eating 6 January 2010
I am on a train through a very snowy and brilliantly white Britain as I write. The countryside looks fairytale. Only problem is the man behind me who has just eaten a wrap with extraordinary gusto, then made a VERY loud phonecall and is now BREATHING with a whistly nose – I may be driven to kill, as I know he’s going all the way to the terminus on the journey as am I…
year 5 January 2010
My only real resolution for 2010 to to strive for utter fabulousness (and have a bloody good time while I am about it) – seems the best course of action to take. There are a few teething problems with the plan, not least of them the fact that my jeans are SO TIGHT now that I may have to take to wearing tents till the festive season’s unwelcome weight is shed…and who knows how long that will take!!!! I am dismayed at how quickly it lashed on, when it took so long to get off…Also this is my 4th week of snow and I am tad cheesed off with it now…it has followed me from its fortnight’s sway in Odessa, back to Birmingham for the disastrous Vill v Liverpool game (am still well reeling and downright sore about that defeat) over to Dublin and now back with me to the UK. ENOUGH ALREADY, I say…really now, enough IS enough…totally NOT utter fabulousness coming off any of that…
feed 4 January 2010
Well, the in-laws were around earlier (yesterday) for Sunday lunch and a fine time was had. I love putting a dinner up on the table for a pile of people – apparently I am a ‘Feeder’ (according to some on the SHAMELESS set) and if I had an inclination I could probably do up a good ‘I’m Irish it’s my answer to the Famine’ thesis. Anyhow, I really love spending time on a bit of cooking and I suspect I may be a tad more domesticated than I’d like to admit. However, aside from loading the dishwasher I am ill-inclined to do the clearing up, so imagine my delight when I strayed below stairs just now and found the house neater and cleaner than i have seen it in many a day – Himself has played a blinder! hooray- perhaps I don’t need a wife after all and He will do?…who’d a thunk it? Oh and it’s probably the moment to admit that I awoke in bed just now fully clothed with my ipod still stuck in my ears (though even it had stopped playing tunes) and Himself in the spare room cos of the ‘purring’ I was lashing forth…hmmm…dignity, dignity, always dignity…
mojo 2 January 2010
I guess it’s a combination of things but, between being home and the weight of 2009 being lifted, I find my Happy is back. Phew! To be honest, I was worried for a while that I had sunk too far and no amount of self-reasoning would lift me out of it. I hate the end of things, especially a year, and 2009 went a tad pear-shaped for me and some of my lovelies in the final throes so I was well cheesed off with it. Now, there’s a touch of vim and vigour returning and I feel slightly, well, dangerous….beware to youse all! Hopefully this returned pluckiness will last into Day 3 of 2010 and I’ll know it wasn’t just a flash in the pan…I am that ‘up’ I am going to walk into town in the snow and brave M & S and a few more stores…I know, I KNOW, this might be a step too far, too soon…ah hell, BRING IT!
eve 1 January 2010
I was at a wedding yesterday and glad of it. The couple who married hate New Year’s Eve in general as much as I do and decided to throw a doo to take the curse off it – a great day had by all – and, as was pointed out, they need never worry about forgetting their anniversary as it’s a fairly hard one to miss.
The snow has followed me to Dublin and is blanketing all in it’s path out there now. It’s a very pretty start to 2010, though the furry Odessan boots are in London presently as I didn’t think they’d be needed this side of the pond.
I’m delighted 2009 is consigned to history as it went wonky at the end (including one of my best friend’s cab being randomly shot at in Cape Town last night, windows shattered and a near miss with a 2.2 bullet!!) so here’s to a great new one…I feel kinda ready for 2010 so BRING IT!
Happy New Year to you all
dublin 30 December 2009
Well, I finally made it home ‘for Christmas’ today…a fortnight after I’d have liked to. Bless the Husband but I think he’ll listen to me next time I say I don’t want to be anywhere but in one of my own beds – Lord knows there are enough of them to choose from. The break in Odessa would have been much better taken in February, say, when the tv series is put to bed and there are no significant vacations for the world to be taking and family and friends to be with. On the plus side, some great boots got bought. Now to shed those pounds gained, having lost such a good lot of weight during 2009, I am dismayed how quickly so much has gone back on. I am giving myself a strict time limit to be able to get back into some very small costumes…eh, hang on, NO – that’s not me, that’ll be the fact I have to/must get back into some very small costumes next week – sigh…2009, you weren’t great in the end of all…
sleet 30 December 2009
I thought I had left snow behind in Ukraine – how wrong I was. I have just spent some hours in Birmingham being snowed on there (north of England, for those of you elsewhere in the world) – and insult insisted on accompanying its close cousin injury as I watched Liverpool snatch a late goal against my beloved football team Aston Villa to triumph and take the 3 precious points from the game. NOOOOO! Wrong, all wrong. At this time last year we lost 2 in a row, at a crucial moment leaguewise, and the season went very steeply and swiftly downhill from there – time to regroup and KICK ASS.
On a slightly plus-er side I am getting great milage out of the boots I had to buy in Odessa to deal with the snow there (having travelled in trainers expecting milder weather) so they sort of don’t owe me much now and may even have paid their way. And against all odds myself and Himself made the train back to London and are sitting quaffing a, not great but cold and wet, white wine and charting the weather – just passed Northampton, heading South, and it is merely raining now, not even sleeting…
2009 is near an end and I am not sure I’ll miss it all that much…
small hours 28 December 2009
Ah yes, must be time to go home then as the body decided to do its ‘wake up fully at 4 in the morning’ routine. In fairness to it, it thinks it is 6am as we are 2 hours ahead here in Ukraine still. As i type, an early morning Odessan light is creeping through the blinds and I can see all too clearly the vast mess of clothes, shoes and novel writing paperwork that must somehow be squeezed back into a small red case. I’m not sure where the exit bit of my tourist entry form to the country is so I amy be staying here indefinitely. I’m also having those jolts of remembering all the things not done before we left. I am expecting that every plant in the Dublin house will be dead of drought because watering them is one of the things Richard never thinks to do even when I remind him to, unless someone else has noticed their plight and given them a drop of juice?? That house is destined to have no ‘sundry’ living things in it for a while…no cat(s), no plants (I would fear for the survival of even a cactus at this stage) but some day we’ll get back to all of that. And I have forgotten to buy train and plane tickets for imminent UK travel all through this week so they’ll be nice and expensive when I get around to them later. Yeah…time to go back to bed as, to misquote Scarlett O’Hara, ‘today IS another day!’
philharmonic 26 December 2009
We went to a great night of live music at the Philharmoinc here in Odessa tonight. It was a night of music from ‘The Movies’ and included lots of John Williams – modern classics, in other words – but also Isaak Dunaevsky from the 1930s which I loved and had never heard…quite jazzy and jolly, and fantastic really. All under the baton of the brilliant Hobart Earle who also took time to tell us that it’s Mozart’s birthday tomorrow – I rather suspect that if that truly genius brat (Wolfgang Amadeus) – was alive today he too would be writing film music!
verandah 25 December 2009
Well, how odd is my Christmas? I got up at 9 and did my homework, went to 2 hours of Russian class (with the lovely Tatiana who really did despair of my not grasping the third group of verbs and their roots and conjugation – or ‘conjuring’ as I am so glad she called it cos there is an element, far as I am concerned, of wanting MAGIC to happen that you might remember sounds, verbs, words ANYTHING in this language! A fine lunch in Verandah (duck – you’ll not find turkey here, I don’t think) and now we are checking out some bars mentioned on a Russian site citing (see? SEE what I did there???) bars and restaurants to visit in Odessa and much more updated than any of the ones in English.
So, to report on another we found last night – an ‘Art Cafe’ that had lots of recently published books, including a version of Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN, in a handsome edition, and a Gunther Grass whom I haven’t read in any other language BUT here’s the kicker – I read the 2 first lines in Russian and recognised tenses, cases, words and nearly SO nearly got what was being said!! By the way, the hardbacks were selling at 12 grv which is JUST over a euro…value for money or what!
Have a great day to all those who celebrate it and to all others ‘have a good time…ALL the time’ (spinal tap)