70s food, Kiwi-less, plans

Oh hilarious. I'm watching, as I have been doing every Tuesday evening for a few weeks now, 'The Supersizers Go...' with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins. This week, it's the 70s, and it reminds me quite how much I really like prawn cocktail. I remember having it at my eldest sister's wedding when I must've been all of five, and thought it was about the most exotic and brilliant thing I'd ever had. It was served with buttered brown bread, out of which I made a prawn cocktail sandwich. Classy.

I still make it, if the truth be known, with my own marie rose sauce and big fat tiger prawns - and it's still ace.

Anyway, childhood food aside, I'm writing this stretched luxuriously out on the sofa, as the Kiwi's in New York this week, generally attending numerous parties and watching films, I think, damn her, and so here I am, all by my self. She's back on Friday, which at this point is seeming very far away indeed.

My weekend was spent back in Manchester, which was brilliant - catching up with the folks and the family Yoog, then back to London on the Sunday night for drinks with my old housemate which were probably more enthusiastic than they should've been; Monday morning was a bit of a challenge.

I do have a bit of news for you all. The kiwi and I have been thinking about it for a while, but we've decided for definite to move to New Zealand. In about six months' time. Scary stuff, but massively exciting too. We'll go via Manchester for a week (early Christmas), then Canada, snowboarding, then Australia for a bit of time with the folks, then NZ for New Year. And then back to reality with a crash...

More on this later, but I wanted to let you all know. Funny, I started this blog to document some work-related changes in my life, but I guess the changes will be a little more wholesale than that.

In other news, Nick Drake has been in my headphones a great deal of late, what terrifically brilliant lovely stuff it is too. All three albums, in sequence, at least once a day.

All... by... my... seeeeeellf

It's all very well having a wonderful successful and important girlfriend who jollies off to New York, but frankly it does leave me slightly out of sorts. I suppose you'd call it loneliness, but it's more fun to just get grumpy about it. Bah.

But to be honest I am missing her like I really didn't expect. I kind of thought it'd be a time to do lots of stuff and, y'know, generally be dead productive but realistically it's mainly been a lot of sitting around guffawing at the internet and going to work, sort of.

On the work note, it's all going a bit mental again following Friday's lull, and we're painfully aware that we've got less than three weeks til we present the final product,which really means two weeks as we'll need a week of tweaking and final design work to get it shipshape. Personally I'm not really 100% on this; I reckon they're on a hiding to nothing and haven't really got the commitment to really make this a success - an opinion which, whilst unpopular, I've been keen to express. In gentle, non-threatening terms, that is. When one is a retailer one can throw ones weight around and generally be a bit of an ogre; when one is being paid many thousands of pounds for ones opinion, it needs to be put across with some delicacy. Another learning experience there, I reckon...

So, on the floral front, as you can see my masterpieces continue to thrive and we have no fewer than 10 (ten!!) buds on their way to add to the four we've already got. This is ace - although to be honest I'm not sure how such a tiny pot of what's basically mud can support quite so much flowerage. Perhaps this is one of those things one shouldn't question.

It's all going quite well then. The Kiwi's back on Friday morning, so plenty to do between now and then, including setting up a wine tasting for the weekend and working on a presentation about the fashion industry (now sure how I got myself into that one). Oooh, and I bought some shoes last week off the internet, how daring of me. Some tan round-toed semi-brogue type things which were in the sale at ASOS for a mere £19 - they arrived today and ladies and gentlemen I think we have a hit. Which I sort of didn't expect. Amazing. Now to buy some clothes to go with them.