This Weekend (8) ...

It. Has. Been. Glorious!
I have basically fallen from food to sun to food in sun to food and sun, so this post might get a bit samey.

1) Thursday was a write off. The Boss turned 60 last week, so we went for lunch to celebrate, and that was really the end of the day. It was good to all let our hair down together, in the knowledge that the only people expecting us to go back to the office were also letting their hair down. Everyone around the table had a story about drunkenness turned bad. One involved naked sleepwalking in a hotel. Another involved sitting on a lumpy sofa at a new girlfriend's house, only to discover that he was actually sitting on the (now deceased) family cat.

2) Friday morning dawned bright and sunny, and my mood with it. I had a tentative plan for coffee with a girlfriend which didn't materialise, but being as I'd made an effort to wear clothes that were not just clean, but also fitted (a rare treat) I took myself to a favourite cafe for brunch, with a good book and no mobile phone, and only felt slightly guilty that I wasn't doing something more productive.

3) On Friday night I had some girlfriends around for a curry and a gossip. Living here has given me the chance to meet some fabulous ladies and make some great friends. As the fabulous Amelia observes, we're turning into a right little local gang! (By the way, you can sign up for her next experimental art e-course here) All was going well until a friend of hers popped around as we finished dinner to collect something from her, stayed for a quick drink, and left at 4am, by which time the wheels had well and truely fallen off. Of deary me!!

4) So if goes without saying that Saturday started slowly. Plans to go to the local school boot fair and plant sale went to pot, whilst I wallowed, hungover, in my pit and felt sorry for myself. A cocktail of nurofen, Twinings detox tea, and two more hours sleep was enough to prize me out of bed and into the shower, which in turn was enough to get me into the kitchen and making a jug of coffee, and after about a litre of that, I was able to face the day.

5) By that point, I'd pretty much decided that the best way to spend the day was to sit in the garden with a book and a bottle of diet coke, so that's exactly what I did. I didn't make the jewellery that I was meant to make, or clean my car, or put away my winter clothes, or paint the dining room furniture, or write to my friend or anything. I just sat. And read. And sunned. And enjoyed it.

6) Lovely Sophie and Lovely Steve (a lovely couple) invited me and three lovely friends around for dinner on Saturday. It was, as you might glean, lovely. We sat in their garden, eating barbecue and the salads that Jules and Lewis had brought, then the Eton mess that I took, and drank the pink prosecco that Matthew took (well ... I drank more coke ...) and nattered the night away.

7) With an existing arrangement to see my oldest friend in the world for lunch today, on impulse I sent a message to another old friend from our gang to see if he'd like to join us. Ten minutes later he called to say that he was on his way. I was still in my pyjamas, eating my breakfast, and got ready at break-neck speeds!

8) Sitting in the garden with Andy, reading the papers, and waiting for Angela to join us, we chatted about mutual friends, plans for forthcoming social engagements, and sometimes, nothing at all.

9) And later, with Angela, we sat around talking about her newly announced pregnancy, the terrible terrible names some people give their babies, new houses, knitting patterns and the market for maternity bridesmaid dresses. And sometimes we talked about nothing at all.

10) So now, here we are again, at Sunday evening. Slow, easy films on the telly, a warm breeze chasing through the house from the open lounge window to the open kitchen door,and a cup of tea by my side. And now ... to bed. G'night.

Blind Faith

"She asked me what my five year plan was, and I said 'I don't know.'" Amelia came over for a dirty curry and to set the world to rights on Friday night, and relayed a conversation she'd had with a particularly successful artist friend. She looked slightly wide eyed when she said it.

And with that, I realised that I've never had a plan.

Certainly I plan on a small scale. "Today I MUST push the hoover 'round", or "tomorrow I'm meeting Cat for breakfast", or "next weekend Kelly and Nathan are coming to stay". Even as far away as "my parents are coming for Christmas" (which, I suspect, will be another post, another time).

But the real stuff? The big things? Nothing.

I did a pretty vocational degree. We were all, apart from an astute few, who noticed what what was happening to them, going to be fed out of the education system and into the non-glamorous world of property, conveyor belt style. I went to a series of interviews and had an offer of a job which was conditional on a certain result in my finals. Which I got. So I went there. Not so much a plan, as a solution.

My next job was secured in a bar during the December Christmas Party Rush. The one after that I was head-hunted for, just at a time when I was feeling a smidge disillusioned. And now this job move - the result of a chance conversation at an opportune time. All of my career moves have been based on good luck rather than good management.

As for accommodation, I lived in a house share which was, in retrospect comedically dreadful (again ... for another time, I think) and which came to a mercifully swift end. I had two weeks to find somewhere to live. I walked past an estate agent's window as he was putting a new ad in the window, asked him if I could look at it, took it, and moved in within the week. I lived there for four years. Then one day an email about a flat to rent nearby was accidentally sent to me, so I moved there.

Buying my current home wasn't even something that I entirely planned to do. There was an incident relating to a drunk and slightly pervy landlord outside my front door in the wee-small hours, looking for a bed for the night. It was a one bed flat. I started looking for somewhere to buy the next day.

Even Loulou Workshop wasn't so much planned, as fallen upon. After a particularly miserable couple of weeks (work trouble, boy trouble, ill health, wallowing, self pity, woe, woe ...) a friend suggested that I could work part time and try to bring a little balance to my life. That was on the Sunday. On the Monday I spoke to my boss and asked if I could stop working on Fridays.

Friends can tell you about boyfriends that I've accidentally dumped. I once went for a drink at Kings Cross, and ended up in Lille. Just this weekend I went into the hairdressers for a trim and came out with a whole new look.

So no. I don't have a five year plan. I don't even have a one year plan. To quote a popular American sitcom, I don't even have a "pl". I have got this far though my life reasonably successfully, without ever having any purpose or direction. I bowl from one project to the next. From one opportunity to the next. From one chance happening to the next.

I just can't decide if that's beautifully impulsive, or dangerously reckless.