Note to Self

Next time little sister suggests watching 'Love Actually', unless your love life is flying higher than a helium balloon, freed from the clammy grasp of a small child by a wind unswervingly bound for the next ether, abstain.

I am now heading to Edinburgh with eyes that make me look like a serious pot head. The first time I saw it I cried, but only at the end. This time, every romance sodden pathos dredging scene had me reaching for the two ply.

Better head to bed and not compound the damage.

J x

Wish me luck

I have a job interview on Wednesday. The pay's crap and the job is sales which as many of you know I can do brilliantly but find less riveting than a Mills and Boon trilogy. However it's working on a magazine being set up by a mate of mine, looks really funky (the first front cover is an eye socket with lashings of glittery green shadow and thick black false lashes so naturally I'm hooked and have decided green is the new black), and there will be room for me to get involved on the editorial side potentially. Given the company currently consists of two people, I would be 3, it's a good time to get in and at the very least will get my hand out of the biscuit barrel and my adventuress revelling in a new town. I have said yes to six weeks, and assuming the one not my mate likes me (the mate naturally knows me enough to waver) will start a week on Monday.

It's in Edinburgh, a city I know a bit and like so far, bar the climate which makes East Sussex feel like the Med.

I have finally produced an article I am very proud of (as opposed to one that I can just put my name to), (on mobile phones, developing the stuff that started here) the novel is up running round my head again after a period of startling silence. Plus Mr make me want sausage has turned up on my doorstep with an engagement ring hidden in a giant bunch of red roses, attached to a hot air ballon which we rode in, attached to a jet writing 'Julie I love you, bugger what ma and pa think' in blue ink in the sky.

Only the last sentence isn't true.
Which is probably just as well as I always thought I would prefer a spontaneous mid snog on the heath / sexy bridge proposal than a sky writing one. Presumably as you only hope for one, it would be better to get something close to what you fancy don't you think?

I did however see the increasingly glamourous Ms West today. She had blossomed without me which is a tad on the irritating side but I decided holding it against her would be petty. It was good to see her, I wouldn't say it was a breeze, but it went far better that most first reunions with a former lover. There was no fighting, no re-dipping and a decent attempt at mutual empathy. We drank coffee and wine, played air hockey with my nephew, went to see our solicitor to tie up stuff with the house, ate cake, looked at photos of our trip and hugged hello and goodbye with the comfort of an entrenched friendship. Can't ask for more than that.

Julie x

Oh Bold Tigress

I am so impressed. The Tasmanian Tigress (http://tasmaniantigress.blogspot.com/) has ditched her mobile phone. Naturally she's right, we don't need them, we are infinitively contactable via a plethora of other phone lines in most instances. Only a decade ago, not only were mobiles novel but emails, blogs and all the technological wap based bits and bobs not to mention fancy ringing fridges and post box TV's never even existed and we had time to pick fresh fruit and play on haystacks (I know, getting carried away with my childhood and off the point).

Even so, ditching the mobile, I shiver.

My rational brain says 'shiver? You fool. There you are with a phone you only brought so the Indonesian boy to whom email was too formidable a prospect could send you SMS's in bursts of barely comprehensible English, and what happened?' Well, what happened was that his partner network was apparently not compatible with my partner network and the 2 (I know, just two - and you should see my phone bill, but let's move on) sms's he did send therefore ended up going to my sister's phone. Not only that but the phone I choose on the basis it had the cheapest tarif on offer at Tescos's turned out to have been advertised in a way that should but predictably hasn't yet, send me scuttling to the Advertising / Trading Standards Boards.

10p a minute it promised. No asterisks, no mention that this only kicked in after three months with twenty quid a months worth of calls. Plus the easy top up service promised fails for some reason no one at customer services (who you pay 25p to talk to every time their system fails) could fathom, imposes an arbitrary limit on my credit card. I therefore spent a large part of Sunday touring one of England's prettiest Cathedral cities in search of a newsagents that stocked the top up cards. Apparently, most don't cos 'they have this great easy text top up service love' .Quite.

I still have to look up my own number anytime anyone asks me for it, the games are crap on the phone (I loved snake but no nokia with one tel in Tescos), the phone barely rings as I have been useless at giving out the number I haven't learnt, and yet

Not have one?
Tiger Tiger Burning Bright
Will you share your courage tonight?

Actually I didn't have one in Bali. But Bali was Bali and back home, the thought seems more than alien

Just think
There would be no getting drunk and sending inappropriate texts to people I was trying to play it cool with (I am currently avoiding drink in order to stop myself falling in this pithole)
There would be no watching the unringing phone for calls from men who have recently left me bereft
There would be one less thing to worry about paying for

But I would have to impose on the already generous hospitality of those who have and will be putting me up during my stint at home, use their phones, and I plan to be moving round a bit, paying the plethora of bills would entail my friends and family asking me for money and everyone hates doing that.
Which is lucky. As I was on the verge of flushing the problematic bugger down the bog, until my brain at the last leapt on an excuse which not only makes sense, but would make me look like a selfish scrounger not to heed.

Still Tigress, I think you're amazing and when I have a base, will seriously reconsider emulating your action.

Blogging to fame and fortune

Blogging is I suspect like reality TV, a new craze a couple of years back who's bandwagon I naturally missed at the hip point. This is very me. I only got a DVD player when Sam went out shopping in Sydney whilst I was the UK. At the time I whined about how a video was totally sufficient and cheaper to both buy and rent products for. My sister now tells me video recorders are heading down the toilet of technology past, along with gramophone, vinyl records, and unless you live in parts of Tasmania where mobile phone reception is out, CB radios. Sam's purchase in hindsight was very wise, but being a last on the bandwagon kind of girl it took me a while to see that.

As with any new craze, a lot of shit gets in by virtue of being first rather than best. Then comes the quality control and plethora of new young hip things on bandwagon, and the bar's up. Had I been quicker, maybe I would now be a blog princess scaling the giddy heights of first in-ness, but I wasn't, so only fabulous writing will get me there. Therein lies a problem...

I have decided that it would be much better to win fame and fortune as a blog author than as a more conventional writer. Naturally should the blank screen labeled novel I keep staring at (in the vain hope the spirit of inspiration will inhabit my body, as Whoopee Goldberg got inhabited in Ghost), cease to be blank, I may feel differently.
I swing, one minute I convince myself blogging and diarying and writing a couple of pages of get it out blurb as suggested by one of those how to be a writer books is useful activity. Next minute I am equally adamant that what I am in fact doing is creating obstacles, diversions, things that seem useful but are really just procrastination, cautioned in the same being a writer book .
Then I go, well it's all about practice, every time I read anything about Jonny Wilkinson or David Beckham the relentless kicking sessions are narrated in depth alongside that statistic that says that kids who do great things have usually practiced for twice the hours as those who fail to make the grade. All practice is good.
Optimism, pessimism.

Next up in the terrible mire that is my self flagellating brain is the caution that artists (same book ) are prone to self destruction as soon as what they claim to desire is in reach, apparently this is because we get off on being blocked, it's safe, it's a place of considerable sympathy so the argument goes. The latter's not true in my case surrounded as I am by infinitely capable get a grip just do it folk, for which I am grateful. Wallowing is I suspect not healthy and should certainly not be encouraged in my case where a worrying predisposition to it is hardly in hiding. This argument leads to, you have two offers of columns, and there you are worrying about your blog and a novel in a coma, what are you woman, crazy? Write the sodding columns

The problem with columns, much as I want them, is that they are not as easy to write as a blog. In a blog I feel like I can just be me, aware that my audience know me enough to forgive my weaknesses. In a column naturally I want to be Julie Birchill, who I suspect practiced a lot from a much earlier age than me, but she's my stick and my wit crumbles when measured against her.

So, I decided if my blog could just get famous then I like that girl from Washington who shagged all the senators, could bundle it all up into a best seller and whey hey, home and dry, a reputation to build on.

The only flaw with this plan is she's the only one I have heard of, other than Salam Pax, who blogged to artistic acclaim.

Sleeping with Senators sounds fun, and in the blog fame woman's case, lucrative which could come in handy as I am currently living off a creaking overdraft and screaming credit card. But pragmatically, less than five minutes into a presidential address and the words 'you'd just be whoring' become real. On the whole (with the exception possibly of Hillary Clinton who I have always found foxy despite the hair, but I suspect would not be up for it when she has big Billy Boy and a presidential campaign to think of) senators are a pretty unappealing lot. Chuck in the fact there's probably a rush of women thinking along the same lines as me not blessed with the genetic predisposition to short-arsedness and a hand that can't keep out of the biscuit barrel, it could be a humiliating endeavor. Imagine going all that way, wearing a low cut top, giggling seductively and listening intently to some dull old codger from Louisiana and losing out to some coiffured Amazonian who thinks current affairs is what she about to get into. That's before the whole question about how to get a work permit in a place probably accessible only to Americans arises.

So, I turn to Salam. Naturally I have always fancied myself as a Kate Adie character. Reporting from a war zone, and I am sure there must be vacancies. But, the reality of working in the place that currently has the highest mortality rate for journalists on the planet shatters the courageous side of my self image in seconds. Whilst I have always imagined myself as being able to charm myself out of a hostage situation, it's a theory I am not ready to test and that in the new wave of fanatics rather than just making a point hostage takers, looks decided shaky. This may sound yellow but believe me, if you'd hovered around the 18-20 dress size and just made it to a 12 you too would want to enjoy it before the ginger nuts forced a reversal.

The other problem with the Julie sails to stardom on the crest of her blog theory is that the writing so far, not to mention the editing, has not been good enough. Therefore I have decreed to turn over a new leaf, make the blog toptastic, and up the ante with spellcheck usage.

Naturally having lain down that gauntlet to myself, you can all expect me to vanish for a while. I will be sitting somewhere in a house in East Sussex staring at a blank screen labeled tales from a chocolate loving gypsy and deciding that, after all, the columns are not such a bad idea.

Julie

Being blog-awed and loving Iris Murdoch

I now have three friends who have decided to follow the road to blogdom apprently inspired by yours Julie. I take that to mean that like me they discovered that blogger.com requires the technological know how of a lap dog and is a great way to avoid sending the same email 27 times.

Gavin, certainly the most self effacing wit in my orbit has it appears fallen of the blog spot with the same abandon he fell off his detox. Gavin, darling, I miss it, keep writing.
Sarah, aka the Tasmanian Tigress continues to regale me with stories from the only place down under likely to relate to the campaign for an open fire I am still waging unsuccessfully in East Sussex.
Jo, lead singer of Hook, (watch out for them) takes her talent that set my brain alight on Saturday night with songs so molten I can't believe she's not inviting me over to New York on her private jet yet, and effortlessly translates this to blogging.

Then there are those who were already somewhere in blog-ether who when I sent them my link and they meandered into the peanut gallery, revealed their own. This happened to me this week with a woman I met in cyberspace who lit up chat rooms in the same way Dorothy Parker enlivened drawing rooms. That brings to 4 the tally of blogs so good they leave me reeling my mates have written.

My fellow blog-diarists have had much the same effect as Iris Murdoch on me this week. It seems no matter where I turn, there's brilliant writing oozing from every orifice. Meanwhile I struggle to find humour in anything as I scrape together half baked offerings for the Bali Times. The novel not only languishes similarly but screams at me to get back to the PC before giggling and whispering 'blocked as a fibre free back passage' via my inner critic.

Mother, noting how my new romance had me flailing for answers to what I have decided is life's central challenge, to be true to yourself in your choices, recommended Iris's An Accidental Man. It was one of those recommendations that left me gasping for sleep even when the reason I was reading was rendered quite irrelevant. Iris Murdoch obviously doesn't do shallow. She romps through big ideas, flashing the mind that made her so adored before distilling highbrow concepts into words that ring as true as ever even for a child of the reality tv phenonomon, an admirer of Bridget Jones, a surrupticious reader of Hello magazine, like myself.

Then there's the plethora of English papers, which I have to say I have found parallel quality to only in New York. Every tiny columist, even the ones packed away at the back of boring supplements more likely to be binned than devoured (by those who have proper jobs at least), seems able to drip charm, humour and words whose meaning I only realise I know when I read them, (but would have no idea how to reproduce on a page).

Naturally I am attempting to see these things as inspiration rather than competition, yet failing utterly to stop the meaningless comparisons that make me want to pick up the phone and ring about that job as a supermarket feng shui consultant (shelf stacker).

As I reach for the tummy control knickers again and arrange to walk my sisters dog in preference to examining my own navel, I thank the ether for the freindships and relationships which I am lucky enough to receive such inspiration from. I thank the ether that I am privileded enough to live in a house where Iris Murdoch books are plentiful, and I remind myself that an accidental man was her 14th novel. Apparently every author has themself as the hero of the first offering (an Iris nugget) so all I need to do is work out what to do to accord myself such giddy status and get on with it. Not reading so much would I suspect be a great starting point.

I did also promise Ailsa I would mention that she rather than Miss Cooper (queen of tell it like it is, even if it's not your idea) was the heroine that hastened the demise of the life is like... cliches. She says it reminded her of Jerry Springer, and apart from being a man who sleeps with his raunchier guests, I can think of no good reason why I should emulate him.

Take care of yourselves, and each other
Julie x

Going public, going solo

As those happy couples en route to the divorce court via Hello magazine have discovered, there's nothing like going public to kill a relationship. I write home at the end of last year to tell everyone Sam and I have turned a corner, four weeks later we've turned another one separately. I agonise about admitting to rediscovering sausage, and no sooner do I do it and the taste turns sour.

So the boy and I have called it a day, actually truth be told he decided as I wrote last time not to fight his family and I decided if they're going to determine his life for him then I shouldn't attempt to fight either. I am however now the queen of civilised break ups with two very gentle endings under my belt in the first half of this year. I am not sure it is a title anyone would envy but it's better than being the princess of messy finales I suppose.

I am more gutted for Ngurah than for myself, I think to him I represented a brave new world of freedom and choices he has had to turn his back on, for me he represented a set of tough choices that there is some relief in not pursuing, although I have to say that had he been more determined to forge his own path even if the route went through the Balinese jungle, I would have done it with him.

I intend to pause for a while to reflect on the roundabout that has been 05, plans and new romances can wait for a while. Unless anyone has the telephone number of Rood Van Nilstroy?

Julie

Weddings, reunions and fighting for a fella

The blog got sporadic due to a minor whirl of activity following my return to blighty, and a spell of fighting a massive malaise due to the unfolding drama of my love life. I have now stopped reaching for the chocolate although I am fairly unimpressed at my ability to have gained ten pounds in under two weeks in an effort to comfort eat my way through things. Being a woman working on balance I have naturally taken some fat pills to partially counteract the effects.
I did not chuck away hundreds of dollars on counseling fees to sit on my arse eating chocolate, creating spots from a previously flawless complexion and staring into the creator of despair threatening to swamp me. In the time honored tradition of strong women before me I therefore gave myself a stern talking to this weekend and got a grip of my tummy control knickers.

I am writing again, leaving the house, doing some exercise and skipping meals in an effort to counteract the chocolate calories, which, I am aware, makes that an area still in need of work.

Prior to the the malaise I ventured out for the fabulous nuptials of My Amy Jane Turtle, nee Cooper, now known as Mrs Jupp. A more fitting name for a pragmatic Yorkshire lass could not have been invented in her home town of Dewsbury I suspect.

It was a fabulous wedding, admittedly sharing a bottle and a half of wine with Dame Mavis before heading down for the pre-wedding dinner was not the brightest idea. I nearly missed the train stop but woke just in time to decide that if I didn't carry on drinking I would feel tragic. There's nothing like being half cut to make the infinitely reasonable question 'do you want to do the big day with a hangover?' slip completely off the radar. Despite the hangover and my own irritation at not preempting it, the day went like a dream. Ray, my sisters partner was the best man, the hilarious Mr Chadwick a camp comedian who managed to have tears, laughter and singing in his speech, was chief bridemaid. I did a reading as did Nicki, who you could tell had been home when the tasks were divvied up having 200 words to my hamlet-esque (in length not tone) monologue.

The bride looked fabulous with more sparkly bits on her skirt than you could find in the Batley Frontier on a Saturday night. The groom almost looked brunette rather than ginger, shades of Mr George Michael, in his Oswald Botaeng suit. The speeches were fabulous, the company marvelous. My mother as chief matchmaker who a few years before had instructed my sister and I to get the now happy couple to her house on a mission of love, before preceding to lock them in the kitchen with some subtle hint about phone numbers, upstaged Cilla both in having more weddings under her belt (two or three mum?) and looking thoroughly glamorous. The kayleigh / barn dance / bush dance was more frenetic and more fun than a night at Bingay and they played the scissor Sisters Filthy Gorgeous, which has for almost a year been my top dancing anthem, at the end of a dancefloor packed disco. The chief bridemaid took the concept of creative georgeousness to a whole new strata with his daffs and basil all senses spectacular on the tables. A more ecletic 155 people you couldn't have found at AA, yet everyone just had a ball and the atmosphere screamed up for a great day until well into the next one.

Being a woman prone to extremes, this weekend, I swapped the heady anticipation of a long awaited love fest for the dread of a school reunion. There's nothing like a reunion at one of the the UK's most prestigious Grammar Schools to transform your average successful woman into a walking wound seeping insecurity. Suddenly all the fabulous things I have done and seen were summed up in three words in my head, jobless, childless, worthless. All morning the words to my old school hymn danced round my head reminding me of courage and honour, although the line about England's women striding out and conquering the world got a bit muddled and I kept trying to remember exactly what it was I was supposed to have done. Realising, in the bath preparing to get ready that Sam as a former Deputy Head Girl (just flown in from Sydney), and her two more intimidating sisters were likely to be there didn't help. I am looking forward to seeing Sam but en masse with her family in an environment prone to remind me of my days as an angst ridden teens was I fely maybe not the best way to have our first friendship meet.

Needless to say I had a lovely time, Sam and siblings didn't go, the scariest teachers were now just little old ladies wizened with age, the only girls I played with were friends it was lovely to catch up with and no one asked me what I was doing for a living or whether I had fulfilled the sentiment of the school anthem. The power suited world beating wonderwomen I expected to see all looked remarkably normal, some were even having a bad hair day or dragging badly behaving kids along behind them, and I got to thank my English teachers for sparking my imagination and my politics.

I have seen one too many (read one) bad American films on the subject to realise that nerves before these things are a right of passage and finding others felt exactly the same helped a great deal. With hindsight I am gald I went, and strangely feel more grown up for the experience even if I was very adolescent in my insistence on having a fag in the bog for old times sake cos 'they can hardly give me a detention now can they?'.

It's all over with Ngurah, nearly. He has said that being held responsible by his entire family if his mother has another stroke because she is stressed he is seeing a westerner. Fair enough. He's quite frankly a mess, really gutted about the whole thing but convinced his family won't budge. We are considering whether I should visit Bali and pay his parents a visit to try and allay their fears before totally conceding defeat. I am tempted by this idea on the basis that I would hate to spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have done something more.... Feeling like he's the one who got away. Having said that I need to be 100% sure I would be happy to live in his village if I intend to allay their fears, and work out whether prolonging the agony for him and his family is a wise course of action.
I will talk to him about it again before making a firm decision but at the moment would say I am 90% in favour of flying over just so I know I gave it my best shot.

Yours,
Julie x

Rediscovering Sausage

I started this blog as a simple way of keeping in touch with the nearest and dearest whilst traveling, but it all got a little more complex than that. First off, In bali I was as some of you know, rediscovering sausage. I should at this point acknowledge the witty Mr Chadwick for coming up with the best way of addressing the 'so you're seeing a man then?' question. Apologies for keeping it secret from many of you for so long.

I wanted to tell you all but needed to tell Sam first, and then thought writing about it in too much depth when she was reading was a bit rude. Having been assured by the gorgeous Ms West that she's well and truly over Julie and would be interested in hearing about my long limbed Balinese love God, I've decided it's time to come clean.

Blogging is I am discovering a very public fora even if contents are intended to be private. So far I've been tracked down by the tenant that followed Sam and I into our Sydney apartment in search of a forwarding address. Then there's the lovely Gareth, a man from university who I knew for many years, kissed briefly and has apparently been harboring some misplaced guilt as he reintroduced himself very sheepishly via the peanut gallery.

The Man in my life

Is beautiful. Very much my type as those who have been privy to my male crushes (including I have to admit Rood Van Nilstroy of Manchester United fame) will know that on a pure lust level I like my men tall, dark, preferably with long dark hair and a touch of the missing link. He hits all the criteria and is I think the sexiest man I have ever laid eyes on.

I will once I get the technology together put a photo here

He's the guy who took me on a tour to Ubud, the man I told very firmly that 'I do not want a boyfriend so behave' That in hindsight sounds terribly arrogant but please put it in the context of Bali where batting away men became one of my least favorite past times.
I had been assured by the Balinese Princess that he did not play with tourists and would be a total gentleman. The latter at least was partially true.
He took me out for the day on the back of his bike, I found myself fighting an unfamiliar urge to throw my arms round him and nibble his earlobes. It was in hindsight a perfect first date, we saw some beautiful places, he upstaged me by looking far sexier in a temple sarong than I ever could, then we went and listened to some very bad Balinese Jazz. After two weeks as the date to leave approached I realised I wanted to stay and play. Hence the change of travel plans.

It is quite honestly a very unlikely union and the more I learnt of his life and his culture the more I realised this is a relationship with more baggage than even I the queen of traveling heavy, am used to.
He's Hindu, which fortunately is a religion I can relate to. bar the four days when I had my period when he wasn't allowed to touch me. I did that, hated it, we've agreed it is an area where my culture will need to triumph.
He's high caste, which essentially means he is a Lord, without the material trappings that frequently accompany such titles in my homeland. He is expected to return to his village and take over from his father as a local leader. A job as far as I can tell that has no salary attached and will keep him from home a great deal.
He runs his own business at the moment renting cars and bikes and offering tours to tourists, it's a pretty basic operation but he's built it from scratch and has the concepts of excellent customer service down pat.
He is the only son which means he not only has to support his parents in old age but bears the brunt of financial and ceremonial responsibilities that accompany both his religion and caste. He could for example never leave Bali for more than a holiday and that would need to be carefully coordinated to coincide with the few periods that do not encompass major ceremonies.

He's never left Bali. He has a pretty basic standard of education, is incredibly innocent but bright, funny, responsible, kind, peaceful and utterly charming partially because he's unaware of it. He's driven, ambitious, a dreamer, and his dreams are a pretty spot on match to mine, very sensitive and is huge. He makes me feel protected, cherished and adored, most of the time.

The Gypsy is utterly smitten

Sadly the path of true love never runs smoothly. The future with him if there is such a thing looks pretty tough.

Apart from the obvious questions about whether the life prescribed for him is one I would chose for myself, he is currently having a hell of a time with a family who have decreed that he shall not have a Western girlfriend. Apart from wheeling in the entire family to lambast his lack of judgment, and threatening ostracism if he continues with such folly, he is dealing with a mother recovering from a stroke and the guilt that his choices are to say the least going down like a bag of vomit. To add to the joy the family on learning of his relationship with me have decreed that he should marry his cousin (to those who keep telling me about the deformities that would afflict his children as a result of such action - I should add that I am not sure she is his first cousin - the term seems to be used loosely in Bali) who he says he views in the same way as his sister.
Needlessly to say the status of our relationship is currently in flux. I am not sure it will survive the pressure his family are applying and not sure I should encourage it to given the enormity of the consequences for him, and for me, if it does. For a new relationship that should be in the honeymoon stage, it's all rather heavy and lacks the lighthearted choices I am used to.

The battle between head and heart wages wildly, but there is a strong possibility that decisions will not be mine to make

I will keep you posted

Julie

p.s. I have junked the cliched life is like endings on the advice of my girls who tell it's it's not me and a bit crap, fair enough. However were I to have one for the man it would be life is like white water rafting, sometimes you're flailing about in the rapids, other times sailing through the most spectacular scenery - honestly Ames, that's the last one!

Anyone for a fire?

As the mini map on the plane indicates we're flighing over blighty the clear views afforded by the rest of Europe, the obvious outline of Greek islands and the snow covered canvas of Poland are eclipsed by the British climate. The second we hit England there is a duvet of cloud so thick that even making out a coastline becomes impossible. There I am hallucinating about bluebell covered woodlands and daffoldil shrouded grassy nowles, getting all excited about England in spring, when the reality of the wether bats the blinkers from my eyes.
Safely wrapped in the freezing bosom of my sisters house I recall my mothers neccessary economy of our childhood with a sense of deja vu as I beg my sister to turn on the heating to be greeted with the words so familiar from times past. 'it's not that cold, get another jumper'. like mother like daughter as they say. Getting another jumper is logistically impossible as I am wearing the only one I brought with me and the only one in the house not currently in the washing machine.
For a second the novelty of seeing my breath as I exhale excites me after two and half years in hot climates. Predicably it fades fast as I huddle under the cushions visualising warm feet in the faint hope they will eventuate.

Very British of me I realised to whine about the weather before i even mention the joy of meeting the gorgeous bundle of calm that is my newest niece. Before I even talk about the wit and playful spirit of the other niece who was only a babe when I left, only just talking when I last visited.

They are fabulous. Both my parents have been away which has given me a chance to spend some uninterupted quality time with my sister, I have loved it. I have even manged to be helpful with a bodyclock still working on Bali time I have been waking at 3am and therefore able to allieviate my sister from the nightly ritual of baby duty so she can grab some sleep whilst I keep the latest addition amused.

I head to London at the weekend for a last night of unmarried girl action with Amy before she leaves me and Ailsa as the ringless old maids of a group I once envisaged would stay single forever together. I am very excited about the wedding although having arrived in a house with three childrens worth of Easter eggs the diet starts again tomoorrow to improve chance of looking good in the backless outfit I have chosen (naturally purchased in a warmer climate than this one!). I have gained at least half a stone in three days which I am aware is a bad start to the post bali fitness regime I was determined to get cracking on.

Ah well, first few days home I am giving myself a little slack.