Holiday time :)

Passport, passport…….. Where’s my passport?

Can I fit an extra pair of shoes in my case, I’ve got room, but it is already kind of heavy, I only need 3 pairs right?

Why does my suitcase look empty, I’m fairly sure my packing skills aren’t that good so why is there so much room? I’ve forgotten something haven’t I? I have no idea what I’ve forgotten to pack, damn, O I’m not unpacking and checking. Nope I’m not, I had better unpack and check.

Have I got enough sun cream? Have I got enough insect repellent? Do I need a bigger jacket for the plane? Four books is enough for 10 days right? I’m not going to finish them all?

Need to put a bathing costume in my carry on just in case my suit case gets lost.

Where the hell is my passport?

I’m going on holiday, and I am horribly excited even if I do have to have these irritating thoughts running through my head. Actually the thought about the passport I really need to start listening to because I’m leaving this afternoon. Leaving the UK for a better climate is also pointless at the moment because the fabulous weather we have been having, still I’m excited.  I’m going somewhere completely new.

I haven’t been able to go one holiday in ages, my job keeps getting in the way, I had to be a grown up and put that first. I had to cancel one to Florida last minute, I was so upset.  It much easier when I was young, my mum always knew where my passport was, we would go in the school holidays so there was no conflict, and a parent booked it easy.

I love travelling and going on holidays (I even like airports), I love ending up somewhere new and interesting. I love not knowing exactly what I’m going to get where I get there or what I’ll do. It’s opportunity to explore somewhere new and leave your old world behind for a little bit. So happy right now, or would be if I could find my bloody passport.

So I’m on vacation for the 10 days, I’ll you guys when I get back.

An Old friend in London Town

What I’ll remember most about yesterday was the soaring temperature, the dry air and sticky skin, fidgeting and grinning from overwhelming excitement and anticipation and the shear relief of hearing an almost lost voice and having a hug I have missed. The last time I was in London was a little under a year ago and last time I saw Kat was a little over 2 years and 2 weeks ago. I love both immensely, for wildly different reasons but I don’t see either as much as I would like.

Kat was my roommate while I was studying in America, I hadn’t shared a room since I was eight and despised the idea of having no solitary escape. Kat made having a roommate not only bearable but a wonderful part of my experience in America. She made what had been a sparse and gloomy room, home by filling it with trinkets, colour, noise and friendship. When I finally returned to Britain and my own room, I felt like someone had ripped away part of my being, she had been such a big part of my life it was odd to now have a life and a room without her.

I can’t remember ever really doing the tourist thing in London but who could say no to that chance and seeing an old friend?? London has never disappointed me but to look at everything through the eyes of a traveller was incredible. No one cares that it is over crowed, with people rushing or the expense; we were idle and easy going, swapping stories, answering question (seriously who knew I could regurgitate so much crap about the Royals) and filling her in on a whistle stop tour of London and Britain’s culture and quirks.

We started at London Bridge before following the South Bank of the Thames to the Globe. I love it at the Globe there is so much history there and the white round architecture always amuses me. We than went next door to the Tate, which I have to say is an extraordinarily ugly building considering it houses some beautiful art work. Yesterday they also had a BBQ outside, expensive but good. We followed the burger with a walk across the Millennium Bridge (the one that gets destroyed in the Harry Potter films) to S. Pauls on the opposite side of the river. This is a stunning building and the  gardens at the beginning of summer smell fantastic. We strolled up The Mall to Buckingham Palace and down The Mall to Trafalgar Square where we people watched whilst discussing education, politics, art, music and sports just like when we were hiding in our room pretending to work.  We found time to squeeze in a visit to  St. James Park, Piccadilly Circus before it got dark and we arrived in Leicester Square  it got dark and finally we ate at a proper English pub (or at least as proper as it gets in London).

I loved every moment of it even when my camera died, particularly that I was acting like a complete  tourist. When I go to London I go to shop, to the theatre or an exhibition, for work, I don’t see London, it’s just another city. I adored yesterday because I felt like I was seeing bits I had missed and because I was with amazing people. I was with Kat and in a prolonged moment of a day, doing all those things was so much better. So here is the upside to being a bit older, I can afford to go to London and buy my friend dinner. I can spend the day doing nothing and it be a wonderful guilty pleasure because I can drop everything and still go to work the next day. I’m now old enough to have a friend from years ago who lives in a different country and maintain it.   

Where I am the best version of me.

Is there a place where you feel like a different person, or perhaps where you feel like a superior or ultimate version of yourself? Somewhere that brings out your greatest aspects, diminishes you faults, somewhere where you excel. Mine is my old university town. I have yet to find anywhere that can make me feel safe and peaceful; it is where I formed some of great ideas about literature, art, friends and life. Aberystwyth in Wales lives in its own dazzling bubble, with little crime, vice or evil one can quite happy forget there is a big bad world beyond it boarders. It was a place where I could just be, just live and be happy.

I went through a lot of pain there but I never felt isolated or lonely. It wasn’t just the incredible people I met there, the place itself stood by my side, it laughed with me, stood close by me when I cried in the dark and stopped the world to comfort me. I miss it, I miss the people I love so much I cling to them as though I’m afraid they are a wonderful dream that will slip through my fingers. I miss the person I was there, the better, smarter, prettier and happier person. I miss the conversations about politics, books, comics, films, music, love, passion and life. I wondered if it was just me who had a place like this? Or does everyone have a place where they are the person they could be?   

Tumbling Pretties

Why a slow week at work is bad for your health.

I remember in my youth (ha like I’m old now) that some weeks used to feel like they dragged but I don’t think I have every really understood the idea of a slow week until I got a job. I’m an underling, and when work is quiet I have nothing and I mean NOTHING to do. I mean what do adults do at work, when there is nothing to do. When I was at school I passed notes and day dreamed of the promise of 8 hot hazy summer weeks, I don’t even get those any more. I have also come to the conclusion that a sluggish week at work is incredibly bad for your health.

1. A slow week at work means I’ve become frustrated, anxious and stressed, I’m not only bored but completely puzzled where has all the work gone?? I had some last week, so where is this weeks?? Have I just missed it, is there something massively important I am meant to be doing that I’m not?? Is it all just piling up and I’m  going to end up dealing with it all next week, which lets face it, would suck for future me. This worry makes me feel nauseous.
2. Fear sets in as well like I said I’m an underling and if there is no work there is no job and I’ll be the first to go. Maybe I should be spending all this spare time figuring out how to make the copier machine work when the odd little light comes on and become a little less expendable. All this fear is equally not nice and I worry I may lose sleep; well actually the worry about losing sleep is making me lose sleep.
3. Increased intake of coffee, tea and biscuits are beginning to take there toll. Having the time to frequent the kitchen is not helping the waist line, I can’t even remember how many cookies I had today and I pretty sure I don’t want to.
4. I’ve started chit chatting with the people I work with more, because I now have the opportunity and this had lead to some of the most mundane conversations imaginable. I have also come to realise that I don’t like half of them as much as I thought I did. I also find out things I really really really didn’t want to know.
5. After I have become lethargic, frustrated, worried, scared, fat and isolated it will inevitably not be a slow week next week, it will be a hectic week and I will want to go in a corner and cry and shout at the cosmos for just being irritating.

 

Occationally you watch something and it’s just like: yeah, that just works. It just fits in with your life, and where you are in the world. It speaks to you but also amuses you, makes you smile and feel a little bit better even if your weren’t especially down to start with.

So I thought I would share it. Enjoy

When am I too old to……?

I’m wondering at what age does it become unacceptable to sleep on your friend’s floor? This is a genuine concern for me as I do it lot, visiting people, nights out, going to gigs and other things. I always stay on someone’s floor, but I, er, get the impression that you proper adults/grown ups don’t do that. Soooo I kind of want I want to know at what age is it, you know, ‘improper’ for me to sleep on my friends floors?

Seriously, I mean my parents don’t slumber in sleeping bags on a mate’s carpet; so at what age do I have to start… I don’t know shelling out for hotel rooms or making other arrangements? (I have no idea what these other arrangements are.) Or is that they don’t stop snoozing on mates floors but rather that they have fewer reasons to? Do ‘adults’ stop going to gigs, stop going on nights out and getting too inebriated to drive home and stop visiting friends ? Is that why they no longer catch Zzzzzzz on floorboards?  I suppose that adults stay with other adults and adults have spare rooms, is that it?

This is just one of the many, many questions I have about being an ‘adult’; for example my friend who I went ‘white dress’ shopping with at the weekend, still goes out for coffee, orders a coke and slurps it. She getting married in 4 months and still doesn’t drink coffee and still slurps her drinks. How is she grown up enough to be married? I went to a gig on Monday; now am I allowed to go to a gig on a week night if I have work the next day or am I meant to be responsible and not go? This gig was for a band I have loved since I was 14 and my friends and I went along with every intention of re living our youth in a big way. Does that mean we are adults now because we can relive bits of our youth?  Am I too old to like cartoons, Disney Parks and teddies? If so I am definitely not adult enough to have the child that would provide the ‘permission’ for me to be seen enjoying these again.

I never used to care about these things or what other people thought about these things. Is that a sign that I’m more adult or grown up or whatever? Sod it, I really just want to know when I’ll stop getting back ache from the all that contorting as a result of sleeping on those hard floors!

White dresses and a level up in the game of life.

My friend has moved her wedding forward by a year from September 2013 to September 2012. I’m sorry to say I was first in there with the unoriginal question ‘Are you Pregnant?’ I couldn’t help it. I am vastly ecstatic because they got engaged and then the wedding seemed so far away, now it is the highlight at the end of my summer, let alone theirs. The bride is a wonderful friend from university and her fiancée is fab, I spend a large amount of time in their spare room when I’m visiting friends in trade for a bottle of wine. I have spent many happy hours with them and I can’t wait to see them marry, I plan to cry a sea of tears and drink way too much in their honour. They are a couple that is so established in my world that if they separated I’m sure the universe would rip at the seams.

 

The dresses

I’m not going to be a bridesmaid; however I spent the weekend wedding dress shopping with the bride to be and her mother. Would you believe it, the first dress, in the first shop was just perfect and nothing else after could measure up. This didn’t stop her trying on lots of dresses, I watched her try on white gown after white gown and started to feel, well, a little odd. I have never really wanted to get married, I was always in the train of thought that if you loved someone and wanted to spend your life with them just do it, why do you need a piece of paper to prove that you do or will. It’s not like in today’s society it means a lot, every marriage seems doomed to fail before it has started. Despite my cynicism and my generation’s apparent determination to devalue marriage, I always feel overwhelmingly happy when someone tells me they are going to tie the knot, I think it’s because in that moment that person seems incandescently happy. In the bridal shop, staring at mountains of white, cream, ivory, satin and lace I started to wonder if I wanted a big white dress? I can’t imagine thinking I could spend the rest of my life with anyone, let alone wanting or even choosing someone to do that with. Just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like it, it doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t make me content, it just means I have to do some serious revaluation of what makes me happy.

Everyone around me is in long term relationships, engagements and marriage. Me? Well I joined a Facebook group called ‘My friends are getting married, I’m getting drunk’, yes this is probably childish but it feels like I’m playing a game and I just went up a level in difficultly. It feels like I’m getting old and this doesn’t sit well with me, do I have to start checking for glinting gold bands on the left hand every time someone I am remotely attracted to starts talking to me? I am going to start getting sympathy looks every time I say I’m single, watching a small flash of fear in their eye as they panic I’m might burst into tears over my singleton status or even worse they might catch singletonitis? Or heartbreakingly worse am I going to be deserted, left behind by my friends? Is there room in married life for the single girl chasing a Neverland dream? If I fight to keep my friends will they accept me, chasing happiness that’s not like theirs or will we just drift apart on different tides??

Too hot for sleep.

My wonderful Mother received this text message from me.

“What do you do if a boy is too hot in bed to sleep but otherwise perfectly fine?? Xx”

Yeah, okay, you like my mum can get you minds out the gutter right now!! This text message was about one of the boys I was babysitting last night, not about a man that was simply too exciting for sleep. I eventually did get the 7 year old boy to slip off back to sleep but apparently texting your mum at 11:30 at night, when she can’t remember where you are will lead her to assume all sorts of smutty things. My mum assumed that my enthralling text had been sent to her by mistake and had to spend some time remembering where her first daughter was.  It seems once she remembered I had several little boys in my care the text made so much more sense. I did eventually get a response to my child care issue but by then, the minimal maternal instinct I have, finally kicked in and my issue was resolved.

Since last night my mum has taken to showing my text message to everyone, my siblings, my cousin, our neighbours and her friends and everyone laughs. I missed the joke; at no point could I see the unintentional crude innuendo in my text. I am utterly ashamed, not that I sent a perhaps embarrassing text, I am embarrassed that I missed the humour. I was a student only a year ago how can I have lost that vulgar sense of humour that is integral to all students, I refuse to be that old already. My mum thinks it’s hysterical and she is much older than me; please never inform her I said that ever.

I love the fact my mum thinks I would ask this question and that she is imaginative enough to paint the wrong picture but completely disappointed that she thinks I’d ask anyone other than her. Why would I bother asking anyone else?? As far as I am concerned my mother is the all seeing all knowing oracle of my world. Who laughs at me, because she can ……because she knows I’ll always ask for whatever I need. I love how everyone I know has such a rude mind, it’s nice to know that apparently you never grow up from being 19; where everything can have a smutty but humorous spin on it if you don’t take things too seriously.

Anyway, I figure that not getting a reply from my mum is a good thing, I know I can handle a boy no matter how hot he is in bed….. and you can take that anyway you like

Dancing feet

  I definitely have dancing feet and they are the best thing I have. I can talk for hours about getting the perfect line, movement or position but I’m not going to, as much as I may like chasing the perfect performance that’s not why I love dancing. I love dancing for the sense of freedom, the joy, to feel beautiful, to completely lose yourself and be yourself all at once. I believe that life is not about waiting for the tempest to pass it is about learning to dance through the rain.

Dancing is part of my soul, there is nothing better than dancing like no one is watching or dancing a night away until the sunrises and your feet ache. Dancing is everything and it’s all about dreaming. It’s about good music, feeling like you can fly and go on moving forever. I dance to music in my head anywhere any time, I dance in shops and streets as music is pump out. I will always be the first on the floor and the last. I will always allow a rhythm to infect me, I will ask partner after partner until someone will dance with me, I will always chose to get lost spinning with someone special for a moment, than hours sitting together.

Almost every society and culture has dancing; every child knows that the only thing to do when a song comes on is to jump around like a fool. It is sad that as we get older some of us stop and worry what people will think. When I was 16 I saw two elegant elderly widows, wrapped in scarves and coats gracefully dancing to a band in the park, they laughed their way through dances from their youth and flashes of their early days reflected in their faces. I decided then that if I got nothing else from life, I am going to be a woman who dances in the cold, in the open air, achy and weathered to smile and be happy.

Got any good memories about dancing?? When was the last time you danced like no would care??   Tumbling Pretties

Green eyed monster and other fiends

Jealousy is an ugly thing, it is horrible when it takes hold of you, the “green-ey’d monster that doth mock The meat it feeds on” (Othello, Shakespeare) and what is worse you can’t save someone else from the monster’s grip. You can’t change how people feel. I find that as I get older that the main problem when trying to maintain relationships is that you can’t control how people feel. Then again if you could control how someone felt life would be much simpler. I can’t stop someone having feelings for me or not as the case maybe. I can’t help it is someone is jealous or disappointed and I can’t stop a person being tactless or feeling humiliated. I can’t stand that, that other people maybe hurt and there isn’t very much I can do about it.

I dislike people who lead devoted admirers on because they like the attention but have no romantic interest in them, it setting them up for an agonising fall. No you can’t stop a person liking you but you can control your actions around them and stop leading them on. Two of my friends are currently engaged in this dance and I worry about the fallout and the pain that will be cause and whether either party is really ready for it. You can’t stop a person being jealous but you can try to appease the situation and know when to call it a day if it’s not going to change. My colleague at work is determined to make a relationship work with a man who is cause hurt by her every move it seems. You can’t stop someone being hurt by a joke but you can stop telling it and you can’t stop someone feeling disappointed in you but you can at least try. I’m sorry to say when I was younger, for a short period, I manipulated people’s emotions to get what I wanted and since I couldn’t change how people felt I chose to simply not care. It didn’t last long I find it heartbreaking to see people unhappy and am happy to do everything to make someone smile just a little bit.

You can’t control how other people feel, you can’t control if they fall in love or what they will find ridiculous or how they will react to an event. As I’ve got older I have watched more and more people try to manipulate others emotions or pre-empt how people will react, I have watched these interactions with limited success. Now I’m older I realise you can’t predict how people will feel, you can only control your own actions and the intent of those actions. I find it distressing that I can’t promise that people will always like what I do or that someone won’t end up being hurt, all I can do within my own power is to endeavour to do what I think is right and to the best of my abilities not cause pain to those around me. This doesn’t mean I won’t cause someone pain, I already have and I probably will again, it just means I’ll strive to do minimal damage.