Category Archives: It’s all about me

A little ‘me’ time

Firstly, apologies for the radio silence. Things have been a little hectic due to visiting relatives, theatre performances and the small matter of a 4000 word short story to write for my degree portfolio. Not to mention the PTA obligations, Sports day, International day, and the various overseas train smashes concerning future schools, renting houses and sick family to manage.  Blogging has been beyond what time has allowed. And so when it came to dress making, I figured it was time to outsource.

I have a perfectly good sewing machine at home, I just have no inclination to do anything more complicated than table runners and cushion covers. On the tourist trail to Bur Dubai a few weeks back, I came across a particularly spectacular bolt of patterned silk (well they said it was silk) for a mere £7/m in the fabric souk, and decided to get a jump suit copied I’ve been wearing almost non stop since I bought it nearly three years ago.  For Dhs 250 (about £40) I will have a brand new swishy silk pantsuit to play in, made to measure and cheaper than the original one. Tick in the box for supporting the ‘local’ (chinese) economy while I’m at it.

Having visitors, especially first time ones, often opens my eyes back up to what’s around and gets me out of my self imposed local living rut. Going down to the creek always reminds me where we are, that we aren’t just in this little bubble, that there is a lot of other real life to see out there. Of course it’s full of touts trying to sell me pashminas and boat rides but if you get past that you can really enjoy just being part of the city, haggling for fabric and riding the abra alongside every other creed and colour who is crossing the creek for one purpose or another.
Somewhere lurking near the opposite end of the expat spectrum, during my blog hiatus I was also part of Dubai’s first Short+Sweet theatre festival. A great initiative to encourage local people to write, direct and act in a series of 10 minute plays, it was a spectacle of good, sometimes great, and some downright awful entertainment, but it was ours. Five years ago or so there is no way the city could have even conceived of hosting a festival like this, and it is really exciting to be contributing to the arts scene and (hopefully) changing it for the better. This weekend was spent performing and at and participating in the Emirates Literature festival, another fantastic example of how much things have moved on in the past few years.
And so that’s the end of my excuses; why the dog ate my homework etc. I now have three glorious weeks of relative relaxation, or two weeks of holiday and a  ‘reading week’ as its called in university circles.  I’m looking forward to it: gym, spa, vacation in the desert, and maybe even a trip to my beloved but much neglected mall. The year has certainly got off to an intensive start but it’s been incredibly satisfying too. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so full of ideas and optimism for the time ahead.
It’s also fair to say I’m knackered. Pass the wine someone…
Related articles

Reasons to be cheerful

A slightly lazy look at life today, either because a) analysing the Star Wars screenplay for my course has been surprisingly draining,  or b) it’s nearly midnight, I’m still not in bed having swore I would go early, I can barely read the screen my eyes are so tired and I need the bathroom.

So, five things that have made me laugh this week that I thought I would share, for better or worse:

1. ‘Girls’. I just finished Season One and I’m hooked. If you haven’t watched it already, get hold of it. Funny,clever, poignant and goes where no Sex in the City episode would have ever dared to tread. (Note: if you were ever remotely shocked by Kim Cattrall, you might want to skip it)

2. My son and his incessant thirst for knowledge. Question of the week: “Why don’t cats have hands?” A close runner up: “Mummy, can we buy a book about lungs?”

3. The fact that I had a spot on that bit under your nose that really hurts when you have a spot on it. This, per se, did not make me laugh (why the f*** am I still getting spots?) but my idiotic reaction did, in a sort of ironic way reserved usually for people I don’t like very much. Aged 38.5, instead of leaving well alone, I did the mature thing and wrapped my fingers in toilet paper, squeezed until my eyes watered from the pain, then cursed at the resulting sore mess on my face for the next two days. Dumb ass.

4. Relentless Laundry , whose brilliant writing never fails to make me laugh out loud and reassures me that I am not alone.

5. My son, again, this time for managing to fake a limp so realistically I made a two hour round trip to the physio to get him checked out at a cost of $100. He told me in the car on the way home “it was just a pretend bad leg”. This has not made me laugh yet but I’m sure I will look back on it one day with a smile.

Happy Monday y’all.

Cream crackered

I love being busy. This new episode of my life where I’m doing things all the time is much better than sitting about moping (although there is less time to shop or have manicures, and this is a downside). However, the nature of my new ‘work’ is such that I spend much more time at the computer and less time doing everything else. I sit and sit, in what is probably the worst posture of all time, with my shoulders hunched and my legs crossed, and I read, I write, and I catch up on the relentless influx of emails that invade my computer (everyone on the MA course writes so much my inbox can be filled with up to 70 or so emails a day, containing musings, feedback and so on from my fellow students which although interesting are somewhat over-prolific), and I don’t seem to do a lot else.

I’m feeling pretty mediocre at everything too, probably as a result of trying to be good at everything and failing because I’m simply not ready for that yet; and tired, because I’m just not used to all this concentration. My life is usually a little more ‘free’, a little less chained to the desk – and I seem to be thinking an awful lot, which hasn’t really been my thing for a while. I am struggling to keep my mind on the everyday aspects of life, like grocery shopping, and remembering to send birthday cards and – if you were to push me – parenting. Not that we’re having a bad time – I just know my mind isn’t really on the job of being ‘mum’ at the moment and I’m starting to feel a bit guilty about that too. I have found myself struggling with the  ‘who, what, where, when, why?’ questions several times this week, and failing to come up with my usual satisfactory answers to the major social, emotional and moral dilemmas my three year old poses. This includes the “Why do we die Mummy?” bath time quiz which left me floundering as I tried to think of ways to explain that wouldn’t leave him a)confused or b)depressed. I’m not sure I managed either.

I’m so busy concentrating I can’t concentrate. I keep forgetting to do things, or go places. This week alone I have forgotten I was getting my hair cut and that my husband was going to Oman. Both are in my diary, I have looked at it several times, and yet still failed to take in the information well enough that I wasn’t totally surprised when my hairdresser turned up at the door on Sunday, or that my husband was toting a suitcase this morning. I have PTA issues to deal with and summer holiday bookings to make and a whole host of things in between that really do require attention that I am failing to give. I do a little bit of each every time I remember and then have to drop it all to get something else done before a deadline passes. Take this morning: I know I need to book restaurants for when my visitors come, call my mother, and get the maintenance guys in to do their quarterly checks on the house, but I just don’t have the energy for any of it. I am lurching from day to day in a daze, going to bed late and rising early and not sleeping well in between. My face is full of spots (WTF I’m nearly forty, when does this END?) and each day when I drag my sorry butt out of bed I think about how I still haven’t been to the gym in three weeks but simply can’t summon up the enthusiasm to go. I feel like I need to sleep for a thousand years. And I’d quite like to go shoe shopping when I woke up, if only all this ‘work’ was paid.

I’m fully aware that this is just a period of adjustment and that my brain and my body will figure it out soon enough. And I know there are ways of making it easier on myself in the meantime (drink less, go to bed earlier, get off the computer, stop procrastinating in a blog and get on with it). I just need to relocate my motivation for all of this and I’ll be good to go. Sigh.

If you don’t know me by now

Well here I am, one day into my MA and absolutely NOTHING’S HAPPENED. It’s no-one’s fault, but the first study block opens today and of course, there’s me clearing the decks to start work and it’s only when I sat down I realised that it will open at 9am. UK TIME. Duh. So now I have a very empty looking morning which I’m trying hard to spend productively rather than at the mall, and so far I have managed a coffee with a friend, some form filling and a blog post. I’m ignoring the unpacking sitting in the guest room that I STILL haven’t done and there’s filing all over the floor of the office but I’m taking things slow and with an hour left until pick up I’m sure I’ll squeeze it all in.

The form filling was for the course, so technically I have been working today. It was the usual stuff – why are you doing the course, what do you want to be when you grow up, what are your strengths and weaknesses etc. etc., along with the one that has really caught my eye and is bugging me senseless, a finish the following sentence-type-thing:

‘Most people don’t know that I can….’

Now, several things spring instantly to mind and I’m sure those of you that keep your minds in the gutter along with mine have already filled in the blank with a hundred ‘amusing’ endings (Actually the next question is worse, “Most people don’t know that I have….” which I could potentially go to town on, but perhaps it’s best not). But this is my master’s degree. So I have to be reasonably sensible. Or do I? Should I just be honest? Trouble is honesty weirdly keeps sounding like I’m making it up. And it says something about me I’m not sure I’m ready to share with a bunch of strangers as their first impression. Or anyone else, come to think of it. Which presumably is why ‘most people don’t know’. Of course now I’m blogging about it a whole lot of people will know, which again, means I’m already editing out what I’m not willing to share even as I write, and again defeating the point of the question. After over half an hour of agonising about this incredibly elementary question, I’ve come up with these alternatives:

‘Most people don’t know that I can operate four different types of mechanical saw, remember things longer than the average elephant, and lose weight without trying very hard’. (Show off)

‘Most people don’t know that I can pole dance’ (Shallow, and possibly makes me sound like a dirty hooker)

‘Most people don’t know that I can judge whether or not I will be friends with someone the instant I meet them and will then stick to that opinion even to the detriment of myself (Self depreciating and bitchy)

‘Most people don’t know that I can….OH FFS, I don’t know! It’s too much pressure, to say the right thing. And for those of you that say there is no wrong answer of course there is, don’t kid yourself.

These answers, as well as not being anywhere near as interesting and challenging as I really feel they should be, do not get over the essence of me to a complete stranger. Or maybe they do? Maybe if I put all of them into one sentence and added ‘..can be more anally retentive than a constipated octopus’ it would sum me up completely.

What would yours be?

Here comes the rain again

The first rain of the year in Dubai, everyone gets incredibly excited. The second time, they all complain about it bitterly. This time the rain is accompanied by cold (by cold I mean below 20C/68F) and so the winter woolies have been broken out, along with umbrellas and raincoats.

Of course in our house the winter woolies are all stacked in a neat pile waiting to be put in suitcases. This is most likely going to be my last post this side of the big man coming, because in three days we fly to the UK and are staying in a field somewhere between the end of the world and the Dark Ages, with no internet or wireless to be found for a clear three miles in any direction. I’m not sure how we are going to cope with this as a family, what with my husband’s blackberry being nicknamed ‘the other wife’ for a few years now, my iphone permanently welded to my hand and my son assuming control of the ipad to the point he knows how to work it better than we do. However, I’m sure we will find a way to manage. Frequent visits to my mother’s house is probably the key.

Anyway, back to the winter woolies. It’s that time of year, when I open up the cold weather wardrobe and assess what is there and discover that I’m staring at decade-old clothing from top shop that I used to wear to the office, intermingled with a few dodgy 50% off jumpers I’ve purchased in the January sales in Dubai over the years. It makes for a sorry collection of clothing but up until now I have refused to spend the money on buying myself stuff for what amounts to two weeks of wear per twelve months of life. I spend a ridiculous amount of money as it is buying new for my son every year, with the intention of selling it off to recoup some of the costs when we return and finding that of course, this being Dubai, no-one wants second hand clothes unless they are free. So the thought of buying for myself has always seemed even more extravagant when I have been able to get away with what I have for so many years.

But this year, I gazed at the pitiful collection and decided I needed to add to it. Trouble is, I have lost my sense of winter style. I have no idea what’s in fashion, or more to the point what isn’t – because most of the year there is no reason to pay attention. It’s hard to shop wooly jumpers and long sleeved dresses when it’s 80 in the shade. It’s hard to imagine how you will be cold enough to require a coat, or even to try one on when you are sweating buckets. My ‘nod’ to winter is getting my nails painted in a berry colour instead of their usual coral or red. Taking off flip flops to try on a pair of fleecy lined boots for size it’s just very difficult to imagine I will ever have cold enough feet to worry about fitting thick socks in them as well.

wallpapers wallpaper christmas sweater sexy nina

This? (Photo credit: 黎湯姆)

I have forgotten how to be cold. I can’t remember how I should cope with party shoes and pantyhose: if I have open toed shoes should I go bare legged and risk pneumonia, or should I get a new pair of shoes that are closed in so I can cover up? (I got new shoes, obviously). Do I wear a coat in the car or take it off so I don’t boil when the heating kicks in? Do pub and restaurants provide extra pashminas for you to pop on if you get chilly? (I suspect this is a Dubai thing). Is it skinny, straight, boot cut or flare this year? Are there any such things as pyjamas that keep you warm and don’t make you look like your Gran? Why are all jumpers hand wash dry flat when you wear them during the worst time of year to get things dry? Is is acceptable to wear jumpers more than once on this basis, as long as they don’t smell of bacon? When do you wear welly boots? Is it every time there is rain or just when it floods? I’m sure I didn’t own wellies for about a decade until we went to Hong Kong to visit my sister, so therefore, Glastonbury excepted, are wellies a middle aged thing rather than a fashion thing in England, and should I not be wearing them at all? How do you wear gloves and not get your rings caught up in them?

Ugly Sweater 2010

Or this? (Photo credit: Sappymoosetree)

There are other, less fashion oriented questions I now ask myself before we leave. Exactly how much moisturiser do I need to wear in order to stop my face and body drying up like some ancient reptile from the cold/wind/central heating? How environmentally unfriendly is having a bath if you run the shower for half an hour anyway because you don’t want to get out? Why has no-one invented a car that de-ices itself? Why do all pubs with working fireplaces feel cold? Is there any way to get my feet thawed out, ever? Why am I in the cold instead of in the sunshine?

But today, we have rain. Dubai has provided me with a sort of purgatory, a place of transition to sit and get comfortable with the concept of dark days, bad traffic and a chill in the air before we travel to the real, slightly more hardcore version on Thursday. So as much as everyone else may be moaning, I am embracing it.

Should I not get chance to write again, I’d like to wish everyone reading safe travels if you are travelling, and a very merry Christmas. I’ve increased my readership by a fairly wild amount this year and for that I am very grateful and not a tiny bit flattered, that my ramblings are still providing entertainment (and maybe a bit of education?). I have certainly enjoyed sharing them with you. I hope that 2013 will find you happy to keep reading and wish you all the very best for the new year. Over and out.

Rubyslippers x

Busy doing nothing?

I have spent quite a while these past few weeks wondering what I do that means I don’t get anything done. This is a bad place to be in. I get that people who work or don’t have kids (or sometimes people who work and do have kids) don’t appreciate what I do all day but if I’m questioning it too – well, that is not a good sign. It’s not that I’m not running around like a crazy person, it’s just that I never seem to get anything done, or finished, or sometimes even started. Life appears to be a series of relentless activities punctuated with constant interruptions and no-one who isn’t doing the same thing can seem to appreciate that not working is not the easiest choice sometimes. Well, in actual fact the phrase ‘not working’ is not even an accurate description. It’s more a case of ‘not being paid for all the work I do’. Not that many people view it that way, but let me tell you, it’s not easy being the person that does all ‘the other shit’. Because that’s what most of it is. A load of old shit. But it’s shit that makes the world go round….and the world would be a poorer place if we weren’t in it. So I decided to keep a diary, to prove it. I’m not sure what I proved – mainly that I’m not as efficient as I would like to be, that living away from home adds about 2 hours of extra workload onto my day, and that a whole lot of it is spent chasing my own tail – but anyway, here it is, a summary of a day in the life:

3am: Wake up to the sound of child screaming because he needs the bathroom and the door has swollen stuck on his bedroom and he can’t get out. Take child to the toilet, put him back in bed. Lie awake for 45 minutes making various ‘to do’ lists and wishing for world peace. Or sleep.

6am: Wake up to the sound of child singing. Attempt to snooze and fail.

6.30am: Finally give in upon being butted in the nose by my loving, if slightly over-enthusiastic son, and get out of bed. Shower, and attempt to cover up bags under my eyes with make-up. Mentally add several items to my to-do list whilst drying my hair.

7-8am: Drink a cup of tea, write a thank you letter and succeed in getting it into the envelope without sticky fingermarks or my child ‘enhancing’ it with a crayon while my back is turned. Make nutritiously balanced packed lunch, cajole child into socks and shoes, pack bags and check emails. Quickly reply to various people from the US and UK who have all sent me messages in the night so they too can enjoy full in-boxes first thing in the morning.

8.15-8.45am: School drop off. Negotiate car parking, realise I have forgotten it was ‘Mo’ day. Consider using my biro to draw fake moustache on my child then think better of it. Remind myself that it is also National Day this week and add ‘fancy dress outfit’ to my list of things to organise. Remove old posters from various locations around the school as part of my PTA mum duties. Smile at lots of parents but keep walking purposefully so that I don’t have to stop and chat.

8.45am: Fight through the hordes of women parking up and head to the supermarket for tonight’s dinner (even though I clearly spent an hour food shopping yesterday, for some reason I still have an empty fridge). Bump into two people who want to stop for a chat, and get agitated to the point that I avoid making eye contact with the third person I see and reverse into the next aisle to hide. Forget blueberries for making fruit salad at school on Thursday and resolve to make a return trip tomorrow. Again.

9.15am: Assess ‘to dos’ regarding house maintenance, overseas property management, Christmas, travelling, Improv group, PTA and school stuff. Reply to emails regarding all of the aforementioned. Forget most of what I had remembered I needed to do at 3am this morning. Call a guy to fix DS’s bedroom door.

10am: Head to shopping mall. Buy DS some winter boots for our UK trip home, some pyjamas, cards and gifts for this weekend’s kiddie birthday party, and attempt to find some inspiration for DH’s Christmas gift. End up in a decoration trance in Crate & Barrel instead. Unless my husband wants seasonal napkins and a santa sleigh for Christmas this is considered an epic fail.

11.30am: Give up and go home. Grab a cup of tea. Start making food shopping list to order online for delivery to our rental accommodation in UK. Email several good friends I haven’t spoken to since summer but really should have so that I don’t have to handwrite paragraphs of crap into Christmas cards when I do them next week. Accuse some of them of being lazy for not getting in touch and keep it to a short, abusive ‘Are you still alive?’ type thing so I don’t have to write much. For others, write something longer and more newsworthy, copy and paste content, changing names as appropriate for speed. Yeah, I know, that’s really bad – but it’s very efficient. Deal with it.

12.15pm: Head back out to the party shop to buy the National day costume stuff I forgot to look for in the mall. Make a mental note I need to find the pirate costume already lurking at home somewhere for Saturday’s birthday party.

12.40pm: Make a sandwich and start studying. (In my head, this activity was allocated 2 hours today.)

12.41pm: Doorbell rings, it’s the guy about the stuck door. Abandon sandwich and studying to oversee job.

12.50pm: Repairman comes to tell me he is finished, so I go to check the work and pay him. Resume eating stale sandwich. At this point with less than half an hour of time left of my morning I give up on my studying and call my mother.

1.00pm: Tell my mother I have to get off the phone. Check email whilst talking and cross of the stuff on my to-do list. Mentally note I haven’t done very much of it.

1.20pm: Hang up and drive at breakneck speed to pick up DS from school.

1.45pm-5pm: Get jumped on, do colouring, play football, climb up stuff, assist in operating various toys, go to park, read books, cook, wrestle, repeat myself about 457 times, mend something broken, wonder if I’m starting to smell, sing, prepare dinner, be endlessly enthusiastic about stuff that is interesting to a three year old. (No-one who doesn’t have one will appreciate just how much energy all this requires, but trust me, it is the working person’s equivalent of conducting a series of endless negotiations whilst having your boss sitting on your lap singing for the entire day including bathroom breaks.)

5-7pm: Cook, play the ‘if you eat this you can have that’ game for half an hour or so, clean up, bath, bed. Get at least one phone call during this time from someone who should know better than to attempt to speak to me at this point in the day. Consider the merits of sauv blanc vs. responsible parenting. Settle for a cup of tea and half a cold (home made) chicken nugget.

7pm: Yank myself into a dress. Shave legs (just down the fronts where the light catches) with a wet razor and some moisturiser. Think about going to the gym in the morning. Assess my arms and legs for spit/ketchup/sand etc, brush hair, spray perfume on, add lipgloss.

7.05pm: Leave house for client dinner with DH.

11pm: Return home, slightly squiffy. Check emails and drunk message at least one person on Facebook. Enjoy precisely 3 minutes of quality time with DH to discuss the day. Go to sleep, safe in the knowledge that my day will begin again sometime between 3 and 6am.

Nobody’s perfect all of the time

I am a Virgo. It’s important to me that you know that. Virgos, as a rule, take their star sign very seriously – probably more seriously than is acceptable in modern day society – and expect you to take it seriously as well. That they are a Virgo. They couldn’t really give a hoot what you are. Unless you are a Virgo too.

White&black

How Virgoans see the world  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m pretty certain Virgos come across as some of the most irritating people on the planet. We are the picture-straighteners of the world, the perfectionists, the hyper-critical, overly-logical, self-analyzing, right-angled, alphabetising, colour co-ordinating junkies of the human race. Black is black and white is white and there is officially no such thing as grey. ‘Change’ is a dirty word unless it has been planned that way. Achieving perfection is not the stuff of dreams, it is a way of life. ‘Trial’ is fine; ‘Error’ – not so much. And if all that wasn’t enough pressure, of all the Virgoans I have met and befriended over the years, many, if not all, have been actors, photographers, designers, and writers – i.e. creative. Creatively challenged, actually – because all that super-organised, self-critical think-in-straight-lines stuff gets hugely in the way of the fuzzy-wuzzy-dolphin-music-hippy-dippy-shit we like to immerse ourselves in. But somehow, magically, it works, and when a Virgoan manages to finally tap into their unconsciousness to get the creative stuff out before the conscious brain sets to work on recalibrating it to make sense, they tend to produce great (if not completely perfect) results.

So when a Virgoan screws up, particularly one who is of a slightly more creative nature (one might suggest the term ‘drama queen’ as appropriate to insert here) it is nigh on impossible for them to adopt an ‘oh well, never mind’ approach. It is, in fact, the end of the world. Which is about where I have been most of this week.

If you read last week’s post you will recall that I started off my dalliance with imperfection whilst cooking for a dinner party. Never before have I cocked up so much food in such a short, important space of time. That was last Friday. It should have been an indication of the greater incompetence that lay ahead.

Last week, shortly after posting my blog, I waited for a delivery to show up. A new, longed-for mattress with an all singing all dancing memory foam topper that would hopefully put an end to broken sleep and bad backs. When it arrived, it took them half an hour to get it upstairs due to a rather tight spot between the ceiling and the stairwell. Not wanting to think the worst, I ignored the fact that I didn’t remember this being so much of an issue with our old bed when we moved in, and instead blamed it on the general incompetence of the delivery team.

Not so. In fact it was MY general incompetence that was at fault, as became blindingly obvious when the mattress arrived in our room and was -oh – a good ten inches bigger than our bed. I had forgotten to measure and had guessed when we ordered. And I had guessed wrong. Oh the shame. So much so I blamed my husband in the ensuing phone call to the mattress company and with lots of eye rolling and pretend-crossness at his incompetence (sorry babe) I convinced them to exchange it for the correct size.

But what was it I was ashamed of? Not getting it wrong, per se, but that I had guessed. GUESSED. No Virgo GUESSES anything. It is simply not in our vocabulary. Something was going very, very wrong.

This morning we were due to be on a plane to Sri Lanka. I know that because my travel spreadsheet (oh yes) says so. But instead I am typing this in my study and we are clearly not on a plane anywhere. In a conversation with our housemaid, who hails from Colombo, I discovered that not only was the country still at the tail end of the monsoon (a fact I had known about but chosen to ignore up until now) but that there were ‘bad mosquitos’ in the capital city. Upon further inquiry it transpired these ‘bad mosquitos’ were called ‘Dengu’. Hmm. That sounds alot like ‘Dengue’ to me. So I did a bit of Googling and what do you know, there is a pandemic on. Who knew? Not wanting to be put off entirely (although by this point I must admit I was going a little cold on the idea) it got me thinking about all the other diseases we might pick up. We knew malaria didn’t affect the thin sliver of coastline we were visiting, but in full confidence that was all I needed to worry about, I managed to entirely forget to check our vaccination records until a week before we were due to travel. It turns out my son hasn’t had a typhoid jab and although the nurse was vaguely confident it would be ok for him to travel five days after the vaccination, she did mention that ‘before four weeks is best, ma’am’. Given typhoid is spread through water and the monsoon is still finishing up, it would only take one dodgy washed vegetable and that would be that.

So we cancelled. And being a Virgo, I take it as a personal failing that 1. I didn’t research the weather patterns and disease issues properly in the first place, 2. I didn’t organise our vaccinations in time and 3. I didn’t worry enough.

I didn’t worry enough. How does that even make sense? That’s how perfect I want to be, that I am worried about not being worried. It is extremely stressful being this self-critical. It takes up huge swathes of time and energy, being cross with oneself for not being ten out of ten ALL THE TIME. (A score of ‘ten’ being most sane people’s ‘eleven’, of course.)

So this week, in summary, the thoughts running round my little twisted mind (at 90 degrees, obviously), go something like this: 1. I can’t cook, 2. I guessed something and that is a BAD THING and 3. I didn’t worry enough. As I result, we ate ice cream, haven’t slept well and aren’t going on holiday. I’ll leave it to you to work out the order of disaster rating.

Things have taken a turn for the better since I realised I had dropped the astrological ball and gave myself a stern talking to. It’s Thanksgiving next week, and in an effort to pull my Virgoan socks right back up I am currently surrounded by shopping lists and schedules for preparation and cooking. I have already been out and purchased a soup tureen, turkey grippers and extra pie dishes in anticipation of producing a meal for ten nothing short of utopian. I have bought a new tablecloth (I measured the table first), done an inventory of glassware, plates, napkins and suchlike to ensure we can cater for a crowd, and assessed the state of the decorations hidden in the under stairs cupboard for the past twelve months. I have candles, name place cards and have already printed menus for the buffet table. The turkey is ordered and my housemaid is on standby to help with peeling vegetables and washing up. I am determined this meal will look perfect, taste perfect, and run like a well oiled machine, so that I can kick back and have a glass of wine by the time the pies (plural – apple, pecan and pumpkin) are served. In fact, I am so demanding of my own organisational excellence that I am considering booking a manicure for the day before, so that I can look immaculate too and really test out just how perfect I can be. I need to get my Zodiac groove back and there is only one way – to get back out there and give it all I’ve got at being great.I am in competition with myself. Tragic, but true.

If it goes wrong, fellow Virgos, I promise I will change my birthday.

I spy

Well, it’s been a busy old week in the Ruby Slippers household. Half term and a hectic array of social events mean that this morning was a welcome return to normality. I celebrated by sitting in Starbucks for a full hour, getting round to doing some of the reading I missed out on this past week in favour of looking after the small boy and trying to find five minutes to converse with the big one.

We went to see ‘Skyfall’ earlier in the week which wasn’t what I was going to write about but feel it might merit a mention after all. It’s important to note that I am not much of a film buff and therefore anything I have to say on the matter should be taken with a large pinch of salt. Indeed, the only other movie I have been to see in the past three years is ‘The Hunger Games’, which I thought was brilliant, and I watched ‘Bridesmaids’ when my husband was away and I’d run out of recorded episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. It was fairly enjoyable but Modern Family is funnier. In the world of celluloid and screen, TV is my first love and films come a very poor second. And since my brief encounter with nearly being cast in one, I can’t fathom what would inspire someone to reach for the stars in this manufactured, artificial world, when there is so much to be gained from performing live in a theatre in front of an actual audience that claps when you are finished. Ah well, each to their own. Let’s face it, they all earn a lot more than I do which means they must be doing something right.

So, film – not my thing. BUT I make three exceptions to this rule – 1. If I think a book was brilliant and hear on the grapevine that they didn’t trash it when they made the movie (e.g. The Hunger Games), 2. anything with John Cusack in it (I know, weird choice in a world that contains Hugh Jackman, George Clooney and Brad ‘I used to be hot but then I met Ange’ Pitt, but JC is my ‘I totally would’ and I make no apologies for that fact), and 3. Bond films.

I LOVE Bond. It’s a super-dooper version of Spooks (which I also loved, particularly before they killed off Rupert Penry-Jones, who was my Chief TV Totty for several years, replaced by Danny from CSI New York until he grew that silly moustache and currently a Situation Vacant).

I’m not sure why I get so fired up about 007. I have never found a Bond sexy so it’s certainly not about that. Daniel Craig might have the body of adonis but his little sticky out ears irritate me and his ‘back to basics’ Bond is boring and not in an ironic way. Piers Brosnan killed any kind of romantic associations I may have harboured for him the day he sung in ‘Mamma Mia’, and any Bond prior to that is so old now it’s just wrong to think of them in that way. Would be like shagging your Grandad. So no. It’s not the sex symbol thing. And let’s face it – it’s not the storyline. I love the ‘chase’ at the start, which always gets me on the edge of my seat (well, not always – for me, Skyfall did not produce the kind of adrenaline rush I was looking forward to) and I enjoy the gadgets (which again, Skyfall managed to score a big old zero for), but I’m not some kind of geek that knows all the films in sequential order or can list the baddies from each one. I just really enjoy watching them. They let me into my imaginary world for a few hours where I can dream about wearing glamorous dresses, jet setting round the world and killing people who really piss me off.

I have long believed I would have made a brilliant spy. I genuinely believe MI6 really missed a trick when they didn’t recruit me. Not so much now I spill my guts on a blog every week, of course, and possibly all that running around might have irritated me after a while, and it’s not the sort of career you can really have if you have a family – but I do think I would have made a very good assassin at the very least. I’m very organised, anally retentive, and have exceptionally good spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. I don’t like jobs that drag on e.g. filing, but I’m very good with jobs that require (excuse the pun) instant execution. We talked about this at a dinner party once, when the question round the table was of the ‘what do you wish you’d done when you were younger that you didn’t?’. Our guests displayed mild amusement when I said I thought I would have made a great spy and that I’d been wasted as a commercial manager in a graphic design agency, but this quickly turned to mild alarm when my husband agreed that I would have indeed been very good at it, given the right training, and that he didn’t think shooting people would have been a particular problem.

So me + spy films = happy. But I have to say whilst I enjoyed aspects of ‘Skyfall’, I am tiring of the ‘humanising’ of Bond. I don’t agree with the portrayal of him as a vulnerable man whose age is catching up with him. Borrrrring. Bond doesn’t get old, or die. He just gets replaced with a newer, improved version. That’s the point. And I’m not sure there was anything new or improved about this movie. Judy Dench was fantastic though and I thought the new Moneypenny was well cast – full of flirtatious innuendos and sexy enough to get her rocks off with Bond but not so outstandingly attractive that he would fall in love with her to exclusion of all others. And the new Q was a good addition who provided a the humour that was missing a little from the rest of the movie. And I liked the baddie. But the ‘Bond girl’ (if you can call her that) was terrible, the plot was a tad bullet-riddled and the ending was way too soppy for my liking. I feel there must be a balance between Contemporary Bond and Bond a la Fromage. Maybe they will find it in the next one.

So – enough of that – what else have I been up to this week? Well we had another dinner party on Friday where I didn’t talk about shooting people in cold blood, but did manage to cock up the starter and dessert so royally we ended up having ice cream with Crunchie bar bits and chocolate biscuits after dinner. Not a big deal, thankfully, as despite the pedigree of the guests (one descended from TV royalty, another friends with actual royalty) they were only in their late twenties and thought it was great. Either that or they have been brought up to be incredibly polite. As I am not a spy and therefore cannot read people’s minds with my special psychic spy pen, I will never know.

Next week, we jet off in rather less than Bond-esque fashion via Emirates economy class to Sri Lanka. Despite the lack of casinos I’m rather looking forward to some quality family time exploring a new country (should we get further than the hotel pool of course). So it’s time to tackle the hundred and one things to do before we go. I bet Bond never had to paint the ceiling or get his garden furniture sanded and stained. Although I’ve never had a helicopter shoot down my house either. Fair play. Maybe not being a spy has it’s advantages after all.

Related articles

Contemplation by the creative mind (or some such poncey nonsense)

I love it when interesting people stumble into my life. After an initial flurry of – ooo – two or three people, whom I met in the first few months of being in Dubai, I then spent a good few years yearning for more of them to cross paths with me and become my friends.

And whilst I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t have much in the way of social stimulation I can honestly say that I didn’t have a whole lot of opportunity. The first year we were in Dubai I was studying, so I had plenty of time in the day to meet people. But it didn’t work like that. I found it very hard to just ‘make friends’ with people, for starters, because I couldn’t find anything in common with most people I met. Because I didn’t have kids, I was dismissed by those that did, and because I didn’t work in an office, I was dismissed by those that did. And I dismissed them too. They weren’t interesting to me, and I started to think I didn’t fit into anyone’s world. I was bored and I was boring.

In my second year here I started work as a teacher. I didn’t have a huge pool of co workers to get to know, nor the time to spend getting to know them. Most of my days were spent in the company of twenty under-5s, and whilst they are interesting in their own way I wasn’t exactly going to be drinking buddies with any of them. After that I gave birth, and I think anyone who has done the same can say, hand on heart, that it saps all the ‘interesting’ out of you for a good chunk of time. Meeting people who make your brain come alive is only relevant if you haven’t had all of your little grey cells burned up by sleep deprivation and shitty nappies. I was irrelevant to my old teacher chums and although I met a few new mums once I had the baby, most fell by the wayside as our kids got older and we found we had less and less in common.

But when my son turned a year old, he wasn’t the only one to take the first baby steps towards independence. Upon realising that my life probably wasn’t anywhere near as awful as I made it out to be, I realised that my angst and anger at being stuck in a foreign land with a small baby and no friends really needed to be channelled into something more positive. So I went back to my roots, and joined a drama class, where I finally found the energy to be me again.

That was two years ago. The people I met in that class went from being a bunch of misfits I vaguely knew the names of, to being my friends who I can count on to have an interesting and entertaining time with whenever we meet. The class gave me confidence in myself and my ability, and has led to more and more involvement performing and learning with an ever expanding group of people who inspire me to be great. It allowed me to think again, and to celebrate the weirdo in me that had got lost in a sea of conformity somewhere along the journey into expatriateworld and mummydom.

Once the juices were flowing, it made me want to do more. I began to write again. And six months ago, I joined twitter to boost my reader numbers (because as any blogger knows, the stats page is the most important one of all, especially if you thrive on being the centre of attention like I do). And now I have friends who I have made through blogging and twitter, because we write, and we like how each other write, and although I don’t know them terribly well, I have begun to put my trust in the theory that if someone can make me ‘feel’ with what they write, or say, or how they act, that they are ‘my kind of person’. They become interesting. They become my friend.

I had assumed a rather old-fashioned definition of ‘friend’ up until this year. I was searching for people to replace the ones I left behind. It took me a long time to realise that they can’t be replaced, nor do I want them replaced. But now when I think of all the interesting people I have met through being a little more creative, and a little less judgemental and proud, I realise my life is the fuller for it. And if I really think about it, all the friends I left behind came from the same place – they too were once a bunch of misfits in a rehearsal room who over the decades, have become my family.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, of books and blogs, in preparation for my MA and to improve and invigorate my work onstage.  I find increasingly that these two ‘careers’ of mine overlap, and intertwine, so that my life is slowly becoming fluid again, and instead of wearing many hats in a day to try and fit in with everyone else, I find my world as a mother, wife, friend, and ‘creative person’ is about life fitting in with me. The two things I loved doing in life twenty years ago – writing and theatre – have once again become central to my life today. And life – mine and my family’s – is all the better for it.

People thrive on different things to get them through life. How I keep forgetting, and how I only just figured this out again, is beyond me. I have the attention span of a fly, clearly. But in my life, being busy doing creative things is key. If I am not creative, I am not inspired. If I am not inspired, I am not interested. If I am not interested, then I am bored. If I am bored, then I am thoughtless, and lonely, and sad. And right now, I am horribly, smug-tastically happy with my life, which is full to the brim with busy all of a sudden, doing all the things I love, surrounded by people who make me smile. Which can only mean I’m getting it right.

Related articles

I want to break free

There’s no two ways about it: I want to go back to work. I don’t mean actual work of course; Working 9 to 5 (who ever finishes at 5, anyway?) in some grey office doing the bidding of a boss I can’t stand has never been my strong point and that’s not about to change. And I have a degree to start thinking about in January which will eat up large quantities of time I’m sure. No, I don’t mean I want a job…I mean what I said – I want to work. And I think I’ve finally figured out why I’ve flitted between so many different careers all these years – administrator, manager, writer, theatre practitioner, teacher: so I can do virtually anything on a need-to-work basis whilst remaining resolutely uncommitted to anyone except myself. In posh terms, I believe one would use the term ‘Freelancer’.

brain

Dear patronising Worker Bees: Despite being a stay at home mum for three years, both sides of my brain are working just fine, thank you (Photo credit: TZA)

Of course the word ‘Freelancer’ is partly composed of the word ‘free’ which has several meanings. ‘Free’ can mean uninhibited, or unpaid. So let me be clear. I want to be paid. I don’t want to compromise on the time with my son but I would really like to earn my own money again and feel like I’m making a contribution to wider world once more. And despite my adoring fanbase whom I truly appreciate for all their kind words and encouragement, I am not making it a better place just sitting here faffing about with a blog. Nor is it earning me beans to buy shoes or birthday presents for my husband, who with the best will in the world must be slightly bored with his ‘surprise’ gifts turning up on the credit card.

And that’s the crux of the matter. Never mind that thing about having to use my brain again – despite evidence to the contrary, I use my brain almost all the time, every day. I have plenty to keep me busy and I’m not desperate for company, so whereas I thought I would eventually return to work to be around people again, this is not the reason. No, the reason is I want to have some earning power again, no matter how small. It has great meaning, to be able to earn your own money. It is synonymous with freedom and even the smallest amount would change how I feel. Some of it is about me, of course. I want to buy that dress I saw that would be perfect for Christmas without it appearing on a Mastercard statement for my husband to torture me with. But most of it is about pride, and achievement, and just the very basic happiness that can be derived from buying something with money you worked for. For example, I’d like to take my husband out to dinner and actually pay rather than ‘pretend pay’ with money that he gave me in the first place. I’d like to treat my son. I’d like to send myself flowers, and maybe send them to other people too, to make them happy and because I can. It’s not the stuff mortgages are made of but it’s the little things that I’m tired of not being able to do without relying on someone else to pay for it.

Not working is a curious state of mind. It is not easy to not work. If you’re not careful you start to lose respect for yourself at approximately the same speed that everyone else does. People that work don’t understand that people who do not have lives that are just as challenging. We do all the stuff the people that work don’t have time to do, but that add a little love into the world, like baking cakes or going to sports days or being on the PTA committee or keeping the house standing. Not all of it is fun and there are days when I wish I was in an office with a boss I don’t like, just so that I didn’t have to wait in for the electrician or look after a sick child. But a lot of it is fun, and valuable, and irreplaceable. I would not want to give up the time I have with my son when it’s just us and no-one else, nor would I want to watch the house disintegrate into chaos as a result of me resuming a full time career. And as an expat, I would not want a mere four weeks of holiday to take to see family and friends on two continents, nor would I want to be reliant on a housemaid to look after my child every day because I am not there.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about ‘having it all’ and struggled to find peace with only having ‘some’. I believe there is a balance and the more people I meet the more I understand what the balance is and how to achieve it. The next step is to actually do it. So that’s what I’m concentrating on now, to make the most of the many strings on my bow, new skills and old ones, and get out there and work them. I believe I will get there.

Related articles