Had a great bonfire night! Met my old flatmate Nicole and her boyfriend Jef on party number 1. (Not to be confused with Nicola, who was supposed to pop up at party number 2 but got stuck in Clapham… Almost met up with her tonight though, but decided against it since I’m in serious PAIN! Why? Read on…)
Haven’t seen her for ages, which is totally my fault! I’ve been either away or really busy every time she’s come up with ideas, which I’ve felt quite bad about… Going to change that now though and meet up again as soon as she’s back from Germany next week! :)
By the way, I normally tend to refer to her as “German girl” since there are just too many Nicoles and Nicolas in this city. But through an amazing coincidence the nickname turns out to suit her pretty well, her being German and all. (She’s referring to me as “Swedish girl”..)

But I’ve felt guilty about it! I really have. And thinking about this guilt suddenly reminded me of Helena wanting to come over to London for a weekend and having asked me which week suited me. I haven’t been sure whether I would go to Sweden or not in November so it’s been hard to say, but as it is now, I’ll be staying put here until mid December! I’ll email you tomorrow! Guilt number 2 sorted.

Guilt 3…was supposed to meet up with Marta during last week but didn’t. Was busy. I’m sorry…I’ll text you right away! Straight after this post. No, actually, I’ll do it right now! Doing it…doing it…done! ;)

Ok, now we’ve stepped into a vaguely guilt free (twilight) zone, let’s move on..

Remember my walk to Brighton? (If not, see earlier post…) The same obsession recently came over me again. But this time I thought I’d conquer the west rather than the south. The south has been done. Old news. You know that you know the area too well for your own good when you meet someone from some really small and obscure little village and they try to explain to you that…

- “You wouldn’t know where it is. Nobody does. Not worth knowing either.”
- “Oh, but I do! But I do! I know exactly where it is!”
- “But that’s not…possible. Nobody knows this godforsaken place! There’s no reason for… Nobody would ever voluntarily go there! You must be thinking of somewhere else?”
- “No, TRUST me, I know where it is…”

And then you go on describing not just the roads and neighbouring villages but also some of the various cows and trees in the fields close by! Then there’s a fair chance you’ll be able to detect some serious fear in that persons eyes! :)

So as I said, for the sake of my sanity, it was time for a new direction! (And also, you can’t really get much further south then Brighton without involving fish and seaweed…and I’m just not prepared to do that.) And what more appropriate place is there to invade rather than Windsor? That’s where the queen is! Go for the headquarter, I’d say. That’s what the aliens are doing in every sci-fi movie I’ve ever seen! And they are clearly more intelligent than me because they have their own flying saucers. And I don’t.

And I did it in two goes! Well, if you’ve walked all the way to Brighton, then Windsor seems to be a bit of a stroll, really. Or so I reckoned. I’m quite bad when it comes to estimations and planning. Or, let’s not call it “bad”. Bad is such a bad word. Let’s say I’m just very optimistic. But on my plus side I’m very determined! I don’t give up easily. So if I decide that a walk between Hounslow and Windsor, including a sightseeing tour of both Windsor, Eton and it’s neighbouring areas can be done in not much more than an afternoon, then I won’t give up until it’s done!

It was a nice day. All I say is thank God for my thermos (see earlier posts…) so that I could have a few well deserved coffee breaks on the way, because otherwise I’m not sure what would have happened. I’ve calculated that altogether that day, I walked between 28-30 km!
I’ve told people that it was a “jog/walk” instead of just a walk, and it was! It wasn’t particularly meant to be a jog, but it became one out of desperation of getting through the painful experience as quickly as possible. Some roads are more interesting then others. Walking past the whole space of Heathrow Airport is one of the less interesting routes! So it’s just easier to jog it rather than walk, just to get it over and done with.

But the last bit…between my local tube station and home (which is about 350 meters or so) was so painful I was more or less laughing (because if I’d been walking by myself crying, it would have looked weird)! I was so happy when I finally got home. I don’t know how to possibly describe it in words. So that’s what I meant earlier when saying I was in pain! I think my legs are seriously pissed off with me. And it’s very complicated when different body parts are in conflict with each other because you suddenly become some sort of UN mediator!

-“Listen, I’ll give you (me) a spa treatment later…if you (me) just stop hurting (me) so much! No? Ok, I’ve got a really luxurious body lotion… No, not that either? Ok, how about some Nurofen? Ok, we seem to have deal… (handshake)

Despite my negotiations I decided that this was a day that was made for working from home! But as I’ve explained in other posts, life just isn't that easy, is it? For some reason today was the day when my landlord finally decided that it was time for my bathroom to be renovated! So, after having woken up relatively early, made some coffee and turned on the computer I was disrupted by noise larger than life itself. There’s no way using only letters and words to describe exactly how loud the BAM BAM BAM was, or how out of tune the Indian song they were singing were. But I’m not complaining though. A completely guilt free day off! Nothing I could do about it, but to give in. Although completely guilt free days off normally includes some level of enjoyment, whilst mine only included an infinity of pain and boredom. (It’s sort of like when you’re busy and having loads to do and you find yourself longing for a cold, thinking “wouldn’t it be lovely lying in bed for a couple of days, eating Strepsils, watching movies”…and then when you actually GET a cold, it’s not that much fun anymore because then you don’t have a bloody choice!)

A weird thing happened during my jog/walk by the way. During the last weeks I’ve found myself thinking about a certain lamp me and my ex boyfriend used to have in Paris, on several occasions. For no reason. Whatsoever. Then yesterday, I saw the exact same lamp in a window! It was weird. It’s a lovely lamp. It’s made of some sort of crystal and is supposed to have healing effects if you sleep near it. My boyfriend at the time and his friend had been driving a load of them from St Tropez to Paris as a favour to his aunts friend and had therefore got one of them himself. And now I found the exact same lamp here in London. After having involuntarily been thinking about it! Couldn’t help but to stare manically at it for a while. Surreal..

Speaking of France.. Another guy, Rory, was over there this weekend and suddenly offered to bring me some snails. Snails are to me what lobsters are to a cat. In other words, I sort of like them. Then he comes home reporting failure, saying he couldn’t get hold of any!That’s the French equivalent to Chinese water torture! That’s what the French used to do to prisoners during the revolution! I’m sure that if you check through international treaties and carefully read between the lines, you’ll find that sort of thing to be illegal in civilized countries. That’s cruel, that is! And then he had the cheek to suggest I go pick some myself on the North Circular when it rains! That’s road kill!

(Having said that, there was a guy we used to live with in Paris, Fabrice, who used to go pick snails in the cemetery to give to his mum to cook when he was little. That must possibly be worse…)

Yeah, cheers, thanks, but then again, maybe not. Think I prefer getting my creepy crawlies from the counter in Harrods rather than on the motorway thank you very much. Apparently there’s also supposed to be some great, fantastic French shop close to Trafalgar square that a French guy here in London, Jerome, has found. Great snails there, he claims! Still not sure exactly where it is but it just a matter of time before I find it because now my motivation is on top!


PS. Still having seriously weird dreams by the way, but at the moment for some reason they all seem to concern either swimming pools, New York or swimming pools in New York. I’m not sure if this means I should go on a fantastic trip or just exercise more, but after a few relatively quick calculations I reached the conclusion that a trip to my local swimming pool would be much cheaper than going to one in New York, so the second my legs have forgiven me I’ll be down there swimming again!


PS 2: There’s something seriously wrong with the weather, isn’t it? Or is it just me? A couple of days ago people were going to the beach! Personally I was walking around in a little T-shirt and then buying the newspaper, I read stories about a heath wave! There were pictures of people swimming in the sea and children making sand castles on the beach all over England, from Blackpool to Bournemouth! It’s November! That’s not NORMAL! (But then again, today there’s been a storm so violent it almost pinched my window…) Well, at least when I booked my next flight last week, I voluntarily paid an extra fee to save the environment. So, I’m off the hook when it comes to global heating…right…? Right?