A Whole New World...The Start of a New Zealand Road Trip

It seems funny to think that this most epic of road trips began with some donburi and teriyaki bento in a little suburb outside Glen Eden, West Auckland. We were hangry and a little hungover and had already argued a little about map-reading techniques within the first ten minutes of the journey, but that's how it began.

We had spent most of the previous Saturday (this was Monday) drinking on a mini wine tour, then beers in the Hallertau brewery, followed by a couple of cans of Woodstock (a sickly sweet bourbon and coke mixture from A's adolescence), finishing off the night with a mix of different drinks - more beers, wine, and finally - ouch -whisky sours. The Woodstocks, I was told, had to be drunk outside, on the beach at Muriwai, and it was explained that this was West Auckland tradition: you couldn't have grown up as a "Westie" without having done that, so I chugged down the sweet alcopoppy thing, whilst realising I was on one of the most incredibly beautiful beaches I'd ever had the pleasure of watching a sunset upon. We started out full of chatter and laughter, but as the bright sun waned and we watched a million colours in the sky illuminated in the many rockpools on the ground, it seemed to quieten us, as if we had to pay reverent heed to what we were witnessing.

Actually, that was the second impressive beach I'd seen already in my first week in New Zealand. We had taken one of our first drives out a few days prior to Piha, a spectacular surfing beach on the Tasman Sea, with a permanent town population of 600. It's incredibly rugged, famous for a giant formation known as Lion Rock and the first ever NZ board-riding competition in 1958, and is surrounded by subtropical forest and various impressive hills and rock formations. It's one of the beaches where The Piano was filmed, and it lends itself well to melancholy art: a song, a poem, a piece of prose, a painting all might suggest themselves to someone so inclined, were they to have visited on a day like we did; overcast, windy, and brooding.

Driving through the countryside towards our first stop in Rotorua, I was reminded of Scotland's green peaks and burns shimmering in the low sunlight, but also of the great American landscapes I have only seen in films: the flat, wide roads, the tall pine forests, and the seemingly endless shapes of mountains forming on the horizon. We started out listening to Maori radio, and I felt inspired by the newness of this place, moved by its exoticness, its duality, its storytelling in two languages.

It was the same feeling I'd felt the evening before, as we had walked out of the house for the first time that hungover day just in time to see the sunset. We had walked to A's old primary school up the road, set on the side of a hill with a huge Macrocarpa tree, and looked out to views of the Waitekere ranges and prehistoric-looking forest. We noticed a Sunday church service taking place in the small school chapel, and the attendees were Pacific islanders, either Tongan or Samoans, speaking in a language we could not understand. Soon, however, as we started ascending the small footpath, we heard the strains of a haunting song sung by a choir of strong voices. It hung around us like the scent of flowers at dusk, and clung to us, silencing our chatter as we reached a magical little waterfall above the path, itself enclosed in a hushed cathedral of green.

I've spent much of the last three weeks feeling awed like that. Maybe the photos below will help to begin to explain it.

Manifest Your Destiny.

These were three words that came to me as I sat down to write at a busy Barcelona café last night.

I have decided to embrace that spirit, as I feel the strong pull of returning to this place that truly feels like home, but of course in recent months I have been anxiously analysing the details, like not yet having a job lined up, or the ridiculous Brexit deal being floated that treats EU citizens as lesser people, and I worry about the repercussions for UK citizens settling in the EU.

But the new model (cobbled together from plenty of thinking, and listening to others I trust, but little reading on the subject) is thus: Don't worry about what might happen. That's such a waste of energy. Instead, focus on the goal. Envisage it as clearly as you can. Drive all your energy towards it. Imagine how it will feel when it is achieved. What you can imagine, pretty much, can happen. 

I wrote down those words. They were somehow already familiar to me. Googling them quickly I realised they are a best-selling book on spirituality by the late Wayne Dyer, one of the most widely-read self-help gurus, and a former high school guidance counselor. That's the job I do right now, by the way; some weird synchronicity there.

I'm trying hard to live those three words. I'm trying to both live in and embrace the present, as well as envision the future I would like. I think it's important to do both, but mostly to be grateful for what you already have. In the past few days, meeting up with friends I made whilst living here in Barcelona, I have verbalised the plans I have had for a few months now, to leave Costa Rica at the end of my work contract there in 2018 and come back to the city I love, the one I miss when I am away from her.

Of course all of this is accelerated by Brexit in 2019. If I'm going to stay here, I figure, I may as well get here and settle as soon as I can, before my passport makes that more difficult. In the last few days, I have mentioned to my friends the ideal school I would like to work at: The British School of Barcelona, which is not in the city itself but in a small neighbouring town right by the sea. I could spend less in rent there, meaning I might be able to afford a flat with a balcony or some outside space, get a small dog, and come to central Barcelona at weekends. I thought about it first because they have always been a supportive and welcoming school, one which I have had contact with now for several years as I used to visit them for my old job.

So imagine my surprise when I was crossing the street coming from the supermarket this morning in my friend's neighbourhood - a place I just happen to be staying, to look after her cat - and I see, two steps in front of me, my contact from the British School of Barcelona, who was the Head of the Secondary school. I greet her, and she clearly remembers me. We exchange updates, and it transpires that she is now the school's Headmistress. I tell her about my tentative plans to have sent her an email in the coming days and my eventual plan to relocate back to the area. She encourages me to send the email, and we exchange warm goodbyes. I am left stunned, smiling at my good luck and at the universe seemingly throwing me a line.

Maybe it's possible. Maybe it's happening. Maybe that balcony, and that dog, and those walks by the sea, are in my future. I walk along, thanking whatever universal force there is, and I can already smell the salty sea air.

Too Much Tomato Soup, or Cognitive Bias & Curvy Edges

Have you heard of the More Exposure Effect? It's one of our best-loved biases as humans. It's the tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them. It explains why you (probably) love Heinz tomato soup, and would actively choose it over another generic supermarket brand. You've probably had more Heinz tomato soup in your life overall then other generic brands, and now you associate Heinz with what canned tomato soup actually is.

So, of course, this got me thinking about relationships. Tenuous allegorical link incoming.

What if you've only had quite a lot of one kind of tomato soup, and you get stuck thinking that's the only kind of soup out there? (I watched the soup nazi episode of Seinfeld recently, that must be where all these soup metaphors are coming from. I'll stop with that now.)

This past year and a half I've had to re-evaluate so hard, with so much effort, what kind of relationship I'd like, or need. I've been a newly single woman, after being in successive relationships basically since the age of 15,  heading towards her mid-30s. Just writing that line makes me feel neurotic. And yet I'm not. This year (well, now 18 months of self-discovery and singular alone-ness) has been some of the most life affirming time I've spent. Of course much of it has been in the company of others, but really, mostly in my own company. And I've lived a lot of life-affirming moments. But usually as part of a couple.

I know that I have an innate desire to be paired up with someone - my own bias, I admit. I like time on my own, and I value my independence fiercely, but there's something in me that needs to be tactile, needs to hear the breathing of another, needs to look into someone's eyes before the lights go out. I'm someone who finds joy in making breakfast for two, who likes to think about what the other would like to do, or see, or watch, who lives for planning unplanned road trips and weekend breaks, who wants to touch, and smell, and taste the other person in their life, living moments with their hands in my hair, and our legs intertwined on the sofa, and cooking soup, or singing, or dancing together. I actually quite like having private jokes, knowing looks and winks shared only between us. I would hate to be one of the "smug marrieds" but I think I'd make a pretty excellent matching jigsaw piece for someone. You know, with the weird curvy edges.

However,  I'm fairly sure that this bias for the familiar, for the neatly sewn-up, for the happily ever after, has caused me to outstay many a welcome in less-than-healthy relationships. Sure, I've learned something from every guy I've been with, and I hope I've taught them things too. But my former need to be paired - like my less-than-reliable cheap bluetooth speaker - has meant that maybe I've missed facing the music. (Another terrible analogy. I can only apologise). What I'm trying to articulate is that I finally feel like I can be alone, and I can be OK with that. It doesn't make me a failure, even as a woman of 34 years old who has many,  many paired-up friends. And although my lovers might come and go, I'm not going to try to "catch" one or hold on to him to meet some kind of former standard, or some societal norm. No, he shall remain out of my road trip plans, and out of my bed, unless his crazy matches my crazy, big time. And right now, I feel more likely to be able to spot a true kindred spirit, by knowing myself better than I might ever have done, at a hundred paces.

And that feels like growth, and it feels as good as making someone soup. But not tomato soup.

La Vida Nueva

Our balcony view - a world away from Vauxhall...

It's been a criminally long time since my last post, and that's mostly because we've been embarking on the aforementioned new life. But I just looked out of the window here and had a moment of catching up with myself, and knew it was time for an update.  Next week it will be four months since we moved into our flat in Barcelona, fondly referred to then as 'the beautiful wreck'. We've spent that time trying to make it habitable and a profitable sideline as a holiday guest room. That's what has consumed our days these past months, meaning we're well behind on our Spanish language learning (please, don't even mention our lack of Catalan)...

During that time, we have painted, plastered, learned how to fix ceiling cracks, scrubbed, bought beds, secondhand sofas, tables, and found chairs on the street, hauled all our furniture up 57 stairs, done 3 mammoth ikea trips, learnt to barter in the markets, started to use the dictionary a bit less, started intercambios, freelancing, a radio station, in the case of my other half (!), held our first dinner party and tried to keep up with the conversation, welcomed friends, family, paying guests, been to the beach a handful of times, thought very seriously about getting a little dog; and started eating dinner much, much later. It's adventure we wanted, and we're having it. And I wouldn't change a thing. (Except obviously having a teleportation device for our friends and family). But they've been coming to visit. And we've loved having proper quality time with them, away from the London hustle we'd become so accustomed to. 

Before, during, after: our living room

Looking back at my notebook from the summer, I can see how far things have come (you get an idea from the photos above, too). In August I was writing on the train en route to the airport to meet my mum, and panicking a bit: 

On my way to pick up mum at Barcelona airport. It's her first visit, and we have been rushing to make the flat appear more finished than it is; having had workmen in for the past couple of days doing everything from changing taps and painting ceilings to industrial polishing of the floor tiles. Just having the floors really clean makes a huge difference, but then so has 30 litres (so far) of brilliant white paint. We started in the huge living room (the ceiling cracks still need fixing) and worked our way to the guest bedroom via the horrid, ugly blue and green kitchen. I don't know how anyone could have countenanced preparing food in that dark, disgustingly dirty room, but it's bright and clean now. The guest room is looking great with a coat of paint and shiny floors; it really will be the jewel in the crown of our little holiday let.

The best thing we have done this week really is ask the upstairs neighbours if we could use their wifi for a week. This has meant we have met them all but also that we have managed to do some research on the building we are living in. We had been given hints of its stature by the owner, who is clearly very proud of the history of the building, but it wasn't until I googled the name of the building's architect that we realised that not only was it famous for housing the Picasso family when they first arrived in Barcelona, it was also the building that the very first photograph EVER taken in Spain happened to portray. And add to that the fabulous setting opposite the Llotja de Mar, Barcelona's centre of trade and industry, plus in later years the art school where Picasso himself trained, and you have a location so incredible we were sat open mouthed whilst reading. It's also wonderful news for our business. I hope these nuggets of history excite and tantalise our guests as much as they do us.

But first : let's hope it passes the mum test!


I'm smiling as I read that through again. Firstly because of the energy it took to be undertaking all of that work, and because we've over the worst of it now. But also because it was still so optimistic, and although I had no idea how things would turn out, or whether we'd ever manage to get the guest room operation off the ground, I put every ounce of faith I could muster into the plan, the one we'd been talking about for years, the one we'd worked so hard to leave our comfortable but ultimately unfulfilling London lives for. Watch this space, as there are undoubtedly more updates to come... and in the meantime, if you're wondering how the beautiful wreck looks now, have a look here. You can even come and stay with us here. I'd be delighted to meet you.

The Quarter-Life Crisis, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Failure

The plan is coming along nicely.

We've identified the city (check), come up with a business plan (sort of) and started tucking away savings (erm...yeah. I am putting that shoe fetish on hold, as of next week. Promise). We've sorted a date to leave our London flat. In February we're moving in with my mum for 6-8 weeks while we squirrel away our rent money. (Eeep.)

All that remains is to get driving (ok, so that's a fairly large undertaking, but my 19 year old cousin has  already beat me to the wheel in Wood Green, so I should bloody well be able to apply myself). It's getting embarassing. My US family members already think I'm some kind of idiot-savant who just about manages to hold down a job and feed myself without being able to drive to Walgreens. Not that we have a Walgreens to drive to. But you get my meaning.

Oddly enough, even with all this change coming, there's a strange feeling of calm about my future washing over me. Even though I have absolutely no idea what the next year will hold, I feel like I'm really working towards something. And even if it turns out to not be a sustainable business, at least I will have tried something independent, and been my own boss. It's not quite 'do what you love', because, as this very clever lady rightly says, what we love changes all the time. So I'm taking what I consider to be some very good advice and doing what I am. What I am is someone who needs a challenge. Someone who has always wanted to be fluent in another language, and do something I feel passionate about. Passion is everything, after all.

I spent this Saturday at the Nordic Study Abroad Conference, as a speaker alongside some very learned professors from the Universities of Cambridge University, Brown, Georgetown, and Copenhagen. 250 young Danish, Swedish and Norwegian students assembled at PWC's Copenhagen offices to hear from those who had done something different, and were all the better for it. I was possibly the least senior person on the billing, with no letters after my name, no ivy-league degree under my belt, and a mere 6 years' experience of working in the field of international student recruitment. To tell you the truth, I was pretty petrified of putting on that little microphone headset and owning the stage in the way some of the more seasoned professors had. Many of the other speakers had been truly inspiring, and they had managed to captivate the audience in that way that only those who have inbuilt charisma, and a true passion for what they are speaking about, can.  But watching the talk preceding mine, from Professor Sudhanshu Rai at the Copenhagen Business School, I was impressed by some home truths in his speech, which was all about not being afraid to make mistakes, or "fail". I was struck in particular by one statement he made, which put the whole 'failure is not an option' culture into a new light. He simply told the audience of very high-achieving, driven students that when we succeed, we experience a state of euphoria, but that when we fail, we experience a state of reflection. It's therefore only with reflection, and true consideration, that real successes are born.

Hearing that actually helped me to make a better presentation (I suppose the pressure of failure was lessened a bit!). I spent the rest of the conference being pretty inspired just being able to speak to these young people, who had such big plans in their sights. I'm not much older than many of them, and they were so committed, so eager to do something memorable, to chase their dreams that it made me stop for a minute to consider why I'm feeling something very similar now. I might be a little late to the party, but I've realised that we all need to do something that scares and exhilarates us once in our lives. 

A tiny me, onstage (bricking it).

I guess now that I'm not as scared of getting up and presenting alongside the great and the good, in front of an audience who will achieve more in their 20s than many of us will in our entire lives, I'm on the right road. There's still loads that I am scared of: getting a phrase completely wrong in my fledgling new language; running out of money; having to live at my mum's again for a few weeks, or months. I'm scared that I might really miss the security of an office job. I might miss London terribly. And I think I still have a lot to learn, even from those 18, 19 and 20 year-olds who haven't figured it all out yet. And basically I think, if I were younger, I'd run at the opportunity to gain new experiences and try out something new.  I'm not getting any younger, so today is the youngest I'll ever be. So I'm going to bloody well do something cool before I'm old.

Maybe it's a bona-fide quarterlife crisis. But hell, I'm enjoying it.

It's all gone a bit quiet round here...

That's mainly because I have a new favourite thing, namely: instagram. A little photo-sharing app that lets you run pictures through a series of retro filters, tag them, and share them with online friends. It's insanely addictive. I've probably come to it quite late, as I'm one of the last people I know to have an iphone. But it has certainly been keeping me from blogging. Maybe I can claim I've been micro-blogging, in a way. Oh no, wait - that's twitter. Or maybe I can consider it photo-blogging. Anyway, if you happen to want to follow my feed, you can do so here and find me as @bittersweetcity if you happen to use instagram too.

A new life manifesto, courtesy of instagram?

The other reason it's all been a bit quiet is probably because this is the start of my 30th year and I've become much more focused on the future. There's a pressing need to shake things up this year, which if you've been reading previous posts, you will know has been on the agenda for the Mister and I for almost 3 years now. Careers have really taken over our lives for the past year, but the continued stresses and upheavals felt by changes at my place of work, and the sector itself, are spurring me on to do something different. And I mean it this time. I'm hoping to be able to quit my job by August and with savings, attempt the long-awaited travelling and working abroad scenario I've been going on about on here for years. I'm working on the plan in earnest now. Here are my prequequisites: 

1. Must be French-speaking. I've been sort-of speaking well-ish for coming up to 12 years. It's time to get bloody fluent. Oui, je voudrais parler couramment, quoi.

2. Must be warmer than Britain. 

That's not a lot to ask for, surely(!) I'm considering anything from training for a TEFL course to pouring café lattés in Bordeaux. Or preferably, rum punches in Mauritius.

The thing that scares me the most is waking up on my 30th birthday on August 25th and thinking, "I know exactly what the next 12 months will be like." I am frightened of having everything all planned out, and yet I want to know what I won't be doing this time next year.

It means having to take risks. Scary, but good. It's the last time in my life I think I'll be able to, before I need to consider if, or when, I have children; before I need to make plans to be near my mum, as I'm her only child and she is on her own. I know being free of responsibility sounds selfish, and it's never truly possible. 

But just once I'd like to try it. 

Surely I'm not alone in having thoughts like these. People of the interweb: do you also have them? Have you acted upon them? Better still, have any success stories or tips you can share? I'd be ever so grateful. 

Til' next time (stick around, I feel an increase in productivity coming on ;)...

Finally, I feel better about work.

Here is the reason why.

Show your support for the public sector strikes happening across the country today by finding out more.

• The Guardian has a page covering activities, with photos and comment from across the UK public sector.
• Twitter: #strike #solidarity #righttostrike
• The UCU website, for anyone working in Higher or Further Education, is a great source of information for those who are new to the sector or have just recently woken up and joined. (That's me, then).

I feel better already.

Escape

This time two weeks ago, I was waking up on a sunny morning in Bordeaux, looking for the first café au lait of the day. The Mister was across the road, buying pains au chocolat, and we were looking at one another sadly, for it was the day we were due to fly back to London.

We had three hours to kill before it was time to get on the airport bus; that most depressing of transport types. We had already walked most of the length and breadth of the city but we knew it was important to keep moving and not think too much about the holiday taking its last gasps of air, and light, before being consigned to a dusty suitcase of memories.

We walked around until lunchtime, as the students at the University streamed out of classrooms and onto sunny squares, as office workers took cigarette breaks and murmured covertly over cups of coffee, and as more new tourists streamed into the city, gaping up at the magnificent sea-horses at Girondins, and snapping the circus big top pitched at the Esplanade des Quinconces. We met a sweet German couple in their seventies who asked us to take their photo with their old 35mm camera. They beamed for the picture like two lovesick schoolchildren. The Garonne glistened and beckoned as children played in the fountains at the Miroir d'eau.  I took a breath, on the tram back to the Gare St Jean, and held it, sitting very still, while I listened to that little voice inside, which said, why not stay?

Collecting our bags from the hotel, we had a minor argument, about something trivial, like luggage tags, or whose bag held the dirty laundry. It was only because we were both sad, and we had nothing to be angry with Bordeaux about. It was like it was something to do whilst waiting for the airport bus, because it was better than thinking about what we were doing; leaving this beautiful place which had enchanted us and made us want to stay and do anything just to have a little dog and live in an apartment with a balcony and raise French-speaking children.

We put our things underneath the bus and they got pushed to the back, as they always do. A family of South Africans sat near to us and talked very loudly about their cars and houses, their tannned blondeness and plentiful gold watchery seeming out of place on an airport bus. As we passed the Grand Theatre, and then the Piscine Judaïque, and finally the international school,  I cried a little. I turned my head away to the window, so no-one would see, and I made a promise to myself.

One day, little voice. One day soon, I will.

We Are What We Eat

We spent the past weekend in northern France, in the picturesque town of Montreuil-sur-Mer, with the Mister’s relations. His step-mother has a cousin in St.Remy Au Bois whose family have lived there for 20 years and now run a successful jam-making business. Their high fruit content jam is organic and delicious, delicately packaged up in little jars and sent off to the crisp white linen-covered tables of The Dorchester, Claridges, and St.Regis hotels, amongst others. They live and work in a lovely barn conversion with huge windows, open fires, and lots of dogs, in a bohemian whirlwind of paperwork, packaging and sticky jam spoons.

Long before this visit I had been itching to visit and see the jam farm idyll for myself. I was secretly hoping that we would be able to proffer our services in getting in up to the elbows in jam in exchange for bed and board for a summer (or longer).

This is something how I imagined our future might go: we’d prove ourselves to be confiture-confiseurs extraordinares, lending our marketing and new media savvy to the operation, and the distant step-relations would soon realise that we were utterly indispensable. They would start to plan for early retirement, knowing the business was safe in our hands. We could do all of the grunt work, thinking we were living the good life, and they could retreat to St. Barts or Martinique or wherever, living off the spoils of their genius idea to move to France and entice these poor overworked cityfolk to do their bidding and ensure a steady stream of income into their sizeable pension fund.

And you know what? I wouldn’t mind one bit. I would happily work my fingers to the bone to have what they have. Their peace, their independence, their knowledge of working for something they created and love and believe in.

As it was, the distant step-relations were utterly charming and had thrown their doors open to all of their friends that weekend, both local ones and those from their lives in the UK. They listened sweetly to our excitable chatterings about how well their jams would do in food festivals and markets across London, and nodded politely at us, even though I suspect they already knew what we were telling them. They blanched a little at the sound of an idea of ours to sell some jams for them in the newly revamped Brixton Village, but they took it pretty well, considering they probably haven’t visited Brixton since the 80s, and might still think of it as a hub of iniquity. They even invited us back to stay, so who knows? Maybe that pipe dream isn’t so far away. Of course, there’s still  the learning how to make jam bit to cover…a minor detail, mind.

The strawberries I tasted there were the sweetest I have ever eaten. Maybe, just maybe, it was a taste of freedom.