Sunday, April 05, 2009
Baby in the City!
My son was born on February 1oth 2009, weighing 6lb 10oz. Mum, dad and baby are well and happy!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Having It All
This morning I woke up and burst into tears. The reason being, that no sooner had the snooze alarm gone off, my boyfriend was brusquely calling “morning” in my ear - waking me up abruptly and depriving me of my last ten minutes sleep. This wouldn’t usually make me cry of course, but at the moment I’m a tightly wound coil. The last few days could be likened to tobogganing down a black run. Never sure when you’re going to land or whether it will be smoothly or in an undignified heap. There is no rest after dark either - my dreams are full of work. Last night for example I was trapped in a lift and screaming “will you c***s get me out of here” to no one in particular. Oh yes, my job is not without stress. But then there are the perks I thought, as I stumbled into the sun on Chiswick pier, temporarily de-stressed by the warming effects of a good white wine and a hearty meal and talking advertising b*llocks to other people equally as inebriated and passionate in their subject. We took a chartered boat back to festival pier, one of the survivors from Dunkirk and I had to admit to myself that whilst I am not sure I have the emotional stability to deal with such a life in the long run, part of me really, really needs the buzz.
But can I have it all? I think I’ve fallen for someone recently. Indeed for the first time in three years I’ve made it past six months. But my relationship is not without conditions. Of which the main one is that the mother of any children he might have, will be healthy. Which means eating the right food (no inevitable on the run snacking or skipping meals that my sort of job encourages), exercise (difficult when one is tied to their laptop for 12 hours a day) not getting stressed… Failure to achieve these conditions now, even before we have had children causes arguments. So in order to prove that I can do it all, at 8:30pm on Monday night when I finished work, I changed into my gym kit, got off the tube half way home and ran the rest of the way back to my boyfriend’s house in Putney.
I am intelligent enough to realise that this level of strain on my body is not maintainable. I also realise that some would say that it is none of my boyfriends business how I choose to plan my days. But in so many ways, I agree with him. I want the Georgian house, and the three children and… well, we’re still fighting over whether we have a dog or a cat but you get the picture. And I realise that my earning capacity is unlikely to match his for some years. I also want a huge say in the first few years of my children’s life and that would simply not be possible alongside my job.
But to give it up? Oh I wouldn’t miss the stress… but the buzz? So it seems I have to make a decision because I’m really not sure that having it all is possible.
But can I have it all? I think I’ve fallen for someone recently. Indeed for the first time in three years I’ve made it past six months. But my relationship is not without conditions. Of which the main one is that the mother of any children he might have, will be healthy. Which means eating the right food (no inevitable on the run snacking or skipping meals that my sort of job encourages), exercise (difficult when one is tied to their laptop for 12 hours a day) not getting stressed… Failure to achieve these conditions now, even before we have had children causes arguments. So in order to prove that I can do it all, at 8:30pm on Monday night when I finished work, I changed into my gym kit, got off the tube half way home and ran the rest of the way back to my boyfriend’s house in Putney.
I am intelligent enough to realise that this level of strain on my body is not maintainable. I also realise that some would say that it is none of my boyfriends business how I choose to plan my days. But in so many ways, I agree with him. I want the Georgian house, and the three children and… well, we’re still fighting over whether we have a dog or a cat but you get the picture. And I realise that my earning capacity is unlikely to match his for some years. I also want a huge say in the first few years of my children’s life and that would simply not be possible alongside my job.
But to give it up? Oh I wouldn’t miss the stress… but the buzz? So it seems I have to make a decision because I’m really not sure that having it all is possible.
Monday, April 14, 2008
So Many Are Born Average
So many people in this life are average. And yet I still manage to naively thrust greatness upon people before they've shown me that they are worthy of such belief. I am let down time and time and time again.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Simplicity
August 2007
Sometimes I wonder whether KP ever thinks of me. I mean he must do sometimes? Just like I did a moment ago, when I saw “Staying Alive – real poems for real times” on the table. He bought it for me. I think I’d read about it in the Sunday Times and he sent off for it and proudly presented it to me. He knew he’d “done good”, even though he didn’t understand the impulse to read such matter. He was like that. He aimed to please. The first weekend he came down to stay with me, by the time I’d showered, he’d moved the kitchen table outside into the Springtime sun complete with tulips in a vase and two lots of scrambled eggs and tea. So I’m trying to think what he might still have as a reminder of me. He won’t look at the photo albums of course, they are probably gathering dust in a white drawer in the spare bedroom of his parents house. But he loved two photos that I framed of him and a close friend chatting at dusk in the Bejan sea. I’m sure he’ll still have those and he won’t think of me every time he looks at them…but maybe sometimes, he will.
I try not to think like this any more. But this has been prompted by something else. My first love…the one with whom I listened to Chopin when falling asleep. Our relationship was never easy. We’re too similar, too complex, too in tune with each other. We fought. Vicious attacks taking chunks out of eachother; if I swiped he would swipe harder until we were both a sodden, bloody, mess. But we did love eachother, possibly more than either of us will ever love anyone. But it was painful, all four years of it. And being back in touch and older and wiser, we still have to fight this urge to swipe at eachother. He’s sent me an email. We must decide if we want to be together, to get married, to live happily ever after. Except he knows as I do, that happily ever after would be hard work for us. It could be brilliant, a relationship whereby you are so in tune, you know the other’s thoughts at a precise moment in time. We know why the other swipes, we understand eachother’s reactions, to everything… pretty much… so if we understand, can we learn to behave differently? “Tell me when you have felt most loved by me” he says in his email. This is difficult, because I know he loves me, more than anyone ever has. But I can’t remember a time when that physically manifested itself without any pain. Maybe it’s just too long ago. I remember one time coiled in a ball on his lap after we had split up but were still living together. He was chatting to our flatmate, I was zoned out in my own little world, loved by his long arms wrapped around me and sad because I knew I wanted him to leave nonetheless. Every holiday, every night out… I remember the love but I remember the fights spoiling it time after time after time. And whilst trying to remember when I felt most loved, my mind wondered to KP, and the scrambled eggs. A simple gesture, probably not given with half as much love but certainly given without any pain. And of course it was simpler, because KP didn’t feel any pain, that’s why he didn’t understand me and why my first love does.
But I guess, I want love without pain. I want simplicity. I want scrambled eggs in springtime sunshine and I don’t want rainy clouds destroying it half way through.
The question I can’t answer is “are my first love and I capable of achieving this together?”
Sometimes I wonder whether KP ever thinks of me. I mean he must do sometimes? Just like I did a moment ago, when I saw “Staying Alive – real poems for real times” on the table. He bought it for me. I think I’d read about it in the Sunday Times and he sent off for it and proudly presented it to me. He knew he’d “done good”, even though he didn’t understand the impulse to read such matter. He was like that. He aimed to please. The first weekend he came down to stay with me, by the time I’d showered, he’d moved the kitchen table outside into the Springtime sun complete with tulips in a vase and two lots of scrambled eggs and tea. So I’m trying to think what he might still have as a reminder of me. He won’t look at the photo albums of course, they are probably gathering dust in a white drawer in the spare bedroom of his parents house. But he loved two photos that I framed of him and a close friend chatting at dusk in the Bejan sea. I’m sure he’ll still have those and he won’t think of me every time he looks at them…but maybe sometimes, he will.
I try not to think like this any more. But this has been prompted by something else. My first love…the one with whom I listened to Chopin when falling asleep. Our relationship was never easy. We’re too similar, too complex, too in tune with each other. We fought. Vicious attacks taking chunks out of eachother; if I swiped he would swipe harder until we were both a sodden, bloody, mess. But we did love eachother, possibly more than either of us will ever love anyone. But it was painful, all four years of it. And being back in touch and older and wiser, we still have to fight this urge to swipe at eachother. He’s sent me an email. We must decide if we want to be together, to get married, to live happily ever after. Except he knows as I do, that happily ever after would be hard work for us. It could be brilliant, a relationship whereby you are so in tune, you know the other’s thoughts at a precise moment in time. We know why the other swipes, we understand eachother’s reactions, to everything… pretty much… so if we understand, can we learn to behave differently? “Tell me when you have felt most loved by me” he says in his email. This is difficult, because I know he loves me, more than anyone ever has. But I can’t remember a time when that physically manifested itself without any pain. Maybe it’s just too long ago. I remember one time coiled in a ball on his lap after we had split up but were still living together. He was chatting to our flatmate, I was zoned out in my own little world, loved by his long arms wrapped around me and sad because I knew I wanted him to leave nonetheless. Every holiday, every night out… I remember the love but I remember the fights spoiling it time after time after time. And whilst trying to remember when I felt most loved, my mind wondered to KP, and the scrambled eggs. A simple gesture, probably not given with half as much love but certainly given without any pain. And of course it was simpler, because KP didn’t feel any pain, that’s why he didn’t understand me and why my first love does.
But I guess, I want love without pain. I want simplicity. I want scrambled eggs in springtime sunshine and I don’t want rainy clouds destroying it half way through.
The question I can’t answer is “are my first love and I capable of achieving this together?”
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Regeneration?
I'm finding it hard to write at the moment. I'm overprotective of my new, three month relationship. It's special, I want it just for me and I don't want to share us.
But I wrote this back in July about My First Love and thought I would share this instead. There is a part two... which I will share in a few days.
July 2007
The fact is I do love him; I always have done and probably always will. I wouldn’t have stomped over old ground by catching the train to Manchester to chat over tea with his mum in the kitchen and remark on how big his little sister has grown if I didn’t. But confused by my motives for coming, he used the open space on the drive to the lakes to question my purpose. And before I could answer, he told me that all he had said last year about how he could definitely envisage having children with me and only me, was no longer true. He was back to not wanting them, he wasn’t ready to marry and he had gotten to a place whereby he saw me as a friend and that was the only reason he could have me to stay with him. I nodded, slightly winded and considered whether I could get him to do a detour to Lancaster station to drop me on the route home. We sat in silence most of the way to Morecombe, which was long enough for him to realise that I was hurt and to start back peddling. He didn’t mean to be harsh, it had taken him five years to get over me and he had only just managed it last year. He viewed me as I had viewed him the year previously, when he had journeyed to see me - driving to London to tell me that he could live without me but his soul couldn’t. He laughed when I reminded him of this speech, “no wonder you ran a mile” he proclaimed. “No, I said, that wasn’t it, I was just getting over somebody else”. We ignored our confusion for the rest of the weekend, we re-visited our caravan tucked away in Ambleside, we ate Tapas in Windermere, which was the place where we sat by the water’s edge six or seven years ago and let the gulls jump for bread. We walked down the pier at Morecombe, his new home and stopped for tea. His choice of home, did not startle me, it made perfect sense. It was how I had envisaged it, knowing him so well. I had been slightly bemused by the cries of “Morecombe is such a dump…you’ll hate it” from my friends but I knew him well enough to know that while he can live in shabbiness, there has to be beauty. And there is beauty in Morecombe, miles and miles of blue sky, it’s a panoramic place, known for its healing properties. The green, calming influence of the lakes on the other side of the bay tells you that you are a million miles from London. And it’s a place of regeneration, half of Morecombe is currently held up by scaffolding, splints repairing the broken bones of the old buildings. There will be a day of glory when the old Art Deco Hotel finally resurfaces and becomes a central point in this slightly shabby but special seaside town. But whether our love can be regenerated, that I don’t know.
But I wrote this back in July about My First Love and thought I would share this instead. There is a part two... which I will share in a few days.
July 2007
The fact is I do love him; I always have done and probably always will. I wouldn’t have stomped over old ground by catching the train to Manchester to chat over tea with his mum in the kitchen and remark on how big his little sister has grown if I didn’t. But confused by my motives for coming, he used the open space on the drive to the lakes to question my purpose. And before I could answer, he told me that all he had said last year about how he could definitely envisage having children with me and only me, was no longer true. He was back to not wanting them, he wasn’t ready to marry and he had gotten to a place whereby he saw me as a friend and that was the only reason he could have me to stay with him. I nodded, slightly winded and considered whether I could get him to do a detour to Lancaster station to drop me on the route home. We sat in silence most of the way to Morecombe, which was long enough for him to realise that I was hurt and to start back peddling. He didn’t mean to be harsh, it had taken him five years to get over me and he had only just managed it last year. He viewed me as I had viewed him the year previously, when he had journeyed to see me - driving to London to tell me that he could live without me but his soul couldn’t. He laughed when I reminded him of this speech, “no wonder you ran a mile” he proclaimed. “No, I said, that wasn’t it, I was just getting over somebody else”. We ignored our confusion for the rest of the weekend, we re-visited our caravan tucked away in Ambleside, we ate Tapas in Windermere, which was the place where we sat by the water’s edge six or seven years ago and let the gulls jump for bread. We walked down the pier at Morecombe, his new home and stopped for tea. His choice of home, did not startle me, it made perfect sense. It was how I had envisaged it, knowing him so well. I had been slightly bemused by the cries of “Morecombe is such a dump…you’ll hate it” from my friends but I knew him well enough to know that while he can live in shabbiness, there has to be beauty. And there is beauty in Morecombe, miles and miles of blue sky, it’s a panoramic place, known for its healing properties. The green, calming influence of the lakes on the other side of the bay tells you that you are a million miles from London. And it’s a place of regeneration, half of Morecombe is currently held up by scaffolding, splints repairing the broken bones of the old buildings. There will be a day of glory when the old Art Deco Hotel finally resurfaces and becomes a central point in this slightly shabby but special seaside town. But whether our love can be regenerated, that I don’t know.
Friday, January 04, 2008
A Cross To Share
"In 1290 the wife of Edward Ι - Eleanor of Castile died in Nottingham. It had been a marriage of love and not the usual arranged marriage of political convenience. Her body was brought to London for burial and everywhere the cortège stopped Edward built crosses. The last stopping place was in London at Charing (an Anglo-Saxon word for 'turning') where the road turned to Westminster and Charing Cross was erected."This is the most fascinating fact that I have read in a long time. How romantic, how exciting, how simple and yet grand a gesture from a King of England to his beloved, deceased, wife. And so I delve a little deeper and discover more new facts… You know those signs that you pass as you navigate your way towards London? The ones that say “London 23 miles”. Well have you ever wondered where they measure that from? I have. And now I know. They measure it from the site of the original Eleanor Cross (South of Trafalgar Square). Imagine that, a simple romantic gesture now defined as the centre of all London.
I am reading one of my stocking presents - “A History of England in a Nutshell.” Before this, the total sum of the history that I remember from school amounted to a vague recollection of a school outing to a muddy field which, it was explained, was the site of the Battle of Bosworth (but I couldn’t have told you what relevance the Battle of Bosworth had on anything). I also remember a fat, ginger, king called Henry VΙΙΙ alongside the ditty to remember his numerous wives… divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Oh and the Second World War. That’s it. For some reason the government didn’t think to teach kids in the 80s history in the order in which it actually happened and gave so much attention to certain events that it gave everyone a warped idea of their importance in the course of history. Just before I gave up history at 14, I got an A grade in my summer exams. Extraordinary.
Well, on Monday as I trudge back to my job, I will be placing the palm of my hand on the replica of the Eleanor Cross in front of Charing Cross station and pledging that 2008 be the year that I no longer live in ignorance of my country’s history. But that is not my only pledge. Time is precious, I am a part of history and I’ve wasted the last two years of my history in a job which answers to arrogant, petty managers, for very few silver pennies. In 2008, I will go all out to better that. Oh… and hopefully I’ll make a bit of my own romantic history too with my new man man and our first holiday abroad together. How very exciting!
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Growing Up
I was standing in a penthouse hotel room overlooking Trafalgar Square on the evening that I grew up.
Over the years I have made some relatively stupid dating decisions. It’s easy to do. Swept up in the romance and thrill of it all it is often difficult to stand back from the situation and think about what it is you are doing, to ask the right questions of yourself. Do I really want to get into a relationship with a man who is going travelling for four years? Do I really want to be sleeping with one of my best friends on and off? Do I really want to be with a man who hates anything to do with his or your family? The answer should have been no to all of these questions but I never did stand back and ask myself even though I think if I had then I would have known the answer even back then. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.
So one night this week I realised that I had grown up when, stood looking over Trafalgar Square with all its twinkling lights, with a glass of vintage champagne in my hand and in my very best designer gear, I asked myself one question. Do I want to get into a relationship with this man who is willing to cheat on and then leave his girlfriend of two years for me and introduce me to his children? At one of the most romantic moments of my life, still looking at the National Gallery in front of me, I put down my glass of champagne and gave the answer to my question to the man stood behind me. ‘No. I can’t do this.’ And with that I grew up.
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