last days of summer

glorious glorious morning, I walk early down to the calm blue sea. Most of the world seems to be back at work (and of course I am looking for a job); just a couple of joggers, one lone swimmer, and the usual dog-walking people who seem to be always around.

The sea is fantastic, such a lovely blue that you can almost imagine swimming (brrrr... ); small waves lap up to the beach at perfectly regular intervals. I sit on a bench and just watch the waves.

For me, this is as near as it gets to perfect happiness. I can smell a hint of autumn in the slight chill in the air and that sense that with autumn, things start to happen again, life starts to take shape.

a day out..

It's been a month of Days Out.

The day out was always a part of my English life - trips to the zoo with my parents, shivery days at the races eating our picnic bye the car; teenage days with an early boyfriend wandering around our local towns, Coventry, Lichfield, Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield; later the slightly deranged day trips to Margate and Ramsgate from university.

Even if the weather hasn't been fantastic over the last few weeks, the English day out has definitely improved over the years. Better places, better food, nicer people..

I've loved the monkey forest - monkeys! loads of them! - and charming young people only too happy to answer all your questions. I've enjoyed the Bluebell Railway - old steam train! - staffed by delightful older people, only too happy to offer information and share memories. I've been to Alfriston - mediaeval village composed entirely of tea-rooms and National Trust buildings: to Middle Farm for farm-y type goods, lovely people.... this summer has been one long Day Out and fun with it..

actually rather liking the rain

felt ill all day yesterday and went to bed early with a ginger tea and "the phantom tollbooth".

and didn't it rain in the night?! i woke and could hear it pouring, woke later and the water was almost smashing down from the sky. You wouldn't believe it could just be falling, it was as if it was being thrown at us

i slept then, and slept again, and slept again and the rain reduced to a steady dripping and splashing and I slept and slept again so in the end i woke at eight after nearly nine hours sleep, to a world of grey and umbrellas in the street and feeling rested, stomach not hurting, neck not so painful and a clear and simple world to live in today.

So much happening..

So first of all, there's the end of work next week. So relieved to have done this though of course the idea of having basically no money coming in and quite a lot going out, is a bit worrying..

Then, it's my mum's operation at the end of June and there's a lot of getting ready and getting organised around that and it makes me feel a bit scared and worried (as it does my mum too, of course.. ). Though I do think the operation will be okay - but is it time then for my mum to move down to Brighton? And if so, how do we manage this?

I'm hoping still to spend most of July in Portugal, coming back in the middle to see my mum and also for my schoolfriend's memorial service.

In August I really need to get running! I've entered a 10-mile run in October and so far I can only do four... I've been up to six but there's a lot to build up for ten miles.

If all goes well, in September, I should be starting a Creative Writing MA. It's been my dream for so long to do something like this.. I was amazed to be accepted on the course and I can't wait for it to start.

Before that though, I've a haircut today; my mum and her sister down for the weekend tomorrow; the arrival of Hass and Sarah and family on Sunday; Bulgaria on Monday and Tuesday; my mum's pre-op consultation on Wednesday; Hass and Sarah again on Thursday; last day at work on Friday; Rose for lunch on Saturday; Mike's mum's 90th on Sunday; Paris to see Lisa on Monday and Tuesday and then it's Lichfield Lichfield Lichfield for my mum's op..

the absolute bleakness of winnersh triangle

It's absolutely not unfair, in fact it's kind of me, to call this area bleak.

Bleak to me, means wide empty winter landscapes with a raw and savage beauty all of their own. Whereas, bleak here means that from my window I see a pedestrian bridge- white and empty - across a grey five-lane road - also empty. On the other side of the road I see an office block, To Let. The sky is grey. Our office is silent apart from the clacking of keyboards.

listening to music as if for the first time

well, it's kind of prosaic because the nurse cleaned my ears out of wax which is something I think of as happening to small kids, not mature middle-aged women like me.

it's like my ears have been dead for months and now they live and the music - Gil Scott-Heron right now - just dances down those fresh clear tubes and I feel connected with my world again.

Ladies of the Net

so here we are, in the lowest possible tennis league in our corner of sussex, enjoying our tennis, improving a little each time, and just playing a few matches to help us learn more.

At midday, precisely, the Ladies arrive. They're from a village a few miles away. They arrive on our courts: part of a park or -as they like to say "council-run courts" - where university boys in shabby t-shirts relive their school tennis rushing clumsily around the courts; small children stand near the net missing every ball their proud parents try to feed them; a talented ten--year old is on her fifth hour of tennis today.

The Ladies look around and they do not like what they see. "Will our bags be safe?" asks one.. "Is there water?" asks the second..

The third lady - perma-tanned, perfectly groomed, recently waxed and hairless legs, skintight skirt and top demonstrating perfect bump-free and almost bosom-free body - astonishes us all by asking if the net is the right height. We confess that we have no idea.

There's a sharp, estuary-accented, intake of breath. Our perfectly groomed chum produces a special gizmo designed for the measuring of tennis nets. We are a centimetre low but she shows us mercy and deigns to play on our substandard courts with the rough people and the low-hanging tennis nets.

I wish I could say we beat the Ladies of the Net but they trounced us totally.

Waking up next to a London park on a Sunday morning..

First of all when it's only just light, there's birdsong. Quite a lot of birds - the small ones tweeting, bigger birds calling to each other. All of them I imagine, looking for food already.

The dog-walkers are the first humans I hear in the park, calling the dog's name. Sometimes there's a splash as the dog takes a dip in the children's pool. From time to time there's a barking competition as dogs establish, give up and regain territory.

The runners are a little bit later: I hear the shoes hitting the pavement, some faster, some slower. I imagine the peace of the empty park, the pleasure of the early morning air.

Then it's really morning and all kinds of noise jostle in the air; a pair of high heels clacks by and I wonder if they are going to church?; children are running around, the boats are in the pool and it really really is time to get up.

Sunny Saturday Morning

Listening to Gil Scott-Heron - I've just bought so many CDs!, can't wait to hear them all.

Coffee by the sea. I find myself thinking that if only I could work in Brighton I'd be completely happy but guess this isn't precisely the case. I would love to work here though...

Vaguely excited, vaguely anxious.. is this my time of life, the stage of my life I'm at or just the remnants of the week's work-anxiety spilling over into the weekend?

Edward Bond's "Bingo" in Chichester yesterday: good first half but meandered rather in the second half and I found my mind drifting far far away.

Why do I feel so busy all the time and how do people manage who have children?

Well I guess the simple answer is that life is really busy: it takes at least a couple of hours to drive to work and that's not allowing much for the M25 or for the fifteen minutes it takes me to get in the car, choose the right CD, get the satnav to stick to the windscreen, agree a destination with the little man inside and finally pull out into the road.

Then there's the real travel. Of course it's amazing to see places you wouldn't normally see, but on the other hand, getting up at 4am and being ready and able to present by doesn't get any easier as the years go on.

But really, the fact is that when I'm finally home, finally I've got some spare time, there's just so much I really want to do. There are so many novels to read, books to write, photographs to take, movies to watch - and all of that's before I've even gone for a run, played tennis or given the slightest consideration to the ironing.

Hey ho... at least I'm not bored!

the brighton marathon

It was the first Brighton Marathon yesterday and the whole city has been just fizzing with it. Everywhere you went, every cafe, every shop, there was always a comment.

"You doing the marathon?" the man in the newsagents asks when I come in red and puffy, after my three-mile run. "Twenty-six miles!" we exclaim together "Imagine that.. "

"She's doing the marathon!" the man in the vegetable shop announces about me to another customer, with great hilarity as if nothing could be less probable. I can see his point, and all the more so the next day when we actually do go and watch the Marathon as it passes along the seafront.

Up at the front it's all men, just one or two women running fast ahead with the fastest of the fast runners. After fourteen miles, some of these people don't seem to even have broken sweat and it feels superfluous to cheer them.

I walk across the lawns to see the first few runners on their last mile. I watch one bloke, he's maybe fourth or fifth, still really running, just pounding along the seafront, a space all around him. There aren't any other runners visible in front of him or behind him.

People are applauding him but I don't think he hears: he's just running, running with the sea and the sky around him, solid and straight and the way he looks, I imagine he will just keep on going, running past the final post, past the pier, the beaches, the marina, just running on forever and ever.

the repercussions of volcanic ash

surprising, isn't it?

How much we all depend on air travel now....Practically everyone I work with today, and have worked with over the last ten years, is stuck somewhere in North America following the big Las Vegas trade-show that I was frankly a bit disappointed not to be invited to this year. I'm laughing a little bit inside, because Las Vegas is such a strange and weird place and for some people it's heaven (bars, booze, gambling, women.. ).

For me it was always a strange and crazy place; there was the endless dryness in the air (it's a desert, after all); the blinding heat in the afternoons when you came out of the trade show; the fierce air-conditioning everywhere so you were always either too cold inside or too hot outside and in any case, shoes always hurting after walking miles and miles on nylon carpet. There was the disorientating jet-lag for all of us Europeans, so we'd all be bright and wide awake at 3am and then exhausted all day. There were the wild nights of course, where groups of people who were definitely old enough to know better - and I most definitely include myself in these groups, and most definitely should have known better - would go out on the town, clubbing and drinking and feeling just for an evening that we were young and free and energetic again.

I remember too the Ethiopian taxi drivers, Las Vegas their first stop after Ethiopia, deep black skin and always friendly to me, and I would wonder what they saw when they arrived in Las Vegas, what struck them. Of course, there would be the fatness of the people; there would be the lavish amounts of food everywhere. And I guess too, there would be the emptiness of the interstitial streets, places between places where nobody walks, nobody lives, where there's nothing at all.

If I was there now though, after five days of weirdness and trade-show and wild nights and early mornings, I'd be so sad and depressed and no amount of vodka, no conversations with strangers, nothing would be enough to compensate for the overwhelming homesickness that comes and hits you at the end of the stay there. I'd be howling at the volcanic ash..

we started too early with the champagne...

---and now I'm spending Easter Sunday hazy headachy and hungover.

There was the champagne at home, then the wine with dinner, then the cocktails after dinner and then - back at home - the wine after the cocktails after dinner and after all need or desire for more alcohol had in fact gone but by that point we seemed to have got into the habit of it.

At one point there was a lively and vigorous discussion about Skype's business model with three of us insisting that it was a complete mystery how Skype could ever make money and the fourth saying, with great conviction "There'll be a way, there always is".

I wanted to quote from some book I haven't even read yet. I wanted to talk about this guy who says there are two problems with society: the culture of potential which is what makes us worship the young & youth and inexperience and makes middle-aged men dress like their sons, and the culture of entitlement which is what makes people think that they really ought to be a star even though they don't have any talent and in any case have never tried especially hard at anything.

This concept seemed so brilliant and I started to share it with my friends but half way through I forgot what I was saying and lost the culture of entitlement and the conversation swooshed along without me.

how many things we all have..

I've been reading Richard Brautigan and his character says "I have nine things, more or less" then he lists them, .. they include a child's ball and "a lock of hair that needs washing".

Right now, I probably have nine books that I haven't read yet and I can't remember what they 're called , even though I'm looking forward to reading them so much.

I don't know and don't want to count how many necklaces, CDs, t-shirts, pairs of socks I've got.

There was a time, when I was young, when I first left home, when I could count the things I had: two bracelets, one watch, two pairs of jeans - I didn't understand why a person might want a third pair of jeans. One nice skirt for going out. One coat for winter. One handbag.

The thought of all the things in my world makes me feel dizzy. Where did it all come from and why does it matter?

let me tell you about Austria.

it's Thursday night now and I've been in Austria since Tuesday afternoon, so maybe this isn't the most in-depth view of Austria. But it's my first time in this country and I need to tell.

There was the arrival in Salzburg; tram-ride from airport to station. The scenery may have been beautiful but the man sat nearest us on the tram lay back in his seat, exposing vast hairy stomach, red face, tattoos, piercings and unzipped flies. Is there a possibility that as the scenery gains in beauty, so the population lose in style?

Kaprun itself is so fantastically attractive, the sun actually hurts your eyes. It's a beauty beyond supermodels. In terms of scenery, this scenery is so fabulous it doesn't have to lose weight, curl its lashes or even buy a new frock. Mountains and glaciers erupt out of the town. The sun blares down. The small church bursts out of the centre of town, built on some rocky outcrop so that -from the right angle - the church, symbolically, stands higher than the mountains that surround it.

Every house is a chalet. Every chalet has blinds and wooden bits and gables. Every chalet is a hotel and every hotel seeks to be slightly more charming than the last hotel. There's an awful lot of charm around for one small town.

birds fly over the sea..

So I was sitting there, having my morning coffee by the sea - not really quite warm enough to do this yet, but when the weather isn't good enough and there's nobody around is when it's most special. So my coffee is cooling and I'm looking out over the sea and there's a skein of birds - a v-shape, the same as you see geese flying - only these birds are small, maybe the same size as a starling flying in the V-shape very fast, very determined, just a couple of feet above the sea.

I watch them, mesmerized: could they be following something? But then they are blurred against the sea, and then by the West Pier and then gone...

Home on a Friday evening..

A brutal cold dark-grey and rainy day, followed by dark dank evening....finishing off the last emails of the day, realising that in fact I don't care and never have cared about competitive analysis.... selecting Shut Down on the computer... there's a moment, a second or two of emptiness.

The room fills with the smell of the potatoes baking, I've chopped the salad, the wine is chilling in the fridge, the shutters are closed tight and the weekend is a warm and friendly presence, like a dog you've had since it was a puppy - a little bit predictable but there's always the prospect of fun, nice times, something to smile at..

That strange spacey feeling when you get back home after a nine-hour flight

.. almost sleepless, almost blind with thirst, those are the days where the sun glitters across the beach, the flat is a sea of glaring light, and Sunday afternoon in Havana seems more tangible than the beige sofa with the new cushions that I'm actually sitting on.

I can still feel the hot pavement, still hear the music from the bars.... there was a moment there, in Havana, yesterday when the real Havana suddenly and spontaneously coincided with the Havana of my tourist dreams. Music poured out of the bars; the sun was shining; families sauntered through the streets, children dressed in their best; in one of the squares a dark shy bride and groom climbed into a horsedrawn carriage.

Music is the thing...

It was a long and not entirely pleasant week and then it's Friday night and Oumou Sangare strides onto the stage; six foot at least of African woman; huge hair; tons of makeup; white dress shimmering down to the floor and then she opens her mouth and just blasts the whole week away.

An hour later the girls are dancing; the guys on bongos are going crazy, the man playing the strange instrument is wafting around the front of the stage; the ageless guitar player is giving it his all and crowd is trying their best to clap along with what feels like several different beats.

So that's when Oumou Sangare has the bright idea of bringing the eleven members of the Ochestre Poly-Rythmo back on; and the bongo player invites a guy up from the audience who carefully takes off his socks and shoes and then dances like he's the missing member of the band, so now the stage is fuller than the Tube on a Monday morning.

But just a bit more fun

I'm really not great on the ice..

I mean, it's okay if it's an ice-rink and you've got skates on, but that now-regular ice on the pavement thing just isn't working for me.

There's a new layer of snow today on top of the ice. It protects a little and disguises a lot. Downhill is the worst; passing people is difficult and slippy. I'm scared that I'll fall, something will break and I'll be just another statistic, a silly middle-aged woman who ought to have known better.

On the other hand, I've walked for an hour a day, each day so far of these crap conditions and each day there have been moments of beauty.

I guess I'll just carry on.

believe it or not, there was a man in a wetsuit

So.

It's zero degrees or whatever the temperature has to be for cold, wet, sticky, sleety snow to land as icy slush. I'm working from home, combining my heroic marketing efforts with looking out of the window.

And what I see is a man, walking down the road, wearing a wetsuit and carrying a surfboard. Did nobody tell him?

Later - I mean properly later, as in the amount of time it might take you to surf for a while on the freezing English Channel - I see him walk back up the road. I wished I could see his face; was he happy? pleased with himself?