It's Christmas!

Happy holidays everyone!

See you all in 2014....

How To Be Appear Completely Inebriated At Your Office Party...

.... while in fact being stone cold sober, and having not touched a drop of alcohol for close on two years!

Start by having a wonderful, generous boss... who arranges fabulous Christmas parties every year. This year was no exception - an elegant dinner in The Orangery at Blenheim Palace, residence of the dukes of Marlborough and notable for being the birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill.

A generous boss means there will be shed loads of bottles of wine on every table... enough wine that even Churchill on a bender would have struggled to get through it all by the end of the evening.

Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.” 
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

A generous boss will also insist that everyone takes a couple of unopened bottles home with them, to share with friends and family over the Christmas festivities. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.... however, as I discovered a couple of minutes later, there is something somewhat undignified about sweeping through the elegant East Gates of Blenheim Palace at the end of the night... accompanied by the loud and distinct clinking of bottles under one's best winter coat.

Very Posh Doorman at Blenheim Palace [in Very Posh Oxford Accent]: "Taking some supplies with us for the trip home, are we Madam?"

Nat [in Very Unposh, Southern African drawl, only made worse by a lingering sinus infection and a day of nonstop talking]: "I don't even drink!"

Very Posh Doorman at Blenheim Palace [in possibly even Posher Very Posh Oxford Accent]: "Never too young to start learning, Madam!"

The first sign of alcoholic addiction? Denial. Damn you Very Posh Doorman at Blenheim Palace!

Goodbye South Africa's Greatest Son...

R.I.P. Nelson 'Madiba' Mandela - 1918 to 2013

Life Lately

I've been a little preoccupied lately. Distracted. Restless. Listless. Perhaps it's the fact that my 40th birthday is just a few weeks away, and while that's really nothing to write home to the bloggersphere about, it is one of those milestone birthdays that does make one stop and take stock of things.

I remember having a feeling of change around the time of my 30th. I spent that birthday in Paris (it was freezing but fabulous) just days before my second interview for the job that would be a turning point in my career. The job that took me out of the laboratory as a pharmaceutical research scientist and into the more corporate environment of medical writing. 

There are days that I love my job and then there are those days that make me want to run away and never come back (usually those days when Annoying Demanding Client is being particularly annoying and demanding and..... just being clientish). Deep down I wish I was doing something more exciting (preferably with a more creative slant and lots of exotic travel), but I know I have to be sensible and pay my bills. Because the same year that I turned 30, we bought our first house and became beholden to the Almighty Mortgage Lender. Then began Operation Overhaul Humble Hovel into a Liveable Home, and that really was time to start acting like a grown-up...perusing wall colour charts and carpet catalogues, boning up on the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 flues, becoming versed in the benefits of combi-boilers, and dealing with a seemingly never-ending stream of builders, plumbers, blokes that sort out the gas and so on.

As I approach my 40th birthday, I don't have the same expectations that things are about to change, and perhaps that is what is making me feel quite restless. And to top it all, I'm suffering from extreme wanderlust! Don't get me wrong, I know that I have travelled a fair bit in my life already - anyone who reads my blog has possibly worked out that I jump at every chance to explore another part of our amazing planet. But I crave the opportunity to really travel... to just head off for a few months and see where we ended up. To have no set itinerary, no agenda, no obligations. Unfortunately, such plans shall remain as dreams for the foreseeable future. We are still indebted to the Almighty Mortgage Lender, and too sensible to even contemplate (for longer than about five minutes) chucking it all in and sodding off into the Big Beyond. Would we ever be able to come back to reality? I fear not.

So, instead, I intend to make the most of the next year, and indeed every year, by....

Starting off the year in one of my favourite places in the world - Thailand! A few days of sun, sea, sand, and spicy (satay!) food will be the perfect antidote to the cold sleet, rain, ice and snow of the UK. Not that I have anything against ice and snow, but I do like to mix it up with a bit of fire too! And so I shall, with a trip to Iceland (the Land of Fire and Ice) booked for mid June 2014, coinciding with the Summer Solstice and 24 hours of daylight way up north.  Before that, I've booked a sneaky break to New York (New York!) over Easter.... I plan on walking all over the Big Apple and then some, as by then I'll be in the final stages of training for my power walking marathon, the London Moon Walk on 10 May 2014.....

That's the first six months planned for now. Stay tuned for more on all of these adventures....

Autumn In Bonn...

I spent a weekend in Bonn, recently.... visiting some friends who've relocated to Germany for work. It was a great chance to catch up and do a bit of exploring too...


Bonn was the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven (born 1770)...

I enjoyed hunting out the little details around the city....

And the crepes!

We took a trip across the Rhine....

And a walk through the woods, looking for conkers....

All in, a fantastic weekend! And I have a load of blogs to catch up on....

Close Encounters Of The Bovine Kind....

A final post from my Alpine Adventures series....

So.... it's the first day of our hiking holiday and we're about ten minutes into our first of many uphills to come, up a steep and narrow forest path. It's raining lightly, but we're sheltered among the trees....  

We hear them, long before we see them. The soothing melody of cow bells, echoing down the mountain.


Oh look! It's a lovely cow with a cowbell!! Got to get a photo of that!

Ahhh, such a cute looking cow.... hang on! She does seem to be moving a lot closer to us. In fact, she's on the run....

Mad French cow! Madder than a box of frogs

Two minutes later, said mad cow has me backed into a large and very prickly bush, with nowhere to hide. Her head down, horns aimed at my stomach, and I'm contemplating a painful death by goring... believe me, female cows have massive great bastard horns on them too!....and highly peeved that I've not even made it past the first hour of the first hike.

Lick! Lick! Euuuuuch! All she wanted to do was give a big fat slobbery lick with her enormous rough tongue!

The first of many bovine encounters that week... fortunately, none as formidable as that one....

Keeping a safe distance!

Thirsty cow - possibly mad too

Italian cow - less formidable than her French counterparts!

Silly cows!

This one had no beef with me!

Paris... The Bad, The Good and The Funny

I recently treated my mom to a weekend in Paris for her birthday. Things didn't go exactly to plan, but we had a load of laughs and came away with many memories.

It was raining the day we arrived... the type of rain that drives everyone indoors, seeking warmth and shelter, and yearning for hot cups of tea and yummy cakes. Consequently the queues for cafes everywhere were horrendous! After a bit of browsing in the beautiful Galeries Lafayette, I'd planned on taking my mom to Angelina's  for tea, but we really didn't want to waste the afternoon waiting in the long line that was snaking down the Rue de Rivoli.

Galeries Lafayette

Galeries Lafayette

Plan B - find somewhere (anywhere) along the Champs Elysee - turned out to be Very Bad Plan Indeed. We'd walked all the way down to the Arc de Triomphe... in the pouring rain.... without finding anywhere. Finally, just near the Arc, I noticed a restaurant  that was serving les gateaux yummy and had loads of empty tables under the cover of the awning in front of the cafe...result!

Or maybe not. Apparently the only table that was available for us was the one right at the edge of the awning... the table that was getting progressively wetter with the persistent raindrops falling on it. When I pointed out to the sullen waiter that there were in fact other empty tables and that we did not fancy sipping tea diluted with the deluge of water that would be falling into our cups, he just shrugged mournfully... "I cannot help the rain!". 

Fair point. I did not expect him to be in control of all matters meteorological. I did, however, expect a bit of half decent customer service... so we let our feet do the walking as "I can, however, take my patronage elsewhere, Monsieur!".

Admitting defeat, we returned to our hotel, stopping at the little patisserie over the road to pick up a selection of macaroons and a takeaway coffee. We were just enjoying the sugary delights in the comfort of our hotel room... with not a sneering waiter in sight... when with a loud crash, a huge picture fell off the wall and onto the floor... yikes! Luckily that didn't happen in the middle of the night... or we may well have both suffered heart failure. Nothing worse than getting woken up by loud crashes and bangs....

Nothing disturbed our slumber that night. After a fabulous dinner in a brasserie not far from the hotel... great food and a jovial waiter who seemed quite struck with the mother and daughter duo, tried speaking to us in Russian and then Italian when I attempted some awful French, and then joked that we did not need to pay for the meal, but we'd have to do the washing up.... we went to bed early, planning to make the most of our second and last day in Paris. I didn't bother to set an alarm... my mom is always up with the larks, so I didn't give it much thought. I certainly did not expect to sleep right through until almost 11 o'clock the following morning! What did that jolly waiter put in our ratatouille the night before? Valium?

Of course we'd missed breakfast and, what was worse, wasted a good few hours of the glorious sunshine! I phoned down to reception (worried that we'd even missed checkout) and the lovely gent on duty reassured me that we still had another hour, and then offered us breakfast in our room at no extra charge. Within a few minutes, there was a knock on the door and a tray of fresh pastries, baguettes, butter, jams, honey, a pot of tea and orange juice was delivered to us...what a treat to have breakfast in bed!

Fuelled up and feeling very well rested, we set off for the Eiffel Tower and a boat trip down the Seine to take in the sights...

A bit of a dash back to Gare du Nord and we just made our Eurostar train back to London. 

Tout est bien qui finit bien!

(All's well that end's well)

Photos all my own