long term it would appear this staying at home lark would stagnate at some point. In fact, I know so having been there before I was working full time. There were days when it was pushing 3pm and we still hadn't left the house. So all the more reason to celebrate how lovely this week was and appreciate why that was.

It was a scorcher yesterday so I knew at some point a park or fountain would make the itinerary but first we had an appointment with fear. The dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum. The first time we went Lishy had a full blown panic attack when it came time to file past the 'real' dinosaur. Here:

I kid you not my friends, this animatronic full size T-Rex is flippin scary. Even more than a good scare myself is watching other people shit themselves. Lishy was one of these the first time round. She covered her head with a bag (not a plastic one - put the phones down) but afterwards she pledged that next time, she would look the bugger in the eye.

So we set out, as I say, like people who had all the time in the world. I decided to bus it - it's a chance for The Lish to calm the freak down and rest a little while watching the world go by. It's usually a very Zen experience. Today (or yesterday to be exact) the traffic was murder. It took a long-assed time to get there only to find the kind of queue you find outside embassies to countries people actually want to live in. The sun was now hanging like a succulent peach, dripping it's sticky hotness onto us. I lobbied hard to go to the Victoria & Albert next door which had no queue (never a good sign) but nonetheless. The Lish was adamant. We were going to see the dinosaur.

So we stood in line. For a long time. Eventually we made it into the cool main hall. Sweet relief.

"I don't want to see the dinosaur," said The Lish. Now, the Natural History is a busy place and that is the only thing that prevented me from drop kicking her into the iconic giant dinosaur skeleton that greets you on entering.

Suffice to say, we went to see the dinosaur and after a little bit of sheer unmasked terror, Lady Lish came round and stared, if from somewhat an awkward angle, at the very realistic eyes of the beast. Well done cockerliscious. I don't think we'll be visiting the exhibit again.

Then it was a hop skip and jump and walk and stop for a pee-pee and a mummy, I'm hungry - you promised me a popsicle to Somerset House in The Strand. This is a water park that puts all other water parks to shame.

It was slightly busier than this but I want you to feel the grace of the place. And luckily for mummy there was an exhibition of zodiac heads by kidnapped artist Ai Weiwei which I flippin love. They are freaking amazing. Such a mystery what's happened to the poor man.

The day scorched on and I browned the fat a little bit more. In fact, I will look like I've actually been away at this rate.

I revelled in the sculptures but before you start pegging me as one of those namby pamby, arty farty types - all I could think was: I wonder is Ai Weiwei is pronounced I wee wee. Which just goes to show that you can take the girl out of the council flat and give her an education yet she will still take the most base route to humour.

Day 3: Chlorine popsicle

2011-06-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning, correction, I was woken this morning at an ungodly hour, I should add, by who else? - The Lish - demanding I put a DVD on. I'll admit, I cracked. I did all the things I've been trying hard not to do all week and then I put the DVD on. But I've decided I'm setting a new rule that no-one, talks or moves before 8am on a holiday or weekend. To help the little one understand what 8am looks like, I'm buying one of those alarm clocks with eyes, specifically designed for whacko kids who, no matter what time they went to bed, no matter how tired they were (or tired out) the night before, still wake up at 6:30am. You can set the eyes to open at a specified time. So basically - you don't so much as fart before those eyes are open or there will be hellfire to pay.

After that little morning battle, I just couldn't face a jungle jim despite having proposed the activity myself. The fact is, I hate the damn places. They remind me of the loneliest and most depressing time of my life in Canada. They also smell of feet. Canucks prefer to call them, indoor playgrounds and since most of the country is under 9 feet of snow for 6 months of the year, you can understand why there were so many of them over there. Yet every time I took The Lish, I was usually the only person there besides a bewildered Bangladeshi at the checkout, no doubt questioning the decision to have left a warm (if somewhat humid) paddy field for this shit. What or where other Canadian children do for 6 months of the year in Ontario remains a secret. And no, they are not slicing the powder on some breathtaking slope cos there aren't any worth skiing on in Ontario. None. So I imagine they are all sitting in the basement eating Cheetos practicing for a life of obesity.

But I digress. So I vetoed the jungle jim on the grounds of emotional trauma and instead decided to take The Lish to one of London's few open air pools. It's in the heart of London too. One could say the capital's best kept secret. One could say that or one could say it's not going to win any prizes any time soon.

Here see for yourself. That 3-tier gallery around the side there? Not a gallery. They are council flats full of gypos that overlook the pool 365 days of the year. Smoking their fags and having their dole arguments in full view of the unsuspecting Londoner who thinks he's just hit the jackpot by finding this place on an otherwise stuffy summer London day.

Also, the sun decided to hide behind the clouds the moment we stepped into our swimming costumes and didn't come back out until our lips had gone a deep shade of purple and our bodies began to show the first signs of hypothermia. By which point, we were done. Nice try. At least it only cost a £1 to get in. Again, you can understand why. We found the nearest park and lay like sardines for 2 hours as we waited for our core temperatures to rise enough for circulation to return. Again, I do believe that was the nicest part of the day for me.

So tomorrow, while like today the forecast is low 20s - I think I'll believe it when I see it and instead am planning an activity that does not require the removal of undergarments. I'm thinking museum. There are so many to choose from in London, we are really spoiled and they are all free. So I may just mosey on down to South Kensington and do a kind of museum crawl. The Natural History, Science (which has a kind of jungle type jim for eggheads and boffin children) and Victoria & Albert museums are within a minute's walk from eachother. Or I may just go to the Southbank to the Tate Modern to see the Miro exhibit. Or I may just lie on a rug in the park as this has by far been the most rewarding of all activities...nice to know children still do ultimately appreciate the simple pleasures in life.

Whatever we do end up doing, it will mark the end of the first ever holiday utterly dedicated to mothering since I became one. I shall reserve judgement and Lishy's review of it all until then.

Day 2: Paedo-watch

2011-06-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

So end of day 2. Pass the morphine. I know it's Wednesday which technically is day 3 in a typical week, but Monday was Bank Holiday and The Silverback was on hand, so I can't count it. This is day 2 of hardcore 'mano-a-mano' single parenting. I managed to eek a day at a fountain in a park until almost 4pm. That's art. I should point out it's not just any fountain, it's the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park designed with children in mind. Children or seals - the water is sub zero temperatures but the children do not seem to mind.

And what a motley crue of kids they were. All shapes and sizes with very independent thoughts on the correct attire for public swimming. The Lish went Canadian - shorts and T-shirt. The Brits let it ALL hang out and with some of those kids verging on the oldish side to be that naked, it made for uncomfortable viewing. Put it this way, it's a good job Muslims very generally speaking do not seem to bring their kids here.

The Lish went mad. No hesitation, she was in like Flynn. Up and down, round and round. I decided at the start of the week that there would be no reading on duty. I just watched her chase her tail and with good reason, this is a park. At best you get mentalists who like to do tai chi in orange jumpsuits from the 2009 Guantanamo collection but at worst, parks and particularly places designed for children draw the nasty and depraved. I kept a sharp look out for paedos all afternoon, not once allowing Lishy to leave my line of sight and almost willing some arsehole to come between mummy bear and her cub. I was ready to rip his bollocks off with my bare hands. Luckily I didn't see any - but then again, what was I really expecting? A fat, bald sweaty fuckwit with bottle end glasses and trousers round his ankles? I dare say they were around, quietly taking it all in. Makes my blood boil.

So cleary, I enjoyed this part of the day immensely. But in all seriousness, I didn't obsess - it was just, you know, there, in the back of my mind.

Onto brighter subjects - the day was one of those days that get immortalised in photographs of your youth, when it seems it was only ever sunny. Except of course today I forgot to bring the camera. So you'll have to make do with me telling you - it was a bloody lovely day. Warm, dry and sunny.

After what seemed like 3 weeks, Lish finally came to sit with me and eat her sandwich and this is the bit I will fall alseep to tonight. We lay together - she wrapped in a towel like a piglet in a blanket and me cuddling her from behind - munching our lunch while sedately watching the park life unfold around us. It was idyllic.

Then another age passed as Lisherlicious went in for a second dip. Meanwhile I kept watch like a meercat. I managed to persuade her that an icecream truck was about to leave if we didn't move fast at about 4pm. It did the trick.

We hiked back to Queensway, via the wild part of the park which I somehow convinced myself was full of grass snakes. To distract from this I got The L to lead the way a la Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz kind of way. In retrospect, had there been any snakes, I'd be feeling pretty rotten for sending the kid in first. I made up for it with a strawberry ice cream ( I had mint chocolate chip) which we enjoyed to the symphony of the traffic on Bayswater road and the heady exhaust fumes. Bangkok has nothing on Queensway. Still, we had ice-cream, we didn't care.

It was 6pm by the time we got home. So no need to bake today thank god. I rushed the pleasantries of bathtime, dinner and bed - rattling through 2 books blocking Lishy's every attempt to stall.

Kiss kiss, click and slump. Over and out my friends. Tomorrow I have Jungle Jim planned. I'm already feeling naseaus.

Day 1: Half term - "baker extraordinaire"

2011-05-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

I only said fuck once today. This is excellent. . As you may have gathered it's half term this week when all God's little children get a week off school; A week I have meticulously planned - to the minute. As a working mum, it stands to reason that I would embrace this week with sincere openness and enthusiasm. And I believe I have. Like I said, just the one 'fuck' today.

The day started well with The Silverback taking on all the morning duties while I had a lie-in. Unlike other days, I got up immediately on hearing the front door click behind him. The Lish dutifully installed in the front room with children's TV and breakfast, I made my own breakfast in a leisurely manner as I referred to the day's agenda. Hackney City Farm.

And indeed it was a joy to execute - it took almost no time (for London) to get there despite being on the other side of town. I made sure to engage all the way with The Lish. Usually I will read but not today. Either she has matured or I've succumbed to what' I've always known I've had - a bad case of arrested development - but we got eachother. She asked her usual obtuse questions like : Is daddy 10? or her favourite, Am I (her) older than daddy? to which I usually answer yes to both but not today.

Today, imbued with the passion and desire to be the mum I can't be when I'm working - I explained that daddy was considerably older than 10 and no, she couldn't possibly be older than the person who made her. Right? To which she answered - but you're still older than daddy right?

Yes.

To Hackney Farm then. I wasn't expecting much, it being a city farm and in Hackney. And in that respect I wasn't disappointed. I remember thinking two things. 1. If the owner has even bothered to read the Trade Descriptions Act - this place probably just made the legal requirements and 2. It doesn't feel like 21 degrees today.

Still, I conjured up a secret garden with fairies for The Lish and what's even more amazing was that she bought into it pretending to see fairies in the most unlikely of places. There were also chickens, two giant pigs, some lambs and a goat - which Lisherlicious mistook for a giraffe somehow. Then the obligatory visit to the farm cafe. Irritatingly expensive to say the produce used in the kitchen was less than 10 feet away and I imagine would take the cook less effort to harvest than it takes me to floss my teeth.

As luck would have it, we just made it around the "farm" and into the cafeteria - managing even to get the comfy seats when it started to pelt it down with rain. So I wasn't wrong about the weather. When I say pelt, I mean Cats & Dogs, which to me made the whole experience that much more organic. The Lish took her shoes off and lay her head on my lap as we watched the sheets of water run down the sky light.

Once the rain stopped we bolted to the bus stop. Large pools had formed at the sides of the roads - it had rained that much - and we narrowly escaped getting drenched as some fuckwit bus driver ploughed through the water causing a hip height wave of gutter water to splash onto the pavement.

Being a life-long Londoner used to a.) the odd downpour of rain and b.) fuckwits in charge of public transport, I'd more than half expected it. Lisherlicious on the other hand almost had a cardiac episode. I have to say, it did make me chuckle though I made sure not to let her see this as she can get quite haughty about these things.

I looked at my watch - it was 12:40pm. How could this be? Surely not? ONLY 12.40? I'd grossly miscalculated how long you can keep a kid at a farm. I had to think fast - the prospect of getting home at 1:15 with nothing else planned filled me with terror.

What take ages? Think! Woman. Cupcakes. Two-for-one activity. It takes ages and then mummy gets to eat most of them. So I put the idea of cupcakes into her head and it worked. A little too well because for the rest of the journey home it was: mummy, can I mixe the cupcakes?; mummy can I lick the bowl?, mummy can I eat the frosting?. This is sadly the point where I momentarily lost it and said the F word - just low enough for anyone but my conscience to hear but she got the message.

As promised she got to mix the cupcakes, she got to lick the bowl and she go to eat the frosting...and let's face it when they look like this - that is where the culinary experience has to stop. What do you think of my collection of bum cracks and fannies? Genuis no?

Though I say so myself, these are not the kind that look shite but taste really rather delicious. No these look shite and taste of shite. I would go as far as to say they are fucking awful cupcakes.

Let's see how far off the mark I am, shall we ? Compare my latest creation to a shop bought cupcake:

Yes, one might say, I have a little way to go before I win Cupcake Wars. But you know what? We enjoyed making them and The Lish enjoyed getting her own back for the bus splash by pointing and laughing at my baking skills. And, I've just enjoyed throwing the whole lot in the bin.

All I can say is:

I'd better get some sleep - day 2 of the half term tomorrow and I'm now conscious of the fact that I didn't bargain on kids doing things quicker than anticipated. Frankly, the prospect of having to bake again to fill time is just too humiliating.

Sloth week

2011-05-28T15:23:00.000-07:00

I am looking at a beautiful horizon. One that involves not having to work for a whole week. It's half term and like it or not, no school = no work. Marvellous ennit? I've been looking forward to spending a week with The Lish, just me and the bum bum doing fun mummy and daughter things. And of course I will also fit in some slattern time.

I hardly see my little one during the week and don't get me wrong, I really don't beat myself up about it - I've tried the stay at home gig and it bored me into a wooden Kimono - I cannot lie - I am a much better mum, in work. But now and again, a little one-on-one time is warranted.

I put a lot of thought into what we will do this week. I'm pumped! And then the holiday actually started. Cocking hell if I'm not already so irritated by it all I could put The Lish in a kennel and head back to the orifice. And it's only day 1. I am a terrible person. Yes, I am and God will punish me. Any day now The Lish will come home with a boyfriend who looks like something out of Shameless and then I'll be sorry.

Before you jump to any conclusions here, I do DO stuff with the child. This morning I spent a whole hour and a half cutting paper dolls out with her. I then took her for a bit of fresh air and let her take her bike out in full knowledge that within minutes I'd be the one dragging the pigging thing around. It's not like a normal bike where you can hang all your shit off. It's just small enough yet somehow heavy enough to give you a slip disc AND a hernia.

Tomorrow, weather permitting I will go to the local farmer's market to look at food I would never buy on principal (local produce should not be more expensive than supermarket food that is flown in from Costa Rica) and run The Lish like a dog in the local park and pray that the sight of swings doesn't make me want to gouge out my eyes with my own thumbs.

So far I have planned a day at a jungle jim, a day at a city farm, the Miro exhibition (it's basically drawings that look like a child did them - what could go wrong?), the dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History (ok, I will probably only go and look at the naked bodies in the Human Biology area - it's tradition), and I'm not going to lie - a lot of shopping for make-up, perfume and shoes. I'm also thinking I may, just may go to Bournemouth. My experience of hotel breaks where it's just me and The Lish though have always ended with me gorging on macadamia nuts and little bottles of spirits while staring blankly at the TV until 3am.

So maybe best I rethink that last item - after all if I want a long day full of restrictions and compromise - I've got work and this week is meant to be about playtime and freedom where anything can happen. Wish me luck.

An even keel

2011-05-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

So another hum drum week rolls by and to be honest it's the best way to live when you think about it - as I have done, given, well....that it's a hum drum freaking week and what the heck else is there to do but think. And I've come to this conclusion - hum drum is good. It means no dramas, no mishaps, no disasters. I think it's probably ok even to talk about the flat. You know - THE flat. The one we've been looking for since last summer so as to become fully fledged Londoners again and stop the hungry little chatter of house rental money blades that shred your hard earned dosh with nothing but NOTHING to show for it - aside from NOTHING. Yes siree - so far, so good. Flat in already desirable (none of this up and coming cock and bull) area. Check. Offer for well under the asking price accepted. Check. Mortgage applications. God knows how, but - Check. Evaluation. Check and dog's bollocks of a good lawyer on the case with the rest. Checkety Check. We do need a few things still to go our way but all that going well - looks like we'll be moving into a delightful place in ooh a couple of months or so. So Hum Drum - long may you continue.

On a much less hum drum note - I did attend the wedding of one of my oldest friends - with whom I've also had one of the longest running rifts. Still, as her sister pointed out, it's only real friends with real affection that have rifts the size of the San Andreas fault line. So I was very happy to be at the wedding but will admit the pang, the surge of regret that I was but a mere guest and not a part of the wedding party. A few years ago that would have been unthinkable. Ah how the mighty have fallen. Still, thankful for small mercies because it really was the stupidest of things that caused this at one time seemingly irreparable rip, so I may have fallen but I've also travelled. This is good and this here is better:

Chairman of the bored

2011-05-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Having a blah week. Are you? Is this like Manic Monday or Black Friday? Maybe this week has a name too, something like Stalk Old Boyfriends On The Internet You're So Bored Thursday. Bored RIGID. I don't know whether I just need it to be the weekend or whether it's time to organise a trip or something. Actually a festival would be ideal. I'd love to go back to Bonnaroo in Nashville. It was pretty special and the pulled pork they serve down that way is unforgettable - momma is used to some heat! Aside from not being able to understand a fucking word they speak down there, it's perfect. In fact come to think of it, it's the not being able to understand a thing that makes it so perfect. I mean, if I don't know what you're saying, I'm unlikely to give a shit.

Ignorance may not be a defence in the eyes of the law but it sure as hell is bliss and besides the law is an ass. And since I find the most annoying thing about trips are all the other people, being unable to engage is a bonus.

So let's reassess - I'm bored and hostile. Not the best time then to attend a children's school play say or a wedding.

You call that a shepherd! Your angel sucks! Can you imagine? I'm imagining going to a childrens' nativity play - I know it's May, work with me.

Well at least tomorrow is Friday. In itself a beautiful thing. Talking of weddings, I do have a delicious wedding to go to on Sunday. I've bought a dress (found a corker of a dress at a charity shop - you know me) that is just fabulous, if a little revealing. I've had to buy dress tape - you know to stick the material to my skin. It's very slinky and tantalisingly silky. Let's hope the tape works because if the dress slips off my shoulders as I reach over for a top up of fizz, it will be more than the champagne corks that will be popping.

Right I'm off to boil some bunnies.

The power of prayer

2011-05-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Sensitive sort that I am, I have been thinking a lot about the little girl Madeleine McCann who went missing in Portugal in 2007 and not just because her parents have recently stepped up the campaign for her search with the launch of a book (which I intend to buy); To tell you the truth I have never really forgotten their plight since it was made public 4 years ago. FOUR years.

I admit that my sensitisation to the issue comes from the fact that as a parent of a young girl, the thought of losing my little girl is physically more than I can bear to imagine. That it happens more often than you think chills me to the bone but also fills me with enormous compassion for people like the McCanns.

Now, I know this is going to sound a little kookie, but being a little bit obsessed with all things spiritual, I often ask the 'guides' to send me a sign that this girl is still alive. The other day, I believe I got such a sign in the form or not one, but two white feathers. I took great comfort in that and just as quickly fell into a state of confusion over whether the guides had left this message or Madeleine herself - see I may be an afficionado of the 'science' but I have a long way to go before I can claim any powers. More's the pity.

Anyway I decided to offer up a little prayer on my way home from work yesterday, as you do but I wanted to make it 'official' so to speak not that praying in one's own front room with a nice stick of incense and a candle or two isn't official - I decided to quickly pop into the local church St. Saviours - appropriate don't you think?

Except that it was in full methodist swing for the night (it's usually Church of England - guess times is hard) and full of Somalians singing and clapping and dancing; I have to say it looked wonderful but surely I didn't belong? But it was too late, I'd been spotted and pulled into a pew where I remained for the whole seven minute long song. This is long when you didn't mean to be there at all. Anyway, with nothing to lose, I started to clap and shuffle with the best of them.

At the end of the song I thanked everyone but explained I had to get home to my daughter and that I'd really only come in to light a candle and pray for Madeleine. It was obvious they had no idea who I meant but the priesty bloke at the front yelled (he has a microphone - it shook the putty out of the stained glass windows) 'we will pray for you lady!'

And I believe they did - at the top of their lungs.

I offer these prayers to the universe that it may provide a solution and bring comfort to Madeleine and her family.

Please do the same. And thanks.

Moving on up

2011-05-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

It's going to be one of those mega updates again. See, life happens when you're not paying attention. Since I last dribbled on about diamond earrings and hen-nights a few things have happened. For one, we've had an offer accepted on a flat. That is all I will say on the matter at this point because I am so supremely paranoid that something will go wrong, I am going to have to leave it at that. Except to say it's a corker of a place in West Hamstead and really oh, I've said too much already. That's all for now. I will post ad naseum updates galore on the ins and outs of the legal process, the chin dragging bore of the packing, the anticipated peel-off-my-own-skin hell of the move and all the wonderful idiosyncrasies of banks, lawyers and estate agents in between but for now, let's say: What a freaking result for the home team!

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we've had another kind of move - a desk move this time and one that I managed to side step completely by being away for it on that delicious Yoga retreat in The Canary Islands. While I was saluting the sun and locking bandhas, some poor sod was given the hapless task of packing my desk up which has a unique organic filing system not even the most severe compulsive obsessive could cope with.

Another result I think you'll find. I could get used to avoiding all manner of responsibility. I could be onto something.

Exclusive exclusion

2011-04-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

From maturity to immaturity in 60 seconds...maybe 43 is still too soon for me to aim for full blown maturity. How do I know this? Well, now you see, I thought I was pretty sorted in that department what with life, motherhood and marriage having kicked my arse into shape (no oxymoron intended) - but no, it turns out I still like to throw my toys out of the pram.

I blame social media.

See I was on Facebook today and saw that a life long friend, whose relationship with me was ruined by a pair of diamond earrings and a lorry load of immaturity a few years ago is now getting married in May. Actually I knew about this and I was genuinely happy for the girl. She's been through quite a lot of shit in her time and I'm not just talking about the type of inconvenience and upset caused by losing a deposit on a holiday, I talking about the kind of pooh that lands you in therapy. Yet she has always had an amazing outllook on life and only slightly self medicates on the rare occasions her seemingly perpetual supply of optimism fails. I had a lot of time for the girl - still do. Trouble is she doesn't have that much time for me anymore. Long sorry story that frankly I've done everything to try to put behind me.

Over time however I chipped away at the crust of antagonism between us until I reached the softer layer of forgiveness - it has taken 5 years and it's been worth every chisel at the rock. Finally I was able to meet with her recently where she showed me her engagement ring and it felt almost like a Hollywood version of old times to the point where she invited me to the aforementioned wedding. Well, I was honoured. I cried I was that honoured and for a moment I felt what Tim Robbin's character in the Shawshank Redemption must have felt when after 15 years he finally chips through the last of the cement that separated him from release. My efforts had finally paid off and even though it felt odd to be invited in a way that was very obviously filled with caveats, it was something after years of nothing. And if felt good. It also felt just and I realised how hard this must have been for her to do.

So joy and gratitude were the specials on the menu that night . Even talk of her bridesmaids had little effect on me other than more delicious happiness for the girl. A few years ago it would have been inconceivable for me not to be part of her wedding party but today - I am lucky to be in the crowd and I'm happy for that huge concession.

Or am I? Looking at her Facebook status update, as you do, I realised she'd had her hen party two nights ago. Picture after picture of raucous fun to which I was most certainly not invited flickered on the screen. Click after click after bloody exclusive click . Hell, an invite to the wedding was but a thought and a dream until last week. So why am I feeling so deceived? So disappointed? So down? I wasn't for a moment expecting an invite to it...was I? I guess part of me was.

It's clear then that I have a lot more scooping of earth with a tiny worn down spoon before I poke through the end of that long dark tunnel; before I break through the last layer of fuck up; before the tiny speck of redemption is revealed and I guess that's just my cross to bear.

I made my bed, I pissed in it and now I must lie in it.

The answer to the meaning of life is....

2011-04-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

The Silverback and The Lish have been back for a week now after spending two in The Tundra visiting The Silverback's familia. Now don't get me wrong, I missed them of course and I was a little bit riddled with guilt over taking off on this yoga week but the biggest surprise was how quickly I began settling into that carefree (and selfish...or is it?) pattern of the single person lifestyle. Meals for one to suit whatever craving you have (had a plate of olives on my first night alone, standing up in the kitchen); washing up for one; TV exclusivity and the ability to do what I want when I want. I think it's important for any parent or carer to take that one week to themselves every now and again. And it's also nice to miss people you know you'll see again.

With the return of the family comes an end to all the above and that's how I ended up watching one of those BBC Four culture documentaries, this time on Elton John. Personally I would have happily watched Jerseyshore, my new guilty pleasure but The Silverback insisted; it's not that he is a big Elton John fan - in fact outside of the tune Tiny Dancer, which he and probably most people under the age of 40 know from the film 'Almost Famous' - I doubt he would be able to hum you one bar of any other Elton John song. Still, he would rather watch a show about Elton's rise to stardom than watch 2 seconds of Jerseyshore. And so I must compromise because after all when golf or snooker gets too much to bear, I make him watch shows about cookery and house refurbishments.

Anyhoo, the point that I am meandering towards is that Elton talked about how he feels he only really matured when he reached the age of 43. Had I been watching this 10 years ago, I would have thought the man was obviously the worst kind of spoiled, instead I found myself relating in a big way. Having only just found a mental space that I feel comfortable with at the age of 39, Elton's own experience completely resonated. In fact if I carry on like this, I too could be on the path to maturity by the time I'm 43. And it only took 43 years.

Funny where you find answers to 'the meaning of life'. So the answer in fact isn't 42 (for Hitchhiker fans) it's actually 43. Who'da thunk it?

Union

2011-04-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

Scorpion

I´m at the end of a week´s yoga retreat in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands. It´s been a week of discipline and acceptance. I found the discipline part quite easy, in fact - stepping out of that discipline was the hardest part for me as the group I ended up with turned out to be party animals despite being on average 15 years older than me. And that is where the acceptance came in. True to form I spent a lot of the week avoiding the loud ones but caved last night, it literally being the last night to meet them all at a tapas bar. It was nice, I suppose.

I have to say, I have seriously enjoyed my own company this week and the company of the more like minded yogis. I can´t for the life of me understand why you would come on a yoga retreat when all you really want to do is drink and eat...and annoy the living shit out of everyone else who is quite happy nibbling on a lentil cracker.

Again, acceptance was the key. I did my last yoga class last night. I could have done a pilates session this morning, but in the spirit of rebellion and given that the latest I´ve been up all week has been 7:30 - I decided to give myself a massive lie-in until 9. WOOOH HOO!! Well, a little of what you fancy won´t hurt. Of course now I´ve spent the day berrating myself for being so lazy.

I´ve also had a bellyful of Spanish TV and took for the first time a yoga class in Spanish last night. I have to say, no matter how hard they try, the Spaniards (and I can say this because I am one) will never to subdued easily. Even when Omming, a guy from Pamplona sitting next to me sounded like he was running from a bull.

I´ve missed my lisherlicious with a raw passion. I am happy to have this time for me for sure, but boy will I be happy to see her cheeky little face. I´ve bought her a flamenco dress, as you do, see if I can´t tease the dago out of her.

I can´t say I had any real expectations, this being the first time I´d done a yoga holiday and I loved it but next time I will go hardcore. None of this mixed bag of holiday makers. I want rock hard 6am no food shit type yoga. It had renewed my love of the practice and given me impetus to impress the poop out of my bosses so I can start to reduce office hours and increase Omming hours.

And so I must leave as there are rays of sunshine to meditate to until the madness of Stansted airport at 2am on a Sunday. Can´t wait.

Namaste everyone.

Sunshine of my life

2011-04-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

What a splendid day for sun and fuck ups. And let's be honest, if you're going to be on the receiving end of incompetence, better that the sun be shining than the rain be a-pouring no? In my attempt to just let it go now, I will just say that when estate agents are bad, they are proper dreadful. And that is all I will say.

On a brighter note, and I'm almost afraid to say this for fear of tempting fate, but either I'm getting better at managing time at work (and the art of delegation - let's not kid anyone), or things are miraculously improving in the office. I shall take this as the 'flow' in what I've now long come to accept is the 'ebb and flow' of life. Things appear to be generally looking up and I'm grateful for every last drop of luck.

On an even brighter note, my Lisherlicious is 5 on Friday. We had her party last weekend - coincidentally Mother's Day...oops! So a few people did drop out wanting to spend this sweet day doing something special and exclusive with their offspring, but plenty didn't. One in particular simply dropped off her child and left with a toodles! and a see you in 2 hours! Which just goes to show - the world is thankfully full of all sorts. And me? well after all the cleaning and hosting, I'm thinking I might have to ask for a Mother's Day in lieu. Ah but it was worth every lump of compacted cake on carpets and upholstery (which I'm still finding btw) for one glimpse of Lishy's smiling face.

A far cry from last year when we didn't know a soul under 35 years old having just returned from Canada. The best I could do was fill the room with balloons and hide her presents in amongst them. She liked the balloons more than she did the presents, obviously. This year we substituted balloons for people. Which was nice and they don't pop (as easily).

Tonight she fell asleep with her new digital camera still clenched in her hand - yes, at 5 that is what she asked for. Gawd help us! But whaddya gonna do? She's my ray of light, the sunshine of my life and my reason for being (even though I haven't always found motherhood easy, I'll admit).

I guess in this sense, practice makes perfect? No?

Sonic Youth

2011-03-31T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm reading the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. It's about this young guy who decides to escape the duplicity of 'modern life' for the 'sincerity' of self-subsistence in the wilds of Alaska. It was only ever meant to be an adventure and it's obvious that by the end, before he got ill, the young man was totally ready to embrace a return to civilisation. In having explored to the extent he did, the wilder regions of the world, he also conquered the barrens of his own internal landscape. I don't want to spoil it for you but, yeah he doesn't make it Out of The Wild. He dies after mistakenly eating a poisonous root. I watched the film in Toronto's fancy schmancy Yorkville area on my first night out in the city. I had just arrived not 4 weeks earlier, full of hope and drive. Thinking back I was as naive about my future in Canada as the protagonist in the book had been about going where the wild things go and like him, I pretty much died trying.

But back to the book, and Jon Krakauer's writing. It's awesome. For example - here is how Krakauer explains the allure of rock climbing:

"By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining non-stop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence - the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes - all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and the seriousness of the task at hand."

In amongst all of that eloquence, I realised with a huge sense of relief that I am, in fact, completely normal. How liberating to know that all those things that clutter my mind are universal concerns. They must be.

Anyway - back to the book. If you haven't read it and you were once a nihilistic, impressionable, idealist who felt the world owed them a living, this book is like a return to forever. For that reason too, it can be quite a difficult read - as difficult as holding a mirror up to a scar. The extent to which the read affects you will depend on how far you've travelled along the path of your internal expedition.

Blue Moon, Blue Mood

2011-03-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure I can put my recent wistfulness down to the mesmerisingly full and abundantly well-endowed moon of this past weekend. It was larger and shinier than I think I've ever seen - shinier than the moons of my youth in the sand dunes of Eastern Spain; shinier than the moons in the cloudless skies of Milford Sounds in New Zealand's South Island that were so bright, the stars were little more than pinholes and shinier than the first moon shared with a lover.

It is said that the phases of the moon control the tides of the ocean, human behaviour even; Women especially are affected by the moon and their menstrual cycle is intimately linked to the lunar phase. So I can only conclude that this plumpy dumpy moon was behind a weekend of the most lucid dreams I've had since I accidentally took two doses of Night Nurse.

I found myself lying awake both nights this weekend thinking about stuff that happened in the past - so long ago it hardly matters today. I mean stuff from over 30 years ago. I remembered lying face down on my aunt's bed in Northern Spain, I must have been 9 years old. My back was the colour of beef jerky. I'd just spent a day at the beach in the middle of a hot Spanish Summer and no-one had apparently thought to put sunscreen on me. I can actually still remember the pain. I find myself feeling resentful towards the adults that should have (in my mind) cared a little bit more. But who knows? Maybe I was an impossible child.

No sooner does that memory fade, I fast forward 15 years to a trip to Cuba I took with my then boyfriend and his family. I got into a fight with his mum. We were both in mourning - her for her husband and me for my mum - I was highly strung, she was angry and we were both looking for a punchbag. It got stupid and I was an arsehole. That's all I could think about - how much of an arsehole I'd been. Then another jump in time, this one just to a previous Chrismas. I'm alone on Christmas Day and I open a present from said boyfriend's mum and it's my favourite perfume and really pretty underwear. I'm such an arsehole.

I think about that lady and I send her love and light and I move on. I send some more to my ex.

I think about the last conversation with my mum. The last time I saw her. I think about when I might see her again. I'm crying now and exhausted. I fall asleep at some point, not sure when or how and wake up the next day feeling rotten.

The following night I go to bed determined not to do this again. But of course I do. Same awful feelings of guilt and regret, different memories. Argghhh. Ah well, I suppose it's all part of purging. I would like to think I'm a much smaller arsehole these days. Perhaps this is my mind's way of reminding me to be nice.

So the moon appears to have disappeared from the night sky and with it my self-loathing. That's good. Ah life's lessons eh?

Sir Winalott

2011-03-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

So I didn't win the Euro millions this weekend, which is a shame because it was a triple or even quadruple rollover worth 90 million. And yes, I wanted it all. I opened my heart up and thought about winning all week. I placed a cosmic order to win but in the end, I didn't even get one number. Not even a cocktail sausage of a chance. And I honestly believe it's because I blocked. I didn't truly believe I could win and since thought precedes action - well it stands to reason that it should have resulted in a status quo. My husband has strategically placed brochures for rehab centres about the place.   But honestly, I'm not going mad. I KNOW I can win the lottery. I just have to buy myself winning it. I have to live the feeling. And so next week, I'll try again.

See the thing is, I already feel like I've won the lottery (pass the sick bag), no but seriously - I live in relative luxury compared to much of the world. Apart from the widespread poverty in large chunks of the world, there are also the crises in Japan, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Australia, the Middle East - I could go on. Dreadful. Actually I don't have to look that far away for examples. The current economic crisis in the UK is cause enough to despair. 2.5 million unemployed, cuts to public services left right and centre, the pensions crisis - christ on a cracker! I have a lot to be grateful for and I truly, deeply am. So you see, when I thought about what I would do with a lottery win - apart from work out my notice (and that's the first sign that life's really ok - who works out their notice with 90 million in the bank, me apparently) I wouldn't really want to change much in my life that I'm not already working towards now and can realistically achieve without the millions.   True life aspirations are not generally (not in the developed world at least) remediated with money, but instead require staunch dedication.  I have made a solid promise to myself to fulfil certain life-long dreams and I intend to honour it - but none of it will happen overnight. I would add that I can tick off quite a few already.

That said, money and I mean copious amounts of it would allow me to be more altruistic. And while that sounds like a pile of cheese, if money were no object, I would spend my days volunteering.... or drinking. See, that's the kind of  attitude that lets the side down.

So anyway, I'm planning on winning the lottery next week. Think of this as an experiment.

Was Not Was

2011-03-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well my cherubins, you sent me the vibes and I believe they worked the way they were supposed to. You know that flat I mentioned in the last post, the one I said was absolutely perfect? We'll after almost no deliberation - well that's not entirely true - a little back and forth did take place, The Silverback and I decided it wasn't for us. I was surprised at first at how quickly I let the whole thing slide and then I realised, the vibes!! The vibes!!! When the decision is the right one, it leaves no trace of aftertaste. See the problem wasn't the flat - no - that cunning little package was the real deal. Built over 3 levels, it felt like a proper little mansion. The bedrooms were a fantastic size, the bathroom shiny and new (with no weird colours going on) and the kitchen was out of a catalogue but a 5 minute stroll around the area and the whole proposition had turned more putrid than Barry White's first dump of Boxing Day.

It's really quite sad what's happened to that area or I should say, what's been allowed to happen to the area.   On the borders of West Hamstead - in other words Kilburn - a word that causes even the strongest stomach to turn -was once a jolly little Irish area.  On a return stroll the day following our initial viewing of the place, it became clear we had in fact skidded into the very arsehole of London. On the surface the local park looks like a shining example of regeneration but take a closer look and while the ergonomic and pastel coloured swings, which no doubt will have cost the local tax payer (out-numbered by 10-1) a pretty penny - the local community still comprises the very dregs of Fat Bastard's crapstool and no amount of pastel coloured street furniture is going to change that.

The other clues of course were the sheer numbers of housing associations, women's centres and community halls- not exactly the sign of an affluent area. Oh they too were pastel coloured, made to look like little haberdasheries but sewing, I can guarantee you, is not one of the activities you'll find on the list. Forgive me but it's precisely those areas that turn out to be the most expensive in the end. Between outrageous council tax bills (well someone has to pay for all that pastel coloured paint) and home contents insurance, you may as well stump up the extra £100,000k for a place in West Hamstead proper and be done with it.

So, it's back to the drawing board this Saturday to bounce between flats for sale like human pinballs. To be honest, it's not like we have anything better to do.  And in the meantime I'm going to make the most of the view of the tennis courts because I think they will soon be replaced by something altogether more urban.

Let me end on a note of appreciation and validation. I met my husband and daughter for dinner at a local south east asian restaurant after work today - it being Friday and all.   As I kissed them both and ordered a beer and my favourite pork and prawn steamed dumplings, all I could think about was a nine year old child who has been trawling the rescue centres around the worst hit quake area in Japan - looking for his missing parents. My sense of appreciation for my family, my silly little life and the delicious dumplings heightened in that moment. And even now with everyone in bed and me about to join them in the land of Nod - my thoughts are with all those people who tonight, once again have to do without.

And in this sense I do take my hat off to Kilburn and it's community centres. I just don't want to live there.

It's like I've turned a corner or something

2011-03-13T01:03:00.000-08:00

Let me set the scene for this beautiful day. I'm at the kitchen table, the kitchen in Warwick Avenue, London that overlooks private tennis courts. The sun is trying to kiss the rooftops through a veil of early morning mist. I feel lucky and happy to be here. Ah - the kettle has just boiled and crumpets have popped out of the toaster, as if it could, it's about to get better.

I must admit that while Sunday precedes Monday and on Monday we all step into the vortex of the working week - there is something very rejuvenating about an early Sunday morning. It feels like that release of being given a second chance; a sort of opportunity to start a fresh. Do you know what I mean? A whole new world of fresh choices packaged up into the first couple of hours of the day. This feeling should be the domain of a Saturday really don't you think? And yet, Saturday morning feels more like the recovery room of a hospital OR (at least it does to me .)

The Lish and I have now moved to the front room where the white light of the early morning also fills the room. We're watching Tiny Pops (kids TV) - Captain Mack. If you have to watch a children's TV programme, I would recommend this one; It's full of cleverly hidden double-entendres and ridiculous plots that have actually made me belly laugh - a nice change from the usual condescending drivel. Captain Mack's punchlines include: "I'm a sky captain - I know everything." and "I have to go, my monkey needs me."

In other news, we've seen a house - oh and it's a good-un but a lot of things need to happen before I can start telling you all about it here. Just send me the good vibes please that we get a stab at going for it.

Earlier in the week, I went to see Vernon God Little at the Young Vic Theatre. What an amazing production. I read the book years and years ago in Thailand I think. It was a period in my life where I pummelled through books at the rate of one every couple of days - that's a backpacker's life. A couple of books stayed with me out of the 100s (and I mean 100s of books I managed to get through in 2 years of travel - yep 2 years.) Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre is one. It was his debut novel and won the Booker Prize in 2003. Damage Done is another - an Australian's 12 years of hell in Bangkok's most notorious prison and probably The Pursuit of Love, a tragi-comic story of love in the 40s - a book every young woman who is led by her heart should read.

I could not imagine how you could start to stage a a high school masacre set in deepest darkest Texas. Vernon Godfrey Little is a 15 year old who when his friend Jesus Navarro commits suicide after killing sixteen bullying schoolmates becomes something of a scapegoat in his small hometown of Martirio. Fearing the death penalty, he goes on the run to Mexico. The Guardian says this about the stage adaptation: ‘Biliously funny… a helter-skelter portrait of a crazy world.'

I couldn't (and I mean could not at all) have said it better myself. If it tours your town - go see it. And read the book too. You won't be disappointed with either.
In other news, The Lish went to London Zoo and saw a donkey.

Wave To All My Friends

2011-03-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

It's always the way with me. I spend months on end living a near hermit-like existence in a circular routine of school run - work - home - bedtime, feeling like a person I used to know but have long ago lost touch with when out of the blue someone in what I've long realised is my AMAZING circle of friends decides to roll up their sleeves and scoop me out of the fishtank. This happened twice this week. I'd sadly had to blow a friend out at the weekend because I'd been so freaking ill with what I'm convinced was dysentery and feeling more than a little sorry for myself when I get a text message on Wednesday from said person asking if I'd like to meet up for a swift one at the local pub.

I can't tell you the last time I was this spontaneous, but I didn't need to be told twice. In one fluid movement I pretty much got home, stepped out of the corporate and into the hippie - bit of spritz and lip gloss and off I swept (my thanks to The Silverback for the short notice babysitting). I bounced on the balls of my trainers down to The Elgin, a pub near Maida Vale tube that has undergone what I call 'ponsification'. What was once a perfectly charming little alehouse is now a purple lizard lounge with poker tables and chandeliers. Whatever! dolls - the beer taste the freaking same.

Man, do I ever love nights like this though. Midweek usually produces a wily crowd and tonight did not disappoint. Even without the uplifting conversation that ranged from the mystical world of spirit to saucy holidays in France, we wouldn't have been bored. Then...enter the Lebanese duo - the Christian and the Muslim - one, an eternal kid whose earliest childhood memory is seeing a naked woman for the first time on a family holiday in Mallorca as a boy and the other quite simply the angriest mofo I've ever met. I must admit, I kind of started tuning the them out round about the third vodka tonic. All good clean fun I suppose.

Then the following night I was cajoled out, this time to a private club with the PR girls who only drink with 'the beautiful people' These girls would rather literally DIE than drink at a place like The Elgin. Course the danger with these girls is that like it or not conversation always turns to shop talk. When the Blackberries come out, it's definitely time to leave. All is forgiven though, always - they are a life source and worry, worry, worry for my sanity. Let's face it someone has to, cos lord knows I walk a fine line some days.

Plus, you know, they got the good cocktails.

Happy Feet

2011-03-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Has this been the longest winter or what? It has felt like an ice age and listen, I've experienced a Canadian winter which would, you would think make anything over minus 2 degrees feel like The Bahamas. The relentless grey skies and dampness grinds like a whinging kid until all you want to do is open your own wrists. So when the sun made an appearance today I downed tools at work and pissed off out of the office for the most efficient of walks. And what a difference a break makes.

Pressure at work continues to weigh down on me but in the words of Lena Horne, it's not the weight that will kill you - it's the way you carry it. Personally, I've decided to carry one box at a time. Result: feeling less like a robot and more like someone who will one day be able to call the shots a bit more. I'm almost enjoying it.

Situation at home has improved too. Nothing short of a miracle there.

Actually in this respect I do believe I've experience a true rebirth interally - externally I've undergone a bit of a reshaping too. Thanks to my recent brush with death by poop - I've actually (finally) lost close to 5 lbs of the most stubborn back fat, muffin top and I feel great. I believe I don't look too shabby either. All I need to do now is get the shears out and trim up and I'm literally ready for my close up. What fun!

And to this point - I'm less than 7 weeks away from the grand unveil - beach time inThe Canaries. I'm off on a yoga holiday in the sun. All I have to do is continue to eat like a bird and all will be well. Judging from the recent increase in appetite this restraint looks to be slipping away. I may have had beetroot for dinner but I am duty bound to admit to a double chocolate muffin today that I didn't exactly nibble at during my little stroll in the sun. In fact anyone watching would think I'd recently been released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Ah, well - Rome wasn't build in a day.

Unwell

2011-02-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

Well, the much anticipated bout of dysentry I've been expecting appears to have finally hit. It began last night with 'the cold sweats' and the stomach cramps. I will spare you the detail. I will say that this morning's ride into work was quite dicey with a couple of very close calls. My fellow commuters have no idea how lucky they are or how near I came to 'treating' the carriage to an organic version of a Jackson Pollock Nonetheless, made it I did, to work and promptly spent most of the morning in and out of the loo until I could stand it no longer. So by 2:50 I had to leave. The return journey was even more tricky, the virus having taken a vice-like grip, I could barely stand. In fact I drew quite a few odd stares - none of concern, such is life in a paranoid city.
It was nothing short of a late Christmas miracle that I made it to the bathroom at home (it was the longest climb ever up four flights) with nano seconds to spare and have pretty much camped out there since.

I only hope the resulting loss of a few stubborn kilos is the ultimate reward - though from the look of my distended stomach and knowing my luck it will be more a case of memento stretch marks.

Onto a less unsavoury and more wistful subject, I saw a foxy loxy coming home the other night with The Lish. He had been cowering in the doorway to the apartment building but darted out the moment it sensed our approach. Where it went we shall never know for it seemed to disappear.

I have long believed in animal symbolism, so I was at once pleased and on my guard on seeing this creature. They are quite common in London, I don't know why or where the heck they live when they are not cowering in doorways - but I do know the fox, if you believe in this sort of thing, or I should say a sighting of one, is supposed to serve as a reminder to feed the emotional needs of the child in you; to be playful and laugh at yourself as well as to watch out for tricky tricksters around you.

Given the last few weeks of mental torment (stress related) of one description or another, it is a timely and much appreciated reminder.

And now I must excuse my self as another timely reminder - this one not so appreciated and absolutely out of my control, twitches.

Pass the nappy rash cream.

Live to tell the tale

2011-02-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

I don't want to jinx this, but I think I'm past the worst of what I can only call the recent mini nervous 'breakdown'. I've always wondered what a breakdown feels like - a morbid curiosity I know but it's a bit like wondering what would happen if I stepped into the path of an oncoming train. That's the kind of curiosity that killed the cat and I don't think I'm ready to die. But I do now understand how paralysing it can be.

The culmination of 3 years of bad planning and a negative mindset. After the real drama of a mental breakdown which saw me turning to pills and being unable to interact with the most important person in my life - my Lish, I realise that I can't afford to make those mistakes again especially since I am far from out of the woods nor is the future any more secure than before. In fact if anything, I'm in for a little bit more of a rough ride while I tame the pressures of work, flame the fun of motherhood and accept the reality of my domestic situation - which isn't ideal and doesn't look to abide any time soon.

Now, I could let negativity and moroseness rob me of my 40s (not to mention my looks and my sense of fun) or I can accept that this too shall pass and in the meantime, I am to live each day as it comes, appreciate the roof over my head, know that I'm not missing out on anything and ensure that I continue to be kind to myself, and others.

In doing that I've already realised that it's ok to take time out from being mum (in a positive way). Today for instance I didn't go out with The Lish and her dad as I would normally do, because for the first time in ages I felt like staying in for reasons other than excruciating head or body aches. Tomorrow for example I'm taking The Lish on a play date. See it all balances out. Instead of dreading and fearing separation from The Lish when she goes to Canada to visit her aunt, I'm off to do Yoga in the Canary Islands. And I don't feel bad. I feel good. It's also good practice for the future afterall the time will eventually come when I must be alone again. Better learn the skills to cope now than at a time when you're too conditioned to know how to change.

You know, I still haven't worked out what the last few years of dead ends means. Why Canada didn't work out? Why I had to break my foot on the eve of graduating Yoga school and why work has ended up being so incredibly stressful. I can only imagine that one day it will all make sense .

I have not given up on my dreams, I am just waiting for that window of opportunity to come again.

Anyway, they say you need to get worse before you get better...well, to my earlier point (and in the hope I'm not in fact inviting a relapse) I do feel better today and strangely liberated by the whole unforgiving experience because I know now that everything (the good and the bad)eventually passes.

Perhaps it's the blossoms on the trees, the fact that January is over,that I've made some social plans or that I have a holiday booked. Perhaps it just that I'm no longer in any pain but hey who gives a monkeys - I'm doing good. And that is a big deal.

I have that funny feeling again that I'm on the brink of a new beginning. This time I'm gonna plan it right. I also come prepared. Giddy up.

Time out

2011-02-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

After a long but positive meeting this morning at a client's offices, I parted ways with the head of department where I work who was on his way home to 'lock down' and get a report written and headed back to the underground to make my way into the office. Filled with dread at the thought of having to plough through at least a hundred e-mails before I could even start on the 'to do' list, I could feel my blood pressure rise with every step. But then, I stopped. Looking at the big clock in the middle of the station, (I'd left my wristwatch in the bathroom) I asked myself...what's the hurry? I need to eat.

I bought a burger with chips and an orange juice - healthy no? and sat down to eat. I didn't read, I didn't think, I just ate and looked at people coming and going. It was nice.

Then with a deep breath I stepped into the vortex, thankful that I am but one day away from the weekend. I can't really tell you what else happened today - one task after another. I will tell you that I got away at a reasonably decent hour and that I got home in time to see The Lish a little bit before beddy byes. Small treats. So you see taking time out for 20 minutes to just 'be' is the only thing that stands out about today (apart from my Lish's cheeky face beaming at me from the bath suds).

I plan on doing more of that.

I'm also in less pain - the headaches have gone and while I'm still working on the pain in my right shoulder and arm (caused by overcompensating the left hand's mouse activity, that, plus a shit load of stress), I've made it a couple of days without pain killers. This is progress.

As for the rest, I'm just taking it one day at a time.

It's not a tumour

2011-01-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

When I took this job in PR, I did not set out to 'have it all' and I was hoping that I would be able to strike such a balance whereby any guilt felt around having gone back to work fulltime would be balanced out by careful planning and cunning delegation of family and household chores at the weekend.  Of course, the reality is much much messier in the way afterbirth is messy. But like afterbirth, it's also necessary. I suppose every difficult transition is going to hurt (and gross you out) a little bit - well a lot actually. It hurts so much I've had a permanent headache since January 4th but I've figured out one thing at least: It's not a tumour.

On a less comforting note, I have realised that this seemingly permanent migraine (with worrying accompanying pain down the left side of my body) is very much stress-related and has so far required a medicine cabinet full of pills and potions to tame.  Nice as a handful of panadol and codeine feels, the answer to stress will not be found in the medicine cabinet.  Instead, I think it's a question of discipline, honesty and COJONES to do what you have to do to get through. For me the solution came in the form of two things - a teeny tiny nervous breakdown this weekend and calling a spade a MOFOING spade.

So if people are asking too much of you, if someone isn't pulling their weight, if a child is just being lazy, trying to keep calm and carry on like it's nothing but a thing is dumb. Also, it won't work. This is the shortest route to an early grave and ain't no-one gonna thank you for dying on them before they are ready. I should know.

So here is what I've realised.  Keep calm by all means, I mean there is no need to spaz out about anything really but DO NOT CARRY ON. No sir.  So today, after some serious Ohmming into the fresh sunshine whilst out with The Lish at the Princess Diana Memorial Park I resolved to do a couple of things: Ask for help where I need it (both at work and at home) and book a freaking holiday. No apologies. And accept that right now: It is what it is, my dear friends. No apologies. None.

So I'm off to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands for a Yoga/meditation retreat in April. Alone. Well not alone there will be others there but I mean, 'sans famille'. The Lish meanwhile will be going to Canada with her father to visit her auntie who will have recently had a baby.   I don't do Canada in April.

This is healthy. For everyone involved. I'll make it up to The Lish in the summer.

But for now, I just need to make it up to me.

All good things come to an end

2011-01-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

..and sometimes it's only when they do, that you realise they were good things in the first place. I could apply this to many areas of my life right now but I think it's a bit early in the week for deep thinking. No, instead I will tell you that 'A', the kitchen waving buddy who made an indecent proposal over a ham and cheese croissant just before Christmas - him - well, he's moving out of his flat to another part of London, so the days of waving at me (or The Silverback) from behind the kitchen sink, as he rinses his breakfast dishes (with nothing but a towel to protect his honour) are over. I wonder who will move in next?

I think he's feeling quite nostalgic because the guitar came out last night. Definitely original material he was singing - I say singing - I thought someone had gone into labour - but no, it was only A lamenting his last days in the mansion block.

While I've come to love living here - and if there were more storage and the landlord knocked a couple hundred thousand off the asking price, I'd be pushing to buy it, we don't plan on staying long term either. Funnily enough we've been looking at flats in the same area as 'A' - not by design I hasten to add but by sheer insane chance. Wouldn't it be absolutely freaking hilarious (erm, maybe) to end up neighbours again.

I have to say though in all my years of living in flats and converted houses in London, I've been very lucky with neighbours. I mean, for starters there's A - how many of you can say you've been propositioned by a virtual stranger eh? and one that turned out to be so nice... if totally inappropriate.

Before A, there was O. Before Maida Valle, there was Queens Park (this was before there was Canada) and in Queens Park there was a boy living in the flat below us who is quite simply THE best looking man I've ever seen in real life. Ask The Silverback - I think the Silverback fell in love with him before I did. This man is not a man but a god: Six foot tall, body like an Adonis (think Ryan Phillipe, Matthew McConaughey or Brad Pitt in Fight Club fit) and a face like an angel sent from A list heaven. Seriously, he is a cross between Jude Law and Jesus H. Christ. A complete player though. I mean you would be if you looked like him. He is the sort of man of whom it can be said, can truly have his pick of the women. And he does, daily.

The Silverback and I had to make do with gazing into his baby blues as he regailed us with shagadelic tales of conquest. We weren't listening of course - even the Dalai Lama would lose his trail of thought if O were to walk in on one of his meditations. One minute he'd be silently chanting his mantra and the next he be catatonic in need of an ice cold bath.

I've never had a bad neighbour now that I think about it. Never. Not really. I've had neighbours I've never spoken to but that's not a bad thing nor did it make them bad. I can remember my very first neighbour in London, a West Indian family who threw the very best parties and had a quality record collection too. This was when I still lived with my mum. After that I lived next to an Australian hippy who would exercise naked in the back garden with a Samurai sword. I kid you not. I was always wary in the mornings of looking out the bedroom window, unsure as to what might be there to greet my tired eyes.

However, I had him round for dinner one day because while he was clearly bonkers, he was also fun and different. He turned up, fully dressed thankfully and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get him onto the subject of these naked shenanigans. The very next day, it was pouring rain so I thought I'd be ok to go right ahead and open the curtains without fear of willies or buttocks jerking around at close proximity only to find Mike (for that was this exotic man's name) up to his old tricks but this time he'd roped his new male flatmate into exercising naked with him too. Before I could dive for cover, they'd caught my eye and were motioning for me to join them.

It's safe to say it was one of those unforgettable moments in life where I literally didn't know whether to shit or go blind.

So actually, all things said and done 'A' isn't bad at all and we shall miss him.

This is what Friday afternoon is all about

2011-01-21T14:51:00.000-08:00

I'm going to talk about something other than work in this post. What an utter bore I've been. Today I looked back at the statue of Eros as I emerged from the entrails of London's underground system at Pickledwilly on my way to work - to remind myself that life is for living and loving. I even took the piss a little today and disappeared a whole 40 minutes for lunch.   I took off to a newly discovered vegan restaurant in Berwick Street, a longtime teenage haunt (Berwick Street) that has not changed much in16 years ...cept for the arrival of this restaurant and the fit cobbler. It's called Beetroot. I love the earthiness of the place. It's like what I imagine a 60s canteen to have looked like. The are no sharp edges. The seats are semi circle benches. The tables or more like squiggly breakfast bars with the difference being they are at a seated level. The literature is all about good news on recycled paper. I found out about some chanting evenings here. It's a serendipitous place.

On the way back to the orifice, I stopped outside the record and tape exchange store where I once bought a New York Dolls album in 1989 and looked at this Dinosaur Junior LP:
- that's vinyl for any young'ns reading. I would have bought it too if only for the album cover but I don't own a turntable anymore and I just couldn't live with an album in the house that I was unable to play. Hmmnnn, I think it might be time to get a little turntable - even if it's like one of those 60s teeny bopper contraptions out of the bedroom scene in Grease. I have two boxes of albums in storage, any one of which would bring tears of joy to my eyes to listen to again.

I rummaged around a hippy type shop and saw a badge which made me laugh out loud - it said: "I can't come into work today, so fuck off."
But back to work I had to go. It wasn't all bad, though I am glad another week is done.

I left on time today and got home earlier than I think I've ever managed. With The Silverback picking up The Lish, I really had the house to myself for a little while. I could have done anything. Anything at all. Chant, do yoga, lounge. And you know what I did? I fidgetted, anxious to hear the lock turn and the family tumble into my weekend. It's the weirdest thing. Between the hassle of work and parenting you'd think I'd cherish half an hour of 'my' time...go figure.

I heard them before I saw them - the tinkle of The Lish's voice travelling up the stairwell like birdsong on a Spring morning.  I couldn't wait to see her. And that is another nice side effect of having a full time job -it has to be said. I miss the family.  I look forward to spending time together.

Course, it took less than half an hour for the effect to wear off and now I wish to be left alone with this image:

  Good Night.

The week where I learn about ebbs and flows

2011-01-16T09:24:00.000-08:00

Week two of 2011 has been no less hectic than last week, workwise (it may even have been more) so looks like I'm going through an ebb of the proverbial 'ebb & flow' of life (or flow if you're a workaholic - which I most definitely am not). I'm afraid blogging is currently a little treat I squeeze out when I'm not comatose on the nearest level surface - utterly exhausted by the pace of life at the moment. But if there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is just how adaptable humans can be when they put their minds to it or have no other choice or better still when they are resigned to a situation. That's me: Resigned and happy. Who knew being utterly frantic could fill in so many emotional voids!!!

I am learning the art of delegation in a hurry and The Silverback gave me some excellent advice about the secret to sanity at work when a job entails being 3 people in one. Actually, newsflash - my situation is not unique which gives me some comfort. Less easy is handling those wankers and fucksticks I refer to last week. Nevertheless, they pay the bills - so it's a case of finding peace of mind and accepting that with the career comes the stress, a notion that eluded me in Canada - possibly why I met with such a sticky end? I'm gonna give myself the benefit of the doubt there because nothing was going to work as I hadn't reached the enlightened state of resignation and happiness. It was a pill I wouldn't swallow. I wasn't ready to accept that life (and finding peace of mind) is about acknowledging, accepting and going with the flow.

Mick Jagger says it best: "You can't always get what you want...."

....But if you try, try, try, you might just find, you get what you need.

I think I've finally put the nut in the nut cracker - won't be long before I crack it. Better late than never right?

And not a moment too soon. With The Lish now well on her way to making memories with people who's names she'll be typing into Google and Facebook searches when she's older, I need to embrace my own unknown - a.k.a 'the next phase' of life. And I want to make it count. For me and for those who I care about.

No pressure then.

Still, let's get next week out of the way first eh? Look after today and tomorrow will look after itself, as they say.

In this sense, the universe always provides - you can put money on it.

The first day of the rest of her life

2011-01-07T12:41:00.000-08:00

Made it, just, to the end of the first week of work in 2011. It's been utterly bonkers and frantic. God there are a lot of wankers in the world aren't there? However letting those work related frustrations leach into personal and private time is out of the question. In fact, outside of these couple of sentences I won't think about those fucksticks again until I have to and even then I have developed a habit of pressing the professional reset button every Monday morning.

This Monday however I don't have to worry about any of that because I've got the day off. I'm taking the delightful and delicious Lisherlicious to her first day at Big School. It's the only time I will be the 'mum at the gates' (unless I win the lottery) because despite all of the above, I love working and more to the point, I do actually love where I work. A first. Actually I really liked my jobs up until I went travelling and then something sort of unravelled for me there for a few years. That's another story.

I was tempted to fall into a wistful nostalgia this morning at The Lish's last day of nursery. The girls there are absolute diamonds but for every end there is a new beginning and truth be told, the thought of not having to trek half an hour out of my way every morning to the armpit of London (Kilburn High Road) is not something I will miss. In fact, after dropping Lishy off, I trotted over to a coffee shop for to satiate the caffeine beast in me and found myself smiling at the fact that it was probably one of the last times. From now on I'm off to live the high life in St. John's Wood.

That's were the new school is. After a little creative letter writing I managed to get The Lish into a really good state school - for a while back there The Silverback and I were forced to consider private school but I just couldn't accept paying £5000 a term for Lishy to draw pictures all day long. For a start we don't have that kind of dough, and for another start...ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Just as well because I don't think strip clubs pay much for women with C-section scars and saggy tits - the only way I was going to be able to afford such extravagances.

Thankfully I give good letter. It did the trick with the local education authority.

Anyhoo - Lisherlicious now stands a chance of actually learning something of value at this place and with any luck she'll become friendly with Paul McCartney's daughter who I've been told is often seen shopping with her dad on St. John Wood's High Street.

Roll on 2011.

Back to the new routine

2011-01-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or have these holidays gone really really slowly? It feels like an age (an ice age) since I was trotting home with a box of ridiculously expensive cupcakes to welcome my in-laws with who had made the journey over from Canada to spend Christmas with us. And lovely it was to have them too. The in-laws, not the cupcakes, though the cupcakes did look like this:

...and were indeed delicious, however it was the in-laws that made Christmas. I mean that sincerely.

But tomorrow is another day (as Scarlett O'Hara so astutely points out) and I can vouch for every member of this household that it's been a long time coming. We're so ready to get back to 'normal' life, you'd think we were being held captive by pirates. Boy, who knew you could have too much time off...

Let's not skip over Christmas so quickly though because there were definitely some highlights such as Christmas morning where The Silverback and I were more excited than a 4 year old to see whether Father Christmas had found our house. Or the wet weekend in Bath. Ok, so maybe that's not exactly a highlight but it was nice for the Canucks to see such splendid architecture. For me it was a weird little trip down memory lane and a chance to exorcise a few ghosts from a place that has for some time contained both painful and amazing memories in equal measure. Now, it is the place I visited with The Family. There is life after death.

2011 may bring even more reinvention. Exactly what shape it will take, I really don't know. What I do know is that the truth sets you free, if you accept it. I accept it. But I also believe in second chances ...and miracles.

And in my case, I'm gonna need a miracle.

New Year's Revolution

2010-12-31T10:13:00.000-08:00

What a difference a year makes. This time last year I was updating my blog, glass of champagne in hand, in the secure knowledge that I was coming home to the UK after two frankly shit years in Canada. Oh, am I repeating myself? I'm sorry, but the strapline to this blog does say: because a girl likes to purge.

And here I am a year later (champagne in hand - some things never change), almost in disbelief at the progress made and unmade. I will leave the 'un-made' elements to a less auspicious day. Today is New Year's Eve and today we get to feel all nostalgic about the past and inspired about the future when we will get to re-do things we've basically cocked up. I have a whole list of things I'd like to press the reset button on. I'm neither joking, nor being petulant. Instead I'm picking things off the list as they come.

Take the 'career'; for reasons so incredibly complex - I fear would send you reaching for the whisky - let's just say I've accepted that I am not ever going to be a kept woman (actually I'm not cut out for this subservient role) or a completely fulfilled stay-at-home mum (despite my many interests), so it's best I get back to achieving (relatively speaking) and earning again. This I have done by going back to work and it couldn't be more different than the turd of an opportunity I squeezed out in Toronto. I have high hopes and even more compelling reasons to make a real success of this time round the block. Wish me luck.

I'm keeping an open mind about everything else. Let's just pretend I give a damn and leave it at that.

I've started chanting too. It's not a conscious decision...it's just something that has inexplicably drawn me in. It makes me feel hopeful and happy. It's hard to explain but I find it relaxes and focuses the mind in a way nothing else has ever done. This is a new journey for me. I'm looking forward to it and while I'm way too cynical (and vain) to get all shaven headed about it, I must admit, there really is something very magical about it. It also fills the emotional gap that would otherwise be plugged by wine and codeine.

In the words of Joey Ramone: I want to be sedated.

In other spiritual news, I may, just may... have become completely obsessed with Jesus after reading THE most intriging account of his life by Sylvia Browne. Like I said, I've been sucked into a vibration of a very lofty kind and it has had a very comforting effect. No, I have not become a bible-basher, in fact I say with utter conviction that the bible (all versions of it) is nothing more than an elaborate work of man-made propaganda. Less said the better here before I get all the sandal wearing freaks demanding the termination of this most cathartic of outlets.

So, here's to a year of self-lovin' (and I'm not talking about diamond covered dildo type love) I mean the other kind - the one that makes you want to be kind to yourself and others. And it's with this woozy thought I leave you tonight. I urge you all to follow your dreams however small and humble.

This is my hope for 2011.

It's all in the detail

2010-12-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve folks. The house is temporarily quiet. The in-laws were on the only flight to leave Canada heading for London, Heathrow on Monday night - after a day of one cancelled flight after another. It's a Christmas miracle they made it here without so much as delay. I'm humbled by that kind of luck. The house has been a hub of activity ever since except for right now. A combination of wine, jet-lag and the realisation that work's out for for holidays has finally sunk in. There isn't a soft furnishing in the house that doesn't have someone lounging on it. It's lovely.

Later we will all engage in the global subterfuge that is Santa Claus and ferociously wrap presents once the Lish is sound asleep - and I mean sound - because this girl suspects something big is afoot. She is not your average four year old and I know, as a mother, I would say this of my child, but seriously - she is like the girl out of poltergeist; exceptionally sensitive and she has a nose for BS like a sniffer dog. So we have to be especially careful.

The other night she noticed the wrapping paper in a cupboard.

- Mummy?
- Yes, doll.
- Is that paper for Santa to use?
- What do you mean?
-What I mean is why do you need wrapping paper?
- Oh, honey that's just for birthday presents
- Well, it looks like Christmas paper to me.

So now we have to put out milk and cookies for Santa, carrots for Rudolf AND leave the paper out for Santa to use. How silly of me to forget.

She's 4.

Well, Merry Christmas my dear friends. Hope Santa is good to you and don't forget to leave the wrapping paper out for him.

Like the Corners of my Mind

2010-12-16T13:52:00.000-08:00

I was out with a bunch of colleagues and clients from work on Tuesday - a very nice bunch actually. We went to Zilli Fish in Soho. It's been there a while, Aldo Zilli's first (I believe) eponymously named restaurant and in case you haven't guessed it does great fish and seafood dishes. I had the pork belly - of course I would. I like fish a lot but for some reason, I went for the pork. I wasn't disappointed. One of the people in our party ordered a plate of broccoli. That's it. Nothing else. I've got nothing on her.

No one said anything, it was the elephant in the room. It's not like we'd gone to Pret A Manger and you decided you just fancied a pretzel. It's like going to Le Caprice and asking for a bowl of boiled potatoes or in fact going to Zilli Fish and ordering the pork...or broccoli. Hey, we fought two wars so that people could order a plate of broccoli if that is what they want.

Up until Tuesday, Zilli Fish was always that place an ex-boyfriend took a girl to when we were 'On a break' as 'Ross' would say...or was just two timing me, as 'Rachel' would agree (we were afterall still living together - you decide). For this reason, I've never actually been able to walk past the place without a bristle of rancor running through me. Going there almost 10 years after the fact felt weird but strangely manageable though, as you can see I couldn' t bring myself to order the fish. Odd how memories stay with you like that.

I recall the moment exactly when I confronted said naughty ex-boyfriend after finding a receipt for the meal.

My exact words:

- So you can't even be bothered to come for a £2 drink with me but you can spend £90 on fish for some bint!!

I have to say, I and indeed we (said naugthy ex) have since laughed about this line but I guess still waters run deep - especially the estuaries in my mind.

I wonder what broccoli woman has against the fish in this place?

Red Carpet Capers

2010-12-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

Another Sunday, another movie premiere. No seriously, I've been writing reviews for Phase 9 again and this time I've been roped into reviewing childrens' films. Last week it was Narnia. They usually screen at 10:30, yes in the morning and the tickets usually stipulate you arrive at 9:30. Now, if it wasn't for The Lish, there is no way on God's green earth you'd find me in Leicester Square on a Sunday at that time. Ever. But, let me tell ya - both times have turned out to be awesome experiences, though, a little word of warning, Walt Disney Productions are a little stingy with premiere audiences. I guess not even Walt is immune to the effects of the credit crunch.

I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia last weekend. It was my first film premiere since returning to London so I didn't really know what to expect but I wasn't expecting much over and above, a free film. I was in for a real treat - or The Lish was - I should say. The whole cinema has been made out to look like an enchanted winter forest. There were face painters, photographers, caricature artists, food, food and more food! I felt stupid with my £2.40 externally bought coffee when the exact same brand was being given out for free inside. The Lish was catatonic; it was like a winter version of Willy Wonka's factory - candy everywhere. The film wasn't bad either.

And today we went to see Tangled - a cheeky remake of Rapunzel - by the Disney Studios. The film was amazing. Honestly, I would recommend it even to people without kids. It's a return to form for Disney without a doubt - though the freebies were a bit light on the ground. This time coffee wasn't free. Of course, this time I turned up without one. Marvellous ennit.

Determined to scope out what there was up for grabs I muscled my way through a small throng to see what was on offer only to find a display of reptiles...FREAK knows why? I mean, I know there is a little chameleon character in the film called Pascal - actually, a very clever little fella - my favourite character in the whole film but lizards and gheckos and ....I'm going to have to say this quickly and get the hell outta this page...snakes.

EUUGHHH! Christ on a cracker - what were they thinking? Well, I didn't hang about in the lobby after that.

I had visions of a real-life 'Snakes in a Cinema' situation as I yanked The Lish towards the auditorium.

- But mummy, I want to get a butterfly on my face
- Butterflies are for stupid people...let's go babes - here's popcorn. Careful! mummy had to pay for that...

Beware of false Idols... and toy figurines

2010-12-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

So 'The Fit Cobbler' has a name. Billy. And dirty fingernails. This is what happens when you get too close to your idols - an irreparable rip in the fantasy-reality continuum occurs and then the jig is up. Still, better to find out now and not when his hang-nails accidentally catch on your best nylons. And the name Billy conjures up snott- nosed simpletons with bandy knees, not matinee screen idols (no offence to any Billies out there who do not fit this sweeping generalisation). No, it simply will not do. I think a fantasy man needs a Man's name with no time for second syllables, something like Brad, Jake or Pat. Ok, maybe not Pat, but you know what I mean?

Ah, what do I know?

On more festive notes, I have purchased a Christmas tree. I'm told it's a no drop, premium spruce. Of course I didn't fall for the marketing, I fully expect to be having arguments with The Silverback over who's turn it is to pick up the f-ing pine needles within days. But for now, it emits a hypnotic, fresh, almost cleansing aroma of toilet cleaner that draws you to the front room with the pull of a basketful of freshly baked chocolate muffins (only with fewer calories).

It's lovely I must admit.

The Lish decorated it with baubles and her miniature dolls...so most of the action stops at about two feet from the top of the tree...but that's not the point. The point is that this was a family activity. The Silverback gave direction from his armchair, "It's wonkyyyy!" - that sort of thing, while mamanissimo lay flat on her back drinking coffee at 180 degree angles (not recommended what with gravity being what it is) and The Lish did a splendid job of bending the branches.

After rooting through all of her favourite toy figurines and carefully balancing them on the tree - she sat back to contemplate her work. Chin in hand she said with real emotion: " I'm just a little bit sad I won't be able to play with my toys until after Christmas," her voice cracking at the very end.

"Do you want to take your toy figures back?" I ask, semi-serious. Incredulous, actually.

"Yes, please mummy."

And we're back at square one.

Here is a look at the tree before all the toy figures had to come off and YES, I know. It's still wonky.

Titilating Times

2010-11-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

You're dying to know aren't you? Did 'the fit cobbler' live up to expectation?

Watching him fill out a receipt was almost too much to bear. I do believe I may have dribbled just a little bit onto the slip of paper as he handed it to me. I don't exactly remember much after that. A chair, a table, some people in an office. Something about a strike. Who needs public transport when you have 'the fit cobber'?

Sadly not all my clothes lend themselves to chemical solvent - so I will simply have to join the tussle to take other people's dry cleaning in. I'm up against pros who have been at this game for a lot longer than me. Wish me luck.

So, I'm having a hard time concentrating on work - I have to deliver a pitch to a journalist about technology in healthcare (yep, you should feel sorry) when my booth buddy turns to me and asks me whether I would like some Monkey Fudge.

Don't ask. Between the Fudge Monkey and The Fit Cobbler - it's going to be an interesting week.

The Fit Cobbler

2010-11-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

Been a bona fide full-time working woman for a week and it’s all going so smoothly, I’m going to struggle to write about something interesting or at the very least controversial at this rate. What I do know is that when I exit the tube at Piccadilly every morning at about 10 to 9, I’m already smiling. A quick glance over my shoulder and there he is, Venus’s sweet cherubim son, Eros. And I smile some more. Then I turn into my street, in the very soul centre of Soho and frankly, I love the area so much, well I should really start carrying a change of underwear.

We had the office Christmas party this week…early I know but in a way a nice segue way into both December and my introduction to the company as a whole. And what a lovely bunch of people they are. Honestly. Yeah, boring I know.

Not so boring is the dry cleaners on Berwick Street…bear with me. I’d noticed a higher than average amount of dry cleaning being brought into the office and an unusually proactive willingness by some of the PR girls to either take or collect items to/from said establishment. I put it down to it being a disarmingly friendly place – my associate director makes me a tea every day. After the fifth day of girls coming round asking if anyone had any dry cleaning that needed picking up, I got curious.

What’s with this obsequiousness?

“Oh yeah”, says P, my booth buddy and a typical London wide-boy , “they all want an excuse to go see ‘the fit cobbler’.”

“The Fit Cobbler? That’s a neat name for a dry cleaners,” I say.

“Nah, that what the girls call the man who runs it. You should get involved mate. I don’t see it myself.”

I had to ask. “Who would play him in a film version?” That’s my way of picturing what someone really looks like.

“Ryan Phillippe, naked,” replied one of the Corporate PRs. In case you're having trouble conjuring the image, here's a little 'aide memoire'.

Behave!

On Monday I’m taking two jackets in for a steam.

And one for luck:

Anatomy

2010-11-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I fibbed a little bit about yesterday being like any other day despite it being my last Friday before the new job begins, because I did have a little, just a teeny tiny girls' night out. In Soho.   Literally a stone's throw away from where I'll be sitting in a couple of days for what I hope is a very long and successful time.

At about 4pm I developed a splitting headache while waiting for the number 328 bus to collect The Lish from daycare. Of course I was sure it was the start of a brain aneurysm. Having forgotten my good pain killers at home, and I do have a case full of the good stuff, I reluctantly popped a couple of shop's own brand ibuprofen (tic tacs really) and hoped for the best. You want to catch pain before it hits the point of no return and I was skating on wafer thin ice. At this point, I wasn't exactly feeling the girls' night out.

Once at home I had to stop myself reaching for the jim jams. Instead, with begrudging patience and the dedication of someone who knows they have a lot of ground to cover, the ritual of 'getting ready' began in earnest.  I'm sure conscript soldiers feel the same way about going to battle.

I started with the slap (employed every trick in the book), then the hair, the Spanks (body sculpting knickers - which feel like a tourniquet) and the heels - the metamorphosis was complete (or as The Silverback put it: you look like a cougar).

The headache continued to niggle so I popped one more pill, the good stuff this time and disappeared in a cloud of perfume.

The girls were already at the meeting point by the time I arrived: a thai restaurant in St. Anne's Court, Soho. It's a little alleyway where Marianne Faithful lived for 2 years as a homeless junkie. Of course today it's so trendy, it's painful.   Watching us eat (I say 'eat') you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd just been released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp, we chit chatted about things that you really shouldn't talk about with your mouth full.

Next? Why dancing of course! What kind of a girls' night out doesn't involve dancing? not even a girls' night in skips the dancing. We headed to Freedom, one of Soho's oldest gay clubs. Of course we went to a gay club. When you've had to put on your make-up with a 4 year old velcroed to your lap, you don't need any more harassment.

I would like to thank Brazil at this point. Soho's gay clubs salute you and your fine supply of the buffest gayest men on the planet. Obscenely good movers too but I didn't see anyone covering their eyes. This particular batch of harmless male tottie, we discovered, were air cabin crew for Air France. BRAVO!

We knew it was midnight when the trannies arrived. Huge in all the wrong places, they were. Still, 10 out of 10 for effort. And then of course came the drunks who couldn't get in anywhere else. Gay clubs are like the UK of Europe - they let anyone in. And do you know what? I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.  You see, straight drunk men are terrible dancers except they all think they're in a boy band for the night. In reality they look like they're spring cleaning.  All elbows and hyper-extension. The pole dancing (oh yes, did I mention there were two dance poles in the middle of the dance floor...) the pole dancing was indescribable, we only hoped there was a doctor in the house ( a paramedic at least).

The rest is like a scene out of Desperately Seeking Susan.

We found a cab relatively easy to say we were in Piccadilly Circus and it was 3 in the morning. Slumped around the Statue of Eros in the famous glare of the electronic billboards that make Piccadilly so instantly recognisable, I noticed Eros looks more like a pigeon than a cherub.

You know that headache? yeah, it's back.

What would you do if you only had one day?

2010-11-19T01:49:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to the last weekday morning of a freelance lifestyle. I'm not doing anything differently because that would feel a little over-dramatic. I'm just starting a new job not dying. And even if I were dying I still wouldn't do anything differently. What exactly do you think would be achieved? The pressure to fit into one day everything you think you now won't be able to do is a pointless waste of effort. Stuff like this needs to be savoured, not crammed in. That's what the afterlife is for.

Besides, I've done a lot of the stuff you might do if you were given 24 hours to live. Really, I have. I've visited every country I've ever wanted to visit. Bought outrageous stuff (been outrageous) and generally treated myself (deservedly or not) and now all I want is a simple (and happy) life for me and those around me. And let's face it, that isn't going to be achieved in a day.

So the best I can manage today is to go to the park with The Lish and then lunch at Mc D's. That's what she wants - that is what she'll get - preceded by TV galore and her ice cream Play Doh factory which I have on more than one occasion pretended I couldn't find...it's THE messiest thing. But today, no mess is too big...well that's not true but you get my drift.

I woke up this morning and thought about the first morning back in London back in March. I remember exactly the mixture of elation, sadness and fear registering like a Hi-Fi's equalizer flashing green and red as the levels peaked with each emotion. It seems like a lifetime ago; a lot has happened. It did make me think about making sure lots of things continue to happen so that (keeping with the wistful subject of expiration) when I am on the proverbial 'deathbed' my life will feel like a proper sum total - none of this flashing past my eyes malarky.

And so this afternoon, while The Lish enjoys a few hours at daycare with her lively gang of climbing frame war-mongers, I will be doing nothing more than reading the epic that is The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest with a regular skinny latte (on the comfy seats) and that will do nicely.

I may even purchase a lottery ticket and if I win, everyday will feel like 'the last day'.

Looking after Number 1

2010-11-12T15:25:00.000-08:00

It was as feared, 'A' had ulterior motives for inviting me out for a coffee and as flattering as it is to an old bird (with a kid) to be pursued so sincerely by a mere boy, I really can't entertain the notion of defecting to the flat next door. One has to question the mental state of this unassuming young man. At least he got the chance to get it off his chest and I got a free lunch. I don't think rejection gets any more diplomatic than this and I get to keep custody of the kitchen.

If I were to allow myself the indulgence of a totally unrealistic fantasy, I could very well argue that I've become a sort of Patti Boyd in a George Harrison - Eric Clapton love sandwich. Except instead of being driven to write beautiful rock ballads to make me stay, The Silverback (George in this scenario) would most likely put together an incentive plan to ensure a quick and problem-free handover before disappearing to The Tundra without so much as a forwarding address.

It's been a week for odd encounters. Take last night for example: I was on my way to meet friends in Islington when out of nowhere a woman sobbing uncontrollably approached me as I stepped out of my building. My immediate reaction was to go into Jodie Foster mode (as Clarisse in Silence of the Lambs). I quickly surveille the area for signs of a set up and go all FBI on the poor woman. More real than the tears was the raw agony etched on her face. She was so upset, I couldn't make out what she was trying to tell me. With my back against the wall (and in my mind a .22 calibre in my hand) I get her to calm down.

Finally she was able to explain that she'd just been told she had breast cancer and on telling her long-time partner and father of her son, he had responded by confessing a 2 year affair which meant he would not be sticking around for the hard part. This made me mad. It doesn't take much when it comes to stories about men being shits and I stood in disbelief as she then went on to explain how she'd sacrificed many years of her life to help this man navigate through a drug and bi-polar problem.

I gave the names of two cancer charities. I really wish her well. They say breast cancer is a martyr's disease - well in the case of this lady, tis true.

As I hurried along, now woefully late to meet my friends, I started to think about the whole 'martyr' thing especially with regards going back to work. I could let myself feel really guilty about taking the office job which essentially means someone else will be doing the school runs for me going forward or I can just accept that the (right) office job makes me happy. You can call this rationalisation but I believe that in following my heart, I'm teaching The Lish to be dependent on herself and herself alone in the pursuit of happiness and freedom because at the end of that day no-one can live your life for you.

But most of all, I'd hate my child to end up a martyr to anyone or anything. No sir.

Everybody needs good neighbours

2010-11-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

So 'A' from across the way - you remember The Silverback's kitchen window buddy? Him? well, he has progressed the 'relationship' from scribbled notes pressed to the window pane with the urgency of someone communicating from their 'Panic Room', to something altogether more bold: he's asked me out for a coffee. Me. Thanks. Still, at least I'm not being asked UP for coffee or OVER for a coffee.

OUT for coffee conjures up a more sincere motivation, right? The Silverback generously concurs that it's the neighbourly thing to do. Course he would, he doesn't have to go.

I have to say I deliberated, knowing really that I had only one option. And, of course, I blame The Silverback. Who in their right mind plays imaginary cricket with a topless stranger leaning over a steaming sinkful of dishes? Who then goes on to wave at this stranger, on a daily basis! with the enthusiasm of a child (with ADHD) who's just discovered his parent's secret stash of After Eight Mints. Hint: It wasn't me.

And yet.

So, tomorrow I'm going OUT for coffee with A. I have to or else it's bye bye to ever being to use the kitchen again. And let's face it, eating is one of the few remaining untrimmed pleasures left to an old bird with a kid like me.

Unless....who do I know in the curtain-making business?

Apples

2010-11-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

Do you like apples?

Well, after one of the most demoralising job-hunting experiences in which prospective employers went out of their way to make me feel like nothing more than an old bird with a kid, I have bagged a rather lovely role at a rather shit hot PR agency.

How do you like them apples?

I don't mean to brag, but I had to turn another role down in the interim. Ok, I guess I am bragging.

It's odd how quickly something happens when it's right. It took 4 days in which time I squeezed two interviews and a writing test in. Some companies can't manage this in a month. This next role marks the start of a new professional phase for me. One where I'm in the driving seat, going at the right speed, buckled in for a coast to coast road trip with all my hopes and dreams (career-wise) strapped into the passenger seat.

Yoga remains part of this journey - the supporting role, the safety belt in fact but relegated to weekends and evenings. It's lovely and wonderful and fluffy and life-affirming but my landlord prefers cash. Not to mention the sparkly stores on Oxford Street filled with fripperies that have The Lish's name on them.

In a moment of deluded festive vacuity, I decided to take The Lish into town today to see the Christmas Lights and yes, why not the Christmas Windows. I have very fond memories of these as a child. My mum would take me to see the Selfridges windows and I would delight in their magic.

Oxford Street Christmas Lights 2010

The Lish came with a blank mental list on which she was to note down all the things we were to ask Santa for: everything - basically.

Just as well I'm working again.

Giggedy Giggedy BOO!

2010-11-02T03:38:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, I couldn’t get out of Canada fast enough when the time finally came to leave. I have, as you most definitely know never looked back and in fact cannot imagine a time in the near future when I will find enough resolve to return even for a visit. I think it’s called post traumatic shock. Not all was wasted; I brought a couple of good things back – a certification in Yoga and a healthy disregard for all things cold. Halloween however is another exception. North Americans know Halloween and unbeknownst to me, the costume tsunami that it is, you can’t help but be affected by it. This year, my first Halloween back in London, I found myself missing the effort Canucks go to.

Londoners are too stressed, too frightened and too multi-cultural for a secularised scream fest like Halloween to flourish. If you’re lucky you can go spend stupid money at a club and if you are really lucky some generous and warm heart soul will have a little party in their kitchen.

Nor will you easily find any kitschy decoration adorning house fronts here. Not so much as a pumpkin on the door step, nothing. I tell a lie, The Lish and I saw a couple of pumpkins that looked like they’d been carved by the criminally insane precariously perched on impossibly narrow window ledges. The brave who go Trick or Treating usually find people, if they do deign to open the door to you will promptly slam it in your face annoyed at having forgotten what date it is. Welcome to London.

I am one of those lucky people who knew a generous and kind-hearted soul having a party. I’ve learned never to shun the hand of friendship and of course, we all three of us went the extra mile for it – taking, if you will, a very Canadian approach to the whole thing; planning costumes and holding dress rehearsals.

At the party I noticed another cultural difference. Halloween in the UK is about the fear factor (however you want to slice it. Some make it funny, others need to be institutionalised) but to a Canuck, anything goes. So while my British friends came as witches and vampires, The Silverback went as Stewey (Family Guy) , The Lish went as a traditonal bride (and so it begins), while I went as Amy Winehouse. So I guess, there is one other Canadian thing I’ve retained. Everyone was baffled by our eclectic choices. It comes down to this I guess, the British like to play by the rules (for the most part) so who’s boring now?

Another thing about the Brits is that they are far more comfortable celebrating historical events. See, for us here more important than Halloween is Bonfire Night (5th November) which celebrates the foiling of Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up the houses of Parliament – London’s first religious terrorist I suppose. And on the 5th of November, would you like to know what this nation of civilised bowler hat wearing, anti-extremist does? It burns an effigy of Guy after letting off hundreds of coloured explosives.

I rest my case.

Not Fade Away

2010-10-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

I'm watching with autistic-like focus, the BBC documentary with 'Keef' Richards on his newly published autobiography 'Life'. A bland title, even by the standards of the most toothless simpleton but in the case of Keith - life and the fact that he is still alive is an achievement of gravity defying proportions, so in that sense: well said K-dog.

It's evident as the line of questioning becomes ever more convoluted that he is indeed a man of few succinct and slightly disjointed words; a man who appears to embody the meaning of 'less is more' in every aspect of his approach to life with the exception of music, drugs and women. In that order.

The most revelatory comment of all is when Keith describes 'Satisfaction' as a sketch he didn't get enough time to make into an oil-painting due to the pressure of touring in the early to mid 60s and the record company's insatiable appetite for singles - ready or not. I can't imagine that song being any better than it is. It's a mind blowing discovery.

Asked whether he realised the part he played in changing the consciousness of a generation (from the way he played guitar to his way of dressing) - he self-effacingly explains that all he was doing was trying to forget the war.

So this mangled old hellraiser with his knobbly, deformed phalanges and curt, humble responses casts a long shadow in the world of music and pop culture; one from under which no contemporary artist will ever out-cast.

Baudelaire once said: "Anybody, providing he know how to be amusing has the right to talk about himself." In the case of Keith - he doesn't even have to be funny. Though he is, endearingly and alluringly so.

It must be Sunday

2010-10-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

This whole blog post owes its inspiration to condensation. Yes, the dew that forms on windows when hot air meets cold. Alarmingly the condensation on one window I'm looking at is on the OUTSIDE - which gives you an indication as to the quality of insulation in this flat - gorgeous as it it.

It's a sunshine flat that's for sure. Wonderful things happen to sunlight in this flat. I have to say though, that I do also love it when the winter nights start to draw in. It reminds me of being a kid, getting home from school at 4pm and it already being pitch black outside. Wil o' the Wisp cartoon would come on; set in a forest where the main character was a little ghost, there was no better programme to watch while outside the night grew darker, cold and clammy. Or watching a black & white movie with my mum - those are great to watch on bleak winter evenings.

On those nights there was always condensation on the windows (on the inside). I would sometimes stand at my bedroom window just before getting into bed, and draw pictures in the condensation while wistfully wishing on a star. I wasn't unhappy, I was just a kid who watched too much TV. Or not. I mean TV is often the one saving grace on dark, cold nights.

Reading too is another cosy activity, but I prefer doing that in a toasty bed with soft lighting. Any minute now Bing Crosby will appear in his slippers, puffing on a pipe with a big book of fairytales. Don't worry, if he does I'll kick him in the brick. Anyway, the point is that cold, seemingly boring nights - especially Sundays can also offer opportunities to get cosy and content with very little.

To wit - on the rare occasions the Silverback is not foraging for food, chest beating or practicing knuckle-walking he sometimes likes to ask blue sky questions like:
- It's Sunday night, The Lish is in bed, it's 5 to 9 - you've slipped into your Jim Jams, have a bottle of room temperature water (sensitive teeth) to sip and flicked the TV on - what are you watching?

In other words, if you could watch any film tonight, which would it be? My response is always the same:
- A psychological or suspense thriller.

One day I will surprise him and say:
- NHL Hockey, preferably a Leafs game.

Of course I'd sooner stick needles in my eyes than watch hockey, but I might just say it, just to see the look on his banana eating face.

Can you tell it's Sunday?

Rules of Engagement

2010-10-16T02:50:00.000-07:00

I went to our storage unit this week - a necessity given we brought Canada with us in the move here and there isn't enough room in the flat for it - to get my 'winter wardrobe'.

With the Silverback in Philly again, it was up to me to manage the manoeuvre with military precision as I was also taking The Lish and she has a boredom threshold of an L.A celebrity's kid. So the night before, I made sure to charge up her portable DVD and packed four of her favourite films (are you getting the enormity of the operation?)

Feeling very much like I do the night before an early flight, I tossed and turned in bed and woke up feeling like a pig had made itself at home in my head. Having ripped the second largest piece of luggage out of the bottom of the wardrobe - an operation that resembled lambing season in New Zealand - we set off on the one and a half hour journey to East Finchley. One long-assed tube ride later, we made it to bus stop A on the High Road for the last leg of the journey that would take us up to North Finchley. A bunch of stops later - I was measuring the distance by eye (bit like my cooking), we made it to C.I.A headquarters.

I had memorised the two sets of codes that would get us into the building and my locker. Feeling like Jason Bourne punching in the number of his Swiss bank account I managed not to make any mistakes that would cause bars to fall from the ceiling and trap us like ferrets in a mink farm. I was feeling proud as Punch (if only I were as good looking at that time in the morning). I'd even managed to zone out the sound of The Lish whinging about how bored she was. We hadn't even STARTED yet.

I approached the locker with dread. The inside is like the storage area of an IKEA store without the labelling. I had to find boots and coats in all of that to last me all winter (or until we buy a house - which may be soon - saw some cracking flats yesterday, but that's for another time).

Opening the door to the sound of an air vacuum sucking oxygen in from the outside and Lishy still whining - I decided to take out my first weapon of mass destruction - the DVD player - guaranteed to silence the witteriest of fish wives, only to find I'd left it charging at home. I sank to my knees in prostrated frustration. Instead I pulled out a packet of Wotsits and hoped it would take her an hour to eat. Wishful thinking.

If having to unstack boxes that weighed as much as I did the day before going into labour wasn't enough, the lights in this place are on a timer, which required me to run up and down the corridors every 20 minutes in order to get the sods to turn on again (motion detector system). Not fun at the best of times, less if you are stuck between a book shelf and a bedstead with your hands stuffed into the lurky depths of an unlabelled box. Suffice to say, I don't plan on going back until it's actually time to move the boxes into a permanent home.

After that little escapade, I looked a right nonce pulling an overstuffed suitcase to bus stop A for the return journey home. I could have taken a cab, but that would have defeated the point since the whole exercise was to save money by not re-buying clothes and boots I already owned, I figured I'd stay true to that sentiment and rough it on public transport. Ridiculous really, I SO deserved a cab home.

After my tour of duty up in North London, I pretty much slept-walked through the rest of the week. Sorry about that. I did however try out the red velvet cupcake recipe I was blithering about in the last blogpost, to my credit, as it involved buying ingredients I've never even seen in real life, like food colouring, vanilla essence and butter (I'm a margarine girl). And look! - but I preface the image below with the following caveat: I don't cook.

So there you have it. Don't say I didn't warn you. I'm told however that taste-wise - it's the business. Story of my life. Nice legs shame about the face.

Do you know the muffin man?

2010-10-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a little show on The Food Network called Cupcake Wars recently. Actually watching would be too passive a description - truth be told, I've been devouring the show like I would a bucketful of cupcakes after a week in a health farm.

The competitiveness between the bakers is ferocious in a way only Americans can get over pastry. Mind you, they are terribly creative. New to my virtual kitchen i.e. the one that exists only in thought, are red velvet, lime-key pie, tres leches and churro flavoured cupcakes - if only I could cook - but since I can't cook for toffee, I live vicariously through these shows.

The workmanship, the quality...it's dazzling. From the 5 foot high displays to the organic vegan ingredients - it's quite amazing the life force energy these chefs and business owners put into the humble cupcake. Last night for example, the theme was Seaworld. They were tasked with including sea salt and seaweed into the recipes. Disgusting as it sounds, I didn't see any regurgitating by the judges - the greedy little ferrets.

That's the other thing: everyone looks like a Yoga goddess - like they've never eaten a whole cupcake in their lives.

I got to thinking what that show would be like if it were done by the British. First off it would have to be called Muffin Wars, which already feels like something you should not be doing in the kitchen.
Innovative flavours would include rhubarb, marmite and if we're being really exotic - cucumber and the most impressive muffin tops would be the ones exposed by the chefs as they bent over to put the baking trays in the oven. Themes would include public transport and hoodies.

I've just checked quickly and tonight's theme for Cupcake Wars is Aphrodisiacs. Flippin' eck! That's one I'll have to slip into something much more comfortable for. I'm imagining red velvet, chocolate, honey, pomegranate and gold leaf.

The Brits would struggle with that theme wouldn't they? Is powered egg too saucy?

Oh behave!

Outrage and a little dairy obsession

2010-10-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

I'm insatiable. I always have been and let me be honest here, not always in a good way. Currently I'm either obsessing and behaving like a whirling dervish (great for multi-tasking in the home and office) or I'm so unwound you need a mop to interact with me (ask The Lish).

It could be borderline personality, manic depression, bi-polarism (I'm a contender for any of those) or utterly normal for a woman living in London, raising a kid and ferociously pursuing a raison d'etre. Yoga helps to keep me grounded, because god knows I'd be pounding my breast and ululating at the moon, naked, from the kitchen window otherwise. 'A' would love that. He's back to writing me notes...he must know the Silverback is away.

Let's take the current Government's re-structuring of the benefits system in this country. I agree that for too long it's been a joke. When people are better off not working - you have a problem. However (and I speak as a woman who has had the audacity to live her life, go travelling, get married, have a kid and still keep her skills fresh) reforming benefits that affect children, families and women makes me a little furious when there are so many much more undeserving recipients out there that could be targeted.

I refer to the K.I.S.S theory behind where and why cuts are going to be made. Like police officers who stop cyclists for running red lights instead of tackling real criminals, the govt. has decided to pick on families by cutting child benefit in households where one or other adult's earnings are in the higher tax bracket. The cut off is somewhere around the £44,000 mark. It means if both parents are each earning £43,999 pa (so almost £90k household) they get to keep child benefit. Conversely if you have a stay at home parent where the other parent say earns £44,001 - you're up the brown creek. It's basically saying...we didn't ask you to have children...

The message is...get married and stay married (whether you like it or not), work like dogs, don't have kids and give us 50% of everything you make so we can fund things like trips to Mars, pay for baby boomer pensions and benefits for couch potatoes.

Way to encourage achievement and independence. And this from a Government trying to sell us on the Big Society idea. It's all beginning to sound a little like 'Care in the Community' which of course was so very successful...in letting the mentals loose on us. Libertarianism gone mashugannah.

I see a huge U-turn in less than 12 months. I sense a revolt of Poll Tax, horse trampling proportions. And the Tories would deserve it. Not 12 hours later, it's already happening with the proposed introduction of the married couples' tax transfer reform which involves basically giving back the child benefit through a tax break and will probably cost more than the money they intended to save by axing the benefit in the first place. If you are finding this complicated and ridiculous...join the queue.

It's a shambles. Now everyone is talking about reforming the voting system...in other words people have had time to see the mess baby-faced Cameron has managed to make in less than 3 months and they're thinking: How did he get in? Meanwhile Cameron is rocking in a corner asking for 'bitty' and his nanny.

What is the point of spending £500,000 on a private education when you can't handle the sophistication of a fair tax and benefits system - instead preferring to introduce truly STOOPID measures like this one. The childrens' minister deserves to be left in a Cambodian Jesuit School run by the worst batty boys the cloth can find.

Meanwhile, I've developed an unhealthy obsession for a certain fruit cornered yogurt. I've been in denial until I saw this in my fridge:

and

this in my bin:

Think it's time for Yoga.

Over-achievers anonymous

2010-09-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

I had a friend over for dinner last night. We've known eachother since school and once upon a time, we were thick as thieves until I left the Roman Catholic girls' adventure playground that passed for an educational establishment, to pursue a more earnest and foolproof route into university.

After my fifth year at this secondary school, I managed to get accepted into the closest thing I'd ever get (or want) to a private education - this time a Roman Catholic Boys' spanking club. Only 50 girls made it into its sixth form every year. It must have been a real imposition for the boys. Hurtling groin-first towards peak time of their rampant trouser jiggling years, they were suddenly and hellishly faced with the morphing and untouchable bodies of pubescent lady-girls. Plain cruel if you ask me - what were the school boards thinking?

Mind you, we girls were no better off surrounded as we were by a bunch of sexually crimped baboons at a time when we would rather have our new lumps and bumps go unnoticed. And man oh man could they be BRUTAL especially once the anaesthetic of familiarity took hold. We were outnumbered and out-hormoned. Some of us got it worse than others, it was the law of the jungle and very possibly the best preparation for life on offer. That said, I still know quite a few of those animals today (lovely boys all shackled to strong women in twinsets and pearls...Ha Ha) and got myself a great education along the way not that I've set the world alight with it...so far.

Which brings me to the revelations of last night's conversation. For all our achievements and despite needing both hands to count how many people I know with First Class degrees, very few of us can really be said to have truly excelled in life . I know it's hard to qualify what makes excellence - so we used the media measuring stick...in other words how TV and newspapers depict success.

We came to the following conclusions (possibly):

1.) The effort of achieving so much so early in life effectively drained them of the last bit of drive they had; drive that was supposed to last a lifetime.

2.) Our parents are to blame. OF COURSE! They worked too hard, gave us too much and in an attempt to instill in us a hard working ethic - they exhausted us before we even got started. Yes, it's their fault.

Astonished by our collective findings and after a sloppy mental audit of what friends were and were not doing, I thought about The Lish and the pushy parent syndrome...and decided two further things:

1.) Lishy will never be scaremongered into 'getting an education' for the sake of it though she will be encouraged to do something she loves

2.) I'm leaving everything I have to charity all £17.53p of it

2-bed or not 2-bed

2010-09-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

Bright and spacious 2-bedroom with terrific views of surrounding countryside. In need of some renovation.

Though I shouldn't be, I am truly amazed at what some people think can pass for a bedroom in London, in particular a second bedroom. I went to view a so-called 2-bedroom apartment today in the heart of Maida Vale - which is genuinely a lovely area of London- only to find myself standing in an overpriced (okay that's all London real estate) studio that had been not so cunningly converted into a monstrosity; an architectural and interior design abomination.

The so called master bedroom was master of all things miniscule. Only if you stood absolutely still could you be in there at all. Moving was an extra not included in the purchase price. It appeared you would have to leave the room in order to open the wardrobe (which I assume you did with a hook from the hallway). To actually dress you'd have to move the whole operation to the front room.

The second bedroom - and by this, it is generally understood that it will (as if it were a legal requirement) be somewhat smaller than the 'master' - was indeed smaller (unbelievable but true). That there could actually be a smaller bedroom than the one we had all just stood on eachother's shoulders to view, was hard to believe but there it almost was... smaller.

It felt like peering into a room in a dollhouse except this one was not one you could find for £12.99 in Toys R Us. No. I would have laughed out loud but there wasn't enough room.

I was therefore very intrigued to see the roof terrace since they had been so absurdly liberal with the description of the flat in the first place, the viewing had now taken a fairground attraction tinge. Well, let's see. If putting chairs on a precariously balanced thickish piece of overhanging tarpaulin suspended by threadbare rope-type thingys (in flagrant breach of all the safety and building laws of the land) so close to the neighbours BBQ it was a wonder they hadn't singed off years ago - then yes - this was indeed a kooky little roof terrace worthy of a feature in ‘House and Garden’. Sorry, did I say House and Garden? I meant Viz.

I pulled The Lish in fearful that the whole structure would collapse from the strain of all 15 kilos of her. I literally covered my eyes when The Silverback gingerly stepped onto it relieved only that his fall would be somewhat broken by the neighbour's BBQ.

Well, now I was intrigued. They hadn't actually mentioned a kitchen in the instruction. It was immediately apparent why. See, technically there was no kitchen. Sticking a hob and fridge in the corner of the front room does not a kitchen make. I wouldn't mind but the appliances looked like something that had been salvaged from a skip during The Blitz. No but I needed to really take this all in because they wanted ....please brace yourselves: £475,000 for it. The lease was shorter than my inside leg measurement and the ground rent, well, let's just say that if I could save that much a year, we’d be buying the place with cash.

Of course, we’re not buying the place. We did have fun though. And to celebrate we went to THE most delicious South East Asian restaurant located next door to Maida Vale tube, called Street Hawker.

Finger lickin' good and truly (unlike the flat we had just viewed) money well spent.

A New Vibration

2010-09-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

I started penning this entry last week, in longhand (old school style) which I don't usually do, prefering the stream of conciousness method which I then preen and fluff as I go. Works for me. I'm sure glad I didn't waste your precious breaktime by uploading too soon as I wouldn't have yet received a proposition for a threesome on Saturday to which, I'm happy to report, I resisted - it wasn't hard. I won't be hitching a ride in anyone's motorbike sidecar ever. 100 % sure about that but it is interesting what you will entertain listening to when you've gone one Mojito too far. Sober, I may have burst out laughing.

Nor would I have been able to report on an interview that I was initially unsure of, turning into the most fun I've had in a suit. I surprised myself by giving a very grown-up, confidence-filled presentation last week and wasn't that fazed when I was asked what I thought was the most important quote in the English language. Yes, that was one of the set interview questions. How do you like them apples? I like 'em fine. Maybe (just maaaaaaybe) I was just the right side of hung over (I had gone to bid a dear new friend Godspeed - she's off to live in the Home Counties - the night before and sparkling wine was the guest of honour) or maybe I was experiencing that elusive but wonderful feeling of release you get when you KNOW THE ANSWER. It helps that I collect quotes. I had many to choose from...nerd that I am.

It also helps if you accept that everything is open to interpretation. To me the question is almost unanswerable because every day is a different vibration. What is important today may not matter tomorrow. So I gave him a quote that resonated with me at that moment. It's by Kenneth Tynan (20th century's infamously harsh but genius theatre critic; He described his job once as follows: "I mummify transcience". Deep ennit? for such a short sentence. I love it.

I'm also awash with personal, social and professional responsibilities this week from pre-school booster appointments, to second interviews to gigs with new friends leading to ever decreasing doses of crap TV (a blessing). Frankly, I'm exhausted but I do feel there has been an irrevokable shift in this phase of my life - for the good.

After all the recent upheaval of moving countries and oh so much more, I'm feeling ready for my close-up . Professionally and personally.

Table for More

2010-09-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve been going through an insomniac phase, not the sort where you lie awake all night or manage only short fitful periods of rest, no this, in typical fashion is self-induced. I get into bed with my i-Pod and listen to Janice Long on Radio 2 until the wee hours. Of course on the nights were I go even later into the ’whoa! It’s time to get up’ hours, The Lish is particularly sparky making it impossible to steal more than a few extra minutes of sleep. I’ve been doing this all week and it was beginning to catch up with me manifesting with things like shoes in the fridge and plates in the bathroom (unless I have a poltergeist at home).

Anyway, last night at around 7pm I realised I was expected at dinner with friends. I was butt-arsed tired. I racked my brains to come up with a semi-realistic reason for not going but given I’d influenced the choice of restaurant and the fact that there is no excuse for self-inflicted handicaps – I dragged myself along managing somehow to be the first one to arrive.

In kamikaze fashion, I brazenly ordered a glass of Sangiovese red. Let there be dark. But then I realised that in all my life I have never been so engaged. The old me would not be sitting there with a glass of wine but at home with a glass of guilt and another bridge burnt. That perked me up a little. I substituted the wine for water…Jesus would not be happy. And then the girls arrived.

These are very new friends for me. They are mothers of The Lish’s friends at pre-school whom I met during the briefest of daily drop offs/pick ups which just goes to show how wonderful London people are. In 2 and a half years of drop offs/pick ups at daycare in Oakville, Ontario I didn’t make one single mum-chum. No judgement, just an observation. Anyway – this isn’t about that.

So a barrister, a child psychologist, a film producer and a slattern settled into what became one of the best nights in recent memory. I want to tell you the sort of things we talked about…but I fear you might blush. I can tell you that lesbianism was discussed and men of course were dissected with the reverence you would a frog in a biology class. It made a refreshing change from scrapbooking in The Tundra I can tell you.

The food was rather good too: I had the black taglionini with scallops in red pepper sauce. Yumsters.

But best of all (in a way but not really), last night, I slept like a dead woman.

The Power of Now

2010-09-08T02:58:00.000-07:00

Yep, that ‘Now’, the one Mr Tolle extols. I haven’t read his books but I do channel the sentiment when I say, I know the power of ‘Now’. See, I haven’t been the best company lately, wrapped up as I have been in big and small picture scenarios hasn’t made for the healthiest mindset. Add to that the world we currently live in and here, dearest friends is the recipe for inner turmoil and the bleakest emotional landscape.

But I’ve long been an alumni of the ‘pick up and dust off’ school of thought and while it sometimes takes me a little while to stand up again, depending on the force of the shove, (lately it has felt like the world’s weight on my shoulders) spoonful by spoonful, I've excavated an escape route worthy of The Shawshank Redemption. I’ve since covered the hole with a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal.

I have for a while been walking in the shadow of the moon but today (finally) I reconnected with the nurturer within and truly engaged with myself and those around me who matter. I was immediately filled with hope. In so doing, and almost by magic I appear to have willed a glut of reciprocal experiences. To begin with and most importantly I had a great morning with The Lish which must make a welcome change from the usual Wicked Witch act.

The long period of silence and introspection (painful as these tend to be) has brought with it the gift of revelation, which I’m sure The Silverback is most grateful for. And finally the phone rang off the hook with work related requests which I can tell you is an incredible development after the Australian Outback-like drought in this area.

Of course now it's time to step up to the plate. One interview requires a presentation. I'll give 'em presentation. In fact, I've had to turn some opportunities down; don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly in the position to do so but that doesn't mean I can't be discerning about what I decide to do next because whatever it is, it's got to keep me happy for a long time.

That means choosing well now, not just in terms of work but life in general. In man terms I'm fighting the urge to lease a Porche, get a piercing and bleach my hair.

A friend in need is a friend indeed

2010-09-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

Christ, what a bummer of a mood. I think I might be experiencing the beginning of a midlife crisis. Yes, it has a lot to do with the fact that tomorrow...I'm 39. The end of my 30s. Look, I'm not upset with getting old (though I'm not exactly thrilled about aging) because with age comes wisdom and ultimately peace of mind. With age comes the elixir of life experience which filters through to deliver a truth serum: the hindsight that enables you to see things as they are, to stick two fingers up to the small insignificant stuff and the courage to face and then walk way from the big stuff.

I'm at a crossroads in this sense. I'm not sure which road to take but I have the feeling it will be one of the most important decisions of my life not least because of course it's not just about me any more. I'm being cryptic I know but that's the trouble with mid-life crises. Their very nature is rooted in a snakepit of twisted questions and slippery confusion.

I'm not alone, for some reason much like the phenomenon that occurs when a bunch of women share the same office space where eventually their periods synchronise, I seems to have lots of friends who are going through the similar personal insecurities. I have a friend in Spain for example who is fighting the demon drink; a friend in Germany who doesn't know what to do with himself once his kids start school (and he is really bricking it); a friend who just lost her husband to a brain tumour, another one fighting breast cancer. And yet, here is the greatest thing about all of it - the most enduring of all human traits: All of us still have hope.

So while I do actually feel a little bit like crumpling, I'm instead taking a linear and commonsense approach to the basic stuff: Job, mortgage and a 5 year plan. How very Virgo of me.

The body and heart will need a little more magic and for these things I have yoga and friends. To wit: I've invited a group of my finest allies to dinner tomorrow. I will revel in their friendship and anecdote because if it's true that life begins at 40, I still have one long and arduous year ahead of me.

Here's to friends.

Cowpats from the Devil's own Satanic Herd

2010-08-31T04:10:00.000-07:00

I've been AWOL for 10 days but you will be pleased to hear the court marshall found me guilty and has punished me accordingly. We arrived in Gatwick late on Sunday after basically queuing from Faro, Portugal to the taxi rank in London's Victoria Station - no plane - we just zig-zagged on foot across Portugal to the north of Spain and across the English Channel along paths marked off by stretchy canvas separators - at least that is how it felt. When we eventually arrive home it's well past midnight and we are met by the bizarre image of a vicar dancing in the street. Ah, good to be back.

The wedding we were in Portugal for was a hazy, nostalgic event. My oldest friend got her man at last and it was a truly soft focus affair. Essentially a blessing - the paperwork having been completed in Australia (you have to love the romance of it all) - was held in the shade of a white awning overlooking the Marina in Portimao, Portugal. Lovely. I was reunited with friends and family some of whom I hadn't seen in over 16 years. Wish I could say it ended well but alcohol combined with selfish behaviour spoiled it. Still, that's not a story I wish to have overshadow my friend's special day. I'm glad to say she will be in London for one day before she returns to Australia where she now lives. Hooray for second chances. I have much to talk to her about.

Feeling oddly jet-lagged (because there is no time difference between London and Portugal...did you know that? I didn't) Monday felt yukky. I needed to shake the cotton wool from my head and decided nothing would provide a better jolt than a little meander down to The Notting Hill Carnival. The meander turned into a bump and grind and then a quick march. I remember the Carnival when it was all about music & community; a celebration for the people in the Westbourne Park area of London. Then it got taken over by sponsors and the police and dare I say reggae (no offence to reggae). See when I first went to the Carnival as a child in the 70s it was basically a street party for local children. The addition of a steel band was down to chance availability. Don't get me wrong, I grew to love the floats and the music. Today however it's a regimented march controlled by police. In fact there are more police than punters in some areas. Still, it did the job. I was wide awake.

Trouble with winding yourself up like that is sleep becomes impossible. So there I was at 1 in the morning watching The Life & Death of Peter Sellars feeling like I'd just experienced my own life & death. I guess this is what you call the 'post holiday blues'. Tomorrow is another day.

Dipstick

2010-08-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

The journey unexpectedly smooth having caught the luckiest break at Gatwick (by serendipitous chance we arrived 5 minutes before "the herd" to check in for our flights to Portugal) and then The Lish sleeping with Alice in Wonderland vigour the whole way right up until the undercarriage touched destination tarmac, can you blame me for thinking that this could well be the start of what is commonly known as a happy familiy holiday?

Still in shock on arriving at the hotel and settling in without so much as a bicker (well just a little one over who got the bed furthest away from The Lish) I was further amazed when The Silverback didn't have kittens over me watching TV in bed until the wee hours (well, we are on holiday afterall). Not content with this, the next day decides to open with a resplendent sun hanging high in a cloudless sky with what I can only imagine were angels fanning just the right amount of breeze down onto our surprised and furrowed brows.

The breakfast buffet didn't disappoint though it did surprise, as if tantalising us out of a stupor with fizzy tomato juice and asparagus. Fizzy.

I hate to continue in this vein for it is totally out of character but the luck continued when the nearest beach turned out to be styled like a buddhist-type hidden gem in the Indian ocean. Any minute now I will wake up with a council tax bill in my hand and a broken pipe in the toilet...no? Apparently it is no, because the ride continued with the discovery of saltwater pools in the hotel. OK - where are the cameras? this can't be right.

I'm fully expecting tragedy of Jacobean proportions to befall us. In expectation, I've hidden passports, cameras, laptops and credit cards. The Lish is under 24 hour surveillance and The Silverback is on tasting duties lest we be served some bad shellfish - though to be honest I never turn down a bout of diggy dye-dohs to help drop those last few stubborn pounds before a well attended party - in this case a friend's wedding. Ah yes, the wedding for that is the only way a hot blooded Spaniard can justify a visit to Portugal - I will report back shortly in detail and full colour.

But for now, I'm waiting for the fall, the crack, the short-circuit, the one mosquito with malaria to bite. In the meantime, I will have to make do with The Germans who so selflessly gave of themselves today to entertain.

Having obviously discovered, like us, that the hotel's pools were saltwater, they being the kings of efficiency felt it would be wise to confirm this outrageous claim by dipping a finger into the pool and tasting it - except they chose the one pool where the salt is likely to come from a far more organic source than the sea (or a shaker)...for they decided to taste, of all pools - the baby pool. Yep. The. Baby. Pool.

Nevermind efficiency - here comes health and safety.

Laugh? I nearly peed myself. Guess where?

I'm a Socialite Now

2010-08-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

Like London buses, my socialising comes in short bursts and closely grouped together. Before Friday, I couldn't remember the last time I went out. I think it was to Electric House for a chi chi dinner - like months ago - with some very lovely PR friends. Does that count? At this rate, taking out the rubbish will start to count.

Given the above, last week has to count as a frenzy of activity. I was out Friday and Sunday! Gasp! How does she do it? Well, with great difficulty it turns out.

Take Friday, I was looking forward to seeing some old (Oi! less of the old! I hear) friends at a pub in Angel - The George Lamb I believe it was called. This is a pub hidden among the quiet leafy streets of the North London 'haves'. It was full of your typical Islingtonian: Designer jeans, graphic tees, i-Phone, a bit smug, very complacent with enormous egos outsized only by their sense of entitlement. No judgement!! I fitted right in (for a West London cat).

Rewind to a few days earlier, as Friday approached, I felt the world famous heaviness of lethargy tuck me in - like a well made hotel bed. The Silverback coaxed me out of this mood rightly pointing out that I would love it once I got there. And of course I did. I love my friends. I've done nothing but moan about how much I missed them in Canada so yes! I bucked up my ideas and got myself in the mood. I did better than that, I had 3 quarters of a bottle of red wine, a pint of house beer and two cocktails.

Many many hours later with i-Pod blaring - the earphones now stuck to my forehead - (having at some point in the night decided I needed to listen to Radio 4) I woke up: In my own bed (check); appropriately dressed (check); hubby around somewhere (check); Lishy safe (check); handbag on usually hook (check, check-a-doodle-do).

Anyway, I think it was about 4pm Saturday that I actually managed to peel the i-Pod headphones off my forehead and lift my head off the pillow. Bad idea. By 6pm my heart rate had just about returned to normal.

This does not bode well for someone who has decided to become more of a socialite.

If only it had stopped there but of course, when all I wanted to do was remain in a medically induced coma until the following Monday, committed to stirring only when the chores of motherhood dictated upright, homosapien behaviour - it struck me that I had in fact earlier agreed to attend a charity dance...yes...a DANCE (for crying out loud) on Sunday. ZUMBA no less.

Feeling like I'd spent Saturday night in the recovery room of St. Mary's Hospital, after a C-section, I dragged my carcass to Maida Vale tube the following evening with the gait used by Kevin Spacey's character in The Usual Suspects. Nothing left to do but toss a breath fresherner into the woolly hole that passed for a mouth and put my best foot forward.

And do you know what? It was hilariously good fun. Thankfully having Googled Zumba I realised the flamenco dress I had selected was indeed a bad wardrobe choice. With no embalming fluid to hand, I reached for Spandex instead figuring if this was going to be some kind of South American cock dance, I'd better wear something sweatproof, stretchy and easy for emergency services to cut off. Lucky choice because it turned out to be aerobics on speed.

It was immediately obvious that a few people hadn't done their research. They had no doubt imagined something 'more party less perspiration' and were soon struggling to stop their jeans from cutting off circulation to the upper body as rivulets of sweat seeped into the fibres causing them to shrink.

One man in particular who looked like Ozzy Osbourne (as Ozzy would have looked had he not left Birmingham) would revert to a kind of Parkinson-esque, piano fingers, hand jiggle while hopping from one foot to the other (as if what he really needed was the toilet) when he couldn't make out what the steps were.

I was no better mind. Last night I discovered that I might like music, I might be sort of flexible (for my age) but I dance like a white honky. Still. Got rid of the toxins and all for a good cause and now I'm ready to take on ...absolutely nothing for the next couple of weeks at least.

Gone but not Forgotten

2010-08-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered that I make things disappear. All I have to do is set off on a pilgrimage with the sole intention of visiting and POOF! - over at the destination end whatever it is, disappears. The very thought of a London restaurant or bar or shop from my pre-Canada days appears to activate the self-destruct button the moment I think about it. It's quite remarkable. For instance, I decided I needed a pack of Tarot cards. I learned how to read them in Canada - boredom and desperation drove me to it but then I discovered that I really rather loved reading them; other people enjoyed having them read and I found the notion of seeing into the future and making sense of the past, strangely comforting. Anyhoo, my personal pack is in storage along with just about everything useful that I own.

Example: I own some superb kitchen knives yet I chop onions with a butter knife. I think the phrase is 'lazy-assed'.

Anyway, Tarot cards. I set off to a crusty type shop in Neal's Yard that sells crystals, incense and all things Woo Woo only to find that it had 'Gone Fishing'. It joins a long list of things that have ceased to exist. Having made the trip to the West End, I thought I might as well have a little walk around. Casualties included:

The 'chippie' on Old Compton Street that provided the only solid sustenance to goths, punks and rockers on a Friday night after the Intrepid Fox pub had kicked them (and me & my motley crew) out
The Hole. This is a sculpture outside of the Angus Steak House in Leicester Square where said motley crew would meet before jingle jangling into Soho for beer and chips
The Swiss Centre also in Leicester Square that had a giant working cuckoo clock. I remember bringing a boyfriend here to show him the wonder of it...yes, you may laugh- he did
A really good BYO Italian restaurant in Cambridge Circus. Gone
CBGBs and The Astoria clubs on Charing Cross Road. I said WHAT????

I could go on. Some call it progress but to me it's only progress if it's replaced with something better. In each case I cannot in all good faith say this has been the case. So I consoled myself with a little visit to a bookshop on Piccadilly that has been there for eons and has, in the spirit of progress added a fifth floor bar that serves the best chips and view of central London.

If I squint, I can still see these places just as I remember them.

The Small Print

2010-08-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

Listlessly reading The Evening Standard last night after a blah-de-blah day, delaying the inescapable "bedtime routine" with the delightful Lisherlicious (secretly hoping daddy would oblige and bless him he does), I come across a report regarding a gi-normous pharma company that has had to pay out £877 million to patients in the US taking its schizophrenic drug, who now claim to have developed diabetes as a result.

Taking a moment to reflect I think: Well, that's unfortunate. I mean, bad enough you're mad as a box of frogs, now you've developed an appetite the size of a supermarket's snack aisle; You already have an American-style capacity for eating to begin with, I mean, this is terrible news.

Worse still, the aforementionned pharma company had also, it was claimed been pushing the drug for unapproved uses including insomnia. So not only can you now not sleep, you've got the sweet-tooth from hell, which if not satiated wouldn't just lead to grumpy exchanges with colleagues and family members, it could positively tip you over the edge - into a coma.

Imagine the police report:

Clinically obese male, caucasian apparently suffering the combined effects of exhaustion and 'severe munchies' has been found unconscious in his kitchen, his hand in a cookie jar. His condition had been described as stable but ravenous and mad (figuratively speaking not literally, though as we've seen that too is not out of the question.)

Each claimant has received around USD11,000 (that's about £8,500). Should buy a few chocolate bars.

Irreverent? believe me I know and I pay for it ALL THE TIME.

School for Scoundrels

2010-08-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

Like clockwork, every Friday night, in that time between shuffling home from work, taking a two Fs and an A* shower and repreening for a night on the tiles, the door buzzer goes. I know from experience it's going to be a young nameless and breathless lady calling for 'John' who lives in the flat next door. I direct them accordingly and then forget all about it until just after chucking out time when Johnny Boy and his latest prey return.

I'm usually watching the end of 'Lisa Williams: Life among the Dead' - a very talented medium with hair like Limahl - when I'm reminded by a tower-shaking slam of the door to the building...FOUR FLOORS DOWN that loves young dream is back. A stampede not unlike that of a herd of elephants in the wild out-running humans with firearms completes the routine followed by the tell tale creaking of horizontal olympics.

All TWO minutes of it.

Got to hand it to the boy. He gets it every Friday and he never repeats. Put it this way, if you have a good eye for detail and a photographic memory - you'll be wasting your talents here cos you won't be coming back.

Now I don't know if he deliberately gives them the wrong flat number or whether he doesn't give them his address at all. Perhaps he gives them just enough of his address to make sure they get the right door and then leaves the girls to guess the number of his flat using the 'Joey Tribiani' method of counting across and up. An endurance test? A test of true love? or perhaps he's just a little bit of a wanker.

Or as The Silverback says: Legend or Devil?

*Face, fanny and armpits...Emily Bronte...I. Am. Not. (sadly)

Tickled Pink

2010-08-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Oh thank god. I'm back in business. After losing the laptop to the virus equivalent of Mordor (hence my absence from these here frivolous pages) - I decided to get myself a dinky, fit-for-purpose little Sony Vaio (pink, of course) which I intend to use for social media and social full-stop purposes PERIOD as they say in the States. In addition, I invested in an external drive just in case I go into download overdrive or actually get around to finishing my 'magnus opus' and find that 250GBs isn't enough to store those precocious words. Given its tiny processor capacity (by comparison), the Vaio has the added benefit of letting me know if I've crossed the line byte-wise. For instance, if it starts to huff and wheeze with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease gusto I know it's time to take it down a notch. My kind of performance indicator.

Sadly along with the motherboard of my old laptop go 5 year's worth of memories and I don't recommend the feeling. So like Carrie Bradshaw, I now back up. It's a small outlay compared to the sentimental losses I may have just incurred. I mean, you can invest in a back-up system or you can invest in a heart of glass and cultivate an enormous sense of entitlement. Just make sure you bring a hearty list of obfuscating vocabulary to the customer services desk of whichever snake pit of electronic con merchants you were forced to buy from if you decide to take the aristocratic path.

Computer Boy will tell me soon whether there is more than a page of illegible script worth recovering. I don't even want to think about it.

Still, a pink Sony Vaio...every cloud.

Must dash - the keyboard is spitting sawdust.

The More Things Change

2010-08-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

I got back from France last night. I took The Lish and The Silverback to meet an old friend and mentor who lives in a tiny village just outside of Perpignan, very close to the Spanish border and extremely close to my heart. It had been 11 years since I'd last seen her and 19 years since I was a teaching assistant at the French Lycee in Andorra where she is the Head of English. The car ride from the airport felt like a bleep of a heart monitor as I enthusiastically asked about everyone I knew and voraciously imbibed the resulting information. The rest of our admittedly short stay however, soon became a continuous loop of sedate continental mornings, refreshing dips in the nearby lake seeping into effervescent evening strolls in the shadow of the Catalan Pyrenees. Here is its crowning glory - le Canigou:

Though time has passed for us both in linear terms and 'stuff' has happened, nothing else has changed. She remains a fragile and generous soul and I'm still that little girl in a big wide world (with a serious case of the mashuganahs) who arrived in 1992 in her Doc Martin boots, torn leggings and hennaed hair convinced that the local 'tabac' in a village of maybe 800 people (some of whom could still clearly remember the fascism of WWII) would sell New Musical Express (NME) or Rolling Stone. The village has doubled in size, the tabac still exists and continues to eschew english language music rags.

While for me the trip has been a tonic, The Silverback got into all manner of clandestine talks with my friend about 'La Resistance' and the noble Maquis of the south, having long been into the politics of war.

Meanwhile, I got into the politics of gender having spotted the autobiography of Baroness Shirley Williams, leader of the Social Democrat Party in the 80s (that later became the Liberal Democrat Party) on the bookshelves of the bedroom we were using. And likewise I'm now on a mission to read Mrs William's mother's books on pacifism and gender. I love it when I stumble on stuff like this. I had no idea.

The Lish meanwhile discovered 'la baguette' and has 3 kilos around her midriff to show for it. It's back on the scooter for her.

Take your time summer, the job market sucks and Portugal signals.

Ctrl+ Alt + Del

2010-07-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a first for me. Today I turned up for a networking chat with a very well known recruiter only to find out the consultant in question wasn't there. Despite an e-mail trail of too-ing and fro-ing on times and dates -it appeared I wasn't even on 'the system' as if 'the system' had a mind of its own and was therefore beyond blame.

Never before has an optimistic and positive outlook been more crucial and important. I don't mind admitting, my resolve today cracked slightly to allow a tiny lump of emotion (ego) escape from my throat. I drew the line at actually crying because I know this is just one of those things and I also know how much fun I will have showing my press relations skills with this little gem of an anecdote to the trade magazines that can take your credibility away as fast as they attribute it. What were you thinking lady? Did you forget I work in PR?

I mean, so what? A frankly bad recruitment consultant proved my theory about recruiters - it could be so much worse. So why do I suddenly feeling so despondent? I know I can't be alone because, aside from me there were 4 other people in the waiting room looking as frustrated as I felt; the difference being that I don't have time to waste and walked out pretty much immediately. Maybe I don't need the work as badly; Maybe I'm too highly strung, but actually as a person whose role for a long time has been about building cultures aligned to company/brand promises - I know an organisation in trouble when I see one. So, and I mean this sincerely: good luck to them because maybe not now, but soon - they will wish they hadn't been quite so cavalier with talent.

Ok - that's enough of feeling sorry for myself. I've got so much more to be grateful for. And so I am off to validate the good in life with a bag of Reversy Percies and The Lish. It's all for her in the end.

So folks - the thought for today is to try not to forget how lucky you are especially when the chips are down. Alternatively you can just release a string of expletives while beating the pavement with a tree branch. The effect is pretty much the same and the latter also helps burn stubborn calories.

The Crazy World of B-Movies

2010-07-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

Went to the BFI (British Film Institute) last night to watch The Corpse Grinders – sold to me as follows; "Look – it’s only an hour long. Beats the pub."

You know it’s going to be all or nothing when you get this kind of offer and it could go either way. I decided not to sweat it. It’s been a week of experimentation. For instance, I’ve just also finished reading Ozzy Osbourne’s AUTObiography no less. It’s at once laugh out loud funny and incredibly inspirational – in an early learning sort of way. Ozzy deserves his fame, though he might have behaved a little better along the way...perhaps? No, scratch that. It wouldn’t have been the same if he’d gone all Jon Bon Jovi on us.

Anyway, back to last night. Let me introduce you to Ted V. Mikels. Campy, outrageous and beyond eccentric independent Z-grade film maker – here are a few movies attributed to him besides The Corpse Grinders. There’s also The Doll Squad, 10 Violent Women and Blood Orgy of the She-Devils. Oh and here is a picture of the man himself:

Here he is in his hey day:

He claims Hollywood stole the idea for Charlie’s Angels off him, referring to the Doll Squad for proof. You be the judge:

The Corpse Grinders takes place in a cat food factory that uses human flesh as its main ingredient. The owners, a pair of shady characters out of Colombo employ a man clearly suffering from Aspergers to dig up bodies for them to keep the production line going. The grinder in question cost $17 and it shows. The acting is so bad it’s good. I laughed my arse off at the editing. One minute there’s a knock at the door, jump cut to a cat attacking a buxom beauty, bit more jerking of the camera – she’s being fed into the corpse grinder.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Under normal circumstances, you’d dismiss this as utter dross. But then there is an interview with Ted Mikel’s the director, writer, producer, medieval dark lord of his castle and realise he’s being totally sincere and you can’t help yourself; you actually start to rate this crap. I left wanting for more - though I will need just a little time to recover.

You know sometimes you just have to go with the flow, arrive with an open mind. You never ever know... Happy weekend everyone.

La Belle Epoque

2010-07-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

The fog lifts on another balmy and barmy day chez my disturbed mind. I'm back to my usual fighting fit self I'm pleased to report having, it seems bagged another interview for a stellar organisation. See, I think this whole job hunting malarkey is a test on endurance not skills. I am confident in those...it's the waiting around that is fuelling the clot in my aorta. I should know better than to doubt the power of the universe. It will provide - it always has. So I shall leave that whole agenda in the capable laps of the gods.

Jeez, I'll tell ya, it's amazing what a bar of chocolate and three bags of strawberry shoelaces can do to settle the mind and body.

I'm alone again. The silverback is in Hamburg and I've been left to my own devices. First on the 'to do' was to book a trip to Perpignan. I was 21 last time I was there and the trip will be a very emotional one for me. It was the last year my mum spent on this mortal coil; I was there, she was here and when I came home after a year of Cyrano de Bergerac country and picturesque spaces filled with belle epoque experiences where I was teaching English as part of my degree, it was to be the last 2 months of her life. It was a sudden and unexpected death and as the16th year anniversary creeps ever closer - never a day I like to dwell on - it seems appropriate that this year I come full circle.

My teaching friends and staff at the Lycee who had taken me under their wing - I was known as La Petite Lectrice to everyone, even the local boulanger - were devastated for me and united in their show of solidarity. It is a kindness I will never forget. After many attempts to return, as crazy as it sounds, I simply didn't find the time to visit. I lie, I did go back once 7 years later and that was pretty intense, but I return now as a mother myself and wife. I've come a long way since La Petite Lectrice made students fill in the gaps to the lyrics of Nirvana's Lithium. I remember that being an immensely popular lesson.

I will get to see my mentor again who is to retire from a lifetime of giving - she is the Head of English at the French Lycee in Andorra (though I doubt she will ever really stop giving) and her mother who is 100 years old!!!

I hope to catch up with all the eccentrics of the village: The french literature teacher with an unhealthy obsession for Le Canigou - the local mountain. He talks about it as if it were a person, related to him. Then there is the son of the school administrator whom I gave private English lessons to with one condition; everything we talked about had to revolve around the films of Kevin Costner.

There are also those I have no wish to see again: the sports teacher who it was widely believed made porn films on the side or the economics teacher with an aversion to soap and deodorant...

I think however, the thing I'm almost most looking forward to is seeing how my husband deals with the lingo - especially down south:

- Pernod? Avec de l'eau?

- Victor Who?

- Wiz water?

- PLEASE!!

Into the White

2010-07-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm thinking that my current negativity is blocking all these cosmic orders I've been placing. Nothing has gone my way recently. Oh woe is me. I live in Maida Vale, am in no danger of starving (if only - yes I know this is not politically correct - it's this black mood - I can't control it), I have a pretty freaking amazing family and yet I'm feeling sorry for myself. I should be ashamed. I am. Still, what kind of a Londoner would I be if I didn't have a little moan every now and again.

Once again, I find myself looking for work at the worse time of year: Summer. This should be a happy time, a time to take advantage of the fact that pretty much bar the odd writing job here and there, I've got loads of free time. It's the stuff of dreams. But no, I want to work more and very few recruiters can be arsed right now. It's not all grim, I'm a natural networker so something will give - it always does but instead of going with the flow, I'm fretting. I have this vision of hitting an age where Summer, Spring or Winter, I'd be lucky to get a job selling hotdogs on the street. I worry about my old age even though I know of course I won't make it past 65. I am aware of the irony. I'm also a fatalist but at least I'm not a hypochondriac...there is that. Can you imagine?

And by the same token, so what if I do make it past the age of 65 with not a penny to my name having spent it on trips to France and lattes? - I'm in London! This is the town that encourages under achievement. Achievers get nothing from London. They get to pay taxes and to be put on waiting lists. And don't start with the 'but what are you doing for London?' bollocks: I pay taxes and wait patiently on lists. I give free Yoga classes to people that don't want them; I write to local Councillors to complain about the state of primary school education. Secretly, I love every minute of it. It beats the void of Burbsville, Ontario.

I am drawing a line under today. It's for the best.

What a world, what a world...

2010-07-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

It's been a helluva week folks. I've been rejected left, right and centre; struck down by some weirdoid flu-type thing - maybe malaria...no, lung cancer, at least and get this: I can't even (it seems) GIVE yoga away - that's how much of a reject I've become.

So first, I spend ages researching an industry sector for an interview which comes to nothing. I blame the Bakerloo line. I was all suited and booted, rehearsed and researched with more 'aptitude' than a cheerleader in heat only to get to the station platform to be told that I wasn't going anywhere that morning. The Bakerloo line had been suspended. In for a penny in for five pounds worth of bus rides and a gallop up Oxford St. - I make the interview but now not only am I shaken, I'm stirred and my lips are clinging to my teeth. It's not easy speaking when your teeth have a cement-like grip on your lips. It's impossible to enunciate. I sound like I have motor neuron disease. It make me so nervous well, I end up ballsing it. Hey ho. Two other roles didn't want me either. One had the good grace to tell me. At least I can relax now for the rest of the weekend.

Next. Free yoga anyone?

No.

I guess I will have to charge the next time as I think Londoners are too cynical to accept anything for free. They probably thought I was trying to recruit them into some naturist satanical cult. I lie - two people came. I knew one of them. The other one was an old man trying to shake pneumonia. Just what I need.

I won't go into the schooling fiasco for the nipper. I just won't, it's too depressing. What this country has done with the education system is the street equivalent of setting fire to your own hair when all you need is a trim. We've had to go private. So it's Lady Lish to you all now.

Then my laptop packs up. You know, I don't ask for much in life. Not really and when I do, it is with careful consideration but now I can't even get online without having to sit in a stinking internet cafe surrounded by 'gamers', where the seats are so low I can feel Carpal Tunnel marching down my neck towards my wrists.

On a good point...and I tread with caution here because the way things are going I feel a crucifiction coming - I made it 5 years as wifey to the Silverback Gorilla. So there's one thing I didn't cock up this week - mind you, it's only 3pm - there is time for a total FUBAR.

That's me done and done but hey y'all come back now.

The Living is Easy

2010-07-10T02:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I didn't do any better at all this week in terms of blogging but it's 32 degrees in London. This is the weather of everyone's youth. I can't stay indoors blogging!!

It's a lovely dry heat. Perfect for pub patios which is incidentally where I've been 'working' from since the beginning of July. I've been snacking on sunshine, proper grazing because I'm beginning to look like a Mulberry bag. I also have 2 weeks coming up in Portugal; going to my oldest friend's wedding. We've known eachother since we were babies. I'm very much looking forward to this - I love a good party, but also to spending 2 weeks in retro holiday mode consisting of sunbathing, sunbathing and more sunbathing. It takes me back to my teen years going to Alicante with my mum where she had a summer house. It was made of egg shells. You could hear the neighbour zipping his flies up, the walls were that thin. But OH the fun we all had. I had to sell it eventually after my mum passed. I held onto it for 7 years afterwards, but the holidays there were never the same.

Memories of holidays with my mum - the original sun worshipper - become fuzzier as years pass. It goes without saying that I miss those times. I want Portugal to be for The Lish, what I used to have with my mummy. We'd spend days at the beach toasting. Nights out on the roof patio - our house a veritable Private Members Club for select neighbours who would dribble in and out all evening bringing food, wine and anecdotes. I would duck out after a bit and disappear into the night with my gang to do stuff kids don't discuss with parents - nothing sordid...just under age sex and drinking...not really 'Breakfast Club' stuff - I've always been a massive prude. And now I'm just a massive prune. I'm brown as a berry! and I'm not alone.

Two looks sweeping the nation at the moment are: The Californian raisin and the polished pink snooker ball.

I leave you with a couple of pictures of 'my beach' in The Costa Blanca. Witness to many rites of passage. You have to trek through thick fragrant pine scrub to get to the sand. Ah, Happy Days.

PLAYA LAS DUNAS - GUARDAMAR SEGURA, ALICANTE

He's Alive!

2010-07-03T02:01:00.000-07:00

It's been a week, sorry! Will do better next week, but I haven't been idle, I promise. At least there is that. I've had a 'mixed bag' of experiences this week. A weird-ish week; the kind that feels like one of those fuzzy and at times uncomfortable nights where you know you've been dreaming but can't quite remember what about, except to say that you're feeling a little frazzled. Well, my week's been a 7-day version of that. And then again, in the same way those nights are quickly forgotten, I've had a few eye-opening moments this week that have made me feel positively re-born. If you are finding it difficult to follow my thoughts - then you have utterly understood the kind of week I've had.

Let's see, I'll try to explain, if you care to read on.

It started with the Sunday papers which I tend to continue reading the whole of the following week. It turns out an artist I had thought long gone from this coil of monotone is actually very much alive. I felt like I'd been given a second chance at a bad interview or something. Well, maybe he isn't VERY much alive, but there is a pulse - he's in his late 80s. I refer to Frank Auerbach, an expressionist and figurative painter whose parents (German Jews) sent him to London during WWII as a child where he lived in a boarding school. They themselves didn't make it out and died in camps which may explain why some of Frank's paintings have (for me) an unsettling energy:

I mean even his landscapes - look!

The colours are bright and the whole picture says summer but to me, it makes my stomach churn a little. The brush strokes or something. I love it and yet it makes me very sad. Anyway, I know he is alive because he reviewed an exhibition in said Sunday papers, by 'extreme realist' artist Alice Neel. I'll let you colour that one in for yourselves, but I recommend it to anyone who likes weirdos.

It's nice to know he isn't dead, just from a humanitarian perspective but to me, a person who tends to get into things long after they were fashionable - yeah, that's me - well it's like finding out Jim Morrison isn't gone but running an organic cafe at the end of my street or better still, finding a packet of Maltesers at the bottom of my handbag.

To change the subject, I've also had a couple of stabs at opportunity-of-a-lifetime roles - the only ones I will apply to from now on but more on that as and when. I'm just glad I'm at this stage (job-hunting) after so much recent upheaval. My yoga classes are set and the marketing is underway. I shall dutifully report back on how all that goes.

Most incredible of all this week, I discovered how to place cosmic orders. Definitely more about this next week as I'm in the testing phase though I warn you, as much as this subject deserves its own blogpost, I intend to be fairly reserved since I truly believe talking about stuff like that, as if it were a children's story sort of devalues the whole thing and leaks precious energy - that said, I will share.

And finally I bunked off school with The Lish in unabashed anti-estblishment celebration of sunshine and friendship a.k.a a playdate with one of Lish's fellow ex-pat Canadian friends during which time I realised (odd that it took something as simple as this) that being a parent is about the walk to the park, not the swings or the slide.

And now, I must go for I have pancakes and bacon to cook. This is about the pancakes and bacon, and not the cooking.

If it's not about the music, then what is it about?

2010-06-26T02:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the first day of The Festival. What festival? What are you, dead? Ok, so not everyone cares - at least not enough. I'm refering to Glastonbury Music Festival. I mean I could go but I don’t and yet I purport to be some sort of music enthusiast - critic even!. It’s like a football pundit deciding he’d rather polish his car than go to the world cup. Except that well, I don’t want to sound like a culture snob...but sorry it’s just not what it used to be and by that I mean this:

Once upon a time Glastonbury was a kind of annual measure of the state of music, all the Glastonbury line up tells me today is who was available on the circuit. Scan as I do every year the line-up, I realise I have already seen all the acts I would want to see in circumstances that don’t involve being so uncomfortable I want to chop my own legs off.
And this year Glastonbury turns 40 – reason one would think to pull out a few stops, but again – it’s the same acts that you will have already been able to see at some point this year or who are touring anyway with a couple of exceptions (Dizzee Rascal and Florence & The Machine were pretty amazing) and that’s because they haven’t got much else on. When Prince Charles deems it beneficial to his ‘brand’ to make an appearance something has forever shifted for the festival. And so it staggers from one year to the next.

I would have liked to have seen Eminen coaxed there since he isn’t touring but does have a new album and we have missed him dearly. I mean I LOVE Stevie Wonder (headlining on Sunday), I do, please see this blog post. It's just that he’s also gigging in Hyde Park tonight (Saturday) for crying out loud. For me that’s one 20 minute bus ride away and I can guarantee I won’t have to smell anyone else’s poop.

To quote the music critic for The Telegraph: “...it's [Glastonbury] really just an endurance test... and it's not about the music any more.” Harsh but I have got to agree. There are some that will agree for other reasons. This festival is perhaps more about the music if you remember 1971 when Bowie played for free. Some people get married there and others spend their whole time in Green Fields with the children having gone with absolutely no intention of braving the crowds around the pyramid or other stages. But I can't help feeling there are better places to spend a weekend camping with the kids.

Perhaps it has to do with age? No, I don't think so. I went to Bonaroo festival in Nashville in 2008 to see bands such as Metallica and The Raconteurs who have not since toured. That's my motivation I think and the reason why many festivals in the UK don't do it for me. Ah, what do I know?

Another music critic writes that when Paul Simonon of The Clash was asked how he felt about Glastonbury, he apparently looked utterly aghast. “I have never played Glastonbury and I never would,” he said, in tones of near comical outrage.

“Joe Strummer spent years trying to get me to change my mind but culturally and even ethically it has got nothing to do with my life. Notting Hill Carnival is more my speed.”

Hear, hear.

If you build it they will come....

2010-06-25T08:22:00.000-07:00

....not necessarily. I've finally organised a couple of yoga classes and am in the middle of a mini marketing campaign mostly involving social media and leaflets. Social media is all very well except for the fact that most of my network is in Canada - having started my online adventure while living there and while I have e-mailed everyone I know here in London, this first class is mid-morning, in the middle of the week. Most if not all of my London based friends are working. It's a small point but means I could be standing in an empty hall. Then I approached the mummy contingency at my daughter's daycare only to realised that a lot of those gals have second babies that are not yet in daycare and so again are unable to attend.

I've turned to guerilla marketing now. Leafleting places that both take and don't take leaflets. We all have to start somewhere - I mean Richard Branson started in a phonebox on Ladbroke Grove, if urban myth is to be believed. I did notice today that all the leaflets I'd left in the library had disappeared. I'm hoping they've been taken by library goers and not filed in 'the bin' by some jobsworth librarian. So, hence a second class on a Sunday later in the month. This time SURELY people will come?

Nevertheless, the self-doubt creeps in and I have found myself balancing this out by applying for what my mother would have called a 'proper' job. More about that as appropriate. Let's just say I'm only applying for wishlist positions - so it may take some time to nail.

In the meantime, I'm committed to Yoga and as I watch E!-Entertainment talking about achieving your bikini body, straining to hear the presenter over the crunch of my lime-flavoured tortilla chips. I'm still confident, if a little bit petrified about the outcome of this venture.

The logo's nice though, ennit?