Outside Shakespeare's Globe

Six Months Without Dessert What The Pho!

I've been living in London now for a little over 6 months, without going into London itself very much. Living by Heathrow, working the hours I do, and getting little time off, going into the city is just inconvenient. Yesterday was a killer day though, after working over 14 hours I just needed to get a break. So I got the bus, and the tube, so as to walk around town while the weather was still good.

Of course when you go walking you tend to build up an appetite. I've been craving some Vietnamese for weeks now and I just happened to pass a Vietnamese on my travels, instantly I was craving Banh Mi sandwich and some Pho. I was going to satisfy the urge for both then saw the prices and realised I wasn't in Kansas I mean Salt Lake anymore. Decided just to do the sandwich, and forget the soup this time around. Added a little kick to the sandwich with some Sriracha sauce. Needn't have bothered. This sandwich was hot, hot, hot! Tasty enough had I not had a really great banh mi sandwich that I used to eat weekly. This sandwich was one I might eat once a year - nothing special.

So far I have yet to really enjoy eating out in London. I love Peruvian food, probably my favorite cuisine, but in London my experience of Peruvian dining has been though trendy, a little too pricy and the portions a little too small and missing that homely experience I've had in the past.

Vietnamese just didn't hit the mark at all.

Indian in London so far has been a let down to some of the food I experienced in Glasgow.

However today I did put something right. I was wandering around town, working off my sandwich when I passed a french crepe cafe, when it dawned on me I haven't had dessert since I got here, excluding a few lychees (which is just fruit) in a Chinese restaurant in Soho. No ice cream, no cake, nothing in six months! Me, Scottish, sweet tooth, no dessert, how long? - really! Feck off! No really!  Walking on through the city I started craving dessert. Hadn't thought about it in weeks, months maybe. Eating at 1am - 2am as I do, dessert doesn't really come into your thoughts much. But now I'm thinking those crepes looked good. I can hear my wife's voice in my head all those times she offered crepes and I wasn't in the mood for them but I find myself walking back to the Cafe not needing to look at the menu - I know what I want - crepes, nutella, banana. Look at the menu anyway just to be sure its there, scroll quickly half way down, not really seeing anything else, just see what I want and place order. Drool a little.

Wait a few minutes for plate to land on my table. Tuck in. Leave Cafe happy.

Six months really. Why?

A Walk In The Wild Side

Springing Forward

Sometimes I need to get out, breathe and enjoy the sun – shake off a bout of cabin fever. I need to just get out there, stretch my legs and take time to notice life.

Early Spring is all about life. I love every season, but Spring and Autumn are probably my favourite  seasons because the colours and the light change so frequently from day to day. Where as in Autumn everything starts the process of resting, Spring brings new life and energy, and life just seems to 'spring' from everywhere around us.

Probably more than any other year I may have to take more notice of what is going on around me this year, I need to renew some of that energy myself.

Well That Sucked!

Its a funny thing - life! For years you can go on blissfully ignorant of the need for love. You are seemingly happy alone, being an independent person - then BAM! Love happens, and life is never the same again. Where once you were happy to go through life alone, now that is no longer enough. Now you have a higher purpose, desires more pure. You are less selfish, its no longer about you and you alone, two becomes one, now you have another half, a better half, someone who makes your dream and hope and love not just for yourself, someone who makes you better just by them being part of your soul. Its embedded in you deep. You take pleasure in the simple things, moments you may have missed when you were more selfish, lost in your own wandering path through life. That person gives you peace, a new bliss that takes away the need to blindly aimlessly travel through life. Of course we are all human, life isn't always easy, human frailities being as they are love can be lost by human failings.

Unfortunately when that happens you cannot return to a state of blissful ignorance - the goodness of love has been awakened in the soul, and is a painful loss you awaken the heart and have to leave it behind.

I thought I was coping well with the loss of my soulmate. I wasn't exactly happy starting over again 4000+ miles away. I wasn't axactly happy with making less than a quarter of my previous income. Both were difficult to deal with. But I was determined to use time to grow as a person. Understand myself. Rebuild. Refocus my energies. Use life's lesson to become better. I was struggling to overcome, but seemingly gathering strength to move forward.

Five months on I thought I was mentally in a better place. But this week has been hard. First real time I have been sick on my own since. Stupid little cold, flu, whatever, that normally I would shake off as nothing but a nuisance. Instead it just made me feel alone. Today, with no work I decided I just needed to get out of the house, do something normal. Go have a cup of coffee, watch a movie.

Only - movies are one of the things we did as a couple. Doing so alone, just brought back all the memories, feelings, emotions of previous date nights that I had done well to suppress. Being ALONE after LOVE has opened the heart - sucks! Maybe I'm still sick. Maybe I'm still weak. Maybe I'm still heartbroken. I don't know, I do know this was one hard day.

The movie?

NOAH.

Lame.

Russell Crowe did a decent job acting the part, but there is nothing about Noah the character that has a redeeming quality. So the movie itself left me disappointed.

The act of going to the cinema, alone, sucked worse.

Maybe I'm Artistically Stupid, But I Didn't Feel It

Today was a day off from work, and seeing I was in London I thought I may as well see something artistic so I checked out Time Out London to see what was recommended this week and settled on a Visual art exhibit at the Barbican Curve Gallery called  Momentum. Waited for over an hour in line eagerly anticipating what was to come.

Only to enter the darkened room, and find 12 white lights swinging around the room. Really fucking disappointing waste of my time.

I could have spent that time in St Pauls Cathedral.

Or went for a walk along the river.

If I really wanted to be a darkened room I would have been better off watching a movie.