I wanted to write about the New Year, and seeing York again, the warmth of hot apple pie and camaraderie in the Evil Eye, curling up with Inkheart and tea in the homey familiarity of Halifax College, walking through snowfall in the dark and gazing out at the undisturbed layer of white in the Wood Court courtyard.
But then I had a long and tiring journey home, and a list of things to do that caught up with me, and I dallied over fixing dinner and tidying the kitchen, and before I knew it I was yawning over code and Photoshop and thinking aw crap I have to sleep because I’m really tired and tomorrow starts my first full 5-day week since before I went on holiday :(
So in a nutshell, three things:
one: Long, long overdue new layout is up – or perhaps "re-coloured layout" would be a more accurate term – as I’ve basically stopped varying the basic 3-column liquid layout (it is perfection and one shouldn’t mess with perfection).
two: The beginning of this year’s Project 365 is up here (RSS). I remember saying to Louis that I would do it this year if he did (which he is), but even before that I think I was already toying with the idea in my head – I have a woefully patchy documentary record of my life in London so far (heavily biased towards food, the South Bank, and baking), and it would probably be good for me, if for no one else, to have some sort of impetus to take more regular pictures. Maybe some will even have people in them!
three: I always think I’ve properly said goodbye to York, but then every time I return, I can’t quash the swelling sense of joyful anticipation inside me. Try as I might, I feel like a part of me is always going to think of York as my happy place, but at least, I think, I’ve now made my peace enough with the fact that that part of my life is in the past.
(or, the mandatory new-year’s-eve pondering post that louis prodded me into writing)
I suppose I could say, what a year it’s been. I suppose a lot has happened, though I feel that often I was stumbling from one route marker to another, amazing race style, with not a clue what would happen next – only with the knowledge that there had to be an end to the leg, and an end to the race. From settling down in London and getting to know it better, to my two weeks in Stratford-upon-Avon working for one of the world’s greatest theatre companies, to the frantic flurry of job-hunting and hopping, to finally landing something, to making it permanent – I can’t do justice to it all in one post – and that’s just work. I haven’t even begun to say anything about meeting new people, rekindling old friendships, eking out the beginnings of a new life, the harrowing feeling of post-university emptiness, the sweetness of summer on the south bank, flying home, talking, thinking, loving, losing, hoping, living.
I suppose I could say, indeed, that 2009 was quite a year. But to be honest, I don’t think the events of the year made all that much of a difference; I think it would still have been quite a year had I not worked where I worked and found the job I did in the end, if I were still jobless now, if summer had been a torrent of rain, if I hadn’t taken that holiday home, if I had taken up, say, cooking classes rather than Japanese. It would all still have been something, it would still have been an experience to remember. And I suppose, too, that this is true not just of 2009 but of any year, any time; had I not done my MA in 2007/08, I would have done something else, and whatever it was, it would have left its indelible mark on my experience of 07/08 too, for better or worse.
One of my colleagues said in the office today, over discussing New Year’s Eve plans (mine was, obviously, the most boring), that he felt 2009 had just kind of drifted along, but that 2010 was going to be the year. I don’t know that I agree with the drifting, but I do feel, for no reason at all I can put my finger on, that I am more than ready for 2009 to be over – because 2010 is going to be, as noted, the year – and it won’t be because of what happens, whatever may happen; it will be simply because I am alive. The world is changing around me, and there is a long road to walk yet, and a lot of life to be lived.
In my 24 years, yesterday was the first Christmas I’d ever spent on my own. I’d always had family or friends around, if not both; and I guess a part of me always took it for granted that it would be the case year on year.
I feared I would be terribly lonely this year, what with London shut down around me, trapped indoors with nowhere to go, no one to talk to. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it all and claim that it wasn’t actually lonely at all, that it was perfectly fine, that at no point did I fleetingly wish someone else was around. But you know – with the texts that I started getting on Christmas Eve, and my mom’s phone call in the morning, and the emails/Facebook messages that trickled in – I didn’t really have all that much time, or inclination, to feel sorry for myself.
I had a blissfully warm lie-in after hanging up with my mom, and after finally (reluctantly) rolling out of bed around 10:30, put on my Spotify Christmas playlist and started the day with “All I Want for Christmas is You”, which is probably still my favourite Christmas song – if only, in large part, thanks to Love Actually. It was cold, but not the frightful, bone-chilling frost of the cold snap that had ravaged England and the continent for the past week; instead it was more of a calm, settled crisp cold. Listening to Mariah, I couldn’t help smiling to myself and singing along as I made my morning coffee. Oh I won’t ask for much this Christmas, I won’t even wish for snow – how true, that.
So the day passed uneventfully and in supremely restful manner. I threw myself gleefully into playing more of Dragon Age (woefully behind many of my friends, I think, because I don’t usually have time or energy to play after work!) and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time. Christmas movies at Christmastime are something of a tradition; had we all been home together, I would probably have been watching Home Alone 2 with my siblings. But this year we are all scattered across continents: my sister and brother in Singapore, my mom and dad in Sydney and headed to the Blue Mountains for a 3-day outdoorsy walking holiday, and me here in winter with my endless mugs of hot tea and honey.
This morning, I woke late revelling in the fact that I was not caught up in a crazy Boxing Day sale crowd, and put on some unabashedly cheesy 80s pop to twirl round my room to, starting with Bananarama’s “Love in the First Degree”. It’s been a good holiday season, so far. I miss people – but then again, when have I not? And as for being on my own, it was far less devastatingly depressing than I had been led to believe, for the most part. I felt warm, and I felt loved, and what more could I want at Christmastime?
if there is one thing my trip home and the past two days have taught me, it is that at the end of the day, the people matter most of all. i could have the best job in the world anywhere (and i do really love my job) and it wouldn’t keep me there if i didn’t have my family or my best friends around too. and what a family, what a group of friends i have. i couldn’t ask for more.
and if there is a second thing i have learned, it is that there is no such thing as the perfect place to be. here, i miss so many things about singapore and sydney, there, i miss things about england. wherever i go, i think, there will always be something or other i miss; fuzzy said to me after tea at coffee club that this feeling of passing through places and always being in transit was probably always going to be a permanent one, and i can’t help but think she was right. ironic, isn’t it, for someone who has been doing nothing but trying to find home for the past four years. maybe the answer i’ve finally found is that there is no home. there are only feelings, feelings of being home, feelings of belonging somewhere, and the people and things and memories that trigger them.
and there is no combination of words i could say
there are so many things i want to express, for which words will never be enough. reading terry pratchett’s nation in tasmania, and then watching it last night at the national theatre, brought that home to me all over again. i feared i would cry at the last scene, instead there were helpless, silent tears in my throat and a choked up dryness in my eyes. how do you put a name to this? how do you say hello, and goodbye, and hope to see you again soon, and i love you, in your own way – without using these words that so many people have used before you, to mean things that they feel, not that you feel? there is only so much i can pour into my christmas cards, into my smiles and gestures, and i don’t know if it is good enough.
It is always the leaving that brings it all into perspective.
It’s so easy to say that the weather in Sydney is too changeable, my house too cold, my brother and his friends too noisy, my mom too naggy, the lack of coffee in the kitchen unacceptable. But then, looking out on the pink-purple-orange sunrise over Sydney Harbour as we crossed the bridge, my backpack and my suitcase in the boot once again and my dad behind the wheel to the airport, I didn’t want to close my eyes for fear I would miss another priceless moment.
Tasmania was beautiful. Having been once more transformed into a city girl by the always-on lights of London, it was eerily quiet at first; even capital city Hobart doesn’t really feel all that much bigger than York, and as we travelled into the mountains and the (comparative) wilderness I was suddenly struck by how rare, how amazing it was that this part of the world, not 2 hours’ flight from Sydney, had managed to remain so pristinely untouched. This was not some urban-generated landscape, this was genuine nature. And after all this time, there are still no better travel companions than my family.
Yesterday as I sat on the old familiar 174 and went by my old neighbourhood en route to Orchard, looking down the street where I grew up, at the condominium which now occupies the place I used to swim, the playground at Bouganvillea Park behind the old bus stop, I almost didn’t know what to feel. There was nostalgia in spades, there was an ache for what is irretrievably gone, there was a warmth and a deeply felt thankfulness for what hasn’t changed at all. My sister, summing up my thoughts, said to me later in the night that she wanted to go back to our house and our neighbourhood, but at the same time she didn’t want to, was almost afraid to, because she knew it’d be different.
Today, I took a walk down Orchard Road from ION to Plaza Singapura, and at least half of what I saw was completely unrecognisable. Change is inevitable, I know, change is to be embraced. But oh, the dizzying vertigo. And yet – I know that when I sit in the airport again on Wednesday morning, another boarding pass in my hand, I will be soaking it all in and wishing I didn’t have to leave, however unfamiliar to me this island now is. There are still the people. There are still the memories.
We sold out two shows on my birthday, one of which we’d been a bit worried about – how’s that for birthday magic – and my colleagues surprised me with a chocolate cake which I had not been expecting (birthday people at my company always get cake, but they don’t necessarily always get it on their birthday, and I didn’t think I’d have mine till next week because hardly anyone was in the office on thursday!).
And then yesterday was the big brochure copyedit session where we all gathered round the meeting table and went through next season’s brochure proofs with a fine toothed comb, and I discovered to my delight that I’m not the only grammar nazi in the office, and had colleague Tom to back me up on nitpicky issues like “Mothers’ Day” vs “Mother’s” (second is obviously wrong but no one believed us), and eradicating/inserting commas and apostrophes as appropriate.
We all then troop to the pub after work and Tom and I proceed to discover, on top of both being grammar, spelling and punctuation freaks, that we both love Mulholland Drive (literally exclaiming “I love that movie!” at exactly the same time when someone else mentioned it), that I am currently reading and loving one of his favourite books (The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas), that we both first picked said book up at the bookstore because it has a pretty cover, and that we both habitually judge books by whether their covers are pretty.
At which point Tom is like, hang on a sec, are you my long lost twin, only five years younger?! and we realise that we’re probably just the same person in two different bodies. It was all a bit creepy, and very funny. Did I mention he is also a bit of a techie geek and is the only other person in the office who knew what i was talking about when I mentioned how hysterical the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” literal video version is?
It was a good night out. I’ve never been to the pub with them before because I’ve always been busy on previous pub nights, and it was surprising, and refreshing, to be at a pub night where we were discussing Mulholland Drive rather than getting laid, which has been generally more of the norm at English pub nights so far. There was an impromptu birthday song and talk of Christmas and holidays, and surrounded by an incongruous conglomeration of wreaths, pine cones and pumpkins, chatting excitedly with the rest about my upcoming trip back, that festive, restless mood that has been welling up in me for ages now got even stronger.
This afternoon, following Japanese class and lunch at Carluccio’s with the usual suspects, was a hugely enjoyable board game houseparty involving a number of obscure but madly addictive games (mostly German, as they tend to be); tomorrow if the weather holds up will be a trip out to Brick Lane with Debbie in one of my rare East End forays. The next week promises to be a mad busy one as we start finalising the brochure and working on the big push for Christmas, but every weekend that passes brings my trip home ever closer, and I have had a lovely week past to see me through.
things that keep me going through a manic time at work and a notoriously contagious office flu bug that has just found its way to me:
Over the course of last week, because I have been so absolutely exhausted by a very, very manically busy workweek, I’ve been chucking everything I want to blog about in a draft post in point form. Now that I’m actually writing it up, I realise most of the points are totally unconnected (as they’ve accumulated over a week), so this will be somewhat piecemeal…
Anyway, so work. It was crazy this week (and looks like it will be crazy for the whole of October), as we have so many shows and big projects coming up that literally, every day, there is something urgently pressing to be done that I simply don’t have the time to start any earlier. And the thing about the nature of the work I do is that it is a long series of small tasks rather than one large, overarching project with an end in sight, so often it feels like a neverending slog. It is, however, truly gratifying when you find out that the season has kicked off with the first two shows being sellouts and everything above target so far – numbers like these make you feel that it is worth the hours spent cold-calling and researching.
Highlights of the past workweek were working from home on Tuesday morning – seriously, I was so productive without people distracting me or throwing new things at me to do, and I work so much better on my own laptop with music on (especially boppy 80s tunes) – and going to the Middlesex Uni Freshers’ Fayre on Friday, which was a massive blast from the past. I’d forgotten what freshers’ fairs are like, the teeming overspill of bright-eyed enthusiasm, exuberance, and sheer gung-ho fecklessness that are first-year uni students. It was a tremendously refreshing and gorgeously sunny day out of the office, and I found myself genuinely enjoying speaking to students, walking round the hall and chatting with staff at other stalls, getting caught up in conversation with a fellow Sydneysider about dust storms, having a journalism final-year tip me off on where one of our celebs gets his hair cut… I always think I detest networking, but when work mode kicks in, I actually do rather enjoy it.
Friday was also dinner at Gold Mine – roast duck! – with Wey Ren and his lovely family, and Saturday was brunch with Kevin, Shan and Evan at the Muffin Man in High Street Kensington, where we all had a good proper fry-up (scrambled eggs, sausage, freshly squeezed juice, tea/coffee, toast, jam/honey/marmalade, baked beans, bacon – heavenly!), a long, lingering chat as the morning stretched on lazily, a stroll down the shops which ended in a trip to Harrods, and then (naturally) Monmouth Coffee and amazing ice cream at Freggo which is my new favourite dessert joint in town!
Kevin pointed out, as we looked at Halloween pumpkin chocolate in Hotel Chocolat and remembered last year’s freak October snowfall, that it’d been a whole year already (or nearly). And so it’s been – with the new school year starting, people leaving, new people coming, another birthday and Christmas round the corner – the passage of time seems, suddenly, very real. There’s always this feeling at the end of summer, I think, the sense of a chapter closing, a golden russet brown once again creeping up round the leaves and the edges of the days. Exactly one year and a few days ago, I bound and handed in my Alice dissertation; on Friday, as I stood in the middle of Middlesex Uni’s Trent Park campus, I noticed the first tree covered with red leaves and it hit me again how time has flown.
I will be off to Sydney, Tasmania and Singapore at the end of November/early December and I am so so excited about that, but sudden-onset wanderlust and an acute restlessness from being stuck in the UK for over a year now has got me thinking about Christmas holidays already. The Christmas market at Lille and the promise of Mediterranean warmth in Nice are fighting it out at the moment for my attentions and tourist Euros… ah just get me out of here already, and bring on November!
I could get used to this – unseasonably warm weather on weekends, as recompense for crappy weekday weather when I’m in the office with an unlimited supply of hot tea anyway, hanging out with one of my oldest dearest friends as if time had hardly passed, going out for yummy food (Jamie’s Italian at Canary Wharf is every bit as good as the one in Oxford – though i have to disagree in principle with the idea of serving bucatini carbonara – it just does not taste right for some reason), walking the streets of London aimlessly once more – something I haven’t done for a while.
In between hanging out with Wanyun and Andy this weekend I spent an afternoon baking coffee walnut cake for an office birthday tomorrow, as it had been brought to my attention that that was said birthday-person’s favourite cake, but it is strange baking something you don’t actually like (I don’t like walnuts). I feel like I can’t tell if the cake is good because it tastes… well, like something I don’t like! Not repulsive, or horrendous, or anything like that, but just not my thing. And as I am still pretty rubbish, sadly, at dealing with layer cakes, I wound up having to carve my cake up into a funky hexagonal shape so that the sides would be even. This problem is mostly caused by the annoying fact that my two cake tins, which purport to be 9″ and were bought from different stores, are in fact of slightly differing sizes, meaning either Tesco or the little cookware store in Brixton are liars >:O
Also, how does one transport a whole cake on a 1.5 hour public transport commute without a cake box/cake stand/device made to transport a cake? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
(but my heart’s not in it)
absofrigginlutely exhausted. what a week. full of thoughts. full of conflicting emotions. bouncing from almost sinfully sugary highs to fist-clenching, gut-twisting lows, feeling like the tension knots in my back will never leave, feeling full and empty alternately (like the proverbial glass of water), soaking up the last of the summer sunshine, thinking how much i’d miss this as i walked down the south bank, futilely clinging on to the moment, loving it, hating that it had to end.
i can’t even think straight enough to string a post together coherently, i am so tired, and i feel so drained, and i feel like there is nothing of myself left over for me. i haven’t felt like this since jc. and it’s scary. i know i’ll be ok. i just really – need to let this tension go. thank goodness, thank goodness, that i will be seeing wanyun in a week’s time, and finally touch base again with an old familiar world where i know the people love me no matter how long i’ve been away and how long it’s been since we’ve spoken. i’m trying my best, here. but it’s hard.
sq
cui
LcT