I haven't been blogging as much of late because nothing is happening (if you ignore the shouts of VIIIIIIISAAAAAA echoing in my cavernous skull, which I do try to).
I feel like I've entered a second childishness - thankfully not the sans taste/teeth/eyes/everything sort that Jacques waxes lyrical about in 'As you like it' - rather, life has adopted a simplicity I haven't experienced since I was about 4 years old.
I've literally taken to just following my mum around on whatever she happens to be doing that day. I've stomped my feet in boredom around B&Q (Homebase equivalent), whined about too-long dog-walks (my new red wellies help complete that picture), wandered around in search of bunny rabbits at 'Pets at Home (Petco) while mum bought boring dog food and sat in coffee shops listening while mum chatted with a bumped-into friend. Today I actually sat painting pebbles at the kitchen table while mum and dad had a coffee with friends. While the pebblepainting was wedding related and not quite as juvenile as it sounds, I had a distinct déjà vu.
The only difference I can see in this new simple world to the one I inhabited 22 years ago is that I get to drink wine with dinner and I haven't named all the snails in the garden. Yet.
God Save the errrr Queen?
As my train was barrelling through South West England on my way towards London last week, past ocean and rolling hills and great big white horses cut into chalk hills, a peculiar feeling welled within me. I struggled to define it...could it be? No, surely not, not pride? Pride in England? That's practically patriotism. Must have been simple aesthetic appreciation of landscape. There. Far more acceptable.
But the thing is, this sort of thing is happening more and more regularly. I find myself drawn to cushions and tea towels with Union Jacks on them (there's one tea towel in particular that I love...just a hint for those intending on waving flags at my final departure - why not wave tea towels instead?!), I get wistful hearing pomp and circumstance, I even felt a stirring of appreciation for Prince William and his prematurely balding head.
The only explanation I can see for this dalliance with royalism and rule-brittaniaism is that it's a natural defence against the over-powering force of American patriotism.
Take the Stars and Stripes. Also known as 'The Star Spangled Banner, 'Old Glory' or 'Red White and Blue' (never mind the fact that there are at least 28 other countries whose flag is coloured red white and blue , and that Russia, Cuba and North Korea are amongst them). In America, The Flag is EVERYWHERE. On houses, on cars, lining bridges. I can not overstate its ubiquity. There are even little postboxes where you can (and I quote) "retire your flag with honour". This is serious stuff. Hey, it's the same even in good old 'liberal' Massachusetts (who let the side down today), which demonstrates that (in America) patriotism doesn't necessarily mean conservatism (although I'd argue the reverse is almost always true across the board and the Atlantic).
Now in England, patriotism is practically a dirty word. And unless it's football season, British Flags outside of houses tend to signify that the occupants are ummm skinheads (literally or politically). The photos at the American Embassy of kids wrapped up in American flags or marching in red-white-blue-tshirt-formation to denote the flag, if replicated in Britain would most likely be advertising a BNP rally. At a guess I'd say that if the British Embassy has any photos on its TV screens (and I doubt it does), they would be of cricket, rugby, David Beckham... beefeaters perhaps (people in funny costumes, not people who eat beef, although they probably do) - things it's ok-to-be-reasonably-proud-of-without-being-labelled-a-nationalist.
America, I'm not mocking you...or at least not too much. If anything I think it's nice for it to be OK to have pride in one's country - provided it doesn't blinker a person to the validity of other countries and provided (of course) that that pride accepts all citizens, regardless of heritage (Nick Griffin take note) - but as an English person about to attempt to settle in the US, the whole extroverted patriotism thing is rather overwhelming. Hence my sudden desire to dry my dishes with a Union Jack (although have just realised that that's probably not proper flag etiquette in the states and I'd probably be seen as defaming my country rather than hooray-ing it).
It's strange how when faced with being a minority, these tribal instincts seem to surface. I'm not accustomed to championing Britain. I'm accustomed to self-deprecating humour, to moaning about the weather, disparaging our politicians and ridiculing our monarchy. But suddenly I want to be British, want to stand stalwart in the face of marauding flags. I'm just not entirely sure how. God Save the errrr Queen?
But the thing is, this sort of thing is happening more and more regularly. I find myself drawn to cushions and tea towels with Union Jacks on them (there's one tea towel in particular that I love...just a hint for those intending on waving flags at my final departure - why not wave tea towels instead?!), I get wistful hearing pomp and circumstance, I even felt a stirring of appreciation for Prince William and his prematurely balding head.
The only explanation I can see for this dalliance with royalism and rule-brittaniaism is that it's a natural defence against the over-powering force of American patriotism.
Take the Stars and Stripes. Also known as 'The Star Spangled Banner, 'Old Glory' or 'Red White and Blue' (never mind the fact that there are at least 28 other countries whose flag is coloured red white and blue , and that Russia, Cuba and North Korea are amongst them). In America, The Flag is EVERYWHERE. On houses, on cars, lining bridges. I can not overstate its ubiquity. There are even little postboxes where you can (and I quote) "retire your flag with honour". This is serious stuff. Hey, it's the same even in good old 'liberal' Massachusetts (who let the side down today), which demonstrates that (in America) patriotism doesn't necessarily mean conservatism (although I'd argue the reverse is almost always true across the board and the Atlantic).
Now in England, patriotism is practically a dirty word. And unless it's football season, British Flags outside of houses tend to signify that the occupants are ummm skinheads (literally or politically). The photos at the American Embassy of kids wrapped up in American flags or marching in red-white-blue-tshirt-formation to denote the flag, if replicated in Britain would most likely be advertising a BNP rally. At a guess I'd say that if the British Embassy has any photos on its TV screens (and I doubt it does), they would be of cricket, rugby, David Beckham... beefeaters perhaps (people in funny costumes, not people who eat beef, although they probably do) - things it's ok-to-be-reasonably-proud-of-without-being-labelled-a-nationalist.
America, I'm not mocking you...or at least not too much. If anything I think it's nice for it to be OK to have pride in one's country - provided it doesn't blinker a person to the validity of other countries and provided (of course) that that pride accepts all citizens, regardless of heritage (Nick Griffin take note) - but as an English person about to attempt to settle in the US, the whole extroverted patriotism thing is rather overwhelming. Hence my sudden desire to dry my dishes with a Union Jack (although have just realised that that's probably not proper flag etiquette in the states and I'd probably be seen as defaming my country rather than hooray-ing it).
It's strange how when faced with being a minority, these tribal instincts seem to surface. I'm not accustomed to championing Britain. I'm accustomed to self-deprecating humour, to moaning about the weather, disparaging our politicians and ridiculing our monarchy. But suddenly I want to be British, want to stand stalwart in the face of marauding flags. I'm just not entirely sure how. God Save the errrr Queen?
Doom. (And not the slightest bit of exaggeration.)
So this weekend I got rejected for my Fiance visa...
...OK I'm exaggerating...
(but not as much as I wish I was)
When I left the embassy on Friday morning, I was expecting to feel elated, overjoyed, relieved, with a weight lifted from my metaphorical and literal shoulders.
That (literal) weight was my passport. You see, had everything gone to plan, I would have walked out of the US Embassy passportless, as my passport would have been sitting in the embassy, happily awaiting the addition of a fiance visa to its hallowed pages. As it was, I walked out of the embassy passportfull and not entirely thrilled.
Here how it happens:
Thesods gracious, kind and (omniscient) magnificent ones schedule my appointment for 8am, which means I have to arrive at 7.45 am, which means I have to leave the house at 7.00am, which means that I get up and force courage-inspiring porridge down my nervous and resistant throat at 6.30am. I deprive myself of my all-essential morning coffee(s) because a) when anxious, coffee makes me more so and b) it makes me need to pee and, as I've confessed previously, I'm a nervous pee-er. I don't want to have to pee at the embassy because I know from past experience that the voice announcing the numbers does not extend to the toilets, so I decide it'd be a good idea to forgo all liquid.
I have to queue outside, but thankfully England has chosen to be kind and it's not raining / snowing / sleeting / hailing for the first time in decades. I'm then ushered into a decontamination zone where they scan and frisk and search and then into the main building where I am given a number and told to wait...
...and wait...
...and wait...
The waiting room in the embassy is just rows and rows of chairs, full of paper-clutching suckers (like me) listening intently to the recitation of endless numbers. All around the room are booths like you get in a post office, with the important booths at the far out-of-the-way end of the room. Each time a number gets called a paper-laden visa-hopeful scurries to the relevant booth.
In the middle of the room are TV screens which, along with flashing numbers-of-doom-and-consequence, have multiple photographs on repeat primarily of children either wrapped in, or faces-painted with, or marching formations of American flags. But I'm not going to get started here about the American obsession with the stars and stripes - it deserves a whole other blog entirely.
I have no idea how much time is passing because there are no clocks and I wasn't permitted to bring my mobile into the building. It feels a little like the sensory deprivation torture used in interrogations. A little... sort of.
Finally my number is called and I gather my highly-organised folder and walk/scurry with false confidence to the booth.
At first it all goes fine. I hand over my passport, my affidavit of support, Jeremy's tax returns and bank statements, feeling very pleased with myself as I slide the documents out of their neat and tidy poly-pockets... and then she asks for my birth certificate, which I duly hand her:
Visa woman: "No, not that birth certificate"
Hannah: "Errrr what do you mean?"
Visa woman: "I need your long birth certificate. That's your short birth certificate"
Hannah: "I have more than one birth certificate???"
Silence (in which I look at her in horror waiting for an explanation and she looks at me in total boredom)
Hannah: "What does this mean?" "Can I still get a visa today?"
Visa Woman shakes her head
Hannah: "So...."
After making me stew for a while, she finally tells me that it's OK - I can still have my interview but I need to order my long birth certificate online from the central-office-of-birth-certificates (or something) and once that arrives I need to send it back to the embassy with my passport, using their extra special(ly expensive) courier service and then and only then will they put my long awaited visa into it and courier it back to me.
I start to breathe again.
I'm then directed to sit back down again to wait some more, so I return to the waiting room and sit, checking my pulse to make sure I'm still alive and trying not to swear too loudly.
Then the last and scariest bit - my number is called for a second time and for the first time that day I speak to an American (this is when I know it's serious). The first thing I'm asked to do is to raise my right hand and pledge that I'm not perjuring myself, or something like that (I wasn't paying much attention to this bit 'cause I was concentrating on not laughing). I then give the entire potted history of Jeremy and I and, after she rubs it in that I have the wrong birth certificate etc etc, she says that providing I actually have a birth certificate then I'll be issued with a visa.
I then leave and return to the outside world. I realise I'm starving, dehydrated, exhausted, desperate for the loo and still have no idea what time it is.
So I go shopping.
1 shirt, 1 coffee and some false eyelashes later I go back to Sian and Marc's, call my mum and Jeremy, sob in shock that the Everlasting Visa Application is STILL NOT OVER (the clue is in the name, perhaps) and fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.
More positive people keep reminding me that it's all OK. They didn't refuse me, this is just a minor hitch. I want to invite these positive people inside my mind, to let them hear the continuous shout of VIIIIIIIIIIIIIISAAAAAAAAAAAA that echoes there which wont shut up until this whole thing is over and then ask them whether they still think it's a minor hitch.
I know, I know, I'm a drama queen.
...OK I'm exaggerating...
(but not as much as I wish I was)
When I left the embassy on Friday morning, I was expecting to feel elated, overjoyed, relieved, with a weight lifted from my metaphorical and literal shoulders.
That (literal) weight was my passport. You see, had everything gone to plan, I would have walked out of the US Embassy passportless, as my passport would have been sitting in the embassy, happily awaiting the addition of a fiance visa to its hallowed pages. As it was, I walked out of the embassy passportfull and not entirely thrilled.
Here how it happens:
The
I have to queue outside, but thankfully England has chosen to be kind and it's not raining / snowing / sleeting / hailing for the first time in decades. I'm then ushered into a decontamination zone where they scan and frisk and search and then into the main building where I am given a number and told to wait...
...and wait...
...and wait...
The waiting room in the embassy is just rows and rows of chairs, full of paper-clutching suckers (like me) listening intently to the recitation of endless numbers. All around the room are booths like you get in a post office, with the important booths at the far out-of-the-way end of the room. Each time a number gets called a paper-laden visa-hopeful scurries to the relevant booth.
In the middle of the room are TV screens which, along with flashing numbers-of-doom-and-consequence, have multiple photographs on repeat primarily of children either wrapped in, or faces-painted with, or marching formations of American flags. But I'm not going to get started here about the American obsession with the stars and stripes - it deserves a whole other blog entirely.
I have no idea how much time is passing because there are no clocks and I wasn't permitted to bring my mobile into the building. It feels a little like the sensory deprivation torture used in interrogations. A little... sort of.
Finally my number is called and I gather my highly-organised folder and walk/scurry with false confidence to the booth.
At first it all goes fine. I hand over my passport, my affidavit of support, Jeremy's tax returns and bank statements, feeling very pleased with myself as I slide the documents out of their neat and tidy poly-pockets... and then she asks for my birth certificate, which I duly hand her:
Visa woman: "No, not that birth certificate"
Hannah: "Errrr what do you mean?"
Visa woman: "I need your long birth certificate. That's your short birth certificate"
Hannah: "I have more than one birth certificate???"
Silence (in which I look at her in horror waiting for an explanation and she looks at me in total boredom)
Hannah: "What does this mean?" "Can I still get a visa today?"
Visa Woman shakes her head
Hannah: "So...."
After making me stew for a while, she finally tells me that it's OK - I can still have my interview but I need to order my long birth certificate online from the central-office-of-birth-certificates (or something) and once that arrives I need to send it back to the embassy with my passport, using their extra special(ly expensive) courier service and then and only then will they put my long awaited visa into it and courier it back to me.
I start to breathe again.
I'm then directed to sit back down again to wait some more, so I return to the waiting room and sit, checking my pulse to make sure I'm still alive and trying not to swear too loudly.
Then the last and scariest bit - my number is called for a second time and for the first time that day I speak to an American (this is when I know it's serious). The first thing I'm asked to do is to raise my right hand and pledge that I'm not perjuring myself, or something like that (I wasn't paying much attention to this bit 'cause I was concentrating on not laughing). I then give the entire potted history of Jeremy and I and, after she rubs it in that I have the wrong birth certificate etc etc, she says that providing I actually have a birth certificate then I'll be issued with a visa.
I then leave and return to the outside world. I realise I'm starving, dehydrated, exhausted, desperate for the loo and still have no idea what time it is.
So I go shopping.
1 shirt, 1 coffee and some false eyelashes later I go back to Sian and Marc's, call my mum and Jeremy, sob in shock that the Everlasting Visa Application is STILL NOT OVER (the clue is in the name, perhaps) and fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.
More positive people keep reminding me that it's all OK. They didn't refuse me, this is just a minor hitch. I want to invite these positive people inside my mind, to let them hear the continuous shout of VIIIIIIIIIIIIIISAAAAAAAAAAAA that echoes there which wont shut up until this whole thing is over and then ask them whether they still think it's a minor hitch.
I know, I know, I'm a drama queen.
Change
On Saturday, I had the first of a year of many wedding related events - my hen-do. I'm approaching my our wedding with the same attitude as I approach birthdays - make it last as long as is possible. If you consider that the hen-do is supposed to happen a night or two before the wedding and my our wedding is in erm August, then you'll see that in this endeavour I am going to succeed immeasurably.
My task is somewhat aided by having to have 2 weddings (visa wedding and proper-white-dress-aisle wedding...although technically I have a whiteish dress for the visa wedding too but shhhh) and two lots of friends and family to celebrate with, along-with two sets of traditions. My task is greatly aided by the curious American tradition of doing everything twice: save-the-dates and invitations, bachelorette parties (aka hen-do) and bridal-showers, rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions. In fact, you could argue that in having two weddings, Jeremy and I are just seeing the American way of doing things through to its logical conclusion... sort of?
Anyway, so Saturday was my hen-do, kindly and brilliantly organised by Sian after I was told I was absolutely not allowed to organise it myself or to micro-manage anybody else organising it. So I was more or less in the dark on the whole plan and had to blindly follow everyone around London to various delicious destinations for brunch, ice-skating, cocktails, cupcakes, dinner and drinks. Much laughter, fun, sugar and wine had by all.
Part of the day consisted of embarrassing me by making me guess Jeremy's answers to a questionnaire about him / me / us that Sian had devised. The penalty for mis-answering was to eat a penis-shaped sweet. Needless to say I tried my best to answer correctly. All told I did pretty well (although numerous penis-jellies were consumed...I refused to eat the red ones, they disturbed me). We both answered that my favourite bedroom activity is sleeping, that we're most looking forward to no longer having to talk on the phone and that my most annoying habit is worrying. We also both decided that in a shag/marry/kill scenario (with Jeremy in the scenario, not me, although I'd draw the same conclusion) Paris Hilton would have to die.
And then the day was over. Poof, gone, nevertobeseenagain. And I realised (I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes) that this year, despite my bid to make things last as long as possible, is going to be full of firsts and lasts. Full of that weird post-birthday shade of disappointment that all the anticipated fun has come to fruition and is over (we're saving our honeymoon till 2011 which will help counteract that...plus there's always Christmas). Full of adventure and difference.
Ordinarily at the beginning of a new year I look at it with hope and ambition, crossing my fingers for it to be a good one. This year I know without doubt that the me at the end will not be the same as the me right now. There is going to be Change - as promised by Obama and threatened by David Cameron - and it's all starting with penis-jellies. Bring it on (the change rather than the penis-jellies - they really didn't taste that good).
My task is somewhat aided by having to have 2 weddings (visa wedding and proper-white-dress-aisle wedding...although technically I have a whiteish dress for the visa wedding too but shhhh) and two lots of friends and family to celebrate with, along-with two sets of traditions. My task is greatly aided by the curious American tradition of doing everything twice: save-the-dates and invitations, bachelorette parties (aka hen-do) and bridal-showers, rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions. In fact, you could argue that in having two weddings, Jeremy and I are just seeing the American way of doing things through to its logical conclusion... sort of?
Anyway, so Saturday was my hen-do, kindly and brilliantly organised by Sian after I was told I was absolutely not allowed to organise it myself or to micro-manage anybody else organising it. So I was more or less in the dark on the whole plan and had to blindly follow everyone around London to various delicious destinations for brunch, ice-skating, cocktails, cupcakes, dinner and drinks. Much laughter, fun, sugar and wine had by all.
Part of the day consisted of embarrassing me by making me guess Jeremy's answers to a questionnaire about him / me / us that Sian had devised. The penalty for mis-answering was to eat a penis-shaped sweet. Needless to say I tried my best to answer correctly. All told I did pretty well (although numerous penis-jellies were consumed...I refused to eat the red ones, they disturbed me). We both answered that my favourite bedroom activity is sleeping, that we're most looking forward to no longer having to talk on the phone and that my most annoying habit is worrying. We also both decided that in a shag/marry/kill scenario (with Jeremy in the scenario, not me, although I'd draw the same conclusion) Paris Hilton would have to die.
And then the day was over. Poof, gone, nevertobeseenagain. And I realised (I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes) that this year, despite my bid to make things last as long as possible, is going to be full of firsts and lasts. Full of that weird post-birthday shade of disappointment that all the anticipated fun has come to fruition and is over (we're saving our honeymoon till 2011 which will help counteract that...plus there's always Christmas). Full of adventure and difference.
Ordinarily at the beginning of a new year I look at it with hope and ambition, crossing my fingers for it to be a good one. This year I know without doubt that the me at the end will not be the same as the me right now. There is going to be Change - as promised by Obama and threatened by David Cameron - and it's all starting with penis-jellies. Bring it on (the change rather than the penis-jellies - they really didn't taste that good).
Returning to London and playing the safety game
I'm back in London rather unexpectedly. I wasn't supposed to be here until Friday but then weather warnings sent the world (England) into a frenzied hysteria and I decided to travel up early to play it safe. This may have been a little bit over cautious (and that might have been a tiny understatement) but I blame Sian for this entirely because I hadn't even considered coming up that early, but once she'd suggested it, I couldn't not - because if I didn't and then I couldn't but I could have prevented it by coming up earlier then it'd be all my fault...or something like that.
(I know I sound like a lunatic but England does not handle snow well. It kinda goes into a blind panic. Of course I don't expect us to have battalions of snow ploughs and mountains of salt and grit to hand, like they do in Boston - since our weather's usual M.O. is drizzle, it's not really necessary. But, you would think that a couple of cms of snow wouldn't result in total apocalyptic chaos, wouldn't you? You would be wrong.)
I am the Queen of playing it safe. Except where my heart is concerned and there I let loose with reckless abandon. But in all other areas I take the safe option. I've often ended up waiting at the airport for 5+ hours after all the catastrophes I'd envisaged stopping me from getting there failed to occur. I sleep on couches rather than navigate my tipsy way home alone at night. I drink lattes (skinny ones) 'cause I can't handle espresso. I sit in the last carriage of the tube 'cause by my thinking it's the least likely one to be bombed (I once got off a tube and onto the next because the man opposite looked very nervous and had lots of wires in his bag). I hold tight onto handrails and don't go near edges. I'm not so good at road-crossing, but that's more me being oblivious than risk taking.
I figured coming back to London would feel exactly the same as it always did, that I would feel like the reluctant Londoner I always have. It didn't and I don't. Maybe it's the Dibley Quiet working its magic in my soul or maybe it's that with my 10 days of lie-ins and unemployment I've successfully shrugged off the obligatory London mentality of speed and hassle and suppressed rage. Either way I am free of the shackles of stress and now serenely stroll my sibilant way wherever I happen to be going. I'm the bane of Londoners lives and I care not.
So, here I am, back on Sian and Marc's couch. Everything the same except it's different. And it is snowing, but not enough to prevent them from trudging to work today (I felt so guilty and smug staying in bed while they had to go out to work). And as it has 4 whole days to sort itself out, I kinda think I may have taken the whole safe option thing a teensy bit too far. But if I can break out of the London shackles, maybe I can break free of 'what-iffing' my way through life. We'll see. For now, I have a whole series of Mad Men to watch so this 'better safe than sorry' scenario isn't the end of the world.
(I know I sound like a lunatic but England does not handle snow well. It kinda goes into a blind panic. Of course I don't expect us to have battalions of snow ploughs and mountains of salt and grit to hand, like they do in Boston - since our weather's usual M.O. is drizzle, it's not really necessary. But, you would think that a couple of cms of snow wouldn't result in total apocalyptic chaos, wouldn't you? You would be wrong.)
I am the Queen of playing it safe. Except where my heart is concerned and there I let loose with reckless abandon. But in all other areas I take the safe option. I've often ended up waiting at the airport for 5+ hours after all the catastrophes I'd envisaged stopping me from getting there failed to occur. I sleep on couches rather than navigate my tipsy way home alone at night. I drink lattes (skinny ones) 'cause I can't handle espresso. I sit in the last carriage of the tube 'cause by my thinking it's the least likely one to be bombed (I once got off a tube and onto the next because the man opposite looked very nervous and had lots of wires in his bag). I hold tight onto handrails and don't go near edges. I'm not so good at road-crossing, but that's more me being oblivious than risk taking.
I figured coming back to London would feel exactly the same as it always did, that I would feel like the reluctant Londoner I always have. It didn't and I don't. Maybe it's the Dibley Quiet working its magic in my soul or maybe it's that with my 10 days of lie-ins and unemployment I've successfully shrugged off the obligatory London mentality of speed and hassle and suppressed rage. Either way I am free of the shackles of stress and now serenely stroll my sibilant way wherever I happen to be going. I'm the bane of Londoners lives and I care not.
So, here I am, back on Sian and Marc's couch. Everything the same except it's different. And it is snowing, but not enough to prevent them from trudging to work today (I felt so guilty and smug staying in bed while they had to go out to work). And as it has 4 whole days to sort itself out, I kinda think I may have taken the whole safe option thing a teensy bit too far. But if I can break out of the London shackles, maybe I can break free of 'what-iffing' my way through life. We'll see. For now, I have a whole series of Mad Men to watch so this 'better safe than sorry' scenario isn't the end of the world.
Resolution in Action
Ten Things I love about America:
1. Pretty much no one has pronounceable names over there. My mum still can't spell Jeremy's surname and has taken to calling him Jeremy at-the-station.
2. Enthusiasm. Americans are the most enthusiastic people on the planet. It's like a nation of 5 year olds on Christmas eve, and half the time I feel like the kid who told their little sister that Father Christmas doesn't exist - so out of place does cynicism feel.
3. Sushi... not that it's exactly native to America, but it's readily available and affordable and yummy.
4. Fox news. It's appalling, but it makes me feel ever so smug about the BBC.
5. Bears. There are Bears.
6. Obama. For the first time in ummmm ever I'm going to live in a country where I actually feel a sense of Love towards its leader. OK, he's human and I'm sure all this adulation is just setting him up for a fall, but he's a heck of a lot more lovable than our Gordon.
7. Sarah Palin. Actually she terrifies the life out of me but I find her and her political existence absolutely fascinating - only in America. Or Italy.
8. The Everything Bagel. Best invention known to man.
9. Water. You never have to ask for water in restaurants. Ever. If there is one thing European countries should learn from Americans it is this.
10. Ice skating on ponds. OK it's a little bumpy and OK Jeremy's 'test' of stamping on it to see what happens isn't the most scientific so there's always the slight possibility of falling through and having it freeze over and there being one of those horror movie moments of banging on the ice in terror before falling away into the gloom, but it's still pretty magical.
I'm just limbering up on the positivity stakes. I'll be singing Annie songs before you know it.
1. Pretty much no one has pronounceable names over there. My mum still can't spell Jeremy's surname and has taken to calling him Jeremy at-the-station.
2. Enthusiasm. Americans are the most enthusiastic people on the planet. It's like a nation of 5 year olds on Christmas eve, and half the time I feel like the kid who told their little sister that Father Christmas doesn't exist - so out of place does cynicism feel.
3. Sushi... not that it's exactly native to America, but it's readily available and affordable and yummy.
4. Fox news. It's appalling, but it makes me feel ever so smug about the BBC.
5. Bears. There are Bears.
6. Obama. For the first time in ummmm ever I'm going to live in a country where I actually feel a sense of Love towards its leader. OK, he's human and I'm sure all this adulation is just setting him up for a fall, but he's a heck of a lot more lovable than our Gordon.
7. Sarah Palin. Actually she terrifies the life out of me but I find her and her political existence absolutely fascinating - only in America. Or Italy.
8. The Everything Bagel. Best invention known to man.
9. Water. You never have to ask for water in restaurants. Ever. If there is one thing European countries should learn from Americans it is this.
10. Ice skating on ponds. OK it's a little bumpy and OK Jeremy's 'test' of stamping on it to see what happens isn't the most scientific so there's always the slight possibility of falling through and having it freeze over and there being one of those horror movie moments of banging on the ice in terror before falling away into the gloom, but it's still pretty magical.
I'm just limbering up on the positivity stakes. I'll be singing Annie songs before you know it.
Lost in Time
Today is Sunday. I think. I'm not entirely sure. I slept til noon, which would suggest it was a weekend, except I've slept until at least 10.30 for the past 10 days, so unless weekends just got longer I can no longer use that as a day-guide. I'm pretty sure everyone I know is going back to work tomorrow, which suggests tomorrow is Monday and therefore that today is Sunday.
Solved it. For now.
(And have also just made pretty much every friend who is sat at their post-Christmas desk in a post-Christmas funk and reading this as a procrastination technique hate my guts. Sorry.)
It's weird. I am totally losing a grip on time - the way you do when you're on holiday and have nothing to think about other than tide times and sunscreen application - except unless you're on an interminable holiday, you're conscious of it ending in 7, 6, 5....days (Sarah, stop smirking). While I can assure you sunscreen application is not on my timetable (I'm living in leggings, leg-warmers, fluffy jumpers and fingerless gloves and don't move from the fireside unless forced to by my mother), and tide-times are only relevant in that when I'm in my parents' bedroom looking out, I can either see mud or water (it's an estuary), Time has never felt more abstract or less relevant.
I love it.
It's like a breaking free, a reclamation. I could spend the whole day walking down the stairs and it wouldn't matter. Bloody great waste of time and pretty damn boring (not to mention cold - there's not fireplace on the stairs) but I could. I haven't felt that way since exams ended in my third year at uni and the longest summer of all time stretched out before me.
So what am I doing with my time? I hear you ask. Well, so far, nothing much. I wake up, don various necessary layers of clothing and go downstairs to make a latte with my parents' fancy new coffee maker and sit in quiet while I wake up a little. It's generally too late for breakfast so I wait a few hours and then have lunch. Then, if I'm feeling adventurous, I might go with mum to walk the dog. Then I read some more (I've just finished David Mitchell's brilliant book 'Ghostwritten' and have now moved onto Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia', for which she got assassinated for), maybe blog, check email, snoop on facebook, cook dinner for the family, watch TV, read, facebook, email, sleep. If my mum's around then my day is interrupted by demands for me to fold laundry or clean out cat-litter, but that's OK, I have time.
I'm guessing that tomorrow morning when I wake up and realise that everyone's been at work for the past 3 hours, I will feel a twinge of something. I don't think it'll be regret, or even relief, maybe sheepishness and an odd parallel-universe type sensation where everything continues as it always did except I'm not there (my peter pan complex doesn't extend to that particular window though - they're welcome to close it and forget all about me. Especially since if they don't forget me it's probably because I forgot to do something and they're all mad at me).
I like to think that this time of slothism is a necessary process for me to hoard the energy needed to move countries and all that that entails. I do think though that the knowledge that everyone is back to work tomorrow, will guilt trip me into setting my alarm for around 10am and maybe also setting myself the task of beginning to filter through all my stuff to try and condense it down to a few suitcases within the BA weight allowance.
On the other hand maybe I'll just give myself one more day of sleeping until I want coffee enough to get out of bed... friends, don't hate me, I'll be back to working soon enough and all of this will be but a wonderful, long, slothful dream.
Solved it. For now.
(And have also just made pretty much every friend who is sat at their post-Christmas desk in a post-Christmas funk and reading this as a procrastination technique hate my guts. Sorry.)
It's weird. I am totally losing a grip on time - the way you do when you're on holiday and have nothing to think about other than tide times and sunscreen application - except unless you're on an interminable holiday, you're conscious of it ending in 7, 6, 5....days (Sarah, stop smirking). While I can assure you sunscreen application is not on my timetable (I'm living in leggings, leg-warmers, fluffy jumpers and fingerless gloves and don't move from the fireside unless forced to by my mother), and tide-times are only relevant in that when I'm in my parents' bedroom looking out, I can either see mud or water (it's an estuary), Time has never felt more abstract or less relevant.
I love it.
It's like a breaking free, a reclamation. I could spend the whole day walking down the stairs and it wouldn't matter. Bloody great waste of time and pretty damn boring (not to mention cold - there's not fireplace on the stairs) but I could. I haven't felt that way since exams ended in my third year at uni and the longest summer of all time stretched out before me.
So what am I doing with my time? I hear you ask. Well, so far, nothing much. I wake up, don various necessary layers of clothing and go downstairs to make a latte with my parents' fancy new coffee maker and sit in quiet while I wake up a little. It's generally too late for breakfast so I wait a few hours and then have lunch. Then, if I'm feeling adventurous, I might go with mum to walk the dog. Then I read some more (I've just finished David Mitchell's brilliant book 'Ghostwritten' and have now moved onto Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia', for which she got assassinated for), maybe blog, check email, snoop on facebook, cook dinner for the family, watch TV, read, facebook, email, sleep. If my mum's around then my day is interrupted by demands for me to fold laundry or clean out cat-litter, but that's OK, I have time.
I'm guessing that tomorrow morning when I wake up and realise that everyone's been at work for the past 3 hours, I will feel a twinge of something. I don't think it'll be regret, or even relief, maybe sheepishness and an odd parallel-universe type sensation where everything continues as it always did except I'm not there (my peter pan complex doesn't extend to that particular window though - they're welcome to close it and forget all about me. Especially since if they don't forget me it's probably because I forgot to do something and they're all mad at me).
I like to think that this time of slothism is a necessary process for me to hoard the energy needed to move countries and all that that entails. I do think though that the knowledge that everyone is back to work tomorrow, will guilt trip me into setting my alarm for around 10am and maybe also setting myself the task of beginning to filter through all my stuff to try and condense it down to a few suitcases within the BA weight allowance.
On the other hand maybe I'll just give myself one more day of sleeping until I want coffee enough to get out of bed... friends, don't hate me, I'll be back to working soon enough and all of this will be but a wonderful, long, slothful dream.
A Very Dibley New Year
Dibley (my parents' village, code-named here a) for descriptive purposes and b) in case of reprisals) is awesome. It is the anti-London in so many ways, most of them good, some of them hilarious, all of them peaceful and quiet.
Quiet that is, until there's any cause for celebration and then all is disrupted and raucous carousal ensues. This village, buried deep in the Tamar Valley, celebrates everything - from Burns Night to Wassailing to Apple Harvest - which means that when quiet does descend it's normally the result of the whole village having a hangover, or being off celebrating something else in a neighbouring hamlet. So while it might seem slightly strange that this year I ditched London in favour of a village with a population of 300, it was with good reason.
In fact, so confident was I of the new years offering here at Dibley, I got Sian, her boyfriend Marc and Marc's boyfriend Graham to ditch London for Dibley too. And it didn't let us down.
Dibley at New Year has an incredible sense of unity and community - the entire village goes to the pub and then, at 11.50 the pub gives everyone champagne and sends them to the church next door. No, you didn't misread, The Church. And there, in the church-yard, propping their tipsy selves up on 100 year old grave stones, while the bells ring the old year out and the new year in, everyone joins hands and makes up the words to Auld Lang Syne. Then goes back to the pub.
Incongruous though it may be, this tradition is somehow perfect and just thinking of it makes me feel philanthropic - something I don't think London ever made me feel. Because somehow at the heart of all Dibley Hullabaloo, there is a sense of calm confidence. Maybe it's the assurance of traditions or community enduring, or maybe it's just the fact that when you look up at night you see the stars rather than murky light pollution, but either way, celebrations in Dibley are somehow more frank and heartfelt than their cooler, glitzier city cousins.
The very best bit about a Dibley New Year is that on new years day, instead of festering in a bottle-strewn hangover pit, fires are lit, breakfast is readily available and the world outside has green fields and fresh air to offer as a cure. So off we went, Sian and I, pretending to be 10 again and tramping our way across fields, swinging across quicksand, skipping through swamps and clambering over trees while Marc and Graham (stuck being 28) trailed far behind.
And then I felt it. Quiet. I stood at the top of the hill, looking over the river, waiting for Marc and Graham to catch up, and felt entirely calm. No monsters asking to be fed, no heart pounding anxiety, not even a slight twinge of nervy sickness (I ignored the twinge of hangover), just quiet and the peaceful knowledge of the year's promise.
Have A Very Dibley New Year.
Quiet that is, until there's any cause for celebration and then all is disrupted and raucous carousal ensues. This village, buried deep in the Tamar Valley, celebrates everything - from Burns Night to Wassailing to Apple Harvest - which means that when quiet does descend it's normally the result of the whole village having a hangover, or being off celebrating something else in a neighbouring hamlet. So while it might seem slightly strange that this year I ditched London in favour of a village with a population of 300, it was with good reason.
In fact, so confident was I of the new years offering here at Dibley, I got Sian, her boyfriend Marc and Marc's boyfriend Graham to ditch London for Dibley too. And it didn't let us down.
Dibley at New Year has an incredible sense of unity and community - the entire village goes to the pub and then, at 11.50 the pub gives everyone champagne and sends them to the church next door. No, you didn't misread, The Church. And there, in the church-yard, propping their tipsy selves up on 100 year old grave stones, while the bells ring the old year out and the new year in, everyone joins hands and makes up the words to Auld Lang Syne. Then goes back to the pub.
Incongruous though it may be, this tradition is somehow perfect and just thinking of it makes me feel philanthropic - something I don't think London ever made me feel. Because somehow at the heart of all Dibley Hullabaloo, there is a sense of calm confidence. Maybe it's the assurance of traditions or community enduring, or maybe it's just the fact that when you look up at night you see the stars rather than murky light pollution, but either way, celebrations in Dibley are somehow more frank and heartfelt than their cooler, glitzier city cousins.
The very best bit about a Dibley New Year is that on new years day, instead of festering in a bottle-strewn hangover pit, fires are lit, breakfast is readily available and the world outside has green fields and fresh air to offer as a cure. So off we went, Sian and I, pretending to be 10 again and tramping our way across fields, swinging across quicksand, skipping through swamps and clambering over trees while Marc and Graham (stuck being 28) trailed far behind.
And then I felt it. Quiet. I stood at the top of the hill, looking over the river, waiting for Marc and Graham to catch up, and felt entirely calm. No monsters asking to be fed, no heart pounding anxiety, not even a slight twinge of nervy sickness (I ignored the twinge of hangover), just quiet and the peaceful knowledge of the year's promise.
Have A Very Dibley New Year.
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