Sorry this table is sorry

was the sign on the tables at the pontefract castle where i reserved the top floor for my leaving drinks. So many people came! it was amazing, and it also made me quite sad. this is it banana. and it made me think how much i'm going miss everyone. I got a beautiful big card, signed by lots of people and also a whopping amazon voucher...looking forward to spending that.

I'm absolutely drowning in analysis that i have to do but also sort of drifting through hours here that i hardly notice, as i am training my replacement, who is lovely and obviously enjoying the freedom of walking around the building whenever i want.

I wish i could take G with me everywhere, in my pocket when I leave

All the centrefolds...that you can't afford

They're filming Basic Instinct 2 in Pond Square just by our flat...lights like the ones they had at Gyration caught my attention as I was going to Tesco's to buy G some chocolate.

I have finished Balthazar by Durrell, and noted with dismay that Mountolive and Clea are not available separately on amazon.com, so I may have to buy the whole quartet as one volume. It was wonderful. I'm curious about the letters he exchanged with Henry Miller and if there was any mention of him by Nin- perhaps she fancied him :-)

I had dinner with Claudia yesteday- quelle surprise G had to work late so missed it, but it was wonderful just the two of us. She is a remarkable woman. And the meal was fantastic.

Today I have written some more of my essay, which I will continue tonight at least until G and I go to Ronnie Scott's (Nigel Kennedy is playing with his gypsy jazz band). So now I'm nissaning, because i have over 600, and Zoe just called to offer me more save the children. all worth it in the end, i just with I was sleeping better.
I woke at midnight last night, just all of a sudden i was wide awake and then I started bawling at the panic that I'd feel like shit today.

Lauren and I are farewell lunching...it's all ending soon :-)

long time no post

Well, the last two weekends have been blissful and busy and I am still tired to the point of tears. But happy.
The Lhasa concert last Monday was inspiring - full of dust and sun. On Tuesday I went for dinner with G and his uni buddies which was daunting but not too bad. They frighten me a little, although they utterly don't mean to, with their degrees and proper grown-up lives. But they are really lovely I'm just a tad wussy.
We also saw another Kevin Spacey play last week, called the Philadelphia Story- he is fantastic. And the Old Vic is such a beautiful venue.

This weekend was more work on Saturday morning and then free and relaxing Highgate stuff in the afternoon. I bought a dress for Sarah's wedding at the Cancer Research shop in the High Street for a tenner!

In the evening we went to the Tate Britain for the Turner Whistler Monet exhibition and it reminded me of how much I love etchings and lithographs. I didn't even know of Whistler before but he is wonderful! Wonderful!

We had a big smelly kebab afterwards from Archway ("probably the best kebabs in the UK) Kebabs and cinzano, and then fell into bed.

Sunday started with muffin baking (with distractions) and then I hoofed it to Lydia's house where Scotti was already stretched out on the grass in the backyard, sunning himself and his hangover. We had brunch in the glorious sun and drank cava and had great and funny chats and I found it terribly hard to leave them.
I met Gareth at Queen's Park and we went to Nina's house to snack and watch films. I was, of course, a little worried, but the bubbly helped and so has the fact that my self esteem has more or less righted itself and i'm no longer mad-crazy-jealous. Silly banana.

We watched Trust (Hal Hartley) and Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch). Both good, entertaining... sleepy snuggly lovely night, though afterwards I didn't sleep much, so today is starting to catch up with me.

Tonight, cooking, roadtesting the slow cooker and early in bed.

thundering April in May

Always when things feel like they're about to get on top of me, good and proper, something will happen to make everything okay. Just look at my workload for Oxfam, here I was thinking I would be up all night trying to meet tomorrow morning's deadline when I got an email saying the deadline was extended...till Thursday- so I won't have to stay up all that late tonight after all.

Friday and the weekend were wonderful. I had dinner with Claudia at Chez Gerrard and had the biggest, bloodiest steak ever. Poor Claudia had to watch me devour my way through red meat, while she ate demure salmon and greens. We had a fantastic chat, and our mood was quite light, and how I'm going to miss her! We say Dream Story by Strindberg, and while Easter was not something to write home about, Dream Story was outta this world. Quite literally, it was the start of surrealism in theatre. It was a fantastic play though made me dream some crazy crazy stuff. And in fact since then, I've been in a kind of memory limbo, where I catch myself thinking I'm back at school- on the oval, looking over the 'Hellespont'...strange Geelong feeling.

On Saturday I worked all day and G went to his dad's, but I got 160 cuttings done which I was very proud of. It was Nikki's 30th, so in the evening I met her in Chelsea- it was raucous and crowded with Chelsea supporters, but as always it was wonderful to see her and Gilles and other familiar faces. I was tired though, and after three double whiskies, although the prospect of continuing the party elsewhere was tempting, getting back home in the wee hours was not. So I tubed it home and found G already asleep, wearing the sating eye mask I had left on his pillow. His says "No sex on the first date" and mine says "That tickles!"

We slept until 12 on Sunday, had breakfast at about 2pm and then made it to the Tate at about 4.30 to see Strindberg's paintings and photographs. The weather was mental all weekend and it was lovely to see the sky change and dance over St Paul's across the river.
After the Tate we walked to the NFT, ate risotto by the window and then watched Rebel without a Cause. What a sweet film. And James Dean...NICE. Perhaps we'll go see another James Dean film on my birthday.
Afterwards, we sat and drank horribly adulterated martini biancos and listened to a poor homeless man being hassled behind us.
The walk across Hungerford Bridge on the way home was inspiring and heart rending and pushed London further into my heart.

What happened at home...well, decency prevents me going into details, but suffice to say the neighbourhood was kept awake, there were fireworks, and afterwards, I slept very VERY well...
Lhasa tonight.

Just one more thing- the Waifs concert last week. Heartbreaking and homesick making and wonderful. I'm in London still.
i took the tube over to Camden to wander around
i bought some funky records with that old motown sound
and i miss you like my left arm that's been lost in a war
today i dream of home and not of london anymore
i'm in london stilli'm in la ha london stilli'm in london still
you know its okay i'm kinda happy here for now
i think i finally grown up and got myself a lover now
and if i ever come home and i think i will
i hope your gonna wanna hang at my place on sunday still
oh yeah i hope you will
cos i'm in london still
and now we got it sorted here we've really got it down
to a fine art on sunday in a sleepy sunday town
i wonder what i'm missing i think of songs I've never heard
I'm dreaming of your voices and i'm dreaming of your hurt
i'm in london still

Waifs

tonight is the Waifs concert.

Sunset over Palm Beach in north Sydney, eating fried camembert flecked with sand and playing on the swings by the water. a pearl kingdom in my mind, skinnydipping by the moon's pale glow and then driving back in that awkward Landy, listening to the Waifs. I stored them then, in my teenage memory and found them on subsequent trips to Sydney and also hidden Melbourne record shops. The pearl kingdom floated away, back up towards Darwin and beyond...
I wonder what the Waifs will sound like in Kentish Town.

Sleep with open eyes

In the night I rolled over and you were lying there with your eyes open, looking at me. You said you couldn't sleep. This morning it broke my heart to see how tired you were.
Soon, though never soon enough, we will be under big honest skies, in strong sunlight and all the grey sleepiness will be swept away.

I'm having one of those crazy in love with you days today Baby G.

Nudging Perfection

Beautiful spring.

My weekend was truly nudging perfection- this is how it went...
On Friday after work, collapsing with sleep yet prickled with excitement we went to Burwash Weald, to be picked up by a whacky taxi driver whose car was like an airplane, with small screens in the back of the headrests...
Dinner at the Wheel Inn and sexy rest back at the house.
We tried for an early morning but still only managed an eight o'clock start. However, by the time we reached the Cotswolds and we were on the 'local roads' perfection was literally pushing out at us. The tiniest roads and all so green around us. Lush and peaceful, embracing England.

We had a moment with a herd of cows, who all came to look us over, docile eyes rolling and big wet noses pushing through the fence. We city folk took picture after picture...

Painswick itself was wonderful. Ye olde England indeed. We stayed in a 16th Century house with thick walls and low roof beams, a perfect little view across the Painswick valley through the lacy-veil like flowers of a cherry tree.
And it was sunny. Proper colouring-our-skin sunny. We walked and lunched and read and kissed and sunned ourselves. I don't know if the sheep of Painswick had ever seen a Wonderbra before but now they have.

We napped for almost three hours, then watched a couple of documentaries and went in search of dinner, which we found at the Falcon Inn, where there were certain kitchen troubles and staff shortages, but nevertheless, the kind and uber-professional Kiwi manager managed to rustle us up a superb meal, and the wine also, was wonderul. (shiraz)

All weekend I had this strange feeling of being not-quite-here, as in, not really in England. I felt as if I was in Australia, and then other times I didn't really feel tied to a place at all. I was so relaxed that nothing entered into my sphere of happiness, except the very cause of it, which was G.

Sleep that night was deep and completely enveloping. Breakfast however, was underwhelming.
We took the car and drove towards Winchcombe and then walked up to Belas Knap, a Neolithic Burial site which really impressed me. Then in Winchcombe we saw the wickedest gargoyles ever and lunched in a 15th Century pub- a good (and huge) Sunday roast.

Sudeley Castle, giant carp, the Slaughters and a very snobby place to have tea, and then back to Painswick where we could only get wine with room service and only a pack of vegetable crisps left in the car.
All that was left on Monday was the Rococo Garden and the long drive back to Burwash.

All this sounds like an idyllic weekend away, which it was. But the amazing thing about it, and why I say it was nudging perfection, was not only because I was there with my greatest love, but because some sublime calm inhabited my soul, so that not only were the usual stresses of my days absent but I was absent from the push and pull and worry of time, and space also.
I was in a dreamy place, tied to neither georgraphy or time and I was bubblingly, truly happy. And rested.

Seventeen days and counting. And there goes the luckiest girl in the world.