The Sing a Long Season

I am pretty busy this week, since I will be flying out to go home in three sleeps.  So there is not really time for a blog.  Instead, here is a run down of some songs that are helping me get through the silly season, work and packing...

This is a version of a song that we often play once the pub has closed, we all get a bit nuts to it - click here to hear a not great but will do version of it...

Anything by The Wombats.  I love them, they have me singing along at the top of my lungs, if I am not on the tube.  My fav is Lets Dance to Joy Division,  click here and turn it up loud! but recently Tokyo (Vampires and Warewolves) has me thinking.  Mainly because he speaks about wearing a suitcase under each eye, which I am currently sporting myself.
Click here to see their lyrical genius

I recently have discovered She and Him.  I love Zooey Deschanel and she is one half of the duo, the She if you will.  Click here to hear some indie gorgeousness
And now joy of joys they have put out a Christmas album.  I love Christmas music, and this cute take on Baby its Cold Outside has me swooning.  Click here to be Christmased.

Because I am loving my chiropractor right now, and she happens to be a pretty cool chick, I love this quirky song that she has put out.... Click here for ginger loving.

Because I am off to a wedding where there will be lots of awwww romantic moments, this song comes to mind, click here to give yourself tingles.

Because I will be seeing my family soon this one comes to mind.  Click here to hear about my family.

And last but very not least, this song is playing in my head as its becoming time for me to go home to homestead....  I better be home soon so click here.

So that is a small insight to what I am getting down to right now.  I will be home sooner than I can blink and I am sure that there will be more singalongs with friends and family that will have me listening to some new music as well.

See you soon xoxo

Dear Man on the Tube

It was over a year ago now.  I had worked late at a recruitment party for The Sting as a colleague had been off with his sick wife.  I was feeling pretty good, I had gotten a few people jobs and the atmosphere in the club had been fun.  So I was a bit smiley and feeling a bit bold.

As I walked down the Victoria Line platform at Oxford circus – ready to be at the right end to get off at Victoria, I saw you.  I thought huh, he is pretty all right.  Then you proceeded to take off your jumper as it was hot in the Underground.  As you did so, your shirt came up and I caught an eyeful at what you had underneath and it was good.  As your head came out of the jumper, you caught my eye, but I kept walking. 

I stood next to the wall and proceeded with my Underground ritual, headphones in, and book out.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see you watching me.

The tube arrived and I got into one carriage, and assumed from where you were standing that you had gotten into another.  As we pulled away from the platform, I looked up and there you were in my carriage staring at me.  I am not used to being stared at so didn’t really know what to do, so continued being a bit haughty.

The train stopped at Green Park, and you got off, and as you walked past the still stationary train, you looked in the window at me, and were rewarded with a half-smile.  You saw this and smiled back, and headed back towards the doors.  Then they closed.  You threw your hand up in despair and I waved at you as the train speed off.

This whole encounter lasted no more than 8 minutes.  But those 8 minutes cause me to think of you often at Oxford Circus late at night.  The thing is, I am not used to causing that reaction in people, so I didn’t know what to do.  I wish that I had the courage to get off the train, or to pull the emergency stop.  Something tells me that you would have liked that.  I do look for you every now and then, but am not sure that I would know you again.

I told my Mum this story and she said it was the saddest thing she had ever heard.  My best friend called it a James Blunt moment.  A colleague told me that you would have been perfect, not a shit like the rest of the men in my life at the time.  Another lamented the end of the London Lite where people who had encounters like ours wrote in to get in touch.  But I just smile and remember the day that a complete stranger made me feel beautiful, magnetic, and attractive.  Without saying one word.

I hope that life has been good to you, Man on the tube. I hope that you have a lovely lady in your life and that you make her feel these things on a daily basis.  And who knows, maybe one day, you and I will meet. 

Yours sincerely

Nicola

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times

Over the last week, I have seen examples of the best and worst that the human race has to offer.  It’s Christmas time officially now.  And normally I am excited beyond belief, am eagerly awaiting snow, and putting my Christmas tree up on the 1^st of December whilst playing Christmas music.  But with my time in England running out for this year, I am not really in a Christmasy mood.  And there have been some not nice things happen.

I am very much looking forward to stepping on a plane and heading back to NZ my motherland, to see my friends and family, who for the most part, I have not seen for two years.  I feel more homesick in the last week than I have in ages, I guess it’s because I am organising to spend time with my friends, who know me backwards and forwards, that the old familiar dull ache has resurfaced for them.  I am beyond excited to feel the sun on my skin, to have the warmth in my bones and to spend time at the beach.  And to add to the excitement there are a couple of weddings, Christmas and New Year’s added to it.

So for that reason, I am not putting up our flat Christmas tree this year, no one else really seems to care and I won’t be here to take it down either.  And I have run out of time to do my normal turkey day as well.  Which is a shame, but it’s a lot of work, and I will be having some even older traditions in NZ.  My friends and I each year, have what I like to call Christmas Crazy day.  This involves everyone getting together on the last day of work and getting ripsnorting drunk.  And letting your hair down.  I worked in a claims department for an insurance company, so in the week leading up to Christmas, all hell broke loose.  People wanted their cars fixed before they went on holiday, despite the fact that the accident happened 6 months ago and we had been trying to close the claim since then, it was our fault that the panelbeaters were busy.  Or they wanted their claims cashed then and there and when could the cheque be in their hands.  It’s Christmas Eve lady, it will be with you after Christmas.  It would drive a saint to drink, and we have already established that I am not one, so on Christmas Crazy day, I would gladly accept a glass of wine and settle in for a night of great chat with my friends.  Anyone looking in on us would think us slightly unhinged, there have been food fights, people falling off chairs, I vaguely remember a streak, but that could have been another occasion…  This year, it might be a bit more tame as this time there are kids present, but nonetheless I am looking forward to it.

It’s things like this that I am focussing on, when I hear about my good friend being mugged outside her front door, or my backpack being stolen from a busy bar.  I guess that thieves get desperate at Christmas, just like the rest of us, but the difference being that I have worked 6 days a week for the last two years to get what I have, and they just stole it from me in a matter of minutes.  The bag thank goodness did not have anything of great value in it, my sis was worried about my passport, but it had a set of worn that day work clothes, work notes that were valuable to no one but me, and £100 of purchased in the last half hour lingerie.  I had just used up the last of my discount at Bravissimo.  I am really annoyed that this happened to me.  But in contrast with my friend being knocked to the ground and having her handbag stolen, it pales.  The police have been great, they called me back today and told me that they are going to check the CCTV in the bar where we were, considering that I have heard of more stabbings recently, that is jolly good of them.  My friends at Bravissimo are also angels, with three of them offering to share their discounts with me so that I can replace what was stolen.  Which brought a few tears to my eyes.  I don’t want to seem like I don’t care, but I just don’t have the energy to waste worrying about it right now.  The energy is better spent on getting the items replaced, organising Christmas pressies and getting home in one piece.

Friday night saw me saying goodbye to a good friend.  Yep, another one heading home and another sad goodbye for me.  This goodbye was made a bit better by meeting Leo for the first time.  He is very cute wee man who was 12 days old.  And I got a cuddle.  Oh he was cute.  Made my ovaries ache and think of what could be one day.  He and my good friends, made the presence of an ex boyf who should have known better bearable.  The less said about that incident the better. 

 

So today, on my first Sunday off in a very long time, I woke up, watched some tele, spoke to the police and got a few emails off.  I am relaxed and getting through my chores.  I am feeling positive and putting it out there that life is good, and hoping that it comes back my way.  And will be walking to the cinema later.  So life is good people.  Bad stuff happens to good people, but just remember, karma will sort it out.  We might not see it, but that is kinda what faith is!

Learning to love yourself

The temptation to start this blog with ‘I love myself, I want you to love me…’ was almost overwhelming.  However, it should start like this.  A while ago a friend of mine said ‘I can’t believe how much better sex is with someone that you love’.  I must have looked at her incredulously, cause then she said ‘Am I the only one that doesn’t know this?’.  To which I replied, yep.  But she is a lot younger than me so maybe people her age don’t know that.  So here is moment where I think that I may have just cottoned on to something that others have known for a long time.

I am learning to love myself.  It’s hard.  Maybe hard is not the right word, maybe challenging is a better word.  It’s well known that I am rubbish at taking a compliment.  And I guess that most people I know would never say that I had a problem with being confident or speaking to people.  Well they would be wrong.  Very wrong.

The thing is that I like myself, but I am very rough on myself.  I don’t particularly like the body that I am housed in and have tried every trick in the book to lose weight off this frame.  I have recently discovered that it is going to be pretty hard now that I have a wee disease called endometriosis.  The cure for this is permanently having to have hormones of some kind going on, so this means that my body will really struggle to lose weight.  So I can either completely starve or I can do the best I can and learn to accept that I will always be a bit larger than normal.  There are two alternatives.  One is pregnancy, and the other is being in indescribable amounts of pain constantly.  One is not feasible right now and the other is just too daunting to think about.  I guess that I am just upset because I really wanted to loose weight and look amazing for going home this year and for my sisters wedding.  But I am beginning to think, that despite my very best efforts that it might be case of this is as good as it gets and that you know what, it could be worse.  I am currently relatively healthy and after the last few years I have learnt how precious this is.  I can walk and run if I want.  I am not disabled and if the worst thing that I have to complain about is that I carry a bit more and that I have curves, then maybe I should just learn to love it.  So that is what I have been trying to do.  That is not to say that I don’t hit the gym hard, but with my current working environment which involves twelve hour days this is getting impossible.  I try to eat healthy as well but when you are eating lunch on the bus between meetings at 2pm, you kinda have to take whatever Pret has left and be grateful as you shove it in as fast as you can.  And I totally eat my feelings.  I can see on a stressful afternoon that I chow down my snacks, be they fruit or snack a jacks at a record rate.  So I am learning to love my curves and I guess everyone else will just have to love them too.  At least I have a beautiful cleavage to make it better.

But that is not to say that I don’t have some attributes that even I am aware of.  I mentioned above that I have issues speaking to people.  Now once you have removed your jaw from the floor let me explain.  Once I have met you and figured out where you fit in and how to relate to you, I will chat your ears off about anything and everything.  But until I have figured you out, I will be polite and if I don’t really know what to do with you, I will kinda blank you.  I don’t mean to do it, I just don’t know how to relate to you.  Maybe everyone is like this?  I am scared a little of new people and how they will relate to me and what they will think.  A lot of that has to do with the whole body thing, but a lot of has to do with wanting to be liked.  Lately though, as lot has been made out of my personality.  My boss said to me this morning, at an early meeting, after a crazy late night working last night, you are still smiling though and that is a great skill.  My best Cate told me last week that if more people laughed at the world I did that the world might be a better place.  Hmmm, I really took that one to heart.  I guess that I have figured out that if you can get people looking at your face, your smile and your laugh that they might forgive the curviness below.  I am aware that I am good at putting people at ease, even if internally, I am going mad thinking about what they might be thinking of me and desperately hoping not to say the wrong thing.

Since earlier this year, when there were a few horrific alcohol incidents – they are for sure going to be the subject of another blog - I have cut back a lot.  This is because it is excruciating to live through the next week.  After a particularly heavy night out, I will spend the next week or so beating myself up.  Badly.  I will analyse every word that was said, every dance move that was done and I will not look favourably on myself.  The thing is that none of this means anything to anyone else.  I was discussing a particularly bad incident with a friend and she was flabbergasted at what I was saying.  On the night in question she thought that I was hilarious, a lot of fun and could not understand why I was upset.  She was astounded that I was so hard on myself and was not impressed when I began to be a bit sensible about how I drank.  The words ‘Last nights fun Nic would be drinking with us now’ at 10am on a Sunday morning came back at me.  We laughed it off, but it made me see that maybe I am not the screw up that I think that I am.  I am still conscious about the mistakes drunk Nic makes, but am actively trying to get over this.

Anyway that is an insight into the slightly insane world of Nic.  I am starting to succeed a lot in the whole loving myself thing.  Either that or I have reached an age where I think, if you don’t like it, you can just go away.  Still I don’t think that you will see me as one of those old ladies that wears bikinis anytime soon.  And neither will you see me give up on the whole weight loss thing either, despite the fact that it seems a bit hopeless, I have a feeling that it would be worse if I gave up.  I still enjoy a few drinks, but its been a while since I have been put in a taxi that has been paid for twice, once by the person who put me in it and again by me when I got home and I think that is for the best!

The pesky other arm

I watched a movie called Howl the other night.  It’s a very intelligent movie about Allan Ginsberg and his poem called Howl.  The movie centres around when the book was released and how there was a movement to have it censored and around the life that Ginsberg lived.  The movie was brilliant and whilst I should have been thinking about the filming and the story, I got distracted…

There is a scene where Ginsberg is in bed with an acquaintance and they decide to cuddle and this is where I got distracted.  By Ginsberg’s arm.  You see when two people cuddle in bed and then go to sleep there is always one arm left over.  And that arm when you wake up is dead not very comfortable.  But why is this?  Why can two people not cuddle to sleep and both of them not wake up with two perfectly fine arms?  In the scene, Ginsberg is the one doing the side cuddle whilst the other person is doing the lying on the back cuddle.  Ginsberg’s spare arm ends up sticking straight up in the air, which kinda shows the kind of awkward person that he was.  I have never ended up with an arm in the air, but have ended up with them in all other kinds of interesting poses.

The worst is when it gets trapped under the other person.  It might be under their neck, so when you wake up you are not only trapped, but have a sore or dead arm.  If you have somehow managed to spend the whole night like this, then there is nothing more painful than the blood returning to the arm in question.  I am sure that I have a bad shoulder from the other choice which is to lay half on your stomach and half on your side so that you have one arm over them and one out behind you, hardly a great position to sleep in.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine, who was telling me that after making a curry the other night and then seeing on the news that the mix that she had used had been recalled due to it being known to cause paralysis, she was very concerned when she woke up with a dead arm.  But was relieved that it was just cuddle arm.

So you can imagine why I was a little disturbed when I got distracted and could not stop thinking about this arm.  I was watching a movie that was about one of the most impressive and discussed poems of this century, something I was really interested in, but yet I was caught up with the issue of the arm.

There is another solution to the pesky arm, and that is to not be a cuddly sleeper.  But where is the fun in that.  There is nothing nicer than a cuddly sleep and problematic as finding the right non-dead arm position is.  In fact there is nothing quite so nice as a good hug/cuddle in general.  I am sure that I remember reading somewhere that the more hugs you have a day, the more well adjusted that you are.  I know that certainly feel better after a good hug.  I tend to get them most often at the pub – which sounds dodgy, but the English don’t really hug, so only tend to get them from the Kiwis, who are all concentrated at the pub, strange that.

So do you get cuddle arm?  Are you a cuddly sleeper?  Have you seen Howl?  Were you distracted by the arm or did you find more in the movie?