Last night in the UK

This is weird. Very weird indeed. After a week in Manchester, where I grew up and still call home, I'm about to leave the UK. This is my last night as a resident of the United Kingdom, and for the first time in this whole process, I'm genuinely excited. Speaking to people up until now, everyone's said 'this must be so exciting', and my response has always been a dutiful 'yes, it is'. The truth, though, was always something different.

You see, the word isn't quite right. Excited is what you feel on your birthday morning. On Christmas Day. Unfettered positivity, happiness, joy etc. The feeling I've had isn't quite that - there's been lots of positive stuff, yes, about the future, the quality of life, the ability to finally settle, starting a very grown up life with the Kiwi, but along with all that was the sadness of leaving my family and friends here, of friendships that have just started and those that've lasted many years, and in particular putting distance in between me and my family, who mean so very much to me and on whom I depend probably more than they know.

This week has been one of saying goodbye to those people, and it's been painful in the worst way. Not the quick pain of whipping a plaster off, but a long, drawn-out ache, a week of catching people's eyes mid-conversation and both thinking the same thing, of last hugs that neither wants to end, of tears and the hope this isn't as final as it feels.

Tonight we're staying at Yoog's with his wife and son, as we have been for the past few nights. It's fantastic that we can spend this time having dinner with one of my oldest and closest friends, in such a calm, welcoming atmosphere, drinking brilliant wine and, from the smell of the cooking downstairs, soon to be eating excellent food. Tomorrow we drive to London, fly to Vancouver, and begin a phase of our lives we've talked about, dreamed about, and planned for for years.

Now I'm excited.

The last week in London

I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post. It seems like about five minutes. Five very packed minutes, but nonetheless it's gone by very quickly. It's been a fortnight of catching up with people, saying goodbyes, spending too much money, getting stupidly busy at work and generally not stopping once. Both of us are knackered.

So here we are at the start of our last week in London, for both of us our last week at work, and I can't speak for the Kiwi but I'm feeling a bit emotionally numb right now. There's been so much stuff twanging around my head for the last few months that it's almost like I'm becoming acclimatised to all this, or maybe I'm just coping with it all by studiously ignoring it.

Anyway, this week is about tying off loose ends at work, trying to close off my UK tax stuff, trying to remember if we've sorted all the last bills out, changing addresses, our last few drinks with various friends, and our last meal at the brilliant Turkish restaurant near our house. With our flat all empty and bare, and the weather doing that peculiarly British thing of just being... crap, I'm sort of keen to get moving, if I'm honest. With our worldly goods either on their way to New Zealand or in suitcases on our bedroom floor, it feels like we're properly IN the process now. There's quite a lot of it to go, though, and hopefully I'll be near enough wireless networks as we go to keep you updated.

Tarts and other diversions

What a weekend. Scouting for engagement do venues on Friday night followed by dinner at home, once round Richmond park on the Black Panther on Saturday morning, drinks out on Saturday night, Gordon's with T&E on Sunday afternoon followed by dinner & movie at home (Cloverfield, don't believe the hype), long walk by the river this morning followed by a day in the kitchen at long last. This evening's dinner worked pretty well, though I say so myself, roast lamb rump with puy lentils, rosti potatoes, glazed shallots, tomato concasse and herbed gravy.

The bit I'm really pleased with is in the photo; bitter chocolate tart, served with a splodge of sour, cool, sharp crème fraîche. The crumbly bits on the top are a result of some last minute emergency pastry trimming needed to get it out of its case. I've had a bit of a challenge with tarts lately (ho ho), as they've all refused to set properly, but this one seems to be holding its shape reasonably well. The crisp vanilla-tinged pastry is a bit of a winner too. Both recipes from Gordon Ramsay's Passion for Flavour, one of his earlier books that's still a bit cheffy and not quite so 'posh Jamie Oliver'. Sometimes you do want to spend 6 hours on dinner, rather than trying to fit preparation of a memorable meal into 30 minutes.

Sitting alongside this little lot was a bottle we brought back from Australia last time we were there, a 2002 Vasse Felix Shiraz, which I reckon is just about peaking right now, at least this bottle was. Good luck finding any in the UK though, we tend to drink all our Aussie wines shockingly young, so there's never anything of this sort of age around.

And so ends the last bank holiday of the year (I think). Three and a half days of work and we'll be heading out to southern Spain for a week in a villa somewhere near Almeria, with nothing on the agenda but reading, drinking, eating and the occasional dip in the pool or, should the effort seem worth it, the sea. I can't wait.

On the reading front, I'm currently sailing through M F K Fisher's excellent 'The Art of Eating', which I'd recommend to anyone, whether they care about food or not. It's so brilliantly written, without a hint of pretence or self-consciousness, and provides a valuable missing link between the likes of Brillat-Savarin and today's food writers, not to mention a fascinating and well-researched insight into culinary culture over the past few thousand years.

I'd take it on holiday, but it's about five inches thick.

Not so bad after all...

It's occurred to me lately that this blog's turned into less of a worrying insight into the byzantine workings of my 7-year-old mind, more a sort of 'this is what we did on the weekend isn't it nice' thing, which isn't what I'd planned at all. I'll do better in future I promise.

Despite that, this weekend has been fairly pleasant; tapas and cocktails on Friday night and a bit of a drinkathon with Keef on Saturday, strangely woke up feeling bright as a button this morning which sort of made up for Friday morning, when I woke up feeling disastrously hungover having (purposefully) not drunk a drop the previous night.

So we made use of the day, wandering out around Kensington in the sun, downing a massive, largely fried brunch at Café Continenté after which I'm fairly sure I went into shock for 30 minutes or so, heading to Oddbins for some of their amazing own-label rosé, and slowly winding back home via Tesco for lots of exciting spicy things to cook over the coming week.

So just before I wrote this, I was in the kitchen watching the Kiwi bake some banana oat muffins. She's wearing a gorgeous royal blue maxi-dress with a halter neck, the afternoon light's coming softly through into the kitchen and she's a perfectly beautiful image of femininity to me, and just at that moment, I hear the living room stereo, with Adele singing 'all the wonders of my world...', and it occurs to me, not for the first time today, that stuff can get pretty good really, can't it?

Being very grown-up (sort of)

This Friday saw our annual 'doing something loosely defined as 'cultural', when the Kiwi and I went to see Pygmalion at the Old Vic. It got off to a slightly shaky start, when (being used to films and concerts) we turned up on the dot of 1930, expecting it to start some time afterwards, and were made to wait upstairs and watch the first act on a monitor before being let into the theatre. Nonetheless, the remainder of it was superb, Tim Pigott-Smith attacking the Henry Higgins role with evident relish and Michelle Dockery brilliantly timed and spot on as Eliza Doolittle.

I've not seen the play before and, although this could be as much down to the performance as anything else, I was surprised by the savagery with which Shaw tears into the privileged classes, showing through Higgins a thorough hypocrisy and lack of humanity, particularly in the face of Eliza's articulate, grounded and self-aware father. Whilst Col. Pickering offers some hope of redemption for the upper classes, he's still shown as fundamentally juvenile and short-sighted as Higgins.

It also reminded me how damaging a 'happy ending' can be to a play's message - in stark contrast to My Fair Lady, there's no closure to Pygmalion. For the viewer, this means the questions raised in the play are still firmly in the mind long after the show's over; it doesn't offer answers, forcing you to mull it over for yourself.

Anyway, following that we wandered down The Cut to Livebait, where the food was brilliant but the service, unfortunately, was catastrophic. Hey ho. The rest of the weekend involved travelling down to East Sussex to see some friends of ours and their 5 month old baby girl, who's a right bundle of smiles - although for some reason the sight of the Kiwi was enough to reduce her to inconsolable tears at first.

Fortunately they made friends before too long and that afternoon I was treated to the mildly alarming sight of my girlfriend displaying what can only be described as something of a maternal side - even taking over (bottle) feeding duties for a while. She didn't even seem to mind being vomited on, which is totally not my experience of her. Well well, how times change...

Oh the glamour pt 2: Bradford, Cambridge, London

I'm writing this post on a train, reflecting on how much this particular environment will be a feature of my life this week. The two projects I've found myself on lately (the Irish thing does indeed seem to have let me go... fingers crossed) are helpfully located in Cambridge and Bradford, so I've seen a bit more of Kings Cross than I normally prefer to of late.

Small mercies: the majority of the work for both can be done either at my home office near the city or the offices of a creative agency in Piccadilly, but nonetheless this week I'm in Cambridge this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, Bradford Wednesday and Thursday and hopefully London on Friday but who knows.

Both are good, fun, broadening projects which I'm enjoying a lot at the moment, but the travelling thing does put a bit of a dent in my life and my cashflow (racking up near £500 in travel expenses every month can be tricky to manage). Still, I'm not complaining, it pays the bills, most months.

Last week I ran another wine tasting for the team at work, with attendees from various other parts of the business taking the numbers up to around 30 or so, an improvement on previous evenings and weirdly for some reason suggested that a room of 30 people is easier to control than 20 - or perhaps I'm getting better at it, I dunno. Still, they seemed to enjoy it, and for the Facebookers amongst you the photos are up on our company group somewhere should you wish.

The weekend which followed was great, if surprisingly brief, with E&T coming round for dinner on Saturday night, which involved a morning's barging round Borough Market and Tesco and an afternoon's increasingly frantic cooking. Most of it went well, with the notable exception of me screwing up a lemon meringue pie AGAIN - this is turning into something of a culinary nemesis for me.

I'm sure I've made it perfectly at least once, but for some reason over the past few years they won't hold their shape properly. It all generally tastes great, but it's just a bit runny. I set some of the curd separately this time, and it set perfectly, so I think it's my meringue that's the problem - I think I need to spend a bit more time making sure it's properly robust, otherwise it sags a bit and (I think) causes the filling to sort of unset.

The Kiwi has got tickets to the wrestling tonight. Can't wait.

Australia, New Zealand, funeral

So, moving on from the events in my last post, here we are in Auckland, following a few days in Surfer's Paradise in Australia with the Kiwi's parents. The flight over was a bit of a trial, 10 hours from Heathrow to LA, several hours in transit in LA whilst they do all the immigration nonsense, fingerprinting and photographing and such, even though we don't actually want to enter their daft country, including the comedy questionnaire which I might write more about in another post.

Next, 11 or 12 hours over to Auckland, then a couple of hours wait before a 3.5 hour trip over to Brisbane, where Mr Kiwi met us to drive us down to Surfer's. Fortunately my wonderful girl had upgraded us to business class for this leg, so we spent the time stretching out in their first class seats, drinking all sorts of nice stuff and eating as well as you can on a flight, I reckon. Being in front of the engines makes the whole thing a lot less stressful: quieter and, I reckon, less vibration. We checked out the price of the full trip in business, and it would have cost about three times the price, possibly not entirely worth it even so...

Anyway, superb couple of days in Surfer's, beach, pool, restaurant, boat sort of stuff, we treated to the best the place had to offer by the folks and shook off the tiredness of the journey and the pallor of London in a few days. We arrived in Auckland yesterday afternoon and met up with a few friends, tonight we'll be seeing a whole lot more of them after spending the day researching places to live in this city. We'll be moving here within the year, so this is an essential bit of orientation for us both, as I've only ever spent a couple of days here and she's not lived here in seven years.

Paul's funeral is at 0020 tomorrow morning NZ time (1120 Thursday GMT). It's slowly been sinking in over the past few days, has thrown a lot of things into sharp relief for me. I'll be sure to take a moment whilst it's all going on - it's still hard to find any words to make sense of this.

More on our travels when I get the chance - we're rarely in one place for that long but some of our places advertise wi-fi so I'll do what I can.

Christmas, NYE, back to work

And we're back. Following a week and a half's mental haring around Manchester I'm back in the office to relative normality. It's a bit of a slow day here today as you can imagine - the alarums and hysterics I'm used to on the first day back are apparently unique to retail. It seems this doesn't filter down to (or percolate up to?) agency level for a couple of days yet.

Christmas was lovely. Following a cautiously enjoyable Christmas party with work on the Friday (taking it very easy on the beer, leaving in time for the last tube, don't think I offended anyone) we drove up to Manchester, taking a full 5 and a half hours to do so. We stayed in a reasonably smart apartment in Ancoats, just behind Piccadilly station, sort of, which is real inner-city Manchester, in the first throes of redevelopment and feeling a bit like Shoreditch did a few years back. It's still distinctly edgy, with some of the old rag trade offices still open for business and some of the old alleyways still ripe for lurking in, but the tell-tale bars and cafes are starting to creep in, along with the posh apartments and new businesses with shiny nameplates proudly displayed outside.

Bouncing between our apartment and friends and family all week was great, so good to see everyone again and spend time with them over the week - just as nice to be able to retreat to our own space when we needed to. The Thursday in particular was one of these times; the Kiwi went shopping whilst I settled into a pub with a bit of Orwell and some decent northern bitter. Brilliant. My wonderful Kiwi had managed to find me a Wii for Christmas too, which has shamelessly made me fall in love with her even more, whilst at the same time ensuring that I'll pay her marginally less attention in future. Funny paradox, that.

And so back to London on the Saturday, leaving at 0700 and taking about 2 hours 40 to make it back, in stark contrast to the outward journey. We spent the afternoon with the Hatter and his family out in darkest Hampshire; he's getting married in 08 and as I'm to be his best man (hooray!) we thought it about time we met the rest of the brood, and a very happy man he must be, with three ridiculously cute and (apparently) well-behaved kiddies and a rather idyllic part of the country to call home.

New Year followed, with a small group of mainly Kiwis round at ours, me drinking unusually heavily mainly in order to numb the pain of a minor mutilation which occurred whilst preparing bruschetta (middle-class credentials firmly intact there). New Year's Day was spent almost entirely on the sofa with both of us alternately freaking out about returning to work and (mostly me) worrying about January's finances which, in the context of 2008's plans, are some way off course.

There we are then. New Year's resolutions? I don't normally, but here we go: more exercise, more reading of books, more saving of money, more earning of money, more ruthless career progression (hahaha), more wearing of good shirts. Less drinking (not sure about that one), less eating of the bad food, less procrastination, less chopping of fingers. Oh, and possibly the purchase of something shiny before too long. And that's all I have to say about 'that'.

Cooking, Christmas Pounces

Blimey hasn't it been a while since my last post - although nothing much has changed in that time so nothing to report, folks. What has happened is that I've devised a plan to get what I want from this job and have submitted it to the relevant people, so we'll see what we'll see, I guess.

The current phase of this project is due to end this week, and we've actually been reasonably productive despite it having been a rather painful process. I suppose it'd have helped to know more about what we were building before starting to build it but unfortunately that's sort of the nature of this project; it's defining itself as it goes.

On a more positive note, a brilliant weekend just passed, beginning with the Kaiser Chiefs supported by We Are Scientists at Earl's Court on Friday night, followed by an early trip to Borough Market (introduced the Kiwi to Monmouth Coffee) for breakfast at Maria's followed by unrestrained and enthusiastic food shopping. Once we'd ensured we were well and truly skint, we headed back, laden with pork, scallops, preserved lemons, cheeses, truffle oil etc and (once I'd installed BT Vision, which is ace) promptly fell asleep.

We cooked a jalfrezi on the Saturday night, which was brilliant, all vibrant, fresh flavours and a decent belt of chilli too. Sunday involved cooking what we'd bought the previous day, scallops with sweetcorn puree and truffle cream followed by roast belly pork with sage and lemon potatoes, followed by white chocolate torte with dark chocolate sauce. Two other Kiwis came over for lunch - a sort of pre-Christmas thingy. Scallops sounded odd, but worked really well, despite a minor crisis involving quails eggs.

Later that afternoon we headed up to the Green Man near Great Portland St tube to meet the Kiwi's cousin and new husband (although they've been together for ages) which was ace - they moved out to Australia about two years ago and we've not seen them since so was great to catch up.

This morning, back to work. I felt like someone had squeezed an extra week into the year without me noticing, and then I realised that we're headed up north this weekend to see the family and that sort of made it alright.

Freeloading, weekend, tentatively satisfied

I'm not sure if you can quite make this out, but it's a photo of the handwash stuff from the men's loos in the Saatchi & Saatchi building on Golden Square. I've posted this purely as it seemed hilarious that after looking up to said organisation for most of my professional life, I found myself on Wednesday night spilling beer and eating more than my fair share of canapes in the foyer whilst Rudy used their lovely plant pots to knock the caps off beer bottles. What class and suaveness.

Anyway, the reason I was there was that a thing has launched recently called Voeveo, which is basically a global platform for sharing and selling content through one's mobile. So anyone who owns anything digital, be it music, video or whatever, can upload it to Voeveo and anyone in the world can buy it and download it. Very interesting stuff, mostly from a financial and back-end point of view which I won't bore you with here. They're from New Zealand, which generally makes them all-round good eggs in my book.

Apart from that, things have been reasonably quiet of late. The rugby finished on Saturday with a fairly limp game on the whole, which the Kiwi and I watched in the Temperance as usual before going home early and going to sleep more or less instantly. Sunday was more eventful; we had lunch with some friends who're not only heading back to NZ for good soon but pregnant as well. Despite one of our party being with child we managed a fairly long lunch and returned home tired and emotional at about 8, I think. Fortunately my rule of going ugly early on a Sunday worked and I have been hangover-free all day.

Last week was project management week, our PM being on holiday. I've refrained from posting on the subject whilst it was all going on, so I could give an overview of how it all went, and I'm pleased to report it all seems to have gone off pretty smoothly. The week wasn't without its learnings, suffice it to say, but on the whole much better than last time, which is good. #

And another thing - I'm only 30% of the way to my target, so dig deep, people. So far, Melvis, the Kiwi and the Milkman have all successfully bought my favour.

A slightly grumpy post

My word, what a weekend. I'll try to give something of a snapshot in a short pre-work post:

 

Friday night, dinner at Satay in Brixton before Maximo Park, which was a brilliant affair although some cruel prankster had slipped some pieces of orange into an otherwise tasty grilled lamb dish (heathens). The Kiwi had the foresight (not to mention the contacts) to check the stage times beforehand, so unlike Kathryn we arrived at about 2145 with enough time to struggle to the bar, narrowly avoid a fight, purchase four pints (THIRTEEN QUID!!) and shuffle to my favoured Academy spot (three quarters of the way down, on the left-hand side) just as they launched into their set.

Now, although they were superb as always, there was something amiss. I'm going to come across as awfully snobby here, but I've consistently noticed that the more popular a band is, the less enjoyable their gigs are. Up to a point - massive stadium shows have their place. What I'm talking about is this. When the Kiwi and I went to see the Park at ULU in early 2005, before the album release, we paid about £9, got into a packed venue and generally got a bit excitable with the rest of the crowd. The Academy on Friday night was full of proper part-timers: drunk, lairy, pushy and aggressive. Barely paying any attention to what they'd paid £18 to see, acting more like they were in the local Wetherspoon's. Sort of takes the edge off the whole thing, if you catch my drift.

As for the band, predictably ace, with an almighty version of Limassol which built up into a massive, practically Jesus and Mary Chain-like frenzy of feedback and general noise. Graffiti and Our Velocity also stood out, note perfect. My one criticism, and again accuse me of being elitist or whatever, was that they lacked their earlier sense of desperation and mania - hate to use the word but I think 'edginess' is what they lacked here. Paul Smith always seemed on the verge of a complete breakdown whilst performing; on Friday there was more swagger, more comfortable self-assuredness, and that really didn't sit with the Park brand. Even Lukas Wooler's trademark jerky flailing seemed a touch contrived.

I guess it's unavoidable in some ways - if success removes you from the environment that formed part of your original formula, it'll be hard to reproduce with any credibility. Oasis are a case in point here. And maybe I'd been put in a sour mood by paying thirteen quid for four pints of watered down Carling.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend consisted of the two of us driving up to West Yorkshire in a lovely silver Peugeot convertible (much good that did us this weekend...), staying with an old friend who's just moved up there, watching the rugby (hooray!) and coming home again. It's so good to be reminded that there's more to this country than horrid old London, and the north really does have the best bits. 

Phase end, widget, drinking

More techie stuff, sorry. I'm writing this post using Microsoft Live Writer, which is a little app which lets me write blog posts without necessarily being online, something that's potentially quite useful when travelling etc. Provided it actually works, it'll change the way I use this blog quite a bit.

 

That said, you might start to see more maudlin entries from Dublin hotel rooms moaning about being bored and / or overworked etc. We'll just have to see.

 

Lately work appears to be picking up - I'm feeling less like I've no clue what I'm talking about, which is a good start, and of late have occasionally been producing stuff I'm actually rather proud of, even if it's just a well-turned spreadsheet. So that's all good. This phase of the Irish project finishes tomorrow (day trip to Dublin, bah), with next week once again resembling a great unknown filled with terrifyingly unbillable days.

 

However, I'm largely ignoring that at the moment, looking forward instead to heading up to Leeds to see an old friend and watch the England v France game amid a storm of homemade cocktails. Speaking of which, caught up with Melvin on Tuesday in the lovely La Perla on Maiden Lane, happy hour margaritas and top notch Mexican food, all good, highly recommended.

The end of an era

Today, Virgin Digital announced it will be closing down in about a month's time, following the MBO at Virgin Retail and the accompanying rebrand to the defiantly non-digital 'Zavvi'.

This hasn't surprised me (or anyone else) in the slightest, but I can't help feeling a little bit crestfallen about the whole thing. An ex-colleague (and good friend) of mine once described working for the company we then worked for as like being in an abusive relationship. Sounds like a joke, but he'd noticed that the behaviour patterns are exactly the same: you hate it, you're constantly beaten down by it, you become a shadow of your former self, but you keep telling yourself that things will get better. When you come to leave, they say 'don't go, hang around, things will change', and when you finally pluck up the courage to go, you realise how abused you really were.

But still, when you hear about the hard times they've fallen on after you've left, the old feelings come flooding back and that tiny little ache makes itself felt inside. Call me unnecessarily poetic, but I (and those around me) poured a lot of ourselves into that business and, although we're all going on to bigger and better things, it is a real shame that it didn't achieve what we hoped it would.

I'm thinking specifically of the 14 hour days, the working on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, the bank holidays, the 3am calls from LA, the constant, bitter battle with Virgin Retail's board and the frighteningly bad coffee from the machine on the 1st floor. No one can say we didn't give it everything we had.

So, shame it didn't work out, but some things are beyond our control.