A pint of Pimms and a bout of Bondi longing

So I am officially wilting. As temperatures "soar" towards 30 (in honour of moi no doubt) I am flagging/melting/sweating/sooking - take your pick.

It is nearly 7pm, the sun is still hot and high in the sky and I have just reached the bottom of what will speculatively be the first of at least three pints of Pimms - strawberry heavy and oh so delicious.

I shouldn't complain but when the weather is this beautiful - and beautiful it is - all I ache for is the cold embracing slap of a Bondi wave. If I close my eyes I can feel it now. Tepid showers just aren't the same somehow, even with my swimmers on.

Vintage

So turning 30 was actually quite wonderful but you'll have to get back to me about BEING 3o because I'm still not entirely sold on that concept. TURNING 30 is about LB-made chocolate ganache for breakfast and presents and surprise bunches of flowers from my sister and pedicures and rooftop dinners. Even the skies were blue.

BEING 30 is about being undeniably no longer young. It's about contemplating a lack of career while friends at home are literally in labour with their first child, it's about realising some things in life probably just aren't going to happen - flying to the moon, cuddling baby pandas in China, learning to drive a manual car in a competent fashion - and realising that time is for the now. It's part-trepidation, part-excitement and part-philosophical headfuck... oh, you're not sure you want to be 30?... Well how exactly do you plan on changing that... apart from turning 31?

Yesterday was such a special day and by far and away the greatest gift was realising that however imperfect I am my life is full of thoughtful, generous, loving people and job or no job, wrinkles or deep facial trenches, I am loved for exactly who I am. For that, and so much more, I am forever grateful for the people in my life. And when they give me jewellery that looks like this...

... and that come with a holiday to Turkey, well you see what I mean about being loved. Spoilt even. It is truly humbling.

Today, BEING 30, it is about job applications and overdue art reviews and nannying and Real Life. But there is still ganache for lunch I suppose.

Stuck in the writing mud.

LB is off secret squirreling this weekend in anticipation of D-Day next Wednesday (the D in D-Day being "Doomed To Be Considered Old Always From This Day Forward") and I am across the river nannying, or, as I like to think of it, earning my next haircut.

The weather is obstinately beige and not becoming of early summer and the lethargic efforts of the sun are proving contagious. My writing has crawled to a near-halt over the last two weeks and I'm struggling to muster the enthusiasm for much beyond a bowl of Special K on the couch. I might be tempted to diagnose a case of the birthday blues - or an existential crisis of thirty proportions but in the interests of good mental health (mine and those that have to suffer me) I'm choosing to whitewash the feeling in a mash up of philosophy and sentiment about this thing we call A Milestone.

T-minus 18 days

Until I turn 30. And in a not-so-promising sign we have gone from this....

To this.....

One thing Leeds to another

FINALLY. Open toed shoe weather has arrived in London and it is delightful. There aren't many pro's to being fundamentally unemployed (I could probably count them on two fingers...) but afternoons on the sofa, in the sunshine, with a bowl of ripe passionfruits would absolutely be one of them. (I would say the only one but given that I'm staring at an imminent and ongoing lack of career I'd like to hold out for the possibility of even one more tick in the pro column, however tenuous.)

Some daughters do 'ave 'em

My Mum has a favourite early memory of she and I. We’re in the chemist, Mum at the counter, me in the pram and we’re chatting amiably away before she paused and realised, “We’re friends, you and I.” Being 18 months old at the time I don’t remember the occasion but the older I get the more grateful I am to call someone as fabulous as P my Mum, and yes, absolutely still my friend.

P is The Best and her go get ‘em/fuck 'em/I-we-you can do this attitude - at once elegant, ballsy and brilliant - is a constant source of inspiration to me as I’ve navigated my way from highly strung child to awkward teenager to at-times-uncertain adult (I think at nearly 30 I do now sadly have to concede I am unavoidably a grown up…)

She tells me I’m fabulous, clever, brave and beautiful. She also tells me when I’m being pathetic, ridiculous, unhinged and unhelpful. The perfect execution of good mother and friend, pulled off as only she could.

My mum, aged 4 (and on the right) in the surf with my Nan and aunt.
We look identical at this age.

I love my Mum. I love her bravery, her style, her classiness, her sense of adventure, her frivolity and love of laughter, her care, her thoughtfulness and her fabulous collection of jewels and bags and scarves. And the list goes on.

I know she knows all this but if you can’t publicly adore your mother on Mother’s Day then when else can you?

Thank you Mumma – for showing me how it’s done and for the ongoing conversation. Happy Mother’s Day.

A looooong weekend

So I survived nannying - and so did the children. For a long weekend at the beginning of Spring I don't think any of us appreciated the pouring rain, the gale force winds or the hail but god has mercy - and these days it's called Nintendo.

By the time I got home on Monday afternoon it was all I could do to roll cadaverously off the sofa (freshly built) to eat the delicious meal LB had cooked for me, a mouth-watering Thai beef salad no less. It marked the end of an interesting couple of days, culinarily speaking. The long weekend was all about toasted sandwiches, burritos and packet cake mixes... an insulting low after Friday's personal triumph in the kitchen.

Cake aside, yes I really did bake one, I was mindlessly flicking through Bill Granger's Sydney Food cook book when I struck upon a ricotta and tomato tart and, perhaps deluded after all the Masterchef that LB has been making me watch lately, decided that making puff pastry from scratch couldn't be that hard...

And it wasn't.

Granted it was messy and absolutely it was more cal than low but honestly, there was puff to my pastry AND, more importantlyslashsurprisingly, it was delicious. My eyes were like saucers at the shock and even now I catch myself saying quietly to no-one in particular, "I made puff pastry. From scratch. And it was delicious." Or rather... "And it was delicious??" with that slightly raised intonation that suggests shock and utter disbelief. So to make packet mix brownies 12 hours later was a rather depressing come down as you might imagine, irrespective of their compelling edibility (ed: is that even a word?). My new theory is, if you're going to O.D. on calories, you have to at least earn the right to do so by making the bloody thing yourself. This theory obviously applies to everything except Snickers bars.

Not much else happened over the weekend and yesterday I was at the gallery before heading to the bar. A long day by anyone's definition but I didn't really mind. LB told me I should get a 9 to 5 job and I told him it wasn't the 9 to 5 I objected to so much as the Monday to Friday. Give me crap wages and long shifts any day as long as I can have the mornings to myself to sit on the sofa and write.

Coming home from the bar around 12.30, I was walking down the street when I spotted a fox, tearing through the rubbish bags in search of food. I stopped and tried to take a photo of him and as I did he stopped at looked at me, as if to say, rather indignantly, do you mind? But my crap camera failed to catch him in the darkness and so all I ended up with was this:

Best not give up any one of my day jobs just yet...

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: