Wednesday's Windows

There have been two main themes in the UK's window displays this summer:

• Celebrate Britain/Jubilee/Olympics
• And Not..

I may post others in coming weeks, but Selfridges wins the prize for the most wonderful. (It probably also has the biggest budget... but that's life, eh?)

Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom picture for my very favourite window: it's all about the tea, people.

Wimbledon

The seaside

The boat race

Changing of the Guard

Britain's high streets

The Pearly King and Queen

The English fete

Britain's obsession with the weather

A builders' tea party

Hello 2010

Hello 2010; sorry I’m a bit late.

Switzerland and France were great but I’m culturally confused.

Every year that I’ve lived in Bangkok I’ve found it tough to accept that Christmas is on its way; the most important sign of all - the weather - is wrong (I am British… remember?) There might have been carols playing since Halloween finished; there might be thirty foot Christmas trees in all the malls, holly and snowflakes on the sky walk, but with a constant temperature of around 34°C, well, I can hardly believe Father Christmas is due.

But if real Christmas weather was what we wanted… this year we certainly got that.

We opened our presents on 23 December and then we flew to Geneva. Cor blimey, it was cold. Actually, ‘cold’ doesn’t begin to do it justice: it was ab-so-bloody-lutely freezing. What a total wuss I’ve become since living in Bangkok.

On Christmas day (the real one) we donned Michelin man type clothing and wandered about a mostly closed Geneva. It was probably just as well because boy was it expensive. We spent a couple of hours in Starbucks and then narrowly avoided lunch in MacDonalds by discovering an Italian restaurant in the city centre… See, crazy?

I was able to access the foreign language centre in my brain. At one time this contained quite a bit of French and German, a smattering of Latin and Thai, plus a minute amount of Spanish, pretty much for the ordering of beers only. Unfortunately, in Geneva, every time I opened my mouth to speak, a mad mixture of French and Thai emerged. In the end, I decided it was better to keep quiet and gesticulate a lot.

I didn’t ski – have I told you how MUCH I hate skiing? Still the family – and the chosen family, with whom we went – have all survived the Alps again without any broken bones.

We got back yesterday. The really awful thing about being British is that I'm already moaning about the weather. It’s hot here - even though it's the coolest time of the year - but we have air con... I can’t quite get it set right so I’m still sitting in a perishing cold wind… And I’m still wearing a cashmere hoodie and sheepskin slippers.

Arrived safe and sound

Well, I've arrived safely. The weather when I got here was perfect: sunny and crisp. I made my way to my parents without my coat and it was gorgeous - cool. Do you remember cool, Bangkokians?


In memory of the heat in Bangkok, and to celebrate my arrival in the UK I bring you the sandals I had made and told you about here. I didn't need to bring them to the UK.


If I get whiney about the cold while I'm here, please just tell me to shut up and remind me of the heat in Bangkok.

I'm really sorry my hooves are in the blue ones but they don't make sense off my feet.

Phi Phi Island 1

Okay, here are some pictures, then. You can see the weather isn’t perfect, not totally sunny, but for people who spend most of their time in the pollution of Bangkok, it’s pretty darn close to perfect. The gentle breeze is most welcome.

The first picture is the view from the spa over the resort and out to sea.

The second picture is early this morning on our way to the dive centre for scuba diving (Husband, Son and Daughter) and snorkelling (me). It was among the best snorkelling I’ve done.

The third one is the other end of the beach.

Cheat?

I’m feeling a bit fraudulent.

Does it say anywhere in the Novel Racer rules that you can’t fish a bit of crap out of the bin and decide it’s not so bad any more?

I’ve explained before that I’ve started writing many, many times but I always stop. I started this story about 8 months ago, and made notes and wrote some scenes but then I abandoned it because I allowed my demon to stop me. I had quite forgotten it was there (or I had blanked it out because I believed it was dreadful). Anyway, I looked at it earlier this week and while it’s not brilliant, it isn’t worth binning. What is also interesting is that I started in a different place with this draft (about a third into the story) and the stuff I’ve done recently is the first quarter, so there’s also no overlap. I wonder if my brain wanted me to find the first draft.

It’s also interesting to note that I chose to deal with the passing of time differently in each of the two drafts. In the first one, the chapters are the months of the year and in the second I didn’t do that. I’m not sure which to use but I’m not going to stop and worry about that now - hark at me! However, other methods might get confusing. The book is set in Thailand where there are three seasons: hot, really hot and really hot and wet (these aren’t the technical terms, you understand?) but it might get confusing for anyone not familiar with those seasons so having a reminder, while still using the reference of the weather might be better. But I haven’t quite worked out if that structure will work for chapters, which may be why I abandoned it.

Anyway, I feel a terrible cheat because there are 9000 words of rediscovered draft. This would put me at around 20k words: omg.