It has been a busy year, and before I know it, Xmas is around the corner again - another year has almost gone by. It is a typical late Autumn day here in London, cloudy and mild, leaves are changing colors and showing off their last golden glamour before giving up to the winter.
We went to the garden centre and got a new plant for the balcony. Our flat on the first floor facing the communal garden, the lush summer green has long gone, replaced by half bare trees branching out to the street underneath our balcony. It is a very wealthy neighbourhood in this prime location in London, but it is usually very quiet on a gloomy weekend like this. It seems that people just retrieve to their 2.5m home for comfort.
We love this area, but living in a 40 square meter flat is nothing of great comfort. We are getting married next month and hoping to buy a small cottage in Brook Green area in a few months. I love the old houses in London, they have a charm that gets better with age. I am glad in a way I found my first flat in this area when I moved to London two years ago (almost three years now!). It has a village feel to it, close to Holland park and great transportation link from Hammersmith to the city. We wish we could move the French cafe Paul from Holland Park to Brook Green, that would make it perfect.
Looking back at the past eleven months, it seems that my life these days have been dominated by slaving in the office, shopping, traveling and time to just relax and not doing anything. I suppose that what has plagued most of us in modern time, the pressure to be successful at our career, making more money, buying nice things, enjoying nice things, wanting more nice things, trying to make more money, buying more nice things, but is there an end to this really? It seems that we push ourselves to a giant flywheel and could never get off again. When I contemplate on this thought, I have to admit I get a bit scared. Maybe it is time to think about being and so much doing all the time.
I am looking forward to the new year though, I will be a married woman again - after nearly ten years, and we will hopefully be moving to a small cottage house. A little of my own space would be nice, I really need to catch up on my blog. And it could be an exiting year, we will be slowly getting out of this current economic mess, and America finally has a strong, liberal and charismatic leader, that is one very encouraging development, isn't it? If the old sterling ever claws back to the two dollar exchange rate again, we will definitely make a visit to the key west, something could be a belated honey moon.
