Goings on

I survived that soccer tournament, by the way, but only barely. It was two weekends ago and I still have stitch mark imprints on the inside of one knee where I blocked a shot (the other pentagons imprinted on my skin have faded). It took a week for the pain in my knees, shoulders and lower back to ease up enough to go to the gym. That's what I get for trying to keep up with teenagers. But not only were the other teams in the tournament composed of teenagers - they were composed of teenagers from sports academies. Yes, those jock schools where you read a book for five minutes of the day and then spend the rest training. These girls possessed an alarming amount of testosterone. They grunted and growled, gave the ref lip, behaved more like prima donnas than Cristiano Ronaldo, and nearly got in fist fights with one another. Needless to say, we got annihilated by every team except the only other team with players over 20 years old (we did beat them). As I've said before, not many women play football just for fun over here. Anyway, my main achievement was the world's most dramatic slow-motion fall (which has entered team legend). The kind of fall where you stagger backwards a few paces, sway unsteadily, and slowly crash to the ground while everyone around stares in fascination. A younger person would have absorbed the blow and remained standing, but at that point I was so tired I thought 'oh, to heck with it, I'm going down and then at least I'll have a moment's rest'.

But I was able to recover just in time for Natasha's visit. We shopped, hung out in London, had cocktails at the Grand and pints at the Trout.(The Perch had sadly burned down the week before - those thatch roofs catch fire easily.) I see her so rarely, and always for just long enough to remember all the many reasons I like her so much. And then we are cruelly separated again for another year or two. Why haven't they figured out teleportation yet? That's ahead of space travel in my list of priorities. Cause I really miss all the folks back home!

Chocolate and Chanel

We spent a long weekend in Paris a couple of weeks ago. Since we'd already done the tourist thing nine years ago, we basically went to enjoy some city life, sit in cafes and parks and stroll about the neighborhoods. The older I get the more I like that kind of vacation - too adventurous and you need another vacation to recover from it. Besides, the center of Paris feels like Disneyland - packed with English-speaking tourists. Best to stick to the left bank, where just a few blocks in from the river things feel comparatively normal and you can actually get a seat on the patios. My brother was in Paris at the same time, creating further occasions for sitting on patios to eat dessert-like pastries and drink pure molten chocolate - for breakfast! I've never been a porridge girl, what can I say.

We were there during the elections, and while we saw the riots at Place de la Concorde from the top of the Tour Montparnasse, we'd never have known otherwise. Besides, I was preoccupied with my hunt for Sephora stores. The company started in France, and I can only guess that their failure to open any stores in England is due to lingering resentment from the Hundred Years' War. The only truly touristy things we did were visit the Louvre and then Montmartre on a Sunday. Horror show! Go midweek in winter or leave hating all of humanity. Here are a few Eiffel-Tower-free photos:

St. Germain

La Rive Gauche

Bistro!

Hotel room with, er, French doors!


While in Paris I also took the awesomest self-portrait EVER.

Now I'm caught up as far as early April.

Sooner or later I'll get back on the Flickr wagon. Or rather, on it at all, as Jeff has been handling our account and I shudder to think what photos he has been posting.

Anyway, in the meantime here are a few final photos from our trip up north. We visited Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire on the way back down from Edinburgh. It was founded in 1132, and abandoned in 1539 during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. Ever since it has sat in graceful ruin.

Here Jeff is trying to figure out whether he's in the chapter house, dormitory, infirmary, or billiards room.






A lot has happened since that trip. Maybe one day I'll tell you about it. However, in two days an esteemed guest arrives and we have many cocktails and fashion magazines to consume in the meantime.

Keepin' on trucking ...

I am now so ridiculously behind in all the things I've meant to write about that I'm tempted to wipe the slate clean and start from today. Except that today was rather dull, so I'd then put off posting until I felt I had something more interesting to recount, and before you know it I'd be behind all over again. I'm behind at work, behind on chores around the flat, behind on birthday cards and gifts (and now Mother's Day too ...), and behind on reducing my behind in anticipation of yet another swimsuit season. It seems like just yesterday that I cast aside leg-revealing skirts, arm-revealing tops, fake tan lotion, razors (hah - kidding - sort of) and my punishing gym routine with delight, looking forward to a winter of bulky sweaters and carb-loading. Every autumn I do this, and every spring I pay for it, meaning that from the months of April to July I am hungry and therefore angry and unpleasant. Consider yourself warned! I do wish the people I work with would stop finding reasons to have cake. Always with the cake! Cake that sits there on the table in the middle of our 'pod' - yes, I work in a pod now - and becomes absolutely, completely, impossibly irresistable during that 4:00 pm sugar crash.

Anyway, to follow from the last post, our travels continued from the Lake District on up to Edinburgh. This was the first time Jeff and I had returned since living there nine years ago (good lord I'm old). I was kind of anxious about what it would be like to visit again, since that year was probably the hardest one of my entire life. As soon as I opened the car door I smelled the peculiar baked beans odour that permeates much of the city, or at least the area around the residences we lived in. I had entirely forgotten about the baked beans smell! No one ever seems to comment on it, so I have no idea what it is - though a whiskey distillery is a safe bet in Scotland. You're never far from one! (Another time I'll tell you about my ill-fated attempt to join the university's 'water of life' society - I'm apparently just not man enough for the single malts.) We had spectacular weather - warmer than Greece on one day - and I really enjoyed hitting our old haunts again. It was reassuring to discover the Metropole Cafe still there, the Elephant House and Cafe Florentine still kicking, the university campus as drab and depressing as ever, and the streets that same mix of picturesqueness and grittiness that I remember so well. A few photos, if you will:

Like I said - warmer than Greece!

Looking toward North Bridge and ultimately the castle:

We climbed Arthur's seat for old times' sake. I rather suspect this perspective will confuse anyone who hasn't climbed it themselves - look for the little person at bottom left for scale. You can see the castle and the Scott monument in the background, and Salisbury Crags in the foreground.

And, as always, I close with the pub.

These are a few of my favourite things

While my mom and brother were here, we took a trip up north to the Lake District for a few days, where we had some fantastic hikes and stopped for many pints along the way. That's one of the nice things about hiking about the countryside here - you almost always come across a welcoming pub sooner or later. So civilized.

Naturally, I sang 'Climb Every Mountain' or whatever that Sound of Music song is the whole way up. You can't help it when the birds are singing and the sun is shining and your muscles are aching but alive and you're escaping fascist ... er, anyway, the occasion seemed to call for it.



Jeff set a bold pace for us to follow the second day:



To make sure that we made it down the mountain in time to catch the last taxi home:



And we very much enjoyed the fact that the clocks had just moved back so sunset came much later:



And we finished the day with a good ol' pub meal (this one is Jeff's - I opted for roast chicken):


I also got my nerd on and visited Dove Cottage to fawn over Wm. Wordsworth's shaving kit, passport, lock of hair, pen nib, valise, fingernail clippings (okay not really), etc. I adore old everyday stuff. My favorite part of working in the Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives - besides laughing at 1970s high school yearbooks - was examining all the odd little daily items that belonged to the Loyalist pioneers in the area. I particularly liked them because their owners weren't anybody in particular - it's like those old photos you see at antique shops where someone has dressed to the nines for the photograph, with a visible sense of self-importance, and years later no one remembers who they are. Anyway, Mom came along to Dove Cottage, but the boyz weren't interested. Hardly surprising. My brother has been travelling around continental Europe for the past several weeks (coincidentally sending me a postcard from Salzberg, the Sound of Music town). He got to drive a few laps at the most famous racetrack in Europe, which apparently merited rapturous description, but sent me an email saying Venice was 'OK'. Start quote, end quote. I think he's just reached that point where, if you see another breathtaking castle or cathedral, you might vomit. You start craving mid-century-modern furniture and elevated bungalows. It really does happen.

Perennially cheerful person that I am, I will leave you with my pet peeve of the day: trendy environmentalism. Apparently people lined up at Sainsburys grocery stores at 5 in the morning to get one of those canvas bags that say 'I am not a plastic bag' on them. Well good for you. What's that you're climbing into to drive home ... an SUV? (Or, as they fondly call them here, 'Chelsea Tractors'.)

Aw, rats. Now 'Climb Every Mountain' is in my head. Oh well, at least it's better than that 'How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?' song. Oh no ...