Get a grip

Something very strange and nice has happened to me over the past few weeks. I appear to have been welcomed into the warm embrace of what could be termed the 'mummy bloggerhood' via twitter and blogworld, with a few new followers and lots of new people's lives to read about and nod in agreement with. (It's also opened me up to a concept which quite frankly would scare the bejesus out of me if I didn't know that most of my Twitter followers don't actually want to read about the minutiae of my life, and that is tweeting a link to a newly published blog post. I used to have my blog linked to Facebook and a few of my FB friends found it from there, but since the squillion upgrades they've had that has disappeared. It feels very odd indeed to be proclaiming to the world at large that I've written something but hey, let's give it a go...)

But all this has led to a few roundabout conversations in my head about how much I can commit to write every week. When I started my blog I was commuting hours each day on the train; had no childcare responsibilities, a varied social and home life and consequently a large variety of things to write about. When I got pregnant I was still commuting and found it very therapeutic to blog about my weekly bump progress. When Gemma came along and I landed a local job with no commute, well look at the yearly archive of posts and the numbers for 2009 and 2010 speak for themselves. I joined Twitter over a year ago and have used it to tweet a random mix of personal, work/industry related stuff, and tv musings (Masterchef, Strictly et al), none on a regular basis. I follow a similarly assorted bunch of celebs, friends, work colleagues, and industry tweeters - a bit like the blogs I read, which I categorise in my reader under various headings - local, craft, personal, e-commerce, etc. One of those headings is 'baby' which is a catch all term for the mummy bloggers I've come across over the years. It's probably more relevant as a 'where did I first hear about this blogger and what did I immediately typecast them as' rather than what they actually blog about - all of them being intelligent, creative, articulate women with excellent taste in music, books, food, culture and all sorts of other interesting things. They just all happen to have kids and write entertainingly and movingly about them. This post is an interesting take on the 'mummy blogger' phenomenon and actually made even more interesting for the comments after it.

So why I am I so hesitant about becoming part of this throng? Like anyone I crave acceptance to a group, and perhaps not like anyone am paralysed with worry when I feel I'm being judged or not accepted. However - I know this is not happening to me at the moment and it shows my overanalytical internal nagging at the issue at hand. I was tagged in a meme the other day - the first time ever - and it totally freaked me out. Not because I don't have 7 things to say about myself that are faintly interesting (eh-hem well more likely I don't) but because firstly time seems to be of the essence with these things and once a Twitter day has gone by everyone has moved onto the next thing, and I haven't had a moment to sit down and write anything until now. If I didn't do it what WOULD people think?? Secondly, it wouldn't occur to me to write a blog post about something like that ordinarily, so why should being tagged make things different?

I'm sure I am flouting all sorts of blog etiquette rules here and probably ruling myself out of any meaningful relationship building with my new cyber friends. Most have probably realised by now that they're not going to get much out of me other than a few tweets now and again rather than a chatty conversation; and a blog post once in a blue moon. In turn I will still enjoy reading the new blogs I've found and will ping back a tweet to a comment that particularly resonates with me. But just as I don't call myself a craft blogger because I'm a member of Ravelry and knit occasionally; or a food blogger because I made some jam last November, I don't really feel I can call myself a mummy blogger because I sometimes write about Gemma.

In fact looking at recent posts I seem to be writing an awful lot about whether or not I'm going to continue writing and what type of writing that is and the fact that I don't write as much as I used to. This cannot be good for anyone. Draw the line. Onwards and upwards. My next post will be about compost heaps, or estate agents, or something.

Looking forward

So it's the last day of 2010, a year notable for almost complete lack of blogging from my perspective and complete hectic frenzy on most other fronts. And not because of any life changing events or major projects on the go, nothing that could really be described as IMPORTANT. Only the constant struggle to fit 2 full time working parents (one of whom spends a number of weeks out of the year on another continent), one full time nursery toddler, some family holidays, the bare minimum of home maintenance, extra curricular time for family, friends, swimming lessons and weekly chores, and about 10 minutes every week for a moment to sit down and think, into the last 12 months since I went back to work.

It's actually been a really tough year as well as a wonderful one. Gemma has come on so much in her physical, mental and social development and is a right little lovely monkey now (see http://lefthandedmonkey.com for her progress updates) - this past Christmas and 2nd birthday have been fantastic. One of the funniest moments was having lunch out with friends yesterday - after a big bowl of ice cream and much excitedness, Gemma put her spoon down, looked at everyone and said earnestly, "I'm a bit hyper now".

However, I have found it really tough working full time as well as being a full time mother. I don't feel I have deprived Gemma in any real way - I'm sure she would love a day or two extra a week at home with mummy but overall she loves nursery so much and it has brought her on in so many ways that I actually feel they have done a better job than I would have in some respects. After all there is still no designated 'messy play' area in our house for her and I will always veer towards the story reading/walk to the park/swimming/play with toys type of entertainment rather than getting the play dough or pens or paints out. Some of the sweetest moments this Christmas have been late afternoon, on a bit of a wind down from all the chocolate and overexcitedness, snuggled on the sofa with her watching a kids film.

No, it's more the breathing space that I'm missing, and the realisation that actually I am more of a homebody than I had previously thought, and hate not being able to get all the things done round the home that I constantly spot need doing. I find it incredibly frustrating that I don't have the time to sort out the garden or plan stuff that needs to be done around the house or actually finish more than one piece of knitting per 6 month period. Clothes shopping is a furtive 20 minutes at work on the internet at lunchtime. Meal planning for our week is more 'what's in the veg box and how many fishfingers do we have left in the freezer' rather than looking creatively at what we have and browsing a few recipe books for inspiration. And always the nagging guilt that we should be spending much more quality time together as a family at the weekends rather than me martialling everyone from swimming to supermarket to swings to home and nap time while the cleaning is done, repeat ad infinitum...

2011? I don't think it will be much different to begin with. My work year is not going to be any less hectic, for a start. But as Gemma grows up and will become less demanding (maybe not quite yet, but hopefully at some point this year!) maybe we'll be able to plan our out of work lives to be a bit more fulfilling, and I can take pleasure from the little things and stop fretting over the big stuff. After all, we have so much to be thankful for. So thanks, 2010 and hello 2011. May your days be merry and bright.

Time to try again

For any old friends who might still be out there, no, not that type of trying.

It's time for me to decide, once and for all, whether I am going to continue blogging here or stop once and for all, and at the moment, the former is the preferred option. I've just re-read all my 'pregnancy diaries' on this blog and realised that actually I bloody enjoyed writing about stuff on a regular basis. And today I learned that Bloglines, my RSS reader of choice, is ceasing to exist on 1st October, which has given me a bit of a jolt. Even before I started blogging myself, I used Bloglines to aggregate all my feeds, and have found it the simplest and most user friendly of interfaces ever since. Every new post on this blog plus all the posts and photo albums I've posted on lefthandedmonkey.com have been viewed via Bloglines, so it peeves me mightily to have to use Google Reader or somesuch from now on.

What this news has done though is prompt me to re-read the past few years of postings on good intentions. This year has seen a massive blogging hiatus, wholly due to the demands of a full time job and a full on daughter. One of the reasons I have decided to carry on blogging, even if there are no readers out there any more, is the increasing frustration I'm feeling at the lack of individual time I have to just be myself, do stuff, that isn't job or family related. My family is my life, don't get me wrong, and by gum Gemma is the best achievement I have ever made. But it's time to reclaim a bit of 'me' even if it's simply by writing things down. With no commuting time (except driving in the rush hour singing Baa Baa Black Sheep at the top of my voice to entertain the small child in the back); no early morning time at work; and limited free time at home (sssh I was meant to be ironing tonight) this is going to be a bugger to achieve, but I want to give it a go again.

If it gets to May 2011 before I post again, maybe I'll have a rethink. But I should be able to do better than that, I hope.

Progress

Of sorts, anyway. It looks like I did no posts at all in February - first time ever I've skipped a month. However in my defence I have been posting here on a reasonably regular basis, and as my life is pretty much all about Gemma at the moment I didn't want to duplicate on this blog as well.

Today I managed to clean the living room though, without even having to stop once and rock, sway, feed, change, or otherwise entertain my daughter. I took her out in the Baby Bjorn this morning and when we got home she was so spark out I used the opportunity to get some stuff done. Feeling slightly more on top of things now she is 10 weeks (today!).

The other things that have made me feel a little more back to 'normal' (whatever normal is now) are: joining Twitter, which may or may not be a ridiculous thing to attempt, but at least tweeting or twittering or whatever makes a change from a) posting long entries here and b) updating my Facebook status on a regular basis with wholly baby-related posts. I elected to follow Stephen Fry, Phil Jupitus and Chris Moyles, as the celebrity Twitterers who I know about, but drew the line at Phillip Schofield. How do these celebs have time to post so much? Stephen Fry especially, while I do revere him utterly, must be a smidge annoying to be around, given that he must be surgically attached to his iPhone to be tweeting so much.

Some other normal things - am getting back into bookgroup mode with two books on the go, though whether I will have time to read them is another matter. The Mother and Baby group is reading the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, and the Wednesday evening group is on John Banville's The Untouchable. Neither of which I've started yet, ho hum. My knitting has picked up - am halfway through a little beanie hat for Gemma. And this week or next I want to get out and give the garden a good seeing to now that spring appears to have sprung in this part of the world.

Will try and post at least once a month from now on. In the meantime here's a gratuitous photo of our gorgeous and totally wonderful daughter living it up in the baby gym.

Not quite business as usual

Gemma is 4 weeks old today and it's amazing to think that this time 4 weeks ago I was in the recovery room at the Spires, new babe in arms, gingerly resting on the bed and on the most wonderful, joyful high I've ever experienced. That high hasn't gone away though - it's been tempered somewhat by the broken sleep - and we can't believe she has been with us for a month already.

As promised in the previous post, she now has her own little website set up (all the household jobs Ali listed to be done with such diligence when he started his paternity leave are still uncrossed off, but personally I think chronicling Gemma's progress and creating a place for photos which our family and friends can access is much more important than a bit of painting and plastering) and I have managed a whole 2 posts already onto her blog (so more regular than I've been updating my own blog in the past...). It's linked to from lefthandedmonkey.com, a site which we've had for years but not done much with. It is also work in progress, as it's created on a Mac which is not my machine/software of choice (yes I know, this is heresy in some quarters) and I need to go on and fiddle with the font sizes etc, plus we need to sort out the uk2.net frame at the top (i.e. pay them loads of money every year to allow us to remove it).

I'll continue to blog her progress there, and am hoping to continue my own ramblings on here as well. Obviously there will be some baby topics cropping up here, given that I am on maternity leave until next year after all and thus there won't be a lot happening other than baby related stuff. And it goes without saying that my intentions for our daughter are nothing but good, in fact they are the best possible, so my blog name has never been more appropriate.

Eco-unfriendliness

With the impending arrival to our family it’s become a lot harder recently to plan for and be as eco-friendly as I would want to be.

Eco-pluses:

1. We compost everything that’s compostable (but we don't have a wormery)
   
2. Use Ecover for most of our detergents, cleaning products etc
3. (In theory) have an efficient condensing boiler
4. Get an organic veg box delivered every week
5. Recycle glass, cans, paper every week (though the council won’t take cardboard and we don’t save it to recycle at the tip, which is bad)
6. Buy local produce whenever we can vs. air freighted and support local businesses
7. Buy organic food, clothes, toiletries etc vs. non organic if possible (and affordable!)
8. Try and reduce our packaging wherever possible – use cloth bags for shopping (as often as we remember, which to be fair is about 80% of the time)
9. Garden organically
10. Bought a rotary airer* for our washing this summer and use it to dry our clothes outside
11. Plan to use washable cloth nappies not disposables
12. Cook almost all meals from scratch (I guess this is sort of eco friendly, as we would never buy ready meals and rarely if ever get takeaways other than the odd self-indulgent fish and chips from the chippie round the corner, which counts as supporting local businesses anyway!)

* or birley for those from north of the border…

Eco-bads:

1. After a few performance glitches and some internet searching we realised our boiler may not be as efficient as we thought when it was installed…
2. I love an open fire and will happily burn loads of logs and coal even when it’s not really that cold
3. As a result of number 11 above, we’ve just bought a tumble drier. There’s no way I am draping wet nappies over radiators in January. If the baby had been coming in June I might have risked it and hoped to be able to put them outside to dry but it ain’t gonna happen in the middle of winter.
4. When working at home during the recent cold snap I’ve had the heating on all day rather than stick an extra jumper on. I can see that from 5th December, when I’m at home all the time, and especially after Chewie arrives in January, the heating bill will be enormous this winter.
5. Prefer to buy new than second hand (though we are getting a lot of newborn hand-me-downs from Archie which is brilliant and so is a sort of eco-plus.)
6. Don’t think twice about jumping in the (petrol-guzzling sports) car and driving to see friends, family, do the shopping, etc which we could in theory do on public transport
7. I don’t think we have ever even attempted to measure our carbon footprints and don’t make a proper effort to avoid flying etc although we do like taking holidays in the UK and I foresee more of them will be UK based in future!

So overall it appears that we are doing more good to the planet than bad, however I do think our bads are big enough to outweigh the small effort of the goods. Must do better - watch this space...

Friends, family, garden and good intentions

Following on from the last post, what have we been up to with our nearest and dearest then.
Well, the weekend before our holiday we had Stuart, Alison and Archie to stay. We got some real smiles out of Archie and Stuart entertained us by demonstrating how his love of music has been inherited - Archie's current favourite band is Black Sabbath. Whenever Ozzy's dulcet tones and thumping guitars come on the stereo he kicks his little legs and pumps his arms and smiles and gurgles, and apparently no other band has quite this effect on him... We had a great day out in Oxford, after a delicious meal at Carluccios the girls went shopping while the boys enjoyed a few beers, though quite how Archie managed to lift the pint glass is beyond me, ho ho. All in all a chilled out few days enjoying good company and good food before our holiday kicked off, very pleasant indeed.

In the garden, our little plot has come on surprisingly well given that we were away for the best part of two weeks. We installed a timed soaker hose thing along the borders with some dripper attachments for the pots and the tomatoes (highly technical, but Ali did most of the hard work, I just squealed faintly whenever the hose threatened to squash one of my dahlia seedlings or a tender pansy) and this worked well - at least nothing had died when we got home. Actually we may not have needed to bother with the hose as there was quite a bit of rain which had battered the plants down so some emergency staking was in order. Somehow we've got some striking bright yellow coreopsis going great guns next to a hebe and a briar rose (didn't purchase it and it looks remarkably robust to have germinated from some random seed, so I can only assume it was in the garden when we moved in and has been dormant for 4 years, unlikely scenario though this is) and this had flopped all over the place so it's nicely propped up now. The dahlias are OK, the morning glory is starting to flower, the sunflowers are growing inches every day and the hollyhocks are of monstrous proportions. We've even got some blackcurrants that look almost ready enough to pick! The basil, however, which was in the kitchen, while not dead from dehydration did mostly get eaten by caterpillars and is possibly beyind saving. All in all though it's looking good out there.

My good intentions recently have mostly been to do with updating the blog more often, so not entirely successful there. Exercise-wise, we were on a walking holiday so this counteracted the scrummy Italian food and wine, but nothing else to report, though I did swim a bit in the hotel spa pool, albeit not very energetically. My next good intention is to get going on my knitting again and also to organise a renovation of our sash windows which will be costly but really does need doing. I love living in an old house but there is always something that needs fixing, renovating or generally tidying. The worst thing is we still have a pile of ashes and rubbish in the grate from our last fire of winter (probably from February or early March). What slatterns we are.

Well, well, well…

…Three holes in the ground. (as my dad used to say)

It’s been exactly a year since my first post. Who’d have thought it? Given that any previous attempts at diarising my life and random thoughts had been limited to a half-filled in notebook at the age of 13, invariably detailing the angst and tribulations of crushes on random schoolboys from the boys’ school up the road from ours, and abandoned after a few weeks, I think I’ve done jolly well to keep it up for a year.

I’ve come to enjoy posting up odd thoughts here and there, and it’s certainly good to flick back over the months and remind myself of what we’ve been up to. It’s also made me more appreciative of other friends’ blogs. On the Saturday before Easter I met up with some ex-Virgin friends for a long boozy lunch in Covent Garden, most of whom I’ve not actually seen in the flesh (so to speak) since I left Virgin last May/June. But, for Dan and Mark in particular, it was as though no formal ‘catching up’ was necessary, as I knew what they’ve been doing with their lives through their blogs.

My good intentions remain, though others have fallen by the wayside over the past year. I still promise to post more pictures, especially as I have seedlings germinating in the kitchen as we speak and with any luck and everything crossed, the garden will be a veritable riot of colour this summer. If the bloody weather starts playing ball, that is. And I will go back to Body Balance, eventually, I'm sure...

Willpower; or, Why Do I Always Succumb To Peer Pressure?

So yesterday morning I updated my Facebook status to 'Kathryn is resolved to have a booze-free fortnight'. Partly as a result of a wine-fuelled Saturday night at my parents along with my godparents and some family friends, where, while I didn't have a hangover the next day, totalling up the number of glasses drunk nevertheless made for sobering reading. At least I didn't finish the night on whisky, unlike Ali and my Dad, who were both very worse for wear on Sunday morning. So much so that Mum even emailed me yesterday to ask if Ali had recovered (and knowing the infrequency with which she checks her yahoo account, this was concern indeed).

Actually I've been relatively abstemious this year so far, mostly because of the various bugs and viruses which laid me low until about mid February, but also out of a desire to live a little healthier. So a booze free fortnight wasn't presenting me with many qualms, after all, only one real weekend to get through and no major nights out planned.

Except last night, after a meeting with our agency in an office right in the middle of heavingly busy Oxford Street (are there ever any days of the year when it isn't teaming with people?) I was about to take my leave at 5.30 and fight my way onto a tube at Oxford Circus. It took me almost 5 seconds to decide in favour of the suggestion of a quick drink, and even less time to agree to the champagne ordered in the bar. Yet a mere 9 hours earlier I was convinced a couple of weeks of orange juice and fizzy water were the right way forward and determined to stick to it. I could have declined the after-work social and gone home (boring and anti-social as well as possibly missing out on any juicy gossip or even just interesting general chit chat). Or I could have chosen a mineral water as my drink of choice (the sensible thing to do but nowhere near as tasty as a couple of glasses of cold champagne). Instead it didn't even present me with a moral dilemma - I just changed my mind in favour of the easy and more enjoyable route.

I wouldn't even be blogging about this normally, except a similar cop out occurred last Tuesday, when I just decided not to go to Body Balance. I was home in plenty of time, wasn't feeling ill, knew I could do with going and also knew I would enjoy it when I got there. I didn't even make a feeble excuse to myself like I normally do ("oh I'm so shattered/run down" "oh it will be too busy and I won't get a decent spot" " oh I don't have enough cash on me"). I just didn't want to go. My good intentions appear to be being sabotaged by a lazy little devil on my shoulder, whispering words of apathy in my ear whenever it looks like I'm about to make a decent decision. I'm not sure I like it - somehow I need to find the willpower to close my ears when those thoughts insinuate themselves into my head.

But that champagne *was* nice...

Getting On With Things

It’s amazing how perky you feel once you’re better after a poorly spell. I’m still coughing (mostly when having conversations with people, which makes me sound a lot worse than I actually am) and my sinuses are into overdrive a bit, but I feel about 3000% better than I did this time last week. It feels like it’s my first proper week back in the office since Christmas so I should be taking advantage of the renewed vigour for work, rather than blogging, but hey…

Had quite a quiet weekend, being as I was still in recovery mode; although I was pleased to make a start on a few jobs that had been bugging me. We got stuck into the piles of clutter in the top room, many of which had been sitting in dusty boxes since before we did the extension – that’s OVER 2 YEARS! – and most of which ended up in black bin bags for recycling or dumping. The room looks a lot clearer now and we even started to have a discussion on what we’ll end up doing with it – en-suite, bespoke shelving for an office, the possibilities are there but all expensive. We’re both agreed that the hideous lemon yellow artex that’s on every ceiling surface and the eaves will have to come off though. We got a guy in to give us a quote for re-fencing one side of our garden before the dilapidated boards that are there now collapse entirely. And we went to the pictures to see The Golden Compass, which was enjoyable enough but couldn’t match the fantastic quality of the book, and seemed to end very abruptly too.

What I didn’t do, mainly because I was paranoid about getting my carving knife cut infected (it’s getting better and I don’t have to wear rubber gloves in the shower any more which can only be a good thing) was re-pot some house plants that are in dire need of it. The peachy coloured anthurium in the bathroom hasn’t stopped flowering for about a year now and needs room to spread out a bit; and about 3 or 4 weeks ago one of the cacti on the kitchen windowsill put on an amazing growth spurt and started flowering! The flowers didn’t last long and are looking a bit wizened now but Ali managed to capture them when they were in their glory. So that’s my job for next Sunday.

I also just ordered the cutest looking knitting kit for a new born baby cape, which I’m going to aim to have completed before Stuart and Alison’s baby is due at the end of March. It doesn’t look too hard and Alison’s a big cape fan so hopefully it’ll go down well. So my good intentions are back firing on all cylinders now I’m better again – it’s Body Balance tomorrow too!

All over for another year, then

Well, the Christmas tree has come down and been chopped up ready for going on the fire. All the decorations are packed away, cards taken down from all the bookshelves, floors swept and mopped and the kitchen looks very empty and white. Good job we ordered a reclaimed pine dresser on Saturday from the lovely Foxwood to fill some space, and more importantly hold the increasing amounts of glassware we seem to be acquiring recently.

I’ve been planning a post for the last week or so – but somehow things have got in the way, such as Christmas, planning and hosting a New Year’s Eve party, clearing up after the same, and going back to work. Having read what seems like squillions of newspaper articles and blog posts all about people’s New Year’s resolutions, lists of the year for 2007, and festive goings on, and given the title of my blog, you’d think I would be more up to speed with my own. Good intentions for 2008 will probably come in a later post when I’ve thought of some (they won’t be much different from the intentions that I posted during 2007); so for now I’ll just round up the end of the year.

Ali and I had a really lovely quiet Christmas at home by ourselves, the obligatory roast beef for dinner and rather too much of different sorts of wine. It was really good just to have a whole day with nothing to do but open presents, cook the meal, eat it and watch TV (though Christmas telly was particularly crap this year. Even the festive edition of SCD was a bit of a let down – clearly none of the celebrities and their partners could give a toss about the result, given that it was only the studio audience voting, and Darren Gough was a shoe-in to win as he’s on the SCD tour so they had to keep him sweet and remind the public to go and book their tickets). Boxing Day we travelled to Hitchin to visit our friends Cameron and Elaine, taking the remnants of the chocolate pie I’d made for Christmas – and believe me there was more than 80% of it left. In Jamie’s recipe it looked lovely and light and fluffy – but with an ingredients list of chocolate, sugar, butter, crème fraiche, more butter, cocoa, more chocolate and butter pastry, it was never going to be the healthy option. Cameron and Elaine nobly said they’d keep the remains and finish them off but I’m willing to bet a lot ended up in the bin…

A few pub jaunts later and we were in the throes of planning for NYE. By 31^st we’d got 3 polypins of real ale from 2 different local breweries (Butt’s and West Berkshire); dozens of bottles of wine and mixers galore; I’d made our biggest stock pot full of beef stew plus 2 smaller pots of veggie chilli, 24 fairy cakes (sprinkling the hundreds and thousands on the chocolate icing was so satisfying!) and a pear and almond tart, we’d cleared Waitrose of all the dips and chips you could think of, and we were ready to go. So ready, in fact (I’d done a lot of the cooking on Sunday) that I’d cleared up, showered, and dressed up by 2pm and felt a bit at a loose end – after all it would have been suicidal to start drinking then...

It was the first time we’d mixed up 2 different groups of friends – the Oxford crowd who I’ve known most of since 1992; and our ‘local’ friends who we mostly know from where Ali previously worked. Add in one 4 month old baby (Freddie); one toddler (Evie) and 3 kids between 6 and 10 (Bailey, Courtney and Bethany) and there was a fantastic mix of people in the house. With around 30 people our ground floor was full to bursting and I don’t think we could really host anything bigger, unless it’s summer and people could go outside, but it’s good to know our limits! With a 4am finish and the kids up at 7.30 (Evie liked the sound her feet made running up and down on the wooden floors of the bedroom above ours) it meant a very sluggish start to the new year but with some strong coffee inside us and a bacon sarnie we were ready to go to Robin and Anne’s for a New Year’s Day dinner. Being presented with a glass of bubbly at 2pm after 3 hours sleep was just the tonic (!) and while we were seriously flagging by 7.30pm it was a great start to the new year. Back to work on Wednesday. Hmph.

Some 2008 good intentions to follow, hopefully before the end of January. Nerys and I were at Body Balance on Sunday though so despite not having a booze-free day since some time in mid-December, I think I’m on the right lines.

[From top to bottom - fairy cakes and a clear-ish work surface before the party; Dr Brown's real ale bar; Andy at 11.10pm (before too much fizz was consumed); Ali & a stubborn cork]

Time for some new good intentions

Been doing a 'leadership development' course at work recently. I always have trouble with these courses - but only beforehand - it's the idea of spending a whole day or two away from the office, when there is so much going on at the moment that absolutely requires me to be sitting on my email at all times and letting everything get on top of me (because of course that's the mark of a good manager, oh yes...). But inevitably, taking a day to reflect on past activity and behaviours exhibited is actually always a worthwhile experience and makes me feel far more able to take things in my stride moving forward.

Part of the day today was about planning for 2008, and I set myself some pretty overarching targets: attitudinal, business objectives, and personal goals. The personal ones are always the same - more 'us' time for Ali and I; exercise more; go on a proper long holiday. Some kind of fit in with the very loose theme of this blog, in that they are good intentions but might not get carried out very often. But I hope that I will have the willpower to see them all through.

One I thought of but didn't write down was to get more DIY stuff done around the house and garden, and make use of the new toy we bought 2 weeks ago. My mum was in a slight state of shock when I told her we'd got a shiny new sewing machine for me to make things with - after all, I was never what you'd term creative when I was younger. It was the purchase of a stupidly expensive pair of jeans when we were in Edinburgh the other week that did it. Having lost some weight, and also due to the fact that my dearest, best loved and constantly worn Earl Jeans are starting to fall apart from over-use, I splurged on a pair of James Jeans from Harvey Nichols. Size 26!!!!! (sorry had to get that in) but so dear I can't even disclose the price, it's too shameful. Anyway, the smaller size still obviously couldn't make up for the fact that I'm a short arse, and needed about 4 inches taken off the legs so I could wear them properly. The last time I took a pair of trousers to the tailors in Oxford they made a balls up of them and hemmed them too short, so a sewing machine was the clear way forward. Only about 16 more pairs of jeans to go and I might break even. I have to say, although machines have got a lot more sophisticated since I was at school - the one we bought is computerised, and excitingly does all sorts of very posh embroidery stitches of leaves and stars and suchlike - it was relatively easy to get the hang of it and now I have a pair of jeans I can wear with pride without tripping over the extra material. If I get round to making anything more adventurous rather than just sewing hems I'll definitely start posting more photos. Which is another good intention.

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Quick SCD update, for those of you who care (and knowing who reads this blog, that's probably only one or possibly two of you, but why should that stop me, it's my blog after all). After Saturday's show my allegiance, hitherto firmly with Alesha and Matt, is now wavering quite distinctly towards bloody gorgeous Gethin. WHAT A SALSA!

Life post-cheese

No, not literally. By god, that would be unthinkable. A life without cheese is a life half lived, to misquote Strictly Ballroom...

Anyway, my holding post of a few days ago was really just to get back into the blogging habit again, as it's been a while since I posted anything of note; but my recent discovery that I was listed on the Mostly Books blog and the subsequent nice comments from friends has got me enthused for posting again, as I had let work and other stuff get in the way a fair bit. I know that even when I'm really busy, I will always make time to run through my Bloglines feeds and whenever a new post from a friend's blog appears it cheers me up no end - much more exciting than all those industry techie feeds I read and even (dare I say it) more interesting than the newsy feeds on books, music, eco stuff and the like that I subscribe to. So, good intentions poised and at the ready, I resolve To Do Better. (Capitals are great, aren't they? I feel amost Edward Gorey-ish using them, She Said Archly).

So, what's been going on in our world since the fromagery of late September?

A couple of quite alarming and intense work weeks, where I was planning a big project for January. I'm 99.8% sure none of our direct competitors read this, but even so I won't expand further. Anyway, it's something way outside my comfort zone and I was mightily relieved when the proposal I submitted on 12th October to the US got well received. Phew.

In between this, was a drink-sodden weekend where we went to London to meet up with Ali's folks and some friends they were visiting in Caterham. We met up in a pub just off St James' Square, and basically lurched around Soho all afternoon from hostelry to hostelry. This was the weekend of the England victory over the Aussies in the Rugby World Cup and I was the only English person in the party. Luckily despite all the Scots contingent being desperate to find an Aussie pub to watch it in, we ended up in the Glasshouse just off Piccadilly where I had a fine old time yelling encouragement and generally getting very overexcited. Wa hey!

By 12th I was more than ready for a break, my first day off since starting the job back in early June. After a few days of pre-holiday panic, that was it - done. On the first day of our week off, the Saturday, we were back in London to watch Maximo Park play at the Brixton Academy as part of an XFM night. Or not. I was FUMING at the time and could have written reams but step by step:

- Kathryn and Ali arrive at the venue after a day of mooching in town
- Go in, get patted down, buy 1 pint of cider and a bottle of water for SIX POUNDS BLEEDING TEN!!!!!!!
- Look at the set list and realise MP are not on til 10.30pm. Last train from Paddington is 11.30pm. Fuck.
- Have panicked discussion, look at Ali's Crackberry and realise that all trains are cancelled post 9pm anyway due to engineering works.
- Discuss merits of getting the bus home and then give up in disgust, leave the venue (much to the bemusement of security) and watch the second half of England v France (wa hey again!) in a pub in Brixton, then head off to Paddington to chance our luck.
- Wait at Paddington for an hour and half for a replacement bus service to Reading. Lots of swearing.
- Eventually get to Reading at 12.30am for the last train to Didcot.
- Grrrrrr.....

Sunday was a bit more chilled, culminating in a birthday celebration for our mate Chris in the Yummy Thai restaurant in Wantage. It certainly lived up to its name, yum yum.

Our week off was lovely. 3 days in north Dorset staying in the village of Buckhorn Weston at the phenomenal Stapleton Arms. Beautiful room, comfy bed, LCD TV, walk in shower which was the most powerful I've ever experienced in a hotel, organic breakfast grub, great menu, 2 real ciders on tap :-) and log fires every night. Wonderful, and really good value. We did Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Stonehenge, the Cerne Abbas giant with his big willy (and the faint outline of Homer Simpson remaining on the field next to him, hee hee), and a great walk on the coast and Chesil Beach. Then back on Thursday for some R&R at home, a nice meal at the Crooked Billet on Friday night and Rod, Wendy and their 3 kids over on Saturday for a fab get together. Sunday was spent nursing hangovers (Ali and Rod got stuck into the whisky in the wee small hours of Sunday morning...) and as mentioned before, by the time it got to mid afternoon, I was ready for hair of the dog and some pure SCD indulgence.

Back to work now and it's getting intense, preparing for January. It's bizarre not gearing up for the Christmas rush - reminds me of working in the travel industry in a way, but better, obviously.
So that's me up to date, we've got a rare free weekend coming up so I'll be repainting the front door. I'm actually looking forward to it, in a bizarre way.

Time for a bit of a retrospective

Good intentions. Having named my blog thus, I suddenly feel the need to review my intentions over the course of the last 6 (my god is it really 6) months of writing and see whether I'm a wretched failure or actually doing quite well. So...

1. Writing my blog - tick. This is going OK, I feel, in that after the first month of not telling anyone the URL, and keeping it all secret, I'm now quite happy for friends, family, colleagues, all and sundry really, to be reading it. I think this is mainly because I know I haven't let slip any great indiscretions on here, plus also I'm not trying to be the next big literary sensation. A few people have said that it's nice to know what Ali and I are up to. A few have agreed with some of my ramblings. Anyway, no nasty comments as yet, and that's because you are all such lovely people.
2. Body Balance - overall, another tick. I do feel better for doing this class every week, but I have let a few weeks slip here and there. Overall I've managed to get to the class more often than not. It's fair to say I will never develop Madonna-style upper arm tonage though. And the music is still shit.
3. Cataloguing the garden and photo-blogging through the seasons. I read quite a few gardening blogs and would love to have been able to snap away through the growing and fading of the plants in our front and back gardens. If I'd been that dedicated I probably could have achieved it, however a) it has been chucking it down for most of the summer and b) my summer hasn't exactly been filled with free weekends for me to live out my bucolic dream. We've either been away or had folk to visit on most weekends since Easter, and those times where we've been at home (e.g. this weekend just gone) have been wet. We did go to Millets (our local garden centre) yesterday and I persuaded Ali that the joint account really did need to accommodate the purchase of 2 chocolate cosmos plants, 2 pink Japanese anemones, 3 little perennial plants (a foxglove, a hellebore and an aquilegia) and a weigela shrub with lovely burgundy leaves. I can't wait to plant them all out but the rain has pissed all over that idea this weekend. We also have a squash or pumpkin (we don't know which) growing in a tub which held tulips earlier in the year, the result of our compost bin failing to break down a random seed somewhere and it suddenly germinating about a month or so ago. It's going nuts and spreading all over the lawn at the moment and I really hope we get some good fruits off it. We also have a few leeks donated by our green-fingered friends Cameron and Elaine; and a globe artichoke that's flowering after 2 years of dormancy. The next sunny weekend I will make the effort, take some photos, and post them up.
4. Related to the last post - keeping 50% of our weekends free for some 'just us' time. This is a tricky one as the reason we haven't managed this is because we've seen friends and family so much this summer, and done a lot of cool things. So that's good. On the other hand, our 2 weeks in Italy were so wonderful, when we spent a whole fortnight just having a good time in each other's company, that it's clear we should try and do more of it. Unfortunately holiday allowances and lack of cash mean we can't take a fortnight in Tuscany every 2 months. Oh well.
5. Books I should be reading/re-reading. I've got far too many interesting new books to read to bother about re-reading the bloody Iliad. What was I thinking?
6. Diet. A new one, this. It's partially come about because of my new job, but looking back over my weight since I graduated, slowly, inexorably (there's those cliches again) I have put on about 1 or 2 lbs a year since. So, like howsoonisnow, I am cutting out bread, cheese and mid-week drinking, and I'm using the online diet plan of my new employers. And it's working, admittedly slowly, but it is actually working. Amazing.

So that's my good intentions in a nutshell. Overall I think that it's a good mid-year review, though there is certainly room for improvement in some areas.

good intentions gone to pot - but who cares really?

Since I started this blog there have only been so many blogging hours in the day and inevitably I have missed writing about trips taken, friends seen, experiences had. Luckily (or anally) I keep a spreadsheet to track what we're doing on which weekend, sounds very sad doesn't it but it is actually very useful, especially at times like the present where we don't know what we're doing from one weekend to the next. A large part of this is down to our jobs - mine in particular is shaping up to be a lot more time consuming out of the office than my previous one. I'm off to Munich next week for 3 days of financial planning for 2008, followed with a bit of light relief with some team bonding when we hike up the Alps to a log cabin, drink lots of Bavarian beer and traipse back down again. Good stuff.

Anyway, thanks to the wonders of home_calendar.xls, here's some highlights of the past 4 months or so:

In March we had Jenn to stay and we spent a great day out at Woodstock and Blenheim Palace wandering around the gardens and taking pictures (well Ali and Jenn did) of pheasants and lots of nice plants. Jenn is over on secondment from the US (she works for Urban Outfitters) and has stacked up more travelling within Europe and Africa in the past 18 months than I have managed in my lifetime. She also has a penchant for antique shopping so Woodstock was ideal, lots of little curio shops and a good pub lunch to boot.
We did a return visit to her grand apartment (on Sloane Square, if you please) a month or so later and took a trip to Kew Gardens, which I had never been to before but really enjoyed. Cue more snapping, this time of a very relaxed and gloriously iridescent peacock having a nice sit down near a Japanese garden.

Towards the end of April we went down to Matt and Nickiy's for some cheese, the first Pimms of the summer (expertly made by yours truly if I may say so) and a slide show of Nickiy's photos from her trip to Nepal earlier this year. A smashing early summer afternoon, the product of which was the first draft of a periodic table of the cheese elements. You don't want to know.

In May and June we seemed to stay closer to home, and the weekends round and about our wonderful holiday in Tuscany were variously spent on a pilgrimage to the Shoulder of Mutton in Wantage; a boozy Saturday in Oxford with Mum and Dad (lunch in Carluccios followed by some enthusiastic consumption of ale and Addlestone's cider in the White Horse, then back home for a meal and yet more booze); and a barbeque at Keith and Nikki's new house in Didcot. On that weekend it was absolutely peeing down all day - so we got soaked on our way there from the bus stop - however a strategically placed gazebo ensured that the afternoon went off excellently and our sausages were dry. I don't recommend chucking an empty cardboard Stella box on the smouldering embers of the barbie though.

Finally to the past few weekends - first off, watching Le Tour de France in London and Kent. Saturday we went down to London and as a surprise for his birthday, Matt and Nickiy had organised this for Ali. I don't think it made the news in the end but there was a police escort and a helicopter involved at one point. Susan and I were having a nice time mooching about on the South Bank and then stuffing our faces in Wagamama as it was all happening - much more sensible. Then we watched the time trials from Parliament Square and made our way back to Streatham for a late curry. A criminally early start the next morning ensured that we got to the previously staked out prime piece of grass verge somewhere deep in the Kent countryside before the hordes arrived, thus ensuring a trouble free breakfast picnic, while cheering on any and every car, bike, or trailer that came past. When the peloton came past it was actually quite stunning - we were at the top of a small hill and could see them straining their way up it for quite a while (though clearly nowhere near the heights they've recently climbed in the Alps stage of course) and visually it was fantastic. Matt and Nickiy and Susan between them had done an amazing job getting it all organised and keeping all the planning secret. Three cheers!

Last weekend was a little bit quieter but no less enjoyable - to Hitchin to see Cameron and Elaine and their 15 month old baby Sholto. The weather held out, the company was great (lots of parents and other 15 month olds from Elaine's NCT classes) and the kids angelic. Well, mostly. We ate well, drank well, and managed to get to bed by 10.15 on Saturday night (there's a song in there I'm sure). Totting up the points (more of which another time) I managed an impressive 96.5 points exceeded over my weekly allowance last week. Hurrah for cheese and cider and barbeque food.

So that's me up to date. This weekend we have the Brown family coming en masse to stay and I'm really p-ed off that I can't get to Legoland on Friday due to some long range planning thing at work. Still, expect a pretty knackered blog post some time next week...

Literary intentions

No, I'm not about to start writing a book, though maybe some day....

This is more about books I want to get round to reading, or feel I ought to read (or re-read in this instance). I've been hurriedly trying to re-read Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Odyssey before my next bookgroup meeting, as the book up for discussion is Margaret Atwood's excellent The Penelopiad.

As a former classicist I did read the first 12 books of Homer's Odyssey (and the last 12 of the Iliad) in the original Greek for my 2nd year exams - but these took place in early 1994, a loooong time ago. So of course I've forgotten it all by now, and in an attempt to prove to myself that the degree wasn't a total waste of time I foolishly mentioned to Mark, co-owner of the wonderful Mostly Books in Abingdon (and host of our monthly Wednesday evening bookgroup) that I was going to swot up a bit prior to the meeting. I've actually only got up to book 4 of the poem though and am off to BodyBalance tonight so feel that I might not get any more done by Wednesday night. It's proving quite interesting though, remembering all the epithets ("rosy-fingered dawn" "wine-dark sea") and the stock phrases that I always rejoiced to see in exam translation passages as they repeated themselves with such regularity: "And then they put aside their desire for eating and drinking" being a fine example...

Is it terrible to cheat and do some revision on Wikipedia?

Good Intention #2

So, last night I went with Nerys to a Body Balance class at the leisure centre in Abingdon. I started the year with a desire to tone up and get fit, as the post-Christmas flabbiness was getting a little out of control. So I bought a Yogalates DVD and probably did it about 5 or 6 times before petering out mid-February. It did, however, make me feel more toned and less slump-y so I've been meaning to pick it up again, though never quite getting round to it (good intention, poor execution).
When Nerys said she had been to a couple of these classes and did I want to go with her each week, it seemed like a great way to keep motivated and keep going. They are a mix of yoga, pilates, t'ai chi, and something called Feldenkrais (no, me neither) and while slightly different to the DVD I've got - not as much focus on the correct breathing, and no resistance band to tone arms etc - it was still well worth it, if only for the realisation that I'm not quite as inflexible as I thought I was. Long may it continue! (though the music was a bit varied in quality, I hope they get rid of Snow Patrol on the tape next time). I may even do a proper yoga class as well if I get any good.

First good intention slipping a bit

A whole 11 days since my last post (though to be fair I did do 2 at once on 5th April). It's not even as if nothing has happened in the last 11 days, as there's been Easter, a week at work, and a nice sunny weekend with friends since then, so lots to write about.
I think my blogging style is going to become a bit of a mish mash of diary-style entries and random musings. No different from the millions of other blogs out there then, I hear you cry, but at least I won't be trying to shoehorn myself into a particular theme or topic each time I post. As my Blog roll signifies, I can loosely group my favourite blogs by topic - books, music, e-commerce and 'misc' but it's always the ones by the individuals that I know, posting about their lives, that I read first in the morning above all others. Maybe one day someone will add me to their list of favourites, who knows, but until that day I'll blog on in (relative) anonymity.

The first of many...

This first post will be short though probably not sweet. As per the title of this blog, I am starting this (as I start a lot of things) with all good intentions and great enthusiasm - the challenge to myself will be to keep posting even when there's not much to post about. Actually, that's probably not the greatest idea, leaving, as it will, lots of my tedious rambles to posterity. We shall see.