Tag Archives: Life in the UK

London Love…Fab Finchley

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It’s been a little while since I shared a Fab Finchley foray with you so here’s the post to remedy that.

Yesterday I was off for a visit to the physiotherapist. While not the first physiotherapist I have ever encountered, it was in fact the first visit to this particular one who lives a short stroll away on the other side of my local park.

So last night I set off in the warm sunshine (yes still very warm at ten minutes to six o’clock) and before long my strolling took me across Victoria Park. London has been blessed with a few glorious weeks of summer (the newspapers are calling it a heatwave *guffaw*) and the park was dotted with people making the most of the weather – kids, runners, families, dog walkers. It seemed that everyone was moseying around the paths, enjoying a moment on a shaded bench or sprawling on the grass beneath the bright blue sky.

I had walked almost entirely across the park when I was struck by how vibrant and lush it looked. It wasn’t that there were loads of flowers out as there are at other times (I found my first daffs of the season here) but it seemed that everywhere I looked was literally vibrating with energy and colour.

Stopped in my tracks by the beauty of this scene, I turned around to see this.

 

I smiled quietly to myself. For a few moments I stood there, taking it all in, before turning back and heading on to my appointment.

And it reminded me once again how much I love living here.


ps…regular Gidday-ers maybe wondering about the lack of birthday posting since the big day on August 1st. It’s been a busy ol’ time but rest assured I’ll be updating you soon…

Nothing Happens When You Hide…

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During the first part of my commute this morning (ie. the bus) I opened emails to find my daily snippet from Seven Sentences waiting to inspire me. Today’s headline – to not dream is to not live – seemed a little clichéd at first but as I read on, my interest grew:

“…it’s no fun to hide…it’s important to realize no one is actually looking for you.”

This was quite a grounding statement to be hit with at 6.45am. And then there was this:
 

Nothing happens when you hide…the world is simply getting older.”


Being on the cusp of birthday number 44, that rang very true. But what rang even truer was this:

“Waiting to be discovered is essentially a form of hiding. Just be you, celebrate who you are and take authentic risks every day.”


This didn’t resonate just because my big day’s tomorrow (and regular Gidday-ers know how I love to celebrate).

You see, I have been offered an exciting promotion and it was all announced at work on Monday. The congratulations have been a mix of ‘well done’, ‘I’m happy for you’, ‘you’ll be great at it’ and ‘you deserve it’, a wonderful acknowledgement of my last two and a half years in my role. I feel proud and moved, thrilled and humbled by it all.

Then I received an email that reminded me of something else. The journey.

I sat at my desk in the quiet of the early morning office and as I read each of the words, I remembered the ‘dream’ of working overseas, a dream that I had forgotten I had ever declared. But this someone reminded me that so long ago I had shared it and through all of life’s ups and downs, the highs and lows, joys and sorrows, here I was living the ‘dream’. That with hard work and a bit of risk-taking, I had somehow charted my course and ended up where I’d dreamt I would.

And as my eyes filled, I remembered something else.

That there’s no hiding from the people who love and know you best. And that is a remarkable thing.

Because when you hide, love doesn’t happen either.



Ye Olde Bucket List…Part Two

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With the previous night’s Shakespearean sortie under my belt, on Sunday I added another satisfied tick to Ye Olde Bucket List by visiting Lord’s.

Lord’s is the home of cricket. It’s located in North London and as my local bus goes right by on its way down to Victoria Station, you can get a glimpse of the Nursery Ground over the wall. So it was with much anticipation I arrived at the gates with friend The Umpire to see Australia versus England in the second Ashes test.

With England leading by about 500 runs from the first three days of play (for those of you who don’t know your cricket, test matches can go for five days), I had little hope of an Aussie victory but the Ashes series is an age-old contest between our two nations and when in Rome London, Lord’s is what one must do.

Australia got an absolute shellacking. No surprise there given recent performances. But it was a great day. Lots of sporting banter, a cricket umpire as a companion (to answer all my inane cricketing questions), some really fabulous weather and a goodly selection of vittels to keep us sustained: what more could a person want?

Oh yeah. A few more runs on the board.

Here are a few pics of my Big Cricket Day Out.

The first one’s of yours truly, mainly to prove not only that I was there but also to demonstrate that England is actually having a Summer (note the blue sky behind the hat and sunglasses).



Fans had travelled from across the world to stand sit shoulder to shoulder and support their team.

The emergence of the players at 11am…England was STILL batting.

This is the Grace Gate, the official players entrance. It’s Grade II heritage listed – that happens a lot in London.

And this is the Big Vacuum Cleaner, ready to suck up all the rubbish it could find. Just kidding. It’s actually the media centre.

And in true form, the banter was everywhere. Even on the back of the dunny toilet door.

 

And that, my dear Gidday-ers, was Lord’s and another tick made on Ye Olde Bucket List.

Speaking of ticking things off, never fear peeps. I’m still ticking off the days until the very fabulous  birthday celebration of yours truly. Just 7 sleeps to go…

Ye Olde Bucket List…Part One

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It’s been a busy few days since my last post and I’ve been having a rather splendid time enjoying some of what the English do best…namely Shakespeare and sporting banter. So you lucky, lucky Gidday-ers get two posts.

I know. Two for the price of one. That’s got to be an offer you can’t possibly refuse.

Macbeth came first.

To provide a little context for this rather tragic inclusion on ye olde bucket list, all of that ‘double double toil and trouble’ stuff has been running around in my head since High School when I studied the play as part of the English curriculum in Year 11 and then revisited it in Year 12 English Literature.

And the fun didn’t stop there. Lo and behold, Macbeth was also the Shakespearean text in my first semester of literature at University. That’s three times in three years. The Merchant of Venice the following term was a breath of fresh air.

Anyway I’ve never actually seen the play. Ever. Not even a movie adaptation.

So on Saturday night I settled into my seat at The Phoenix Cinema (my lovely local) and watched a live transmission from the Manchester International Festival. Kenneth Branagh co-directed (with Rob Ashford) and took the leading role with Alex Kingston (of ER fame) as Macbeth’s lady wife by his side.

The set wasn’t a theatre but a deconsecrated church so the live audience sat either side of the central aisle and watched the action unfold…on the grassy verge in the middle. The rains came down, battles were won and lost, murder most foul committed and vengeance served in the end.

It was absolutely brilliant, Branagh was breath-taking…

…and Macbeth finally got ticked off the bucket list.

But the weekend wasn’t yet over.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know what else got ticked off.

A Marilyn Moment…

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London is officially having a heatwave.

(It does make me chuckle at the thought of a mere 32C sending weatherpeople and policymakers into paroxysms of fear and foreboding, causing them to issue warnings to the old, young and mums-to-be.)

London does not do heat well. Its narrow streets swelter and arterial roads melt, its transport system buckles and its buildings steam, constructed to retain rather than dispel the heat. People visibly droop as the mercury rises and breeze is a rare thing on days such as these.

Which is why I stood my ground this morning.

I got to the station a few minutes earlier than my normal train courtesy of what I like to call a ‘fast bus’ (one where not many people make it stop and/or get on). I heard the speaker crackle heralding news that the next train wasn’t stopping. I had been standing in the shade, positioned where the door usually ends up when my train stops.

Rather than step back as I’m usually wont to do, I stood still, flattened my palms against my light summer skirt and as the train raced past, I let the breeze swirl around me.

I felt my body sigh in sheer relief.

It was all over in under a minute but my Marilyn moment stayed with me all day.


Even now it makes me smile.

ps…and speaking of smiling, my smile will be getting bigger and bigger as my special day approaches. Just 15 sleeps to go peeps…

Questioning The Benefits…

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I watched a television show this week that explored the benefits system here in the UK which pitted public opinion against the benefits culture.

I’ve never been on benefits although I have been in the position of scrimping to pay my bills and feed myself as the result of my job being made redundant at the end of 2008 followed by the a**e falling out of the job market in 2009. So as everything from the weekly grocery shop to the job hunting behaviour was scrutinised, I did have some sympathy. But I was definitely on the side of the tax payer who was stunned to see how cavalier other people were being with ‘my money’.

One of the people receiving benefits was a young guy on the dole who had graduated from University with his degree. He received a visit from a tax-paying nurse who works long hours to earn the money she needs to get by. She asked some pretty tough questions and pointed out to him that his situation in having a supportive family – living rent-free with an aunt and uncle who also co-fund things like his iPhone bill – surely meant that he should be working to contribute, albeit at something that might not reflect his degree qualification.

Granted, this guy only received something in the order of £3,600 per year and was doing some volunteer work at the local Youth Centre but in doing the job-hunting rounds of the retailers in the town centre, there was very little enthusiasm demonstrated around find a job to pay his way, let alone fund his hi-tech paraphernalia or brand-name shoes. He’d worked his way through Uni and he felt he should wait for a career job.

I remember leaving Uni in 1991, a rare (for then) duo of degrees in hand, expecting that my choice to double the workload and fees over my four years of study would yield the kind of career prospects I’d been promised when I had first enrolled. I had worked to pay my way throughout and also had a mountain of debt to pay back at the end.

As I sent off applications, phoned recruitment officers and generally chased as many opportunities as possible, time after time I was met with ‘you’re over qualified and under-experienced’, something I found – and still find – to be a ridiculously circular argument. (How can a graduate with any promise get the essential experience for an ‘entry level’ position in their chosen career?) So after leaving my put-myself-through-Uni job, I worked as receptionist, then moved to a sales admin role with a sales brokerage firm six months later and worked my way into my marketing career from there. Life being what it is, I have found myself back ‘at Reception’ several times, temping to make ends meet after moving to London. But that’s a whole other story.

It’s been demoralising each time and there was many a time I thought to myself, what am I doing and how did I get here after all that hard work? But I always wanted to earn rather than receive the handout. Quite frankly, it also kept me sane: to be learning about a new business and meeting new people rather than dwelling on the situation I was in.

There’s a big part of me that can ‘see’ the logic in waiting and taking what one can get. And I understand the disappointment of feeling that years of hard work to get a qualification is being overlooked or even dismissed. But I am pretty put out that my taxes are paying for his gadgets. I’ve blogged about ‘entitlement’ before so I won’t get on my soapbox (for now anyway) – maybe the fault also lies in a system that is ill-equipped to validate need versus ease.

What do you think? Is there anywhere that has gotten this right?
 

Cut To The Heart…

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I love my street. It is a wonderful street to live in. It’s chock full of old semi-detached houses with amazing architecture, intricate decorative detail and gorgeous leadlight windows which come alive when I walk along the footpath at night.


During the day, it’s a leafy avenue lined with a magnificent array of trees that signal the passing seasons with their colour and bloom. And there’s a particular tree that signals the entrance to Gidday HQ. It’s verdant boughs cast a familiar shape across the sky as I gaze out of the window from my lazy-weekend-morning pillow and I’ve watched it transform from stripped bare to a riot of pink blossoms to its recent coat of rich, deep red.


So I was devastated to arrive home one evening last week to find this.

Finchley Council…not so fabulous!

The Month That Disappeared….

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It’s the last day of June. The longest day here has passed and we are halfway through the year already. The last time I looked I was blogging ad infinitum about my Paris city break and looking forward to seeing Seattle-A for the first time in about 7 months.

What happened to the last 4 weeks?

Well it’s been a busy month jam packed with travel near and far. As regular readers of this blog will know, I spent a week in the Emerald City with Seattle-A at the beginning of the month. I then returned to Gidday HQ for four days – during which time I squeezed in a hen day (yes a whole day) – before travelling to Sweden for our mid year Sales Conference. Back again for 2 nights before packing yet another bag and heading to Oxford for previously said hen’s nuptials. Add to that some long hours at work last week and I literally dragged myself into this weekend, grateful for a little decompression time (and a well-earned mani-pedi).


At the same time, the busy-ness has been wonderful. It feels a bit like a whole lot of great things crammed themselves into the month as a reminder of all of the amazing people that give richness and colour to my life.

The wedding was a case in point: a French woman marrying her Russian paramour and surrounded by a veritable league of nations as the intimate reception of thirty played host to French, Russian, English, American, German, Turkish, Italian, Kyrgyzs (I had to look up what to call someone from Kyrgyzstan) and Australian (that would’ve been me) well-wishers. And working for the European division of a global company meant that the sales conference was attended by a cross-section of my extremely awesome colleagues from across the continent (and indeed the world by virtue of us having an American boss).

But maybe the biggest cultural exchange was in Seattle. 

Pre-trip it is safe to say that a mild sense of apprehension prevailed as to how my life-long, self-imposed baby-free zone would work when confronted with 9 week old twins. Seattle-A and I had discussed several contingency plans – including fleeing across the nearby border to Vancouver (me that is) – if it all got a bit much. But those two little dudes manage to melt Aunty Kym’s heart in the space of just one week.

This is Rockin’ R. Many a cosy chat was held with Aunty Kym during burping, cuddling and even sleeping…although he was a little perturbed as to why the bumps on my chest, so similar to Mummy’s, didn’t emerge at feeding time in the same way…

And this is DJ O, named for his penchant for playing tunes on the interactive baby bouncer. He’s attached to Mummy in a very possessive and singular fashion so this was a short lull in his squirming wriggly-ness where he wasn’t letting the whole world know how life was sucking in Aunty Kym’s embrace…not so many close encounters but still adorable.

All the while I got to hang out with my gorgeous friend, absorbing as much us-time as I possibly could to sustain me until the next visit. We had a few excursions with the little dudes in tow with varying degrees of success (especially our last day lunch, which DJ O was having none of!) Thanks to Hubby, we also got a glorious Sunday afternoon together for coffee, manicures, pedicures, wine tasting and a rather pleasant lunch lolling about in the sunshine at the J. Bookwalter Tasting Studio before heading home to BBQ a whole Copper River salmon (Seattle-A is that kind of girl!)

There was even a touch of drama when G the wonder-dog gave spirited chase to a coyote who’d wandered by to check things out on my penultimate day.

It was such a wonderful week. There’s is something so soothing about being with the people who know and love you best. And I never thought I would become so attached to my awesome little dudes so I hope it’s not too long before I can manage another trip to see them all. Who knew that Aunty Kym would survive baby bootcamp (albeit sans nappy-changing) so well? And that my cuppa-making skills would be quite so in demand?

In any case, it was an emotional hug in the drop off lane at the airport on the Tuesday evening.

So that was June. Gone in the blink of an eye and yet leaving a montage of special memories impressed firmly upon my heart.

I wonder what July will bring?

Inspired By…Literary Notes

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Today I worked in London and Wednesdays in London mean one thing – Stylist magazine. And as I picked up today’s issue, I noticed that it was dedicated to all things literary. Double yay!

So once ensconced on the tube, I delved in, eagerly gorging on snippets and opinions, greedily flicking through recommendations and wondering how many of the ones I hadn’t read would be available to download onto Audrey (and when on earth I would get the time to read them).

I was just over halfway through the magazine when I had ‘a moment’.

Part of this week’s issue has been turned over to four authors invited to write short stories inspired by a summer scent. On the basis of Oscar de la Renta’s Granada, Jeanette Winterson penned Days Like This, a tale of summer romance, of two hearts finding a brief respite from life in the implicit promise of balmy nights and days filled with salt, sand and sea. Quite a lovely thing to read on a sunny June morning.

I was nearing the end of the story when I read this:

…I know that happiness is in the small things that happen everyday and not in the big declarations. Don’t say forever. Say now. Don’t say I do. Say I am.

I stopped, looked up from the page and then looked down again, re-reading those words with a new intensity, determined to imprint them on my brain.

Now
I am
The small things that happen everyday

I closed the magazine, savouring the seconds of stillness that encircled me amid the crush of midweek commuters. A couple of stops later I trundled off the carriage, feeling a little lighter than I had when I boarded half an hour earlier.

Who knew that commuting could be so inspiring?

Women Of Note…

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I read a snippet today that got me wondering.

Ruth Sunderland of the Daily Mail has suggested that the appearance of high profile women on bank notes here in Britain will bolster female interest in the engineering profession. 

Those that have received a guernsey in the proposed Womens’ Engineering Society (WES) campaign include crusader of the skies Amy Johnson and doyen of the digital Ada Lovelace. Sunderland suggests that the appearance of women such as this right at our fingertips could help to inspire young women thinking of a career in the engineering industry, or even the banking sector.

If you head on over to the source of all this inspiration, you’ll find out that WES is an organisation that supports women in technical professions. Formed by the women who took up engineering during WWI while the men were away, the WES will celebrate its 95th anniversary next year and in looking for ways to attract women into non-traditional roles, they will launch National Women in Engineering Day on 23rd June 2014, 100 years to the day after the start of WWI.
 
Further wiki-style investigation has led me to understand that, apart from Elizabeth II, the only other woman appearing on English bank notes has been Florence Nightingale who did the rounds on a tenner between 1975 and 1994.

Australian lolly fares better with the fairer sex featuring on 50% of bills. There’s warbler and sweet inspiration Nellie Melba, two Mary’s – Reibey, a businesswoman and Gilmore, a poet – and a couple of suffragettes (Edith Cowan and Catherine Helen Spence).

And then if you flip an Aussie fiver, you’ll find one of the two women who have held the royal reins longer than any fella in British history. She’s had an upgrade on the new polymer notes having only made her mark previously on paper of just one dollar denomination. The previous five dollar note featured champion of female immigrant welfare, humanitarian Caroline Chisholm.

Anyhow, I digress. It got me thinking who might appear on currency of the future. Would Angelina Jolie’s humanitarian efforts garner her a spot on a greenback? What about Claire Balding, one of Britain’s best sports reporters, beaming up at you from a British bill?  And then there’s Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female Prime Minister – how will she be honoured by her world of back-biting back benchers and odious Opposition?

Who do you think should get their bonce on your banknote?