On Sunday I loaded up my bike with my own body-weight in bags, and cycled to Cambridge station to board a train to London. All the way there I was about ready to turn back, having pretty much forgotten all my reasons for moving, and feeling full of fear that I wouldn't settle back properly.
Nearly 48 hours have passed since then, and I'm so happy to be here. It helped that my first day in my new job was half taken up by team-building exercises involving canoes, curries and Cobra. But even today, which has been far more worky, has just been full of joy. I'm really excited by all that I'll be doing work-wise, and already am struggling to fit it into my workplan, and getting the balance between 'doing' and 'strategy'.
And socially, well I don't really know why I was so scared. Since moving back I've already caught up with lots of old friends, and the nepotism and cliquiness I had feared here is actually not manifest in work-time, but instead there's just a supportive, bantrous environment where work and play don't compete. Eeeeeee - it's all very good!
I've had quite an eventful few days. On Friday my restful sojourn in Cambridge was nearly flummoxed by a deer that leapt under our train, ripping out all the electrics and necessitating an emergency rescue from Newport by the wonderful Jerry. My mispelling of deer resulted in several of my friends thinking we had run over an old lady. Now what sort of old lady has antlers eh? Stupid people!
Saturday was nice; lunch with Cambridge friends, then drinks in Wapping with my Jimmy and her lovely newish boyfriend Ali, who I would quite like her to marry. We went to The Prospect of Whitby, a gorgeous olde worlde pub on the Thames, with a leafy river terrace and nice wine. It was built in 1520, and was frequented by Dickens back in the day.
Yesterday was the Brick Lane Festival, which gets more rammed every year. I got groped by a man in the crowd, but reported him to a policeman, so ended up feeling rather empowered and kick-ass. He was shorter than me (the gropist); I should've elbowed him in the head. There was some good music going on in the park, but Brick Lane itself was rammed with middle-class white people wearing 'interesting' clothes. Me and my mates went and sat in the park and soaked up the sun to the Bhangra beats - a perfect London Sunday afternoon. Then in the evening we went to see Little Miss Sunshine, which is a great film. A bit schmaltzy right at the end, but otherwise a near-perfect depiction of how families can be simultaneously deeply joyous and tragic. I came out with a warm glow, which I then accentuated with another riverside drink.
This morning Suzy and I headed to the Bromley By Bow centre where 5 government ministers had gathered a lot of media types together to launch their new Social Exclusion Policy. Suzy was disappointed that Tony Blair wasn't there, but I was a bit glad, as I might've had to throw my Danish at him. Once again I was struck by how sad it is that the incredible work that Labour has done, and will do, in combatting social exclusion is overshadowed by some very bad international decisions, and by a culture of infighting and Blairite Faustian pacts.
So that was the weekend that was. Lunch over - it's back to the bidwriting!
I got home tired and stressed from work, and now I feel much better after a glass of wine. Am I an alcoholic? Joe is mixing together weird things, and making me laugh out loud, which is nice. Goodnight.
So when my Dad was 34 he had a heart attack, and was medically dead for a few minutes, during which time his brain was starved of oxygen. He was resuscitated by a passing policeman, but was in a coma for days, and my family were told he'd not much chance of regaining speech or movement, indeed that it was highly likely he'd be a 'vegetable'. Well he isn't, and that seemed miraculous at the time. His cognition was not impaired at all, though his speech and movement were.
And now there are stories about a new treatment for brain damage , a serendipitously discovered sleeping pill that seems to awaken long-dormant areas of the brain that went into hibernation for their own protection. I wonder if this could help my Dad? I've emailed a link to my Mum, but I very nearly didn't, as I imagine there could be a whole range of emotional responses to something potentially this big in our family. If my Dad was even slightly helped by this, he might not be the Dad I have grown up with. His coma was when I was 2, and my memories only begin around 4 months after it. My brothers have never known the man he was before. So it might be a whole can of worms, it might even be a dead end, but maybe it will be a really good thing.
My Dad is still the cleverest man I have ever met, and also very witty, and it breaks my heart that very few other people get to see this, because he has to speak so slowly and carefully. Some people who have known him for years have seen it, and last week his local party members tried to nominate him to stand as the local councillor; he had to vote against himself to escape it, because his health is not good enough at the moment as he is waiting for some major heart surgery. I want the world to see it.
Please God, let this work.
I'm tired.
My brother's are yelling at each other, and kicking the youngest one.
I'm going to Sheffield at 4am tomorrow. I'll be fine until about 2.30, then I fully expect to fall asleep in a pile of my own conference notes. However I will come back tomorrow night fully able to NLP you all - so ha!
This weekend my love of small and local was confirmed by a nice experience involving Spitalfields market on a Sunday afternoon. I bought a coat from a nice Japanese lady. It is ridiculously now, and is in a crazy new fabric that manages to be voluminous yet light. I am in love with it, and it was dirt cheap, and I got to chat to the designer for ages. If anyone wants to buy me a present, she has a lovely green one with an incredible cut...
My other 'small n local' experience was in a boot shop. I went in with the intention of buying some DMs, Cherry Reds to be precise, in a fit of nostalgia. But I came out empty-handed, not for want of trying. The man spent about 20 minutes measuring different areas of my feet, and then another ten minutes lecturing me on how to look after them, bone-wise. He was rather rapturous about their straightness, and he said I should give my mother a medal for not letting me wear heels until well into my teens. He looked almost tearful as he spoke of the women he sees with golf-balls attached to the sides of their feet. We then proceeded to the trying on, and disaster struck. My heels and ankles are too small for Docs. The man said "Your basic problem, darlin', is that you're trying to squeeze a very feminine foot into a masculine boot"; well reader, I nearly married him.
The upshot was that he actually refused to sell me DMs, and I came away vowing to ban my children, should I have them, from wearing heels, even the girls. However he scared me a bit by saying that the shoes I wear mean I'm in danger of my arches descending as I get older. So I need to start wearing shoes that actually hold my feet. I might start wearing walking boots as slippers..
I'm becoming the sort of person I have always harboured secret hatred for. I eat porridge for breakfast, I avoid caffeine, and I am generally early. I go to bed before midnight, and get up an hour earlier than I strictly have to. My teenage self would loathe me with a vengeance. However last night I managed to combine disgusting-loser earliness with blondeness in a rather pleasing fashion. I was 40 minutes early to meet a friend because my head had transmogrified 7.30 into 7, so I went to a bar and had a G & T on my own, something I would never do normally. It was Bombay Sapphire in honour of my former housemate Liz, who makes the best G & Ts ever, and it was nice to sit nursing a drink watching Broadgate go by. In the end I was very glad to have been early.
I think I just need to embrace the horrible loserness of all this earliness and body-clockety and porridge-eating. Maybe those people I always hated were onto something. Pilates tonight...
I am still homeless.