i'm recovering.
yesterday i had a jolly good try at drinking 'all the drinks'....pimms, rose cava, red wine, lager, sambucca, vodka and red bull.... and i was desperately trying to get someone to order me a tia maria and orange juice. its a very interesting drink- it sounds disgusting but it tastes just like smarties! try it!!- but its probably a good job that it never materialised last night!
we had our london leaving do yesterday, and counting my work leaving drinks and the leaving drinks that lovely kitty organised for us in dorset the weekend that we moved our furniture down, that makes it 3 leaving parties so far. not a bad tally, but if i want to take my liver travelling with me next week i think we should stop celebrating now! we made it a very local affair- we started outside in the sunshine in finsbury park, with drinks and snacks and the odd toss of a rugby ball. it was a bit chilly- it is nearly october so we were always being optimistic by planning on being outside- but when the sun's rays hit us they were lovely and it was really nice to be looking out over the tips of the trees to the city for one last time. when the sun dipped under the tree line we headed to some of our favourite local pubs to warm up and hook up with more friends, and it inevitably ended very drunkenly at kicking out time, with a final kebab from the local kebab shop. oh, and a few very competitive and loud rounds of 'travel hungry hippos'- a thoughtful leaving gift from a very thoughtful friend, that will either make us many friends on our trip, or (given how loud the game mechanism is) perhaps will mean that we lose a few along the way!!
some people came a really long way to see us off- some even ventured out of deepest darkest south london which was very brave!- and it made me realise how lucky the husband and i are to have such good, loyal friends. it hit me last night that we will be quite lost without them on our travels, and just spending an evening in a familiar pub happily talking crap to people we've known for years is a simple pleasure that we will miss hugely whilst we are away.
thanks again to all who came out, might even post the odd picture when i work out how to make that function work!
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Thursday, 23 September 2010
no spoons...
it's a very sad state of affairs when you decide, having been physically working hard all day, that a yoghurt will make you feel better. it gets sadder, when having pulled the lid from said yoghurt you realise that due to limited cutlery being left in the house, the dishwasher is on and there are absolutely no spoons, or any other scoopy type implement available to eat it with.
fuck it, i thought, i'll have a cup of tea. kettle boils. all the mugs are in the dishwasher too.
on the plus side, this total lack of cutlery and crockery signals...dah, dah, dah! the house is pretty much DONE! ready for tenants, ready to be let and ready to be left. i'm about ready for a sleep!
got back from dorset on tuesday, with my gorgeous mum, carrying marigolds, in tow.
the two of us have spent the past 2 days scrubbing the house from top to bottom, cleaning walls, emptying the last bits and pieces out of kitchen cupboards and breaking numerous nails.
and of course polyfillering all of the lumps and holes in our walls- that stuff is actually properly magic and i adore it!
i think i can classify that my least favourite job of the 'big clean' was scrubbing the carpet along the skirting boards with a damp cloth. it's knackering on the back, knackering on the knees, and the skin on my hands is now so dry from the continual plunging in and out of cold water that they are properly cracking. and it turns out my husband and i live like animals- the amount of dust, dirt and crap that is left in our carpet after we hoover it is frankly totally utterly icky.
its now just over a week till we fly, and i finally feel pretty organised and ready. i still have quite a few tasks to tick off my several 'to do lists', but thanks to my mother's input and help with getting the house ready these are only straightforward little chores. for the first time in weeks i don't feel overwhelmed by what there is to do. i'm actually just starting to feel excited about the trip now, and the adventure that awaits us.
bring it on.
fuck it, i thought, i'll have a cup of tea. kettle boils. all the mugs are in the dishwasher too.
on the plus side, this total lack of cutlery and crockery signals...dah, dah, dah! the house is pretty much DONE! ready for tenants, ready to be let and ready to be left. i'm about ready for a sleep!
got back from dorset on tuesday, with my gorgeous mum, carrying marigolds, in tow.
the two of us have spent the past 2 days scrubbing the house from top to bottom, cleaning walls, emptying the last bits and pieces out of kitchen cupboards and breaking numerous nails.
and of course polyfillering all of the lumps and holes in our walls- that stuff is actually properly magic and i adore it!
i think i can classify that my least favourite job of the 'big clean' was scrubbing the carpet along the skirting boards with a damp cloth. it's knackering on the back, knackering on the knees, and the skin on my hands is now so dry from the continual plunging in and out of cold water that they are properly cracking. and it turns out my husband and i live like animals- the amount of dust, dirt and crap that is left in our carpet after we hoover it is frankly totally utterly icky.
its now just over a week till we fly, and i finally feel pretty organised and ready. i still have quite a few tasks to tick off my several 'to do lists', but thanks to my mother's input and help with getting the house ready these are only straightforward little chores. for the first time in weeks i don't feel overwhelmed by what there is to do. i'm actually just starting to feel excited about the trip now, and the adventure that awaits us.
bring it on.
Sunday, 19 September 2010
there is but a 'ni' between packing and panicking...
well, it has certainly been a busy 7 days! though it has only been a week since the last blog, it feels like a hell of a lot longer and i can only assume this is because so much has gone down (as they say, on the streets).
i spent most of last sunday panicking, and either shouting (or on certain overly panicked moments squealing incomprehensibly) at, or being patronising to my husband for not having quite enough fear and adrenalin running through his system. i wanted him to be jumping up and down and panicking just like me, that there was just too much packing up to be done, not enough time to do it, and definitely not enough boxes in N4 to accomodate all of our crap, even if we had the time to pack it all away.
the irony is of course, that whilst i was alternating between hysteria and depression and not doing very much, he was just getting on with the job in hand and putting stuff in boxes. good husband.
my monday was taken up with training my replacement for my job (and more panicking and packing in the evening- have you noticed how there is only a little 'ni' denoting the difference between 'panicking' and 'packing'... interesting!). it was quite strange, but having expected to find it quite difficult to hand over the reins, (having been in the same job for 3 1/2 years, which is well over a tenth of my life and by far the longest i've ever worked in one place) by the time this lovely girl arrived for her handover i was practically throwing the reins at her, leaping off my metaphorical horse and running into the sunset.
my last day in the office was tuesday, which (after more handing over) was concluded by a spell in the pub and a bit of a crashing of a wrap party. i was invited, so its not technically crashing, but it most certainly wasn't my leaving party and i fear that i may have tried to make it so... or even perhaps told some people it was... after the preceding spell in the pub, i may have got a bit distracted, and forgotten that the party was about a tv show that the company had produced, and not just about my last day in the office, and a general celebration of me...
i did have a fabulous time though, and felt it was a truly fitting end to my career in television. the wrap party was held in soho, in an edit house where i took my first tentative steps onto the career ladder at the tender age of 22. 6 1/2 years (and several bottles of cava, mostly drunk from the bottle) later, i found myself taking the same tottering steps down oxford street, and buying the same drunken midnight macdonalds, as i had many a time when i was working there all that time ago. the poetic finality of this one last drunken and debauched night in soho gave me wonderful closure.
it also gave me a massive hangover, and a crick in my neck where i fell asleep on my sofa till 6am.
wednesday was my birthday, so i promised myself a day without packing to get over the shock of being just that bit closer to 30. to be entirely honest being 29 felt very similar to being 28- i did wake up feeling awful, and old, and wrinkled and haggard, but that was more to do with the effects of my 'leaving party' than my birthday, and once i'd showered and ironed out my skin and had a cup of tea i felt much the same as usual.
i went to the hairdressers and had my hair chopped into a cute flicky slightly shorter than sholder length style. the official reasoning behind this was to make it more practical for travelling than my long locks (not freakishly long, but bottom of shoulder blades long), but i think also subconsciously i felt the need to make some kind of outward change in my appearance to denote the change in myself. rather like girls who do radical things to their hair when they come out of relationships, i wanted to have a 'leaving london, leaving work, free as a bird to travel the world' haircut. i'm not sure if it expresses all of that precisely, but it certainly does dry much quicker.
i had a lovely time in a lovely farringdon pub with a load of my lovely london friends in the evening to celebrate my birthday. they are all beautiful people, and the fact that they all seemed to stay out beyond last tubes on a wednesday (ie. a school night!) is a testament to what good friends they are. i will miss this lot when we are on the road hugely, but i hope they will all be around when we get back, and open to many visits and stays from me! i'll bring the jaeger, they just need to provide a spare bed or sofa!
thursday and friday i mainly spent packing and panicking again, and leaving random agitated stroppy voicemails on my husband's phone about things that could definitely have waited until the evening when he got home from work ('i've found a waitrose carrier bag full of socks! do you want these kept or thrown or packed for travelling? and why are they neatly tied in a carrier bag?' etc.).
and then the dawn of saturday arrived, as did the removal men, and i became strangely calm. i'm not sure if it was just that i had worn myself out with worrying, but there was suddenly a much higher ratio of packing to panicking going on, and all seemed well in the world. and soon enough their van was full and they were sent trundling off out of sight with most of our worldly possessions cloaked in bubble wrap bouncing over the speed bumps in the back. the husband and i went to collect a second van, which we swiftly filled with the remaining dregs of our belongings and headed on down to dorset ourselves, to my mum's garage where we are storing everything whilst we are away.
for the first time all week, the move felt exciting and thrilling and not just a chore. it certainly hadn't been an easy few days, and a regular check up with my nurse on friday did show that my blood pressure levels had rocketed, but it did feel worth it. the green fields, heath land and countryside that we passed on the drive down was a pointed reminder of why we are putting ourselves through the stress of packing up our life and heading down south.
and of course, the very big thick silver lining is that we have at least 5 months before we have to unpack all of those boxes again!
i spent most of last sunday panicking, and either shouting (or on certain overly panicked moments squealing incomprehensibly) at, or being patronising to my husband for not having quite enough fear and adrenalin running through his system. i wanted him to be jumping up and down and panicking just like me, that there was just too much packing up to be done, not enough time to do it, and definitely not enough boxes in N4 to accomodate all of our crap, even if we had the time to pack it all away.
the irony is of course, that whilst i was alternating between hysteria and depression and not doing very much, he was just getting on with the job in hand and putting stuff in boxes. good husband.
my monday was taken up with training my replacement for my job (and more panicking and packing in the evening- have you noticed how there is only a little 'ni' denoting the difference between 'panicking' and 'packing'... interesting!). it was quite strange, but having expected to find it quite difficult to hand over the reins, (having been in the same job for 3 1/2 years, which is well over a tenth of my life and by far the longest i've ever worked in one place) by the time this lovely girl arrived for her handover i was practically throwing the reins at her, leaping off my metaphorical horse and running into the sunset.
my last day in the office was tuesday, which (after more handing over) was concluded by a spell in the pub and a bit of a crashing of a wrap party. i was invited, so its not technically crashing, but it most certainly wasn't my leaving party and i fear that i may have tried to make it so... or even perhaps told some people it was... after the preceding spell in the pub, i may have got a bit distracted, and forgotten that the party was about a tv show that the company had produced, and not just about my last day in the office, and a general celebration of me...
i did have a fabulous time though, and felt it was a truly fitting end to my career in television. the wrap party was held in soho, in an edit house where i took my first tentative steps onto the career ladder at the tender age of 22. 6 1/2 years (and several bottles of cava, mostly drunk from the bottle) later, i found myself taking the same tottering steps down oxford street, and buying the same drunken midnight macdonalds, as i had many a time when i was working there all that time ago. the poetic finality of this one last drunken and debauched night in soho gave me wonderful closure.
it also gave me a massive hangover, and a crick in my neck where i fell asleep on my sofa till 6am.
wednesday was my birthday, so i promised myself a day without packing to get over the shock of being just that bit closer to 30. to be entirely honest being 29 felt very similar to being 28- i did wake up feeling awful, and old, and wrinkled and haggard, but that was more to do with the effects of my 'leaving party' than my birthday, and once i'd showered and ironed out my skin and had a cup of tea i felt much the same as usual.
i went to the hairdressers and had my hair chopped into a cute flicky slightly shorter than sholder length style. the official reasoning behind this was to make it more practical for travelling than my long locks (not freakishly long, but bottom of shoulder blades long), but i think also subconsciously i felt the need to make some kind of outward change in my appearance to denote the change in myself. rather like girls who do radical things to their hair when they come out of relationships, i wanted to have a 'leaving london, leaving work, free as a bird to travel the world' haircut. i'm not sure if it expresses all of that precisely, but it certainly does dry much quicker.
i had a lovely time in a lovely farringdon pub with a load of my lovely london friends in the evening to celebrate my birthday. they are all beautiful people, and the fact that they all seemed to stay out beyond last tubes on a wednesday (ie. a school night!) is a testament to what good friends they are. i will miss this lot when we are on the road hugely, but i hope they will all be around when we get back, and open to many visits and stays from me! i'll bring the jaeger, they just need to provide a spare bed or sofa!
thursday and friday i mainly spent packing and panicking again, and leaving random agitated stroppy voicemails on my husband's phone about things that could definitely have waited until the evening when he got home from work ('i've found a waitrose carrier bag full of socks! do you want these kept or thrown or packed for travelling? and why are they neatly tied in a carrier bag?' etc.).
and then the dawn of saturday arrived, as did the removal men, and i became strangely calm. i'm not sure if it was just that i had worn myself out with worrying, but there was suddenly a much higher ratio of packing to panicking going on, and all seemed well in the world. and soon enough their van was full and they were sent trundling off out of sight with most of our worldly possessions cloaked in bubble wrap bouncing over the speed bumps in the back. the husband and i went to collect a second van, which we swiftly filled with the remaining dregs of our belongings and headed on down to dorset ourselves, to my mum's garage where we are storing everything whilst we are away.
for the first time all week, the move felt exciting and thrilling and not just a chore. it certainly hadn't been an easy few days, and a regular check up with my nurse on friday did show that my blood pressure levels had rocketed, but it did feel worth it. the green fields, heath land and countryside that we passed on the drive down was a pointed reminder of why we are putting ourselves through the stress of packing up our life and heading down south.
and of course, the very big thick silver lining is that we have at least 5 months before we have to unpack all of those boxes again!
Sunday, 12 September 2010
and so the packing begins...
so, but a few days ago i was warbling on about how difficult i was finding it to get my head around the fact that we were actually leaving london.
today i sit on my now throw-less naked sofa (throw has been satisfyingly vac-packed!), surrounded by boxes, newspapers and other packing detritis, whilst wearing my new brown (satisfyingly safari appropriate) fleece.
it feels real.
it definitely feels real.
and strangely not as scary as i've been working myself up to. i have even, in the past few days, started refering to our little jaunt as 'the holiday' rather than 'the big (for which read scary) trip'.
what is scaring me, at this stage, are the processes still left to go through before we leave. i'm quite convinced the travelling itself will be like falling off a log in comparison to the mammoth task of packing up a 7 roomed house (not counting the shed which is also full to bursting) that has been lived in for 5 odd years and preparing it for rental. i got a text message from one of our new tenants, telling me that they signed the lease yesterday, which is great news, but there just seems to be an awful lot left to do, and not very much time left to do it in.
as with all of these things, i do have faith that it will all come together, and it will take us just as long as we have to do everything. if we had 2 months, i'm sure it would take us 2 months. if we had 2 days, it would take us 2 days.
we actually still have 5 days before the removal van comes, and then another couple of opportunities to off load things a week or so later with both sets of parents, who are coming up to visit before we leave.
it'll be fine.
i have faith.
and more importantly i have red bull...
today i sit on my now throw-less naked sofa (throw has been satisfyingly vac-packed!), surrounded by boxes, newspapers and other packing detritis, whilst wearing my new brown (satisfyingly safari appropriate) fleece.
it feels real.
it definitely feels real.
and strangely not as scary as i've been working myself up to. i have even, in the past few days, started refering to our little jaunt as 'the holiday' rather than 'the big (for which read scary) trip'.
what is scaring me, at this stage, are the processes still left to go through before we leave. i'm quite convinced the travelling itself will be like falling off a log in comparison to the mammoth task of packing up a 7 roomed house (not counting the shed which is also full to bursting) that has been lived in for 5 odd years and preparing it for rental. i got a text message from one of our new tenants, telling me that they signed the lease yesterday, which is great news, but there just seems to be an awful lot left to do, and not very much time left to do it in.
as with all of these things, i do have faith that it will all come together, and it will take us just as long as we have to do everything. if we had 2 months, i'm sure it would take us 2 months. if we had 2 days, it would take us 2 days.
we actually still have 5 days before the removal van comes, and then another couple of opportunities to off load things a week or so later with both sets of parents, who are coming up to visit before we leave.
it'll be fine.
i have faith.
and more importantly i have red bull...
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
i have become comfortably numb...
oh
holy
shit!
seriously
holy
shit!
all of a sudden our departure date is rapidly whizzing up on me. i feel a bit like the subject of a dolly zoom in a crappy b-list horror movie. from being a distant date in the fuzzy future, the fact of what the husband and i are about to do has miraculously clicked into very sharp focus. i leave my job in 4 working days. we move the majority of our posessions into storage in 10 days. we fly out of the country in 23 days. actually, not quite 23 because our flight takes off in the early morning.
so closer to 22 and a third.
the mere fact that i can refer to these future dates as being days away rather than weeks or months is by turns exhilirating, exciting and terrifying, but i'm mainly finding it numbing.
on occasion i find myself looking round the office i've been working at for the past 3 and a half years, and the thought that i won't be sat at my desk this time next week, and then probably never again in this building, just doesn't feel real- that is what i mean by numbing. i'm trotting through these last few days, and people keep asking me when i'm leaving, and im answering dutifully with a sparkle in my eye, and they are saying they are super jealous, and im smiling smugly, but when it comes down to it i cant quite believe my own words.
the concept that we are actually leaving london, walking away from this amazing metropolis, forever (which is, yes, using artistic licence because we will be flying into heathrow on our return.... and we have so many friends and family in and around the city that we fully intend on spending vast swathes of time visiting and camping on their various sofas....but give me artistic licence- i'm being wistful!) is just very difficult to get my head around.
at times i love this city, and at times i hate it. i'm sure that we are making the right decision to leave now, because i am finding myself hating more things than i'm loving, and i don't want that to be my lasting memory of my relationship with this place. but at the same time, rather like a big brother that winds you up on a regular basis, i still have huge fondness for it. i fell in love here, i learned to stand on my own two feet here, i honed many a life skill here and i truly grew up here.
london has become my comfort zone- this place, and its often rude and unpleasant inhabitants, i know and i understand. i am one of them. i walk swiftly down the left side of escalators whatever place i'm in now, and i rarely hold the handrail. i tut at people who walk slowly on the street. i want to be able to go clothes shopping at 7pm if the mood takes me. and i fully expect to have my order understood and a hot drink in my hands within 1 minute when i ask for a wet hot chai latte with soya. you can plonk a drunken me in almost any place (though i'd obviously always rather be plonked north of the river!) and i could find my way home on public transport, like a squiffy homing pigeon.
when i first moved to london this place scared me. now, to be honest, i'm a little bit scared of the big wide world outside it.
so i dont know if this is denial or fear, or just a lack of imagination, but the reality of this big trip of ours has definitely still not quite hit home.
and where exactly will 'home' be in 22 and 1/3 days?
holy
shit!
seriously
holy
shit!
all of a sudden our departure date is rapidly whizzing up on me. i feel a bit like the subject of a dolly zoom in a crappy b-list horror movie. from being a distant date in the fuzzy future, the fact of what the husband and i are about to do has miraculously clicked into very sharp focus. i leave my job in 4 working days. we move the majority of our posessions into storage in 10 days. we fly out of the country in 23 days. actually, not quite 23 because our flight takes off in the early morning.
so closer to 22 and a third.
the mere fact that i can refer to these future dates as being days away rather than weeks or months is by turns exhilirating, exciting and terrifying, but i'm mainly finding it numbing.
on occasion i find myself looking round the office i've been working at for the past 3 and a half years, and the thought that i won't be sat at my desk this time next week, and then probably never again in this building, just doesn't feel real- that is what i mean by numbing. i'm trotting through these last few days, and people keep asking me when i'm leaving, and im answering dutifully with a sparkle in my eye, and they are saying they are super jealous, and im smiling smugly, but when it comes down to it i cant quite believe my own words.
the concept that we are actually leaving london, walking away from this amazing metropolis, forever (which is, yes, using artistic licence because we will be flying into heathrow on our return.... and we have so many friends and family in and around the city that we fully intend on spending vast swathes of time visiting and camping on their various sofas....but give me artistic licence- i'm being wistful!) is just very difficult to get my head around.
at times i love this city, and at times i hate it. i'm sure that we are making the right decision to leave now, because i am finding myself hating more things than i'm loving, and i don't want that to be my lasting memory of my relationship with this place. but at the same time, rather like a big brother that winds you up on a regular basis, i still have huge fondness for it. i fell in love here, i learned to stand on my own two feet here, i honed many a life skill here and i truly grew up here.
london has become my comfort zone- this place, and its often rude and unpleasant inhabitants, i know and i understand. i am one of them. i walk swiftly down the left side of escalators whatever place i'm in now, and i rarely hold the handrail. i tut at people who walk slowly on the street. i want to be able to go clothes shopping at 7pm if the mood takes me. and i fully expect to have my order understood and a hot drink in my hands within 1 minute when i ask for a wet hot chai latte with soya. you can plonk a drunken me in almost any place (though i'd obviously always rather be plonked north of the river!) and i could find my way home on public transport, like a squiffy homing pigeon.
when i first moved to london this place scared me. now, to be honest, i'm a little bit scared of the big wide world outside it.
so i dont know if this is denial or fear, or just a lack of imagination, but the reality of this big trip of ours has definitely still not quite hit home.
and where exactly will 'home' be in 22 and 1/3 days?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)