All in a day's work

Left home for the office.

Me: "We have the weather of the Falklands without the fun of penguins."
Handsome man in lift: "Wha?"
Me: "It's very cold for the middle of June."
Handsome man: -
Me: *squirm*


Walking past the Big Issue seller I see every day, he mutely held up the latest edition.

"Sorry Simon I've already got that one."
"Unfortunately so have I."

It was Simon who told me a few weeks ago that he has been selling the BI for sixteen years and so far has never opened it or read a single word!


Later met up with a good friend and we strolled down to Trafalgar Square, talking about a mutual acquantance.

Friend: "Is he on my bus?"
Me: "Wha?"
Friend: "My bus. Is he gay?"
Me: "He is on a train going in the opposite direction to your bus darling."

Had a pint of Guinness and went home to do yoga.

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Views from the shard

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14 February

Every year I look at the blokes poring over saccharine verses in card shops, embarrassedly carrying bouquets on buses and trains and handing over large sums of cash for chocolates, cakes, champagne, roses, candlelit dinners.........And I wonder how they all have been so taken in. What tyranny of advertising, media hype and sentiment is it that drives people to subscribe to an invention designed only to part us from our money and if we don't, to feel guilt.
Then - most years - something catches my eye; a pink pig one year, a heart shaped egg poacher another, and I buy it on impulse to give to my love. Ha. We have always agreed that Valentine's Day is a pointless con to which we won't subscribe, which is also why you will never see me lunching in a restaurant on Mother's Day.
I never receive a Valentine card or gift and have never felt I was missing out especially as I receive bouquets and blooms all year round. But this year while I wasn't tempted by any cutesy pinky piggy frippery, I received a Valentine card. Life and relationships are just like that aren't they. Later that day, having quite forgotten what day it was, I spotted the loveliest little Cinderella carriage being drawn by white plumed horses through Covent Garden. Funny time for a wedding I thought and peeking inside saw the glummest young couple imaginable. Maybe she had been expecting something from Tiffany.
As children we were told that the feast of St Valentine was to celebrate the day that the birds begin to find their mates, heralding the start of spring. I still subscribe to that belief and this year like every other I remember, was struck that precisely on the day of St Valentine, not a day earlier or later, the light changed. The winter shadow had gone and despite the bitter cold, you could just make out the tantalising scent of early spring.

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Pillow talk

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Living in the fast lane

Woke up to more snow

Put the kettle on.

Ran a bath.

Bubbles and bickies

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Another home

This is a night time view from our flat in Bankside, with the Shard in the background. In the morning it disappears in the gloom that passes for sky at this time of year.

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Leaving the country

On the flight to the Isle of Man (quietly intriguing place) I was thinking about the word "bovine" - not entirely in a good way, although I am quite fond of cows.

I had the knees of a very large young woman buttressing the back of my seat, making for quite an uncomfortable journey. At one point I turned to inform her politely that she was digging into my back, only to realise that she was simply too big for the allocated space, so to complain would have been pointless. I recognised my fellow passenger from the departure lounge where I had first perceived her inert cow-like form.

Most of my childhood was spent in Crabtree Lane, in the white house at the end, next to Mr Bomford's field. Cows and horses were our neighbours and the favoured route to most places in the village was right through the middle of them. Horses being the faster and more powerful beasts we treated with due deference, but the placid, patient, masticating cows we largely ignored. If one was approaching in a nosey way we would just stamp a foot to scare it off. But but but - every now and then you would get a rogue cow that would not be frightened off and gave you the sort of look you want to give to your parents when they have caught you out in something and where you want to brazen it out, knowing you will probably start blubbing instead.

We used to coax the horses and the cows over to our garden wall by tempting them with luscious long grass and occasionally apples. The cows had such wonderful mushy noses and hot breath, also the most beautiful trusting eyes.

All of which is a preamble. Working backwards, I drew the cartoonish cow just because I was thinking bovine and because I was dying to carry on playing with my new drawing app! Prior to that as I walked across the tarmac to board the plane, I looked at wintry England with its skeletal trees and leaden skies and thought that just three weeks ago you saw a similar scene, but your thoughts were very different as you took it all in for the last time.

And I wondered how that felt for you, with the rawness of goodbyes still stinging your insides and the final aurevoir to good old England. How long was it on that interminable journey before the aircraft window was lit with lapis lazuli in place of the dirty old pearl sky of home?

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The festivities commence

This was the view from my 4th floor window yesterday and I think it sums up why the urban Christmas doesn't really work for me. Just one look at the state of the road (shame on you London Borough of Southwark) reminds me how tacky it all is. Having said that one of the Santas not in shot was wearing a sombrero, which admittedly was very comical. More deliberately funny than the Santas we saw last year in Kenya, the one riding a fine camel, the other walking behind with a shepherd's crook, ringing a hand bell and greeting the supine holidaymakers with a hearty "Merry Kissmas!"

Later:

Realised they were heading for Trafalgar Square

http://gu.com/p/3chbx/iw

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Loss

Pamela was an energetic, small, slender woman I used to know. She was full of vitality and for a time she worked for this national programme called Look After Yourself (LAY) which was part of a campaign to reduce deaths from heart disease. The LAY bit of the programme helped people prevent and recover from heart problems by using exercise.

When I got to know Pamela better I discovered she had triplet girls, all at university, whose adored older sister had died a couple of years earlier in a terrible accident. Subsequently Pamela became a guest speaker on the course on Loss and Bereavement that Ros and I ran at the university (and she has a chapter in the book).

One day Ros and I were returning from a meeting byTube. As ever it was crowded but through the bodies I saw a vaguely familiar face. "That woman over there looks a bit like Pamela". "No way" said Ros. It was Pamela and at the point that she noticed us we were able to recognise her, as she arranged her face into its animated smiling Pamelaness.

When we had first spotted her she was lost in a reverie. Every muscle in her body, but most noticeably in her face, was slack - drooped, stooped and sagging. Imagining herself alone in the crowd she had dropped her composure and had lost herself in mourning; so much so that she was barely recognisable.I never forgot that moment in which the nakedly grieving face was re-moulded into the mask that engaged with the world.

Today I left you at the airport, still a bit tearful as I boarded the train and absorbed in my own thoughts of loss. After a few stops the man in the next seat handed me - wordlessly but with an encouraging smile - a pamphlet entitled "Why Jesus?" I declined politely. Some stops later my attention was arrested by the posters for a new film: "Nativity 2. Danger in the manger".

Why Jesus indeed.

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Liverpool

Well this just a practice run for my weekly letter to Australia. I've just set up this blog, lying on the bed in a very comfortable room in Hope Street hotel, Liverpool. The view from the window is of the Catholic cathedral. I don't know if the locals really do call it Paddy's Wigwam or if that's just a story for visitors.

It was dark when I arrived and blowing a strong wind so I had a bracing walk from the station, knowing broadly where to go but doing a bit of a scenic route to get here. When I was really close I stopped a young man for directions. We ended up having a long conversation and he slowed his pace to walk with me to the corner just before my destination. That's it really - people in general really are friendlier up here. (Though it must be said he was actually from the North East.)

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