Do two lovers really miss the tranquility of solitude? I'm not usually given to questioning the wisdom of Paul Weller's lyrics, but I only ask because it's awfully quiet around here without my husband-to-be. Perhaps too quiet. After much agonising he decided to accept a three month contract doing something technical for a gambling company in Gibraltar. Within days of saying yes to the post he'd flown around 1080 miles to the other side of Europe and left me here. So I'm living alone for the first time in around a decade.
The changes have been quite dramatic, as one would expect. There's less washing and ironing piling up and the flat seems to be maintaining a higher level of tidiness than usual. I have also received a number of invitations to dinner from friends and neighbours. This amuses me greatly as we never received even half as many invitations as a couple! Actually, I think I should start inviting other people over to eat as I'm finding it difficult to scale back portion sizes. I made enough rice for two the other night, but ate it anyway. If I carry on like this I shall be enormous August.
Together my absent love and I have discovered the wonders of Skype, which enables me to see if he is looking tired or suffering from sore hayfever eyes from the comfort of the kitchen while I'm cooking my gargantuan feasts for one. The laptop lets me make a fuss of him from afar and he gets the dubious pleasure of seeing my ugly mug every night. I'm trying to choose a variety of locations around the flat to host our chats, changing the props and backdrops for each video call so that he doesn't get bored. He likes to play with extreme close up shots. So far a carton of orange juice (because the Spanish for juice is "zuma" or something similar, and that's a funny word), some sparkling mineral water (because it had gas in it, and that was apparently funny too) and a jumbo sized heel blister (because he wore the wrong socks with the wrong shoes) have loomed up at me from my screen. I get the feeling that our chats will soon be stage-managed, epic productions on the scale of "Lawrence of Arabia".
I'm not really totally alone, of course. Thanks to his mad panic trying to find some scales to check that his hold baggage wasn't over the weight limit the night before he flew out, everyone in our building knows that he's gone and I'm still here. Apparently the chap downstairs knows Gibraltar well as he used to live there. His dad used to be an air traffic controller there, which is nice. Neighbours, friends and the internet don't necessarily make this whole process a lot easier, though. I think this is by far the hardest thing we've ever done as a couple. He's only a wee fella, but it's amazing how much space there is around here when he's gone. Still, three months is nothing. He'll be popping back and forth - in fact he should be here later tonight as we're off to see the registrar and complete our legal preliminaries for marriage on Tuesday. Then come October we'll be married and he'll be mine forever. I shall try my best never to let him go again, but I suspect he'll have other ideas. He's full of surprises. He may take a new contract with a yurt manufacturer in Outer Mongolia, or something similar. Or maybe I could get my own back and become a seasonal sheep shearer on Mull. His unpredictable nature can cause a lot of grief, but it's one of the reasons I love him. It doesn't do to make life too predictable, does it?
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Anyone for Tennis?
I've been dipping in and out of the coverage of the French Open tennis. I like a bit of tennis, actually. There's a strong mental aspect to it - kind of like a duel without the pistols.
As you probably know the home of the French Open is the Stade Roland Garros, situated in the outer environs of Paris. I'm sad to say I've never visited it. The funny thing is, though, that this prestigious grand slam tournament venue is actually situated (according to one of my Parisian guidebooks) on Avenue Gordon-Bennett. 2 Avenue Gordon-Bennett, to be precise.
Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.
As you probably know the home of the French Open is the Stade Roland Garros, situated in the outer environs of Paris. I'm sad to say I've never visited it. The funny thing is, though, that this prestigious grand slam tournament venue is actually situated (according to one of my Parisian guidebooks) on Avenue Gordon-Bennett. 2 Avenue Gordon-Bennett, to be precise.
Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Curtain Up
Last week I finally hung the new curtains in our living room. We bought a curtain pole and some finials which match the pattern on our fireplace soon after we moved into the flat. For a year and a half they sat, propped up against the wall, their only useful moments being when we cooked sausages and a long pole was needed to silence the smoke alarm. In an optimistic fit of New Year resolve we bought some curtain fabric in the January sales and since then I have been trying to make curtains out of it. At times it has felt like going into battle with the voluptuous quantities of fabric and liner.
The saleswoman in the John Lewis fabric department was very excited about my desire to make the curtains myself. "Ooh, you're young," she said. "You'll always make your own curtains in the future after doing this." I think I was seduced because she called me young, so I set about the task with great vigour. I decided that I wanted curtains that dropped from above the window right to the floor. I wanted a dramatic, opulent look in the room. Also, there was a lumpy bulge in the wall beneath the window that I wanted to cover up. All this meant that the curtains would be significantly bigger than me. They had the upper hand size wise. Wrangling around seven metres of fabric proved to be a significant challenge. Most awkwardly I had to move a lot of the furniture out of the living room in order to provide the only space big enough to cut the fabric and lay out the curtains side by side to match the pattern repeats between them. For those readers keen to eradicate bingo wings and improve upper body strength I recommend curtain making. My poor muscles had never ached so much. Coupled with the pain of sore, pricked and bleeding hands from all the pinning and tacking I had to do, I was in pretty bad shape throughout the process.
It wasn't just me that was feeling the physical strain of the task in hand either. My ancient, secondhand Singer Stylist sewing machine had not been used for some time before it was pressed into curtain making service. Actually I had been keeping it in the living room as a kind of symbolic act since we moved in, trying to show visitors that I was somehow in the process of properly dressing the window in that room. The last thing I sewed, come to think of it, was a draught excluder for a bedroom in our old rented cottage. I bought a load of cheap pink cotton and made it in the shape of a penis. I still have it - I use it to frighten some of our more delicate friends with. Anyway, after making that I carefully cleaned the machine and oiled it before putting it away. This meant that when I got it going again for the curtains it emitted gentle puffs of smoke for a while, presumably as the old oil burned off the newly heated up motor. The smoke stopped after a couple of sewing sessions, but the strong smell of sewing machine oil persisted. There was a certain heady atmosphere pervading the flat whenever I sewed. Luckily the machine held up for the entire project and still seems to be going strong.
Overall it took me four months of spare-time sewing to finish the curtains. I received some very helpful advice from the lady in John Lewis, looked up how to do some things on the internet and worked out the rest myself. I probably could have finished the job more quickly, but frankly there were some times when I just didn't want to look at the damn curtains, let alone sew them. A fine example of this would be when I had to sew on and unpick the heading tape over and over because I couldn't get the thread tension right on the machine. Now, though, they look fantastic. I even made three matching cushion covers out of the same fabric to go with them, and I get the pleasure of telling everybody that I made them. The living room looks great and I reckon that, despite all the effort it took, I would definitely make curtains again. It was worth it. I became even more proud of my soft furnishings when I happened upon an episode of "Kirstie's Homemade Home" on Channel 4 the other day. Kirstie Allsop was going into raptures because she'd made a cushion all by herself, then she promptly turned around and commissioned a professional curtain maker to finish the job and dress all the windows in her fancy holiday home. Having made my own curtains I felt extremely superior. I've earned my home furnishing spurs the hard way... and I didn't feel the need to make a t.v. show about it, so there.
The saleswoman in the John Lewis fabric department was very excited about my desire to make the curtains myself. "Ooh, you're young," she said. "You'll always make your own curtains in the future after doing this." I think I was seduced because she called me young, so I set about the task with great vigour. I decided that I wanted curtains that dropped from above the window right to the floor. I wanted a dramatic, opulent look in the room. Also, there was a lumpy bulge in the wall beneath the window that I wanted to cover up. All this meant that the curtains would be significantly bigger than me. They had the upper hand size wise. Wrangling around seven metres of fabric proved to be a significant challenge. Most awkwardly I had to move a lot of the furniture out of the living room in order to provide the only space big enough to cut the fabric and lay out the curtains side by side to match the pattern repeats between them. For those readers keen to eradicate bingo wings and improve upper body strength I recommend curtain making. My poor muscles had never ached so much. Coupled with the pain of sore, pricked and bleeding hands from all the pinning and tacking I had to do, I was in pretty bad shape throughout the process.
It wasn't just me that was feeling the physical strain of the task in hand either. My ancient, secondhand Singer Stylist sewing machine had not been used for some time before it was pressed into curtain making service. Actually I had been keeping it in the living room as a kind of symbolic act since we moved in, trying to show visitors that I was somehow in the process of properly dressing the window in that room. The last thing I sewed, come to think of it, was a draught excluder for a bedroom in our old rented cottage. I bought a load of cheap pink cotton and made it in the shape of a penis. I still have it - I use it to frighten some of our more delicate friends with. Anyway, after making that I carefully cleaned the machine and oiled it before putting it away. This meant that when I got it going again for the curtains it emitted gentle puffs of smoke for a while, presumably as the old oil burned off the newly heated up motor. The smoke stopped after a couple of sewing sessions, but the strong smell of sewing machine oil persisted. There was a certain heady atmosphere pervading the flat whenever I sewed. Luckily the machine held up for the entire project and still seems to be going strong.
Overall it took me four months of spare-time sewing to finish the curtains. I received some very helpful advice from the lady in John Lewis, looked up how to do some things on the internet and worked out the rest myself. I probably could have finished the job more quickly, but frankly there were some times when I just didn't want to look at the damn curtains, let alone sew them. A fine example of this would be when I had to sew on and unpick the heading tape over and over because I couldn't get the thread tension right on the machine. Now, though, they look fantastic. I even made three matching cushion covers out of the same fabric to go with them, and I get the pleasure of telling everybody that I made them. The living room looks great and I reckon that, despite all the effort it took, I would definitely make curtains again. It was worth it. I became even more proud of my soft furnishings when I happened upon an episode of "Kirstie's Homemade Home" on Channel 4 the other day. Kirstie Allsop was going into raptures because she'd made a cushion all by herself, then she promptly turned around and commissioned a professional curtain maker to finish the job and dress all the windows in her fancy holiday home. Having made my own curtains I felt extremely superior. I've earned my home furnishing spurs the hard way... and I didn't feel the need to make a t.v. show about it, so there.
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