You Are My Sunshine

It's muggy in London tonight. The sky is grey and low slung. It's 9pm as I write this yet it's still light outside.

I'm not used to London feeling like this. The warmth and humidity reminds me of the tropics. It makes me want to be outside by the ocean. If I was in Perth right now, I would drive myself to the seashore and lay on the sand and breathe.

Over the weekend we had fantastic weather. For the first time this year I lay down in the long grass in Richmond Park



and looked up at an all blue sky. I took off as many clothes as I could in a park without being arrested. I closed my eyes and took in the warmth of the sun. I turned my head to my husband who lay next to me:

Hey, if you close your eyes you can hear the sea. I can hear the waves lapping up against Leighton beach...

courtesy of Ben Cooke

The all seeing, all-knowing BBC weather channel has informed us citizens that we are in for a good summer. We're going to get consecutive days of sun interspersed with a few odd days of rain. Just so we don't forget that we're in England.

I hope so much that we have a good summer. Every year everyone I know hopes. Our collective hope could power Ireland.

I love that about you Brits. Despite the grey and grime and grot - you hang on and never stop hoping.

Freedom's Just Another Word...

with nothing else to lose", sang Janis in her usual husky style.

I was certainly not free at work yesterday when I came across this speech by David Foster Wallace about freedom. I had a mountain to move off my desk before I could leave for home so that a new mountain could appear overnight.

Nontheless we all pick and choose our moments so I decided to ignore the incoming emails and phone calls and questions and tasks and deadlines. For ten minutes I sat down and read what Mr Wallace had to say.

When I'd finished reading I went back to my mountain and worked steadily away until I couldn't anymore and left for the day.

Before and after those ten minutes, nothing changed in my space. If you looked into my world through a viewfinder you'd have seen everything was where it always was.

That's the way it is. That's the way we see each other.

So you wouldn't know unless I told you that the ten minutes I spent reading that speech were ten of the best minutes of my life.

I have had lots. But yesterday. They were ten good ones.

Thanks DFW. RIP.

Climb Every Mountain?

In my work life I am surrounded by successful career women. Women who have clawed their way up to the top of the arts' professions. Women whom I never once thought I would have the opportunity to meet. Once upon a time I would have considered many of these people to be role models. I would have considered myself lucky to have landed any one of their jobs.

But not anymore.

I am lucky. I am lucky that my current job has allowed me to meet and work with these women. To see that up close, all that glitters is not always gold.

These women will have had made significant personal sacrifices to get where they are. I know they all work hard and have persevered for years against constant obstacles. I know that they have beat off hundreds, even thousands of competitors to survive in their chosen environment. Up close they do not seem particularly hardened but they are as tough they come.

Knowing this makes me feel distinctly uneasy. Why?

Because I don't want to get to where they are and have become like that. But to get to where they are, I don't think there is a choice. The arts world in London (and everywhere else) is dirty and grasping. As soon as you get a known profile, the knives come out. You have to get your hands filthy to survive and the higher up you are, the grottier they potentially get.

When I was little, my mother, to warn me off a career in politics used to say:

All politcians are corrupt. Even if they start off with good intentions, to stay and succeed in the game, they have to become crooked. A good politician is a contradiction in terms.

So where does that leave me?

With clean hands but no career? Or with a potential career but at what cost?

The Food Anger

I hate getting bad food in restaurants. It makes me so angry. In fact, it makes me LIVID.

London is not a city where the general standard of food is average or better. It varies wildly between bloody awful to exceptional. When you try a new restaurant in London, you are taking a risk.

I had dinner this week at the Giaconda Dining Room. This place is well known as being a little haven of inexpensive civility amongst the brashness of Soho. I'd heard good things so was looking forward to it.

When we sat down to order at 8pm I was ravenous. I'd been up since 5.30am and worked on a photoshoot all day long. My eyes made quick work of the menu. Rigatoni Puttanesca for starter. Baked cod with polenta and endive salad for main. Done.

The Puttanesca came and went without comment passing from my lips except for two words:

Very salty.

The Husband who was happily tucking into his Pig Trotters cast a wary glance in my direction. There was fear in his eyes but he wisely made no comment.

When my main arrived I dug in with gusto. My enthusiasm palled after the first bite. And took a rapid nosedive after the second and third. The flavours of the dish were not fish as expected but oil. The fish tasted of oil. The polenta tasted of oil and even the salad tasted of oil. I put down my fork. My husband looked up nervously from his Hashed Ham Hock with Egg and Salad.

How's yours? I asked
Good, he said. Do you want to swap?
No.

I sat fuming and then it was upon me.

The Food Anger.

When I am very hungry and I do not eat, I get a bit nuts. I'm short tempered, irrational, snappy. I would not trust myself to drive when I'm like this.

However when I'm very hungry and have paid good money to eat something at a nice restaurant and it turns out to be crap, I lose it. One of these days a plate will hit the wall. Another diner will be spattered with food as collateral damage. I will probably be arrested.

As my husband ate, I stabbed. I stabbed the oily fish on the oily polenta. In my mind I was stabbing the chef. Then I started to complain. Loudly.

I warned all the other diners not to get the fish. I also told everyone not to bother ordering fries either as they were oily and rubbery. I lamented how it was too late for us but they should all leave now if they hadn't yet ordered.

My husband continued to eat and ignore me.

I was being childish and obnoxious. But I didn't care. I didn't want to speak to the waiter politely and ask for another dish. The waiters were giving our table a wide berth by now anyhow.

When he had finished his meal my husband ushered me out as graciously as he could. He did not tip them however which was just as well as it would have meant the end of our marriage.

Two days later and I am still pissed off. But at least I am not foaming from the mouth anymore.

We went out for dinner the next night too. But that's a whole other story.

Coffee Makes the World Go Round

This London man is supposed to make the best coffee in Britain



I must hunt him down...

Like A Fish to Water

In Australia I am a below average swimmer. I would swim but I was never one of those strong, sleek bodies that charged through the water doing lap after steady lap. In Oz I always swam in the Slow or Medium lane. I would never have dared dipped my toe in the Fast.

When I moved to London I stopped swimming. Having been spolit by Perths' open air, salt walter pools, I could not bring myself to become enthusiastic about swimming indoors in a heavily chlorinated, 25 metre urinal.



After a few years of non-swimming, I got free membership to one of London's best gyms. The pool in this gym was decent by London standards. It was still indoors and 25m but it looked clean. The husband said:

No excuses now. You can start swimming again.

But I didn't. By now I hadn't swum for years and was out of the habit until.....

the Paris Half Marathon.

Training for the half marathon forced me into the water again. I knew I needed to incorporate some cardio exercise that would not put weight on my joints. So I dived in and to my surprise I discovered that not only could I still swim, I wasn't bad at all. In fact, I was pretty damn good.

What happened? Three years of not swimming and in the first lap I become Esther Williams? Something's wrong.



I looked around and slowly the light went on.

I was in London.

A city of BAD swimmers.

As a general rule, Londoners are not great swimmers. It's not a part of their upbringing like it is for Aussies. They try, bless them and it's not their fault. They don't have the sea and lovely pools like us.

Still, this makes me feel great. I did nothing and became an above average swimmer. Over here I even swim in the Fast lane.

It doesn't get any easier than that.