Judgement Call

I like to drink from time to time. I'm not a daily drinker but when I drink, I like a session. I'm not one of these glass of wine at lunch girls. I like to hunker down with good company and work our way through a few bottles. I like to have stimulating conversation and to discuss topics, not people. I like to burst into random song sometimes and if others join me, all so much the better. I like to sit on the floor when I drink. I prefer to drink at night.

I had one such session recently with some work friends. It was one of those lovely, spontaneous sessions where we were all on a level. The company was relaxed, funny, witty and interesting. No-one hogged the conversation. No-one was left out. It was as close to perfect as could be.

Afterwards I wrote on my Facebook status that I had enjoyed a drinking session with my work mates. Why I felt compelled to write it? For the same reason I guess that anyone writes their status on Facbeook. What do I care if Jim is going to bed? Or that Amanda is having a cup of tea? Or that I had a drink with my mates? There's a space for us to type stuff. So we type.

Well someone did care it turns out. One of my friends posted a comment. To quote nonverbatim:

You seem to be drinking far too much these days. Isn't it about time you had a baby?xxxxx

Is it me or is the xxxxx supposed to be ironic? This friend conceived her baby during a lost weekend of cocaine and booze. Surely it has to be ironic.

There are many things I wanted say and ways I wanted to respond. But in the end I just deleted her comment. Comments like that aren't worth bothering with.

There are times when judgement, hypocrisy and ignorance combine to effect comments of great humour and irony.

This was not one of them.

London I Love You

I've been in London just over three years now and there are so many sights that I just have not bothered to go see. The Tower of London. Westminster Abbey. The Houses of Parliament. The list goes on. It's never been a thing of mine to go see stuff just because you should. For me it's about seeing what you're interested in. When I go to a new place for the first time, I love to check out the day-to-day spots. The supermarkets. The pharmacies. The cafes. The bookshops. This might make me a cultural cretin but at least I know what the deals on soap in the local hypermarket are that week.

That all changes when you have overseas visitors. When you are being a host, all local nuance is lost in favour of hauling out the big guns. The big, should-see stuff.

I'm lucky at the moment to have some friends staying with us who are making their way around the world. They are truly a delight. They are the best guests we've had to date. Fun, erudite, stimulating, easy going, appreciative, thoughtful and independent. I want them to stay longer but I cannot compete with the languid shores of Thailand which is their next stop.

But I digress. Since they've been here, I have made up for all my past nonchalance. We have gone to the Tower of London. Westminster Abbey. The Imperial War Museum. I have been with them to spots that I know I would never have gone had they not visited. And it's been great for me. For now I am interested and engaged with some of London's should-sees.

Visiting the Tower made me want learn a lot more about English history for I realised I know practically nothing. The beauty of being outside Westminster Abbey as the bells chimed was a wake up call for me to actually go inside one day. The Imperial War Museum blew my mind; their exhibition of the Holocaust has relentlessly dug into my brain for good I think. The same day we walked past Brian Haw holding his lonely, one man vigil outside the Houses of Parliament. At that moment the quote that thudded like a drumbeat in my head throughout the Holocaust exhibition increased by 100 decibels:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [sic] to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Sometimes change happens in increments; bit by bit so slowly that you do not notice. But over the last few days the changes in me have been big and swooping. Very noticeable and so very right. Getting on the tourist wagon has made me realise just how much I love London and how much more there is to get to know about her. How much I enjoy showing her off to new visitors and that for me to do this well, I need to know her past better as well as her present.

Oh London. The longer I'm here, the deeper our affair becomes.

Random Quote

This is the true joy in life: the being used up for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clot of ailments, grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy

Up The Duff

What is that song with those lines: All my friends are getting married? That’s not quite the case these days but I tell you what is. It’s:

All my friends are having babies….

As a woman, get to your mid thirties and what do you know? All the females around you start getting up the duff. It’s like mushrooms in a field. One minute – just grass and overnight – lo behold – mushrooms everywhere.

The past few months have been spectacular for mushrooming. I’ve had to start writing down due dates in my diary just so I don’t forget to send a baby card at that time rather than an invite to a cocktail party.

This burgeoning state of affairs has led me to reflect on my own un-pregnant state. Suddenly it seems that I am in a minority. My frame of reference has changed. Instead of just being; I am now in the reference category of pregnant or non-pregnant.

As a woman, it’s not a nice thing when this happens to you. One day, you’re trundling along –quite happy with yourself and your place in the world. All of a sudden, you’re head over heels in love with the idea of being pregnant. Quite why this happens – who knows? Is it the biological clock? Or the fact that everyone else is doing it so you want a piece of the action too? The reasons are endless but the idea is there, planted within yourself, even though nothing else is.

This sucks because once the idea has taken hold, you become restless. You are acutely aware that you are not pregnant. Some small part of your innocence has gone to be replaced by a yearning for something you’ve never had.

For the longest time, I never considered kids. I was not a maternal type. Even as people around me started becoming parents, I felt good that I was not. I valued my independence, solitude and freedom far too much. I had committed to marriage but that was as far as it went, so I thought.

Well bollocks to that idea. Something happened because I am now fully pro-baby. Disconcerting though it is to find myself in this space, it’s also reassuring. Even if for the simple reason that I now understand all those magazine stories about women who go to all sorts of measures to get themselves pregnant. I get it. As to how I got here, to this strange new space – who knows?

What I do know is that a few weeks ago, it suddenly seemed that the whole word was pregnant. Everyday I would get news of another baby-in-the-making. I was happy for those involved but felt my axis shift slightly each time towards some un-named abyss. I decided to give myself a reality check. I made a list of all the women I knew that were pregnant and all the women I knew that weren’t. The results were about 50/50.

Seeing it down in black and white gave me some sort of solace that breeders were not taking over the world. But I know that hearing about another pregnancy might tip me over the edge into god-knows-what.

Unless it’s mine of course.

Kindred

Say what you like about Facebook but it does have its benefits. The other day I had lunch with an old friend from Perth whom I lost touch with in the late nineties. We had tracked each other on Facebook and discovered that we both were living in London. We decided to meet up and have lunch.

When we knew each other back home, Monica and I weren’t best buddies by any measure. We were friends by default and the only times I saw her were en masse within a group. So this was really the first time we had sat down together to lunch and talk.

And talk we did! For three and a half hours, we stopped yakking only to shovel food and drink into our mouths. As we swapped stories, we found ourselves very much in similar stages of life. We had both recently left jobs due to unpleasant work environments and colleagues. We were both (relatively) newly married. Her feelings about being an expat in London mirrored mine. We discussed the difficulties of settling in London when the longing for family and friends back home is so strong at times that it is tangible. At the end of our lunch I felt that finally, I had met someone who understood. I had met a kindred.

Even though I have lived in London for nearly three years, I have not met anyone that I would define as kindred. Husband aside, most of my new friends here are good for a laugh or a chat but we don’t have the kind of exchange that makes you feel that you have been “got”. Now that I am in my mid 30’s, I find it rare to come across people that “get” you. Age, time, stress – whatever – it’s true that making real friends gets harder as you get older.

Monica and I will stay in touch. We may not see each other regularly but that’s OK. When it comes to kindred’s, a little goes a long, long way.

January is the Cruelest Month

It’s sunny today which means that London has come to life. My street looks like a Technicolor fantasy. Hopes soar, spirits rise. Until tomorrow at least when the rain comes falling down.

I have been here nearly three years now and for at least 18 of those 36 months, I do not see sun. Coming from the southern hemisphere, this is difficult. I seem to be in an inverse relationship with the weather over here. The longer I stay, the harder the winter becomes. Perhaps all his moaning about the weather is typical of an Australian living in London.

Despite the cliché of the whinging Pom, my husband (a Brit) claims that Australians are the whiniest lot that he has ever come across. Or perhaps that is because he has me as an example.

It’s not that I want to be so affected by the weather. I simply am. Last years dismal summer left me in a state of panic when winter approached. I eked out an existence throughout those long, dark months by rationing myself small treats to look forward to. I got through it without having to resort to a “Happy Lamp” or trips away to sunnier climes with other light starved Brits. My plan of attack was simple. End of January - one box of Tim Tams. End of February - two boxes of Tim Tams. End of March - three boxes...and so on. Come the end of winter, I could have been the sole distributor of Tim Tams in London.

That said, I do not know how many more London winters my blood sugar levels can take. Fellow Australians assure me that I will get used to the climate. But perhaps that is half the problem. I don’t want to get used to it. It’s not how I want to spend half the year, dammit it, in a shroud of dark gray.

Winter wonderland, I’ll be damned. More like Hell frozen over.

Return To Sender

Being a veteran job hunter, I have spent a good portion of my life going through the mill of job hunting. The scouring through the job pages. Drafting and writing the job application. Answering lots and lots of mundane questions such as:

Are you a good team player?
Do you have excellent interpersonal skills?
Can you pay attention to detail?

Why is it that all the jobs I apply for ask the same ten questions? Has no-one updated the template in the last 100 years?

Let’s face it. Job hunting is a pain in the ass. Literally. A good application can take me up to five hours to do which means a lot of bum-on-seat time.

The other thing I hate about job hunting is when companies won’t accept your CV. Instead they ask you to re-type your whole job history on their application form. Why is this necessary? It’s a waste of time. Companies who ask you to do this are either

a) Really backward and inefficient
b) Manipulative and game playing
c) Sadists

As much as I complain about job hunting, I still do it. What choice do I have? A girl’s gotta eat and I’ve never been much good at the whole networking-let–me-introduce-you-to-this-person way of finding work. I’ve always done it the hard way which is to apply for jobs cold and hope that my experience talks me into an interview.

It’s great when you get asked for an interview. You have a chance and the five hours of writing about your interpersonal skills suddenly seems less painful.

The worst is when you don’t hear back. A lot of companies now state that they will only get in touch with you if you’ve been shortlisted.

This sucks.

Let me get this straight. You work your ass off, writing reams and reams of reasons why you are the world’s best team player. You re-type your whole CV on THEIR application form. Your ass gets numb and your shoulders ache. You ring your ex boss and suck up so that you’ll get a decent reference. You check and re-check your application. You send it off to them before the deadline.

And nothing. Not even a one line email to say, Thanks but no thanks.

Everything is supposed to be easier and quicker now that we have online technology. How hard is it for a company to send a group email to all their rejected candidates?

Why are the fuckers so lazy? And rude.

I don’t buy for one second that this is about saving time. It takes five minutes to send a group email.

Dear Employers of the World,

Pull your finger out and press SEND.

Yours Faithfully,

Lavendar Lee

Breeders Beware

So I was in Soho with my friend Blue yesterday when we started to talk about aging.

"I go to the gym and run," he said. "And weights twice a week. I'll never give up eating so I have to do something to keep trim. After all, I want to keep going out. Clubbing and whatnot and I don't want to look a desperado when I do. Some people just look like that they don't belong."

I met Blue ten years ago in Australia when we both worked for a god-awful employment agency which eventually crashed and burned. Back then, Blue was already well on the way to becoming fabulous. As well as always being immaculately turned out in designer suits, he had a budding collection of pieces from Newson to Alessi as well as a house that looked like it had come straight out of the pages of Wallpaper magazine.

We were like chalk and cheese; his Prada to my Primark but we bonded over a love of trying new things.

"We met when we were in our mid 20's and now we're sitting here talking about heading towards our 40's," Blue moaned, glugging his third vodka and cranberry.

"You're talking about turning 40. I ain't. I’m in denial"

Blue ignored me and continued his litany:

"Even in your 30's, you can still look good if you work at it but once you hit your 40's, that's it. The decay and decline really starts to set in. I still want to look decent so I can go out"

Blue is gay and in a settled relationship. He and his boyfriend have all the accoutrements of an established urban couple. Nice car, nice house, nice shoes. As we discussed our thoughts on aging, I noticed some similarities in our priorities. Blue wants to keep healthy and look good so he can continue to function in the gay community. It's important to him that he can go places and not look out of place. He wants to be able to go clubbing in his 40's and not be judged.

I can't remember the last time I stepped into the nightclub. But I get where he is coming from. I dance and I've been doing it for years. Now that I'm in my mid 30's, the bod ain't what it used to be. I have aches and pains that aren't going anywhere. But I want to keep limber, keep moving, keep dancing. I don't want to be the weird 40 year old desperado in the corner of the dance class, re-living her youth. I want to be there because I can keep up and look like I should be there.

But what Blue doesn't have on his horizon is the baby clock. He and his partner don't want kids. I, on the other hand can hear a long delayed biological ticking; although that could be the choir of voices that have been in my ear for the past 3 years:

"When are you going to have a baby?"

But what I can't help thinking is that if there is one thing guaranteed to age you, it's kids. I don't know why people say that kids keep you young. On the inside perhaps. Every person I know that has kids, has aged because of it. You can hear a creaking in them that wasn't there before.

It's a vain question I know. But can you still hold onto your youth whilst producing one?