Drum roll please

Packing day approaches with the pitiless step of a Greek tragedy.  I can't bear it.  I've run out of excuses and in two days time I will have to face up to the fact that my life for the next week will comprise bubble wrap, masking tape and cardboard. Normally this would herald the start of a ferociously creative afternoon making crocodiles and castles with The Lish but alas, not this time.  This is about putting things back in its box.  I imagine once I start, I won't stop.  I'm a bit like that .  The all or nothing girl; flawless foundation perfectionist one day, baggy trackpanted slattern the next.  I'm like that woman in Seinfeld who only looks good in a certain light. I scrub up well (I wish I could say it just takes a slash of red lipstick) but god love me, I can look like hell in no time at all.  Heroin chic was based on me -  caught on camera sometime in the late 80s, out on a Sunday morning running to the newsagents for the Sunday Times and a carton of orange juice.

The Sunday Times, especially the Magazine - how I have missed you.  Ironically I really hope to be too busy to read you but as I have promised myself and practice daily with Yoga Nidra, I live only for today these days, usually in the realm of fantasy but, you know, baby steps and all that.

The flights are booked, the first two week's accommodation also.  I will have my work cut out for me looking for a more permanent arrangement but luckily I know London like the snack aisle at the local supermarket so I already know more or less (to the street) where I will (and won't) be looking.  Actually none of that really phases me.  More than all of that (including finding the sea cucumber a place at a school) more urgent than that even, is the fact that I have two years of Euroculture and London street cred to catch up on.

For example, last time I looked, a clothes store called River Island was the opposite of cool.  It was the place you shopped if you were having a midlife crisis.   It was also the place I bought my mother the first ever Christmas present with my own money.  It was an emerald green satin blouse.  Hideous when I think about it.  A ruddy great bow at the collar completing the Bozo the Clown look, but my mother was ecstatic to receive it.  She wore it often bless her.  I remember packing it into a bin liner to give to a charity shop 12 years after she died.  It was tough but it had to go.

Now it turns out the same store has emerged a leader in the cool stakes, ousting, some would say the like of TopShop.  I cannot afford to make faux pas like this if I wish to be taken seriously in media circles the likes of which I very much hope to join again - like a grain of sand in a giant oystershell. 

As you can see, I really don't have much of interest to write about today (this apparently doesn't stop me).

Must dash.  The bedtime routine beckons and I'm out of vino!