Grateful Friday

The first Grateful Friday of 2009! It's toasty warm, if horrendously dusty (building work) in my flat, so I have no idea of the weather outside... it looks cold though, cold enough to stay indoors and be grateful for:

1. The start of 2009 - for the first time in my life I was actually relieved that a year was over. Instead of being glad about the end of one year, I'm going to be pleasantly anticipating this new one. Here's to a better 2009!

2. A surprise trip this weekend - to visit a friend whom I haven't seen for too long. It's her birthday and I'm going to make her a Santiago Lemon Torte, lush!

3. A whole wheel of cheese! Two extremely kind friends donated half of their Stilton to my NYE dinner party. Three days and a lot of digging and eating later, it still looks the same size as it did when I opened it... It's about as big as a dinner plate and about four inches tall, that's a lot of cheese. I don't even like Stilton, it's too rich for me, but this one is organic and creamy and rich and tangy. I love it, especially with a glass of Port.

4. The satisfaction I know will be mine when I finally finish my tax return... I hate these things. Why oh why can't I start it earlier and avoid the nightmares?

5. Cycling 2009 - I'm going to cycle lots this year, even if it's cold, I have neglected Mabel of late and she is sad and pathetic chained outside to a railing, I promise to get her out more this year.

2009 - The Simple Life

I don't know about you, but simplicity is not something that I manage to experience very often in the way I live my life. I came across this poster from Ready Made and it made me think. The dynamo lights on the bike in the drawing are almost the same as those on my Dutch bike. They never need batteries and I am always able to cycle home in the dark, even if I have forgotten my LED lights. Maybe living simply is about removing the need to remember so many things, like bike lights, and just getting on with living. If there were more room in my head for the importan things in life, perhaps I would be happier. I'll give it a go and let you know how I get on.

Christmas

Christmas came and went this year in a frenzied blur. I was out of the country until mid-December and didn't feel remotely Christmasy at all, even after mulled wine and minced pies the last week in December. The lack of Christmas cheer made me feel sad, I used to love Christmas - the magical promise of life in twinkly lights against the darkness. Maybe next year will be different. It's hard to feel Christmasy walking along the top of the Andes in 18 degree sunshine in December, or while filling in a tax return at the kitchen table, or while the house is full of builders' dust and the Christmas tree is coating in a fine grey powder and the lights are only half visible. Next year there will be baking and trees and cinnamon muffins and presents and lights, lots of lights, and I will try to stop to take it all in.

An attempt to not be like the town mouse

When I was a child one of my favourite books was The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, which is based on one of Aesop's Fables. In the story the two mice are cousins and they go to visit each other in the town and country respectively. Each struggles to understand the way the other lives his life - the town mouse turns up his nose at the country mouse's simple food, and the country mouse is scared to be in a big house with the 'music' of barking dogs accompanying quince jelly at dinner. My childhood version of the story ends with the mice resolving their difficulties, understanding each other and living happily ever after, but Aesop's is (unsurprisingly) less cheery - the country mouse runs out of his cousin's town house shouting, 'Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear', and that is the end of that.

As I arrived at a cold, damp station platform today I could see mist blowing through the darkness alongside the train. The night sky was so much darker than I remembered, there is dark in the city and dark in the country, and they are so different as to be almost unrelated. As we sped through windy lanes towards my parents' house the trees stood black against the pink-black sky, and I thought I had come to the end of the earth. I'm a city girl and the country always shocks me at first. A pine cone splutters to light in the fireplace and the fusty smell of woodsmoke engulfs the air around us, I reach for a glass of port and try to relax, I'm not doing a good job of it so far, but unlike the country mouse I hope to settle in and not run out in fear, shouting 'Get me to the city!' I can try anyway.

Where are you?

m: I'm still here.
y: Where?
m: Here. The same place I've been in for five years.
y: What do you mean? You're not, you've done so much...
m: I am, I'm still in the same place. I have the same dreams, I'm just not there. It's depressing.
y: Don't be so hard on yourself, nothing is wasted, nothing. You'll see.
m: Yeah, but you can't say that. People live their whole lives and never achieve what they set out to do, and I don't want to be one of those people. I can't. It's killing me.
y: Ok, well what is it you want to do?
m: I don't know. That's the point.
y: *sigh* Let's go for coffee.
m: Ok. But it's your turn to pay.
y: Alright. Just smile will you? For me?

Bicycling

I've had my bike for almost four years. It's a sad-looking thing, unloved and resented of late. I resent it because the brakes are shot and I can't be bothered to pay to get them fixed. Add that to the fact it's heavy and slow, I really am not enjoying cycling anywhere further than Ken High Street on it. The other day, my dear friend Hannah lamented the near-death of her beloved bicycle, who had not lived up to his name, Hercules. I sympathised and forgot about it, until one day she arrived at my door with a very shiny new bicycle that was soooo sooooo lovely I actually am ashamed to say I did a jig on the pavement!

The only problem is that I've now come down with an acute attack of 'bike-envy'. I can't help it, it just came up out of no where. All of a sudden I'm all over the internet for a new bike. It's addictive. I have convinced myself that I will easily save the money I spend on a new one by not buying a travelcard, and next week I'm off to see these lovely people to test ride a few of their angelic cycles (the one I am coveting is pictured below). I'll let you know how I get on! The excitement is almost too much, then again, I am a faddy person so we shall soon see if this phase lasts.

Anger management

I'm not an angry person. In fact, if anything, I'm a little smug about staying cool as a cucumber while others shout and scream. Even I know that's all rubbish though, we all get angry, it just comes out in different ways. I tend to shut down, withdraw and have a good old silent slanging match in my head with the person or persons I'm cross with. That's actually no better than hitting a wall, or screaming, but I'm trying to work on being somewhere healthy, somewhere in between.

A couple of days ago I woke to the wind howling outside. The virginia creeper that looks so pretty outside my window in summer has taken on a horror-movie persona... scratching and beating on the panes of glass without ceasing. It was one of those winter mornings when the urge to roll over and go back to sleep is as strong as death, but instead today I chose life and ungracefully tumbled out of bed. I should have known it wasn't going to be a good day. First of all, the trip to the Post Office with a bundle of red cards resulted in a getting wet on the journey. Later, I spent two hours on the Piccadilly line on a defective train, going slowly insane at the huffing and puffing of my fellow passengers, who clearly had better places to be than 200 metres underground with a random assortment of the general public, one of whom had not had a wash for several weeks. After five tubes and a bus I found myself walking through unfamiliar streets towards my destination, when quick as a flash, my ipod was stolen. Someone with fingers so nimble I barely had a chance to realise what was happening. At first I didn't know what to do - perhaps I'll just get an iphone instead I thought. But the anger came, directed at anything, anyone, most of all at myself. I feel guilty for caring about something so transient, so indulgent as a material possession, that, let's face it, I can replace tomorrow. I guess I should write it off, but part of me wants to be angry, wants to indulge myself in that self-pitying guise. That's the bit I need to work on, for all things in this life are not my own, and today a woman in Calcutta is struggling through another day of rain, trying desperately to bring up her children on a pile of sand at the side of the road. I want her to matter - life and death, and not my indulgences.

How then should we now live?

Travel is a huge privilege bestowed upon our generation like no other before. I think nothing of international flights in double-figures each year, soaking up cultures and people like the chamis leathers my dad used to dry the car with. From stiff and indifferent, my mind transforms, becoming supple and flexible. My mouth literally changes, wrapping itself around unfamiliar language and even more unfamiliar food. I can eat anything now, really, and this from the girl who used to almost vomit at the smell of fish.

Yet with great privilege, comes great responsibility, and the more I see of this world, the more I come to understand that all is not well. All is not well with the poor. All is not well with the environment. All is not well with the economy. All is not well with world politics. And after a time, it becomes hard to know what to do with that knowledge. I used to flit between guilt and indifference, until I realised that both were selfish in nature, and now I see that we all have our own choices to make, and our own paths to take. For some, their place is in living their life - bringing up children, seeing friends, loving their family, putting food on the table, and buying fairtrade, using the car less, buying green electricity. For others, their place is in politics. For others, in dialogue between communities, like a friend who volunteers in conflict resolution between different cultural groups in East London. All these actions are good and pure and right and will go a long way to starting us off on the journey towards all being well.

I don't know where it leaves you... it's not for me to tell you, or to say. But for me, on the journey past guilt and indifference, I hope to find a way I can make a difference, somehow, however small. Not to appease my conscience, but to live in a way that reflects what I have seen elsewhere. To know that my actions in some way take into account the misogyny I saw in Asia, the poverty in India, the indulgence in other cultures. I wish you well on your journey through to the place where you find some things, no matter how small, are well with the world.

Sloaney Maloney

The Kings Road is one of those institutions. It conjures up feelings of glamour and slightly-pretentious fun ... the roaring success of a new play at the Royal Court, a good steak eaten slowly at a pavement table at Oriel, a naughty trip to The General Trading Company. Yes, there are a good deal of the Chelsea twin-set brigade there on an average afternon, but there's normality too, a coffee in Pret and a t-shirt purchase at Zara. That's the Chelsea I know and love.

Today I just-so-happened to have some errands to do, a couple of gifts, a birthday and an American-esque baby-shower, so I put in my ipod and got the tube to Sloane Square. Within half an hour, I had amassed a not-insubstantial mass of gaily-wrapped packages dangling precariously from each arm. Not unusual, I thought. It's a road with shops on and people go there to, er..., shop. Yet as I wandered through a few stores en route to Waitrose for some eggs, I began to notice, well, sense, that something strange was happening when I walked in the door of these emporiums. Shop assistants said hello. I was addressed as 'Madam'. People asked if I was looking for 'anything in particular'. If I'd had a free wrist, it would have been drenched in Chanel at the perfume counter in Peter Jones. To top it all, a very camp ginger guy in the White Company asked me to feel a cushion, 'Go on,' he enthused, 'they're soft as cashmere!' I declined and left, my packages cutting into my forearm with each indignant step. Money shouldn't buy favour, but it seems that in Chelsea at 4pm in Winter, it's exactly what it does.

Marionettes

I have a friend who, when he's stressed, has this horrible recurring nightmare that he's being eaten alive slowly by a milliard of small ants, black, with shiny teeth. My mother shouts at anything, usually my father. My father sulks and speaks to no one, save the motorcycle magazine, which is afforded all interest and deemed worthy enough to receive the occasional grunt. Stress is elusive. It creeps up, unknowingly until you're slap bang in the symptom and it's too late to work out what it is that was so hard to deal with in the first place. Take me, an averagely stressed out 20-something. I was a chubby teenager, so you'd expect that my innate reaction would be to reach for a Kit Kat - the four-fingered-wonder, of course - at the first sign of anything untoward. Hmmm... No. What do I do instead? Dance? Come out in a faint rash? Shiver? Go red? Nothing so common! No, I vomit. Predictably and grossly, approximately 45 seconds after getting out of bed. Three solid wretches and usually it's over. I'll rub my tender stomach soflty, just for a bit, and tumble from the bathroom. Five minutes later, I'm fine. This routine has been like clockwork since I was small. Exams? Jules is in the bathroom chucking up. Ballet recital? Oh, yep, she's there again, at least she'll fit into her leotard. The irony in all of this is that I only recently found out that my sister does exactly the same thing! Imagine! Two marionettes, joined not by string but by genes, 150 miles apart, simultaneously emptying the contents of their stomachs at the side of the road each stress-filled morning! We're ok though. Don't get concerned. Peace is on the horizon and the Shreddies and toast and tea will soon be worth their nutritional value.

hee hee

This was the only thing that made me laugh today.

FYI

Clamping your earlobe in your hair straighteners hurts.

A lot.

Ciao Bella

On an almost-deserted weekday street between Russell Square and Holborn, there's an old-fashioned English-as-they-come pub called The Lamb. The bar is encased in a complex carved wood and glass structure with flaps like windows that spin around so you can see the barperson. It's ace, a real 'find', somewhere to take wide-eyed American visitors to drink warm ale and choke in the cigar smoke, (until July anyway). Just next door the pavement is flanked with tiny outdoor tables with blue cloths. A white-haired man eats a plate of parma ham, he's holding a wide glass of Chianti in his liver-spotted hand. A tall girl with a Russian hat and extremely long legs kisses a guy in a trilby as they fall, laughing, through the door. A fat family with two shiny-faced children sit in a circle devouring garlic bread and olives. This is Ciao Bella, probably the best Italian restaurant in England. I'm not a hugely sentimental person, but this place gives me a warm feeling, somewhere under my chest, and for a moment, I can pretend I'm on holiday in Italy... the waiters are from my parents' generation, they're professionals, nothing is too much trouble, limoncello is cold and sharp in my throat. I'll take you there one day, and you'll feel what I'm saying.

Mango tea, and darkness

We drank mango tea
In almost-darkness
Your face an illusion
Conjured away by lack
Of light.
Outside: chaos
Snowflakes, bodies rushing
In from icy-cold-ness.
We hide in your sanctuary
Smiling. Safe.
Few naked words
Float on air
And sink to be pondered.

We feel fine, or do we?
A cat and a monkey.
A love and yours truly.

Affection

Affection is an underated emotion. We talk a great deal about love, (often when we mean lust), too much about hate, and not enough about the raw depth of affection. There are a smattering of people who grace this life who I have a deep-seated affection for. I can't explain it. They may be good friend, they may not. Often I don't know much about their everyday lives, I don't see them at work, at home, I don't understand their jokes... but I have an affection for them that is as deep as love but more simple. Like Victoria sponge cake, sponge and jam with no pretence...