LDN: Day #1

London, I have arrived! Boring flight, waiting, waiting, but was met at the airport by some of the other girls and also our driver:

nice man who drove us from airport to hotel

The hotel is a bit nicer than I expected.... It's a Gregorian townhouse in Chelsea, and at the front desk was a man I hardly understood because of his foreign, sort of French but not quite, accent. I didn't have to carry my luggage upstairs, a younger, but still hard to understand foreign accent man, carried it up for me. With my usual budget I'm not used to this kind of service and therefore it mostly makes me uncomfortable.

My room is a small double room and the bed has no less than six pillows! How big a head do you have when you need six pillows? It's all very neat and the sheets are Italien linen, bathrobes are provided and on the bedside table stood a couple of bottles of still water in lovely blue glass bottles. To me this is a grade of luxury I need to time to get used to. But who cares, I'm not paying anyway : D

big bed.

I have bathrobes and toilet paper with folded ends!

I went for a slight walk immediately after my arrival. I had not had any dinner yet so I went looking for some greasy Chinese take-away to it in bed. Instead I found expensive Thai-restaurants I dared not enter, men in suits and cigarettes in hand, Chanel, Ralph Lauren and Jean-Paul Gaultier. I went back hungry, not daring to ask where the nearest Tesco was. Luckily, the Internet told me where Tesco was. I'll look for that tomorrow.

I'll try to write a quick post a day. It'll be interesting to see what morning brings.

Running motivation

Going for a run? Start out with...

...to warm up your mind while getting dressed and doing a little dance while going out the door.

Next, for the warm up (do include some spinning and jumping and dancing here as well):




 In the words of Freddie Mercury: "I'm a sex machine ready to reload". That's a quote from the song above btw. Use that as a motivation phrase while running if you like ;)

Moving on. Closing up on the steep hills there's need for something slightly more malicious.



By this time I'm usually knackered anyway, hence it doesn't matter what song I put on. The rest of the run fluctuates between runner's high and runner's despair until I get home and feel grrrrreat! (Other Prodigy-songs are good for running also...)

The upcoming travel to London is quite the motivation in itself. I did a little googling on the girls I'll be working along with and it seems they're all about two (to three) dress sizes smaller than me, i.e. they're what society calles models (or as I call anyone who is taller and thinner than me: skinny bitches). More on the subject of skinny bitches later. Toodles!

Oh, feck...

I was making myself a little evening snack (take a slice of whole wheat bread, put on some honey and lime juice, then a bit of salt-cured meat and on top three slices of brie. Put the thing in the oven until the brie is slightly melted. Finish with some walnuts on top). But! As I turned off the oven and opened the door... BANG! The entire front of the oven door was spread out on the kitchen floor. We've been thinking about changing the oven for a while now anyway...

 

 Luckily my evening snack got away with only two pieces of glass, easy to pick out and I got my snack.

It should be mentioned that these sort of things happens to me rather often. A couple of years ago I was about to apply my facecream when the jar slipped out my hands, landed on the sink, broke the sink, and fell to the floor, jar intact. Fortunately we had already made the decision to redo the bathroom at the time of the incident.

temptations

Made the mistake of entering Topshop's webshop just a sec ago. Fortunately I have no money therefore nothing was bought. Also, remember that London called? Well, on Sunday to come I'll be flown to London, get my hair cut and coloured, take pictures of it, stay in a hotel in Kensington, and be flown back on Saturday. The hotel has wifi, laptop and camera will be brought and I hope to blog about the whole thang. And there's Topshop in London, which was the point of this whole little story. Hopefully there'll be time for a little bittle shopping.

Aaaanywho... Window shopping results from Topshop.

Sunday pursuits

On Sunday I went skiing with Lena. She was the fastest uphill, I was the fastest downhill. That's Lena in the pic and me behind the camera using any excuse to catch my breath. I'm a winter's child, bad stamina won't stop me putting on my skis.

Perfectly quirky

 

I know I mostly say not-so-nice things about Manfriend, but here's a very nice thing he brought me the other day. A harlequin rose! I didn't know anything such existed until Manfriend woke me up from my nap on the sofa. And as far as I know, he gave it to me just because he's lovely and nice and not as a I’m sorry-rose or a I have a hidden agenda-rose.

Today's remarks / London calling

1.   Ehm, so, yes, well, I can't come to terms with myself as to what this blog should look like, especially what to do about the header. The yellow flower-thingy will do for now. Any ideas for a header my adulterous readers?

2.   I got a call from London today. Not saying anything else for the moment. If things go through I might share the story, if not then you'll just have to use your imagination as to what the call was about my darlings.

3.   Cousin It?! No, just the back of my head....

 

 4.   My bread bin I bought at a flea market before Christmas but have forgot to blog about until now. Isn't it just goooorgeous? Yes it is.

Weather report

Outside my window: it's snowing vertically. I love snow, especially since I haven't got a driveway to shovel free of it.

a note on hairdressers, especially Swedish ones

Warning! This post contains more text than images.

I don't like the concept of new year resolutions any more, I find they've lost their value, that is if they ever had a value beyond something to talk about on new year's eve. But if I were to have one, a general resolution, not a new year resolution; it would be to become more of a bitch to hairdressers.

I went to get a haircut just before Christmas. I went into the first salon I found since I only meant to get a little trim, get off those split ends. The hairdresser, a Swedish guest worker, was nice enough. I said don't cut too much of the length, I'm saving for longer hair. As he cut my gut feeling just became worse and worse and here my problem starts. I am just not able to say anything but yes, that looks nice, mhm when I should be saying I'm getting a bad feeling, I don't trust your skills, get those scissors away from my head before you do irreparable damage! I'm leaving! 

an image to look at, just to break up all that text. source

But I just sat there, as I've done many times before, hoping it would all be over soon. After the chubby Swede was finished harassing my hair and asked me what I thought of the result I said nice, lovely, mhmm, looks good. I got my stuff, went to the counter and paid the obscene price he said, even though this price did not include wash or styling. I paid and ran. My wallet felt harshly abused and was left naked without as much as a penny to cover itself.

What I should have said was something like What! Are you mad! I will not pay that much for your mediocre work, especially when you did not wash my hair or style it in any way even though I specifically asked about a price including washing and styling prior to you guillotining my poor defefnseless hair! Feck you!

So, yes, from now on I'm going to try to fight my urge to be polite and let them know my dissatisfaction before stuffing my Visa card in their little machines. What's your strategy when confronted with bad hairdressers?

Today's shopping (oops..)

Some of the things I bougt today were planned purchases. The others, not so much. Ah well, I've had a great day! Met Lena for a coffee at my new favourite café which I will hopefully take and post pics of later. The cappucicno was good, the chit-chat was better. (Note that I'm not putting in a smiley-face here even though the situation would be fitting). Anyway, let's focus on well spent money for now.

Planned purchase: sewing threads in the colours of, hmm, a colour palettte. The box is a Christmas gift from Helene.

 

  

 Planned purchase: vacuum bags

  

 Sort of planned purchase: Sportswear from H&M. Good for motivation.

 

 Not planned purchase: camisole, earrings, broche and leggings from BikBok

 

 Also planned purchases: cutting mat, rotary cutter, patchwork ruler and a pair of bedside tables. The tables caused some light disagreement between Manfriend and myself, but more on those and that later ;) Damn, I fell under the curse of the smiley faces afterall.

The ickness of cherry-coloured wood

I hate the colour of our floors. They’re dark. I used to like them but I’ve overdosed on cherry-coloured wood. Ewgh. All the floors (minus the kitchen and the bathroom), three large bookshelves, the telly-table, half of all the clothing hangers, the bed, the nightstands and the bedroom chest of drawers are all made up of cherry-coloured wood.

Icky floor and icky telly-table.

Alright bookshelf but standing on the icky floor it's just not right

I prefer my clothing hangers to be white.

But! I have a plan. I can’t do anything about the floors but save up money and wait until I have enough to buy a new place with light floors. The telly-table is already doomed. It’s too small anyway. The rest, well, we'll see.