Blog messup.

Its a mess. I'm working on fixing it. But its taking a long time. Haloscan is closing. Echo isn't easy. Can't change the commenting system without changing the template to a new layouts version. Don't like all the change but hopefully it will work itself out in the end...

Revert

Going back to the way it was...

Tickets

Two ticket inspectors sit on the train, waiting for the doors to close, when we will all be captive and they can start checking the tickets. A rastaman, wearing a red gold and green crocheted hat leans into the carriage and shouts Peckham Rye? to nobody in particular. Several passengers murmur yes. He gets on.

One ticket inspector says to the other, friend of yours?
Other ticket inspectors goes, huh?
Switching to a Jamaican accent, "Peckham Rye" he a friend of yours?
I don't keep friends just acquaintances, he retorts.

Friday night, date night

Islington, Friday night. Bails and I were having a quiet one. Coffee in Tinderbox and Yo! Shushi for a meal. Sitting at the conveyor belt (which was strangely empty - watched those plates of food available go round and round, unwilling to take any of it off). We sat opposite tables occupied by date night couples.

A couple who sat next to one another rather than opposite, she was nearest the belt, at its corner, having a conversation with a woman from a different couple. Her partner chowed down, no words, just chewing.

A long haired couple. His mousy, hers brunette. Hers longer, his greasier. Beige couple, matching beige sweaters.

Second Snow

Woke up in the morning, opened the curtains, sighed - here we go again. More snow. Was glad it was going away. It snowed all day, faster in the morning then slower. Wetter snow than before.

Snow falls gently around me. There is something lovely about the light reflected back from snow beneath your feet. Squeak of fresh snow underfoot, muffling the sounds of everything, chill. Magical really. Translucent ice prints revealed as the snow melts away.

Bad Tottenham Fashions

Nylon leggings, printed with 'denim' pattern complete with pocket and fly images. Trying to replicate the already-fairly gross but popular skin tight stretch jeans but without the thickness (and therefore warmth) of fabric.

Mini Thaw

As the compacted ice melts back it reveals the footsteps that crushed it down. I retrace my own steps from my house to the bus stop. I had walked on the edge of the pavement where the snow was less slippery than the already compacted ice. The trail of several days' walks, mingled with other distinctive treadmarks.

Snow

I'm getting used to the snow now - its bright. I just wish the foxes and cats could walk in their footprints a bit more - they have totally messed up the virgin snow. Its all walked over and spoilt.

Absent Minded

Hazy memory came back to me while lying in the bath. Maybe I was 5, maybe 7. Could have been Scotland but more likely to be Devon or Cornwall. The family - Mum (long brown wool coat), Dad (fisherman's smock and the blanket wrapped round over one shoulder and under one arm), Amy being carried, and me - walking down a path from the cliff to the beach. My head got hot so I took off my white wooly hat and launched it over onto the beach, from where I would collect it when we got down there. Unfortunately, the unforeseen happened, the hat got caught in the thorny bushes its way down. Fear. Mum, or perhaps Dad, asked me what did you do that for? I said I thought it would get down to the beach. Nobody said anything else about it. Relief.


Earlier this week I decided to heat up the last spoonful of plum pudding left over from Christmas day. It came in a microwaveable plastic bowl with a lid. So I stuck it all back in the microwave and pinged it for 6 minutes. In the living room, chopping up the tree, I heard it end. The dining room and kitchen were full of white thick smoke. Running in, opened the back door, smoke wafted out, acrid stink, opened microwave and inside the pudding had embers burning inside, the plastic bowl melted completely around it. Chucked it out into the garden. End of christmas is a lingering smell of burned plastic.

On the chime of midnight the whole neighbourhood erupted into a sympony of fireworks. And it started to snow. Happy new decade!

Happy New Year!

So the decade comes to a close. A decade that started in South Africa at an outdoor rave party, if not footloose then fancy free at the end of the very turbulant decade of my 20s (lost love, death, degrees, work, going out, gaining life experience - peaks and troughs, although by the end it sort of felt like there were more troughs than peaks, or perhaps the troughs were deeper). At the close of the decade I have stepped into a proper adult life: home owning, 12 year partnership with the boyfiend and a better job. Sensible achivements all. Also rediscovered a way to have a creative output - started life drawing, started blogging and started making ceramics. I am also an auntie, a nurse and an agony aunt. Still struggling to decide what I want to do when I grow up. Perhaps the next decade will shed some light on that.

So it started with Bails in South Africa dancing wildly in a summer night heat, and it ends with Bails on the sofa at my house drinking champaign and watching Jools Holland.

Happy New Year to You!

After Christmas, Before New Year

Dead time between Christmas and new year. Don't really have anything to do, don't want to do anything either. Rain, gloomy, dank. Cold. Had to go to work today. Work neighbourhood is dominated by tourists rather than the usual suits. Work place is only a quarter full. The christmas tree in the main entrance (two floors tall) has not been watered and is showing signs of fatigue - lower limbs are drooping, needles all over the floor. In the street many organisations have discarded them already (chucked into doorways).

Christmas Cheer!

So, its well and truely over. Turkey was cooked, due to mis-timing it was ready before the vegetables even got into the oven (planning for next time - try not to be the cook and the chauffeur - too long collecting people to bring over meant I wasn't present to direct the helpers to get the veggies on to par boil in time - perhaps an hour of grumpy Harriet while we tried to catch up, fortunately once it all gets under control again the grump goes away). We forgot to do crackers so nobody had to wear a cracker hat, sis's husband didn't have to tape two together in order to get it over his head. Two of the new strings of lights had partial failure shortly after being put on the tree, but not soon enough so they could be taken off and marched back to the shop. Ended the day with 6 (dad, me, sis Amy, her husband John, their kids) on the sofa, broken-back Bails got a chair to herself. Mostly it was dad, John and Amy snoozing; me, the kids and Bails watching Bolt on dvd.

Hope you all had a lovely day and wishing you all a happy new year!

Big Snow

Novelty for me - having a car - we rent one sometimes when we may need to travel around but there won't be any public transport (christmas day for instance). It gets used a lot then for doing the chores like picking up heavy groceries in the supermarket. We drove in. Shopped. Came out - blizzard had started (London blizzard - say 5 inches of snow, in an hour). We got in the car, joined a queue of traffic trying to exit the supermarket. Two and a half hours later we actually managed it. We weren't the only ones - someone texted in to Chris Evans drive time saying they were stuck in Sainsbury's carpark in Hull. Perhaps its the design of Sainsbury's car parks the land over - bottle necks the lot of them.

Bus Queue Rage

47 pulls up at Liverpool Street, empty. The 3rd woman getting onto the bus looks as though she tries to trip up the woman ahead of her. Misses. But she does manage to bump her roughly, barging past to get a seat downstairs. Sorry she says without meaning it and without any eye contact. Bumped woman goes upstairs confused.

Perhaps she got on the bus out of order therefore infuriating the woman who ended up behind her. This is now probably more normal than waiting in line these days at London bus stops.

Attractive

Clear watery grey eyes, brown skin, crows feet crease in a smile.

Christmas Countdown

Deck the halls with boughs of holly tralalala...

1. I've made a Christmas cake - extra glace cherries, fed with rum on two occasions now.
2. Bought Christmas cards, will try to send them this year, don't usually get round to it.
3. Started shopping - got a couple of items down - spoke to my sister today she was picking up her last item. Maybe I'm behind...
4. Picked up some new wrapping paper - for when I eventually get the shopping done.
5. Made mincemeat - put in extra orange peel, more cinnamon and mixed spice than it asked for, and decided to put in ground ginger. Gave the mixture a good kick.
6. Done a reccy at the shops a couple of times (Selfridges, Covent Garden, Tottenham Court Road, Islington Upper Street) - don't like to choose too soon, like to get a good overview before making decisions. Need to scan the product, think about the people for whom something is needed and then rush round like a maniac on Christmas Eve picking it all up and hoping I can remember where I saw it.

Still to do:

• Get a Christmas tree (need a tall but not too bushy one I think)
• Decide where to put it - don't have a natural place for it at present which is not in the way.
• Shopping - actual purchases rather than window shopping.
• Food shopping - when the time comes

West London Ladies

A bit footballers wives bling used to shopping in Harvey Nicks and Harrods, others some sloaney hair and pearls. Lots of expensive handbags.

Not like the North East London girls I'm used to - primark rip-offs of designer gear, bling in the cheapest possible sense, keen on the Croydon face-lift and achingly straight ironed hair.

Different parts of London have clearly distinct feels. I've grown accustomed to South London, also a bit more eastly North London, but I've never really come to terms with West London. A bit too posh, a bit too spoiled rich girls.

if you are on a fold up bike with small wheels do you really need to wear a go-faster aerodynamic helmet and all the special cycling gear?

Dramatic things for men to do with their look

"So, are you trying to be a cowboy?" She was looking at the newly sported full mustache that took a turn down the sides of his mouth. Not enough to look like a gay biker. Not enough to join into a goatee. But enough to for cowboy style. Ought to be worn with cowboy boots and spurs and the gait of the saddle weary. Chewing tobacco and spitting. Denim. Possibly a jacket made of suede with fringes. Definitely needs to be in the bleaching Californian desert. Not so great a look in smart slacks and loafers strolling around the Tooley Street office.
"Its men's health week," the cowboy explains.
"You're growing a mustache for men's health week?" confused.
"Yes! I didn't mean it to get so.. so... wild!"
"Yes, wild west!"

Casualty

Rush hour, way home, on the train. Phone rings. Don't recognise the number so I don't answer it. Message from someone saying Bails had an accident. Agreed to meet at the hospital. North Middlesex. Arrived at the A&E department. Bails had not come in yet. Sitting waiting - sign said 3 hours. Man with a painful stomach is hunched over, his head on his hands on the back of the chair. His wife is sitting silently next to him. His son (who I suspect has the wheels) is chatting to a different patient and his girlfriend. I presume they are friends. The waiting is excruitiating. The son keeps sneaking into the restricted area and coming back with reports. Two women sit chatting loudly, laughing. Can't tell which one is the potential patient. Lots of people are using their mobile phones, even though there are signs all over the place forbidding it. Eventually I am too restless to stay sitting down anymore and stand in the queue again to ask whether Bails has been booked in yet. At first they say not but subsequently it turns out she is here.

8.00pm. Inside the restricted area there are curtained off cubicles and a central station. Its not like ER. Not quite like Casualty either. There is no sense of urgency. Lots of student doctors in strange smart outfits. Every once and a while someone gets up to see one of the patients in their curtained area. It seems that the doctors wear stethescopes. Nursing staff don't.

Bails has hurt her back in a gym accident. Some kind of weight lifting accident. She's lying still on the gurney. Stretchered in.

10.45pm. No doctor has come to make an assessment of Bails' case as yet. I ask the nurse at the station if there is a queue and if so where are we on it. She is irritated by me and looks at me accusingly. She grudgingly looks up the list of patients. 2 ahead of us. Other people who were waiting with me outside come and go. One of the female doctors looks like she has been up for 24 hours straight. Huge bags under her eyes. Grouchy demeanor.

12.15am. I decide to ask again where we are in the queue. Next it turns out. Took an hour and a half to see 2 patients. One of the other nurses asks whether anyone has been to see Bails yet. No I say, with some irritation showing. Its now late, I haven't had any supper. Finally at 12.30 the doctor comes and asks lots of quetsions. Bails is sent for an x-ray. X-ray comes back and 3 doctors stand around looking it it. One noticies a fracture. Everyone shows a degree more urgency. This is a serious injury. Shouldn't have been left for 4 hours on the trolley. Finally a doctor is assigned, Bails is fully assessed and admitted to the trauma ward. Its 2am.