Promoted

Yesterday I heard I had been promoted to a very senior level. It was very exciting and I felt very proud of what I have accomplished in the last four years in my work and also in my life.

It was never about a title or a salary, it was about having the courage to change my life and I’m incredibly proud of being able to do that. When I left my life in LA almost five years ago, it was always about taking a leap of faith to see what awaited me on the other side. And as it’s turned out, the other side has been a very good decision!

I cycled home in the dark and cold feeling quite emotional and celebrated with a bottle of Champagne with Big T and the Little Dog!

You Say You Want a Revolution

This week we went on a creative excursion to the V&A in London. 

The exhibition, You Say You Want a Revolution, was an experience of the late 60s covering fashion, music, graphics, politics and film.

you-say-you-want-a-revolution

It was one of the best exhibitions I’ve been to in a long time and was a huge curation. We took the audio tour which combined music from the era with video installations and it seemed as though we were transported back to the late 1960s.

It’s hard to describe the experience but I found it incredibly moving. At the end of the exhibition was a film collage of the last forty years. I felt my life flashing before my eyes as it seemed to reflect everything I had experienced through the decades and into the new century, having been born at the end of the 1960s.

And the sad thing was that what had started as optimism in the 60s has ended as consumerism as we acquire more material possessions and have lost interest in the common good, world peace and other messages from the era.

A final quote on the wall from Noam Chomsky summed it up…
“Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.”

I walked out of the exhibition feeling overwhelmed, tears in my eyes as I listened to the music of John Lennon as he sang Imagine. 

A profound experience and one which I would highly recommend.

Sparkling Frost

It’s become much colder this week, a high of a balmy four degrees forecast for today. Brrr!

We went out this morning to walk the little dog and found a blanket of white sparkling frost covering the park. The sky was blue and the sun was a low golden ball on the horizon. Our breath was steaming as was the little dog’s morning poo!

While it is cold, it’s absolutely beautiful and I continue to enjoy one of the most stunning Autumns I’ve experienced. 

A glorious Autumn continues!

 

 

Not in LA

This week I was supposed to be going to a meeting in LA. 

It all sounded good on email, I would fly in on Sunday, do some Christmas shopping, go to a few meetings, see some friends and get a little winter sunshine. Work and play, an ideal week by the sound of it.

When the meetings were cut down to one, it just wasn’t a good use of company funds to fly me to LA for a three hour meeting and couldn’t be justified. Fair enough and so I’m grounded in London, video conferencing on California time…

California Dreaming… it’s been a while!

 

Lady in Red

To break with my traditional palette of navy, grey and ivory, I bought a bright red dress. It was very bright and very red. 

I decided I would get into the festive spirit and so I wore it to a party on Saturday night to celebrate the marriage of one of Big T’s cousins. Great fun!

To go with the red dress, I bought a pair of red shoes, a red lipstick and wore a red necklace I’d bought in Marrakech. Overall the look was very red indeed. The only thing missing were red tights, but that would have been one red too many!

As it turned out, I had more compliments in one evening than I think I’ve ever had. I was approached by total strangers to tell me how much they liked my look and to ask where I had bought my shoes. What compliments, the only problem… they were all ladies of a certain age.

It seemed I had pulled the septuagenarian ladies.   

Old lady in red!

Demockery

Last week I think I invented a new word… Demockery.

It sums up recent events rather well. I think I might submit it to the dictionary.

Stored and Staged

We spent the weekend clearing out stuff. 

It always seems as though one has too much stuff and so we rented a small storage unit (at great expense) and off went a random collection of felt, felt toys, extra bikes, ladders and one green armchair deemed too tatty.

It was not a very relaxing weekend.

The reason for this is that almost two years to the day since we bought the money pit, we’ve decided to invite the estate agents to come round and give us an appraisal of all our hard work. Was it worth it?

And the reason for that is that we saw a complete shithole of a house down the road in Kensal Green and they wouldn’t take our offer seriously until we were on the market and ideally under offer ourselves.

It’s hard to imagine going through it all again as we immersed ourselves in dust and DIY for the best part of a year. We had no kitchen for six months, washed up in the bath and all the other fun and frivolity that was 2015.

We ended up with a lovely flat but I have to admit the prospect of taking on another even bigger, even worse (hard to believe) project, makes my blood run cold (which it seriously would be without any central heating).

The good thing is that our flat looks amazing (minimal but lovely) and we’ll see what they say on Thursday.

Money Pit or Money Pot? 
 

Trumped!

Apparently no one saw it coming but for the second time this year we were well and truly trumped by an election result. 

This time, the US elected Donald Trump and the world stood still in disbelief.

I saw it coming and knew that it was possible but I didn’t think it would happen but it did. 

So here we are again, waiting to see what the knock-on effect will be. 

Seems like a good time to move to New Zealand?!

Agnes is One

Agnes has celebrated her first birthday.

It turned out we had the date wrong as we thought it was November 3rd when actually it was October 27th. Still, she didn’t seem to notice. 

From a tiny puppy to a proper big dog, here’s Agnes at one.

From this…

 To this…

Baking Well

With family coming for lunch on Sunday, I decided it was time to try my hand at making one of my favourite desserts, the Bakewell tart.

The Bakewell tart follows my other favourite dessert, the Victoria Sponge, the common link being a jam filling. 

I had been a little intimated by the idea of pastry and sponge but it turned out it wasn’t sponge at all but a frangipane filling made of ground almonds, butter and sugar. Not exactly slimming but very delicious.

It turned out to be both quick and easy to make, both of which are disastrous as it means that whipping up a Bakewell isn’t such an intimidating prospect after all and may feature on menus in the near future…