reflections

It was our last and final summer bank holiday yesterday.

It doesn't officially mark the end of summer here, but there is a certain je ne sais quoi in the air; an emotive sensory ether of sorts, clouding my fellow commuters this morning.

The realisation that autumn isn't that far off, there's a chill in the air, and the holidays spent on the Costa del Sol are well and truly done until next year.

It's a time for reflections, and a time where everyone starts buying their NWC. It's actually an acronym here that's well versed amongst the wardrobe watchers: your NWC, as plugged by The Sunday Times this weekend is a New Winter Coat.

This season's is a pale antique rose colour. That's the hue people are going mental for, in case you follow fashion like a motherfucker.

It's also a time for reflection as I consider myself going into hibernation and about to embark on the largest, and most expensive, house alteration I ever envisaged my grown-up self to do.

So with that in mind:

Facebook is just so fucking boring. I've been an avid, mostly subconscious Facebook scroller, since beginning of 2007.  As people my age become less inclined to share anything interesting whatsoever and instead put up endless albums of babies or what they ate - and here's my beef - only babies and/or what they ate - I just don't bother to even go there anymore.

Every now and then, my friend who owns a cat called Monty puts up a funny picture of him sitting on a skateboard or something.

From time to time I see a wedding album, and I go through it in a frenzy, desperate to see how they did their tables.

But that's where it ends. The ratio of baby conversations versus humans actually not speaking in the third person is about 9:1 right now. It would be great if someone I know well would just put up a really dirty joke; or say something like, 'My ass hurts something chronic since releasing that bum baguette.'

Toilet humour might be juvenile, but by God it works.

No wonder Facebook is making people feel sad.

Or they just don't put anything up at all. Can't they mix it up a bit? Just for the sake of me wanting to know what folks are doing back at home? Put up pics of your child for sure, but why not also put something up about drinking too much wine at a wedding or a picture of a car license plate -whatever - people have become so boring.

Myself included. I guess. Facebook sucks big fat boring donkey testicles.

Good thing there are other social networks around to scroll through instead.

Wedges have literally been my summer shoe. I own three pairs of grassy wedges. Formal (for weddings), flowery floral bright ones (for fun) and black and beige ones for everyday office vibes.

Lemme just say. My bunion has gone down considerably.

Since living here, and mainly walking around with my extremities squeezed into boots and socks for most of the year, my foot has grown itself another knuckle. You heard it here first.

Wedges have been the best thing ever - comfy and look hot. Please dear God can September be nice so that I can continue wearing them for that little while longer.

Started spring cleaning. Throwing shit away that we won't have to move. I'm being ruthless. Decor items I've had too long like that funny statue thing I bought in Thailand that I thought was really zenny but is actually kitsch as custard.
Clothes I haven't worn for 6 months.
Boxes with nothing inside them.
White appliances and cooking stuff we don't use, like that extra frying pan and the fucking fondue set that had so much promise but just never happened.

I heard somewhere over the weekend that to be happy, comfortable and have just the right amount of stuff, you should have no more than 100 items.

Now, consider that 'underwear' in itself is one item. Because that's an essential and you need more than one. You probably don't need 45 sets of doondies though.
Think of it as a yin-yang scenario, where you're not completely minimalist to be uncomfortable, but not tied to tons of stuff in boxes and bags you'll never open or use, where you're totally bogged down with clutter.

I sit in any one of our rooms, at any one time, constantly looking around to see what I can throw away. It's a disease.

Also, not really telling the Brit that his spanner set and USB cable bag - he's a geek, he has an entire cupboard of this stuff - is teetering on the edge of a tip.

I turn 33 in September. 
Just wanted to get that out the way. I have done everything and recently - and more - in my life so far, so maybe for the first time ever, I am not terrified to be this fucking old.

Ever since I turned 19, on my gap year, in France, barely having experienced being drunk more than a handful of times, I have cried on my birthday. Growing old isn't something I've been calm about. Not because wrinkles scare me really, (I mean they're not great, but they're inevitable, so I deal with that fine), it's because I get further away from being youthful.

I get further away from being that happy-go-lucky, irresponsible 18 year old that travelled the world, wrote stories for a living, dyed her hair platinum blonde at a whim, did fun stupid stuff and didn't care about longterm plans or consequences.

But, at 33, I have done most of what I have wanted to do, and more. I have only hit 48 countries out of my 100, but that doesn't mean it's stopping or stopped entirely.

So actually, turning 33 is somewhat of a pretty proud milestone for me. Let's not rip the ring out of it, it's still bloody ancient, but that's just fine.

Actually on second thought, it's still a little bit frightening.