2013. The year that really, really was.

Well 2013 has definitely been one for the books. As its final moments eek away I’m still grappling with everything that I saw, did, ate, accomplished, learnt, discovered and appreciated. I’m really not ready for 2014 to start and feel like I’m being dragged along, heels firmly entrenched, towards Getting On With Things when I’m still not ready to let go of London. So, really, New Years Eve is the perfect excuse for some indulgent looking back. And there’s a lot to twist the neck for….

Comings and goings

So we’re back. And it feels….

Familiar.

And strange.

I’m just freewheeling with my emotions at the moment – ignoring the stunned, slightly dazed feeling that comes from a cocktail of jetlag, overwrought emotion, uncertainty and exhaustion – and focusing on the minute to minute. And the truly genuine joy at being back amongst the family.

The Last Weekend and Several Last Suppers

It’s been an epic last weekend in London with all the requisite factors – alcohol, tears, museum visits, high teas, posh meals, public transport fails, contemporary art piñatas and pouring, sobbing rain.

I’m exhausted, a little overwrought, foggily dazed and both dragging my feet and ready to pull the pin. 

I might be flexible but I don’t thrive in limbo.

A Chinese revelation and not just any wine bar

It was Lovely Boy’s turn to discover somewhere new this weekend, after my Oval revelation on Tuesday. 

It’s just a disgrace that his discovery was Gordon’s Wine Bar. I mean, the man has been in London for near on a decade and by his own admittance has walked down Villiers St on his way to and from Embankment station more times that he could contemplate. And yet he’d never heard of Gordon’s, much less crossed the threshold down into it’s dark and atmospheric space. It’s a fucking travesty of the highest London order. One I remedied pretty quickly.

The pleasure that is Paris

“I’m not sure I can be bothered with Paris.”

Said my lovely, lovely husband on the eve of another decadent weekend away. I mean, talk about first world problem, talk about fucking sacrilege, more like.

I'm developing an unhealthy obsession with Paris doors

Last weekend we were in Reykjavik with LB’s parents, several weeks before that we were traipsing through France and Italy with my parents and this weekend just gone we’ve been in Paris, with my aunt and uncle on their virgin European adventure. I get the exhaustion – I myself may have also complained about it in recent weeks – but BUCK UP kiddo, it’s PARIS! And I love Paris, even when it’s nine degrees and raining.

Reykjavik

So Reykjavik is a funny little place. And I’m being literal about the little. Perhaps my expectations of a European capital city have been mis-managed after jaunts to Berlin, Istanbul, you know, Paris, but Reykjavik, as I suppose naturally befits the capital of a country where there are more sheep than people, is small, kooky, quiet and strangely, wonderfully contradictory.

Inside Harpa, Reykjavik

Pimms and Penguins

On Friday night Lovely Boy and I went to the Zoo. The first and last time we were here was just over four years ago now: on A Date. One of our first dates actually and it made for the ideal location given our awkward, bumbling, out of practice romantic intentions. Oh look a monkey! A pretty bird! A meerkat! etc etc.

This time around we're husband and wife and while arguably less bumbling, there was still lots of awkward distractions. Oh look! A man in a tiger print onesie! Oh look! A group of adult women getting their face painted! Oh look! Those two came dressed as a camel! etc etc.

All I want for my birthday is f-ing sunshine

So I had a LOVELY birthday. Lovely. There was colour, there was alcohol and there was a poem – a rhyming one at that – about my apparent love of profanity. I should qualify that most of the poem, written by my lovely husband, concerned the fucking dreadful English weather but I concede there may be some truth amid the rhyming couplets, shit weather or not.

I mean when I say shit weather, it didn’t POUR, but there was enough consistent drizzle to warrant concern about my new purple Parisian shoes and not even the faintest lick of lily-livered sun to give hope to proceedings.

Mantua, mouthfuls and a lesson about vinegar

So Mantua is a charming, funny little part of the world. Shakespeare banished Romeo to Mantua in the late 16th century so I’m not sure what it was like then, but today there’s definitely worse places you could send a lovesick teenager I’m sure.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful, quiet, medieval town surrounded by miles of farm land that’s only punctuated by other quiet, medieval towns, but the eating is good, the cocktails are pretty sensational, there’s a stunning theatre built entirely of wood and it’s easy driving distance to a whole number of other great spots, like Lake Garda to the north and Modena to the south, where you can do things like learn about balsamic vinegar and eat at the number three restaurant in the world.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, or worse, smug, it’s been, yes, another good couple of days. 

Food porn et Paul Cezanne

Another cracking couple of days chilling in Provence with LB and Le Parents. We spent the best part of this morning having indecent thoughts about cheese and prosciutto and fresh strawberries and macaroons and more cheese and more olives and warm baguettes at St-Remy’s weekly farmers market. (I just started typing an analogy about food porn and this market taking things to the next level but it started to get a bit unseemly so I deleted it. So I’ll just say this: Oh. My. God. Best farmers market. Ever.)

A Suitcase and a Spatula

There are moments in a friend’s life. Birthdays 18… 21… 30… (god, 40), the first dates, the weddings, frequently babies. There are dream jobs, first houses, fuck, sometimes there’s just a really awesome pair of new shoes and a bottle of good wine. And then, well then there’s the launch of a first book.

Easter: the Pemberley and other bits

So we survived bike riding in the snow, a little muddier for the experience but otherwise intact and made off for the town of Buxton. Our accommodation for the night was the Old Hall Hotel, where Mary Queen of Scots used to stay. It was more tired granny grandeur than anything once regal but a huge bed, a hot shower and a good night’s sleep left us with zero complaints. We hadn’t originally planned to stay somewhere old school shabby posh but it was the only place in the entire region that welcomed single night stays, this being the Easter long weekend and all so really, we were just grateful they’d have us.

Has Spring finally sprung?

I've gone a bit postal the last couple of days. Has there been a full moon? I don't know. All I know is that this morning, and yesterday (ok, and the day before) I've just wanted to cry. Cranky, inarticulate, toy-dropping tears.

Hormonal, homesick too maybe, and really just ready for a break in the weather.

At Lovely Boy's suggestion, this afternoon we left the house. It was 18 degrees - heatwave, I know - and headed for a stroll through Hyde Park and Come What May.

The crowds in Hyde Park willing the sun to get its shit together

The sunshine was weak - like a muscle released from a six week cast, withered and not sure it really remembers what to do. But undeterred, it seemed everyone was desperate to make the most of this mirage of Spring, running towards it literally and otherwise and just hoping not to end up with a mouthful of sand.

No sand thankfully and no real need for sunscreen - but sunglasses and slip on shoes sans socks! Woo!

Doughnuts and a vitamin D deficiency

We've been back from our mind-blowing, bum-numbing Easter driving holiday for a week now and already it feels like forever ago. It was an incredibly memorable week, for all the right kinds of reasons this time, and I'll get to a succinct digestion of all that we saw this weekend with any luck. But for now though, I want to talk about doughnuts and other things that start with D.

Driving into Snowdonia National Park

Just Desserts

Last week it was poetry and opera, this week it’s been about dessert...

I took LB out for another adventure last night, only this time I didn’t have to drag him. Probably because it involved three courses of adventurous eating all in the name of pudding.

Another find, another pop-up, After Hours Dessert operates on the premise that the two best bits of any meal are the drinks and the sweet finales. And so that’s what they do - just the cocktails and just the dessert. Hello, friends.

Surviving February

Slogging my way through this miserable fucking February I’m realising now just how important it is to leave. Normally this would be for a Sydney summer – an extended ellipses of sunny days, swimming and family to punctuate a grey, cold December and a biting, hope destroying February. Not having gone to Sydney this Christmas, Mexico was meant instead to be that break in the weather, albeit a briefer one. How that didn’t go to plan is well established elsewhere…

Butter chicken curry

On this day four years ago I met a very nervous Lovely Boy outside White City Station. He was going to cook me dinner for the very first time. We hadn’t kissed yet, we hadn’t flirted, we’d just spent time in our respective heads wondering and undoubtedly over-thinking.

Those who know LB know he’s not a braggart – unassuming, quiet, enthusiastic, gentle and genuine, yes – but a show off? Uh, no. So when he offered to cook me his butter chicken curry and told me it would be the best butter chicken curry I’d ever eaten I was intrigued.

The girl who ate Christmas

I’m still digesting.

Christmas 2012 – Lovely Boy’s and my first together in London and I think we did it in style.

It’s been a strange experience sticking it out in London this December, when in all December’s past 

I’ve been itching to get home for a Sydney summer with the family and all but counting down the minutes until check-in at Terminal 3. That itch is still resolutely itchy but because I couldn’t scratch it this year I’ve been distracting myself with Christmas craft. And god has it felt good. I honestly wasn’t sure how I’d go, playing the long-game this winter, but really, even in confessing to a bout of tears yesterday, I’ve surprised myself at how well I’ve handled the cold and the lack of family distraction (though there’s still January, February and March to get through so plenty of time yet for a toy drop.)

FEAST

Oh the joys of an English winter. First the collective germ-sharing that is public transport dishes up a London-wide epidemic of stomach viruses and "vomiting bugs" (oh delightful) and then, when the immune system is down and out, along comes snot & co. to really amp up the already considerable gross factor.

All of which is a very whiny, long-winded way of saying, I'm currently at home with a box of tissues and a nose that's running at Olympic speed. The stomach bug has gone now thankfully but I wasn't much up for eating last weekend, which was totally inconvenient given we went not to a feast but The Feast on Sunday.

Carols at St Martin-in-the-Fields

The weekend festival of festivities continues today. Still wilfully ignoring my stomach bug, not least because this afternoon we're off to Feast, a pop up Christmas banquet in an old disused building in Islington where food will clearly be unavoidable... The terrible teenage girl in me would see this set of circumstances as a fortuitous silver lining but I'm an adult and so I'm pretending otherwise. Actually, the down-to-my-last-10-pounds-before-payday adult that I really am sees it as a shocking waste of money.

But enough with the slightly impolite discussion about stomach bugs and what happens when you feed them...