Can I just say: I am beleaguered by this British season. The mere hint of Spring this week has made me so much happier. Thank God the winter is coming to an end. So tired of it.
Today I spoke to my friend Emma - one of the University friends from the weekend - we debriefed on how wonderful it is that we are all still such good friends and what a comfort it was to sit around a table looking at faces we'd known for over twenty years. For me, a feeling of love and gratefulness that in those early, shy, Autumnal days at college, I happened across this group of people.
Then I realised that my very best friends in life have the following characteristics. They are all strong, optimistic women who have the ability to sum up an issue in one sentence and dispatch a suitably erudite and thought-provoking solution that I can muse over. This set of characteristics extends to all of my best friends (and my Mum for that matter), even though they are a varied and disparate group of women I have picked up along my (nearly) 40 years on the planet. I love that they can all do this and without fail - when one does it - like Emma did today, with a gem of wisdom about how you react to failures in life, it makes me smile.
I've been thinking a lot about work lately. I stopped work eight months ago and so I am about to enter the new territory of the longest time I have not worked in my life. Before work I studied, so frankly I have never had it so good. However, despite my good fortune I do find myself wondering whether I should work again and at what? I decided the day I walked away from the corporate world that I wouldn't go back, but sometimes I get pangs. I don't miss it exactly; but I do sense the loss of it. I have considered the other things I could work at and have yet to conclude which way to go. Interestingly never ever before have I not known what to do with my life. What a novel experience. Since forever I have had it all mapped out and known precisely which way I was going. I am now trying to savour this free-fall and not react strongly and with worry (as would be my habit) to not knowing.
So tonight, it's a fish finger dinner (childhood throwback), Tom Odell playing (Boo's choice), red wine (it's good for you) and after a long day the prospect of a hot bath and an early night.
