Bond, James Bond

Everybody has a list. Those people that you wouldn't kick out of bed given a chance. I think there was a Friends episode about it, although I won't embarrass myself by going in to details. All you need to know about my list is that it is a guarantee that if I put a bloke on the list LK will refuse to watch a movie with him in it (he still has not seen The English Patient since I confessed that Ralph Fiennes scored high on the phwoar factor) - as if I could ever spend time with a bloke called Ralph. Or more to the point, as if he should be worried. The only thing I could pull these days is a pelvic floor muscle.

Anyway, it appears one of my 'candidates' has just bought a house only a few miles away from my home town in North Yorkshire. To say this is incongruous doesn't quite do it justice. I grew up in the wilds of Yorkshire; it's a destination if you're a tweed-clad hiker or a snowy plover. It is not a star hang-out (although we did once see Geoffrey Smith on a bicycle). You can't make that up.

Now, Santa Barbara, different story. You can't walk to the shops without tripping over a star or seven. Oprah lives a few miles away (a different school district, I can guarantee you that, but still). The best place in fact for star-spotting is the Starbucks in Montecito. Positively dripping with Hollywood talent in need of a latte. To think that Bond, James Bond (aka Daniel Craig) has moved to - rumour has it - Knaresborough seems a tad unfair. Like moving to Rwanda to spot a silverback gorilla only to find out that your local petting zoo has just established an exhibit.

We had in fact been privy to this rumour when we went home in April. There we were sitting and supping in one of our favourite pubs when the landlord told us that Daniel Craig had just bought a house down the road. "On, Bond Street" he said smiling, then walked away. We thought it was bait-the-American time, but it turns out to be true, confirmed by none other than my Mum who confessed she'd heard from a trusted source that he'd joined the other gym in town. I know!! What are the chances!

I do know, for the record, that I am both married and heavily, heavily pregnant, but ladies, I am not dead, and I wouldn't pass this up if I bumped into it in Knaresborough fisheries:










































Woof!

It's as if North Yorkshire's trying to lure me back (although the likelihood of him wearing a Speedo even in August is slim-to-none).

Doing The Right Thing

Yesterday I read this lovely, thought-provoking post by Wife in the North. I was instantly reeled in because it was set in a tea-shop in York. Oh to be transported back to a Fat Rascal for a morning! Why am I yearning for a drizzly morning's cup of tea next to the Ouse when I am minutes away from a palm-tree fringed beach breakfast? Obviously those Chelsea Buns from my internationally famous actress friend have started something at the DNA level!!

The post, along with the comments, made me think about how often we see the right thing to do, but avoid it because it'll be too time-consuming, or potentially embarrassing (a very knee-jerk English response). I know lots of really lovely people, those that are always ready to lend a hand, proffer a Kleenex, ask the right questions, to friends and strangers alike. I am not one of those people. The other day I let a bloke go in front of me in the queue at Trader Joes because he was only buying 4 things and I had a full domestic-diva trolley-full. I spent the next five minutes avoiding his gaze in case he thought I fancied him. Nuts, me.

As a whole though, I tend to shy away from confrontation, from getting involved with other people's lives. I will always listen but I very rarely ask. I'm very rarely the person who steps forward if I see a toddler wandering around by herself in the street, or someone who needs help. I'm always praying someone else will step in first. The situation arises all the time in the office where I work, people need help getting their elderly spouses in and out of wheelchairs, christ, opening doors, how hard is that?

As all good posts are, this one of Wife in the North's was both well-written and thought-provoking. It also reminded me of my brother. My favourite memory of him (can I say memory, when he's alive and kicking and probably right this minute in the pub?!) is when he helped an old lady with a run-away rockery.

LK, my brother and I were walking in to town to meet his then girlfriend for lunch. We were chatting away, strolling past the huge gabled entrances to some of the formidable Victorian homes along Harrogate's Stray, when we noticed an elderly lady struggling to move a massive boulder that had made a bid for freedom from her rockery, and was now in the middle of her drive. I remember my brother doing a comic half-step, a swift turnaround, and all of a sudden he was taking over and rolling the stone back in to position. Such a simple action, completed before we'd even had time to adjust our pace.

I remember how effusively he was thanked 'what a lovely young man', how the red crept up his neck to his ears. I remember thinking what a top bloke he was. I did see the old lady, but it never even occurred to me to help. I tend to blame innate shyness, or awkwardness on my part, but that is, as you Americans would say, a very 'lame' excuse. I need to step up to the plate more. It is a trait I very much dislike in myself. A trait I would not like Anna to inherit, so I need to lead by example.

Oh the horror.

Us vs. Them: Fashion

Whenever I go back to the UK I always end up dressing circa 1996. That's the last time I dressed for a cold climate, and my Mum and Dad still have some of my fashionable knitwear from the 90s in my wardrobe at home.

It's a little nerve-wracking going back, particularly if you have to dress for a big event, like a wedding, and you don't want to get it wrong. It is practically impossible to get a dress for a spring wedding in California that is not diaphanous and floaty and would render the wearer frozen in an instant in THE NORTH. Plus if you make the mistake of telling a Californian sales assistant that you're looking for something appropriate for a spring wedding in England they immediately start casting around for the Laura Ashley maternity dresses.

Basically I was really struggling, and I don't have vast expanses of time with which to go clothes shopping as the creature has a ten minute clothes-shop boredom threshold and any longer than that she's running amok in the lingerie section and I'm trying to coax her sticky hands from a rack of immaculate silk negligees. My friend Jen inadvertently came up trumps by inviting me to her four-year-old daughter's birthday party. Not the ideal place to find a dress for a wedding - unless it's in size 4T, or so you would think. I turned up at the party and she said 'you can leave Anna here if you want, we'll be done in about an hour'.

It was like the jailer had forgotten to shut the door.

Three nano-seconds later I was in the Department Store across the street looking at posh frocks. My mind was racing. Must find dress. Must find dress. Of course there was nothing. Everything remotely appropriate was in this season's 'jewel tones' and I have the colouring of, well 'colouring' at all is stretching things rather. In a fit of panic I grabbed, tried on and purchased a black polka-dotted halter-neck dress.

A black, halter-neck dress for a Spring wedding. My brother's Spring wedding.

They are an amazing couple and will certainly be married for a lifetime. I would be in their wedding pictures in my accidental purchase for a lifetime.

I was terrified that I'd bought the wrong dress. That I would appear the brash, ridiculously-attired American at the English country wedding. Then my friend told me to take a long hard look at every Hello magazine littering my bathroom *admits to guilty pleasure*. It was clear that you could wear anything you wanted to at a 21st Century English wedding as long as you had a pashmina and one of those feathery doo-dads perched atop your head. A fascinator, I learned. A collection of artful feathers, and in some cases twigs? on an Alice band instantly transforms any sad sack into a wedding guest. I absolutely loved mine, despite one of my brother's friends pointing to it and saying 'I'm surprised a blackbird asn't tried to ave a crack at that' (imagine a very broad Yorkshire accent). So yes, fascinators, great things, especially if your husband keeps accidentally calling them 'fantasizers'.

I am more and more aware though how inappropriate my typical Southern Californian wardrobe is for England - and not just in terms of warmth. Basically, one mans swimwear is another mans disgusting Euro speedo. LK and I frequently look liked we've dressed for a beach party every time we land at Manchester airport. My fantastic Ebay-steal Uggs that I thought perfect for April in North Yorkshire:













Were only slightly more upscale than the fake Uggs (Fuggs) worn by every single teenage girl in the UK. Whoops.

I did however stumble on my own personal clothing Aladdin's cave. I once had a dream during a particularly uncomfortable and insecure time at College that I found a shop where every single item of clothing was perfect for me. Turns out, fifteen years later, this shop actually exists. White Stuff, or 'Caucasian Clothes' as LK coined it was like dying and going to heaven. If heaven involved a horrible exchange-rate induced financial enema with every purchase. Honestly, just linking to that website again had my index finger poised over the 'add to your cart' button. Damn that's an amazing shop.

Must go and lie down now.

Weddings: Part Deux

Where was I? Oh yes, so we came back from London, having had a simply marvellous time running around being both childless and childish, and taking ridiculously touristy photos like these:













































This doesn't look at all like London does it?







We had a fantastic time staying with some old friends Eggy & Tom at their shamefully fabulous place which made me want to start working harder in life, and then I realised I quite like having Fridays off and must content myself with living in squalor. Sunny squalor. I did have a long hard lust at their bookshelves in the guest bedroom where I wanted to read 89.9% of their entire collection, and only then because I'd already read 7.8%. My second night away from the creature ever, a skinful of fantastic wine and all I wanted to do was stay up all night and read. Prize for wife of the year right here please.

We literally stepped off the train from London and my brother's wedding arrived.








Thanks to my cousin Andrew for the photos.


And it was absolutely perfect. Even the terror of me doing a reading, and LK being the best man and having to do a speech to rival the Father of the Bride and the groom (no easy task) did not detract from the day. It was one of those weddings where everything seemed to go right. Of course I missed the juiciest part of the night as Anna fell asleep on my shoulder at 10:30pm, and if she could sleep on me while I was dancing to 'Night Fever' then all was lost and I clearly had to take her to bed.












I missed dancing with my brother (who dances so well only the fact that he was the groom would make you not question his sexuality), and I may never forgive Anna for the fact that I missed the bacon butties brought round at midnight.

The amount of love in that room was overwhelming (and not just from my brother's friend who was trying to mate with everything in a skirt). It sounds trite, but it was very life-affirming to be surrounded by all those people that I love, and to see them so happy.

Thanks P & L, I think you made me realise that things can never be truly bleak when everything we'll ever really need we have.

Two Weddings & A Fascinator

Oh, you want to hear more about the trip?!

As much as we all love going to England, we wouldn't ordinarily have left our nuclear-mushroom-cloud of a life in California just as the fiscal A-bomb was about to make landfall. However, my baby brother was getting married, and thanks to some generous financial assistance, we were able to buy that one extra plane ticket for the creature. Our child who no longer flies free. She already has a passport littered with immigration stamps, but now that she's old enough to require her own seat her traveling days may be limited to the Ventura Target, and that's only if gas prices don't keep rising.

We had to take her though, as not only did she have a fabulous dress to wear:













but she's the only recent offspring on both sides of the family, and therefore about as popular as a half-price sale in the Marks & Spencers knicker section.

*Very popular*.

As luck and fantastic friendship would have it though, we ended up sneaking in a second wedding a few days before my brother's big bash. My BFF from University, Sus, is getting married in May. She knows pretty much all my secrets, so I'm not going to publish *that picture* (plus, she's an incredibly famous actress darling, and there is such a thing as bad publicity - or bad hair). Sadly we can't make it over in May, because breaking it to an American employer that you're taking three weeks off in a single year is hard enough. Twice in one year, not going to happen. So we were truly gutted that we would miss her walking down the aisle with this fabulous man:



















How Sus, who is half American, married a bloke from Yorkshire, and I, who can't leave THE NORTH without hyperventilating, married an American, has got to be one of the biggest, but most fantastic mix-ups of all time. If someone had told us 15 years ago in the College bar that was going to happen, we'd have wanted to be drinking what they were drinking.

Anyway, back to the story. In order for them to get married in a rose garden in Kent, they would have to get married in a registry office first (in England the place is legally consecrated for marriage, not the person). Here is where I will be forever grateful. Instead of going to the registry office the morning of their big wedding, they chose to get the legal bit over with a month earlier so that we could be present. When she first suggested this as an option I literally choked up. It was an incredible honour.

My Mum and Dad watched Anna overnight, and we headed down to London, to Haringey registry office where it was truly beautiful to see two very accomplished actors fluff their vows ever so slightly because they were overcome by the enormity of the moment. It was beautiful, classy, sweet and sincere. And then we went for ice-cream:















and they called everyone they knew and said 'we just got married' and the bloke at Thornton's gave them free chocolates because they'd only been married for fifteen minutes, and love ruled Haringey(?) High Street and all was right with the world.















.....to be continued.

Fit To Be Tired

I used to be fit.

Many, many years ago I was superbly, effortlessly fit. The type of fit you take for granted as a pre-pubescent girl.

It was that long ago.

We were an active family; I did swimming, ballet, judo (all of them reluctantly and without talent), and we would do marathon 'walks' in the Yorkshire Dales every Sunday fortified only by cheese and pickle sandwiches and the occasional lump of Kendal mint cake. It's good stuff, pure sugar, but still provided barely enough calories to help us face the drizzle and drag our muck-clad wellies round that final escarpment.

My Dad had a way of guiding a car key around an Ordinance Survey map that instilled fear and awe in my brother and I. He would prop the map up on the bonnet of our car, the drizzle-laden North-Easterly winds whipping it out from under him until he had it pinned with rocks. He would point at the 'suggested route' and instead would drag 'the magic key' towards a cluster of such tightly-packed contours that it looked like the skin of a chain-smoking 75-year-old Floridian. All I could usually see of my brother's face under his yashmak-like Peter Storm was the glint of panic in his eyes.

We both knew what was coming next.

'Now the map seems to suggest we go along this meadow here' he would say, passing the key tantalizingly close to a flat riverbed area, 'but I'm inclined to think that if we just cut up this road, and go along here', jabbing at the angry-looking contours while my brother and I look at him in growing alarm, 'here's where we might be able to cut across and make these two suggested five-mile walks in to something a little more interesting'. We knew that to mean a marathon 10 mile Man vs Wild survival challenge with the outside chance of a Cadbury's creme egg at a village shop or a shandy and lemonade at the Miner's Arms if we made it back to the car park. Both of us wondering why we weren't at home watching the Waltons along with the rest of humanity.

My Mum would be sitting in the car, shielded from the weather, listening to the Archers on the radio until the last possible moment.

We certainly ended up fit though.


I remember our first ever 'Double Games' at secondary school. We went for a cross-country run, up past the hockey pitch, further even than the athletics track, a piece of school turf so remote we called it the 'North Pole'. Past the 'bog fields' and then for good measure up a delightfully steep and deliberate hill. It was probably about 3 miles all told. I remember coming in in 2nd place and being genuinely puzzled at the tattered wrecks of humanity who collapsed into the changing rooms later that day. Ex-friends looking at me with pure hatred 'you could've waited with us ya cow.'

That was when I was fit.

Now I get it. Now when I run it feels like my lungs are going to burst through my nose in pursuit of oxygen. My legs feel like they weigh 100lbs each. Training has made it easier, but it's only 3 weeks to the race and I know that I will be no way near fit enough to do it without pain, let alone effortlessly. I would love to be able to do the race and enjoy it. I would love to have trained enough so that doing the race and having fun with it would be my reward. To be able to do the race like LK, and breeze through the disciplines.

My husband, the pre-pubescent teenage girl.