NEWCASTLE IN A NUTSHELL

I’m both totally psyched and absolutely shattered just thinking about this weekend. I have an old school friend, Jo, coming to stay (as in we went to school together – not ‘old skool’ like she’s some retro throwback, not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with that… in fact, that would be supergood). Jo’s never been to Geordieland, so she doesn’t know the awesomeness that is Newcastle and its surrounding, erm, surrounds. I feel under pressure to make her time here as amazingly exciting as it can possibly be, so she leaves with a giant aching in her chest of love for the Toon that amounts to the love I feel after five and a half years here. But with only two days in which to do so, how do I encapsulate the entire Newcastle experience into such a short space of time?

The fact is I can’t, but we’ll have some fun and frolics trying. So far I’m contemplating a trip to Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, maybe a big red bus tour, a walkabout in the city centre (Fenwicks window and Christmas Market treats), meals in the likes of the Salsa Club and Francesca’s, happy hour on Osborne Road, cocktails in As You Like It and Mr Lynch, boogying in Mood and (dare I say it) Blu Bambu – Jo is a girl who knows good tunage when she hears it and will fully appreciate the dance chart cheese… I think. But first, I’m having a slumber party – spending Friday night in, with a couple of girl-friends who are joining us, getting reacqainted (ooh err missus) with Jo – wine, food and giggles, mint.

Eeek! Just thought, I have house visitors this weekend – I HAVE to clean this house! I’m off!

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS…

I ran up into town after work last night to grab an early Christmas present for a friend, before the store-that-shall-remain-nameless (since said friend reads this blog and I don’t want to give her an inkling) closed. I’m one of those people that once I get an idea in my head, I HAVE to do whatever it is I’m thinking of, RIGHT THERE AND THEN. No, it couldn’t wait until today, it had to be right then or never. I left work at 5.45pm, the shop closed at 6pm and was a 10 minute walk away – I pretty much frogmarched Kiwi all the way there. He didn’t look too impressed – he was doing me a favour by keeping me company, despite the freezing cold evening, and I was forcibly dragging him by the hand, zigzagging around streams of people heading in the opposite direction.

But Kiwi soon forgave me when we arrived at Monument and saw that the European Christmas Market was in town. I’m sure you’ve seen the sort – stalls with Frenchmen selling cheeses, German men selling giant bratwurst hot dogs and Danish men (it’s always men) selling salami. I get so excited by markets in general, but seasonal ones more so because they only come around once a year and generally revolve around food. You could be forgiven for thinking there’s a food-addict inside me screaming to be fed, and you’d be right. If my conscience allowed me to eat even half the food I wanted to, I’d be morbidly obese by now. The Christmas Market didn’t disappointment, with sweet stalls overflowing with nougat, Belgian chocolates and cinder toffee; stalls with sweet and savoury breads and pastries; olive stalls and mulled wine served on every corner; not to mention the numerous textile and craft sellers with their wooden ornaments and toys and woollen hats, gloves and scarves.

Having dived into the store-that-shall-remain-nameless and grabbed the gift, we had a leisurely meander around the market on our way home and came away with a giant wheel of Camembert and a bargainous bag of salamis – 10 for £10.

So, to add to my list of what Christmas means to me – it means special markets too. It’s also a time of year for coffee shops to get seasonal. I’ve said it before, I don’t do drink (much), smoking or recreational drugs, so coffee is my thing. Usually I’ll go for a milky latte or something similar, but if I’ve had a bad day or I’ve got a long night ahead, I’ll go for the hard-stuff – an espresso shot. At Christmas, coffee shops start selling gingerbread lattes, mint hot chocolates, cinnamon coffee and the like; plus they’ll get out the marzipan laden christmas cake and icing sugared florentines. Bliss… I’m feeling hungry, how about you?

‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY

Inspired by Sweetiegirlz post on what Christmas means in 2008, since it seems to have lost its religious significance, here is what Christmas means to me, (for whom it has never had a religious significance):

Christmas, like all seasonal celebrations or occasions, revolves around the excuse for me to indulge in my favourite thing… food. Be it Christmas, Easter, birthdays, anniversaries, snack time, afternoon tea-time; if the occasion calls for it then I’m there with my knife and fork at the ready. I can almost taste Christmas now (or it might be the aftertaste of the roast dinner and mince pie I had last night)… Roast turkey, honey roasted parsnips, cranberry sauce, cheesy leeks, cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, swede and carrot mash, pork and apple stuffing, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, brandy butter, Elmlea double cream, Christmas tree chocolates, chocolate gold coins, liqueur chocolates, mince pies, Bristol Cream sherry, Baileys coffee, Baileys on the rocks, mulled wine, Boxing Day left-over-turkey curry, day after Boxing Day left-over-turkey Ploughman’s salad, day after the day after Boxing day left-over-turkey sandwiches and cranberry sauce… I think you get the picture. Christmas is a time to put on your elasticated trousers and get merry with your belly.

Christmas is also a time for big snuggly jumpers and dressing gown, socks and slippers, cosied up infront of  the televisions with endless re-runs of Friends or ‘classic’ films, mostly starring Tom Hanks; Splash!, Big, Turner and Hooch, Toy Story (I and II), Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, and a few without Mr Tom in them – Beethoven (I, II and III), Home Alone (I, II and III)… again, you get the picture, Christmas is a time for  your arse being ‘at one’ with your sofa. Christmas is a time when my mum gets out our annual tree decorations and I get excited about seeing them all again – we don’t have the usual matching baubles and tinsel, we have individual ornaments which have some significance. My brother and I used to get the old box of tree ornaments out the loft and decorate the tree after we’d broken up for the school Christmas holidays. I’m especially looking forward to seeing the tree decorated at mum and dad’s house this year because I’ve just realised I can barely remember the ornaments anymore and that makes me sad.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Fenwicks department store window, of which I’ve seen six now. Six Christmas’s of Fenwicks windows and I’ve loved them all – walking up Northumberland Street and hearing the themed songs drifting from Fenwicks is like walking around town with a soundtrack to your life – an uplifting, emotive, Christmassy soundtrack. I’m like a kid, I’ll line up behind the constant stream of children and old people for however long it takes to get to the front, press my nose right up against the window and shimmy along to the end, painfully slowly (for the people behind me), not wanting to miss a single detail.

Most importantly, Christmas is a time to spent with people you love. It’s an excuse to get together with family and friends who you don’t see as much as you’d like to. It’s a time to laugh, to feel warm and hazy inside, and to make and share memories together, to last until the next time you see one another.

AWAKE

Kiwi’s fast asleep in bed, but I can’t face going up to join him. The past week has been sleepless, I seem to have become a light sleeper at the same time Kiwi seems to have become a heavy snorer… It is not conducive to a relaxing night’s kip, it results in me tossing and turning, huffing and puffing (in the hope he’ll wake up and turn onto his side, oh. please. wake. UP! and lie on your SIDE!!!) and eventually having a full blown tantrum when I do finally drift off and an almighty grunt comes from Kiwi’s nasal area, giving me the shock of my life and rendering me fully awake, again. I can’t even wear ear plugs, as my ear canals are teeny tiny and ear plugs seem to expand so much so that when I wake up in the morning I feel like I’ve been punched in the ears and pulling the fully-expanded plug out my spacially-challenged ear canal is like extracting… well… something painfully big out of something painfully small.

I really hope this is a short-lived phase. We were fine just a week ago… I think it’s just the excitement bubbling up in me that’s preventing the sleep, and Kiwi has always snored but I’ve just been too tired to notice before.

ITEMS ON MY CHRISTMAS LIST

Santa, are you paying attention? I hope so.

Items on my Christmas wish list:

A Filofax, a very pretty looking green filofax with brown flowers on. A much needed item as I call my parents every Christmas or occasion that calls for a card/letter, to get the address of whichever family member/s apply. I could do with something in which to keep addresses and birthdays. I could also do with a Filofax so I could pull it out during meetings with clients (once I’m working for myself), and look all self-important and professional and writer-ish.

A camera, one with exchangeable lenses and manual settings and all sorts of things I know nothing about. Kiwi can teach me how to use it, I’ve always thought about having one and I think now is the time. New Zealand scenery deserves more than a point-and-shoot to do it justice. (It deserves more than my lacking photography skills too, but I’ll learn).

Money, to top up my savings with all the poundage it has lost in the run-up to leaving (insurance, shipping, flights, pre-arranged trips in NZ, visa… it all adds up to one big fat hole in my monies)

A trip to New Zealand. (I have a good feeling that this one might come true)

My Kiwi *cue music* all I want for Christmas is yoooooou – and a filofax and a camera and some moneeeeeeeeey…

45 DAYS TO GO…

The countdown calendar says 45 days until we leave the country… in the list of things to do I’ve had: change of address for my driving license. Did you know if you don’t have a fixed address in the UK, you have to surrender your license, even if you are technically a resident? So I have to involve other people in my admin issues by giving a family residence as my address, therefore potentially inconveniencing them, fantastic; the same went for my bank, no fixed UK address = no bank account. Although turns out I couldn’t use my current (now previous) bank account *cough*Natwest*cough* from New Zealand anyway, as to transfer funds from my UK account into a New Zealand account I’d have to do it in branch, in person. With that being physically impossible, I changed to a more international bank, you know, “the world’s local bank”. And they say I can change my address to my New Zealand one too, bonus; I’ve had to set up a money transfer account for my UK to NZ with a third party company whose transfer fees are as cheap as Kiwi could find; I’ve had to apply for an overseas repayment plan with the Student Loans Company, although as I have no idea what I’ll be earning I’ve declared myself ‘working holiday’ until I start working with clients and can give them more information, so they’ve deferred payments for 12 months. I’m considering voluntary payments in the meantime so I can keep chipping away at the big beast that is 3 years of pissed-away student loan…; I’ve been unsubscribing myself from every email and postal mail subscription that I possibly can, and paid £25 for the pleasure of a 6 month Royal Mail redirect to a family address (further inconveniencing) just so if I receive anything else of absolutely no interest to me, I know who to inform to stop sending me crap; I’ve finally printed off my electronic visa, two copies – one for my hand luggage and one for my baggage, just in case plus I’ve bought travel and medical insurance as part of my visa requirements, and discovered that the safety of my body sells for £320.99…

(Breather from boring you with my life of application form-filling)

…Kiwi and I have also shipped off all our worldly goods to New Zealand, a month and a half early yet we’ll arrive at month before the boxes do! It took the shipping company far too long to get a courier booked to pick up the boxes, but that allowed us time to realise we (we = Kiwi) had to fill in forms and forms about the contents of the boxes, so we ended up having to go through everything and taking some things out (an ornamental Abalone shell that I use to keep jewellery in counts as an ‘animal derivative’ or something like that, and I have to declare it at customs… who knew?!); in 3 weekends time I need to take two giant suitcases of our summer clothes down to London by train. We’re going to Aberdeen for Christmas, then flying down to London on New Years day, ready for our flight from Heathrow. But as domestic flights don’t have as much baggage allowance as a long-haul journey, and it costs £7 per extra kg, a return trip to London was cheaper than paying the excess baggage fee. I’ll spend 3 hours on a train from Newcastle to London, 2 hours having coffee with Ally (who lives in London and who I’ll stay with while we’re in London), leave her with my bags to store for a couple of weeks, then spend 3 hours on a train back. Laborious; last, but not least, I have to sort out my P45 and P85 (leaving the UK tax form), oh the joys of pleading to the government to decide that I shouldn’t need to pay taxes in the UK, as I won’t be benefiting from them (although does anyone ever benefit from paying taxes even when they live in the country? Hmmm, topical).

So that is where I am at. *Yawn*.

WELL HELLO THERE (& DAY TWENTYONE OF NANOWRIMO)

It’s been a while… I have lost my mojo. The novel has stopped since my last novel-related post and I feel 50,000 words would be a mean feat with only 9 days left, so we can safely assume that like everything else I ever begin with the best intentions, I have failed. Although, looking more optimistically at it, I have achieved the beginnings of a novel which I can come back to as life goes on, and add to. I feel there’s only so far in an autobiography you can get at the tender age of 24, I have barely lived life. It’s not an excuse for my failure, but a reason why the ideas dried up and I simply had nothing more novel-worthy to contribute, leading to a lack of inspiration and motivation.

The blog has been neglected too, I’ve not only fought off my anxiety issues but I’m also feeling relaxed about leaving the UK, my dreams aren’t as crazy-like and I’ve worked through all the little bits of my personal history. So, I feel I’ve come out the other end and can only move onwards and upwards – no more introspection or retrospection.

LOST

One writing mojo. If found, please return to me.

DAY THIRTEEN OF NANOWRIMO

Novel? What novel??! It’s just over a third of the way through the month and I am just under a third of the way through the 50,000 word count. I have written 12,000 words to be exact. Not fantastic, I should have at least 20,000 by now. But as I have established in the novel itself, I’m a slacker, so it has got to be expected. I had intended to keep on placing the chapters on my blog as I finished them, but since I realised I was falling behind somewhat and decided it would be a better idea just to get some words down, my novel has become disjointed and there are no chapter flows as such right not. Rather than make it suitable for public viewing, I’m just trying to increase my word count, so I’m not sure I’ll be adding any more to the novel page until November has passed. Once I’ve completed the challenge, then I can worry about structure and form and content.

It’s tempting just to type the same sentence over and again. It’s tempting just to type the same sentence over and again. It’s tempting just to type the same sentence over and again… You get the gist, I’d be at 50,000 words in no time at all. But where’s the feeling of pride and achievement in that? So, back to work for me… Do we think I can manage another 13,000 words this weekend, to put me back on target for words vs days left? I severely doubt it. *feeling of disappointment in myself*.

ANXIETY DIARIES – THE END

Week six and I have come to the end of these particular diary entries, as I seem to have come to the end of my anxiety attacks. I spent the first ten minutes of my hour long appointment with Betty today establishing that I was all fine and dandy now, thank you very much. Then we spent another half an hour chatting about this and that to do with life in general, amongst some small talk… then we realised we had nothing else to talk about and so Betty set me free (still charging me for the full appointment, but hey it was a priceless experience and all that jazz blah blah blah…)

But really, bitter tight-arse aside, I do really feel like I’ve been set free. I feel like I’m not scared of the move anymore, I don’t feel anxious or fearful. I’ve bypassed the ‘dark and looming, frightening concept’ stage of preparation to emigrate and now I’m onto the ‘inconvenient, irritating, why can’t the government get off my back’ stage. I’m snowed under with forms – a P85 leaving the UK tax form, a change of address form from the Driving License Association, an overseas assessment form for my student loan, leaflets about international bank accounts because my crappy UK bank won’t let me perform transactions abroad. Then there’s the list I’ve made of companies I need to unsubscribe from mailing lists, goverment institutions that I need to inform I’m leaving, all official stuff that’s dull, boring, frustrating and other words that make me go *le sigh*.

But, once this is all out the way I’ll be onto the last stage – the ‘excitement, can’t wait to leave, heart pounding, butterflies in my stomach’ stage. The best bit. And adding to the excitement will be Christmas and New Year, the best times of year – with seasonal festivities and joyous celebration after sparkling party after cosy times with friends and laughter. And what could possibly be less anxiety-ridden than that?!