A pinch and a punch

1st of November. Wow. Thanks to the world's best parents I will be heading Bondi-way in seven weeks time for Christmas and a month of family fun and frivolity with friends. Scary to think how quickly Christmas is approaching and scary too to realise it hasn't yet been two months since I arrived.

It's been an emotional couple of days. Yesterday I went to the funeral of a good family friend in Nottingham, who died suddenly and unexpectedly two weeks ago. I've never been to a funeral on my own before - and it's not something I'd like to do again, despite being adopted by two lovely old women who shared their tissues and memories with me. Shock and grief and a profound sense of unfairness make for a heady combination and while I truly believe grief is but a measure of our capacity to love - it doesn't bring them back, does it? The world is certainly a little less lovely for her passing.

Thank goodness for friends - and the comfort of pajamas on cold, wet, miserable, grey days as has been today. Turkish food to beg/steal/plot for and a bottle of wine last night with a friend on her couch and today in situ on my own couch in the company of my best and oldest Peter Alexander's, my similarly-clad and so so lovely flatmate and the Home and Away omnibus. So very sad. So very true. But I like to think an effective antidote to the increasing stabs of longing for warmth and sunshine and sand between my toes.

So YAY for all kinds of distractions - and I don't refer here to five impending days of hard core art in Germany next week...

I am heading out of London again tomorrow - for a walk, no less, through the English countryside.


Hmm. Doing my best to wrangle those latent Mr Darcy fantasies into check and think thick woollen stockings should do the trick. The kind that cover your ribs. Nothing like killing any vestiges of allure with a method actor-esque attempt to understand what it's like to be a fat sausage.