The power of 3

This weekend was a rather pleasant one as weekends go. It could have been due to the weather being fricking glorious and it finally feeling like summer. It could have been due to the fact that it was the first weekend in ages where I didn’t have to log onto a computer and do any work. But it probably has most to do with the fact that my girls were in town! Yep, the holy trinity came together once more to drink, eat and talk utter rubbish.

The weekend began on Friday night, when I met up with some friends of mine who I hadn’t seen for a while. We were drinking cider which is always a bad sign, and the fact that lunch had consisted of a small salad and a banana and dinner had been 2 Nurofen plus should have set alarm bells ringing. Funtimes were had by all though. Especially when I started dancing round the pub to the music in my head. And when I fell off my bar stool several times. And I don’t remember this bit, but apparently I attempted to kiss one of my friends, who I actually have no interest in whatsoever. I don’t know what it is about alcohol that turns me into a lecherous old man. If it wasn’t for the wonderful A, I would never have made it home in one piece. I also have to give props to the two random strangers who stopped me on the tube on the way home to check if I was ok and helped me out. Boris may have stopped drinking on the tube, but as long as the pubs are allowed to serve fools who can barely speak, there will always be louts causing mayhem on the public transport system.

The rest of the weekend was much less drunken in comparison, but it was just divine to have my two most favourite people in the world both in the same room at the same time. We’ve been friends for almost 10 years now, but we’ve only ever lived in the same city for about 2.5 of those years. The second and third years at uni were spent in the same little village, be it Willamette or Keele, but after graduation, the time we’ve spent together has been appallingly little. Not because we were sick of the sight of each other or that we would gauge out each others eyeballs with a rusty spoon if we saw one other, but because of great big sodding oceans getting in the way. The year that I spent in the UK whilst the other two were still living it up in Japan was one of the longest and loneliest that I can remember.

For the past few years, we’ve actually all been in the same country, but hundreds of miles apart. Which might not be such a big deal for some people, but seeing as none of us can drive, it’s not as easy as that. Jobs, lack of money, other commitments and sheer un-organisation has meant that we only actually meet up about 3 or 4 times a year.

We talked about the crapness of having so many people who mean a lot to us not being in the same city or even country. We came up with the idea that when we win the lottery, we would buy a beautiful desert island and build houses for all our friends and families so that we could all live together in one place. (I’m not actually sure how this would happen as just a few minutes earlier, we’d been discussing how none of us even knew how to buy a lottery ticket. The Teacher actually said that they scared her.) I think that’s the one downfall of doing so much travelling and meeting so many incredible people along the way. You inevitably have to leave them. There are people for who I have endless amounts of love and respect, who live on the other side of the world. I know it can be nice to have international friends to visit on vacation, but I would gladly sacrifice the cheap holidays just to have them nearby. Just so I can call them up on a random Wednesday evening and suggest a meet up in the pub to talk about nothing and everything.

I miss not having my friends close by. Which is why I’m counting down the days to when the BFF’s finally see the light and move to London. If not for the culture and the restaurants and the shopping and the endless galleries and the museums, then for friendship, for home made dead moth cocktails and for belly laughs.

Queen of Procrastination

It's a lazy sunday afternoon, and I'm trying to put off doing some work, so I'm compiling some lists to pass the time. I'll try and spread them out over the next few days to make it a bit more interesting. First up, is a list of stuff I'd like to do at some point in my life. No, it's not a replacement todo - I won't feel a sense of failure should I never get round to doing these things. It's just a list of things that I think would be fun to try:

• Milk a cow (I saw this recently on the tellybox and I think it looks like it could be fun...)
  
• Stay a night in a lighthouse (this has always been a dream of mine. The actual dream is to have a radio station that I run from the lighthouse, but that's not as realistic as just trying to spend the night in one.)
  
• Skydive (I'm not sure if it's the idea of falling out of a plane, or the idea of being strapped to a great big hunk of a man and falling out of a plane...)
  
• Attend a pole dancing class (I've been looking at some classes near me, and have had confirmation from certain siblings that they would join me. A verbal contract is legally binding in my world.)
  
• Go to a football match (I can't believe I've never actually been to a football match in the UK. The only one I've been to is one in Japan, and I'm somehow guessing that polite clapping and instant ramen noodles don't feature quite so heavily in English games.)
  
• Have a colonic (Just because the whole concept intrigues me...)
  
• Change my hairstyle (yeah, not sure how realistic this last one is...)
  

It's a love/hate relationship

I heart the ghetto
Tuesday morning: I wake up late, but it’s ok as I only live 2 minutes from the tube station.

I don't heart the ghetto
Tuesday morning: I step out the front door and have to walk down the road avoiding the discarded chicken bones and empty beer cans that are littered across the street.

I heart the ghetto
Tuesday morning: some random stranger stops me outside the station and tells me I look pretty.

I don’t heart the ghetto
Tuesday morning: Despite being so far south that I'm practically in Brighton, I still don’t manage to get a seat on the tube and have to spend 30 minutes with someone’s grotty armpit in my face.

I heart the ghetto
Tuesday afternoon: my flatmate tells me that there’s been a “police incident” on our street and it’s all cordoned off, so we spend a few minutes emailing back and forth trying to guess which weirdo on our street is responsible. Is it the crazy woman with the gigantic knickers on her washing line, or the bald man who tells us he “knows people” so to call him if we need anything, or the couple across the road who have better public arguments and rows than anything the Eastenders script writers could dream up.

I don’t heart the ghetto
Tuesday afternoon: we hear a rumour that the police incident may be a stabbing on our street.

I heart the ghetto
Tuesday night: When I get home late, the supermarket is still open so I can buy myself a nutritious meal of super noodles with a tin of sardines. I may live in the ghetto, but I can still get my recommended daily allowance of Omega-3. Life is good.

Lyrics du jour

I've been listening non-stop to Los Campesinos! recently and as well as having the most gorgeous melodies in the whole wide universe, their lyrics are also to die for. I've posted some of them here to give you just a taster, but seriously, you need to check them out for yourself. They're Lush. With a capital L.

My year in lists:
You said "send me stationary to make me horny"
So I always write you letters in multicolours
Decorating envelopes for foreplay
Damn extended metaphors, I get carried away

We are all accelerated readers:
And there were conversations about what Breakfast Club character you'd be
I'd be the one that dies (no one dies)
Well then what's the point?

You! Me! Dancing!
And oh, if only there were clothes on the floor
I'd feel for certain I was bedroom dancing
And it's all flailing limbs at the front line
Every single one of us is twisted by design




ps. I'm also rather excited that I managed to embed this youtube video into the post. Hurrah! And you all laugh when I say that I work in IT!

What does a broccoli plant look like?

As a child, one of the things that we'd love to do in the summer was go strawberry picking. We'd all pile into the car with our own little plastic baskets and head off to the Yorkshire contryside to spend an hour or so trying not to get told off by some grumpy farmer for trampling all over his precious crops. We'd come back home tired, with red stains all over our t-shirts and knees and with baskets full of juicy fruit.

I was supposed to go into the office today to catch up with some work, but when I got a call from Sis#4 telling me that her and Sis#1 were going fruit picking, I couldn't resist.

Part of the fun of today was seeing how fruit and vegetables grow. I've always just gone into the supermarket whenever I want my fruit and veg. I couldn't tell you whether a courgette grows on a bush, or underground or on a tree. Nowadays, we're so far removed from the food production process that so many people have no idea how the things that we put in our bodies are made. It was amazing to actually pick our own peas and mange tout. We didn't have time to get round to the broccoli and cauliflower fields, so we're saving that for the next visit. In the meantime, I'm having a great time trying to imagine exactly how those things grow...

Find more pics here