It's not a tumour

When I took this job in PR, I did not set out to 'have it all' and I was hoping that I would be able to strike such a balance whereby any guilt felt around having gone back to work fulltime would be balanced out by careful planning and cunning delegation of family and household chores at the weekend.  Of course, the reality is much much messier in the way afterbirth is messy.  But like afterbirth, it's also necessary. I suppose every difficult transition is going to hurt (and gross you out) a little bit - well a lot actually.  It hurts so much I've had a permanent headache since January 4th but I've figured out one thing at least:  It's not a tumour.

On a less comforting note, I have realised that this seemingly permanent migraine (with worrying accompanying pain down the left side of my body) is very much stress-related and has so far required a medicine cabinet full of pills and potions to tame.  Nice as a handful of panadol and codeine feels, the answer to stress will not be found in the medicine cabinet.  Instead, I think it's a question of discipline, honesty and COJONES to do what you have to do to get through.  For me the solution came in the form of two things - a teeny tiny nervous breakdown this weekend and calling a spade a MOFOING spade.

So if people are asking too much of you, if someone isn't pulling their weight, if a child is just being lazy, trying to keep calm and carry on like it's nothing but a thing is dumb.  Also, it won't work.  This is the shortest route to an early grave and ain't no-one gonna thank you for dying on them before they are ready.  I should know.

So here is what I've realised.  Keep calm by all means, I mean there is no need to spaz out about anything really but DO NOT CARRY ON.  No sir.  So today, after some serious Ohmming into the fresh sunshine whilst out with The Lish at the Princess Diana Memorial Park I resolved to do a couple of things:  Ask for help where I need it (both at work and at home) and book a freaking holiday.  No apologies.  And accept that right now: It is what it is, my dear friends.  No apologies. None.

So I'm off to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands for a Yoga/meditation retreat in April.  Alone.  Well not alone there will be others there but I mean, 'sans famille'.  The Lish meanwhile will be going to Canada with her father to visit her auntie who will have recently had a baby.   I don't do Canada in April.

This is healthy. For everyone involved. I'll make it up to The Lish in the summer.

But for now, I just need to make it up to me.

All good things come to an end

..and sometimes it's only when they do, that you realise they were good things in the first place.  I could apply this to many areas of my life right now but I think it's a bit early in the week for deep thinking.  No, instead I will tell you that 'A', the kitchen waving buddy who made an indecent proposal over a ham and cheese croissant just before Christmas - him - well, he's moving out of his flat to another part of London, so the days of waving at me (or The Silverback) from behind the kitchen sink, as he rinses his breakfast dishes (with nothing but a towel to protect his honour) are over.  I wonder who will move in next? 

I think he's feeling quite nostalgic because the guitar came out last night.  Definitely original material he was singing - I say singing - I thought someone had gone into labour - but no, it was only A lamenting his last days in the mansion block.

While I've come to love living here - and if there were more storage and the landlord knocked a couple hundred thousand off the asking price, I'd be pushing to buy it, we don't plan on staying long term either.  Funnily enough we've been looking at flats in the same area as 'A' - not by design I hasten to add but by sheer insane chance.  Wouldn't it be absolutely freaking hilarious (erm, maybe) to end up neighbours again.

I have to say though in all my years of living in flats and converted houses in London, I've been very lucky with neighbours.  I mean, for starters there's A - how many of you can say you've been propositioned by a virtual stranger eh? and one that turned out to be so nice... if totally inappropriate.

Before A, there was O.  Before Maida Valle, there was Queens Park (this was before there was Canada) and in Queens Park there was a boy living in the flat below us who is quite simply THE best looking man I've ever seen in real life.  Ask The Silverback - I think the Silverback fell in love with him before I did.  This man is not a man but a god:  Six foot tall, body like an Adonis (think Ryan Phillipe, Matthew McConaughey or Brad Pitt in Fight Club fit) and a face like an angel sent from A list heaven.  Seriously, he is a cross between Jude Law and Jesus H. Christ.  A complete player though.  I mean you would be if you looked like him.  He is the sort of man of whom it can be said, can truly have his pick of the women. And he does, daily.

The Silverback and I had to make do with gazing into his baby blues as he regailed us with shagadelic tales of  conquest.  We weren't listening of course - even the Dalai Lama would lose his trail of thought if O were to walk in on one of his meditations.  One minute he'd be silently chanting his mantra and the next he be catatonic in need of an ice cold bath. 

I've never had a bad neighbour now that I think about it.  Never.  Not really.  I've had neighbours I've never spoken to but that's not a bad thing nor did it make them bad.  I can remember my very first neighbour in London, a West Indian family who threw the very best parties and had a quality record collection too.  This was when I still lived with my mum.  After that I lived next to an Australian hippy who would exercise naked in the back garden with a Samurai sword.  I kid you not.  I was always wary in the mornings of looking out the bedroom window, unsure as to what might be there to greet my tired eyes.

However, I had him round for dinner one day because while he was clearly bonkers, he was also fun and different.  He turned up, fully dressed thankfully and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get him onto the subject of these naked shenanigans.  The very next day, it was pouring rain so I thought I'd be ok to go right ahead and open the curtains without fear of willies or buttocks jerking around at close proximity only to find Mike (for that was this exotic man's name) up to his old tricks but this time he'd roped his new male flatmate into exercising naked with him too.  Before I could dive for cover, they'd caught my eye and were motioning for me to join them.

It's safe to say it was one of those unforgettable moments in life where I literally didn't know whether to shit or go blind.

So actually, all things said and done 'A' isn't bad at all and we shall miss him.

This is what Friday afternoon is all about

I'm going to talk about something other than work in this post.  What an utter bore I've been.  Today I looked back at the statue of Eros as I emerged from the entrails of London's underground system at Pickledwilly on my way to work - to remind myself that life is for living and loving.  I even took the piss a little today and disappeared a whole 40 minutes for lunch.   I took off to a newly discovered vegan restaurant in Berwick Street, a longtime teenage haunt  (Berwick Street) that has not changed much in16 years ...cept for the arrival of this restaurant and the fit cobbler.  It's called Beetroot.  I love the earthiness of the place.  It's like what I imagine a 60s canteen to have looked like. The are no sharp edges.  The seats are semi circle benches.  The tables or more like squiggly breakfast bars with the difference being they are at a seated level.  The literature is all about good news on recycled paper.  I found out about some chanting evenings here.  It's a serendipitous place. 

On the way back to the orifice, I stopped outside the record and tape exchange store where I once bought a New York Dolls album in 1989 and looked at this Dinosaur Junior LP:
- that's vinyl for any young'ns reading.  I would have bought it too if only for the album cover but I don't own a turntable anymore and I just couldn't live with an album in the house that I was unable to play.  Hmmnnn, I think it might be time to get a little turntable - even if it's like one of those 60s teeny bopper contraptions out of the bedroom scene in Grease.  I have two boxes of albums in storage, any one of which would bring tears of joy to my eyes to listen to again.

I rummaged around a hippy type shop and saw a badge which made me laugh out loud - it said: "I can't come into work today, so fuck off."
But back to work I had to go.  It wasn't all bad, though I am glad another week is done.

I left on time today and got home earlier than I think I've ever managed.  With The Silverback picking up The Lish, I really had the house to myself for a little while.  I could have done anything.  Anything at all.  Chant, do yoga,  lounge.  And you know what I did?  I fidgetted, anxious to hear the lock turn and the family tumble into my weekend.  It's the weirdest thing.  Between the hassle of work and parenting you'd think I'd cherish half an hour of 'my' time...go figure.

I heard them before I saw them - the tinkle of The Lish's voice travelling up the stairwell like birdsong on a Spring morning.  I couldn't wait to see her.  And that is another nice side effect of having a full time job -it has to be said.  I miss the family.  I look forward to spending time together.

Course, it took less than half an hour for the effect to wear off and now I wish to be left alone with this image:


  Good Night.

The week where I learn about ebbs and flows

Week two of 2011 has been no less hectic than last week, workwise (it may even have been more) so looks like I'm going through an ebb of the proverbial 'ebb & flow' of life (or flow if you're a workaholic - which I most definitely am not).  I'm afraid blogging is currently a little treat I squeeze out when I'm not comatose on the nearest level surface - utterly exhausted by the pace of life at the moment.  But if there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is just how adaptable humans can be when they put their minds to it or have no other choice or better still when they are resigned to a situation.  That's me:  Resigned and happy.  Who knew being utterly frantic could fill in so many emotional voids!!!

I am learning the art of delegation in a hurry and The Silverback gave me some excellent advice about the secret to sanity at work when a job entails being 3 people in one.  Actually, newsflash - my situation is not unique which gives me some comfort.  Less easy is handling those wankers and fucksticks I refer to last week.  Nevertheless, they pay the bills - so it's a case of finding peace of mind and accepting that with the career comes the stress, a notion that eluded me in Canada - possibly why I met with such a sticky end?  I'm gonna give myself the benefit of the doubt there because nothing was going to work as I hadn't reached the enlightened state of resignation and happiness.  It was a pill I wouldn't swallow.  I wasn't ready to accept that life (and finding peace of mind) is about acknowledging, accepting and going with the flow. 

Mick Jagger says it best: "You can't always get what you want...."

....But if you try, try, try, you might just find, you get what you need.

I think I've finally put the nut in the nut cracker - won't be long before I crack it.   Better late than never right?

And not a moment too soon. With The Lish now well on her way to making memories with people who's names she'll be typing into Google and Facebook searches when she's older, I need to embrace my own unknown - a.k.a 'the next phase' of life.  And I want to make it count. For me and for those who I care about.

No pressure then.

Still, let's get next week out of the way first eh? Look after today and tomorrow will look after itself, as they say.

In this sense, the universe always provides - you can put money on it.

The first day of the rest of her life

Made it, just, to the end of the first week of work in 2011.  It's been utterly bonkers and frantic.  God there are a lot of wankers in the world aren't there?  However letting those work related frustrations leach into personal and private time is out of the question.  In fact, outside of these couple of sentences I won't think about those fucksticks again until I have to and even then I have developed a habit of pressing the professional reset button every Monday morning. 

This Monday however I don't have to worry about any of that because I've got the day off.  I'm taking the delightful and delicious Lisherlicious to her first day at Big School.  It's the only time I will be the 'mum at the gates' (unless I win the lottery) because despite all of the above, I love working and more to the point, I do actually love where I work.  A first.  Actually I really liked my jobs up until I went travelling and then something sort of unravelled for me there for a few years.  That's another story.

I was tempted to fall into a wistful nostalgia this morning at The Lish's last day of nursery.   The girls there are absolute diamonds but for every end there is a new beginning and truth be told, the thought of not having to trek half an hour out of my way every morning to the armpit of London (Kilburn High Road) is not something I will miss.  In fact, after dropping Lishy off, I trotted over to a coffee shop for to satiate the caffeine beast in me and found myself smiling at the fact that it was probably one of the last times.  From now on I'm off to live the high life in St. John's Wood.

That's were the new school is.  After a little creative letter writing I managed to get The Lish into a really good state school - for a while back there The Silverback and I were forced to consider private school but I just couldn't accept paying £5000 a term for Lishy to draw pictures all day long.  For a start we don't have that kind of dough, and for another start...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Just as well because I don't think strip clubs pay much for women with C-section scars and saggy tits - the only way I was going to be able to afford such extravagances.

Thankfully I give good letter.  It did the trick with the local education authority.

Anyhoo - Lisherlicious now stands a chance of actually learning something of value at this place and with any luck she'll become friendly with Paul McCartney's daughter who I've been told is often seen shopping with her dad on St. John Wood's High Street.

Roll on 2011.

Back to the new routine

Is it just me or have these holidays gone really really slowly?  It feels like an age (an ice age) since I was trotting home with a box of ridiculously expensive cupcakes to welcome my in-laws with who had made the journey over from Canada to spend Christmas with us.  And lovely it was to have them too.  The in-laws, not the cupcakes, though the cupcakes did look like this:

...and were indeed delicious, however it was the in-laws that made Christmas.  I mean that sincerely. 

But tomorrow is another day (as Scarlett O'Hara so astutely points out) and I can vouch for every member of this household that it's been a long time coming.  We're so ready to get back to 'normal' life, you'd think we were being held captive by pirates.  Boy, who knew you could have too much time off...

Let's not skip over Christmas so quickly though because there were definitely some highlights such as Christmas morning where The Silverback and I were more excited than a 4 year old to see whether Father Christmas had found our house.  Or the wet weekend in Bath.  Ok, so maybe that's not exactly a highlight but it was nice for the Canucks to see such splendid architecture.  For me it was a weird little trip down memory lane and a chance to exorcise a few ghosts from a place that has for some time contained both painful and amazing memories in equal measure.  Now, it is the place I visited with The Family.  There is life after death.

2011 may bring even more reinvention.  Exactly what shape it will take, I really don't know.  What I do know is that the truth sets you free, if you accept it.  I accept it.  But I also believe in second chances ...and miracles. 

And in my case, I'm gonna need a miracle.