Loving summer in London!

I have been a bad blogger of late.  My excuse?  It's summer in London.  A real, proper summer in London.  Not like the lousy summers we've had for the preceding three years that I've been here.  

The first summer I ever spent in London I found myself trapped in Oxford because of the floods.  That's right - the middle of summer and there were floods trapping us in the town and closing off all roads to London.  The second summer I waited patiently for the sun and the heat to arrive and it never did.  Last summer the papers promised us a "barbecue summer" but, while there were one or two splendid days,  that was it.  So you can imagine my delight at having a proper summer for once.  I'm determined to make the most of each and every sunny day in case summer stops tomorrow.  For that reason, I haven't been writing much.

One of the best things about summer in England is the long days.  The sun only seems to finally disappear at around 10 pm, meaning that the afternoons stretch into evenings and picnics can safely run until 9 pm.  So we have been having quite a few picnics. 

There has also been an endless supply of excellent bands stopping in London as they make their way through Europe on the festival circuit.  Last week we saw the Avett Brothers (who were incredible) and a couple of weeks before that we saw Local Natives (also excellent).  Tomorrow night we are off to see Grizzly Bear in Hyde Park.

It is also World Cup fever over here, which means lots of pub lunches followed by game watching.  I confess I don't know anything about the soccer (or "football", as I'm told I must call it).  In fact, the very first World Cup game I watched I had to ask some friends why one player was wearing a different colour to all the other players.  They told me it was because he wasn't one of the players - he was the umpire.  Not that this lack of knowledge has stopped me from watching the games.  In fact, so far as my work colleagues are concerned, I'm a mad keen football fan.  That is because all such fans have been allowed to knock off work early to watch the England matches.  Last Wednesday afternoon all the mad keen football fans were allowed to leave work at 2 pm to catch the afternoon's match.   I insisted I was such a fan even though, in fact, it took me the better part of the game to work out which team was which.  Pretending to be a mad keen fan when I'm not was not easy.  I had to quickly excuse myself from the conversation when it has turned to matters (things like the team line up or best players) where I thought my ignorance would be uncovered.   When questions on those topics were fired at me, I made the excuse I was dying to go to the toilet and bolted out of the room, returning only when it was safe.  That avoided my ignorance being uncovered, but I suspect my colleagues now think I have either a very weak bladder or chronic diarrhea. 

Today is a blisteringly hot 31 degrees.  As I'm typing this I'm looking out the window and thinking that there are better places to be than behind a computer screen. I'm going to try and convince G to come swimming with me in the ponds in Hampstead Heath or to go for a jog.  And then it's off to the pub to watch the (likely last) England game of the world cup.  I am genuinely barracking for them this time.  If they get through, I'm anticipating that us mad keen fans will have a good excuse to take a few more afternoons off work.

I love London in summer!

nudity in Barcelona

Every time we have been to Barcelona (three and still counting), we encounter a nudist.  This trip was no exception, as we saw a young man confidently walking the streets wearing only shoes and a satchel. What made this trip different from most was that this time around I found myself an unwilling nudist (or almost nudist).

The first occasion of my near nudity arose due to the ill-thought out lifts in our hotel.  Our hotel had a roof-top pool (or it was advertised as such; really, it was no bigger than a large bath).  One afternoon, before heading out to Primavera, I decided to take a quick dip.  As we were on the 5th floor and the pool was on the 9th, I thought it would be safe simply to catch the lift from our floor to the pool wearing my bikini and nothing else.  Given that towels were provided on the 9th floor, I didn't even bother to wrap a towel around my waist. 

There were three lifts and their design favoured style over functionality.  The way that the lifts worked was that you would select which floor you wanted to go to before entering the lift, using a numbered keypad on the wall. Once you pressed the number of the floor you wanted to go to, the keypad would then flash a letter "A", "B" or "C".  Then, when one of the three lifts arrived, the idea was you checked to make sure it was the lift designated with the letter that had been flashed on the  keypad before stepping into it and waiting for it to deposit you on the correct floor.  The inside of the lift had no buttons, so you could not change the lift's destination once inside it.

The difficulty with the hotel's lift system is that, when you are tired from getting home at 5 am the night before, it's hard to keep track of what letter flashes on the keypad and so which lift you are meant to get into.  As I discovered the hard way, if you don't pay attention to the letter flashed at you and simply hop in the first lift that arrives, you can find yourself deposited on a floor you never intended to visit.  In my case, when the lift stopped and its doors opened, I ambled out in my bikini, only to find myself standing in the foyer of the hotel rather than on its roof.  Worse still, there was a large group of businessmen standing by the information desk.  Initially none of them noticed me as I stood self-consciously in my bikini, frantically pressing "9" on the keypad and waiting for my designated lift to arrive.  It was at that point that one of the employees behind the information desk decided to be helpful, and shouted to me "madam, you must look at the letter that appears on the screen.  You must get in the lift that matches the letter if you want to go to the pool.  You must have gone into the wrong lift to be down here".  There was no avoiding the bemused stares of the businessmen in their suits after that.

That incident paled in comparison to the one that was to follow. 

The next day, I rolled out of bed, tired and bleary eyed and wandered into the bathroom.  I stripped off my pyjamas, turned the shower on and, while waiting for the water to warm up, went into the adjoining toilet.  These details of my ablutions are necessary, for reasons that will become apparent. The window in front of the toilet was a large panel of clear glass.  There were no curtains.  This did not bother me, as I thought at the time that the window did not need curtains given that it simply looked out to the roofs of nearby hotels. 

As I sat on the toilet, in all my naked glory, I suddenly found myself face to face with a man, who was pressed against the panel of glass like spiderman, peering in at me.  I sat for what seemed like an eternity, trying to work out if I was dreaming or hallucinating, before realising neither to be the case; instead, I was face-to-face with a window cleaner who seemingly had no intention of averting his eyes from my state of complete nudity.  The last time anyone had seen me in this state I was around 2 years old.  And even then, according to my mother, I usually at least wore some clothing by way of my underpants on my head. 

It is hard to muster much dignity when you have been seen, naked, on the loo but I did my best, covering what bits of me I could with my hands and running out of the toilet.  A quick exploration of the hotel afterwards meant I found the culprit - it seems the hotel has its own window cleaners who work off the roof of the hotel and clean the windows every morning.   

Perhaps the Spanish are so comfortable with nudity they do not see the need for curtains, blinds or even some warning about the window cleaners attending the building every morning.  I am not quite so easygoing. 

I confess that these incidents have not given me a taste for the life of a nudist and you are unlikely, at any point soon, to see me embracing the nudist lifestyle in Barcelona.

Primavera!

This week I have been recovering from an exotic Spanish cold.  It wasn't the sort of memento I was hoping to take back from my holiday in Barcelona, but my suffering was worth it for the fun we had over the previous week. 

G and I were in Barcelona for the Primavera music festival, a festival well worth the exclamation mark assigned to it in the title to this piece.  Primavera is a three day orgy of music and involved some old-time favourite bands such as Pavement and the Pixies, as well as some of our more recent favourites, such as Wild Beasts and Florence and the Machine.  I also discovered a new-found love for acts I had thought I despised, such as the Pet Shop Boys.  You can see the full line-up here.

The holiday had a rather inauspicious beginning.  G and I arrived at our hotel in Barcelona (the Silken on Avenue Diagonal) in the early hours of a Thursday only to be told that, notwithstanding the fact we had pre-paid for a week's stay in the hotel, the hotel was overbooked and they had no room to give us.  We were ferried to an associated hotel for the night.  We then returned to our booked hotel the next morning, grumpy and tired.  To compensate for their error (or perhaps simply to stop us complaining at the hotel's front desk) we were upgraded to a suite for the remainder of our stay and provided with a daily complementary breakfast.   

On the Thursday two friends, Ke and Ka, arrived.  The four of us then began the routine we would follow for the next three days. We spent an afternoon wandering around Barcelona, stopping for the odd tapas meal and drink.  Then we all met in our suite at around 5 pm for cava and nibbles before heading to Primavera.  There, we fueled up on beer, red bull, jaggermeister shots (what can I say - they were only 1 euro each) and food from the food court before dancing the night away until around 4 am.  We also met up with some more friends who were in Barcelona for the party and generally had a debauched and excellent time. 

After three excellent days of partying, G and I then finished the trip off with another three nights of r&r in Barcelona.

The only downside to the trip was the fact that most of the hotel saw me nude, or nearly nude.  But I'll save that for another blog post.

Becoming one of "those" employees

It has happened.  My job has finally sent me mad. 

Below is a copy of an email I found myself sending to the team leader last week.  In my defence, in an office where we hotdesk, this felt at the time like a very serious issue.

Dear [team leader]

I am sorry to bother you about such a trivial matter, but I am not sure who else to contact regarding the issue of telephone wipes.

I know it was mentioned at the team meeting last week, but I was wondering if anything is being done about obtaining telephone wipes? We simply aren't given them any more, and as I am rarely at the same desk, most of my mornings are spent hunting around the desks of others for any spare telephone wipes. I confess that, as people eat at their desks, sneeze into their hands and then use the keyboard and mouse, I use mine not only for the telephone but also for wiping down the keyboard and mouse. After that spell last year when I was constantly sick, I have become concerned to prevent myself getting sick again. Increasingly, it is becoming difficult to find any spare wipes. If we are not longer going to be issued them on a daily basis, one solution may be for packets of wet ones or other disinfectant wipes to be left in the kitchen for those of us who move desks to use. Who can I speak to about purchasing these wipes for general use?

Kind regards

Natural beauty

I'm a believer in natural beauty.  Therefore, I usually don't wear make-up, heeled shoes or bother "doing" my hair.  Or at least the "natural beauty" thing is my excuse.  Actually, I'm just lazy.  Given I'm not overweight and don't yet have a face like a half-sucked mango, I like to think I can get away with my casual appearance.  If it was up to me, I would happily wear my tracksuit or leggings and trainers everywhere.  As it is, after much negotiation, G and I have reached a compromise, being that I can only wear such outfits  in public if I'm doing exercise or if I'm not in G's company.  He doesn't want to be embarrassed by my chavvy, casual look.   

Although G and I have reached this compromise, he still gives me disapproving looks when he discovers I've been out in public sporting a tracksuit, leggings or (sometimes) even just a coat thrown over my pyjamas (only when I'm getting the Sunday morning papers).  G tells me that, even at the local shops, it isn't good to look like a hobo.  I have always thought him uptight in that regards.  Now, however, I'm starting to come around to his way of thinking.

One area in which I am not lazy is in the personal grooming department.  Messy eyebrows irritate me no  end.  I like to keep mine looking natural but, as all women know, natural looking eyebrows are no less effort than their more shaped and sculptured cousins.  No grown woman actually wants natural eyebrows; the trick is to shape them so it looks like god gave us these beautifully shaped eyebrows, rather than the squashed caterpillar brows we're born with.  So I'm fastidious in removing those unsightly and out of place hairs and taking myself off to the beautician every now and again.

This weekend, G and I were in the rather unusual position of being in high demand for social events.  With two 30th birthday parties to go to on Saturday night, on Saturday I decided to attend the beautician to get my eyebrows done.  Given there's a beautician just around the corner from us, and given G wasn't accompanying me, I threw on my comfort outfit of leggings, uggs and flannel shirt. 

"Are you going out in that" G asked.  Yes, was my response. 

"You'll get cold".  So I threw my coat over the top.
"That looks no better.  Really, that is not a look you should sport in public.  Or anywhere".

I shot G a loaded "don't be so uptight" look as I walked out the door.  I didn't care that I looked ridiculous and off I went.  Oh, but I should have cared.  I really should have cared.

When I arrived at "Dee's beauticians" I gave the woman my usual mantra: natural looking, don't change the shape, just tidy them up.  Dee seemed to understand.  She pointed me to the table and quickly applied the wax to my eyebrows.  A few painful moments later and she gave me the mirror to see my reflection.  Staring back at me I found a woman with two eyebrows so thin they appeared to have been drawn on with a fine pencil.  Dee had managed to turn my "natural" eyebrows into two extremely thin lines.  They are the sort of eyebrows sported by young women who think pink velour tracksuits with heels are the height of fashion.   Dee told me that while she knew I said I wanted natural, she thought this look just suited me so much better.

And she's right in a way.  The "are they there or are they not" eyebrow look does perhaps suit the slightly insane look I was sporting that day.  On the other hand, they do not go at all with my usual look, which tends more towards the "I'm not a chavvy skank" trend. 

Don't tell G this, but I'm starting to think he is right.  Maybe, even when I'm only going down the road, it's time to trade in the comfort for a little bit of style.

An update on the farter

The flatulence problem in my office has not subsided.  Finally, however, the farter was spoken to.  His line manager discussed the tricky situation with HR and on their advice proceeded to have what she describes as the most difficult conversation she has had in a professional context. 

I am reliably told that the farter told his line manager that his "problem" was not a medical one but was simply the food he eats.  He was apparently baffled by the fact it was regarded as an issue, as he considered the smell (which he was aware of) did not travel that far.  In short, as one rather blunt work colleague put it ,"he knows he's a stinker and doesn't care".  Nonetheless, he was asked in future to excuse himself to the bathroom when a fart was imminent. 

Problem solved, we all thought.  But sadly, it wasn't to be.  The next day there was a noise of eruption and the office was once again filled with that familiar odour.  Worst of all, a colleague sitting near him insisted that his facial expression was one of (as she put it) "someone pushing it out".  The drama of the farter continues.

New York, New York

According to various members of my family, my previous blog post on New York was not sufficiently detailed.  I confess I didn't think a blog post detailing our trip would be of interest to anyone; after all, New York has been described in countless movies, TV shows and songs.  Musicians as diverse as Alica Keys, Frank Sinatra and Ryan Adams have written odes to the city.  And years of American TV shows like Sex and the City being syndicated around the world have resulted in images of the city forming part of most Westerners' cultural iconography. 

I blog about London, but then I think London is so badly represented in movies, songs and TV shows that there's still plenty to say.  When you try and think of a song dedicated to London, you end up with the Clash's London Calling, with its chorus:

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in

Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning and I, I live by the river

Hardly descriptive of London.

The movies seem to show London either as a breeding ground for zombies (think 28 Days Later or Shaun of the Dead) or a place of bumbling, posh but oh-so-charming men (think Notting Hill or any movie from the nauseating corpus of  Richard Curtis' work).  Alternatively, you get the grimy, mockney gangster movies.  In short: Londoners pretend to hate London (and make it out to be a city of flesh-eating zombies) or exploit the stereotypes of it to sell movies abroad.  And the stereotypes are far from the reality:  posh public school-educated men are no more charming than their working class counterparts.  And most gangs in London consist of council estate teenagers carrying knives, rather than being full of lovable rouges with amusing accents and their own strict moral code.  The positive side of this representation of London is that I doubt visitors to the city expect London to be romantic or wonderful.  Londoners will rarely admit it to be either of those things, as it's far more in keeping with the British psyche to moan about the city.  But often London can be wonderful.  I don't know that anyone can walk through Regent's park on a sunny day or have a drink in an ancient, dingy London pub without being seduced by the city's charms.

In contrast, we know a lot about New York.  New Yorkers don't seem able to stop enthusing about the city.  All that talk and praise is pretty tough to live up to and I confess that, for me, New York didn't get there.

Perhaps I've become too English over the time I've been here, but I found that in New York, people just talk. They talk a lot.  Even when they're on their own, walking the streets, they talk.  They all seem to have a blue tooth headset perched in an ear and to be either having a shouty conversation through it or anxiously waiting to have a shouty conversation.  There are a lot of people in London who talk when on their own, but they are usually talking to themselves and are the sort of people one crosses the street to avoid. 

New York also has a reputation for being friendly.  In part that seemed correct, but people varied from being incredibly friendly to incredibly rude.  The former tended to be people working for commission (shop assistants) or tips (waiters) and the latter anyone who knew there was no hope of them getting a tip (eg, anyone on the other end of a telephone).  At least in London you know people will be rude or, at best, indifferent.  I find that just a bit more predictable and easy to deal with.  To be frank, I don't want to converse with the gym staff about my horoscope.  Nor do I want to discuss in detail my holiday with waiters or plans for the upcoming weekend.  But maybe I'm just becoming too English and/or grumpy.

The things I did love about New York were the restaurants (we ate at far too many), slick bars and coffee shops.  New Yorkers know how to mix a cocktail (English bartenders frequently do not).  And G and I greatly enjoyed the culture of the brunch: the day that starts with an enormous meal, a bloody mary or mimosa and strong coffee (with endless free refills).  I loved the diversity of the neighbourhoods; from the neighbourhoods of orthodox Jews through to the trendy gay Chelsea and the ultra hip Williamsburg.  I'll also admit that sometimes I liked the fact you could talk to strangers about things other than the weather.  Aspects of the city were also really beautiful, such as the view from Brooklyn Bridge and the city lights at night.  The Statue of Liberty is impressive and the Chrysler building stunning.  And New York was, I admit, very, very cool.  There were more hipsters than you could poke a stick at.  All this made for an absolutely fantastic holiday.

In Sex and the City, Carrie once commented that she was dating New York.  I think that if New York was a person, it would be the cool, slick bad boy of a teen soapy (think Dylan from 90210, the original).  That might be fun for a little while, but I think I would rather date his older, scruffier but ultimately more lovable friend.