Thoughts on London

Spent the last weekend of January in London, catching up with my old flatmate, who now lives in Amsterdam with her husband and baby.

Was amazing to spend a couple of days, just like we used to, staying in Bayswater, talking. Catching up.

Afternoon tea at the Chelsea Teapot. Vanilla tea, for the first time.

Drinks and dinner at a gastro pub in Notting Hill. Very late night - after 12!

Brunch the next morning at 202, on Westbourne Grove. It was like 2006 to 2007 again. I realised that if I still lived in London everything would probably be the same, and not necessarily in a good way.
Funny though, how that moment in time, those few years of being in London has gone. Would be so hard to return to it.

Told A I was coming down. Thought he was going to arrange drinks and to meet up on Friday, but nada. He made all the right noises, then did nothing.
I went to the cinema, Whiteleys Odeon to see The Impossible. I got a stupid,half hearted, no effort email from him on Sunday evening. I didn't bother to reply. Then the next day, more emails, where he tried to say it was my fault that we didn't meet up.

Felt sad and drained and angry. Fed up yet again.

Have been ill with a cold since. I hate it when you get all excited about something that's going to happen, you get your hopes up, then nothing. Again. Makes me laugh now. I have so many disasters, that I'm detached. It's so nice when there are no men messing things up, making you unhappy. I really quite like it when it's just me, doing what I want, without distractions. I'd be happily single for ever, I think. I worry though, about what other people expect of you, that's the worst.

Anyway. As ever, onwards and upwards. For the first time ever I was truly pleased that I've made the move back up North. I had fun in London, but the dirty air, amount of people and the way money just goes, got to me. I loved coming back to the peaceful quiet of rural North Yorkshire, the sweet clean air.
Being able to sleep soundly and having less stress in general.

So that's progress.

2013. Got a few days annual leave. Hibernating. Roaring fires. Sleet and rain against the windows. Heavy grey skies. Fill dyke February. Not planning on doing a great deal, getting over my cold. Bought a SATC boxset, wanted it for years. Reading. Joined a boot camp. On the beach at Scarborough. Got to get fit. Have very little enthusiasm and am pretty sceptical about whether or not it will work. Did go on the treadmill today though for half an hour. My sister kind of made me join it, so I did to stop her nagging.

Coming up to one of my favourite times of the year.
Love that lazy week between Christmas and New Year, looking forwards, to long cold walks, roaring fires, alcohol at all sorts of inappropriate times, too much food, films, relatives and not being at work.

Have got a week off starting Sunday, my aunt, uncle and cousin arrive from Melton Mowbray and we all go out to dinner that evening to a local pub. It kicks off Christmas and heralds the point where you can stop doing and start enjoying.

Have been organised, all presents wrapped, baked - brownies, cookies, quiches, Delia's veggie sos rolls, made orange ice cream this morning. House is cleaned, spare beds made up, had my hair cut and the tree is up. Can't help that siege mentality. It's that idea of stopping the world, normal life for a while and holing up.

And then you get so sick of it, being so lazy and greedy, you're ready for January and a new life.

Seeing R tomorrow night for drinks and supper. He wanted to see me before Christmas. My heart is sinking a little at the thought of it. I hate myself for being so mean spirited, but I just find him a little tedious and annoying.

Have been enjoying watching 'Last Tango in Halifax', a drama on BBC 1. Very funny. Last episode was last night. Looking forward to watching Downton Abbey on Christmas Day.

Really enjoying my job, had a review yesterday. It's probably one of the most fun jobs I've had. The hours are great. I left at 3.30pm yesterday and don't start until 2pm today, so I get lots of time to do other stuff and lie ins, on cold, wet, windy mornings.

Horrified by the shootings in the USA. Always seems extra awful when anything bad happens at this time of the year. Saw a statistic, where something like 90,000 people in the US were killed by guns in a year and in the UK it was 39. Says it all really.

November

Rather nice to have been off work yesterday and today, curling up, keeping warm, sipping a huge glass of red wine and watching the incessant drizzle outside.

Popped into town both days, for the incomparable flat white at this rather scruffy coffee shop. It's so good.

Bought a warm, cheerful looking hat and scarf, a pair of gloves and a sort of brown poncho.

Reckon it's going to be a cold winter.

Love house sitting, for my friend's parents. Big, spacious house, vast well stocked kitchen. The sitting room is a lovely room, so much light and it's so peaceful, overlooking the Yorkshire Wolds. The cat is a black and white fluffball, very affectionate, furry and friendly.
The bed linen is flannel, so soft, so cosy. Been watching the Food Network, in particular, Nigella Express & The Barefoot Contessa. Watching a Channel 5 whodunnit - 'Concrete Canyons' at 3.15pm.

Couldn't be bothered to go to a bonfire last night at my sister's and her husbands. Don't like loud bangs anyway. Better to keep the sofa company. It would miss me.

Stocked up on a supply of magazines, crisps, Ben & Jerry's, chocolate and wine. I don't usually get a chance to hole up like this anymore, as I don't live alone.
A little depressed. A, of course didn't turn up, didn't come. Didn't even say: 'Sorry, I can't come'.
Bored of it all.

Asked R if he fancied seeing 'Skyfall' and he said: 'Of course I flaming well do, even though I'm not really a James Bond fan'.
Hard to reconcile; R who so wants to be with me and A, who so doesn't.
Cannot get my head around being with R, even though he's super keen. I've had boyfriends who I don't really fancy before, and it's just not worth it, 'just to be with someone'.
Put myself on Match.com. Feel about as desirable as a hedgehog to a balloon.
Will try and snap out of it from tomorrow.

Hoping Obama wins the election. Romney seems a little bit too far to the right.
Emailed a girl I met in NYC in 2011 to see if she was ok after Hurricaine Sandy and she said she'd been off work, the schools were shut. One block to the right of her was the East River and torn up trees.

Unravelling or unwinding

Was feeling generally quite anxious about everything.
Work. What I'm doing with my life. There seems still to be so many questions and no answers. Or solutions.
But I'm off for the next couple of days and starting to unwind a bit.
Popped into town this morning to fill up with petrol, do some shopping at Sainsburys, have my weekly flat white at a scruffy little cafe. (The flat white is just as good as Monmouth coffee).
Bought a new dressing gown and pjs.
I'm house sitting for the next week or so and am going to take advantage that and of this grey, heavy weather and hibernate.
Is it a bit of Hurricaine Sandy?
Been reading the headlines. Part of me finds the thought of a storm on the Eastern Seaboard thrilling and I would almost like the idea of getting supplies in and seeing it for real, especially in NYC.
I should imagine the reality is very different and it's all very well for me to say that when I'm in the relative safety of England.
Planning to read - a biography of Nigella and 'The Secrets of the Sands' by Sara Sheridan.
Snuggle up. Watch the food network. Drink red wine.

Told the cafe that I'm not going to be able to cook there much longer, due to my full time workplace putting pressure on me to work Saturdays.
In one way it will be a relief - because every week I get really worried about being able to cope and cooking things right.
On the other hand, it has been great experience and on the whole things have gone alright & I've learnt a lot about cooking and pressure.
The irony is that at my other job, we get to do a fair amount of catering - whether it's baking with the residents, cooking lunches or like yesterday, making finger food for a birthday party lunch - and I'm super relaxed and thoroughly enjoy it.
And I know that for some people that could be stressful.

I have suggested that A visit me for a few days whilst I am house sitting.
Would be fabulous, holing up, shutting out the world, it would relax me and I'd love to spend time with him.
He hasn't really committed, sounds vaguely interested, but I am prepared for him letting me down. Disappointment.
Trying not to email him. Said he could come, if he wanted. Trying to leave it at that.
I know I should not be wasting time on someone who seems so unsure about me.
Guess I keep giving him these little chances, but there is a limit to how much I can take and if doesn't take the bit between his teeth, by the end of the year, then that will be it.
Except this time, there will be no ultimatums, as they so don't work.

Round up

Another fairly gruesome chat over coffee with R yesterday, at his insistence. I feel sorry for him. I think we are going to be friends and still do stuff, i.e go to the cinema together, but I can't get my head round anything more.

A - he said that I have to stop 'pushing, bossing and bullying'. And he's right. I have been getting wound up and anxious. I keep issuing ultimatims and obsessively checking my email to see if he's replied. It's a trap that I've fallen into before with other people and it's not good.

I don't think there's much hope there. The great thing about A was that he seems to like me just the way I am, he seems to like my body as it is. I keep getting stuck on that one little fact. In six years he's never said anything bad about the way I look and I know men can be so mean about things like that - they know it's a woman's weak spot.
I remember being devastated six years ago when a guy in a fit of anger or something told me that I was 'short, fat and ugly', when before that he had always said lovely complimentary things about my body.
It was hard to understand. It's not that no one had ever said anything bad to me, far from it, I just didn't expect it from him, because he'd always told me that he liked my curves etc. I understood that men have a type and I thought I was his, I'd been careful about that, or so I thought.
I never forget the moment when his text came through telling me that - I was sat in my office in Mayfair, it was a Friday afternoon and April, one of my colleagues, saw my reaction and said that 'my face just fell'. I had to go out of the office, I was in a daze. I sat in Grosvenor Square park trying to make sense of it. In a day or so, I'd kind of got over it and dealt with it, but nonetheless, words like that leave scar tissue.
If I join Match.com I have to lose weight, to get anywhere and it's so hard.
It's stupid being such a slave to appearances, I know, but...

And sometimes I just think it's better to be alone and not have to worry about all this kind of crap, just to be happy 'whatever happens' and enjoy my freedom.

I am a stone lighter than when I went travelling, which is something. I am trying, mainly the 5:2 diet, where two days a week you have 500 calories.
I can do that, easily. Have been eating those Nakd bars on the low calorie days and they're nice and filling.
I seem to eat too much on the other 5 days at the moment though, especially when I feel anxious, harrassed, sad or bored - which happens a lot.

Made a Sophie Dahl aubergine and tomato recipe this morning and her spelt soda bread - saw it in Stella over the weekend.

Should go for a nice, long walk this afternoon.

Have to unglue myself from the computer and probably exercise more. Need a horse. Planning to buy one soon, need something to focus my mind more. Did have the idea of choosing a recipe book and working my way through all the recipes. Or maybe starting going to yoga again?

This time last year

Loving Autumn - the chill in the air, the leaves turning, the smell of wood smoke coming from the village.

Lovely to have money to splash out on some seasonal clothes - brown ankle boots, a big cosy black cardigan, nice gloves, scarves.
Bought the new Jackie Collins book 'The Power Trip' and devoured it. I still enjoy reading them, they're a lot of fun.

Last year, I was back packing and was wearing the same old stuff on a rotational basis. Didn't have much spare cash. Always amazed me how I was often twice the age of a lot of backpackers yet never had as many gadgets and stuff as they seemed to have.

This time last year was in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand's North Island, staying on a beef and sheep farm. I had such a damn good time and Alex, the farmer was incredible. I remember him picking me up in his truck in Paihia and me taking a look at his tactiturn, somewhat stern appearance and thinking what the hell have I got myself in for?

A couple of hours later it was even worse - we were stood on a remote hillside, watching his dogs round up lambs and Alex's language was turning the air blue, using the c word liberally. I was rather shocked and horrified...

And it was just me and him in the house. He'd split up with his girlfriend (although he had told me this beforehand and said he'd understand if I didn't want to come).

Alex turned out to be really chatty and open, which was a huge relief. I hate the silent type, because I always think they're thinking dark and awful things about me.
Within a few days I felt very comfortable being around him as I helped him around the farm, cooked, turned his lemons from the garden into lemon curd went out and about with him.
I remember the efficient lunches where a loaf of bread was put on the table, with some avocadoes and some cheese and we'd make up sandwiches to eat there and then.

I loved the long nights, in his wooden 19th Century house, with its beautiful rich red brown Kauri floors and window panes rattling in the wind and rain. We cooked from scratch, he was very keen on that, using an Asian cookbook, often drank red wine. The cat curled up on the chair and there was a fire. Good conversation. I was blown away by how accepting of a complete stranger he was. I loved how he'd tell me all the juicy stuff, stories about people, his life.

Wonderful experiences - gorging on beer battered oysters in Russell, stunning green countryside and views, watching the Rugby world cup in Paihia, riding over his farm on horse and quad bike, going to the local cattle market, watching films, making bread, setting nets & me getting them into a complete tangle, drinking coffee on his verandah, docking lambs, meeting his Maori farmhand, eating pipis for the first time. And having luxuriating in having a proper deep soak in a bath for the first time in months.

I'm enjoying re living my memories of last year, just as much as actually doing them.

I'm Free, but...

For the past couple of weeks, three things have been bothering me:

How to phase R out of my life

Cooking in the cafe - I always feel scared and not really up to it

A going awol. Again.

Think R has got the message. I have been as kind as possible. He did say the 'caring' way in which I tried to end it made him all the more in love with me.

It's such a shame it can't work. He is fairly good looking, a nice man, honest, fit body, in love with me (his words), so local, we have mutual friends, he would go all the way I'm sure - romance, marriage, babies.

I just can't though. I tried. Ended up getting irritated.

He is about a decade older than me, but is naiive and I don't really know what the hell he's been doing with his life.
He seems to have no friends out of work, he hadn't been to the cinema in years, so when we went he was all not knowing what to do/where to go.
He has lived in the same place for years - yet his flat is like a monk's cell, with books, but apart from that pretty bare. With a single bed, for f's sake!
He didn't know what a stubble field was or a burial mound - in spite of living in the country and a stone's throw away from both.
We were at a party, talking to my sister's mother in law, who he's met a few times now. We were talking about her daughter, L, who is due to have a baby any day now.
R said: 'Who is L?'
It's not a major thing, but he has met L and she was very obviously pregnant and it's not as if there's been loads of faces/names to remember.
It was another nail in the relationship coffin.

He wasn't terrible in bed, but quite clumsy. And he took everything off. Except his socks.
That's an image I cannot get out of my head. As I recall from reading a Shirley Conran book, it's a 'vaudeville' view of a man.


Work: I kind of dread Saturdays. Sometimes I feel as though I manage. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done, cook to order in a busy cafe. The owner was working with me last week - usually I'm left to it, unless we're really rushed and I cut up the chicken wrong and made an egg sandwich instead of the ham one that she had told me to do.
Silly, but I feel so crap, expect to get sacked every week.

The girl who cooks during the week is a decade younger than me, has her own catering business as well as cooking at the cafe. She is my height, ok, perhaps an inch taller, but so tiny and pretty and delicate.
She has a strapping boyfriend. She goes on hol to places like the South of France and Kenya.
She is a good rider.
When I've worked with her, I have felt super intimidated.
She was like a cat, aloof, detached and capable. I was like a dog, over eager, anxious.

Went down to London last week to visit my friend A, in her new flat in Wimbledon. She is going to work in Conneticut, setting up a new office. She is an investment banker. Was lovely - wine, dinner, chats.
Had a great time wandering around London, in the cool but sunny September weather visiting old haunts: Ottolenghis, Kensington Gardens, Wholefoods, Oxford Street, Marylebone, discovering new ones: coffee at Lantana in Fitzrovia.

Had hoped to meet up with A. He sounded keen, then disappeared and cut contact when I pressed him for a plan. Have not heard from him in over a week.

Girding myself up for putting myself on Match.com at start of October.
House sitting this week, having a lovely time, watching Food Network, eating chocolate Ben & Jerry's, red wine - to console myself over awol-ness of A. There has to be compensations.