4 posts tagged “holiday”

What's your favorite thing about being sick?

This is not a funny question for me today.

I haven't written a post on this blog for simply ages (did you notice?), and thought I would ease myself back in with a Question Of The Day. Covering more than a month of absence would an excruciatingly long post make. Much better to be targeted. Imagine my horror when I saw said question. For I am sick! And there is nothing favourite (favoUrite, thank you, Americans) about it! Surely it should read "what's your favourite thing about pretending to be sick?" or "what's your favourite thing about convincing yourself you are sick and taking a glorious day off when you're actually fine?"

I'll tell you what are not my favourite things (plural) about being sick.

Stepping out of a horse and carriage ride in Central Park (didn't quite meet my Sex and the City-fuelled dreams, if the truth be known*), nearly keeling over and wondering why, given the ride was so slow we almost rolled backwards into the Apple Store across the road, do I feel so dizzy? That is not my favourite thing about being (becoming) sick.

Spending the last afternoon of my holiday in New York in bed, with a hoody on over my pyjamas, my head under the covers and my feet bound in a pashmina, trying to beat the freezing shaky-shakes and wondering whether it was such a good idea not to wear a jumper when freezing to death on the Brooklyn Bridge that morning, is not my favourite thing about being sick.

Nor is taking half an hour to wobble ten blocks or so, as if I'd been bedbound for a decade and forgotten how to walk, to a lovely diner, only to eat two spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup and drink a hot toddy with my hands over my ears to muffle the hideous sound of people- imagine this, on a saturday night- talking and laughing, in an attempt at a celebratory last-night-of-trip meal. I can't imagine that this was my boyfriend's favourite thing about it either, as he manfully tried to haz cheezburger and enjoy a beer as I croaked pitifully "I can't, I can't manage another spoonful, arrrr, why is everyone talking so loudly, arrrr, a taxi just drove past the window and blinded me with its devil headlights, ohhh, I can't drink this hot toddy I will get a hangover on top of all the toooortuuure".

Sitting on a plane for twelve hundred hours with my throat filled with shards of glass and my head stuck between some railings (it felt like), this is not my favourite thing;  only managing  a quarter of the obligatory first-night-home takeaway, that is not my favourite thing; phoning into work to announce that after my seven days of leave, I'm now going to take a sick day, thank you very much; knowing that there are snacks in the house and not feeling like eating them; knowing that Come Dine With Me is on and not feeling like watching it; being in my cosy living room instead of toiling underneath a gigantic air con pipe, and feeling altogether meh about it. All of these things are not favourites of mine.

Being an ungrateful cow who should be writing about the fabulous holiday she just spent in New York last week- which right up until the last hours of the last day, was brilliant- instead of whining about her minor viral throat infection. Apparently that's my favourite thing right now.

No wait.

Complaining!

That's my favourite thing about being sick.

*The Magnolia Bakery, on the other hand, did meet my SATC dreams. A collection of photographs of me with my greedy snout buried in various cupcakes reveal that indeed, I have never been happier than when at the Magnolia bakery, or specifically, immediately afterwards once the box of cakes was open.

Do you remember your first flight? Where did you go? Why?
Submitted by Laurel.

I was quite a late bloomer, in flying as in most things. Childhood holidays for me were camping in Wales- four kids, Mum and Dad squashed into a tent which would always blow down in a raging storm, every single time. Transport was by means of our very dilapidated VW camper van, which I found totally embarassing at the time, but now I see how cool it was and how much my Dad's dream. That van... you could hear it coming about 10 minutes before it rumbled into view.

We would holiday with families who lived on our street, and once or twice with Pei's family. I have many happy memories of wide sandy beaches and secret coves in St David's (Britain's smallest city); mums doling out brown bread sandwiches with the discipline and authority of Army majors; dads showing off their sporting "skills" with blow-up beach balls; toddlers ferreting secretively in salty puddles; boys diving into huge waves; the day after one particular storm when the beach was teeming with washed-up jellyfish. And then there was the time when the VW nearly rolled off a cliff with all six of us asleep inside.

When I was about thirteen, we upgraded to Eurocamp in France, which was, to us, unparalleled luxury. There were swimming pools, with slides! Proper (camp) beds, a fridge and a cooker in the tent. Bars at the campsite! And sunshine, every day. It was great.

So I didn't feel I missed out by not flying. When I did eventually make it onto a plane, I was thirteen years old- that was a year of luxury for me, you see- and I was going to America on a school choir trip (look, I keep reiterating that I was/am a geek, so no sniggering allowed).

The flight was from Gatwick to Boston. Our coach broke down at a service station, delaying the flight for three hours- there were around 200 of us so they couldn't really fly without us. When we eventually got on the plane, I remember being surprised at how small and beige it all was.

In those innocent pre-9/11 days, it didn't occur to me to be scared. It was all rather exciting and seemed incredibly posh- and I have to say, no flight has matched it since. Virgin Atlantic is a good experience for the flying virgin. There were little menu cards from which to choose your meal, and the food wasn't completely disgusting. I found the little bags of nibbles quite glamourous, almost as glamourous as the red-suited stewardesses, whose hearts must have sunk at the sight of 200 geeks marauding rowdily onto the plane in a blur of braces, spectacles and doc marten boots, as rowdily as choir geeks ever maraud.

I was brought up in a home where board games were encouraged and computers were not, TV was limited and I wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill, and we didn't own a satellite dish or a VCR. So it goes without saying that throughout the entire flight, I simply gorged myself on electronic goodness. I could watch unsuitable films and American sitcoms, and play Mario Bros for seven hours flat, without any intervention. Never mind the fact that due to my games console deprivation, I didn't have the blindest notion of how to play a video game, and my Mario spent 20 minutes running frantically on the spot, being repeatedly bonked on the head by flying baddies with sharp teeth.

I'm terrified of flying now, but so much that I haven't managed to go to New York (work), Tokyo (holiday) and Greece (holiday no 2) this year. So, not that terrfied, clearly.

In other news: 

Ha! I just ordered a Magicwear dress from M&S, which I have been hankering after for months but which sold out as soon as it hit the shelves. I've been waiting for them to come back into stock for weeks, and kept missing my chance. Being ill at home pays! Ha, bitches! It's going to make me look thin.

Everyone

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.

It bothers me that I have been too busy/stressed to update my brand new blog. I really wanted to make it work and write in it every day, and I hoped it wouldn't be end up being another thing to feel guilty about neglecting, along with my family, my fingernails, old friends.... Those three things were not listed in order of priority, I hasten to add.

My God, have I been stressed. As I stumbled to the bus stop this morning at 7.30am (work doesn't officially start until 10am- because people who work in TV are lazy stop-a-bed drunkards, on the whole), I felt the acidic churning begin and an almost feverish, clammy heat taking over from my hands to my face, finally hitting with a thud that point right in the centre of my back where I feel stress the most (anyone else get that?). It's not good, I thought to myself, between panicky gulps of air, to be stressed before you even get to work.

Other highlights of the past few days include:

- Waking up at 3am crying, thinking about the people we are filming with for my current project. Obviously I don't want to give too much away about my actual job or workplace (even though I think all five of my readers are family and friends)- but I'm working on a series which involves dealing with families going through loss and pain, and asking them to dredge up these emotions. It's hard.

- Being pulled in four different directions by four different directors (not literally- although that might be marginally less stressful) who ALL NEED EVERYTHING DOING, YESTERDAY!!

And other stuff, which frankly, is too tiresome and boring to bang on about here. I've whinged enough.

And now, having felt guilty about not updating my blog for the past week, I am sitting in the yawning darkness- because no-one is here and I don't know where the light-switches in this place are- of a huge, empty, open-plan office, with only the roar of the air con for company, feeling guilty because I am updating my blog, instead of setting up the filming for Friday. I treated myself to a skinny latte this morning, because I think I damn well deserve it.

My workplace fairy godmother (scouser, 40s, loud, big gold earrings, yoga-loving, brilliant) said to me yesterday, I need to stop worrying and stressing about things I can't change. She's so right. We also dicussed whether current affairs is the right place for me to be. I really enjoy my job, I do. But working in current affairs means dealing with despair on an almost daily basis. The despair is wearing me down.

Next week, obviously, I will love my job again. Except I won't be at work, because we're off on holiday on Friday. France, here we come! And not a moment too soon.