Goings-on

Outside my window at the moment, the activity level is high.

Every time I look, nature is frantically making its final preparations before the cold really hits.

The fat, sleek squirrels sprint along the fence tops like slightly crazed mothers on Christmas shopping duties. And Mr & Mrs Fox have taken to climbing trees or conquering roofs to complete their foraging for the season, still a little devious looking in their movements.

Along the streets the leaf carcasses now lie in a thick carpet, waiting for the winds of the autumn to carry them away to a place they can break down in peace.

But as the fauna finalises its winter holiday prep; and the trees strip themselves of their obvious life, that magical holiday feeling has begun to pepper London. Whole streets are bathed in twinkling lights, and as the thermometer drops, we begin to think of mulled wine, ice skating and thicker gloves.

52 Shots #32

On a Sunday evening, thousands of miles away from the actual event, a big, old house in Clapham celebrates the 30th birthday of my friend Phoebe with quite a tasty carrot cake.

Happy birthday Phoebe!!

Time goes by

Two years ago this week, I dragged a wheelie suitcase and a bunch of aspirations up the Clapham Common tube station stairs, and out into a grey and autumnal London morning.

Did I ever think that two years later I would still be here? Not on your life.

Just when you think you've got life sorted, you find yourself outside Willsden Green tube, after a disastrous job hunting day, getting a call from a recruitment agent. And then everything changes.

The path that I thought would lead to through nine months in London and then onto two years in Japan, has instead taken me a completely different direction.

But for all I gave away when I turned down Japan, I have gained ten times as much in its place.

52 Shots #31

Dutiful turbines slice the endless Gran Canarian wind

The small things

One rainy morning last week I spent my bus journey watching a mother and her small son play noughts and crosses on the steamed up window.

Game after game they played; the mother patiently tutoring her son in the art of getting three in a row in her soft Eastern European tongue. Occasionally they would both look across to me and our eyes would smile at one another.

They rushed off the bus at Elephant & Castle to get on with their days. As I watched them walk along the shiny footpath hand in hand in the rain, I wished he could keep the memory of this morning's lesson tucked away somewhere safe forever.

Now I have...

About this time last year I blogged a list of 'I have never....'s.

It seems that, without really trying, I have managed to knock quite a few of them off over this past year. Six in fact.

Just last week I swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. Pretty much like any other ocean, but was very nice all the same. Mainly because the air temperature was about 25 degrees and we were leaping off a boat, which at the time was lolling about a Gran Canarian Bay.

I guess I should start thinking about crafting a new list. Before I know it, I'll have slid down a bannister, in my new (stolen) shell suit whilst chewing on some snake, as I'm off to see the Northern Lights.

Forward planning

I used to be a real planner. I never would have imagined I could turn into a person who, on Thursday night checks her flight confirmation to discover she is flying out half a day earlier on Saturday than she thought. I haven't washed anything, packed anything; in fact I don't even have everything. And I certainly haven't learnt everything I should have. Under prepared is not the word. I'm desperately hoping for a sailing instructor with Dalai Lama-like patience.

At the moment through the windows to our backyard nature, we can see the animals prepare for the winter. I couldn't believe just how fat and fluffy the squirrels have gotten. I was really quite saddened on the weekend when told that squirrels hibernate. I've had so much joy recently watching them dart along fences, turn 360s in our big tree, then chase a friend across the roofs. The other day, one particularly feisty one managed to tumble about 10 metres from the tree to the ground and still land on his feet with a look on his face as if he meant the whole stunt.

The big fat wood pigeon can't believe his luck as the berry bush just keeps on producing; and Mr Fox can still be seen sneaking his way about the back of the garden in the now-dim early morning light.

It's a good thing I don't have to hibernate. I really would doubt my ability to plan far enough in advance.

Ladies that paint

We love our house. But even I could tell that the kitchen needed some TLC in the form of a lick of paint.



And so it was that on a Friday night when most of London was still at the pub, three ladies met at a little DIY store in Clapham, to arm themselves for a weekend of re-decoration.



We pushed everything into the middle of the room, and covered the entire place in plastic (thanks Lambeth Council for all those recycling bags).

And then we spent the rest of Friday evening washing and filling the fault lines which ran along the edges of the walls, as well as the holes from picture hooks a long time past.





The next morning, bright and early, we sanded. And sanded. And sanded some more. Then we washed.


Finally it was time to paint. This, we discovered was the relatively painless bit. So Saturday night was spent roller in hand. As was Sunday morning.


By 6pm Sunday evening normality had returned and we were washing the paint from our hair and nails and admiring our work through very weary eyes.

Now it is a little bit like when you play too much tetris and your eyes start fitting blocks in everywhere you look; all of a sudden I seem to be obsessed with examining paint work wherever I go.

Out of my comfort zone - number 2

I'm sure nearly everyone has something that scares them. For me it's death. So much so that even thinking about it now is making my stomach contract. Let's keep this post short, shall we?

It is the thought of there being nothing afterwards that has me staring into the dark of night sometimes, gripped with fear.

So in order to confront my gut-twisting phobia, this week I went to the somewhat ironically named 'School of Life' for a lecture on 'How to Think About Death'.

I was running late which was great because it meant that I didn't have time to think about the possibility of what awaited me.

Fortunately, what did await me on arrival, was my very calm friend Kath and a large glass of wine.

We looked at the philosophical side to death and then brought it a bit closer to home and started to think about our own deaths. By that time I was onto my second large glass of wine, so I was becoming less worried about death by the mouthful.

I'm not sure that after listening to someone talk on death for two hours, that I'm less scared of it; although I quite like the idea of planning my own funeral and writing my own eulogy. If I have to die, I would at least like to force my favourite music upon people for one last time.

The crab apple epilogue

Here is one for you Ness & Dave!

The Sunday evening following my jelly experiment, I baked a batch of scones, one of which I topped with my crab apple jelly that had been cellaring in a cool spot under my sink. The consistency was good; the colour was spot on; and fortunately the taste was fitting for crab apple jelly as well. Success it seems.

Next stop plum jam I think.