A New Venture

When I went travelling I tried to keep a diary, with notes, pictures, ticket stubs, drawings, musings etc. I remember one entry I wrote, really near the end which just reads: "Lost time living too hard."

I remember that whirlwind feeling, of cramming so much in; going, doing, meeting, seeing...

My life today feels like that - like some kind of beautiful chaos.

But as a result, I hardly have time to go for a wee let alone sit at my computer and blog.

Also, being back at work has lessened my need for a creative lifeline.

I'm going to try and keep this up, but in the meantime check out my Editor's Letter for some daily rambilings.

So last night I got to thinking…

Ha, you know you wish you were Carrie Bradshaw too. But here's how it went:

This time 10 years ago I took my first journalism job in Shanghai. I went to China with the idea of doing a follow up on the Dying Rooms. It was unsuccessful - the orphanage had been moved to an Island off mainland China and it was heavily guarded. My computers got shut down and I had to check in with the police for a while. KO.

These days I edit content about Victoria Beckham's style choices and Lady Gaga flashing her butt cheeks. I often wonder how I got here.

I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason but also that we choose our paths based on circumstances at the time of decision making. Back in the Big Smoke I was offered two highly incongruous jobs on the same day - one in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and one at a dance organization.

I sometimes wonder if in a parallel life, I'm now some kind of diplomat wearing power suits and dealing with foreign policy. But those days at The Place hold a very special place in my heart, and I'm glad I chose to be immersed within such a creative world.

And again, the day the I was offered my role at Sky I was also offered the position of Editor of an art magazine based in Chelsea, right around the corner from Christie's and which also housed a newsroom for a yachting mag. In another universe, am I working with painters and art dealers and going to gallery openings every night?

Christmas Time...

... Last year, mistletoe. This year, wine.

2009



2010

So Much To Do, So Little Time

TO DO LIST: w/c Dec 7, 2009

• Get time for KR's hearing test at Edgware Hospital
• Book baby massage course
• Get times for Mummy & Me yoga at Triyoga Primrose Hill
• Register birth at Camden Town Hall
• Fill out child benefit form
• Register KR at the doctors

TO DO LIST: w/c Dec 6, 2010

• Buy Secret Santa present
• Get babysitter for work Xmas party
• Send thank you cards from Kaila-Rose (for her 1st birthday presents)
• Organise press tickets for Cinderella @ Sadler's Wells and The Snowman @ The Peacock
• Organise Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park with Robbie

The Reformation Act

I remember the weeks of November in 2009 as a blur of midwife visits, trips to the breastfeeding clinic and being utterly unable to be left alone. One evening when The Kiwi threatened to attend a meeting, my hysteria was such that he had to cancel. Hormonal overload like never before.

In my 2010 Moleskine the biro inkings are taking their first tentative steps into a re-found social life and a re-formed sense of identity. I never actually went to anything while Kaila-Rose was settling into nursery, but there are press nights, shopping events and evenings with friends, written in alongside big, scribbly question marks. Which says much about my state of mind when I first went back to work.

Picture Perfect

I still remember the feeling when I set off for hospital the morning my induction was booked. I felt like I was going on holiday, it was exciting, it was unknown. I remember the ensuing mayhem of four days swerving in and out of labour as the inductions didn't quite kick in as they should, and the drama of the day that Kaila-Rose was born.

I remember the smell of her breath after she fed, her warm face fitting into the nook of my shouder and the first time she looked at me with her little blue eyes.

All of the gruesome stuff I've forgotten - my brain and my hormones have done me a real turn there.

I remember so much from that first year, some things that I can describe, some that I can't. Most were fascinating only to the Kiwi and I and no-one else. How endlessly we discussed napping, feeding and sleeping; how hysterical we found her first spring in the bouncer; how moved to tears by her first smile; how proud of her first step. Stuff that would bore the sh!t out of almost everyone else. Stuff that people only find amazing, joyful and hilarious when it's their own kid.

But I wanted to keep a record, a reminder of these precious memories. So, I put together a book called Kaila-Rose's First Year on www.photobox.co.uk. Painstaking work it was too - I scoured every pic, from The Kiwi's professional photographs to the snaps taken on my mobile phone. You can design the pages to have up to 9 images on each in a grid format for the bad quality ones (taken for the most part by yours truly), then the better images can fill a whole page.

It's a pretty perfect picture book if you ask me.

One Year Old

On this day last year:



12 November this year: