She's Back... and it's all about the chair

This and that

Sat at the kitchen table tapping away listening to BBC6 with the smell of the lamb casserole I've just made permeating the air.  Delicious.  Yesterday I baked my first ever loaf of bread and it worked but my god what a lot of kneading.  This was eaten with a lovely cumin soup from the Hugh Fernley-Dingaling's recipe in last Saturday's Guardian magazine.  So what's with all this talk of food?  It's freezing and all I can think about is eating.  Once Spring has arrived I'll be waddling down the path full of casseroles and soups consumed in the depth of Winter.  

So what's new?  I had a two hour driving lesson today that was HARD.  Driving instructors should be awarded peace-time medals for their patience and ability to keep calm when their pupil is unable to understand the most basic of commands.  The driving up and down dual carriageways was joyous, three point turns were painful.  I've been instinctively positioning the car (because I know everything) when really I should be aligning little yellow stickers on the windscreen with kerbs.  I just couldn't understand him and why and why do I have to do it that way?  I left Abdul (my instructor) wiping his brow and then watched him leave my house at high speed, I don't think he even said goodbye!

The good news is I arrived home to a nice parcel from the Open University.  I've been trying to get on an archaeology course which starts in February and I'm in!  Woohoo.  It's going to be hard but hey after today what harm is a bit of Wetwang Woman circa 300BC (or should that be Before the Common Era?).  I am genuinely excited at getting stuck into something that I'm really interested in and seeing where it takes me.  

 

In the mix of all this I skyped with my old pal Lou in Ibiza.  Don't you just love Skype.  My relationship with Lou always involved a lot of talking (and lots of errr work), in her office or mine and it felt just like the old days.  Talking about not much of anything but it was just what I needed today.  Her life has completely transformed since she left London and I'm so happy to see her in such a good place.  Of course I'm not at all jealous that the view from her flat is the Mediterranean and mine is the back of a North London flat.... haha. 

As you've probably gathered I like to put a clip up once in a while and I came across this today.  It must be hard following in the steps of a living legend and I think James McCartney has probably found it hard to find his way but I found this clip of him playing at the Viper Room in LA a couple of nights ago.  What a great voice!  His dad should be well proud.  

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

..well not actually Manderley, California to be precise.  I dream a lot: full on technicolour, action, drama, interactive, cinematic blockbusters.  Sometimes my dreams are so involved I don't want to wake up and miss the ending.  So this morning I woke after a night of travelling,  I travel frequently in my dreams and last night I was in California.

A recurrent dream of mine is going to the States to visit family.  In the real awake world I used to go the US a lot, I'd fly to LAX and get a connection to Salt Lake City where my family would collect me.  However the connection between LAX and SLC was tight and if immigration had a queue around the block I'd invariably miss my connection.  So the recurrent dream is always  me worrying about the connecting flight and what I'm going to do if I miss it - it's actually a very irritating dream that never goes anywhere.  However last night this recurring dream had another element to it - I was at the beach in Cali sat on a grass verge, I was with my brother and his family and we were watching these huge waves seemingly take people to the heavens on the cusp of their waves and bring them crashing to the floor.  It was so exciting and in my dream I had the scary gut feeling of being in these huge waves but also the exhilaration of being thrown around in the sea... it was amazing.  (I won't bore you further with this dream and the wedding planner stuff I was doing behind the scenes with Marc Jacobs - we just couldn't agree on Anything!)

Dreams are pretty easy to decipher and this was incredibly clear to me.  Tonight I'm meeting a very old and dear friend tonight who is a surfer.  We met when I was travelling many years ago and at one stage he was living in La Jolla in South Cali where I used to go and visit.  He now lives in Ireland where he still surfs the big waves... but with a lot more clothes on!  Also I was on the phone to my brother last night hence his inclusion in my short but epic film.

This type of dreaming is called lucid dreaming where you're aware that you're dreaming and that you're able to control or interact with the incidents actually occurring.  I sometimes feel as if I'm making a film and if I don't like the direction it's going, I can change it.  Looking online for more insight into this phenomenon I find it's a much discussed subject and a great deal of books have been written around this subject.   Creative minds find they can solve mental blocks in this dream state and there are hundreds of web pages dedicated to teaching you how to lucid dream as if by lucid dreaming it will solve all your problems.

In my experience lucid dreaming is generally a positive one, a place where I travel the world and experience all the things I can't do in the awake world i.e. body surfing 30ft waves in the balmy pacific ocean.  A bit like this.... but I've yet to meet Leonardo... and the next one makes me laugh, a lot.  Happy Weekend y'all.

Girls, girls, girls

There seems to be a common thread running amongst my friends at the moment - full-on, hardcore, debilitating PMT.  The sort of PMT that makes you question your own sanity and sends you into a deep dark place where no-one dare follow.  For some of us this is something they've had to live with for a very long time but for those of us who haven't really had to deal with this experience before it's hard, really hard.

My personal experience is text-book and is bang on each month.  Ten days before the inevitable my brain changes gear - I actually feel my brain changing over.  Clumsiness, (dropping iphones, putting things in fridge that shouldn't be there) tiredness, lack of motivation, irritability which starts out at a liveable level 5 but then culminates in all-out warfare and finally the depression.  All rational thought processes go out the window, all you want to do is sit and wallow.  For some of us we hit the Curly Wurly's, others the Sauv Blanc but none of them make any difference, if anything they make us feel even worse about ourselves.

Well I'm taking a stance.  It's only lunchtime and I've already had one phone call and one email about how awful their PMT was making them feel today.  I want to get to the bottom of this, why should we have to deal with being Jekyll and Hyde every month?  So girls, girls, girls - I want your remedies.  I want to hear any folk-lore old wives tales out there.  I made this decision myself before Christmas and I've started the Evening Primrose Oil regime, which helped.  Kalms are the herbal equivalent of Valium and seem to take the edge of the irritability but all it does is mask the symptoms, I want to find a way of us not feeling this dreadful anymore.

It may be a case of doing more exercise, yoga etc but I know that my friends and I who do these things regularly still suffer.  Maybe the way forward is happy pills but I'd rather avoid those completely and find a more healthy way of dealing with this.

Oh and apparently there's no cure for PMT but there's always Liz Lemon:

ooops

Been a while eh... it's been an emotionally charged month or so and because of this I didn't feel I could write anything that wouldn't have an "emotional" edge to it. Build-up to Christmas, Christmas, post-Christmas, New Year, family dramas, excessive drinking and eating - no wonder we're all in a slump in January.

So let me begin with "Happy New Year", I hope it really is a good year for you and your nearest.  So what's happened since I last saw you?  The aromatic Christmas tree is now in the back garden and we're trying to bring a dead tree back to life by sticking it in two feet of compost.  The new business idea came to a crashing halt.  If there's one thing I have learnt is that you need to be passionate about whatever venture you take on.  I was interested in making my business idea work but I don't ever remember getting that excited about it.  Plus I'm very good at putting stuff together but I lose interest soon after, which doesn't bode well.  Most importantly there really wasn't a market there for us and I think it would have been a lot of effort for little return.

What now?  Good point, I really don't know.  I'm looking at maybe taking an adult education course, something quite heavy and time consuming but I may have left this to late to enrol.  A few jobs have come up but back to "passionate", didn't really feel that passionate about any of them.  Which brings me back to the reason I started this blog, I thought by smashing my thoughts on paper I'd finally bring myself round to what direction I should take.  I envy people who are passionate about their work, who really get excited about where their job is taking them.  I want that but I just don't know what that job is.  I'm in a great position at the moment whereby I've been allowed to think this through, I just hope I get there soon.

Finally we're going to look at a property tomorrow.  I'm excited, this looks like our kind of place and it's overlooking huge parkland and has a little village atmosphere on the doorstep but it's still in London.

Before I sign off, I'd like to thank a chap called Aaron who posted on my blog last night.  It dragged me out of my January slump and got these fingers typing.

"Halston"

Blues

I'm a dreadful blogger.  Almost four whole weeks since I've composed a single word - which isn't exactly true as I've started to write stuff but it seemed so depressing, so I thought not.  This time of year is a funny one, the excitement of Christmas mixed in with dark mornings and short bursts of sunlight.

I don't think I suffer from SAD but I do think it's at this time of year when your thoughts tend to be with friends and family who may not be having the best of times for lots of reasons.  Of course it's not all been doom and gloom, there have been birthday parties, a few impromptu drinks here and there and one or two unsuccessful shopping trips.

Also there was the annoying throat/chesty thing that felled me, which was completely my own fault and one that has only come about since smoking was banned in pubs - yes I'm blaming someone else for my teenage behaviour of having a quick fag in the freezing cold!  It's an annual thing now and the sensible thing is to stop which I have but only because I can't bear the hacking/choking in the middle of the night.  I know, terribly attractive.  The gym consequently had to be put on hold and my backside resumed it's usual heavy load. However yesterday after a hackless night's sleep I hit the gym and we're back on track - I feel loads better.

So last night we bought our Christmas tree, it's of the aromatic and non-drop kind of tree and my god it's lovely.  There's nothing fun about putting a tree up with two people who can be as OCD as Mr C and I are (please note this doesn't apply to everything in our lives, hence the reason we don't live in a show home!).  Anyway after a lot of "a little to the left, a little on the right" a lot of "just let me do it!!" and a bottle of Prosecco we finished the job.  It's very lovely and I just went to have another look at it while I was making a cup of tea.

Finally went to see Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea on Monday night.  It's set in early 1950's London, probably Hampstead and is beautifully shot.  It's not an upbeat film and could or has been a stage play.  Rachel Weisz who I think is such a brilliant and beautiful actress is amazing and at some point I thought I was looking at a young Charlotte Rampling.  Films like this always bring me out of whatever slump I may be in, the story may be pained but sometimes with films like this, they really are a thing of beauty and it was as if I was watching an artist paint a picture and the end result made my heart soar.

The Week That Was

Well last Monday was positively charged with positivity.  Me and my not yet legal business partner had a meeting with an older colleague who had a wealth of information about our new business venture.  She had confidence in us, which was so important to me and as we chatted away and picked her brains we inadvertently made her get incredibly excited about our venture too!  After the meeting me and the BP had a pint and dutifully started planning our next move, company name etc.

Tuesday I spent asking for a favour or two.  We needed a designer for our logo and a valued friend who happens to be an Art Director agreed to do it.  Meanwhile I spent all day trying to read up on actually setting up a business - will we be a partnership, an LLP, a PLC or a dingdongdee?  After reading and doing some online business tests I realised that we need to organise a chat with an accountant.  A nice, properly qualified chap or chappess who can relay this maze of information to me in bite sized portions.  

Wednesday was driving lesson day.  I'd convinced myself that after my previous week's performance (I thought I did pretty well) this would be a more involved and enlightened day.  I actually waited outside on the pavement in anticipation of Abdul's arrival.  We drove to our "spot" where he made sure I can remember how to put my seat belt on and adjust my headrest etc.  But then he said the words that changed the whole experience "today I'm going to show you a different way of moving off..." - me blind panic, I thought there was only one effing way, the way you showed me last week.  Well apparently not, there are two ways, and there are  reasons but they all melted away into different biting points.  

How he tried, we stopped, started, parked, started, parked, again and again.  Drove into scary busy lanes and I felt poor Abdul holding on to his seat for dear life.  Well that was until the local schools started to empty.  Cars were coming from both directions, mothers, prams but no children at this point - thank God.  So I approach a zebra crossing at probably 15 miles an hour when a woman runs across the crossing from nowhere and what do I do??  Miss the brake and floor the accelerator.  Abdul ever the good instructor prevents me from sending her 50ft into the air and brakes for me.  She waves with an apology and meanwhile I just want to undo my seat belt, unlock the door, go home and whimper in the corner.  Abdul has a different idea, "come on now keep driving" whilst directing me into one of the busiest roads in NW6. 

Thursday I was a little hungover.  Wednesday's experience sent me to the pub to meet a friend for a quick drink and then over dinner I shared/had a bottle of wine with Mr C whilst relaying/boring him with the horror of my afternoon.  However I did research a lot of websites.  I came away thinking they looked a little dated and not representative of the creative industries they represent but they must be doing something right as they're making money.  I want a website that either we create or we find some lovely peeps to help us (payment = a delicious dinner?).  It'll be a simple layout but nicely designed with some bite.  

And Friday came all wrapped up with that end of the week feeling.  I spent time doing more research into what our competitors are doing right now, drinking a lot of tea and trying to visualise me and my BP actually getting this off the ground.  We will be in a very competitive market and our knowledge is very one sided but I'm hoping that talking with the right people will even this out.  I won't tell you what the business is just yet as I don't want to jinx it until we are in a good place.  We need to make sure all the boxes are ticked and every thing's underlined.

Finally don't download W.E.L.D.E.R. - it's the app of the moment.  Weekend newspapers were hastily read and books held no meaning... it was all about W.E.L.D.E.R.  I just LOVE it!

     

I just don't get it

Recently an ad for a top retailer aired on TV and since then it has brought tears to the eyes of (from what I can gather) most of the UK population.  For some reason me and another person and various other people who I don't know but whose opinions I find credible (via twitter) feel the complete opposite.  The ad itself features a little boy desperately wishing his days away until Christmas Day where we are led to believe (by the huge amount of presents at the end of his bed) that it's all about what he will receive, when in fact it's about him being more excited at  presenting his parents with the gift he's been hiding in his wardrobe.  Nice idea, the whole "it's better to give than receive" etc but I can't understand why this is tugging on so many heart-strings?

This ad is being lauded as being creatively brilliant (by the ad world), beautifully shot and advertising at its best.  What I think is that it's a Christmas ad for a great shop.  Personally I think their ad last year resonated more with me (creatively and emotionally); it didn't make me cry but made me feel warm inside and more importantly - I should start putting my Christmas list together and do my entire shop at John Lewis!

But what I do find most odd is that the daily TV ads for starving children in war torn countries and the desperately heart-wrenching NSPCC ads don't have the same outpouring of tears/tugging at heart-strings that this ad seems to have created.  Now these ads do make me cry, proper can't breathe sobbing at the inhumanity of their desperately sad lives.  However they don't have an expensive media spot in the middle of XFactor.

So being less cynical I started thinking that a lot of people are in a different situation than they were this time last year.  Money is tight, inner city communities have broken down in front of our eyes, society has shifted and has made us feel less secure.  There now seems more than an ever an elite few with all the riches one could ever imagine and the remainder wondering how they'll meet their mortgage repayment this month or heat their homes with rising fuels prices.  Maybe collectively and unconsciously we as a country just want to feel safe again and this ad has made us wistful for simpler times.

Finally a few angry tweeters in response to a certain bloke who also can't understand this outpouring have said to him, "it's because you have no children, you wouldn't understand".  This (not very nice) argument has been thrown at me more times than you can possibly imagine.  Am I (or that bloke) less compassionate and less in touch with children and family life because I don't have children? I think not.  I decided against children because personally I feel there are more than enough people populating this over burdened planet (for reasons they have no control over i.e. barely literate African nations, religious groups and their anti-contraception mind controlling belief systems).  

I have all the connections I could possibly ask for with family and children.  I have two of the most beautiful nieces, another two nieces and nephews by marriage and an abundance of friends whose great kids I love hanging out with and most importantly I LOVE Christmas.

Quite simply this ad isn't worth the accolades.

 

Fears

It's been a long time coming but if a 17 year old can do it, so can I.  Today I had my FIRST ever driving lesson.  Two hours with a lovely man called Abdul and his dual pedal BSM car.  First we sat in a side street and looked at pictures in his folder and then after I'd demonstrated a level of understanding, off we went.  I realise I should have done this a long time ago but I moved to London quite young and only had to walk to work every day plus we have the best public transport system so why bother?

My years of riding a bike around London has put me in good stead apparently as I have an understanding of road signs and it's helped that I've been navigating around traffic on busy roads.  So after my two hour lesson concluding with me driving and parking outside our house I felt incredibly confident, however in my excitement I got out of the driving seat and opened the door into the path of an oncoming taxi!  Ouch, it was a close move.  Thankfully the instructor sensing my nervousness made me get back in the car, buckle up and re-park the car.

So that's one of the many fears I've conquered this year, silly fears like I could never drive a car (I could kill someone!!), I could never join a gym (but I don't know how to use the machines blah blah blah) and I've done both.  I realise they are silly but they were obstacles that I needed to overcome and so today I'm giving myself a little pat on the back.

I hope the next one will prove a little more interesting readers.

15 things I've learnt this week

1.  I own an obscene amount of V neck jumpers.
2.  I seem to have a lot of finishing creams but not much removal cream.
3.  If I applied hand-cream every day for the next 20 years, I'd still have enough for another 20 years.
4.  I have every garish No.7 lipstick that has been given away as a freebie in the last 5 years - they're all unwearable unless you are 8 or 90 years old.
5.  I will never have to buy a white Gap T ever again - my wardrobe has cornered the market.
6.  Mr C refuses to dispose of items of clothing no matter what condition, holey Calvins included.
7.  Mr C has a hidden wash-bag containing "styling gel" (still laughing about this).
8.  I am so clumsy that I seem to trip over my own feet... sober before you ask and no I haven't got early signs of dementia.
9.  My cashmere socks from last winter have made a lovely pair of cashmere cut off gloves this winter.
10.  I don't want to move to the country anymore unless quite a long-list of provisos are met.  Highly unlikely.
11.  Crouch End could mean Haringey, Archway, Tottenham.
12.  Muswell Hill could mean East Finchley, North Finchley, New Southgate.
13.  Flats on the "top floor" are attic conversions and only suitable for people who are vertically challenged and who appreciate trapezium shaped furniture.
14.  Hallowe'en The Resurrection is a scary film more so when your digital service drops out halfway through!
15.  It's time.

Wish You Were Here!

Postcards.... not as picture perfect as a Facebook image but much more exciting to receive.  After my year out travelling around the world I came home and got back to the humdrum of normal life, meanwhile a few of my newly acquired friends carried on living the dream with a few surfboards under their arm.

Mail

I miss letters - handwritten ones with stamps and proper handwriting.  I left home in the northwest of England and moved to London when I was 18 years old.  Even though my family and I spoke regularly on the phone we still wrote to each other.  The letters below are written by my parents, my brother who'd recently moved to the USA and my sister who'd recently left for university.  So much more colourful than email and meant so much to me that I still have them and all their others today.  Check out the Cheshire stamp on the "Cheshire Cat" envelope!      

                                                                  

                

Dreary me

I've been looking for a new place to live for quite a while.  The brief: home counties, outside or in a bustling village, a whole house (pre 1940), working fireplaces and a big kitchen.  Most importantly it had to be commutable - i.e. less than 40 minutes into central London.  I did find somewhere six months ago, it was a dreamy house in the middle of nowhere alongside a beautiful lake, sadly Mr C would spend at least two hours a day travelling there and back.

My research so far has all been online but after three weeks of house arrest Mr C was fit and able enough to drive us to one of the locations we've been looking at.  I was so excited, at last we were going to see the place where we might end up living.  The cottage we went to look at was in a small village in Buckinghamshire.  It looked so cosy with its thatched roof and white washed walls, I had visions of me skipping up and down the high street with JJ (see previous) purchasing my wares from the butcher, baker and errr candlestick maker?  We pulled into the tiny village that certainly looked lovely but didn't have my butcher, baker etc, just a row of shops containing a barely there Co-op and a chinese take-away.

We found the lovely cottage next door to the one of only two pubs in the area. So there we sat in the pub, next door to the lovely cottage with its pub garden bordering onto the cottage(!); we ordered some lunch and took in the surroundings (a signed picture of the previous Inspector Barnaby).  Well aside from the picture I didn't take in anything apart from the fact that I felt a little sick.  Here we were in the quiet little village I'd been banging on about for six months and I thought please can we eat up and get out of here.  I had visions of snow on the ground and Mr C and I living a kind of The Shining existence.  

Please note pub on immediate left....

We ate, paid and left.  Still feeling a little optimistic about what we might find we decided to have a drive around the area and look at some of the other villages.  It was just awful I couldn't see myself living in any of these places that I'd spent all these months researching.  The countryside was beautiful but you then hit these small towns, it was the same everywhere - huge housing estates, pretty town houses, town centre, high streets with half their shops empty.  

So after doing half of Bucks in about an hour we headed back to London.   We discussed the places we had visited and I just got more and more agitated.  I can't do it, I can't do it!  The villages I like with the butcher, baker etc and the beautiful stone houses aren't here, they're at least an hour by train out of London or sitting quaintly on the south coast (Fowey, Salcombe etc).

Of course there are the odd houses dotted about in the beautiful countryside which I love but I only have to think of a creaking old house when Mr C is away (sometimes three weeks at a time in some far flung destination) that I get a little worried.  Late at night, pitch black darkness and wind lashing around the house with me hiding under the bed til morning.

Oh god, what are we going to do?  This morning I thought if we can't have a stone house in a pretty village in errr The Cotswolds then we're staying in London.  There has to be a lovely place on the outskirts that doesn't have a gang of hooded dudes slouching past your front door morning, noon and night.

Last night..

...as I was lying in bed I started thinking (odd that I then dreamt about Stephen Mangan) about how much I WANT a dog.  A little cutey one similar to my friend's dog, Harvey. His fur is silky soft and when he came to visit he was an absolute delight.  After dinner as we sat drinking wine and talking rubbish, Harvey sat quietly occasionally nodding in the direction of whoever was talking, as if in agreement.


And then last night we met Twiggy.  Twiggy is two months old with the littlest face and the tiniest paws.  She was sat at the bar in our local pub with her incredibly pretty blonde russian owner.  The blonde sipped on her vino and Twiggy sat quietly in her lap taking in the atmosphere.  I couldn't resist and went over to stroke Twiggy who then desperately tried to gnaw off one of my fingers (I think she could smell the scrummy cassoulet I'd just eaten).


Ohhhh how I wanted a dog until I woke up this morning feeling a little light-headed and remembered that right now Twiggy or Harvey would be desperate to go out for a walk which would mean me walking the streets, half asleep with a plastic bag. 


My brother and his family have owned a dog on and off for over a decade and when I discussed getting a dog with him the other night he was of the opinion that it can be a royal pain in the rear, especially if you go away a lot and you need someone to look after the little pooch.  A friend of ours in LA puts his dog into Doggy Day Care... and when you go and collect your little dog you're given a report card on his behaviour and who he played with and what he'd eaten.  We thought this was hilarious and that it must be an "LA" thing but it's huge over here too.  


I had a look at the Battersea Dog's Home website but be warned you need to have a strong heart when you look at the pics of all those unwanted dogs.  Under each picture is a short biog, selling you their best points and how they'd love to live in a home with you.  Battersea Dog's Home also advise that you read their document "Getting a Dog" - it's written on the premise of a "A dog is for life and not just for Christmas'.  This however is my favourite advice from their website:   Regular walks provide your dog with a change of scene and the chance to meet other dogs. Remember, your dog needs a social life, too!


Oh what fun we'd have, me and JJ skipping along to Doggy Day Care or meeting her pals in the park.  Maybe letting JJ have her friends over for dog biscuits and a run around the garden.  Sadly I think we're going to have to find our new home in the country before we start looking for a JJ.


  
http://www.battersea.org.uk/

Truth Will Out

I put conspiracy theorists in the same bag as people who believe "God" made the world in seven days.  Those same people who use religion as a way to make money and the same people who go to war in the name of their "God".


Anyway this isn't about religion this is about conspiracy theorists.  We've all been down the pub or sat around a dinner table when someone will start a conversation with the words "did you know that there were explosives planted in the Twin Towers...they've actually found kryptonite and glycolic kerastase residue in the debris" oh god, please put me out of my misery.


Wikipedia actually have a great list of conspiracy theories (current and old):


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories


it's a delight to read and an hour or so of your life that you'll never get back.   The moon landing conspiracy always a favourite and brilliantly satirised in this sketch:

A conspiracy by definition is a group of people who by mutual agreement conspire to do something unlawful and in turn hope their fellow conspirators will remain silent forever! Therein lies my first question conspiracy theorists.  For example the moon landing, if you truly believe this was a hoax, it would have meant the collusion of at least three astronauts, many NASA officials, a camera crew (to film the hoax), editors as well as carpenters and electricians to build the set.  That's a lot of people to keep quiet for the last 40 years and for what purpose?  Even if the NASA officials and astronauts thought for whatever reason (space race with Russia, distraction from the Vietnam War) why would this make any difference to the guy holding the camera and the bloke fixing the lighting?  


Even if the majority of people involved in the conspiracy kept this secret to their grave, it would only take one person to blow the whistle - death-bed confession, drunken confession to their partner, anonymous letter.  Some people no matter how hard they try are really not good at keeping secrets or most importantly committing a crime. 


One of the most famous conspiracies never to become a conspiracy theory would be Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.  The newly crowned King James I was initially thought to be sympathetic to the Catholics (his wife was the Catholic Queen Anne of Denmark).  Since Elizabeth I's reign, Catholics in Protestant England had been persecuted since her ex-communicaton from Rome but even with his Catholic Queen he felt that he needed to appease the Puritans who felt the Catholics were gaining strength. Finally James gave in to the Puritans and the Catholics were back were they started - underground and paying rescusancy fines (failure to attend Church of England services); plots against the newly crowned King became common place.  


Guy Fawkes and his band of Catholic conspirators decided to blow up Parliament when it re-opened on the 5th November.  From the original group of five, more people were recruited until more than ten people were now party to this conspiracy.  However one of the last members of the group to be recruited (Tresham) sent an anonymous letter to a member of parliament (Lord Monteagle) asking him to avoid the opening.  Monteagle had Westminster searched and Guy Fawkes was found amongst the gunpowder.   


So why did Tresham (recruited because he had the horses they needed to escape on!) expose the plot?  Maybe he felt this was a step too far even for him, he didn't want the blood of all these people on his hands.   


Which is why when conspiracy theorists hypothesise after such epic events I ask how the hell would that "government" or group of people have organised such a monumental deception without one person coming clean after or before - it would be unheard of.  Even the News International phone-tapping scandal which had been a collusion operating for over a decade is now public knowledge and there are elements of this investigation being unearthed every day.  An ex-News of the World reporter speaking to The Guardian last week has threatened to expose those responsible for the scandal to ensure that "Truth Will Out".


The truth does come out eventually, sadly in some events not soon enough.  History has shown us that even when you seemingly have everyone on your side it doesn't mean you can guarantee their silence.

Empty

I've sat down to write my blog everyday and seem to have hit a brick wall.  It's got a lot to do with the fact that Mr C has been diagnosed with shingles and my thoughts are wrapped up in trying to heal him.  What started as a little rash has developed into a pain that is triggered by the lightest material against his skin.  Shingles in adults comes from the chicken pox virus you caught as a child travelling down your nerve endings and infecting your skin.  When your immune system is compromised (stress is a factor) the virus is then reactivated as your immune system can no longer suppress it.

So I am trying to build up his immune system with lots of goodness.  Fresh berry smoothies packed with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.  Lysine, Vit B, Vit C and Zinc supplements.  But I think it's going to be a long journey, he woke up in lots of pain today but having a long soak with a few epsom salts, he's feeling a little better.

I hear so much about friends never being able to shift a cold, feeling run-down, T.A.T.T. (tired all the time as the doc calls it) and generally losing our mojo.  Last December I had literally run out of all the goodness that I had fed my immune system over the years.  Within the space of four weeks I'd caught a viral infection and was off sick for the latter part of December.  I have never felt so low, it truly knocked me out.  This had something to with the the fact that a job which I'd truly loved had began to fall apart, triggering off the stress I felt at the time.  Sometimes you need to take some time out and recognise the only thing that matters is keeping yourself fit and healthy.

As much as Mr C acknowledges that he should have been exercising more, listening to his body more, I can't help but wish I'd been a bit more vocal about his workload.  He is my best friend and the best husband I could ever have wished for and it's really sad to see the wind knocked out of him.

I guess that's why I'm running on empty this week...

   

  

Houseboat... sure why not

In the midst of trying to get a project off the ground with my pal Miss B, I am also trying to find a new pad for the Cherry's.  The current one is way past its sell by date and I've simply had enough of these four walls.  We are incredibly lucky to have a flat at a cheap price in an area of West London that is deemed "trendy".  Having lived in this area for the last 14 years I've watched the media and mid-ladder fashion pack buy up all the properties and seen the demise of the smelly pubs replaced with bars that have serious acoustic problems - or is it that people really enjoy shouting loudly at each other?

Of course when the media pack arrived so did the coffee and the artisan bread (oh please?!).  I was well chuffed when Starbucks appeared but when Starbucks moved in so did Costa.  And let's not forget the Artisan Bread cum Expensively Priced Cake cum Coffee Shop and opposite that another overly priced coffee emporium.  And this is all within 20sq ft!

But behind the artisanal facade is the reality that 20sq feet of expensive coffee shops and a ridiculously priced clothes shop doesn't keep the yob factor away.  If anything it seems to encourage it.  We are within spitting distance of an area that houses some of the poorest communities in London.   The road we live in is the main thoroughfare between these two communities.  Every evening it's a given that groups of guys and girls of all ages will walk along our street, shouting at each other (no-one seems able to just talk here!) and generally being a nuisance.  And so after another summer of this endless chatter we are moving but there is a slight problem we don't know where.

In our dream world (the one were we win the Lottery and spread the joy) we'd buy a lovely town-house in Kensington or Holland Park....haha, £10million anyone??  Back in the real world, the thought of spending £350,000 upwards on a one and half bedroomed flat in a half decent area (this being one of them) makes me feel a little sick.  So we are now looking at the commuter belt, where we could maybe get a house, a couple of bedrooms and a garden for our imaginary dog to run around.  Oh how lovely that would be... 5,342 properties later... and we still haven't got very far.  As much as we would love somewhere remote we still need to work, which means a daily commute.

So the search area has been shortened (a lot) and it's time to go and visit the commuter belt and figure out where we will finally lay our hat.  First stop Buckinghamshire...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/16/move-to-great-missenden-prestwood-bucks?INTCMP=SRCH

p.s. since this article was posted, we can't find any of these properties, good old Guardian.

p.p.s. as I was posting this blog last night, this happened less than 1/4 of mile away from the coffee shop zone.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/30/teenager-baby-shot-west-london

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy...

Last night we went to see the latest adaptation of John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. What an incredible film.  I was gripped right from the start.  The cinematography was amazing, the acting and wealth of great actors was incredible.  It was so well styled and is now in my all time list of great films.  And just so you know how much I enjoyed it, I burst into tears when it finished!  It was so intense and so beautiful that I was totally overwhelmed.

I love film as much as I love reading and I've been trying to think of the first film I watched that had such an effect on me and it must have been To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.  I was off sick from school and my brother was looking after me, I must have been 7 or 8.  I was mesmerised with both Grace Kelly and Cary Grant and afterwards I wrote a fan letter to Grace Kelly (at my brother's suggestion) telling her how much I enjoyed the film... signed Kelly aged 7.

This was my first introduction to Alfred Hitchcock, he is one of my favourite directors.

Hitchcock has been coined the master of suspense but he was also a great innovator of film.  His earliest work is definitely my favourite and if you ever come across The Lodger, 39 Steps or The Lady Vanishes, you must watch them.  These were filmed in the UK before his move to Hollywood where he subsequently made some of his finest films:Rebecca, Rear Window, The Birds, North by Northwest, to name a few. 

I do think Rear Window is Hitchcock at his best. The apartment block James Stewart's character observes throughout the film is a voyeur's dream and even though I've seen this film more times than you can imagine, I still see things that I hadn't seen before.  Grace Kelly's wardrobe is to die for and she is utterly gorgeous in every scene.  The detail is incredible.  His films are elegant and so well crafted which is why I adore him.

Of course these were films I was watching on rainy Sunday afternoons on our TV at home but these grainy black and white, early colour films had more meaning to me than the stuff I would watch with my friends at the cinema (apart from anything George Lucas was making at the time!)

My other favourite director of that era is David Lean, he of the great landscapes.  This clip is from one of his earliest works, Great Expectations; here you see the camera move slowly from left to right showing us the desolation and bleakness of the marshes and finally exposing the gallows in the foreground.  Shiver...

And then to Lawrence of Arabia and possibly one of the most famous scenes of all time, beautiful on too many levels.  David Lean is a truly epic director and what vision to realise these great scenes, awe inspiring.

I've really waffled on here but Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was an incredible film and I realise now it's actually one of a long list of films that have had a profound effect on me. I truly hope that Gary Oldman and John Hurt get suitably Oscar'd for their great performances and the cinematographer deserves one too! 

Wrestling with your wrinkles

I have been using moisturising creams for the last 15 years or so.  And as the years have gone by so has the urgency with how many times I apply my potions (morning, night and sometimes a little in the day).  When I've had the money I've used Creme de la Mer and I thought it was a miracle how my skin looked so amazing but I was in my early 30s and could have applied lard every day and would have had the same result.

My usual potion was Olay and all the serums that came with it.  Then having read that No7 was the only cream on the market that "actually" worked, I switched instantly.  So now I'm a sunscreen, serum wearer of the Lift and Luminate range and I have tricked myself into believing how it really does make a difference.

So it was interesting to read in the Daily Fail (it's a guilty pleasure and I only look at the pics!) about a certain columnist who having been a slave to the expensive moisturisers most of her life, embark on a facelift.  It sounded and I can only imagine a torturous procedure.  Having seen a couple of these operations on TV, they poke under your skin with what seems like not a care in the world, sucking and jabbing until they've get you as taut as Madonna's upper arms.

After six weeks of hiding in your bedroom for fear of scaring the postman and living on a liquid only diet, you emerge with a perma air-brush effect and all your friends marvelling at the new position of your eyebrows.  But the reason I found this little article of interest is because and this isn't the first time I've heard this, moisturisers don't actually hold the wrinkles at bay.  Yes, they may soften them or give you a glow on your tired skin but it's not going to get rid of the over-hang on the eyelids or the deep furrows.

I'd always wondered why the mega rich women in the world who surely had access to the creams and potions made up from magical components, did they end up having fillers/botox, facelifts etc?  And I know why, it's because they too realised that having spent years going to bed layered in nightcream made from the fat cells of a baby's bottom that it was all a waste of time.

And so what I have learnt is that Mr Facelift Doctor reckons serums do work and all the better if you apply it before you go to bed.  Of course I think a good night's sleep would be even more beneficial.  Finally it may cost £30 but if you use foundation every day and feel naked without it, Chanel Vitalumiere is the only way.  Now that makes your skin look like a teenager's!

Paris

How I love Paris and all things French (Vincent Cassel etc etc)!  We're having a friend over for dinner and I'm beyond excited to try out a recipe called Petite Blanquette de Poulet a L'Estragon (chicken in an unbelievably creamy sauce).

Let's hope it looks as scrumptious as this when I'm done.  I'm not one for checking out calorific values on menus but this one seemed to scream heart attack, a whacking 1300 cals per portion, it will be so worth it though.  However as I don't want to give me and my fellow diners a clogged artery, I'm going to use 50% creme fraiche mixed with a bit of cream and hopefully I'll still get the richness of the sauce.

But on to Paris and all things French.  I was watching the penultimate episode of one of my favourite programmes (Sex and The City) and it's the one where Carrie moves to Paris to be with grimo ballet dancer Mikhail come artist Aleksandr Russian bloke (I literally gag whenever she has to kiss him) and I was just loving all the background scenes of Paris.

I think Paris is a place that you grow to appreciate. I don't care that the waiting staff in restaurants are rude or that they overcharge you to sit outside on one of their beautiful boulevards, the place is oozing beauty.  The last time I visited we went for an early drink on the roof terrace at  the Centre Pompidou.  I don't think it matters what time of the day but if you're able to, try and get there as the sun sets over Paris - it is breathtaking. You have a 360 degree view of Paris but not from some great height, just nine or so floors from the ground, which makes all of their buildings seem within reach and close enough to appreciate their stunning architecture.

Paris can be incredibly expensive but if you're willing to explore you should find some bars and restaurants to suit every pocket.  We have walked the length of the Seine trying to track down some little restaurant we've read about and sometimes it was worth it and other times not.  But what a way to discover a city.  I can't wait to go back there!  

And so this is the morning after the Petite Blanquette etc and it was very very delicious.  Not as time consuming as I thought it would be and I mixed the double cream with skimmed milk which seemed to lessen the blow.  I dished it up with some Watercress (with a little balsamic glaze) and some new potatoes.  We washed it all down with one or two bottles of wine and left the dishes for the morning.

e·piph·a·ny - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

I've had a few of these in my life, unfortunately so far none of them have led me to discover a different approach to famine in the the third world (yet) but simply a way of approaching things differently in my world.

In my experience acting on an epiphany takes courage.  Being an adult in this big bad world can be a complicated and stressful existence.  One minute we're skipping along, hand in hand with our latest best friend and without a care in the world.  We have a roof over our head (but doesn't everyone have one of those??), a restaurant style service three times a day, an in-house maid who launders and irons our clothes and heaps of unconditional love.  A love that is never questioned or examined, a love that puts us to bed with a bed-time story.

Fast forward to the here and now.  You've left the five star hotel and the 24 hour support facility. We begin to form relationships with the only experience of love and friendship we've encountered to-date: unconditional, honest and open.  With our hearts wide open we encounter the not so nice people and get stung, it hurts, and for some of us we close the shutters on new experiences and stay closed for business, for evermore.  Now it's when I've felt sad or hurt that one or two of my epiphanies have occurred.

I've found it's so much easier to put on a smile and a lovely outfit and show the world that I'm fine when I've felt horrible inside.  You think you've got it all covered off and no-one can read your mind but the only person you're kidding is yourself.  Yes, you!  Beautiful you, you who were the apple of your parent's eye, you who were cherished and cared for and whose parents wanted nothing but your happiness.

So you want something else, you want to change things?  This is where you need courage. Change needs you to start thinking differently (a kind of re-wiring of your brain).  Stop worrying about who may be judging you and what others may think and start thinking about your own life and the things you want from it.   It will turn emotions on that you didn't know existed and will turn off the emotions that have been keeping you in status quo all this time.

Now my 2011 epiphany (as I said there's been a few over the years).  I used to run quite a lot but gradually stopped running due to a painful Achilles.  I swam for a bit but found it tedious and it didn't feel as exhilarating as a run did and then I just stopped exercising.  I was still the same dress size but with a few extra bumps here and there and as I think with a lot of people I thought why bother, there's always Spanx!  And then I had my epiphany moment, I had to start thinking differently about exercise because there's always going to be a bigger dress size and a pair of big pants to hold me in.


The incentive shouldn't be about weight loss it should be about your well-being. The weight loss should be an added bonus.  That big pumping heart sat squarely in your chest is a muscle that needs exercise and a well exercised heart is a better incentive than any diet.  I don't want high blood pressure or the inability to walk up a hill when I'm any age.  I certainly don't want a myriad of tablets to keep my natural body chemistry - natural!  

So after a decade or so of declaring that you would never find me in a gym, I joined one.  I realised there were machines in there that would give me the cardio-vascular work-out I needed without having to run.  Can I tell you that I was so nervous joining that gym, I felt so self-conscious, out of my depth, less than a novice and all I kept thinking was, I will not let these fears stop me from living a hopefully long and happy life.  

That's what fear does, it stops us from fulfilling all the things we so rightly deserve.  I signed on the dotted line and in all my nervous confusion got totally ripped off (inevitable) but this was soon rectified.  Guess what?  I'm not a gym freak but I go often, I may have lost a little weight but I have a great resting pulse and my brain lights up like a Christmas tree after my work-out.  The fear I faced that day has far outweighed the momentary feelings of self-consciousness and it has repaid me ten-fold.


Next week:  The Epiphanies I've Yet To Have... How to say No and mean it... No I don't want another glass of wine etc etc.