March feels like it's been quite a nice month. It's somehow STILL winter, but I did briefly manage to escape the cold... More on that later.
I've been enjoying having consistently long, nice looking nails for the last year or so, thanks to the revolution that is builder gel (aka BIAB) — it's a bit pricey and you have to get them infilled once a month (c £50 for infills and art each time) but in exchange for that I get a happy little glow every time I see my hands, plus lots of compliments. I justify it on the basis that I do pretty much no other body self-care stuff, and don't really spend anything on all the fancy cleansers and other body products everyone else seems to go in for (let alone make up, which I've never worn)... So this is my treat, while I can afford it.
Still, I have yet to learn the art of actually getting anything done once my nails get more than 4 – 5mm past the end of my fingers, the salon staff are always surprised when I'm like 'please, shorter, my productivity is at around 50%'. (How do other people do it?!)
After a long teaching day, took my partner out on a pizza date as an excuse to get them to take my laptop home so I could go and enjoy a gig for the first time in ages without a heavy bag (Homeboy Sandman at the Jazz Cafe)
My old friend Reggie was in town for a show, and asked me to come join him (and a bunch of other old friends and aquaintances). This time it was at the O2 arena, which is such a weird space, weird vibes. Nice time though, and I successfully public transported my way across London at around 2.30am, which ridiculously, is a first for me. Thank you night tube!
Bought a NEW new phone for the first time in many years (i.e. not a second hander from CEX). Got sick of big stupid phone for man hands and decided to treat myself to an iphone 13 MINI (thankyouverymuch) which hopefully will keep me happy for many years to come. (It's actually just like the first iphone I ever got in 2010 which was probably still the best phone I ever had, form factor wise)
Got to have a cuppa with my old senior designer James. Kinda wild that we talked/worked together every week for a decade and then after we both left the job it's like... Guess that's over?! I do still sometimes miss having a super tight colleague friendship like that sometimes (but we will always still be friends!)
Knowing I was going on holiday later in the month I bunched two packs of the pill together to make my period come a week earlier (rather than while I was away), and while it is effective, by about halfway through the second pack I am always IRRATIONALLY EMOTIONAL about pretty much everything
Had a cute house sushi n games night!
WHY is it still big coat season?! (That said, still feeling extremely smug about the brand new big puffy Cos coat I picked up in a charity shop last summer for a mere £40, it has had a lot of use)
As part of 'trips week' for Graphic Media Design students at UAL, I was asked to run a walking tour with a colleague. We ummed and ahhed and settled on a brutalist walking tour, which neither of us are exactly specialists in, but we figured we'd know more than the students?! My route started with the various buildings that are part of the Southbank complex, passed over the river past 180 Strand and the KCLSU building, the sadly under hoarding 'space tower', on to iconic tower block Centrepoint near Tottenham Court Road, and then on the Elizabeth line (arguably an example of contemporary brutalist architecture in itself) to Farringdon, where we finished off at the Barbican. This wasn't the actual walk, just a test walk which I did on my own to establish timings.
So I booked my holiday with a provider called 'Journee'. Their gimmick is that you don't find out where you're going until you get to the airport — they arrange all your flights and accommodation, and activities while you're there, if you want them.
This appealed to me, because I've been a bit paralysed by indecison about where to go on holiday for a while... I hadn't left the UK since December 2019 (when I spent 3 weeks in Boston), and had mostly been considering going (again) to Germany or the Netherlands, both of which I love and can get to easily by train from the UK... But there's a whole world out there and maybe I shouldn't keep going to the same places?
I really hate flying and find it quite hard to justify, but Journee just hooked me in, and they only book destinations within 2 – 4 hours flight, so I decided to go for it.
You fill out their form and tell them your likes and dislikes, and you can veto things you wouldn't want to do (like boat trips, or wine tastings, no thanks from this motion sick teetotaller). They do try and make the packing process easier by giving you a weather forecast for your destination (which I was told should be 9 – 10 degrees warmer than London, yes please!)
They also give you a series of clues, which were sufficient to enable my partner to correctly guess where I was going, but having little personal interest in history or geography, I had no idea. Yay for ignorance!
(Side note, I put the dates on every day of my visual diary by checking the previous day — mistakenly read 'is' as '15', and got v muddled with the dates over the next few days, just FYI for anyone who pays attention to such details)
Still though, everyone knows going on holiday means you've gotta work extra hard in the run up to try and clear the decks
In 34 years of riding the tube, truly, the most astonishing and hilarious thing I have ever seen.
There's a series of video games about the Japanese Mafia (Yakuza) — they're fighting games, on the surface, but they're actually incredibly rich in plot and are more about men feeling feelings and doing cute little side quests in early 90s Japan than they are about beating the shit out of each other (though there also is a lot of that). My partner is about to replay Yakuza 1 (which comes after Yakuza 0, which was a prequel), so decided to rewatch all the key cinematic scenes to remind them of the plot. I watched with them and got SO INTO IT, I dug out a 19 hour Youtube video which shows ALL scenes (not just the edited plot highlights), as some fun holiday viewing. I'm not super interested in playing the game because I don't like combat games, but in every other respect am enjoying it entirely as much as other big games I've loved. Here's some terrible fan art of the two main characters.
Did the actual Brutalist Walking Tour with 7 surprisingly enthusiastic students. My colleague's kid was sick so she couldn't come, which meant I ended up leading it alone... I think it went well?! To my delight, the Barbican conservatory was open at the end — some of them had never even been to the Barbican before, and none of them had been in the conservatory, so it was a very cool way to wrap it up.
Goths on holiday innit (still packing)
I haven't travelled in so long I forgot how it all works
One of my (very few) criticisms of Journee is that they booked flights at really (to me) silly times. I understand they want to max out on the time you have at your destination, but my outward flight was at 7.35 from Luton — there's no practical way for me to get from Battersea to Luton at 5am (even if I drove that would mean a 3.30/4am start), so I had to get a hotel near Luton the night before, which was extra expense. I was quite anxious about travelling the next day but enjoyed watching an episode of 'Inside the Factory' on the big hotel TV all about how they make London buses
(Note, these next few days illustrations are done on my ipad, as is my away-from-home practice these days)
I got up super early to get to the airport for a little after 5am, and open my envelope from Journee and find out where I was going! I had convinced myself they were going to send me somewhere obscure that I'd never heard of in Eastern Europe (which admittedly might have been fun), but was quite delighted to discover I was actually headed to Lisbon — mostly because I feel like I've seen loads of other people going on holiday there recently, and it looks SO NICE! Also pleased because it's only a little over 2 hours flight and as mentioned, I hate flying.
Because of the early start, my flight arrived at around 10.30am, which was kind of nice, but I wasn't able to check into my accommodation until 14.00. They sent a man to drive me from the airport to my accommodation, but once I got there it was like... well why did you bring me here, I can't even check in?! They'd also given me the wrong reference number and booked it under my middle name which meant there was some confusion, but luckily we eventually figured it out.
The accommodation was some nice serviced apartments, and they did have lockers in the basement where I could leave my suitcase, but first I had to source a 2 euro coin... Easier said than done. After some difficult English > Portuguese translation in a very seedy Bureau De Change I finally got my bag dropped off, and found myself blinking in the light trying to figure out wtf to do in this beautiful new city I suddenly found myself in
Obviously the first thing I did was ride the metro!
I got a train to what looked like it might be the seaside (actually a river, sorry Lisbon), and then slowly meandered my way on foot back to my accommodation over a couple of hours, taking in the beautiful sights and sounds and colours.
The next day Journee had booked me a tour of Sintra, but I had specifically asked them not to book me any car or coach travel because I get motion sick and just generally hate travelling by road for any amount of time. I looked at pictures of Sintra and decided seeing it on google was probably sufficient and there were more interesting places I could go that wouldn't involve suffering in a mini bus all day.
I instead got the metro to Oriente, home of the '98 world fair and all the associated infrastructre, including a cable car, aquarium and lots of great places to eat. Had a very lovely time exploring that area before heading back to my accommodation.
Every day while I was away I had a nice lie in until around 9, woke up in the sun, and left where I was staying by around 10. I'd have a nice outing with lots of walking, and then head back to my apartment by 15.00 or 16.00. I'd then spend two or three hours drawing, reading or napping (I read the entirety of NK Jemison's 'The City We Become while I was away). I'd then head out again for dinner, be back again by 19.00 or 20.00, and lie around all evening texting friends and watching Yakuza 0. It was so restful and calming to just have a bunch of days like this. No work! No emails! Just see some cool stuff, do some gentle hobbies, walk a bunch and eat well. And all in the warm and the sun. What a dream, ugh, take me back.
The next day Journee had also booked me tickets to go see some famous monastery but when I got there it was tourist hell and the queues were like hundreds of metres long. Again, I googled it, decided I literally couldn't care less about seeing it, and instead on a friend's recommendation went to MAAT (The museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) and had an absolutely brilliant time there. (I cannot recommend it highly enough!)
I also rode one of the old trams for ages, had two desserts, met a cute dog, and saw a cool bridge. Plus delicious dinner. Dreamy.
On my last full day I crammed in a bunch of lovely stuff — went to see some very cool water infrastructure (an old viaduct, a weird resovoir in what felt like a church), and after lunch, visited the tile museum (cooooooool) and the incredibly beautiful botanic gardens, which weren't too far from my accommodation.
There's so much more I could talk about from this trip, and for anyone who follows me on Instagram you can see a bunch of photos and more detailed day to day stuff on my profile as a story highlight ('journee trip')
The flight back was similarly annoying to the flight out, in that it wasn't until 19.35. I stayed in my accommodation until 12 to max out on that, then tromped around annoyingly trailing my suitcase for a couple of hours, and got lunch. I got tired and sick of that pretty quickly, and didn't really wanna leave my suitcase anywhere as it cost money and I always worry something'll go wrong and I won't be able to get it back. So I just headed to the airport, getting there around 15.00. Annoyingly my flight was already delayed by an hour, so I had a very long tedious time in the airport being grumpy (did read a lot of book though). The flight itself was technically fine but they made us wait a long time stood on buses on the runway and there were a LOT of screaming babies all the way. And when we got back to Luton they also kept us on the runway for ages.
At the weekends the last train from Luton to London goes at midnight. As soon as I saw my flight was delayed by an hour I booked myself the same hotel I'd got on the way out — annoying to have to spend yet more money, but my only other options were sleep on the floor of Luton airport (no thanks, it's my birthday tomorrow), get a coach (as mentioned, no) or call my partner and get them to hire a car to come get me (ditto). So I treated myself and I'm glad I did, because I didn't get through customs until just after midnight, and was very glad to be able to immediately collapse into bed rather than fight my way across London.
Though what ACTUALLY happened was that I was a) hungry (because barely any vegan options at Lisbon airport), and b) too grumpy and stressed to sleep immediately, so I ate an M&S pasta salad, had a lovely shower, watched a little bit of Yakuza 0, and then suddenly looked at my phone and it was 2.30am because CLOCKS CHANGE (honestly, the hotel should have charged me less as I really did not get my money's worth...)
Anyway, then it was my birthday! Love to start off my birthday on a rainy, bitingly cold train station at Luton Airport Parkway :)
Got home by lunchtime, opened my lil present collection, tidied up my holiday bits, and then welcomed a gang of friends in the evening for pizza and boardgames. I was very tired but it was so nice to see a bunch of people.
Now I am 35!
And then suddenly it's Monday and I have to work again and I feel thoroughly discombobulated.
Keeping busy still, my friend Vicky came over for dinner and we played Railroad Ink! Always a fav, particularly fun to play with an urban planner...
Got my nails done again, for spring! (Blossom is out!)
It's easter break at the mo which is nice as it means my workload is reduced (no teaching), but I did do this course on name pronunciation with UAL, as we have so many international students (80 – 90% of most cohorts I teach). It was good, but mostly served to highlight the sheer vastness of my ignorance. Sorry students.
Haven't swum in ages because I got a tattoo in Feb and it didn't heal entirely smoothly (I had an allergic reaction to the red ink, which is apparently quite common). I wanted to leave it an extra long time to be safe, but it is now beautifully healed and I decided to return to the pool. Swum a mile in 55 mins just to prove I can. (Not a super fast pace, but slow and steady wins the race. Sharing my lane with an incredibly annoying man who kept ploughing along really fast to splash past me then standing at the end of the pool huffing for ages until I catch him up, then immediately ploughing past me again. Just go to the fucking fast lane dude, don't ruin it for me and all the other sedate ladies)
And suddenly... April is here!
