The Situation

Surprisingly not a blog about the guy from Jersey Shore…..

Since I’m now unemployed and not in New York with my family, what else do I have to do but blog? And I have so many different thoughts in my head that I would like to express here. I’ve always thought that I would write about the different aspects of being an Australian in London, telling my stories and venting my opinion on anything related. Then life got in the way and I have written hardly anything on here at all! Until the past couple of days where I wrote about what was going on with my cancelled trip to New York, posted it on facebook and got an overwhelming response of support from friends. The power of social media strikes again!

FYI, for those interested, I’m going to New York. Just 4 days later than we had planned. I’ll miss Christmas day with my family but will be there for New Years and a little bit of time either side. It’s not ideal, but it is better than a whole week later, which was the next available flight Virgin offered us. So I feel that I have remained positive whilst trying to figure this out, even as we were met with obstacle after obstacle….’yes we can get you on an earlier flight, it will be 3000 pounds each please’!! Even the day we are going, there will probably be a tube strike, making the journey to the airport just that little bit harder. But hey, I’m still going to get there right? I mean really if I have to pay for a cab I’m not going to complain because it means that I will get there and that in itself is freakin’ awesome!

But it has been hard and when I was in the shower yesterday I had a moment where I couldn’t help but cry. The fact I hadn’t cried up to this point is actually rather unusual. Anyway it got me to thinking about why this situation was so upsetting. I feel that it would be upsetting for anybody, like I said before, when you have your heart set on something and it doesn’t happen you will always feel disappointment. But I have been feeling rather sorry for myself about this. It reminded me about a post I read recently on a blog that I follow; about how this time of year can actually be really hard for a lot of people. And people wrote in saying why they found the festive season hard, or a time of sadness. And I can actually understand.

This is a time of year filled with tradition. These traditions are usually unique to your family and they can be odd and no one actually knows how they began, but if you didn’t do them one year it would just be wrong! For those of us that are lucky Christmas is a time that we enjoy spending with our family. So what about when something changes and you no longer have the same people with you at Christmas? What if it is no longer possible to carry out the traditions from previous years? You are basically forced to make new traditions and still have Christmas but it will never be the same again.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, life is always changing and as we grow older we can’t expect things to remain like they always were. But it is hard. You can’t help but notice the one person who is suddenly missing, Christmas 2007, they were there; drinking the mescal as we sat around outside in the warm night air. Christmas 2008, they weren’t. And people will deal with this in all different ways. 2008, a toast was made in his honour, a nice reminder that everyone there was missing him. It means tears at the Christmas lunch though, not a tradition I remember from previous years. It doesn’t mean the day is no longer enjoyable at all, we know he would want us to have fun getting really merry and playing silly games. But it’s so different.

My Christmas 2009 was probably my most unusual yet. It was a lot of fun, being in a (closed) pub with a really big group of friends eating lots of food and having copious amounts of booze, a friend on the decks and dancing into the wee hours. Actually, not that different to what we get up to at our family Christmas’s back home. What was different, of course, were the people. Most of these were friends that I had only known for a couple of months, at the most! So it was a lot of fun, but to be perfectly honest it could’ve been any weekend really. It didn’t feel like Christmas usually does. It’s hard to explain but there is a feeling that I’m used to getting at this time of year. And I haven’t felt that in the past couple of years. I guess being apart from home and family and the usual familiar settings, it’s always going to feel different.

Which brings us to Christmas 2010. I was once again going to be with family (not the usual crew) but with my immediate loved ones. I feel that we were going to be making a new sort of family Christmas. It really couldn’t be any different from what we have traditionally had, hello white Christmas in New York! Just slightly different to the hot and sunny ones we have Australia. But the point was that we were going to be together again. Well, thanks to the situation at Heathrow, a huge spanner has been thrown into the works and I will not be spending Christmas with my family.

It is for this reason that I want to say a big, ‘FUCK YOU!’ to the universe.

Christmas these days has an element of sadness that it never used to. And it’s hard enough without our plans being ruined! I think we are good people and we didn’t deserve to have this happen to us. Yes, I know so many worse things happen to undeserving people all the time and my heart goes out to those that are having a hard time right now (some personal friends I’m thinking of in particular) but this really sucks! I know Christmas will never be the same but I just wanted what I had planned to happen. And so I’m really disappointed.

Grrrrrr. I know this feeling all too well, there isn’t anyone to blame and everyone has been so nice and supportive! But I wanted to vent my frustration at the situation (rhyme!).

I will try to write a more positive post soon but right now I’m going to go and have a shower….and maybe a little cry…..

Update.

OK so right now I reallllllly need to remain positive.

My flight to New York was cancelled.

Thanks to the snow on the weekend Heathrow has been running a reduced service and flights had to be diverted to other airports. There are people at the airport who have been there since Saturday. That’s now 4 nights of sleeping at an airport! I’m guessing these people just really want to get to their final destinations.

I can totally relate.

I honestly (naively?) didn’t think this was going to affect us. There hasn’t been any proper snow since the weekend and what was left behind is melting away. I heard many stories of friend’s grandparents flying home or their parents making it to Barbados on Monday. We checked the exact same Virgin Atlantic flight to New York today; it was delayed but IT LEFT! Plus, they opened up another of the closed runways today. So everything looked good.

I happily got to packing (throwing mass amounts of clothing on to my floor) thinking it was all fine and dandy. Until my sister called to let me know our flight was cancelled. The other Virgin Atlantic flights to New York were ok, it’s just our time of day. I spoke to someone from Virgin called Ashley Harrison, he was incredibly nice. I mean, his job must suck realllly bad right now. Apparently over 750 flights have been cancelled, so you can imagine he’s probably spoken to a few stressed out people! But he was very nice with me, even laughed when I told him to kick someone else off another flight to New York so I could have their seat (umm I was serious Ashley Harrison!), and explained to me what my options were.

So where do I go from here? We have been booked onto the next available flight to New York with Virgin. This is next Wednesday, the 29^th of December. Yep, 4 days AFTER Christmas. We would be happy to fly anywhere else into the US and then make our way to New York from the there. The next available flight into the US with Virgin? Tuesday the 28^th in Washington. Not great. We are entitled to a full refund so we have continued looking for other flights; we just want to get to America! I will hitchhike from Boston if it means getting there! This has not been that easy. We got to the stage of having put in all the credit card details into an Air Canada flight to Boston so that we could continue our journey by bus, and then the website just said ‘sorry, something went wrong’ and gave us a number to call. So we then tried to find the exact same flights again and they are now over 2000 pounds. Each! Out of the price range, unfortunately.

I know there are many worse things in the world and I realllly don’t wanna be all ‘first-world problemy’, oh woe is me for I can’t fly to New York…such a tough life! I realise this does not compare to the suffering of many others right now.

But I can’t help but feeling rather sad and horrible. My Mum is literally up in the air right now. She is in transit and has no idea of what’s going on. She will arrive and expect to meet us, but of course, we won’t be there! Now I know Mum will handle this perfectly fine (she is one super cool dude, as I outlined in my last post) but you know when you have your heart set on something and then when it doesn’t happen the disappointment is heart breaking? That is the situation the Dowdeswell girls are in right now.  I’m so so so grateful that Kathy will be there and that they have each other. I’m so grateful that Jenny and I were coming together so we are in this situation together. I’m loving all the lovely messages and phone calls from people all over the world who want to let us know that they are thinking of us and they want it to work out. There are a lot of people out there praying, crossing every single one of their limbs, giving us advice and sending good vibes. There are people helping us search for reasonably priced flights. There are many good people who are remaining positive and truly want this to happen.

And I will try to do the same. As I’ve told my sisters, the 25^th of December is just a date. Christmas is about the people. So even if we have to have ours a little later this year, as long as we are all together, that is all that matters. And we will be together at some stage. I know this.

In the meantime, if anyone has any solutions, please let me know! Maybe someone could give me tens of thousands of pounds so I could book flights at their ridiculously inflated price and not have to worry about it. Or pull some strings at Heathrow/Virgin so that my flight can get un-cancelled. Or even adopt me over the weekend so that I can still have a Christmas of some sorts. Now I know I won’t be alone at Christmas…..but can I please be in New York with my family???

The Power of Positive Thinking

So over the past couple of days I’ve had the idea of doing a blog post about how my Mum is a rather inspirational person because she is just so damn positive! She doesn’t worry about things the way other people do. I was thinking today that maybe it’s because once you’ve lived 50+ (although she doesn’t look a day over 21!) years, small things don’t stress you out the same. Or maybe when you’ve lived through some pretty horrible shit, nothing will ever be as bad! Basically her carefree (but definitely not careless) attitude has been a blessing lately, there are quite a few people who think I’m CRAZY to be doing what I’m doing right now, my Mother, however thinks they are the crazy ones. As she said, ‘why are they so negative?’

You see I’m in an odd position, I thought I had to quit my current job in order to be allowed to take holidays in December (being retail it’s a big no no), so I handed in my resignation. However, my boss didn’t really want me to leave so said I could have this time as holiday….but he didn’t really want me to return just to quit again after a couple of weeks. I understand his point of view. He left it completely up to me; they were more than happy for me to stay but didn’t think I should if I wasn’t entirely happy in the job. And, to be honest, I wasn’t entirely happy, it just felt different to a year earlier and I was thinking ‘why not have a change after 12 months in this job?’ But then, on the other hand, I love all the friends I’ve made at work and sometimes I have a great time, not because of the job, but because of my peeps. And it’s a bookstore!  Who doesn’t like books? And reading them for free or extra cheap? And talking about them? And attending events where I pretend I’m super literary and know who all the authors and publishers are, but really, I’m just circling the buffet and making sure my wine glass is always full. There are always good and bad things about any job and I’m not good at making adult decisions….so I just buried my head in the sand and avoided thinking about it. Until my boss put me on the spot and asked for a decision. So I said I was definitely leaving. Eek! I hadn’t actually made that decision in my mind; it was just an instinctive answer. I was offered another job in the meantime, although I don’t think it’s happening anymore (that’s a whole other story!) but still avoided the situation. Whenever anyone at work asked me if I was leaving I just said I didn’t want to talk about it…very mature. They continued to try and convince me to stay but I just didn’t deal with it. Why? Because of what started it all…..my trip to New York! My Mum bought me a ticket and the plan was set. All 4 Dowdeswell girls would meet in New York from their current homes (Australia, England and America) on the 22^nd of December to have Christmas and New Year’s together for the first time in 2 years. Yay!!

So that is how I ended up in a position where I had my ‘last’ day at work today so that I could fly to New York tomorrow and then I would return in 2 weeks not really knowing if I had a job or not. Yep going to spend money in New York and then return to London unemployed! That is why some people thought I was crazy.

My Mum? Thought it was fantastic. There are only positives in this situation. The flight and accommodation have been paid for. And I get to spend Christmas with my family. In New York!

I can deal with the job and all that when I get back. And those sorts of things do have a way of sorting themselves out. If you remain positive!

My Mum is inspirational and if I’m freaking out her calm words remind me that nothing is ever that bad and everything will be ok. There is always a lot to be positive about. J

Go Hard or Go Home

Ok I’ll go home then.

I think I may be doing that whole ‘burning the candle at both ends’ thing because I can’t seem to shake this cold. Went to work this morning for the meeting and everything but felt like shit and ended up leaving at lunchtime. Since coming home I have put on a load of washing, cleaned the toilet and bathroom, eaten soup whilst Skyping (is that a word?) with Mum and cooked a curry for dinner (it might help clean the sinuses….ewwwww) and now I’m dosed up on cold and flu tablets and I’m thinking bedtime will be some hard -core hour of about half seven. Mum told me that she worries about me because she comes online in Perth (8 hours ahead of London) to talk to Kathy in Minnesota (6 hours behind London) and sees me online and figures it must be some crazy hour and why on earth am I still awake? Her advice was; ‘’you’re only young once and you should enjoy it, but make sure you’re looking after yourself.’’ Typical Mum.

I do try; it just seems that this time of year is incredibly busy with birthdays and festive events! I’m actually struggling to think when I last had a night off/a quiet night in. And I honestly can’t. This is how the past 2 weeks have gone for me.

Monday- Went to all-you-can-eat sushi with Britta, Jen, Catt, Nick, Nathan, Chris and Steven. On the day of both the tube strikes and when the snow started! Was worth it though, deliciousssssssss sushi. But too much!!!

Tuesday-Lee came round for dinner and to dye my hair. Disaster. It involved a late night walk to Tesco to try and find some more hair dye, which was unsuccessful as they don’t sell hair dye! Hair was dyed twice more over the next 10 hours to resemble something that didn’t make me look like a freak. Success. Sort of.

Wednesday- Worked until 8pm as my boss has decided a late shift is a really good idea. Cheers CT. Then straight to the pub to meet Steven and his friend, Emily from back home. We had many different drinks, toffee vodka shots from the ski on a Wednesday, seriously???  But not tooo messy of course, the walk home is when fresh snow started falling and it was so beautiful!

Thursday- Steven’s birthday so went up to his in zone 4 of Northwest London (it was like going on holiday!) and had a birthday dinner in Wembley.

Friday- Went to central London for Mexican food and then Southbank to see the World Press Photo Exhibition (I’d already seen it in Rome but was still incredibly moving). Then back to South Kenton for drinks and getting ready before a return to central to celebrate Steven’s birthday with his friends and my sister. We went to a couple of random pubs and then a place, which I can’t remember the name, but it was old-school music and a few of us danced the night away. Trek back to South Kenton and sleep happened sometime around 5/6am.

Saturday- Spent the afternoon in the pub and then came back to Southwest London where we got ready to go to Drew’s birthday party. By the time we got to Croydon we’d missed the first band (one of the members turned out to be a guy from my work-small world!!!) but saw the second (yay, Dan on drums!!!) and danced the night away yet again. Night ended with buying wine from a closed GJ’s and passing out on my couch whilst Drew and his friends sat around my living room. I’m a great host, obviously.

Sunday- Was the girly Christmas party at GJ’s. Good work with organising Gemma! Some verrrrrrry sexy costumes! I myself went as a Christmas tree, meaning I wore a green tinsel tree over my head/face. Totally sexy. We ate food and drank wine and played games. Who knew how much fun musical chairs could be when you’re in your mid 20’s???

Monday- Made a yummy carbonara and then went and saw Xavier Rudd play in Shepherd’s Bush. He was amazing. As always. Although had reworked many of his songs and they sounded quite different, but, still amazing! There was a slight ‘incident’ on the way home that was a little bit horrible, but also made me realise that there are still good people in the world!

Tuesday- I had a plan for Tuesday night. I was going to pick up my pay from the pub and then head straight home to heat up my leftover pasta and get to bed early. It didn’t go exactly like this. Bec was finishing work when I got there so decided to stay for one glass of wine. One glass turned into many and a meal. I was soooo sleepy when I got home that I slipped into some kind of wine coma and had an amazing sleep!

Wednesday-Went to dinner with Lara, Lee and Roxy to catch up and drink free sparkling! We got wine, cava, cocktails, starters, mains and desserts and it was about 15 pounds each. Awesome.

Thursday- It was the launch of Felix’s band’s single but no one from work was very keen to go so was more than happy to chill out on the couch with a glass of wine. However, Steven’s plans fell through and he was keen to go see the band sooooooo I finished the bottle of wine on the train and met him. This may have meant I was slightly wasted BEFORE we got there. Why we did tequila shots I do not know! Saw 3 of the bands and don’t remember much but I do know that Felix’s band is kind of awesome. J

Friday- I worked and it was one of those nights where there were a couple of Christmas functions. This usually means you have customers who only drink once a year-what fun! So of course, you, as a bartender, have to drink yourself to get through. But then the customers usually peak early which means the night can end in lots of bar top and dance floor action!

Saturday- Had a lovely lazzzzzzy day. We spent it eating all the food that had been leftover at the pub the night before, watching crappy TV and napping. That night meant more drinks at the pub with a rather random but very fun crew of people, before heading out to Hollie’s fundraiser with Roxy, Quade and Bec. The night ended with an epic journey home. Not that we were far from home just that we managed to get on the wrong bus, twice! But we got there eventually and I know that there was a kebab enjoyed before I fell straight to sleep in Bec’s bed.

Sunday- Left the pub at 10am to shower and came back at 11am to start work.  The fact it was the first time I’d ever opened and it was a Sunday made for an interesting day. When I finished work at 6 Steven and I went straight to dinner with Jenny, Brayton, Todd, Hayley and her sister, Courtney. We wanted to do a pre-Christmas dinner with a pub roast; however the pub was sold out of roasts (this was after I’d asked to not have a roast for lunch at the pub because I knew I was having it for dinner)! So had a rather disappointing alternative and did the pub quiz. Some of the worst questions ever! I think we came second though.

Monday- Met Lee in East London to go see PNAU. Other peeps like Jess, Harper, Ben and Dave were there too. Plus we made new friends with other Australians. Everyone was rather excited and the anticipation built as it seemed we waited quite some time for them to begin. And when they did, although they didn’t play for very long (or do encores!) they put on a great show! We were right up the front and Peter Mayes (the P in PNAU) grabbed my hands at one stage! Didn’t actually end up onstage with them this time but still enjoyed the show.

Phew.

And I’ve been doing all this whilst having NO money. I mean seriously desperate times. Like having to ‘borrow’ teabags from the pub. And it’s essential that I have them as Steven is not exactly a morning person, actually he’s not even a morning human, until he’s had a cup of tea! J

Tonight I was supposed to have pre-Christmas dinner/catch-up with Jen but it’s not going to happen. And I think it’s probably for the best! Got to get better before the work Christmas party tomorrow night! And then it’s crazy busy until New York! After talking with Mum today, I realised I actually fly out on the 22^nd NOT the 23^rd. Whoops! I did it again. Wonder how my work is going to feel about that…..