endless variations… over and over and over again!
If you have to read a book 4 times a day then any Mo Williems book is an essential addition to the book basket.
Tue, September 2, 2008 at 21:29 Two weeks ago I had seven days of this…
Not in London, obviously - because summer didn’t stop here this year. I need to keep reminding myself that this blue does exist, every day, above the low hanging grey.
Today I rode to work in the rain. Drenched. I had to put soaked trainers on to come home - but it’s still damn better than the tube!
Fri, August 8, 2008 at 00:21 I have ridden to work and back twice this week on my shiny new blue bike.
My. B*tt. Hurts.
Hyde Park is gorgous in the morning!
I am doing it again tomorrow!
cycle to work in livin in the city Mon, July 14, 2008 at 23:35 I was in my late teens when I first came across yoga - in a typically 70’s how-to book with simple pictures of the postures. Picked up from a second had bookshop no doubt, I can remember trying to do the postures but having no understanding of the process, or the intention behind the poses. I can distinctly remember trying them out in my bedroom and feeling altogether silly, even though a part of me wanted desperately to engage in it.
I felt almost as silly in my first yoga group at uni - I have vague memories of standing in a circle in the great hall and being led by some hippie looking masters student, probably as much a novice at yoga as I was. I remember trying to mediate in my room in res and having my closest friend rolling around in hysterical giggles outside my door asking if was floating yet. That phase didn’t last long either.
I joined a few classes in Cape Town, found a teacher who knew how to teach and was quickly hooked even though my attendance was sporadic. Regular engaged practise only began in London in 1998 - when I read about a teacher in some health magazine and called to find out about his beginner classes. He was Simon Low - and back then he taught from a church hall in St John’s Wood - easy to attend weekly on my route home. He taught me 4 things I have never forgotten :
In 1999 I moved across London and needed a new local teacher, somehow ended up in a class in Islington with Ernest Coates, a Sivandanda teacher who taught yoga with almost military precision. His classes were the most comprehensive I have experienced, and while our personalities may have clashed (I have never been very good with authoritarian discipline) I recognise in retrospect how much of himself he gave to his pupils, and how grounded, honest and giving his teaching was - I lost touch with him when we moved back West and googling him is futile. His handbook is still my most used reference book on yoga.
After our move west in 2001, Google led me to Ruth White’s Thursday night class held at Colet House and this is where I developed my practise for the next 7 years - bar a post pregnancy gap almost a year. Ruth’s yoga is Iyeangar based the focus on the stillness and precision of the poses. Colet House is one of those unique places in London, Sandwiched between a railway line and Talgarth Road may not be ideal but you escape all of that when you walk through the doors. I think I was as committed to the venue as I was to the yoga class. We learned yoga through active participation and correction – often correcting each other’s poses through touch and I loved the easy camaraderie that had developed between the students.
When I decided to return to full time work I knew I would need to give up m weekly class with Ruth - the timing was wrong - 6:30 falls right in the middle of prime baby time – difficult to get baby cover and I didn’t want to give up the two hours I spend with my daughter even for one evening / week.
This year I joined another local class with a younger teacher in a local church hall. It is a return to Sivandanda yoga with a little Ashtanga and Pilates thrown in occasionally and I love the increased physicality. The changed in tempo is stretching me and I am finding myself reaching further, and finding the confidence in myself to move deeper into poses than I have for a long time. There is a great deal I miss of my old class, but I feel myself bending further, lifting straighter, balancing with more strength and confidence and I like it.
Yoga is my physical meditation. I love that once a week I stand on my purple mat and using my breath, and the weight and length of my body I follow a series of exercises that either strengthen or make me more flexible. I love that in the time that I focus on the postures I don’t have time to ruminate over what has passed or worry about what is to come - and it is just me in the moment. I love that without thinking I listen to my teachers’ voice and suddenly I am in a pose I wouldn’t have thought I could do. I am balancing on my arms – for two seconds longer than I could two months ago. I am figuring out my head stand and for the first time ever I lifted into the full wheel – a pose many people can do but one that has challenged me for years.
The confidence that comes with achieving each small milestone is a gift of yoga.
When I walk out of a class I feel I am floating on a cushion of energy and I can’t help smiling at the world.
There are seven other aspects of yoga – this physical one is just an easy first, the rest eventually flows on from here and I am still a novice!
Sat, July 5, 2008 at 22:48 This weekend feels like I have just crawled out of a huge wave. Like I have been spun and rinsed by a Cape Saint Francis dumpster. My ears have only just reached equilibrium and I am standing. An almost perfect analogy, except that the ocean brain rinsing freshness is missing. That wonderful ozone cool that surviving a big salty leaves you with. Basically I just feel dumped.
For a moment a couple of weeks ago I thought “jeeze-if-this-is-the-pace-of-my-new-full-time-working-mother-life-I-think-I-better-get-off-this-bronco-pronto-cause-I-just-can’t-keep-the-fuck-up…… !” It was a treadmill. It was brutal. E and I passed each other over a bowl of something hot in the evening and coffee in the mornings.
But is was year-end and a million projects were being pushed to close to get the numbers on the books and I was going on holiday and we had a temp coming in to cover and I needed to hand over a clean patch for one week and no day is entirely predictable and the phone doesn’t stop and I gotta walk out that door at exactly 5:00pm to do my school run and it is a damn fast walk, then the tube, then a walk and then my heart pumps as I walk around the corner and I hear my daughters voice say “mama” in that singing lilt and I smile and we walk home playing games that are so far removed from my day job and sometimes she is tired and I have to carry her some and sometimes she skips all the way home telling me nothing about how she spent her day but asking to pick the violet blue flowers of the weeds that force their way through the cracks in the pavement. Last week in the eaves of the church we could hear the cheeping of tiny chicks as they waited for their mother to return to the nest.
My holiday timing wasn’t fantastic. I skipped a busy week at work to go to Umbria. The dates were non-negotiable. We were celebrating E’s parents 30 years of married life. The entire reconstituted family was there and it was brilliant.
Totally photographic. E’s sister got engaged. There was no major family fight. (tipsy tears by some after a couple of bottles of wine but those don’t count!). I don’t drink wine but I did get cosy with a bottle of lemoncello. Discovered the next day that it goes even better with prosecco but I haven’t tried that yet. The lemoncello is in the freezer though.
We had planned to mission out every day to Florence, Rome, or Sienna but after the first day of driving we decided to slow the pace down and apart from seeking gelatti every day in the middle of siesta (when most places are shut), we did not stray too far from the lawn in front of the house. We ate, and sat, and played with the Chi, and I ploughed through the Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which was engaging, in a ‘Terry Pratchet meets Ann Frank’ kind of way. Holes, by Louis Sachar is more surprising. Sweeter.
It has taken me over a week to catch up with myself since and in that time summer finally crossed the channel. It is still raining but life has returned to a manageable fast walk. I may even get round to calling some friends tomorrow rather than just skimming through facebook to check their status updates every evening. I will read the backlog posts my favourites have blogged. I will mow the lawn. Stir the compost heap in the eager anticipation of a noticeable breakdown of the peels I threw in last week. I will sit down to write about how my Chi changes almost daily so that a part of me waits eagerly each day to see how she will engage with me. What she will tell me. Ask me.
Yesterday I think we had a moment. We were walking to meet E at Waggas for Friday night dinner cause it is summer and the days are long and I wanted to feel part of the city for a little bit longer and she asked me if she was big. Told me that some of the girls in her class say she is the smallest and she is a baby. I had to crouch down to respond. Had to tell her that she was a big girl. That some girls are tall and some are short and that everyone is a little different. My heart was in my throat. My daughter might be feeling rejected. I hate that thought, and I can’t protect her from it.
Today I snuck in an extra yoga class for the week. The most goddamn brilliant class I have done in months. Years even. I splashed out on a class at one of those uber trendy studios that have cropped up all over the place but damn this class had soul. The energy was entirely female and light and enlivened and I had one of those stretch beyond the limits of your knowledge and sweat it out there classes that leave you feeling loose and limber and alive.
And tonight we watched Juno and if you haven’t seen it yet go get it from blockbuster right now! Quirky.
I guess I am going through a teenage phase in terms of literature and movies. Weird!
As for Zim the news remains constant. Things are getting worse. There is less of everything and increasing fear. We all wait and pray, watching from the sidelines helpless to change anything cause you just can’t negotiate with insanity.
Sun, June 29, 2008 at 22:43 So we crash on our couch, watching it all on the telly and wishing we were there again - knowing that the cameras just can’t capture the magic that happens on site. Determined to return, with the Chi! I also stumbled across this site.… and I am not sure exactly what to think!
Tue, June 24, 2008 at 23:18 Zimbabwe. There are no words.
Who Mugabe has become is beyond comprehension. I remember him attending a “Speech Day” at my high school way back in the early 80’s when independence was fresh and there was truly a feeling of optimism and change in the air. Now there is only despair on an almost Biafrian scale. The situation is making international headlines and it feels too little too late. The news that filters out through whispered calls and desperate emails is of a country collapsed. Poverty. Starvation. Intimidation. Fear.
When I hear the blatant lies spouted by people like Boniface Chidyasiku - the Zimbabwean Ambassador to the United Nations as he denies any violence on the part of the police and the army I am so filled with rage I wish I could reach into the screen and hurt him. Hard. Then I wish I could sit with him in a room and force him - with match sticks in his eyes - to watch the video clips and pictures that are flooding our screens. Force him to see before and after shots of homes, farms, families and communities in Zimbabwe. I want to see if he has a conscience. Does he have any regrets or has he stepped so far into the dark side that remorse is beyond him?
I googled him tonight. Ended up on the UN website that gives a brief bio -
” … Prior to his current appointment, Lieutenant Colonel Chidyausiku served as Zimbabwe’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO) based in Geneva, Switzerland from 1999 to 2002. From 1996 to July 1999 he was his country’s Ambassador to Angola. Before that, he was Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China and was also accredited to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and to Pakistan from 1990 to 1996.
Mr. Chidyausiku served as Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1990, and as Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Defence from 1988 to 1990. Between 1986 and 1990 he served as Zimbabwe’s Defence Attache in Washington, D.C. with accreditation to Canada. Commissioned with the rank of Lt. Colonel in 1985, Mr. Chidyausiku served as a combatant with the Zimbabwe Liberation Army between 1975 and 1980.”
He is not the only one that toes the standard party line. How do the high ranking decision makers within Zanu PF sleeps at night. At which point did they turn away from thinking of the success and well being of their people and country and think only of the wealth and power of their elite cabal. Do their children and family look upon them with admiration and pride? Do they stand before their ancestors with honour? I think not. I hope not.
I pray for some kind resolution. I pray for peace.
zimbabwe Tue, May 6, 2008 at 22:21 Am using Meg over there to help me get back into this writing thang…. so if I have to make a choice it would be:
Sun or shade? Sun! sun! sun! (as long as there is water)
Flip flop or Birkenstock?
Beach or lake? Salt air, ozone and ocean waves, body surfing and getting dumped, sand mermaids and shells no contest.
California or Florida? Garden Route South Africa - going with what I know!
Lemonade or Iced tea? Lemonade, freshly squeezed, with a handful of mint.
Sunglasses or hat? Hat. Big.
Grow your own garden, or head down to the farmer’s market on Saturdays? Still getting hang of flowers - so its farmers market - does Waitrose count?
Dinner on the patio, or brunch on the patio? Dinner.
Reggae or Beach Boys? Reggae - and Uncle Bob still rules.
Margarita or mojito? Used to be margarita until one long bad night with a bottle of cheap tequila.
Waterskis/wakeboard or mountain bike? Bike - and I get a new one this month!
Take vacation or avoid tourists? London in high summer when everyone else leaves…. bliss!
BBQ steaks or BBQ salmon? Steak.
Convertible or motorcycle?
holding onto to the dream.
Bike or skateboard? Bike. Easier.
Sailing or kayaking? Kayaking is on my wish list for someday.
Take pictures of the fun, or take videos? Snapshot.
Coconut or mango? Mango - off the tree and sitting in my mothers pool.
Lie on the grass or lie on the sand? Sand.
Lounge chair or hammock? Hammock.
Trampoline or… not? Trampoline…. of course!
ps - thanks Meg!
meme? Thu, May 1, 2008 at 23:49 I did - and neither of the two favourites got my vote today! Can’t vote conservative on principle, and while I think that some of the changes Ken Livingstone has introduced have been successful he lost my vote when he a) extended the congestion charge zone to create a rich mans enclosure against all consultation opinions and b) he prevaricated over the whole Lee Jasper affair.
So I voted for the Lib Dems - because there is something quite progressive and lovely about voting for an openly gay policeman who has admitted to smoking pot. My decision was not based on such simplistic reasons. I listened to some of the debates and I while Brian Paddick may have lacked in the charismatic personality stakes (compared to bolshy Ken and flopsy Boris) - I thought his views considered, calm and logical and I think that having a lib dem mayor could be the catalyst the party needs to take itself seriously with a view to becoming the party in opposition.
And now to bed!
