Monday 21 March 2016

New job, new life



Hi ho, hi go it's off to work I go!



It's been eight years since I worked in an office, to the rhythm of a normal work day, to the ebbs and flows of commuter traffic and the juggle (okay, let's be honest, the clash) between family and full time employment.






Don't get me wrong, I've worked my arse off in this time, as a correspondent working from a laptop to multiple platforms in two time zones, as a full time Master's student for a year then as a freelancer battling to stay afloat, convinced every story might be my last. So, I'm no stranger to hard work, I'm not afraid of that, in fact I love it.






But as I headed off to my new office in Canary Wharf in London's City district (a forest of steel and glass, bankers and more bankers - oooh how I love Cockney rhyming slang...think about it) I felt this strange push-me-pull-you feeling between overwhelming gratitude that I've landed myself an amazing professional challenge (and a salary) at this time of total carnage in our profession and a teeny tiny melancholy ache for the little daily things I came to love so much and now trade for financial security: the daily dog walk, the park and its changing light and seasons, the forced down time, between assignments when the biggest challenge was learning how not to succumb to the terror that there'd never be another assignment and forcing myself to knit a pair of socks (and a fox head!).


And so the new adventure begins.....











Thursday 28 January 2016



Landscape and light


The English light, so brilliantly captured by the great Romanticist painters - from Turner on - is something I revel in and even seven years on, I cannot help but stop and photograph what I see, everywhere I go - much to the annoyance of my family.


The other morning, I looked out the bathroom window just before dawn and had a moment of deja vu. I took a look in my art books and found what had sparked it - Sir George Clausen's 'In the early hours'.


I adore this vignette as I pretty much live it every single day.




Pre sunrise is always a magical time of day for me and remains one of the few upsides of being an insomniac who also happens to work as a journalist for a time zone some 11 hours ahead of her body clock!

Can you see why this painting strikes me so?




















Saturday 9 January 2016









The thing I love most about living in Europe is the change of seasons and the way nature signals where we are in the yearly cycle around the sun.





This year however, even here in London where the parks and gardens change dramatically, from fragrant, leafy, flower heavy oases to ice coated, skeletal wastelands, there is confusion.






Trees and flowers are perplexed, teased out of their hibernation by a seductively warm December, diluvial rain and Spring like temperatures.




And so, for the first time in our eight winters in London, December and January look and feel more like March and April.



Climate change? What climate change?