All at sea...

Incredibly we left on time. Just. And if you ignore the fact that I missed a go-straight-on so had to tiddle around attempting to get where we were going and also ignore that we went sailing past the ruddy great ferry port it all went swimmingly.

Except that it was way beyond my current driving range so I was struggling a little. Not to worry.

The important thing is we got here, sat and cackled in the car for a bit and finally we made it through to the inner sanctum. Which meant I could finally spend a penny. My middle aged bladder really wasn’t built for this sort of abuse.

Oh, and I got tea. And a toastie. So I’m not complaining.

In fact if you must go on a ferry then do it in the middle of winter on a Sunday at the end of half term week. So quiet!

If you ignore the screaming baby in the next cabin. Which will be joined by the screaming flatmate. I’ll just keep telling her there are sailors on board, that should keep her interested.

Anyway, it’s a sweet little cabin and…

We’re moving!

Skipper watching progress

Which means I’m getting a running commentary that a) we are doing 2 knots, b) that we have a heading of 294 degrees and c) she is reading all the navigation lights.

Oooh, a South Cardinal Buoy!

How many hours will I have this?

At least Monty the Bear is happy.

Adieu England, see you in a few weeks…

4 knots. If you’re interested.

Ready set parp

It's going to be a long two hours down to Portsmouth for the driver. As we calmly and elegantly slid into the excellently packed Contrary Clio, I announced that I had tummy ache. Rather concerned, she enquired if I was ok. Concern then turned into hysterics when I clarified the nature of my tummy turbulence. Yes. We are setting off on our 2000 mile trip with a burst of old fashioned windy-pops. 

Still. I'm sure by the time we've been buffeted by mild cross Channel gales later this evening, a force 2 in the car will seem harmless by comparison. 

To dive right in and immediately start talking nonsense about the road trip seems a little bit previous. Maybe even a little frivolous. I can't even begin to describe the enslaught of emotion that I've experienced this past few weeks. The stationary journey to reach this well organised juncture has been relentless,  and has left me wordless in the face of such changes. 

Unsurprising, being sat in this passanger seat and watching the miles flash by is the first time I've had the leisure to meditate and jot. To be honest, being too busy to think has been a blessing because whenever I've started to process the enormity of this step, I've only ever managed to get my head around the small things. 

Like where heck I was going to get Croatian wine for the leaving party. Or Boots having an offer on sun cream. Or how beautiful Tower Bridge looks in the early morning sunlight. Enjoying drinks and lunches with friends and work colleagues. Giving some of my reference books to the lovely neighbours opposite And finally how helpful the bank lady was when dealing with my rather hit and miss finances. 

Each small thing has been dealt with obsessively. Anything to avoid the rather large matter of being jobless, linguistically challenged, and anticipating and embracing a completely different lifestyle. Ultimately there must be a lesson here; look after and appreciate the small things, and the big things will take care of themselves. I hope. 

Speaking of small things. For as long as there is giggling about Dido going down on this ship; place names such as  Burpham; speeding past the queue of cars at Cobham services; calculating the number of murray mints to the mile; and flatmates with unfortunate tummy timing, our resultant cackling will make the next 1900 miles go by as fast as the first UK stretch of the trip.

Packing too early...

This might raise an eyebrow of incredulity from many that know us, but Clare is bleating on about "this is why it's bad to pack too early". Just to add some context as I write we are less than 22 hours from the point where the ferry leaves Portsmouth.

Still, it's amusing watching someone pack wearing an evening dress. More so when I remember that I've done bugger all and I'm currently reclining, a glass of red in hand and marvelling that this is the last night we'll be bugging each other in Contrary Towers.

Oh and playing music.

At least it's not as loud as the gits that now live next door. There is no real point to this post other than to say that I have little to say, more to the point I don't want to dwell too much on how I feel that this little adventure is about to end but a new, more sparkly and more chaotic is about to begin.

Bring. It. On.

A very Contrary Roadtrip

We’re going on a road trip

It’s going to be a big one

We’re not scared…

What a beautiful day!

But first...

So picture the scene, me laying on my flatmate’s bed, glass in hand, her lounging on her chair, glass in hand, both of us quite squiffy. A typical Wednesday in late January you might say. Inevitably conversation turned to a) the road-trip and b) how the last four years had been which meant c) how much we loved the place and by slurred exclamation how much Clare was looking to being back…

Did I mention we were going on a road-trip? No? More on that later.

Little did we know that the impish gods were listening and they'd really had quite enough of our contrary tendencies. It was time to teach us a lesson.

Which they did the very next day. I was off to lunch with a dear friend when I received the message: “okay, we need to have a natter when you get back”…

Err, but we natter continuously throughout the day. Oh bugger.

Which I then duly put to the back of my mind as I had lunch to enjoy. Little did I know…

…little did I know was that a few minutes after I left she’d received a call from the property agent saying that the landlord wanted to sell the apartment. Our home. My sanctuary. CONTRARY TOWERS! Noooooooooooooooooooooo…

I was a little unsettled.

Whilst you ponder that understatement I’ll continue. We found another place, same building, and we went in all purses blazing, I saw, I made an offer, I even agreed to putting all of the required cash in the agent’s mitts to show how keen we were. All looked good.

Until Thursday. The very next Thursday.

I received the call from the agent this time. The new landlord had changed his mind. He was selling. I might have been cross. I might even have used a word I rarely use when I finished the call. I might have been ready to kill.

But none of that mattered, I now also had to find somewhere to live. Again.

I should mention that I had before the first Thursday nominally secured a new flatmate for whilst Clare was away. Needless to say we’d warned him of the crisis but had kept him in mind if the right place came along, similarly if he found a suitable place I was ready to agree. After all at this point we were 23 days away from the road-trip.

The one that would last best part of three weeks.

Limehouse Basin. So shiny...

A date was agreed to go and look at a place with the potential new flatmate, the thing is I realised that it was probably one of the places that we had been offered so I decided, being a) impatient and b) terrified of losing somewhere for the sake of waiting until Saturday. So on Tuesday morning I squeaked at the agent and within an hour I was standing in Limehouse Basin waiting to view. Again.

Fortunately I loved it.

And again being impatient/nervous/pragmatic/foolhardy I put in an offer there and then with the reasoned view that if said potential flatmate didn’t like it I would surely be able to find someone that would want to live so close to Limehouse DLR.

This is my actual hopeful face.

Rather scarily I had another Thursday to get through, by this point I’m a little angsty about them and I know how Arthur Dent felt now, but all was well and by Saturday things were looking good after multiple changes to the draft lease and a healthy dose of champagne. And on Monday…

…we signed.

But don’t get too excited as there was one further change made so we all had to sign again on Tuesday but that - as they say somewhere or other - was that. Crikey.

So where was I, oh yes…

We’re going on a road trip

It’s going to be a big one

We’re not scared…

What a beautiful day!

When I say big I mean quite big. Croatia, via France and Italy and needless to say we aren’t going the direct route. In fact the plan we have is at best an indication of intention. The sort of thing that’s useful to tell banks so they know which country we’ll be in. The route advertised may change etc., etc., etc.

You know how it works.

The only definite things are…

• We leave Blighty on the 21st of February
• We leave Ancona for Split on the 29th of February
• I, with a new co-conspirator, return to Blighty on the 11th of March

The rest is, well, open to interpretation.

Roughly speaking we will never travel for more than six hours in a day. Maybe. With most hops between places being less than 90 minutes, the exception being Limoges to Toulouse, but I’m sure there will be somewhere to stop in all that green, which will please Monty. The bear. But he’s coming with us so it’s clearly not a bear hunt.

Something to ignore!

• Day 1
• Le Havre as this is where we invade France
• Chartres
• Étampes because that’s where my family came from 
• Chambord
• Bourges
• Day 2
• Aubusson
• Limoges
• Toulouse
• Day 3
• Carcassonne
• Montpellier
• Marseilles
• La Seyne-sur-Mer
• Day 4
• Saint Tropez
• Nice, where we will say adieu la France and head over the border to Italy…
• Ventimiglia
• Savona
• Day 5
• Acqui Terme
• Piacenza
• Cremona
• Brescia
• Peschiera del Garda
• Day 6
• Este
• Chioggia near Venice
• Ravenna
• Day 7
• San Marino
• Ancona…

And the eighth day, as Hazel O’Connor would have sung if she’d realised, we land in Split. I hope somebody has warned them. Actually, scratch that, maybe it’s better if it’s a surprise...

So the question is: are we prepared? Probably not. But how hard can it be?

I think what sums it up best is when a friend of ours said…

2000 miles. In a Clio. With Clare. WCPGW.

On forgotten remembrances

My dad is gone and not gone. The only way I deal with this is forgetting. If I was the drinking sort, this would be a bit of a problem. If I was the career driven sort, I'd be a millionaire. Given that I'm the studious sort, it's a slightly more worthy way of making stuff go away. When I was at university originally, my old life and family in Hereford were gladly and thankfully lost at the back of the mental cupboard. 

As I get older it occurs to me that there is so much else I've forgotten. Not just some of the unreally traumatic bits, but the valuable too. Whether it is a family holiday, an old family friend or even just a pet I used to have, I'm not sure why, whether it's a normal part of age or life. Or whether it's something more perniciously psychological. 

Do people who live in the same village they grew up in, surrounded by physical manifestations of memory retain more? Is my emotional amnesia due to a combination of a thirst for knowledge and the inevitable grief caused by loss.  By looking for connections, have I lost the obvious ones? And by trying to distance myself to avoid being vulnerable, I've actually lost myself. Or are some people hard wired to keep the stories alive and I'm simply not like that?

I've spent so much time avoiding or hiding from family I think I've forgotten it's importance in the cultivation and maintenance of what made me, me. It's not that I want to sit there with a notebook and pen and write my family stories but when I'm with them, they jog so many distant images, its almost unbearable. The sounds of my fathers' friends enjoying themselves is the sweetest music. To sit and listen and simply be is to revert to being twelve. 

I was touched by the memory of my father today in an unusually visceral way. I'm used to my wonderful aunt, and she keeps my dad and grandparents alive in her own unique way. She is so like him in presence. Her voice encapsulates all that I love about them all. The pattern of speech is my grandad and the laugh is pure grandma. She is inspeakably special to me. 

But it was dad's old motorbike police partner that did for me today. I didn't remember the gentleman but inevitably he remembered me. 'Bob's daughter'. I've not been called that for many years and it was like being a kid when I went to meet dad at the police station. His Wirral humour was suitably and familiarly macabre on recounting the usual decapitation/body parts stories, so beloved by ex police officers. I genuinely wish I could run back and ask him everything that he could tell me about dad. God I hope we meet again. 

I am becoming cautious about my year away because I'm sure it's just an escape from negligible responsibilities and an avoidance of an empty familial ache. But in the meantime I'm determined to see everyone more, appreciate and remember how they helped shape me. When I get back, I want to be the best aunt I can me, after all, I have the best role model! 

Just an average birthday...

This weekend has seen a return to personal form on a level not known since about October last year. There is clearly a correlation between holidays, lack of stress, and being able to live a normal active life. Or it's just taken me six months to get over completing my MA and emerge, blinking mole-like, from  dark book baggage.    

On my return from foreign parts last week my brother called me to remind me about the imminent maternal birthday festivities. He was wondering when the heck I was arriving on 6th June. My brother stresses a lot. Strange, because I don't worry about stuff at all. 

Oh no. 

To be fair he was right to be worried. It turns out I had the wrong weekend in my befuddled head. After a hurried ticket booking and further consultation with the man of the family, everything was organised. All I had to do was get to Pewsey at 9.30 and he would pick me up. I managed it despite over-sleeping and set a world record for crossing London in the process. 

We arrived at his and I finally had my first cup of tea of the day. My nephew hid under a cushion. So my sister in law decided that we'd better put on our party faces as we didn't want to send anyone else scurrying under the soft furnishings. Chris made a fabulous eggs benedict and we sat in the sunny garden, discussing food. It's pretty much staple conversational fodder in our family. 

My brother is proud to announce that in four years he's grown one stalk of purple asparagus. He reports it tasted the same as green. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Roo's favourite colour is red. And he enjoys writing his name. He also loves cars, doing roly-polys, telling stories, swimming, BMX tracking around the garden, and playing catch with Izzy the dog. He doesn't do sprinting competitions at school because he isn't fast enough to win. After all it's not the taking part... His ambition is to explore the jungle. He had me in stitches. He's also a perfect budding worry-wart. On being left in the car, we conspired to drive away; neither of us have a driving licence. He thought about it with a naughty smile, then looked panicked. 'We can't drive', he announced, 'we'd be 'rrested'. 

True. I have a feeling I'm going to have to work on his more anarchistic side. 

The party went off well, despite the many and varied ailments of the family grandees. The pub was a lucky find given that someone had mixed up The Snooty Fox and the The Fox. Chris had asked me about venues and mentioned foxes. I thought it was the 'other' fox so he booked this fox. We were clearly utterly foxed. But thankfully the landlady was charming and the food was all home made. The apple crumble was excellent according to those in the know. My uncle only deals in cider apples so went for the icecream. Wise man. Roo agreed that the strawberry was the best he'd ever had. He's a card. 

After all the fox kerfuffle, we went to see the White Horse. Chris and Roo demonstrated the art of rolling down hills, given a piquant twist of sheep droppings and the boys being in their best party clothes. My mum and uncle enjoyed the walk from the comfort of their stationary vehicle. My family is truly priceless. 

After an excellent day, it was rounded off by a walk in a jungle-like Pewsey nature reserve, and Roo being excited by the trains and tannoy at the station. I only know one person in Pewsey but we haven't spoken in years. Turns out she was standing on the platform, catching  the identical train back to London that I was. Coincidence made for a great ending of a really good day. 

And the most exciting thing? Next week I get to introduce my nephew to Dippy at the Natural History Museum! 

Let them eat cake...

Today was something of a first and a last for me. The first time I've been to a garden party and wandered aimlessly around Buckingham Palace gardens. And probably the last time I'll be allowed back. Not that I did anything naughty just that that's what most of my readers would presume...

Anyway.

Queue hats...

Best laid plans of mice and harridans meant that I didn't actually leave my office until after 2pm for a 2pm start, which was nice. On the bright side it meant I was expecting queues from Buck House to the home counties. Wherever they are. The event was part of the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Women's Institute.

I wasn't disappointed, the queue from the main gate was along most of Constitution Hill, but fortunately it disappeared before I found my intended queue at Hyde Park Corner. I whiled away the time chatting with a lovely lady from Wiltshire - I think - who was looking for her mum as she knew she was there and wearing a hat...

Hats. There were a lot of them.

I was definitely in the minority as I didn't have one as a) my head is slightly larger than Phobos and b) it was a trifle windy and I'm actually not as daft as I look.

Fortunately the extremely well behaved queue moved quite quickly and after a quick look at my passport and a suppressed smirk from the policeman we were inside. I forgot to mention, we were warned clearly, everywhere, that no pictures were to be taken and phones should be switched off.

It seemed only I read that bit...

Hats. And cranes.

There were endless excited ladies of a certain age having their photo taken amongst Lizzy's shrubbery, I even took one for the nice lady from Wiltshire, though had to decline one of me as yes said phone was firmly switched off.

We meandered through the fabulous parkland with no idea of where we were going until we reached a frenzy of hats and heels. As near as I could gather this was waiting to meet a royal lady in a hat who also probably had heels. Sort of a cult thing was all I could thing.

At which point I fell in to conversation with a fabulous lady from Oxford. When I say conversation I really mean cackling, lets's just say we were kindred spirits and had an almost identical sense of the occasion...

Nobody but me and a tree :-)

Eventually she went off to attempt to get near the tea tent as I wandered off to have a snout round the garden. I didn't actually get massively far as I found a bench by the lake under a glorious tree where I sat and thought. Living in London you don't get much time in the open to yourself and there was something utterly magical about being so isolated with the sound of the wind in the trees drowning the traffic on Grosvenor Place and beyond.

A lady came to join me, I explained that I was simply enjoying the peace because normally in London I get so little, she made to go but I insisted she was welcome. It turns out she was from Norfolk so I naturally asked whereabouts, she launched in to a familiar explanation of "about 15 miles south of Norwich" when I interrupted her and said where my Norfolk house is. We chatted amiably for quite a while before we wandered back towards the tea tent as she explained she'd come down from Norfolk with friends and she'd mislaid them. Oops. Turned out that you will always find a Norfolk lass near food as they were all there when we wandered in.

Band. Ladies. Hats.

In the queue I began chatting with a lady from Northamptonshire, I think, she'd left at 7am to get there! I admitted I didn't leave until 2pm... She couldn't quite get that I was happy to have just one small slice of victoria sponge and a cup of tea. For me the joy was in simply being out and soaking up the atmosphere.

As the day wore on I slowly wandered towards one of the two military bands that were entertaining the massed hats though I was slightly distracted by a tub of ice cream that a young man with a tray offered me. It would have been rude to say no...

After a few hours of being windswept I decided it was time to head home, I'd toyed with the idea of popping in to Duke's for a martini as I was so close, or maybe wandering up to Claridge's for similar, but as ever the feeling of not wanting to drink alone in a place won over so I scuttled to Green Park and the journey to Contrary Towers.

It was a pity I didn't bump in to any of the ladies I wanted to bump in to but it was also unsurprising and really didn't detract from what was a very pleasant afternoon.