A tale in two parts

PART 1
No, I'm not in Europe yet as I start this post though I'm likely going to have to finish it retrospectively when I get back from my two week break as the taxi to the airport arrives in a few minutes.

I'm surprisingly calm considering I've built the trip up so much. I guess that is what happens when you've been out the night before with work. Calm or hungover? I highly recommend a night of heavy drinking before a taxing day of travel . Especially if you also have a boisterous 3 year old in tow. Ultimately you're in so much pain, figuratively you don't sweat the small or in fact the big stuff. Literally I'm sweating like a fat man on a treadmill.

'The Firm' that takes its pound of flesh from me every day turned 13 this year and the Bar Mitzvah was held on the 6th floor of a venerable old ex rag trade warehouse. Glorious fun. Much as I have decided to expedite the finite rule on my corporate life (more about that later), I do love the crap out of my colleagues who are so much fun. I laughed like a drain at the accountant - a young Jamaican who it turns out dances like everyone's dad at a wedding. I believe he is the only known one to do so in the world. Fascinating boy.

Ok - the taxi is here. I have to go.

Back in two weeks.

PART 2
................Ok so I'm back to finish what I started before I blog about the holiday I've just returned from. I left for a two week break after attending a work function celebrating its 13 years in business. Hungover after drinking irresponsibly at said function and pissed off as I was at receiving possibly the most nonconstructive performance appraisal in the history of deconstructive criticism which possibly led to the extent of aforementioned irresponsible drinking, I was in the mood for a holiday. Which I've now had, thank you very much.

I had I realised much to consider while away though I put in place a deadline after which all thoughts of work would be pushed off an imaginary cliff. I was extraordinarily successful at this.

I found myself more and more comfortable with the thought of quitting the corporate world but I was conscious of the need to project 20 years into the future and be mindful that the decision I make today will not end in my having to tincup for a pension outside a railway station tomorrow - though it is my firm belief most pensions in the future will have to be procured in this way.

And it is this thought that leads me to put strategy and planning behind a career move of the sort I have in mind.

In an earlier post I talk about a life less ordinary where I refer to re-training in something that will allow me to do a job that 'matters'. For the next 4 months I will be but a vapour in my house so intensive is the course I'm taking. For now I'll call it my move towards a life less ordinary and when I'm done I will tell you all about where I plan to take my professional self next.

I will say this - if you want something badly enough you will find a way. I'm banking on it...literally.

Make yourself at 'home'

I'm off to London and Madrid at the end of next week to catch up with friends and family - drink from the fountain of familiarity and friendship - and as always I put myself under enormous pressure to squeeze as much or I should say, many (people) into my time there as possible. So much so, I might have to contact Stephen Hawkins and ask if there is such a thing as a space-time shoehorn. At this rate I won't need a place to stay because I haven't actually factored sleeping into the equation.

It's always a bitter sweet experience returning somewhere where you used to own property but now rely either on the kindness of friends or horror of all horrors - hotels; a stranger in the only land I know (and love). I feel this most in London - the connection is too deep for this set up to to feel anything but...odd. My mum used to have a little holiday home on the east coast of Spain where many a crazy rite of passage and fun fun holiday was had but that house is no more and I feel it there too on occasion.

Generally though, Spain is a different kettle of fish - never having lived there (within recent memory - I know I was there for a couple of years before the age of 5) I don't mind hotels and in fact have a special fondness for a family run inn near the train staition Atocha. But there will be no need for hotels in Madrid this year. The family is falling over itself to accommodate. My cousins are moving out of their flat for the week we're there so that I, the other half and the nipper feel properly at home. I'm eternally grateful that despite the miles of separation - there is nothing to fake in Spain.

It's a wonderful feeling.

London, well, that's a different head case altogether. My friends have mostly escaped to the country and those that remain live in tidy little flats - hardly the place for a gargantuan Canadian and vivacious 3 year old...not to mention the slattern of a wife (that's me). So this time, it's a hotel for us - in Camden - my old stomping ground. It's not all bad and yet...as Coldplay says: "Home is where I wanted to go....home." Ah, one day.

For now, I have pubs landlords to check in with who will wonder why sales have been down for the last 18 months, streets and parks of my youth to saunter through & up & down, shop windows to peer longingly into, markets to float about in and a strong craving to visit The Natural History Museum to satiate. Been reading The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum and HAVE to take a closer look now - despite visiting it weekly for most of my teens - mostly to gawp at the exchange student from Sweden. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2008/january/the-secret-life-of-the-natural-history-museum.html

Cheerio for now my little blogettes. Will send a postcard.

The Beautiful Ones

I went to a fashion show Wednesday night at Uber Toronto scenester mecca – Ultra. What? you haven’t heard of it? It’s only the centre of the universe where the beautiful peeps meet to look pretty on the outside - though I must admit it took me quite some time to locate.

It started with the fiasco that is parking in Toronto. I ended up emotionally blackmailing a kitchen porter into lending me his parking space for a couple of hours or face the wrath of god on judgement day should I be raped and killed looking for a space in one of those god awful municipal 10 storey car parks. What? It was late – like after dark late! and I was tottering about on ridiculous heels.

Turns out I’d have been safer negotiating the slopes of a high rise car park building in those heels than I was clacking up and down Queen Street in unforgiving 4 inch Calvin Klein strappy (slappy) sandals searching for a door so dark and small, professor Dumbledore wouldn’t have fared much better.

I took styling tips from the gossip mags that told me clingy and neon plus heels and gold accessories is how the youth of today ‘be rolling’. Turns out looking like Demi Moore isn't that simple. I settled for Roger Moore in drag and was only glad the lighting was dim enough to put my flaws in soft focus. In any event, I figured people would soon be sporting their vodka goggles - either way I'd be off the hook.

Oh but what Moroccanesque delights awaited me inside! Well worth the permanent lower back damage. Dark, sultry and seductive; a wonderful setting for dinner - had I actually made it to dinner. So now I'm ravenous, my feet are starting to look and feel like beef jerky and the fashion show wasn't starting for at least an hour. Nothing left to do but dance and drink and party.

After locating my friends, a couple of saucy Brits, I spent the night shifting my weight from one foot to the other - much like a horse does in its sleep - exchanging laughs and loves from back home - nothing too cultured and almost all irreverent. The Fat Slags, Buster Gonads and Terry Fuckwit to name a few childhood comedy heroes from the comic book Viz dominated the conversation. If you don't know it...and you think you're hard enough you can find these ground-to-air walking disasters at http://www.viz.co.uk/.

Finally, not that the chit chat wasn't riveting, rumblings of the start of the cat walk show filtered through. Midnight I believe it was. I was on my third vodka red bull for sustenance and suddenly the irritating thought of a 6am start the following day began filtering through the fug of alcohol and leg ache. Shoo!

I watched these waif like creatures, floating down the runway curious as to what a gust of wind would do to them. I imagined them floating down to earth as softly as a duck feather into the path of a car. No! Mean woman - mean jealous woman!!

I wouldn't be able to get a wrist through any one of the trouser legs on stage, notwithstanding (may I be struck dumb with ingratitude) it was a delightful show and a wonderful night out.

I had a sobering thought on the way home - did I really miss London that much or the social life afforded me there by having this sort of night on tap - as I had once had? and if that was the case - perhaps the social life, under the right circumstances can be interchanged.

After a ferocious struggle in the bathroom with my Spanx and the most inconsequential of ablutions, I fat-footed it to bed with all the finesse of a wrestler. Somewhere between a sigh and a turn, I had a sparky little thought that I might be onto something with this socialising malarkey. Maybe it's not Canada and it wasn't London...maybe it's just always been me? At the risk of spending half the night wondering how to solve a problem like me...I let sleep take me. Afterall, tomorrow is another day.