Two Years On - Phuket, Thailand - 16 Sept 2013

Well that was a quick two years. I always doubted whether I'd be committed enough to blog regularly but even by my low standards of dedication to any project this is poor stuff.

So much has changed. I made the move.  Within six weeks I found myself employed as an English teacher in a plucky little enrichment centre.  Much has changed there in 18 months but I'm still there and still liking it.

R and I are in the early stages of buying a flat and are getting married next June. Yes, I've long a long way since my last post. I have a lot of ground to cover to fill my readers in.  The logical move is to begin with the present and plug any gaps that matter as they come to me over time.  So: where are we right now?

Antanara Villas, Phuket, Thailand. A (too) short break, latest in our string of mini-holidays. It's fairly luxurious with private pool, ever-smiling staff and abundant turtle motifs. Even the skinks are friendly. It's also some distance (and expensive cab ride) from Phuket's action hot spots but it does have a skinny strip of west-facing beach. The sunset is predictably resplendent.

I have mildly burnt shoulders from a marvellous island-hopping tour yesterday.  We
have a massage booked in an hour or so.  A freebie - all it took was giving up two hours
 of our life to a timeshare pitch.  I love it here but next time may push for somewhere a little closer to affordable eating.  The buffet breakfast is to die for and could probably hold me until evening but I'm on holiday dammit and I want to eat three meals a day.  We found the only apparent street food in the vicinity just now.  It looked like this

We THINK it was chicken.

160 Days

August 23rd, 20:23

Well here goes.  As with most things in my life, I’m a late-starter at the blogging game.  Whether I have the commitment, whether I find that I have anything worthwhile to say and whether anyone ever considers any of my ramblings worth reading is yet to be seen.  But as I hurtle towards middle age a new chapter is starting in my life - a big, scary, thrilling one – with a host of new experiences ahead, some already carefully planned, most unforeseen… so what the hell.  If I don’t start scribbling about my life now, I never will.  Nothing like this is ever going to happen to me again.

As an aside I did keep a diary for a few years in my teens and early twenties.  Looking back over my entries in more recent years I have never failed to shudder and shrink from the page in disgust at my shamelessness, my scrawling handwriting, my crude illustrations and, above all, my glorious inability to string a coherent sentence together – or, at least, to give it any polish or poetry, to create something I'd be anything less that mortified to share with the world.  I suspect that reading back over this as soon as later tonight will have similar effect.  At least back then I had the excuse of being a kid.  But what the hell, this is a practice run.  My blog quest, should I choose to accept it, begins when I step off that plane in my new home.

160 days.  Less than half a year from now I’ll be on the second LHR-SG flight of my life.  Still seems so far off.  It isn’t, of course.

160 days ago today.  March 16 2011.  In Japan rescuers were still searching for survivors of the earthquake and tsunami five days earlier.  Four New York Times journalists were reported missing in Libya.  Four grams of cocaine was discovered at the Kennedy Space Centre.  None of these stories belong to the dim and distant past.

160 days ago he had his leaving party, a couple of days before departing London for home.

Time only stands still when you really need it to pick up the pace.

Flight #1 is somewhat sooner.  55 days from now I’ll be, I would guess, somewhere over western Europe, an hour or so into the flight, a ball of emotions willing the journey to be over quickly, shaking with excitement, eagerly anticipating airline food, repeatedly changing my mind about which movie to watch first and inevitably going with the snobbiest one, my mind fixed on the sweetest smile in the world waiting for me at the other side.

I’m in a long-distance relationship.  Very long-distance.  6740.23 miles.  With my average fitness, should I attempt to walk it, it would take me an estimated 2246 hours and 40 minutes, or a little over 93 days (thanks to http://www.wotzwot.co.uk/walking-time.php which - presumably to waive liability should I impulsively try something very silly – also included a note in red bold stating that “this walk should not be attempted!”). Long-distance relationships don’t work.  Well not for me.  The man of my dreams is committed to his job in Singapore; so in January 2012, off I go to join him there.  It’s the only possible option.  It’s gonna be hard.  At this point I have no idea what I will be doing to earn a living.  It’s gonna be scary.  It’s gonna be hot and humid.  I’m gonna eat a lot.  And its gonna be the best thing I have ever done in my life.  I can’t wait.  Stay with me, I’ll try to make the whole experience as riveting for whichever readers I manage to pick up as its gonna be for me.

160 days.  Maybe I should walk it after all.  I’d be there 67 days sooner…