I’m going to Paris on Friday and I have no idea what to pack. The weather forecast is disappointing — my visions of hot, sunny days photographing the pretty streets of Paris in cute sundresses have been replaced by undetermined trousers and long sleeves and jackets flitting between galleries and cafes under an umbrella. It’s not a bad alternative, if I can figure out what the undetermined clothing should be.
This damp, cloudy, occasionally sunny, humid weather is so not chic. It’s difficult enough to dress for it at home with my whole wardrobe at my disposal. How am I supposed to narrow it down to four outfits? Once again I fail at packing any earlier than a few hours before I have to leave.
Having missed the two weeks of London summer while I was in the Middle East I’m taking this drab August weekend personally.
On the bright side I have a pretty decent list of places to track down gluten-free goodies. If anyone knows how to do gluten-free baking right it has to be the French.
]]>I turned 29 today.
I’ve been saying that in a way it feels like 29 is worse than turning 30. Once you’re thirty, you’re there; your 20s are over and you can look ahead to all those apparent advantages of being in your 30s, knowing yourself and calming down and caring about the right things. But at 29 there’s all the pressure of those things you wanted to accomplish in your 20s and coming to terms with a major period of your life passing.
I came across the New York Times Magazine piece about 20-somethings and “emerging adulthood” that sums it up:
“The stakes are higher when people are approaching the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments must be made. Arnett calls it “the age 30 deadline.” “
I’ve tried not to think too much about my naive teenage assumption that at some point I would meet someone to share my 20s with; that certainly did not work out the way I thought it would. I suppose if I’m being honest with myself, really honest, I also assumed I’d be a mother by now.
“Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child.”
By that definition I’m a long way from adulthood.
My 20s have been a mixed bag of highs and lows — from the highs of studying abroad and becoming obsessed with travel and landing a well-paying job I enjoy, to the lows of a couple of years wasted, lost to the pain of endometriosis.
I have two main goals for 29 — to travel to India and pay off my credit card debt. Then there are smaller goals — taking cycle training to be able to use Boris Bikes to get to work and around town, taking French classes at the Institut Francais, getting into a regular gym routine instead of the half-assed sporadic attempts that have characterised the past year. It feels like chance for resolutions more real than the obigatory New Year platitudes that barely last out the month. To that end, in the spirit of starting as I mean to go on, I took my gym bag to work so I had no excuse not to go this evening. I prefer morning workouts, but since I’m clearly incapable of getting up in time, I’m going to make it a habit of psychologically manipulating myself. I think that also means I’m a long way from adulthood.
But I hope that even as my 20s draw to a close and I leave behind “identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between,” I get to keep “a sense of possibilities”.
I can’t quite file this under “quarter-life crisis”. Does this mean its a one-third-life crisis?
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I’ve had a difficult decision to make in the last couple of weeks. I’ve got just over two weeks of holiday time left to take this year, and thanks to my big mouth, I’m committed to a week in Morocco, so I was thinking to use the remaining time for a 10-day escape to Toronto, my “second home”.
After the hyperactivity of the Middle East trip, the appeal of spending time with old friends from my study abroad days, sleeping late, walking the familiar streets of downtown, eating good gluten-free vegan food and partying at night had me checking flight prices and drafting “I’m coming!” emails in my head. In my mind I was sitting down to eat at Magic Oven, strolling along the lakeshore and catching up with my girls. But eventually the nagging of my credit card balance won out. I’ve just paid for my DSLR, I’ll need spending money for this weekend in Paris, the Morocco trip will need to be booked soon, and the there’s a long anticipated and delayed trip to India tentatively planned for January. Seeing it written down like that I don’t know how I ever considered it.
This is what happens to me in summer. I long to spend time with Miss Ross and Marlie J and the rest of my Toronto family. To sit on a bench by the lake, watching the blazing sun reflect off the rippling waves, the island ferries moving back and forth. To wander through bustling, fragrant Chinatown. To gaze out of streetcar windows as the driver reels off the stops in wonderfully-named neighbourhoods like Cabbagetown and Sackville. To walk down streets shadowed by skyscrapers so foreign to this London girl.
But I have to be realistic. I want this card debt gone, so that I can finally feel in control and on top of my finances. So I can use the chunk of money that goes on past spending to save for future trips. So that I can go shopping in Toronto without guilt. It’s hard not seeing my friends and a city that feels like home. With the travel bug biting ever harder it’s painful to let an opportunity pass. But when I look at the numbers in my budgeting and account spreadsheets I know it’s the right decision.
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Barclays Cycle Hire bikes, affectionately known as Boris Bikes
After trying out a bike with a friend who’d signed up I became a convert and decided to get a membership key myself. On Sunday I rode around the cycle paths in Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park, nervously enjoying the route along the Serpentine lake as I cycled for the first time since I had a bike as a kid. It was fun and exhilarating and my arms actually ached the next day from lugging the heavy bike and gripping the handlebars so tightly.
Like most of the early users of the scheme, I ended up explaining to curious passersby at the docking stations how it works, and heard more than one person say “Look! A Boris Bike!” as I cycled past. I definitely need more practice to improve my confidence and control, but I’d like to become a regular on the bikes. I think I’ll be signing up for free cycle training with Westminster council next month.
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It never would’ve occurred to me to buy glasses in Jordan — I was too busy climbing things — but my friend wanted to find some to replace a cool pair she got while on holiday in the Philippines that she’d sadly broken. She couldn’t find anything like them at home, because frames here are uniformly boring. When I last had an eye test, and switched to contact lenses, I couldn’t bring myself to spend £100+ on new glasses because the plain wire frames were completely uninspiring.
Turns out opticians abroad have far more interesting designs, and at a fraction of the price. She ended up buying four designer pairs, each in a different colour and style. I wasn’t going to get any at first because I wear contacts all the time now, but given that I didn’t actually have a pair with the updated prescription and was going to have to do something about that at some point, I was open to looking in case something caught my eye. The 25 dinar price tag — pretty much equivalent to £25 — for the black D&G pair (including lenses with anti-reflective coating) did the trick. I couldn’t quite walk away from the brown Escada pair, which my friend preferred, and I reasoned that even at 55 dinars I’d be getting two pairs of designer frames far cheaper than I would’ve at home.
We were able to pick up our shiny new glasses after only a few hours (the amount of time we spent glasses shopping is largely why I didn’t take photos in Amman) and I wore a pair when we flew home the next day. Over the last week or so they’ve more than proven their worth as fatigue has left my eyes too sore to wear contacts every day, so I’ve had the option of wearing glasses I can actually see with. I woke up with itchy, sore eyes this morning and there was no way I was going to even consider poking little pieces of plastic in them. Definitely the most useful souvenir I’ve picked up on my travels.
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Tonight I went with a bunch of friends to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, the first time I’ve been so far this season.
Sitting on the floor up in the gallery, we got told off for our picnic, which we jokingly attributed to the envious looks of passersby indicating that people were jealous because we had the most fabulous picnic. The staff member who sheepishly asked us to pack our stuff away admitted that a couple of people had said something about it. When we pointed out that most people around us had food, he gestured to our “full spread”. Good thing we’d basically finished.
To be fair, it was a big spread — a big mixed salad, a jar of artichoke hearts, a green bean and tomato salad, turkey salad rolls for the girls, plain gluten-free rolls for me, hummous, a bag of salt and cider vinegar crisps, grapes, strawberries, a gluten-free apple and vanilla cake, and a bag of Maltesers. Delish.
The mixed salad I made was a hit and will be in regular rotation for work lunches for the rest of the summer. I threw together: salad leaves, sliced cucumber, chopped fresh tomatoes, fresh asparagus, and avocado, and mixed in a pack of puy lentils cooked with sun dried tomatoes and basil, which kicked up the flavour several notches. Sorry no picture. Next time.
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I got caught in a chilly August shower while stocking up on stacks of fresh fruit in Portobello market, and somehow having not learned my lesson, got drenched coming back from the supermarket in a second downpour. I gave up on trying to spent my Saturday getting things done and sprawled out on the settee to watch Grey’s Anatomy series 4 DVDs with some comfort food.
Butternut squash, sweet potato, asparagus, half an orange bell pepper, a wedge of onion and a few cloves of garlic, all tossed in olive oil and seasonings — salt, black pepper, mixed herbs, paprika and cayenne pepper
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I’m currently reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia). I’d bought it to read before the trip, but actually I think it’s more vivid having been to Wadi Rum and seen the stark, dramatically beautiful landscape he describes in so much detail. This rock formation rising formidably from the hot sand, seen from road into Wadi Rum, is known as the Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
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It wasn’t until I was sorting through and uploading my Mideast photos that I realised I had what appeared to be a cleverly composed shot but was in fact a fluke of positioning. When we were in Wadi Rum, Jordan, I scrambled up an arch formed by the rock (while my travel buddy, who prefers her feet firmly on the ground, stayed below).
Standing on top of the arch I took photos of the view in all directions, including with the sun behind me. And so I ended up with this, which is one of my favourites from the day — me and the Bedouin guide in reflected in shadow on the surrounding rock face (I’m on the right):
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Seeing this lovely picture confirms that if I ever get married one day, I want to do it in a Vera Wang dress (oh, and Jimmy Choos).
P.S. it’s not often that Glam Hillary makes an appearance but when she does I’m always taken aback.
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