Another weekend gone as I’m heading back to London, a delayed flight on a rare flight to Gatwick, I’m hoping I’m home by 9pm.
French Fridays are going well. I’m working on my laptop, dialing into video calls and so far, no problems.
It’s a nice treat to be able to do this and certainly breaks up the week.
Very grateful!
It’s very French to plan an air traffic control strike in the Spring, usually to coincide with a long weekend and in this case, to coincide with a train strike. So French!
Big T’s flight from Barcelona to Nice was cancelled and so in order to get home, he bought a ticket to Zurich. One extreme to another!
It turned out to be a nail biting experience as his flight was delayed and he only just managed to connect with his flight to Nice.
Very lucky indeed as he made it back and Little Dog and I went to pick him up from his 10:30pm flight.
That made it four trips to the airport in four days as I was back to London on Sunday evening.
That seems excessive even for us!
It was back to France late last night arriving into Nice at midnight. Very tiring but worth it.
I had survived a five day liquid diet and all was well so started off the day with a trip back to the airport to drop Big T off as he’s off to Palma for two days for a yacht show and then it was home to the Little Dog and a pain au chocolat for breakfast and that was it, all my hard work undone!
I am lucky to be able to work from France on Fridays during the summer and am extremely appreciative of the flexibility especially as it meant having lunch in the garden in the sun while the forecast in London showed rain for the next few days.
With my loyal companion by my side (Agnes) it was a very different experience from the lunch I usually eat at my desk!
I managed to take a few photos while the garden is still green and a few first shots of the new Caretaker’s Cottage. Big T will have to take good ones for Airbnb but these give an idea of where things are currently…
A nice weekend ahead!
5pm on Day Five and the end is in sight.
I’m off to France tonight so am just trying to make it through the rest of the day. I think fruit juice of any sort will be off my menu for a few days.
I will do this again, it’s been a good (and easy) way of cleansing/dieting but next time it definitely needs to be more savoury.
A few more hours to go!
By midday of Day Four I was finding the juices too sweet and even skipped a juice during the afternoon.
It was a relief to have a vegetable soup for dinner and I added some salt for my poor taste buds. There was something horrible about too much sweetness, a coating on the tongue and a sense that all my teeth were about to fall out. I don’t know how people eat doughnuts!
Despite the sugar, I made it through Day Four without any concerns and so with the scales down, I’m feeling lighter and brighter for Spring. I’m down about 5lbs which will, of course, come back as soon as I eat, but it reminds me of where I like to be.
I am a self-confessed fatist and very judgemental about myself. While I may not look overweight, I can definitely tell when I’m not at my fighting weight and measures must be taken. This has worked well so far and I would definitely do it again, just with less fruit.
And so to Day Five…
Another day, another bottle of juice or three.
I was awake during the night with a headache and eventually took a couple of aspirin. It turned out they also had caffeine in them so it was either be awake with a headache or be awake without a headache. The latter was preferable although it meant I was up at 5am listening to the birds.
Day Three progressed well.
I started by cycling to work with bottles of juice in my pannier carefully avoiding bumps in case my precious cargo leaked even a tiny drop.
It was another day of liquids finishing up with soup as an alternative to juice and that was that.
Two days to go… six bottles of juice, two bottles of soup, two ginger shots and then I’m off to the land of butter and croissants.
From one extreme to another!
I have embarked on a five day juice cleanse.
Today is the end of day two and apart from a headache (lack of caffeine), things have progressed quite well.
Back in my LA days I did a few juice fasts. They were quite hardcore as only green vegetables were consumed. There was a morning salt water flush which required staying close to a bathroom and daily self-inflicted enemas which involved staying even closer. It wasn’t perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had but it was extremely effective.
With a week in London it seemed like an ideal time to do a juice cleanse, the only problem was, I had shipped my juicer to France where I felt it might get more use (not so far!)
I also felt that with a full time job it was going to be a challenge to juice enough to get through the days. One thing I found previously was that it took a lot of vegetables and a lot of juicing, it was really quite exhausting. What to do?
Well, it turns out that with a few clicks of a button, five days of frozen juices can arrive on one’s doorstep all ready to get started. I replaced one of the juices each day with soup (variety is good) and decided to try out the Juice Master Delivery.
And so here’s what you get… a ginger shot to get things started, three juices a day, a soup for dinner and an emergency juice food bar if one gets desperate.
On the grand scale of juice fasts, this is definitely for beginners as the juices combine fruit and vegetable (there’s probably far too much sugar) and if you eat a food bar, does it count as a juice fast?
It’s been quite a few years (I suspect seven) since I did something like this so I’m breaking myself in gently.
Three days to go!
Only a month or so since we were wrapped up in hundreds of layers for the late winter snow, we peeled off the layers and exposed delicate flesh to insane temperatures of 29 degrees. And it’s only April!
London, true to form, went wild.
Camden was a seething hot bed of pink flesh and black leggings (ugh). Unkempt feet which hadn’t seen daylight in months were suddenly and shockingly exposed in sandals and it seemed like suddenly everyone was partially naked including a topless man wearing a woolly hat just outside my window at work.
For four glorious days this strange anomaly went on and of course, as temperatures rose, tempers frayed, skin was burned and everyone panicked about what to wear!
Luckily just before things got too crazy, the great heatwave of 2018 broke, the skies clouded over, temperatures went back below twenty degrees and things went back to normal.
It had been a strange week and did I mention it’s only April!
Some people are working hard in the garden, some are not…
all about gem 