BLOG 36: If ONLY I lost hat No. 1!!!

IF ONLY I LOST HAT No. 1!!!

“We should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of” Carl Sandburg, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and poet

I just can’t keep my big mouth shut! Maybe I should pull the brim of my hat down over my gob… actually that wouldn’t work… I had a balaclava once and I STILL managed to talk through that!

Now I am a huge aficionado of hats. I wear them in all seasons. Hats are often a shorthand way of communicating my mood – some say I’m fun, some say I’m sophisticated, some say I am sporty, others say I’m mysterious and others say confident, classy or this person is nuts. It’s amazing the transformation to your appearance a hat can bring.

Of course we all wear metaphorical hats every day too. It seems these mythical hats are popped on when ever we need to change into a different role life asks us to perform. We have our work hat we pull on and between 9-5 we are a professional person, we have our family hat where we fall into the roles our nearest and dearest have ascribed for us, and we have our social hats where we are whatever the occasion demands… and many more I’m sure.

Sometimes we are like actors with a costume box… change hat, change role. A range of hat changes that ask you to be Competitor, Caregiver, Catalyst and Career person, and more. Now that’s a lot of hats!

Carl Sandburg’s quote, with which I began this blog really made me laugh… 3 hats indeed! Then I thought about it and I thought how true… My number one hat is to say “Yeah, I’ll give that a go” My Number two hat is me talking up a storm about how great a job I have made of giving it a go… and my Number three hat is the one where the magic happens (or not!).

I have to admit to being pretty damn great with hat’s two and three. It is very rare that if someone is not convinced by me wearing hat two that I can’t pull a rabbit out of hat three. I even surprise myself when that happens… but it does… more frequently than not. BUT when it comes to hat one… I need some criminal action!

Someone please burgle me and take hat one. If you did then maybe I wouldn’t over stretch myself so much.

The musical Oklahoma! has within it the song “I Cain't Say No”. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of this song from the fabulous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (and you should have it crops up on everything from re-runs of Fawlty Towers to this seasons House)… the lyrics go:

I'm just a girl who cain't say no,

I'm in a terrible fix

I always say "come on, let's go!"

Jist when I orta say nix...

You see if there is an idea bubbling around… and I get to hear about it… no matter how personally inconvenient, no matter now I can’t afford it, no matter whether or not I will enjoy it…. I throw my metaphorical hat into the ring. I can’t help myself. It’s not even like anyone actually asks me to do this stuff… it’s just the subject comes up there is silence… and then like the song says… I always say come on… when I should be saying nothing.

I’ll give you the latest list of stuff I have agreed to… hosting 3 parties (a Bar Mitzvah, a coming of age and a dinner party for Vegans… when I am neither a jewish teenager, turning 18 nor given up my love of meat)… taking care of two sets of my friends kids during the school holidays and having them sleep over…writing a puff piece about a new launch business (when I know nothing about that line of work)… and storing a friend stuff in my garage while she is between homes (lucky I don’t have a car cause nothing else is getting in there now!)

I hasten to add… NO ONE Actually Asked Me to do any of this.

And so, like I am not wearing enough hats as it is, I found myself on Saturday night prepping food for Sunday Evenings Vegan delight. Now I’m a great cook… but with meat, fish, dairy foods, and honey off the menu… I was struggling (hence why I started a day early) … WHY did I put my self through this! When I go to their house they hardly break out the chicken stock and whipped cream! We could have just booked a table in a restaurant… but NO… big mouth HAD to say come over to mine….

This weekend the coming of age beckons. Now this was stupidity personified… the kids mother started talking about a jelly/ice-cream/ pass the parcel affair… I saw the look in the girl’s eyes and I HAD to step in. She’s grown up watching My Sweet 16 on MTV… she was two years over that… she needed a proper party. And so I am sitting here surrounded by boxes of pink accessories which apparently MUST be pinned to my walls filled with dread as my house will be invaded by late teens in 4 days… and I have NO ONE TO BLAME. WHY couldn’t I just stay schtum… NO… big mouth had to say…lets have it here! (Who am I…Judy Garland?)

Now I’m a Baptist. Yes we worship a Jewish Carpenter who lived in what is now Israel…. But am I Jewish?? NO I AM NOT. So how the hell is a Bar Mitzvah happening here??? I don’t even have two fridges so good luck with the kosher food… and my house is where Bacon breathes its last air. BUT… due to a Venue Malfunction I now have a team of very pushy party organizers measuring my garden for a marquee. We know how this happened don’t we. Big mouth tossed her hat into the ring AGAIN!

I’m a freelancer… I work from home. But it was only a few months ago when I filled with terror at the school holidays. Six, sometimes Seven weeks of childcare to find… and THAT ain’t cheap. But did I HAVE to say to friends that have MANY more children than the one I managed to produce… NO WORRIES… I’m at home July to September… send them to me!!! How exactly am I going to entertain, feed, water and keep safe all these extra kids! It’s not like I even drive… I can’t take them anywhere? NO ONE ASKED ME TO DO THIS… but I just couldn’t stay silent in the pregnant pause where we all sighed and mulled over the length of the summer break. I just can’t keep that damn number one hat out of the ring… before I knew it there it was sailing through the air towards a solution to everyone else’s problem.

And Yesterday afternoon, two large men with a van arrived to store possibly the world’s largest wardrobe, and a double slide store divan base in the garage. They instructed me to keep the boxes they brought with them at a more stable temperature as I wouldn’t want the Egyptian cotton therein to go moldy. BUT… it’s not like I was ASKED… I offered… so what could I do?

Well I could have said nothing the subjects came up. It’s what everyone else did! But then what the hey! This is who I am…the person who has hat number one sailing through the air before she even thinks it through. Most of the time I am saved by the fact others say: “You know what it’s really kind of you but… No, you are ok”.

But when they don’t… I get to learn a whole heap of things I would never know in the general run of my life. Vegan food is a total pain in the arse, but can actually be quite tasty and freezes well. Eighteen year old girls have some really HOT divorcee dads. Bar Mitzvah parties are like an extravagant wedding (and I’ll get to keep all the left overs!). Level 6 of Mario Kart can be achieved if a kid teaches you how. No one will ever know that I am using all my mates Egyptian cotton sheets and towels and by Jupiter they are sooo much better than mine.

You won’t tell will you?

BLOG 35: YUMMY!... IT'S MUMMY

YUMMY!... IT’S MUMMY!

“Why can’t mothers slide comfortably into middle age?...Why is there such wretched pressure on us to look good all the time? . . . Why does there have to be such a terror of becoming a little dowdy?” Lauren Booth, Sister-in-Law of Tony Blair Prime Minster UK (1997-2007) and soon to be E.U President

It’s the long school holidays. One should imagine that means I have my feet up as my son and his mates disappear down the park on their bikes. But no. I have just survived a week of dropping my son off at and picking my son up from the Gifted and Talented Summer School at the local grammar. Now I do applaud my son for being accepted onto this prestigious programme, but Jax is rather fed up from another week of exposure to the local Yummy Mummies.

Yup – if anyone thought having a child was all about the child…let me pop that bubble. Having a child means that you are on call all the time to look fantastic. Nothing else will do. And with people having children later than they used to… looking fantastic all the time is not easy.

It used to be generally agreed that once domestic contentment sets in a woman should be less concerned with looking good and more with being good and she should move from centre stage. This tacit agreement with society was in line with the rules of female fertility – so it was considered only right and proper that the ‘goods stop being advertised when the ‘use-by’ date had passed.

I recall when I was young how people marvelled at the actress Goldie Hawn, not so much for her Oscar (for Cactus Flower), but for the fact that she was still alluringly attractive when she was the mother of Oliver and Kate Hudson. It seemed beyond belief that a woman aged 45 could have two secondary school aged kids and be a head-turner. Many thought it inappropriate that Ms Hawn be tossing about a head of long blonde hair, let alone appear in a champagne glass on the cover of Playboy. A controversy raged about the role of women of a ‘certain-age’ for months – it was concluded that Ms Hawn was a freak of nature and not a standard for us lesser mortals to attempt.

Back then the general rule of thumb was that being sexy belongs to the 29 and unders. … after that pull down the shutters and shut the shop. BUT more to the point, when you have had kids… Game Over.

Now this wasn’t all bad. Getting time off from the unnecessary competitiveness and boringly complicated business of being female was welcomed as a kind of holiday. As un- PC as it may sound there actually was some truth in the convention that being sexually alluring is a young person’s occupation.

Your twenties are your selfish decade. Free from the shackles of childhood and not yet trapped under a weight of responsibilities there really is little else to do but invest in yourself. For most women, a great deal of that investment is in our physical appearance. And why not… these are the ‘man-trap’ years… always good to coat the bitter pill of commitment with honey. But the deed is usually done by the end of the decade, and once children start coming along, there really are not enough hours in the day. Okay, there are those who are fortunate enough to have an army of helpers and nannies – but for most of us mere mortals, it’s a non stop round of washing things and persons and picking things and persons up. It was jolly nice that no one expected you to look like you just stepped of the catwalk too.

Back then you could always spot a mother. Practicality was a word that dominated her appearance. Her hair was no longer than shoulder length – practical. She wore a suburban uniform of unfussy, uncomplicated clothing and small sensible jewellery (if any) – practical. Her shoes were a regulation 1.5 inch heels in a comfort fit – practical. If she wore make up it would be just a slight dusting of powder, touch of lipslave, brush of mascara – practical. The older the mother the more practical the uniform became – obviously the older you are the harder it is to keep up with the demands of young kids. But gymslip mother or late prima-grada it was always the same. You stop journeying on the fashion train once you use the ovaries… well they weren’t called OVERies for nothing. And society gave you permission to get of the fashion train – after all you’re a mother now. It REALLY wasn’t about YOU anymore.

And then… a cosmic event happened. A thirty something British Actress was photographed walking over Hampstead Heath. She looked dazzlingly beautiful… and she before her was a pushchair with a little girl called Gracie in it. The child was hers…and the paparazzi were astounded. Anna Friel had taken a break from her acting career to become a hands-on parent... and there she was… looked good… actually more than that…she looked better than she did PRE-CHILD. Desperate for a caption to print beneath this world shattering photograph, a Fleet Street sub-editor called her after a breakfast cereal for children, and the phrase Yummy Mummy was born.

From that point on, the luxury of looking exhausted from running around after children all day was banished. Ms Friel was not in the first flush of youth and she looked good. Since then celebrity over 40 Mums from Rachel Hunter, to Brooke Shields, to Halle Berry to Courtney Cox have furthered the cause showing that what ever your age – having a baby means you can look great too. There is no get out clause.

To be a mother these days is NOT a holiday from the pressure of looking hot.

I recall going to my first party after the birth of my son. The date was circled on my calendar like D-Day on Churchill’s. I had to look amazing and NOT AT ALL like I had just had a baby three months before. The dress was purchased... an unforgiving mushroom grey silver spangled number (DO NOT HAVE A CHILD BORN THREE MONTHS BEFORE XMAS PARTY SEASON!!!). No room in that for a post baby tummy. And after a summer of pregnancy flats…suddenly I had to learn to totter about on killer heels again.

I had to get everything toned and FAST. (Don’t kid yourself it is only your mid-rift that gets pregnant… it ALL swells… every inch of you!) Breastfeeding (once done for the benefit of passing nutrients to the child) becomes essential as you can almost hear your muscles contract and watch with joy as your post birth deflated boobs pump back up. Of course all that feeding on demand gives you a healthy (if not slightly heavy) child, but this is no bad thing. My baby thought he had the best mother as every day he was raised and lowered 30-50 times by his playful mother… but really I was using him as weights.

All that just to walk into a party to hear my colleagues squeal with delight how I’d ‘snapped back’. And walk in was about all I could do. Having a baby is exhausting enough without operation size 10 for Xmas. All that exhausting work to be pre-baby fit… and I arrived at eight and I went home to bed before midnight.

But it is not just big events…you have to look good ALL the time least people say you are ‘letting yourself go’.

Time was that she behind the pram was invisible, and the focus of attention was the pram’s content. A mother would spend more time getting the baby ready for his debut out on the local streets. She could be in a dressing-gown and slippers for all the attention she’d get… it was all about the baby. She’d be down the park laughing comradely with other mums all in their unbrushed, ungroomed glory. Being a Mum back then was very chatty, very friendly and warm.

These days a simple thing like popping out to get a loaf of bread means full face of make-up, gleaming washed hair, skinny jeans and a cashmere sweater. Don’t forget this season’s accessories least people only give you 6 points for trying. And … if you plan to walk behind a pram in an urban area… get the killer heels out. There is no room for practicality in yummy mummy-dom… deviate from the rules and everyone thinks you simply have gone to pot.

It doesn’t get any easier at the child gets to school. The school gates are mean places. No. I’m not talking about the kids…. It’s the other mums. WHERE do they get the time? They step out of their cars looking like they are just about to go to Royal Ascot! When I worked part-time when my son was little, I finished work an hour early so I could rush home and change before getting to the school gates. I’ve witnessed working Mum’s changing outfits on the train just so that they look good for the school gates… like dressing for work isn’t enough stress when you have kids!! Even the stay at home mums knew your child is heading for social ostrichisation if you turn up in hurriedly pulled on jeans and a top covered in jammy finger prints. You tell yourself you are doing this for your kid and you fall in.

For me it did get easier when I returned to full time work and left the grandparents to it. But still, school events demanded my attendance and be it sports day, parents evening or the school play – I filled with fear of failing to reach even the bottom rung of the required standard of Yummy Mummyness.

The general rule is that you must look as if motherhood is something you take in your stride. It does not affect your physical appearance AT ALL. You and your offspring must look perfect at all times.

When you have a baby – you snap back – there is no post baby bulge. Your nails will be painted, your lippy will be on and you will be in this seasons outfit. Your heels will be high. Your hair will be long and groomed and your earrings will be dangly. Your baby will instinctively know not to grab at either. Your baby will be dressed like a mini grown up (baby leather jackets were all the rage when my son was tiny). These rules linger till pre-school.

Then you must enter the arena of the birthday party and have original themes and extravagant ‘thanks for coming gifts’. (I remember when thanks for coming was a slice of cake to take home!). You must also hold back any signs that you are any older than when you gave birth three years ago. You should by now be able to run after a hyperactive toddler in 3 inch heels. Said child must at all times be clean and ready at anytime to shoot the cover of Toddler Today.

These rules increase as the child heads steadily through primary education. By the time the child is 11 you must now look younger than you did when you had him. You may well be middle aged but you must pass as the slightly older sister of a twenty something. Botox is not shameful and dressing in anything that Liz Hurly would wear is mandatory.

Child is now at secondary school. You must now be able to pass as a sixth former…or at least be MILF standard (by which Yummy Mummy rules say Rachel Hunter is now your role model). You must also always be prepared to show the other mum’s how hard you work at it by having an expensive gym bag visible. (This whilst wearing killer heels… you must NEVER be seen in sports wear!) You always must be seen as having to just dash as you have somewhere else to be… your life is one big juggling trick.

Basically, as your child ages, you become younger. You are the busiest and most fabulous Mum on the planet and… incidentally, your stomach is always be ready to be used as an ironing board should the need arise.

I am so intimidated by these Yummy Mummies. It all seems so much work! Half the mothers in my son’s secondary school never eat or are unable to move their eyebrows due to botox. Where as I hoover up food like it’s going out of fashion and find a conversation with someone who remains expressionless scary! But I’m not brave enough to strike out against them. I was not brave enough to turn up at the Gifted and Talented Summer School in sweatpants and a tee-shirt. I am sad to say that not much has changed over the years… the slap went on, the magic-pants were rolled on, the whole Rachel Hunter ensemble went on… and I teetered to the gates in killer heels! Now this was good for my son. Kids like order, they don’t mind rebelling but the last thing they need is a rebel parent bringing down the status quo.

So, out he ran towards me at the end of the session, pleased to see me as always. And I supposed I looked exactly the same as the other mums…. Except for one important detail… I at least could raise an eyebrow!

BLOG 34: Hear,Hair...Over Here!

Hear Hair ...Over Here!

“Hair brings one's self-image into focus; it is vanity's proving ground. Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices.” ~Shana Alexander, Iconic Journalist, first woman staff writer and columnist for Life magazine

I have just returned from the Spanish mainland. Barcelona to be precise. The place is inhabited by some of the world’s most attractive and stylish people who carry themselves with poise and élan. Fashion is an integral part of the culture. Consequently, several leading fashion designers have set up their base in this Mediterranean country – and along with them peluquería (hair salons) representing all the big names… many of which started in Spain as to the Spanish woman, hair is their richest ornament. After all this is the country that gave the world the chignon… the Spanish woman knows a thing or too about how to get her hair to work for her.

Believe it or not I have friends who find visiting a peluquería a much better option than having a regular salon at home because there is a great choice of high quality salons and the prices are often more competitive than those in Britain. A great many peluquería possess the artistic flair and good training background that you would expect of any top class hairdresser anywhere in the world… and the Spanish woman would not be seen without her crowning glory looking perfect. As you walk down the boulevards you will see glossy tresses, updo’s, layers and highlights bouncing away like some Pantene commercial gone crazy. I suppose to my friends who wish to keep their hair lovely, a regular flight to Spain is worth it.

I have not been blessed with anything on my head that should merit such concern.

When I was little, my Mother (a fashionistas who has beautiful hair) covered her disappointment with having a pretty but primarily bald child by attaching ribbons and bows to any clump of hair that appeared on my pate. I look back on my childhood photos and find images of myself in the most glorious outfits (every little gal should have a mother like mine….Every ensemble well constructed plus “The shoes must match the bag”!)…. But I look upon my head and find a display reminiscent of a collection of shish kebabs!

I am pleased to say that towards the latter end of my primary school career, I sprouted enough hair to maintain some of the shorter styles of the day. However the die was cast… I was not ever to relax into a happy relationship with my tendrils. My hair was coarse in texture and dry… and also a rather disturbing shade of rust. It spent a lot of time in pony and pig tails… and finally by mid adolescence I was regularly dying it black. With the new (less disturbing) colour, my hair (when pulled back) seemed less of a problem – however it was never a joy so I projected my self-image through clothes. By the end of puberty however a miracle took place… my wiry hair stopped fighting me at every turn and gave way to long curls with a suggestion of the pre-Raphaelite. You would think this would have made both me and my mother happy… but the fashion for structured cuts was in so off it all came!

This set the precedent for many years… my hair being chopped, cut or coloured to suit whatever clothes were my style of the day. It was long, it was short, it was blonde, it was blue, it was asymmetric, it was straight…. Then finally after three decades of war… my hair and I called a truce. We agreed on black, long, and curly and we almost lived happily ever after.

Okay, there was the odd moment where a 2 tone dip dye (remember that fashion!) seemed like a good idea, then there were the Victoria Beckham-esque hair extensions, then when I became a parent I thought shorter hair would give me gravitas… but over all my hair and I settled at black, long, curly and that became the image I expected to see in the mirror.

Hair means strange things to society. As longer hair signals conventionality, I could afford to be much more rebellious with my clothing than I could with short hair as it softened the statements my clothing made. Equally, having such a dark hair colour signalled intelligence that a fairer shade would not, so I could afford to be more overtly sexual with my clothing without negative consequence. Also, dying my hair to an extreme colour like black meant I could wear dramatic make up and large accessories. My cosmetic box filled with shades of red lippy and gold brow highlighter and liquid eyeliner. My accessory drawer filled with funky costume jewellery. My personal style, that I assumed would see me out became formed and set.

Who knew that a part of my anatomy (for which I had historically held little regard) would play such a part in forming the image of what I projected to the world.

And then one day…. It was gone.

All of it.

I used the same old black dye I’d been using since a teenager… and the unthinkable happened. An allergic reaction of an epic scale that resulted in a week in hospital… and a totally bald head. The long term prognosis was that I could never use permanent hair colour again and that hair would grow back eventually but not around the hairline – making the use of extensions not a viable option. Scarves would suffocate new growth and with no hairline a wig would be hard to secure to the head. It would be better all round to face up to the fact that bald was probably the way forward for me.

After all… it’s just hair… it’s not like you lost a limb...is it? Well meaning friend after friend (all with glorious tresses of their own) kept telling me this.

Oh really?

A bald head has always been heavy with meaning. With women bald heads have been associated with trauma, brutality and the loss of individuality or strength. In the Second World War, the heads of French collaborators were shaved as part of their public humiliation. Among skinheads, a shorn head was a symbol of aggression. Among lesbians, a shaved head, or short hair at least, came to be a symbol of their abandoning of traditional man-pleasing femininity. In children shorn hair is inflicted upon those who have caught infectious head lice. Women who have survived cancer will tell you that one of the most traumatic things on the road to remission was the loss of their hair.

It is NOT just hair.

The image of a woman with no hair packs a visceral punch. There are lots of positive connotations in men’s hair loss to do with strength and masculinity, maturity and sexuality. But in women it's seen as being out of control because it's outside the normal distribution of hair behaviour. In other words, baldness is still relatively rare in women, and is generally treated as a sign of crisis or stress - or if it is known to be self-inflicted, a sign of madness.

Think about it….. What image to you says most strongly that Britney Spears had a breakdown in 2007? The fact that she spent most of the year drinking Starbucks whilst wearing a hoodie…. Or was it that she was driving with her kiddies on her lap with no restraints.………. Or was it that one Friday night she shaved her own head at Esther's Haircutting Studio?

Flowing hair is so tied up in notions of female beauty and a visible symbol of femininity/reproductive power… that for any woman to remove this symbol MUST be a sign that she has clearly lost her mind.

And so against this backdrop… I lost all of my hair.

Which meant that every day was an assault course of other people’s opinions. I have some comfort I suppose in that actresses who had to shave their heads for roles experienced much the same…

In 2005, Natalie Portman had shaved head for the film V for Vendetta. "Some people will think I'm a neo-Nazi or that I have cancer or I'm a lesbian," she said. Emma Thompson had to do so for the TV film, Wit. "I'll be bald for months," she said. "I'll be sleeping in pyjamas and a hat - no chance of any sex." Even the epic image of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien 3 did not pass without comment – such was the stress inflicted on the actress during the time she had to remain bald that she told the directors that if there is an Alien 4 she would do it again ONLY for a large bonus.

These are all women who were paid millions of pounds for their roles and for the inconvenience of a bald head for a few months…. And yet they still found the experience unpleasant… traumatic even.

Women are under constant societal pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way, and as a result, their hair is inextricably bound up with their femininity, sexuality and self-image. People expect women to have hair. If they don’t it is only acceptable to believe that they are victims of a disease so you can drown them in your pity. If the hair loss is for any other reason … well they did it to themselves so they are freaks. And someone like me who lost their hair due to a faulty beauty product is just a rightful example of the price women will pay for vanity. It is seen that what happened to me is entirely my own fault (damn the fact that 98% o women in this country use hair colorants).

I didn’t realise, until it happened, how much my idea of myself was all wrapped up in my image I now look at myself in the mirror, and I am repulsed. So total is the conditioning that a woman must have hair… I am nowhere ready (some 2 years later) to trot about al la Gail Porter with a head as bald as a babies arse.

To cover up the baldness, and remove myself from other peoples points of view and my own… brings on a mighty array of armoury. But bathing, swimming, hot days, trying on hats, dancing, wind, fairground rides, leaning forwards or backways, earrings, open top cars, car ferries, trying clothes on, even holding a friends baby… all risk suddenly revealing a bald head. Intimacy… even someone stroking your ‘hair’ or pushing it from your eyes…. Is to be avoided less you be revealed. There is now nothing more terrifying than a group hug… or indeed an arm around your shoulder… the weight of another’s limb can make a cover-up slip and reveal all. For the last couple of years, those meeting me for the first time find me quite devoid of physical warmth and cordiality... but really I just don’t want them to knock something off my head!

Suddenly you have to rethink a whole lot of things. Including travel abroad.

So… off to sunny Spain I went. The country that gave us the chignon, the flower in the hair, the sexy senorita with the beautiful, gleaming tresses. The country headlining the fashionistas bible with a little bag designer called Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, fashion house called Balenciaga, and a shoe maker called Manolo Blahnik. The country where style is EVERYTHING… from head to toe. I am pleased to report that I committed no crimes of fashion….My shoes matched the bag, my personal style drew the odd compliment… But my hair WAS very different from the local senoritas.

Oh I rocked it… in a short black cute wig called The Dali. After the area’s famous surrealist artist. I thought it was fitting!

BLOG 33: The Anticipation of Travel

The Anticipation of Travel

"I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.” James Baldwin Legendary American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist and civil rights activist

My father travelled almost 5000 miles to settle in England. My Mother also. Travel is a fact of life in our family - we are not lily-livered about travel. Between us we’ve done all the continents, some of us have worked in other countries as well as enjoyed the pleasure of being a leisure tourist. As a unit we really believe that you cannot know yourself until you have put a few miles between you and all that is familiar. A great deal of my attitude to living in the UK comes from the fact I have not only seen that green grass is not as green as you thought when you are in the other field, but that you also are not what you thought.

Okay, travel brings with it airport queues, late and missed departures, struggles with odd languages (DON’T remind me of working in Sweden… you try getting your tongue around “vad tid är frukost?” (what time is breakfast?) when you have a massive hangover!), misconceptions with culture (in both Canada and the USA it is normal for a complete stranger to join your restaurant table!) and strange insects (don’t remind me about opening a book in Dubai to find a gang of Zoraptera (a kind of book lice) munching through the pages). Travel by its very nature an exercise in pushing you out of your comfort zone. I’ve already mentioned my first trip to California in an earlier blog. To be 5300 miles from home, without money or documents is not something I would of actively pursued as a happenstance, however in retrospect I am so glad it happened. It released in me a resilience and practicality I had no idea I possessed, and instead of picking up the phone to get Ma and Pa to sort me out – I did. That trip taught me that NOTHING can go so wrong that you can’t fix it. (Except in the case of Zoraptera… I let them finish the book as they were obviously more into it than I!)

I’m not a stranger to travel, being on the road for work since my early twenties meant planes, trains and automobiles were a fact of life. As was waking up in climates and scenery VERY different from home – it would be interesting to calculate the percentile of my life to date that has been spent in this manor. I’m no mathematician but I think it would be alarmingly high.

In a couple of days time, I am off on a brief jaunt to Spain to catch up with a girlfriend I have not seen a couple of years. It’s just a three day/two night jaunt. We are meeting up in the capital of Catalonia….Barcelona… and I’m booked into a top rated hotel in the Gothic district which is very cosmopolitan. Nothing too taxing here for an experienced traveller like me. Right now as a write a thunder storm brings cold needles of rain on my city and we shiver in an unseasonable 59°f – yet the sun shines and it is 79°f in Barca right now! I’ll leave London City Airport at breakfast and be unpacked and ready for lunch in Barcelona an hour before my favourite restaurant there opens! After all THIS is why I live in Europe. 47 countries, 230 languages, 5 different climates/terrains, and a shed load of completely different cultures and religions all a short-haul flight away.

So, as a child of parents who in relocating continents know all about adapting to a different culture, as an adult who has not only holidayed abroad but worked overseas, and as an ex travel-industry employee… I must a dab hand at travel by now.

You’d think!

I am my usual pre travel neurotic mess. Everytime I leave the UK... I go into a crazy, illogical neurotic meltdown!

My first bout of neurosis is … can I get to the airport?

YES. I did say I am flying from London City. Like about 10 minutes travel on the fabulous new DLR link! I stand in my back garden and I can see Canary Wharf’s iconic tower and I am well aware that London City Airport is the back yard of Canary Wharf. But do you think this is a comfort? NO.

Monday found me doing a trial run to the airport with a stop watch. If that isn’t bad enough I stalked around the terminal timing the queues at the BA check in desk. Of course it wasn’t long before airport security was notified about the crazed looking woman with no luggage and a stop watch and notepad. I must say they do make a delicious cup of tea in the LCY interrogation room… so glad our police have dropped their shoot to kill policy on suspected terrorists though!

You’d think that’d be the end of my concerns with getting to the airport… but no.

Appeased that the DLR link really does get to London City in 10 minutes, and that BA’s queue management is more than adequate, I am now obsessing about getting to the DLR station itself.

Yes, this tiny 3 mile journey has me very concerned. Should I just jump on a bus… but what if it gets stuck in traffic? So I have tested every bus route… 51 is direct, but the 96 has a route with less traffic, but…what about the 99… it does go around the houses but it is more regular? Should I just book a cab? But what if I get one of those drivers who don’t go the fastest route…or keep letting people out at junctions? Maybe I should just blag a lift… I have two people currently agreed to drop me off. And yet I regularly make the journey to this town, and I know it takes 15-20 minutes by public transport or 5-10 minutes by car… why now because I have a plane the other end, am I fretting about a journey I have been doing since I was 13?! For the love of mike- it is JUST THREE MILES!

Having lined up two possible chauffeurs, provisionally booked one taxi, timed the DLR and the BA queue, I have now found something else to fret about.

Packing.

Now to put this perspective, I used to be a member of a touring dance company back in the day. This meant one night Malta, next night Spain, next night Denmark, next night Italy and so on and so on. You can’t follow the kind of punishing schedules we had to… and not know how to pack. After I retired from the troupe, I worked in Publishing and Travel where again it was suitcase at the ready… business trips were all about cramming in as many places as you could between trains, planes and automobiles. So it is fair to say, I KNOW how to pack.

I have the capsule wardrobe thing covered. Any experienced traveller knows these are the rules:

. Safari dress

. Floral dress

• Floppy hat

• Gladiator/flat sandals

• Tote bag for beach, shopping and sightseeing

• Clutch bag for evenings and more formal day events

• Sunglasses

• High heeled shoes or sandals for evening – 1 pair in a neutral shade such as pewter or bronze work well

• Lightweight flip flops for beach (not essential)

• Lightweight, neutral cardi for cool evenings

• 2 sets of swimwear with 2 sarongs

• 1 pair of linen trousers (wide leg to be on trend)

• 1 or 2 smart, embroidered vest tops

• 3 or 4 cotton tops for the beach and general day wear

• 1 pair of cropped trousers and 1 skirt for day and beach wear

. Underwear/sleep wear

. Mini versions of lotions potions and cosmetics.

• A couple of sets of jewellery – 1 for the safari look and 1 for the floral look

And yet….

I know that this packing list is fine if going away for a long period… so all i have to do is scale it down appropriately to this trip. But suddenly I have no idea how to pack for 2 nights. Despite the fact that I have been on more weekend jaunts than practically anyone I know I have forgotten HOW I scale down the above and travel with cabin baggage only.

It’s not the clothes…. It’s the shoes. I have looked at my friend and I’s proposed Barcelona schedule 100 times… and thought… how many pairs of shoes??? Please it is two nights… how many feet do I have? But I find my self thinking… black pumps to travel in (having tested out London City Airport departures the floor is not heel friendly)… then straight to hotel… change. Maybe a nice pair of kitten heel sling backs for lunch. In evening… we’re probably going out to dinner then clubbing… shoes are under the table for dinner but clubbing brings shoe problems… Elephant (the one that looks like a movie-scene) is super trendy and is full of fashionistas but Razzmatazz (where Jack Johnson used to play) might be the mother of all clubs but dress code is low key. Saturday is probably a pumps day… La Sagrada Familia, (well everything Gaudi from Park Guell to his various houses,) Las Ramblas...and a lot more other things… especially as I may have do the stadium tour again… but shoes for the evening… okay no clubbing BUT. Oh then there is Sunday… that’s a Mediterranean day… defo flip flops…but the old Olympic village has a cute port…but if we go on a boat..shall I pack deck shoes?

I have one tiny bag, half full with my scaled down clothes but every time I pop in my shoe allowance…. EXCESS.

Which leads onto the next bout of neurosis… what if Barcelona has suddenly changed?

Now even I know this is nonsense, but the feeling is so real. Barcelona must be the European city I have been to the most (well… apart from Paris, but I don’t like that city so I won’t pretend to know it). Barcelona and I have been having a love affair for a few decades now. My last trip to Barca though was so memorable (for a load of reasons I blush on behalf of those involved to mention here) that it has been a little while since I was last there. Now Barca is a city founded in the 3^rd century BC… it’s been around a while… WHAT ON EARTH do I think could have happened to it that will catch me by surprise?? Maybe it is because my friend (that I am meeting there) has never been there before that has brought this panic on… but believe me I am convinced that not only all the clubs will be different, but that Gaudi’s famous buildings would have fallen down, there will be NO tapas and that the port would have dissolved into the sea taking the golden Mediterranean beaches with them. I am convinced she will look at me and say “WHY are we HERE???”… and it’ll all be my fault! (Apart from the fact that Barcelona was HER idea…. But that is being neurotic for you!)

Whilst we are on the subject of illogical neurosis… I am also convinced that planes are unnatural to the sky.

YES...neurotic or WHAT! At one stage in my illustrious travels I qualified for top tier membership in one airlines frequent flyer programme – so we are not talking about a sufferer of pteromechanophobia (fear of flying). It’s just that I get confused about the science behind flying. I know that the engines do not keep a plane in the air; I know that engine failure will not make a plane plummet to the earth. I know that the media sensationalise airline crashes (and the high casualty rate per incident), in comparison to the scant attention given the massive number of car crashes that happen every day. I know airline security are busier with folk like me lurking in airports than with terrorists who plot to blow up planes… cause there really are not that many terrorists out there. But I am convinced that by putting myself in this unnatural flying bird in a couple of days means… I will never live to tell the tale.

The fact that I have completed many many thousands of thousands of miles in unnatural flying birds without anything more than a late arrival doesn't help to convince me that making this trip is a sensible option! So in between waking up with the sweats that Barcelona has morphed into Raskol Papua New Guinea (the best place to go if urban deprivation, rape, robbery and murder are your thing) I alternate with dreams of exploding planes.

And YET.

If I had to list my favourite activities – international travel is right up there.

I am sooo looking forward to being in Barca with one of my favourite girlfriends, sipping sangria, feeling the warmth of the Spanish sun, enjoying the amazing culture, confusing the locals with my appalling Spanish and having time out from the hum-drum that is a life lived in just one country.

Why can’t I just wish myself Bon Voyage?

To be honest, the anticipation of international travel seems to (rather than excite me) send me into a tizzy of merry mental emotions, rendering me incapable of doing of doing things I have done a zillion times before! I just wish I could calm down about packing a few bits of clothes, getting to the airport on time, arriving in one piece, enjoying the destination and getting back whole! I know it is crap and illogical, but EVERY trip I have ever been on brings out the same old neurosis… this short jaunt to Barcelona is no different than any other. I am very good on the here and now BUT so bad at anticipating the future!

In the landscape of time, there are few locations less comfortable than that of one who waits for event to arrive at some moment in the future. I think the philosopher Robert Grundin said something like that once. How true Bob… especially in my case….How bloody true!

Tienen un gran viaje Jax!