Lido love

I miss swimming. I miss ocean swimming, I miss outdoor, non-chlorinated swimming. I miss having no excuse not to go swimming...

All of which is a whiny roundabout way of telling you I went swimming this morning and I freaking loved it. I've ditched Camberwell Leisure Centre, as clean and relatively convenient as it is because I haven't swum outdoors since Mexico and deep in my bones I need to be back in the water and under an expanse of (blue but grey will do if it must) sky.

April? Did anyone see April?

... It must have run off with the end of March. Bloody hell it's been a while and if the year keeps up at this rate, never mind 30, I'll be 45 before I've even had time to get a haircut.

I had visions of myself, finally, having now the time and the headspace (and the internet connection), sitting down on my new sofa in my new house to catch up on the last six weeks. Only, well.... my sofa, delivered this morning.... currently looks like this:

Thank god for gingham

I am wearing a very pretty dress today. I bought it yesterday and aside from the fact that cotton gingham fabric sans several woolly layers of jumpers = Spring (16 degrees here today - yeah baby!) the dress also represents a very significant victory over the temptation that is a chocolate and peanut butter milkshake. Frankly yesterday it would have been a miracle if I'd only had ONE milkshake, never mind a dirty little secret drawers worth of other deliciously calorific treats. But no. I resisted. I was drawn to the gingham and my day of living virtuously survived intact.

It was a shitty kind of a day before PGD (pre-gingham dress). I was woken by a text message at an ungodly hour and after a trip to the gym in the morning I spent the rest of the day battling dawdlers, idiots, shovers and a general coterie of smelly/strange/unhelpful people on the streets of London as I tried to navigate my way from library to library with the dim hope of actually getting some work done this week. 

Yesterday was the kind of crappy arse day where you pump money into the printer only for it to take said money but then refuse to give you anything you've printed. The kind of day where every issue of an art magazine dating back to 1988 is in the library - except the one you need. That sort of thing. Was such fun I gave up and left. Only to encounter more annoying, pushing, difficult people all the way to the real estate. It honestly made the G20 protests of last week feel like a casual get together.


But to the point - we got our house! - the uber lovely little apartment in Shoreditch and we move in just over two weeks time. I. Cannot. Wait. LB (Lovely Boy) has even offered to take a day off work to help me brave Ikea and then flex his boy muscles and put all my furniture together. Ahh Bless. Now if only I could find someone to help me with all this school work...

There is so much to get done before I move and while I am still without any sort of direction and focus for the collective 8000 words I have to write, "research" is offering a legitimate distraction and I've loved re-discovering the geeky thrills of the library treasure hunt.

Earlier this week my lovely friend from home was in London and it's been so so good to see her and ambling through Hampstead Heath on Monday was just so delightful, not least of all because it was my first ever visit to this tres genial part of London.


Amongst our many and varied conversations we struck at one point on our mutual lack of desire for any form of aggressive participation in the full-time rat race. With that (re)articulated, and in light of the distinct lack of 9 to 5 that is the student life, well, my new mantra is to be resolutely part-time brilliant. Anything more than that and I'm going to need another dress.