hmm… well payday came and went.

i’ve blown a large chunk of it booking a holiday for easter weekend in paris, so it’s all about careful spending from now on, until next payday. i wonder how people with mortgages go on holidays. maybe they don’t. maybe people on my paypacket don’t have mortgages AND go on holiday at the same time.

in other news, it’s been a strange couple of weeks. both emotionally and vocationally. but one’s looking up, and the other’s starting to get back to an even keel, so it’s all good.

right now i’m off to go celebrate a leap year bebe’s birthday. woot!

it’s payday tomorrow.

i’ll discuss my experience of getting my first full salary as a trainee solicitor soon.

but, for the moment, here’s what i’m going to do with it:
+ book a tres expensive easter weekend in paris
+ buy a couple of books and dvds i’ve been eyeing
+ get a ready-for-spring classic trenchcoat
+ etc

i can’t wait!

there’s a coffee@ on the way to work in the mornings, and i stop there to get my small soya cappucino, a quick glance at the morning headlines and and bit of the chat to the baristas (and baristress?). i get along particularly well with one of them, a girl from auckland.

this evening i popped in on the way back to buy some food to supplement my dinner and she popped her head out and ran towards me and gave me a high-five exclaiming that they’d found the PERFECT flat in highbury islington. i was genuinely happy for her, and we stood around the counter chatting about this place she’d found.

it made me smile, as i walked out, thinking how amazing it really is, this intersection of our lives - we’re not complete strangers, we can talk about her new flat, and yet i still don’t know her name. or she mine.

y’know, it’s been a strange weekend.

but tomorrow i go back to work and routine returns, at least until friday night.

as much as i think i like excitement and adventure, maybe all i really want is a hot chocolate and a lie-in under the duvet with a good book.

maybe.

or maybe i’m just not sure about myself outside of work, where there are clear boundaries and where i know i’m perfectly capable of carrying out the tasks given to me. or even if i’m not, it’s okay because i’m not expected to be good at anything.

people are much harder to be certain about.

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -

but anyway, i was sitting on top of my duvet on my bed with the papers spread out all around me and the sun just hitting the top of my head.

and it appears out of the blue, this memory of rob, his friend who is an actor (matt?), and i on primrose hill sledging down the slopes with canteen trays on our bums. we’d stolen the trays from our halls of residence, took the bus and walked through regents park and climbed that hill with those trays in our hands, like so much armour against the cold. when we reached the top, the kids all had way cooler stuff than we had. but it was fun, and we had a snowball fight and then took the bus back again when it got too dark to see. that was my first winter in london.

how far we’ve all come since.

i love this series. photography and dark humour. honestly, what else could be better?

it’s chinese new year next week - yet another year i spend it sans famille.

the past ones have been spent, variously, in chinatown, in friend’s living rooms, and in the kitchen when i invited friends over for a feast. this year, unfortunately, shall see no feasting as 1) the shared utensils in my current place are CRAP and i have misplaced my cleaver that is so essential in feast-making; 2) there is no dining table in the living room, and feasts are not meant for standing around the room trying to eat off a plate while looking for someplace to put one’s glass down; and 3) i’m too lazy.

but i’m sure i’ll convince some of my fellow trainees to come for a (late, i presume) dinner at dim t by the office on thursday evening, and i’ll traipse around chinatown hoping i can find ba kwa or pineapple tarts on the weekend.

a friend wrote recently about music and smells - freshly made love-letters, new banknotes, and mandarin orange peel accompanied by the ubiquitous, blaring chinese new year tunes.

i planned to do a weekly sunday entry, but the last two went past too quickly for me to stop and write something down.

so far, training’s been fun. i’ve discovered that i like advocacy training, but it doesn’t mean that i’d like to be a solicitor advocate. i’m going into the banking department for my first seat, and being supervised by an insolvency partner - woo hoo!

my room has approached a state of constant disarray. i tidy up, and then it all goes awry much too soon. sigh.