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I am going 'abroad' on Monday - for one night only.... There is a certain satisfaction involved with the fact that I may be the only person in Britain to go on a coach to Belgium twice in a year - by choice. I have also been to Dover three times this year... previously I had been once, when I was 14. How things change.
Anyway, it got me thinking that this year I have been to 10 European countries, or principalities... which is really not bad going...
But, I also go to thinking that in my mid twenties I seemed to be a five star hotel kind of girl, and I have now swiftly moved into camping and finally sharing a youth hostel room with up to 45 15 year old girls.
On balence, I would prefer a four poster bed, champagne and the boy...
Anyway - the point of this ramble is - does anyone know where I can get some cheap pink wellies (or expensive - but cheap is better, as I don't want my shoes to cost more than the trip....)?
Fucking Livingstone.
I spent 1 hour and 45 minutes on the bus this morning. Usually, I spend 45 minutes on it.
This unexpected additional time would have been fairly relaxing were it not for 4 things:
1. Most of my kids were trapped with me... and they didn't do me the honour of pretending not to know me. Quite the opposite in fact.
2. I had forgotten my pikey metro to read
3. I knew I was missing a test that I had set!!
4. I had drunk about 50 pints of coffee and it hit my bladder with a whoosh.
Bah.
Home and Garden.
This weekend the boy and I went for a walk to Belsize Park in London, to meet my kittens Christmas baby-sitter. On the way back we came across a shop in the middle of the road selling Christmas Trees.
I held tightly to the boys hand with my blue glove and whispered in his ear. I so wanted a Christmas tree.
I know that I am appearance based in character, and that at Christmas I am so stuffed full of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks that I seemingly have no choice but to create a world so unreal and beautiful that it warms me.
Growing up, everything around me was very very beautiful. My father is a designer, and as a consequence I lived in a world from a magazine... Everything in my life glittered and sparkled and glowed (the cleaning lady who came five times a week saw to that!!!). Equally, outside was a world of little groves and tree lined fences. I had my own swiss chalet at the bottom of the garden, with carpets and heating and wood panelling. It was my not so secret place to be. In the winter sometimes it would snow and my play chalet would look so wonderful against the fairy lights in the pine trees surrounding it
Even outside of the fairy world of beauty created by my parents, everything was wonderful, for I lived in a little coastal town, five minutes from a red squirrel filled national trust forest and the raging grey cold Irish sea. In the summer we would go to the beach and sunbath, we would pretend to live in California. I think our life was better. In the winter that pine forest would look for all the world like santa lived there, the squirrels tails would get fat and people would go sledging on the sand dunes.
Eeven the nearest town to me as a child and a teeneager was voted the prettiest in England. I think that maybe I started to take beauty for granted.
As my parents grew wealthier they moved away from the home of my childhood to an even more stunning house perched on the edge of a rolling, famously pretty golf course. It takes them at least a week to prepare this palace for Christmas. The trees are frosted with white lights, the rooms subtley change their colours to shades of red and green and the corwning glory, my mothers Christmas tree is coated in the 500 different decorations that she and we have collected from all over the world.
As a child, I was obsessed with my mothers tree. My favourite decoration (now relegated, I am sure to a back corner) was a glass of real sherry which looked like someone had disgraded it into the tree by accident at one of my parents ragingly glamourous Christmas parties, where I would inevitably be dressed as a fairy and forced to give presents and wine to the guests.
But, it was always my mothers tree... and after my father had covered it in hundreds of lights no-one was to touch it but her. It was the best tree in the world, but it was plastic and perfect and cold.
So, we bought a tree on Saturday in Belsize Park (me clinging to the boy, breathless with excitement) and had it delivered. It was the most stunning tree I have ever seen.. and we decorated it with red wine and giggles. I still don't know if the best thing about it was whether it was real, or whether it was mine.
So, the boy and I cuddled down on my stunning birthday sofa with our red wine, and looked at the tree being ;tapped; at by my perfect white kitten in a Christmas cardy kind of a way... and I realised that I too now have the power to create a beautiful perfect moment. That my life now is still all glitter and sparkle and Meg Ryan kisses - this time of my own making. But the wonderful thing is that all of this is supported by real love, from parents and sisters and kittens and boys and, as such, I really am the luckiest girl in the world.
Funny Ha ha.
On my pay slip it suggests that I work a 27 hour week. So, that would be almost 6 hours a day.
So far this week I have worked for 45 hours (I've been on an over night trip to Belgium which lasted 6am Monday morning until 9pm last night).
Does this mean I can have next week off, do you think???
Also, as I start work normally at 8.30, does this mean I can leave at 2.30, even though there is an hour and thirty five minutes of school left?
Too few to mention...
The problem with working in a school is that you are consistently reminded of what a complete moron you were when you were about 15.
Oh, I have the pictures, (carefully hidden away from any potential lovers eyes) of the wonky home cut fringe and the growing out blonde streaks. I have the memories of crying for a day when Bros split up, and I know for a fact that I smoked a cigarette and kissed a boy under the influence of martini at teen-scene circa 1992. But what you really do forget is how important everything was. Days and days to plan planting a secret valentines card in a boys locker, hours and hours spent plucking your leg hair because your mother wouldn't let you shave your legs. Plotting and planning to be allowed to go and see a 15 film at the cinema without an embarassing parental appendage... and then the hours preparing to walk into your local pub and request a diamond white.
Two solid days spent in the company of the year 11 girls (from the girls school - obviously) has rectified this. All the characters from my past were there, on the coach in glorious technicolor.
There was the girl with the perfect relationship, buying chocolate for her boy
There was the girl who looked unbelievably cool in everything she wore, even with bin bags attached to her feet in a trench
There were the stroppy girls who made you feel bad for liking school and the quiet girls who need everything explaining twice.
Then there was the girl like me.
Some days....
It's completely impossible to get up... and just thinking about standing in front of so many boys making history interesting and fun makes you feel tired and ill... I wish with all my heart that I could hide behind a desk today and eat tea cakes.
On another note...
I finish school at 12.40 today, it's the weekend tomorrow and it's two weeks until Christmas!!! Woo hoo.