6 posts tagged “friends”
Show us a burst of energy
Show us something that warms your heart.
Bezzie mates
(And hey, at this angle you can just about see my snaggletooth)
Let's make a list. What are 20 things in your life that you're grateful for?
Inspired by wyndslash.vox.com.
My G- for support and care, for sharing life with me.
My Mum- for her warmth, her sanctuary and treats all the way.
My Dad- for listening, understanding, making me laugh
My big brother- for looking out for me and supplying the boofus quota
My sister A- for being loyal, loving, sunshine.
My sister H- for the honour of having her in my life and the things her absence has taught me
Time- For slowly soothing the loss of H
My Grandparents- for being the rock of our family and holding us together through tough times.
My pei. For being there from the beginning.
My friends, each bringing their own jewels to my treasure trove.
Health. It's obvious, isn't it?
Mental health, for keeping me non-crazy, most of the time. I'm also grateful that my mental health has occasionally deserted me- I appreciate the non-craziness more.
My paycheck- each month, giving me the good stuff.
Britain. It's a good place to be born. Stable, democratic, moderate climate, pretty cool music and stuff.
Music!
Writing.
My house and especially my yarden.
Benetint
Topshop
Wine
A whole week spent en masse, in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in France, has left me with too many stories and thoughts to blog about in a coherent fashion. I'm sure bits and bobs will dribble out as the days pass (and I pledge to write here every day, from now on, yes I do). So for now, here are some selected thoughts on the holiday, and a couple more random ones besides:
Three things I enjoyed:
1. Spending time with close friends, the kind of time that you just don't get once you leave school and are no longer in each other's pockets all day every day. There were three other girls on the hol who I have been friends with since school, and it is quite something to think that our friendships have survived the rough and tumble of schooldays politics, living in different cities, and growing up. I also loved getting to know other friends better- partners of friends, friends of friends, etc. Generally we were one big happy throng, although when it was raining (two whole, teeth-grinding days), it's a wonder we didn't kill each other.
2. The jokes, nicknames, japes and games which bubbled up in an organic and hilarious fashion throughout the week, and which would mean absolutely nothing unless you were there (as I've said before, having fun is great; hearing in great detail about someone else's fun? Not so much). I especially enjoyed Ring the Bell, which utilised the old bell outside the house, and was basically Kick the Can, as we called it as children. It's where you all hide, apart from one person, and the aim is to leg it back to base without being spotted and the bell being rung. It was fun... but Ring the Bell Lightly (played at night, hence the bell had to be rung lightly in order to not to wake those who were sleeping), was better. Hiding in pitch black barns is very scary and very fun at the same time.
3. Wine. In the sunshine. Costing less than 3 euros a bottle but tasting good.
Three things I learned about myself:
1. I really am not suited to large group situations. I always thought that was the case, but that, when it came to the crunch, I would be emotionally sophisticated enough to overcome it. I am not. It's not that I didn't have fun- I had a ball. But I also spent a fair portion of time as a snivelling, shrivelling bed-hider, convinced that nobody liked me and picking up on every slight undertone of annoyance from anybody. It's sad to say, but I functioned much better when I had had a drop of Dutch courage.
2. I bruise easily. Not in the manner of Natasha Bedingfield (although that is also true), but physically. When I am pushed into the pool and thwack my shins on the edge, they will sprout purple bumps with splotchy scab-blood. When I stand near a radiator (yes it was cold enough, on one or two days, to turn on the heaters), I will leap backwards in jest and sear two stripes of burn down the back of my calf. When I hide stealthily in a pitch black barn, I will stumble into an ancient bread-oven and rebound into a rickety ladder, plunging my face into a net of spider-webs. In short, I am more of a boofus than I ever thought possible. And I have the injuries to prove it.
3. I can laugh with my whole self again, maybe for the first time in the two years since H died. But also, I feel guilty for laughing too much, too often. And so we return to snivelling bed-hiding.
Hmmm, holidays give you a lot of time to think. My heart is bursting with thoughts, but they're mine really, not the internet's.
Now for the randomness:
- Being back at work is OK. Still working on the despair programme, but it's OK.
- We have the first tomatoes! (pics to follow when The G uploads them). They were delicious. And I was also surprised by the four or five fat chillis flourishing on my chilli plants. I am amazed at the amount of plant matter I have generated in the past year. Gardening is a litte miracle, actually.
- I am excited about buying clothes for Autumn/Winter. I'm after a non-boofus, black winter coat; some patent mary janes from topshop (which are obsessing me also as much as eiron is obsessed with her boots)- a bit like these, except £35 more expensive, doh; and a capsule wardrobe which channels Christina Aguilera in her non bum-flashing "married lady" persona, with a splash of Dita von Teese. So they are both size 6 with killer curves- nyah, so what? I'll squeeze my child-bearing hips into a pencil skirt if it kills me, which it quite possibly might do. I have also adored waist-belts for almost a year now, and I think waist belts and I will remain very much in love this season.
- I am writing this with half an eye on an excellent documentary (which I definitely could not work on!) about some 9/11 survivors who were trapped in a stairwell after the collapse of the North Tower. And feeling, as a result, incredibly flippant about my petite life and worries which are all about MOI.
Sometimes I think I'll be Morrisey in the next life. I've got the moon-faced existentialism down pat.
Not me, that's for sure, when this weekend I will be experiencing "a feeling that combines exhilaration, euphoria, total relaxation and absolute cleanliness". Sounds wild! And all this from a turkish bath.
I'm off to Harrogate spa with my best friend Pei, for a minibreak. I'm so excited!
We'll go to Betty's, pausing under the wrought iron canopy to feast our eyes on the mouth-watering window displays that vary with the season, of course.
We'll shop, we'll eat, we'll drink. And we'll chat, chat, chat!
Now that we are both old and married (except I'm not married, and neither is Pei- yet- but she is engaged) we don't often spend time alone. As much as we love our other halves, I think your childhood best friend is like your first love, but without romance, or rude things. As teenagers we would talk on the phone every single night, and we hardly spent a weekend apart from the ages of 13 to 17. In fact, we were quite sad really, as we didn't really have many other friends! But Pei was enough for me. She is excellent. Together we have concocted our own secret drink recipe (it's disgusting), drawn dozens of cartoons of our adventures, and even created a whole imaginary kingdom of which we are queens. And by the way, that wasn't when we were small children.
I am looking forward to the weekend so much.
Oh crap, it's only Tuesday.
The weekend was great, full of fun and friends. But now I've got the kind of emotional hangover that sometimes attacks after a good time. I just feel... flat. Ack.
The weekend in brief(s):
Friday night. Went to a leaving do for my boss. I was in rather a dark mood so wore a completely black outfit, but with a big pink (fake) corsage plonked on it in a nod to the festivities. I soon perked up when I found out that the bar was free, and soon was happy as a pig in mud, and as pink in the face as the aforementioned flower. Then I picked up my fabulous and dearly beloved friend Ben from the station and we went home to scoff chinese takeaway. I had a fleeting Desperate Housewives moment as I teetered around the garden in my high heels and party clothes, watering can in one hand, glass of wine in the other. It really wasn't very glamorous, despite it looking surprising more so written down.
Saturday. After a very satisfying afternoon of yardening- dirt was sieved, soil was attacked with a fork by th3g, plants were de-potted, re-potted and planted out in the spanking new flowerbed, and the whole lot was watered by Ben who hovered prettily by as we toiled- we had a couple of hours of high-speed, moderate-angst preparation for our barbeque. By the time the friends arrived everything was ship-shape.
Now, if you were the sun, and you had been burning Manchester to a crisp for about six weeks, thus killing my hanging basket and transforming office workers into gasping, melting slugs... If you were the sun, and you could see that we were planning a barbeque for more than a dozen people, and that we hadn't had a barbeque with friends since the Spring... would you a) keep shining for one more night or b) bog off and send your friend the rain to piss all over our barbeque and force me to don a cagoul over my summer dress?
You are much nicer than the sun then.
Anyway, much fun was had by all, I think, despite the driving storms, and as is the custom, the regular old faithfuls fell asleep at the end of the night and had to be scraped off the floor and into taxis/spare beds.
Sunday morning. The bastard sun was out again, so Ben and I invented a game which involved running around a sheet hanging from the washing line at great speed. The aim was to catch the other person unawares by suddenly turning round and shouting in their face. Then The G and I played "peg the washing peg on the girl/boyfriend" for a few minutes, before we all realised that we were hungover, and I realised that washing pegs hurt, and we went inside to loll on the sofa and eat sausage sandwiches (but not on the sofa, because eating on the sofa is forbidden). I doused my hangover in Idris fiery ginger beer, my most favouritest soft tipple of choice.
The day passed in a blaze of inactivity, mostly involving watching Season 1 of Sex and the City on DVD. We were all a but grumpy by the evening, but we finished the weekend with a bang, by watching Sarah's play "A Song for the Lovers", which was brilliant, sad and funny all at the same time. I felt very proud of Sarah and of Monkeywood (the theatre company she runs with her boyfriend/our friend Martin). We didn't last long at the party to celebrate the end of the 24:7 theatre festival, and left Sarah, Martin and Co to celebrate while we sloped off home at 10pm to fit in another episode of SATC before bed.
So it was a great weekend. But in a spoiled, ungrateful way, I feel flat now. Never mind, I can go home and kill some slugs in four hours and counting.
Oh, and I drove all the way to Sheffield this morning for a meeting. Which turned out to be cancelled.
Bah
ps It's lunchtime in my office. We have televisions on our desks, not because we work in the best office ever (we don't), but because we need them for work and stuff, honest. And somebody in this office of grown-up, non-student people, is watching Neighbours on their lunchbreak!
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