Chez Spud

Awww, look! There’s the wife looking super fine, super cool, superdooper on her birthday yesterday. She’s actually 105 now but, by the miracles of modern science and good skincare, she doesn’t look a day over 35 does she? There are vicious rumours of a little post processing ‘help’ but that’s between me, Lightroom and the gun the wife has nailed against my forehead…

Lately I have age on my mind. The big FOUR-OH is looming this year and I’ve decided to embrace the fecker with my list 39 things to do before I’m 40. The theory is that I will arrive on my FOUR-OH birthday feeling smug and fulfilled rather than old and baggy. Also, over Christmas, I was truly delighted to learn that my Wii Fit age is 51. My mother-in-law (60 something) tried it too, just for a lark, and her Wii Fit age is 46. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong. Basically, I’m ancient and knackered already, and nothing but botox and a tediously strict macrobiotic diet can resolve it. Or so I thought…

Well, hoorah, just in the nick of time I have discovered the secret of youthfulness and you don’t find it in a pot of face cream or a syringe full of toxins. Instead you’ll find your mispent youth lurking on the dancefloor, clad in a pair of sparkley high heeled sandals and a swishy skirt. Even the men. Yes, ballroom dancing is the end to all our aging woes and I have photographic proof.

Whilst shambling through the Royal Festival Hall yesterday on our zimmer frames, me and the wife happened upon some kind of Strictly Come Dancing tea dance ‘thing’ going on. It was hugely popular, mostly frequented by men of a ‘certain age’ and their rather young Asian wives but let’s skip that part. My point is this…the ladies of a certain age (well in to their 60s) were so elegant, agile, light on their feet, balletic, athetic, jolly, gorgeous and looked decades younger than they were. Look at this beauty…I wouldn’t air my mummy arms in public even now, and I’m only 39…respect to the Toned Armed One…and check out the nipped in waist and lovely pair of pins…

Me and wife looked on helplessly having rebuffed offers to dance with her dapper partner on the basis that, er, we can’t actually dance. “But it’s the cha cha cha!”, he retorted looking, rightly, appalled, “EVERYONE can do the cha cha cha!”. Seriously, we can’t. So he danced with the Audrey Hepburn look alike and we photographed them strutting their stuff with such panache.

‘Audrey’ was much in demand as a dance partner, but when she wasn’t she sat on the side with her two lovely friends and waited like a proper lady.

I congratulated them on their wonderful dancing and told them that they’d made me wish I could dance. They very earnestly told me that I MUST learn, and that dancing keeps you youthful. And there they sat…the proof of the pudding….looking years and years, 10 years probably, younger than they actually were.

So I’m hoping my list of 39 things to day before 40 is editable? If so, I’m taking off ‘making biscuits for the first time’ off the list because (a) it’s toally lame anyway and (b) I could just nip down the shops and buy a packet couldn’t I? But the pursuit of guaranteed youthfulness? You can’t buy that in a packet down the shops can you?

So, who’s up for the cha cha cha with me? My dancecard has spaces but, be warned, I will likely clumsily stamp on your foot with my sparkly shoes. Sorry about that.

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Shifting sands, that’s what friendship feels like. No different than any other human relationship of course but, in my experience, those sandy friendship beaches are more fickle than the others.

I choose not to have a glut of friends in my life and I’ve always been like that. It’s always been about a few, very VERY close friends supplemented by a relatively small group of good friends. Over the years the number of friends in the ‘inner circle’ has probably remained the same, but its membership has changed.

I don’t have friends from my childhood anymore, I have Facebook relationships with some of them. Does that count? Is that a relationship? Or does it just let you scratch your curiosity and let you feel like you’re ‘connected’ with your past?

My ‘oldest’ friends date from my university days thus I met them when I was 18. That seems late in life to be my ‘oldest’ friends when I compare that with others who have friends that they’ve known ‘forever’. I often wonder if I’m bad at friendship although I sincerely hope not; I love my friends with all my heart and am fiercely protective of them but I think I could be a little intense. I seem to have lost 3 ‘best friends’ in my life and only 1 of them I actively ‘sacked’ It’s a sadness to me that it turned out like that as my friends really do mean everything to me. I have a tiny family so my very close friends ARE my family. It would be very shabby if I wasn’t looking after them as I should.

And then the internet or, more specifically, internet friends sneaked in to my life and introduced a fascinating new layer of friendship in to my life. I’ve alluded to this is previous posts but, truly, I no longer differentiate between internet friends and ‘real’ friends. Friends are friends and we don’t have to physically hang out to be buddies; I care as much about many, many people I only know online every bit as much as I do about people I can look in the eye for real.

But it’s easy to forget your old friends, what with all the buzz and excitement of daily making new pals online who are often ‘there’ more frequently than those old pals are. It’s no different from romantic love in that respect..who doesn’t adore the thrill of the chase?

Driving home from Blog Camp on Sunday I happened to go past the town of an old friend from university (P). I haven’t seen or heard from P in about 13 or 14 years. I wondered how he is doing, and felt sad that the years and life got in the way of our friendship.Then I remembered another, mutual friend (E) and wondered what she is up to these days as I’ve not heard from her in 7 years. I felt a veil of gloom descend that these friends of old had somehow slipped through my hands. So poignant on the back of a weekend making shiny, new friendships.

New friendships thrill and enthrall us, and pump endorphins in to our weary bodies in a way which should only be available on prescription. Out of nowhere we feel scintillating, wanted, needed, accepted and admired…we share our stories, our secrets, our hopes, dreams and fears. People admire us and hang on our every word. And, best of all, we get to edit out our past as we see fit. Result!

Old friends are comfortable. We don’t need to ‘bother’ or ‘try’ or even keep in touch regularly because ‘we can always pick it up where we left off’. But too often that lessez faire approach kills a friendship, not always but it’s certainly happened to me. We all need a little a attention and that includes our oldest and dearest friends. All too soon it seems like it’s ‘been too long’ and there is too much to say, too much has happened so we draw a line under our friendship and move on. It’s a mistake I’ve made too often; these people are the very FABRIC of our lives, and were a part of forming us in to the people we are today. It’s easy to underestimate the significance of the role friends play in our lives.

Going back to my point (you’ll be pleased to hear). The day after my ponderings on my defunct friendship with P&E I got a text from E, out of nowhere…wondering if my telephone number was still the same, how are you, it’s been so long, let’s catch up…and [queue scary music] had been prompted to get in touch having heard our mutual friend P being interviewed on the radio [/queue scary music]. Serendipity in STEREO!!

I’ve taken this as a kick up the arse. Friendships wither and die if you don’t tend to them but they are not always dead, they just need a little water to revive them. So this is my mission, to assess ‘dead’ friendships and make contact with people I genuinely miss in my life. It won’t be a long list, but that’s ok.

First up, my friend J in the US. We worked together about 13 years ago, and she emigrated 10 years ago. I’ve visited her a couple of times since she left the UK and I adore her and her family. She has a child who has complex health issues which do not have a good prognosis. Their life is difficult and they lurch from one crisis to the next. Somewhere along the way I chickened out of emailing her, too afraid to witter on about nothing…not knowing what I was emailing in to. Instead I relied on a website they set up to update everyone on their daughter’s progress, and leaving comments there. I’ve even taken to getting updates on what is going on from a third party.

This is hopeless, and so spineless of me. I love her, I love her family…yet I think it’s OK to opt out like this because it’s ‘too hard’. Not ‘knowing what I’m emailing in to’ is a poor excuse for not being in touch and being supportive. My friend is wise enough to stay about from chatty sally emails if things are not good with her daughter’s health.

I last saw her 2 years ago when she visited the UK for the first time since she left for the US, as her daughter’s health had been too precarious to travel. We’d planned to spend the day together, all four children and us. But then Diggy got sick with some bug and she couldn’t take the risk of him passing it on to her daughter. So, instead, she rang my doorbell, couldn’t kiss or touch me, put presents on the floor of my hall, talked to me for 30 seconds and ran off. I stood in the street and waved to her husband and children. And then I went in to my house and cried and cried and cried. I cried for her and our special day which was ruined. I was still crying when MrSpud got home that night. That’s how much she means to me.

And this is the person I don’t email because it’s ‘too hard’. SPINELESS.

So, my friends, audit your list of old friends…who needs some attention? Who do you think is lost to you but probably isn’t? Who needs you more than you probably realise? Who do YOU need more than you dare admit?

Friends…our shied, our defender, our strength and our stay. Give praise and be thankful for them. And buy them stuff xxx

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Giddy. That’s what I’ve been all day, giddy. I went to London. On a trip. On my own with no husbands or children or pigs or pigs ‘n’ wigs or anything. And it was absolutely blissful. I spent the day with my ‘wife’, BFF and brilliant photographer Lyanne; we went to an exhibition, we walked miles in hurty shoes, we took thousands of photos, we had lunch, there might have been wine, we giggled, we gossiped, ears must have been burning…hell, some of them must have been SMOKING.  She taunted me with her shiny new 3G iphone and I tried hard not to collapse in a rage of jealousy.  It’s been a rough week Chez Spud but I feel so much skippier now (it’s a word), and all nicely buoyed up for my cheeky little jaunt to Paris next week.

I could witter on but I thought I’d do the day in pictures. There are a LOT, so if photography’s not your thing..move along…nothing to see here…see you tomorrow for another treasure.

Here I am at the station REALLY living dangerously. Look! Little Miss Goodie Two shoes has a foot (only one mind) OVER THE YELLOW LINE!! Note to self; those chucks are nowhere near as comfortable as you think they are. Relegate to ‘only wear when in a very good mood’ pile. This one is an iphone/camerabag photo:

Hoorah, here we are in London Town. A camerabag photo of the station roof:

First on the agenda was a trip to the National Portrait Gallery, and a twirl round the BP Portrait Award 2009 (we were stalked around the gallery by a museum ‘bouncer’ after getting a bit too close to a few of the paintings…Julockha are you reading this?) and the brilliant, brilliant Gay Icons exhibition. Alas no photos allowed but you can imagine: gallery, people, whispering etc.

Next we hit Trafalgar Square to watch the One & Other ‘exhibition’ which is too bizarre to describe meaningfully. Click the link to see it happening live! 24 hours a day, for 100 days, ordinary Brits are spending an hour up on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square doing ‘art’. We saw a man flying coloured paper airplanes out to the crowd. It wasn’t that interesting and my photos were awful. So I started taking photos of the wife instead:

Oh and she started taking photos of me. Who needs ‘art’ when you can take photos of your buddies?

Right around now we had a debate about the relative merits of matrix metering and spot metering. Because we are THAT clever. Conclusion? Spot metering is crap. Just in case you needed to know.

Things took an unfortunate turn when we stalked a photographer with some serious gear, only to find it was a Canon. Argh, soul…troubled…eyes…bleeding. We so we hoofed it from Trafalgar Square which was then sullied for us, we shall not speak of it again, and made haste to the South Bank.

And look! Something very strange had happened to the trees along the South Bank. More ‘art’:

A few yards on we found yet MORE street art, a photobooth. In we jumped, wrote a few words about ‘our time on the South Bank’ had our photo snapped and it was uploaded to Flickr immediately. Cool. Cooler…it was wine o’clock lunchtime.

After lunch we shambled up to the Hayward Gallery but didn’t make it in to the gallery, we were too entranced by the fabulous, newly painted bright yellow staircase. I’m not a big fan of concrete constructions but Lyanne adores brutalist architecture. I have to indulge her because, well, she’s my wife and that’s what you do. But the yellow was surprisingly appealing:

Not content with oohing and arrrring over it. We got in it! And then we took pictures of ourselves in it. Lyanne took pictures of me:

And I took pictures of Lyanne:

And after that things degenerated somewhat…

Oh no. And now what is she up to? What the HELL is she doing up there? Ah, right..sing along…near..far…wherever you are…

I recovered myself enough to take my favourite shot of the day, the underside of Waterloo Bridge:

And all too soon it was time to make the trek back to The Country, and my boys. The littlest of whom ran at me on my return and clung to my legs declaring, seriously, ‘Oh Mummy. I lost you!’. Final snap, a camerabag offering again, is the bridge over the tracks at my local station. I liked the pattern of the light.

Here endeth the lesson! And CHEERS to anyone that made it this far xxx

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Very cool little photobooth on the South Bank in London with a live feed to Flickr. Fantastic fun…write your message on a whiteboard, stand in the booth, SMILE and you’re famous.Well, on Flickr anyway.

Me and ‘the wife’ thinking about wine for lunch, exhausted by a long morning of culture, photography and gossip.

More photos later…

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