Can you hear Big Ben where you are?

I have spent 2 days in London this week. I was not looking forward to going, but I had a workshop on Tuesday and my half year review on Wednesday, so I had to drag my sorry arse down to the big city.

It was strange to have to get ‘dressed’ for work. I work from home so my usual get up is baggy jeans and a sloppy top. I soon felt back in the swing of it as I stood on the platform, shoulders back and ready to face the world (and my boss!).

I decided to stay overnight on Tuesday to save the travelling (it’s about 115 miles one way). It also meant Mr Big Time Charlie could stay with me too. He commutes to London everyday and I honestly don’t know how he does it, so it was nice for me to be able to get a hotel room walking distance from his office.

After checking into the hotel we ventured out. We went to our favourite pub for an early bite to eat and then made our way back to the hotel to share a bottle of rose wine.

Our room was on the 13th floor and we had a view of the London skyline. London is quite a special place to us. We spent a lot of time there in the early years as Mr BTC lived in E.ssex and I lived where we do now so London was the place we met up when we were able to spend time together.

We opened the wine and sat on the sofa watching the sun set over the city. We had one I.pod earphone each and I put some music on. The bright orange ball sinking behind the tower made me wish I had my camera with me. We watched the red buses, black cabs and jumbo jets busily taking people in and out of the city as the sound of one of our memorable songs came on.

“London
Can you believe it’s so many years since
London
Hitching a ride and carrying knapsacks
London
In the park by the Thames drinking tea
London
sitting in pubs and living in walk-ups
London
Learnin’ the accent learnin’ to love you
London
We were young we were sure
We were… free”

My mind wandered to family and friends and life in general. ‘I’ll be seeing you’ came on, and I thought, yeah one day, I will, it’s a promise.

The sound of ‘Lucky one’ played in our ears, we looked at each other, smiled and just for that moment in the capital city on a sticky hot July evening, I thought that I was the lucky one.

 

Just watching

We spent last weekend in my home town, B.lackburn. It’s around a 2 hour journey from where we live. I moved away 9 years ago when I decided to pack my bags and seek my fame and fortune in a place that’s called the ’second city’ in England. Still working on both by the way!

We travelled up on Friday, very early, so we arrived before our first telephone meetings at 8.45 a.m. Getting there early Friday had one big advantage for me, it meant I could pick my nephew up from school in the afternoon.

I arrived at the school in plenty of time, as it was going to be a surprise that I was the one picking him up. I parked up and got out of the car. I walked towards the school and stood on the playing field, so he would have to walk passed me to where the car would be waiting. I started to notice more people around me, and then I noticed that I recognised some of them.

A girl who I used to see when we out out drinking at the weekends, a guy who was a friend of a friend, a guy who lived across the road when we were young. I saw them with toddlers, babies, even a cute puppy. Everything I don’t have and want. They greeted their school age children and I watched as the kids eagerly pulled on their arms eager to tell them about the fun they had been having.

It was like looking at ghosts from my past. Would I have been stood here had I not moved away to further my career? Would I trade places? 

I started to feel really uncomfortable so I moved back to the road. I looked through the fence, waiting for him to walk up the field.

My pride and smile returned when I saw him and then he saw me. He was over the moon. It was worth the reminder of what I was missing, and it’s his 10th birthday today, so I must go and call him.

I just wonder how long I will be on the other side of the fence, or if indeed I will ever make it to the other side?

Just some things about me - Part 2

I saw this on Emily’s blog and thought I would have a go. Go on admit it, you are dying to know more about me. Oh you’re not? well could you just humour me?

Here’s a list of things and you have to bold the ones that you have done. So here goes:

Bought everyone in the bar a drink
Swam with wild dolphin
Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
Been inside the Great Pyramid
Held a tarantula
Taken a candle lit bath
Said I love you and meant it
Hugged a Tree
Bungee jumped
Visited Paris
Watched a lightening storm at sea
Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
Seen the Northern Lights
Gone to a huge sports game
Walked the stairs to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Grown and eaten your own vegetables
Touched an iceberg
Slept under the stars
Changed a baby’s diaper
Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
Watched a meteor shower
Gotten drunk on champagne
Given more than you can afford to charity
Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
Had a food fight
Bet on a winning horse
Asked out a stranger
Had a snowball fight
Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
Held a lamb
Seen a total eclipse
Ridden a roller coaster
Hit a home run
Danced like a fool, not caring who watched
Adopted an accent for an entire day
Actually felt happy about your life, even for a moment
Had two hard drives for your computer
Visited all 50 states
Taken care of someone who was too drunk
Had amazing Friends
Danced with a Stranger in a foreign country
Watched wild whales
Stolen a sign
Hitchhiked in Europe
Taken a road-trip
Gone rock climbing
Midnight walk on the beach
Gone sky diving
Visited Ireland
Been heartbroken longer than you were in love
In a restaurant sat at a stranger’s table and ate with them
Visited Japan
Milked a cow
Alphabetized your CDs
Pretended to be a superhero
Sung karaoke
Lounged around in bed all day
Posed nude in front of strangers
Gone scuba diving
Kissed in the rain
Played in the mud
Played in the rain
Gone to a drive-in theater
Visited the Great Wall of China
Started a business
Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
Toured ancient sites
Taken a martial arts class
Played a computer game for more than 6 hours straight
Gotten married
Been in a movie
Crashed a party
Gotten divorced
Gone without food for 5 days
Made cookies from scratch
Won first prize in a costume contest
Ridden a gondola in Venice
Gotten a tattoo
Rafted the Snake River
Been on television news program as an “expert”
Got flowers for no reason
Performed on a stage
Been to Las Vegas
Recorded Music
Eaten shark
Had a one-night stand
Gone to Thailand
Bought a house
Been in a combat zone
Buried one/both of your parents
Been on a cruise ship
Spoken more than one language fluently
Performed in Rocky Horror
Raised children
Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
Picked up and moved to another city
Walked on the Golden Gate Bridge
Sang loudly in the car and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
Had plastic surgery
Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have
Wrote articles for a large publication
Lost over 100 lbs
Held someone while they were having a flashback
Piloted an airplane
Petted a stingray
Broken someone’s heart
Helped an animal give birth
Won money on a TV game show
Broken a bone
Gone on an African safari
Had a body part below the neck pierced
Fired a rifle, shotgun or pistol
Eaten mushrooms gathered in the wild
Ridden a horse
Had major surgery
Had a snake as a pet
Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Slept for more than 30 hours over 48 consecutive hours
Visited more foreign countries than US States
Visited all 7 continents
Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
Eaten Kangaroo meat
Eaten sushi
Had your picture in the paper
Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
Gone back to school
Parasailed
Petted a cockroach
Eaten fried green tomatoes
Read the Iliad
Selected one important author who you missed school to read
Killed and prepared an animal for eating (fish)
Skipped all of your school reunions
Communicated with someone without sharing a common language
Been elected to public office
Written your own computer language
Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
Had to put someone you love in hospice care
Build your own PC from parts
Sold your own artwork to someone that didn’t know it was yours
Had a booth in a street fair
Dyed your hair
Been a DJ
Shaved your head
Caused a car accident
Saved someone’s life

Still awake? Fee free to have a go yourself.

Just some things about me - Part 1

Emily and Leah both tagged me for the meme that’s floating around at the moment. It’s the one that you sum yourself up in 6 words. 6 words, you’re having a laugh aren’t you? So, I scratched and scratched various parts of my anatomy and finally came up with something. I have given it an infertility slant because 6 words could not cover everything for me, so I gave up trying to be clever and stuck with the main reason for my blog.

So here’s the low down on the 6 word ditty:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogsphere
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links
5. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

First of all I am opting out of steps 4 and 5 because I think this one has done the rounds, but feel free to take this as an invite if you haven’t done it and want to.

So here’s mine:

“Three guest bedrooms really not needed”

P.S That’s not a picture of our house, but couldn’t be arsed to go upstairs and take one!
P.P.S Super Gran is home and doing really well. Bee Cee is very happy.

This should keep me quiet for a while…

I seem to have signed myself up for a night school class. It’s 3 hours every Thursday night, it starts in September and finishes June ‘09.

I am going to study photography. Mainly for fun, but I am seriously thinking I need a career change so it won’t do any harm to start studying something I really enjoy. Doesn’t mean I will be the slightest bit good at it though, but what the heck.

Will you all check my homework when there is something worth uploading? Gee. I hope I don’t get a detention from anyone.

Midweek mumblings

Nothing major to talk about so here’s some of Bee Cee’s midweek mumblings:

Firstly Super Gran update - she is much better. Did I tell you she fell a few weeks ago and broke a few bones? Well, she had her leg and arm casts off yesterday and everything was fine. Can you believe she had to travel about 100 miles in an ambulance from the hospital she is in, to the one that does the casts just to have them removed? I’d have popped round with a circular saw to save the health service the cost if they’d have let me. The good news is, she may even get home for the weekend. The doctor thinks that the strong painkillers she has been on has stripped her stomach lining, causing the sickness. She’s now eating and Mum says she is much much brighter. Think I will ring her this weekend to tell her she’s an attention seeker!!

Struggling with work at the moment, my laptop has been playing up a lot. I got the ‘blue screen of death’ yesterday, which is about the 3rd time in as many months. Arrgggghhhh. Working from home, as I do, and no laptop is very good for the ironing pile. The engineer can build my new laptop on Monday so it looks as though I will be stressed to the 9’s on Tuesday with all the backlog.

Talking of 9’s…..good luck JJ with your embies. You know I am rooting for you.

We are heading north this weekend. It’s Mr Big Time Charlie’s Dad’s surprise 80th birthday party, I haven’t seen most of his side of the family since the wedding, so I am looking forward to catching up with them.

We have booked our flights to Croatia for next month. I have decided that if it falls badly for our cycle, I will just wait another month. This waiting lark is not half as bad as I thought it would be, I am kind of enjoying the gym, the wine, the freedom, the lack of stress, but I suppose I had better get back on the horse at some point.

 

Update

Sorry I haven’t posted sooner, my broadband went down on Friday and I didn’t realise it was because they have switched my provider, until today. Anyway, I am back up and running now.

Super Gran update. Mum & Dad arrived in Wales on Saturday morning and saw her in the afternoon. We are not sure what the problem is, and won’t do until today, as the doctors don’t do their rounds over the weekend. She’s not eating which is a worry, but the sickness has stopped which is good.

I feel much better than I did on Friday, things are not great but I am optimistic and I guess we should know much more today.

Thanks very much for all the messages, it means a lot.

Wishing

This morning, I saw a little bird lying on the patio, he had died. He is such a beautiful little thing (I think a blue tit, but I am not sure) and it made me sad that something so precious had left us. I don’t deal with things like this very well, so I called to ask Mr Big Time Charlie if he would move him when he gets home.

Shortly after I got a call off my Dad…you know the type, when they sound really serious. Turns out he needed to be. My Granny has been rushed to hospital, she’s not been eating and has been vomiting black yuck. She’s 90 this year and we have a party lined up for her in September. Right now, I just want her to make it through the weekend. I am waiting for update calls to see how she is. If things get worse I am getting in my car and driving the 4 hours to where she lives in Wales. I just have to be there.

Here’s a couple of photos.

Of me and her last year (actually while I was in my 2ww for IVF #1):

And here she is - Christmas ‘08 with my other Granny. They both have a great sense of humour.

She’s always been a fighter and I am just hoping this is no exception. So come on my precious little bird, do it for me.

A smile for the weekend

On Friday, Mr Big Time Charlie and I went to see this. It was fantastic fantastic fantastic.

Then on Sunday, I went to see this!!!!

I just couldn’t help myself and I felt sorry for my Mum knowing she wouldn’t see unless I took her, so that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it!!

Now, how long will it be before the DVD comes out…..

What do you think?

We often write about our friends in real life that ‘just don’t get it’ and it started me thinking about why.

I do believe that this whole experience has changed me for the better. I would like to think there was a part of me that was always like this, but now I think about everything I say to people, before I say it. I never ask a single person “have you met anyone yet?”, I never ask someone “when are you getting married” when it seems like they have been together long enough. These are just a couple of examples but in everyday life many things happen and I just keep it zipped.

I would like to think my reactions to these situations are because infertility has left a positive mark on me (as well as the negative ones that stab me everyday).

Now, I don’t believe that you have to suffer from infertility to ‘get’ it. I think the key is you need emotional intelligence to understand what it means to someone. One of the definitions of E.I is:

“the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”

One of my friends has emotional intelligence by the bucket load. She has a baby but is so in tune with what having a baby means to me. She is sensitive and so thoughtful. She never fails to contact me when she knows I have an appointment. She always wants to know the next step and I know she writes notes in her diary so she doesn’t forget my key dates.

So, I think what I am trying to say here is that we don’t need to know what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, yes it helps, but it doesn’t mean others cannot walk alongside us if they just spare the time to think things through.

Any thoughts?