So normally I would write a little about how great or terrible the Super Bowl was. However last night this was all I really got, Vernon Kay (dickhead), Man vs Food guy, ex-Blue Peter presenter. Channel 4 coverage began straight after Dragon’s Den on BBC2, and I was falling asleep during that last Dragaon’s Den pitch. I understand the Patriots won – despite them being bastards, I’d much rather them than Richard Sherman after he slaughtered the Bronco’s last year.
Just before going to bed
Day 91 – Another afternoon of playing cards in the hospital with my Mom and Daniel.
Day 92 – My first day of Garden Leave turns into Balcony Leave on the eighth floor. Enjoying the quiet and the sunshine in the flat.
Day 93 – I’m staying with my Mom for a few days after her operation, and my early morning run takes me right into the countryside around Wythall (Worcestershire).
Day 94 – Reteaching my grandmother how to play some of the card games she taught me as a child is both very sad but I spent a lovely lunchtime with her.
Day 95 – Daniel had to do some paperwork with the Mexican Embassy so we took a daytrip down to London. Then while he’s in the embassy I took the opportunity to catch up with a friend from university before she gets married in a few weeks and won’t have time for anything!
Day 96 – Daniel makes me happy every single day. I love the little conversations that we have, the Spanglish and the gestures are our own little language. And he’s been wonderful during this period of redundancy. Now that I’m hope properly from my Mom’s house it’s back to a lovely little normality.
Day 97 – I’d forgotten I had this skirt. Found it in a bag that my Mom brought round a few weeks ago, it was too big but having put on about 5kg it should fit again now.
Day 98 – Waiting for some very stressful news at the hospital, we finally got a call from my cousin at 20h05 to say that everything is OK.
Day 99 – My Guides again, one of the Brownies made me a heart-shaped something out of pipecleaners. It went straight in my hair, naturally.
Day 100 – Having a look through the photos at my grandmother’s house. Then seeing her face light up when she sees them in hospital.
Day 84 – Mexico vs Croatia, I always enjoy watching Mexico with the Mexicans, they always get so excited! This was an afternoon in the Walkabout in Birmignham with all the Mexicans, they wouldn’t put it on the big screen, despite there being way more Mexicans than Brazilians, Brazil got centre-stage.
Day 85 – Sometimes I get to Guides a bit early on a Tuesday, and I sit and enjoy the silence of the church grounds. Then the girls arrive and all hell breaks loose.
Day 86 – After losing my job I was going through the interview process, and on this day I had an offer made to me, but everything inside me was saying “don’t take this”. So I had to get a few pieces of advice. Work was very good about it and allowed me to use the side office to make all my phone calls. The Morph doorstop kept my smiling through a very rough day.
Day 87 – Aaagh the night before this photo, there was quad bikes racing around the road outside our flat. This was taken at 21h30 and there was no sign yet so I was enjoying the quiet night.
Day 88 – I got a job! Well, the one that I really wanted! A different job to the one on Wednesday, I declined that one, twice. So I look forward to starting with them on 4th August, that gives me the whole of July off!
Day 89 – Saturday, my grandmother is in one hospital with dementia and my Mom is in another one having a full hip replacement. I was very happy to see my front door after a long day of hospital visits.
Day 90 – Back at the hospital with my Mom, my sister and I fight to the death in the Battle of the Crutches. Very, very fun afternoon with the family.
Day 70 – Getting ready for the World Cup with my favourite World Cup song! Ok, it’s four years ago – and France – but it always makes me giggle!
Day 71 – Nutella, and ice lollies and wine, basically. Something happened at work, so that was all that could make me happy that day.
Day 72 – Silly conversations, who would win out of Zeus and Huitzilopochtli?
Day 73 – The simple summer morning sunshine across the city. Beautiful!
Day 74 – Guess who I am supporting? Love casual Fridays!
Day 75 – My sister and her wife, being idiots as usual. Lovely weekend. We also went to choose my wedding dress.
Day 76 – Finally trying out Caffè Chino in The Arcadian, a Chinese vintage tea room in the heart of the Chinese Quarter, lovely!
Place Thiars, Marseille. It would be really pretty without that ugly fountain. High buildings, restaurants and cafés then leading out onto the Vieux Port. Marseille was a really strange experience, I was sent for work to improve cohesion and communication with the French sales team, and then – very unexpectedly – I was asked to stay there permanently. I remember sitting for hours on the side of this fountain, in the crêperie just nearby for a whole weekend, toying with my future. I’d just starting seeing Daniel, I was living in a nice house in Moseley and had good friends in Birmingham. Should I stay or should I go? The longer I sat the more beautiful that clumsy fountain became, and the longer I sat the more I was resolved to come back to the UK. But I still think about that weekend in Place Thiars, where my life could twist either way. When I see that ugly fountain, I’m glad I’m not there, it was too hot anyway!
Place Thiars, Marseille
Written for Ailsa’s Travel Theme : Twist
Day 7 – I was told it was cheating, but I was just so relieved to get those files off my desk at work. Even the little victories at work make me happy, as soon as I know that vessel has sailed it’s like a relief that my part in that shipment is done and finished.
Day 8 – We did some campfire songs at Guides, no matter how horrible a day I’ve had at work they can always make me laugh. They are full of riddles and card tricks they all want to show me. This one was for the Bunny Badge, a version of A Penguin Came to Tea.
Day 9 – We tried the new French patisserie the The Cube on Wednesday, Madeleine. Here’s the yummy plum tart Daniel and I shared with a hot chocolate and a coffee after work.
Day 10 – Looking through my old blog blog from uni, I came across this little vocab gem!
Day 11 – After talking about having a curry all week at work I realised I hadn’t had a proper curry in months. So when a friend suggested it on Thursday I couldn’t refuse, the Balti Triangle really is the best place to indulge!
Day 12 – Saturday and we did a lot of things around the house, so in the afternoon I decided to be all domestic and make some cakes. It’s not really the cakes I was happy about, but the recipe book. It was the same one that my Mom had when I was a child, so the delight in recreating the same recipes from 25 years ago always makes me happy and nostalgic – I wouldn’t dream of using anything modern!
Day 13 – A lazy Sunday morning reading in bed in the sun. The weather’s still lovely at the moment, and hopefully it will stay like that.
31st January
January is an interesting month, it makes you think about what you’ve done in the past year, and what you want to do in the next. I’m going to be 31 this year, and I’ll be getting married when I’m 32. My Mom was something like 20 when she got married, and I know that times change – more university years, more careers, general attitudes to sexual freedom have changed so much – but I feel old doing this at this age.
Big stress, drowning in detail, or kick up the back-side
I bought a wedding magazine today, by accident. Haven’t opened it yet. The Mexican one was a mistake as well, waiting in the queue at the supermarket just flicking through, and before you know it it’s in the trolley! We’ve got potentially five weddings this year as a guest, all over the world (well, UK and USA). Everyone is more or less our age so it’s kind of the right time to do it. But I’m very, very aware of age creeping up. And if I didn’t want children I’d probably be OK with it. So right, this morning I was thinking about a Bucket List, or a Life Plan but I don’t even know what I’d put on it. I’ve bought a house and met the man I want to spend the rest of my life with, so then we get into the details. So here are some short, medium and long-term goals.
Short-term
Medium-term
Long-term
Everyone experiences the Back to Work Blues, you can’t deny it – you’re never saying to yourself “That holiday was absolutely bloody brilliant, but I’m so glad it’s over and I can finally get back to work! Yessss!” Especially if like me you work in an industry that can go completely tits up around Christmas. You work in a bar or a school or something else and all you’ve got to worry about is the day-to-day, or it all completely stops. But in export it’s completely different. One rough day on the seas and everything is put back, lorries can’t get into or out of the country. This messes up collections in the UK, deliveries across Europe, letting customers down and generally feeling really shitty about the whole thing!
Sometimes this happens…
It wasn’t even 8 o’clock and she was angry, the kids had been little bastards – her two-year-old little girl didn’t want to get dressed and the little boy is too much like his stupid Dad and it breaks her heart every time she gets back-chat from a five-year-old. She was already late and still needed to stop for petrol, and knew she was going to get a “talking to” at work anyway. Her Mom pops round to take the kids to nursery and school and she gets into her little silver Fiesta, still fuming. She stops for petrol, and tries to be sneaky and push in the line of traffic before the lights change – but some idiot in a red Seat blares her horn “FUCK YOU! FUCK OFF!” she screams as she slams her middle finger against the window. The girl driving the Seat looks at her blankly and drives past. She shows her middle finger again, still shouting but she loses the car in the traffic. About two miles later she thinks, Yes! there she is again, and swears at her again as she sails past.
At work she braces herself as she steps out the car, she’s not as confident since the maternity leave, her replacement for a year seems to be doing it better than her and she’s worried about being pushed out. That’s what her meeting is about, she’s close but not quite hitting those targets but they’re not realistic anyway and her attitude is slipping but this morning she’s so angry about the kids and the car that she’s ready to fight her corner against the younger, prettier and more sociable ex-maternity temp. At least it’s at 9 to get it out of the way, her boss is an idiot and doesn’t know how to manage the team, and he doesn’t even know what she does there. Lunchtime comes and she’s still smarting from all that’s happened but at least her job is safe for the moment. She has a good giggle with the rest of the team and thinks she feels better, then she gets back to her desk and switches her computer back on, that spreadsheet she submitted first thing this morning before her meeting has come back with a glaring mistake and it’s one she cannot reverse or gloss over without letting the whole division know even up to managing director. Shit!
She collects the kids from her Mom’s house, and as soon as she walks in the door she opens that bottle of wine she’s had in the fridge since she left her verbally abusive husband six weeks ago. It’s a bit sour but she drinks and the kids are fighting over the Skylander figures and The One Show is on and she should put the kids to bed but she has another glass. Her five-year-old must have had a big day as school because he’s out like a light. Then her little girl gets up, it’s 10pm and she’s on her third glass and putting her little girl to bed Supernanny style. Her little girl eventually falls asleep at around 11:30, by then she’s just poured her fourth glass and clears away the chicken nuggets that they wouldn’t eat and starts to doze off herself in front of reruns of Scrubs on Dave. She sleeps, after such a day! She doesn’t hear the quiet crying from her boy’s room until morning.
Little did she know the day she’d have, and little did she know that the idiot in the red Seat would come home and write a blogpost about it. To the lady in the silver Fiesta, I am sorry, it was bad manners on my part – the lights there are not green for very long and I’m sure I am not the only person that would have pipped you. I certainly don’t think all your swearing was justified, it wasn’t very mature and especially not for that long down the road.
My first go at a quick fiction post, based on real events (only the petrol station bit obviously!). Let me know what you think!
Chilanga : Exported 