Paved in Gold

“London streets are paved in Gold”

I lived in London from the age of 7 and all the time I was there I never saw the streets paved in gold. In fact like most people that live in London, I didn’t see what was really going on or if I did, I just walked passed.

I have returned a number of times with my husband and children, but we are always on our way to somewhere else.  So seizing the opportunity with both hands I took the 3.06 to London, camera tucked under my arm and tripod thrown over my shoulder, I was ready for what the streets of London had to offer.  I just needed one more thing.  My best friend and partner in crime the lovely MP who still lives in London and has done ever since we were kids. 

We walked 4 hours and took photo’s as we went, we only covered a small section, but it was so lovely, to breath in the cold crisp air, watched as the tug boats silently glide down the river, even at 9 the streets of the city were so alive, they may not have been paved in Gold, but there was so much going on, the young lady with her running shoes on, Ipod music in her ears as she pounded the street with her secret smile that didn’t reveal her thoughts. The busy man in his pin stripe suit coming out of the office heading off for his weekend. The young couple snuggled on the step watching the world go by and even the tramp, housed in his newspaper home under the arches seemed to have a purpose.

It was the first time in about 15 years that I had actually stopped and watched what London had to offer and on this cold January evening the roads to me were indeed paved in gold. 

Christmas Cards

Each year we are very lucky, not only do we get a lot of Christmas cards at home but from work as well. Some of them are from the local shops and have just the normal sentiments but others have been handpicked but all have been sent with such love and care.  The same can be said of Anniversary cards, Valentines cards, Easter cards (but not so many now the kids have grown up) and of course the very worthy Birthday card (of which we have 5 birthdays each year in our house)

As I reclaimed the Christmas cards from the shelves, hanging off the banisters and of course the card garland, my mind began to wonder……… Instead of throwing these away (sorry recycle) what could I do with them?

When the boys were little, I was given a template of a Christmas/party hat made from Christmas cards – which was excellent and they loved helping cut out the shapes and gluing them together.  But now that they are grown up, what should I do with them this year?   This led me to searching and searching the internet for ideas, they came up with the same old ideas time and time again of turning them into gift tags for the following year (which I have done before, but ended up putting them somewhere and not finding them until the Christmas period was well and truly over). Sticking them into a book to look back on – which I have also done before, but then they just sit up in the loft to gather dust, and as I have promised the husband that I would reduce the clutter that sits in our loft this year, I didn’t feel I could create another book of cards.

One website did catch my eye “Major Inspirations” on Sunday November 14 2010 they had posted a suggestion that I had not thought of (and I do apologise to those that knew about this all along) The Holiday Wreath or in my words – the 2011 Christmas Wreath. 

Great Excitement….. All I needed to do now was to get my husband to draw a template of a holly leaf and I could begin.

However, my little girl thought it was a great idea the Christmas hat and promptly sat herself down on the floor with Christmas cards and started crafting the 2011 Christmas hat – I do have to say that she made a lovely job of it and now with what’s left we will start on the Christmas wreath. 

  

This all stands us in good stead for our Make Shift Christmas of 2012. The only thing I will need to think about is the crackers……. But thankfully 2012 Christmas is a long way off. 

Goals

Full stop – Here ends 2011 and 2012 is an open page that we are to write on.

As a child growing up the Christmas period was always such fun and the days between Boxing Day and New Year my mother would encourage me to sit down and think about what “ New Year Resolutions” I might make for the coming year.  I would do this with such promise and determination, however two or three days into the New Year I would have broken at least one of them and by the end of the month all hope had gone out of the window.  It wasn’t until I got much older that I realised that I wasn’t failing on purpose, but that I might need to be looking at these resolutions from a different perspective. 

So having spent the summer months reading “How To Do Everything and Be Happy” and going over the shrewd words of Peter Jones, I sat down and drew up 6 New Year’s resolutions that I felt would make improvements to myself and my family.  I then changed their name from Resolutions to Goals, which could be achieve throughout the year and as long as I didn’t give up on them, but kept trying, I should be successful.

1.   Get Family Sorted

2.   Lose Weight

3.   Decorate

4.   Work

5.   Photo’s

6.   More Time

But as you can see from my list they are a little ambiguous and could be a list of anything for anyone, and this is where Peter’s wise words came into practice – I needed to make each of the goals more personal, each goal needed a step by step achievement plan of its own and in this way when I felt that I failed my goals or that I might as well give up I could look back at what I had achieved and in doing so this would propel me forward to achieving the required end result.

So hopefully the fact that I have sat down with each of my resolutions and transformed them into goals with simple sections to achieve until the final result and that I had taken a couple of hours to hone them to my requirements and planned that once a month I will go over these goals and see how I am doing and what improvements I can make – I hope to find that in 366 days time I having achieved at least one of this year’s goals if not all of them.

To those of you that have set yourself your goals and resolutions I wish you all the success with them.

Funeral

There are many times in one’s life, where you might find yourself, wondering about how your life is going and do you really matter or make any sort of a difference.  Today I found myself wondering such a thing – Not because I was finding that my depression had started kicking in again but as I sat between my husband and daughter in the second row of the Crematorium listening to a chosen few, say how much of an impact a certain beloved uncle, father and husband had had upon their lives.  I wondered if today had been my funeral, what would people say about me?

As I sat listening to friends and family relate stories of how Stuart had made them laugh, held their hand when they weren’t certain and been the rock that they could always lean on no matter the problem, I began to realise that maybe I didn’t know the man as well as I may have hoped.  That he wasn’t just the Jolly Uncle with the big white beard (that on the odd occasion resembled Father Christmas).  But to other people he had become so much more, and in doing these things Stuart had lead what could only have been a full and happy life.  No one’s life is a complete bed of roses, and just like every other person that you might wish to name, he had his health problems, times when things might not have been going as well as they could of.  But amidst all of this Stuart had always tried to be a good friend a loving husband and a wonderful and carrying father.  Furthermore I really don’t think that a person can ask for more.

So when my day does come and someone is standing up before my coffin and re-sighting tales about me, I hope I have proved to be at least as half as good, loving, wonderful and carrying person as Uncle Stuart had been in his life.

He was a very large man that everyone loved, cared for him and will now find that they have a large hole in their lives, that once this wonderful man had stood.

Dearest Stuart you will always be missed, but never forgotten

xxxx

Now List - 16 December 2011

Today is my birthday, as a child I loved the fact that my birthday was so close to Christmas, as people were in such high spirits and only too eager to help me celebrate, but as the years passed and my Adult years took over – my birthday being so close to Christmas became a pain.  We never seemed to have enough money in the house as I had concentrated too much on Christmas presents and helping Santa with his parcels. 

For the last 3 birthday’s I’ve taken the day off work, to spend time at home, only to find myself being nursemaid to my three children and husband who for some strange reason each year came down with horrible flu. So with the days counting down I really wasn’t holding out much hope for any kind of celebration.

However, 7am this morning, husband and children entered the bedroom in loud chorus of Happy Birthday and clutching an a ray of present in their arms.  What a wonderful surprise to wake to.  A new pair of earrings and a ring tree from my little girl – Jamie’s Great Britain recipe from  my middle child and the eldest had bought me the  Christmas Album by Michael Bublé.  My wonderful husband gave me two gifts – A heavy duty tripod that I’ve been looking at for ages and he gave me the gift of being able to knock off a item from my Now List.

I’ve given up counting how many times my family have been to Madam Tussauds and on each occasion over the years for one reason or another I have been unable to go as well – I’d heard many tales from the children about the wonderful statues  that  they had seen and have photographed.

Visiting Madam Tussauds had been high on my “Now List” hence you can imagine my delight as we drove to London and the car came to a halt outside said attraction. I couldn’t believe that it took us two hours to get around the exhibition, but I suppose the amount of times I exclaimed with delight someone else I’d seen and just must have a photo with helped with the amount of time we were there.  Only this week Madam Tussauds had added Colin Firth, Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet to their list of stars, each a must have a photo with.  The fact that we didn’t have the children with us, allowed us to visit the Scream section – a display and interaction of the macabre activities of the human race and some of them were quite fiendish.  The latest section that has been added to the exhibition was the cartoon strip “Marvel” and before departing the building we were witness to a 5 minutes 4D comic strip – So not only were we watching the wonders of Spiderman The Hulk etc but they were jumping out of the screen at us and movement of any time was enhanced with the movement of our chairs.  The amount of time the wind blew and we were drizzled with water, poked in the back and had to duck from flying debris just added to the audience delight.

I’ve had a wonderful day and thank my husband and three brilliant children for making it such. 

Flirt

I cannot deny that I am a middle aged woman

I work in an office of one (me), which is situated at the bottom of a garden of a very large house, apart from me there is the housekeeper and the gardener.  We three meet over a cup of coffee or tea each lunch time as each of our jobs take us to different aspects of the house.  The boss, he spends most of his working day in and around London and only returns when the work is done.

So my only real connection with the outside world 9.30-5.30 is via phone or email.  Very rarely does anyone visit the house and should this occasion arise we always have at least a weeks’ notice.

Over the last couple of months I’ve had the need to communicate with a certain young man and even though our emails have always been friendly and jovial todays became somewhat flirtatious – believe it or not over a missing pencil.  The emails were banded back and forth with a small comment here and a cheeky remark there. Until it dawned on me that this young man did not realise that I am a happily married women and mother of 3.

As I giggled to myself walking to the ladies room – how a little bit of harmless flirting is good for the soul, however, upon looking at myself in the mirror I thanked god that all communications had been via email. – Because before me stood a much haggard person than I remembered.  The unkempt eyebrows, the long hair that once was my crowning glory, now no longer shined but instead showed vivid signs of grey and really needed someone to take a sharp pair of scissors and create some style and body into it, my eyes that wore no make-up shouted at the world how little sleep I’ve been having of late. And the once youthful skin now was dry and screamed out for moisture and all this really did actually tell my true age.

Oh well the happy thought had boosted myself esteem for a short while.

Of Mice and Men

You know how you plan something to the nth degree and they still go wrong – Should you scream or should you laugh?

I’ve had my two day break planned for the last 3 months, right down to the finer details and for it to crumble in front of my very eyes and have no option but to just let it happen.  As far as I could see it, there were only two options, one cry over the spilt milk or two, just let it run its course?  Had this happened to me 3 weeks ago or more – a very large black cloud of doom and gloom would have taken over my world and predicted the end of life as we once knew it.  Thankfully things have improved a lot since then and I can rationalise things so much easier.

So the fact that I wasn’t going to London after all to visit family, celebrate my grandmothers 89^th birthday and then to meet up with a friend and spend a couple of hours taking photos of London by night (an activity that is sitting on my “Now List”), – or have the luxury of having a posh hotel room to myself before making my merry way to “Bluewater” the following day to have a new shopping experience and lunch with my best friend.

It didn’t knock me off course, just opened doors for other things to happen instead.

So instead I managed to have coffee with a friend at her wonderful shop, which gave me a chance to make a bracelet for my daughter’s Christmas stocking and to get my hands on some rather fantastic wool.  Cook the Christmas cake, bottle the mincemeat, finish off some decopatch decorations and still manage to have a lovely fish and chip supper with my husband. Even though Friday didn’t bring me “Bluewater” it did bring me Guildford (a place I haven’t visited since the very early days of dating my husband) so almost a new place to me, and the best friend and I did stop for coffee and cake and a little later lunch, we did manage to purchase some very different Christmas presents for the family, that had we not visited Guildford we would not have been able to (which has to be a major plus in my book). Our evening was a great success of wonderful food, great company and a good laugh, before heading our way to bed, in ready anticipation for the coming day.

Saturday brought us a return visit to London, where myself and the three best school friends meet on a very regular basis, to drink good wine, enjoy delicious  food, swap stories from the previous month, rake up the good old times when we were young and the world seemed to be a much better place.  Even this Saturday was to be different, we four managed to step outside the confines of Victoria Station and Garfunkel’s, to venture across the road (well we wouldn’t want to go too far from the norm) to Prezzo a lovely two storey Italian restaurant where the food and wine so surpassed that of Garfunkel’s, but thankfully the company and the day was as brilliant as usual. 

As I get older, each day I thank god for my wonderful friends that are always there for me  (no matter the distance in miles) – Just a phone call away  and I know would be by my side should the need every arise, without a 2^nd thought.   These friends I have made many years ago when we were small and the world seemed such an adventure and we were all too eager to explore them – now we sit reminiscing of the things we once tried, and many a time laugh at the outcome.  We have seen boyfriends come and go (and a few husbands), stood proudly by each other’s sides as we said our words of love to the men in our lives.  Exclaimed with much joy as our children arrived into the world, (and even became God parents to a few), and now middle age is upon us, and we listen to friends tell how they have lost, close friends and loved ones and we thank god that we 4 are still as close today as we ever where.