The 12(ish) Days Of Christmas

Ok, because (a) it’s now mid-January and Xmas is well in the past and (b) people’s families are largely less interesting if you’re not actually in them, I am going to speed through the Christmas break.

The point here is we had an 11 day period between taking off in San Diego to come home to the UK, and taking off in London to get to Thailand, in which to cram all the various relatives, friends and festivities we could handle.

And then a few more than we could handle, for good measure.

So, here’s the whistlestop tour, and after that we’ll get back to the training and travelling stuff.

21st December 2012

Kicking off with an early start (the car had to be back by 2pm), we hurtled down the freeway from Costa Mesa to San Diego, scooping up a fish taco or four on the way.

All racing behind us, we then had an eight and a half hour wait in San Diego airport, which is in the process of renovations.

All I’m gonna say here is that they will be welcome and that the absolute highlight of the afternoon/evening was some chicken in a basket.

After a 10 hour flight through the night, and some exemplarily rude BA flight attendants (watching a six foot something chap refuse to help a woman load luggage into the overhead locker was awkward) we landed in the UK.

22nd December 2012

Where it was already nighttime, the next day.

Another hire car, and a chance to switch my brain into left hand drive, manual control mode.

Andy’s official job was navigator, but unofficially he was in charge of feeding me various combos of chocolate, cheesy biscuits and dried tuna jerky so I could keep my eyes open for the two hour drive to his mum’s in Wiltshire.

23rd December

Family Part One, the boys vs girls edition. Trip to the pub for the former group, silly cocktails and tapas for the latter.

24th December 2012

PJ mode.

25th December 2012

Up at 6am for the Present Opening Ceremony.

Fuelled largely by coffee and excitement, Andy finally got his hands on the Shoyoroll Gold Star (ordered in America and trapped in customs for a couple of weeks).

It didn’t disappoint.

After the heady Shoyoroll rush, plus a full-on Christmas lunch (that he cooked), Andy needed a power nap.

I will point out, for the benefit of his mum's exemplary housekeeping reputation, that the piles of stuff all over the bed are because we hadn't managed to properly unpack by this point, and were existing in a weird holiday-clothes-with-a-woolly-scarf mode.

Well holiday clothes, scarves and an obligatory festive jumper.

Ten minutes later, it was time to head over to his Dad’s for a second helping of Xmas dinner, topped off with way too much chocolate.

26th December 2012

More Extreme Chocolate Eating (my Atos endurance training was not wasted).

27th December 2012

We drive down to my mum’s in Kent for Xmas part, well, I’m not sure even I can keep track at this point.

My mother is not naturally a fan of the season, but had pulled out all of the stops to decorate our bedroom with reindeer, snowmen and twinkly stuff.

Aside from one terrifying moment where I mistook the rustling of the helium balloons for an intruder in the middle of the night, it was much appreciated.

28th, 29th December 2012

More family of various flavours and combinations.

30th December 2012

A round-trip to London – girly lunch for me, burger and martial arts chat for Andy.

After eleven weeks away, three different cities and numerous houses, the notion of ‘home’ is actually wavering slightly. Having vehemently defended living in London for the last 20 years, we’re starting to contemplate other options (living by the sea for example).

Sadly, despite the likelihood of this turning out to be a seminal 'life realisation,' I forgot to take any photos to demonstrate the point. So you'll have to make do with a slightly awkward Christmas-deco-inspired self portrait. Still, it was jolly fun.

31st December 2012

New Year’s Eve. A time for celebrations, champagne, parties, bars and kissing strangers at midnight (actually I’ve never managed that last bit, even in singler times).

Or you could do what we did and stay in, have a nice bit of dinner, half a glass of wine, put on an impromptu BJJ demonstration/gi catwalk and attempt to keep our eyes open till midnight.

The final minutes were headily spent folding laundry, ready to stuff in our cases (the Asiana website had threatened a total of one 20kg bag, which is challenging when you’ve got two gis on board) the next day, and by 12.20am we were both in bed.

1st January 2013

New Year, new destinations, and another round of goodbyes before we set off to the airport.

Destination Phuket in Thailand, by way of Seoul.

Highpoints of the trip included some exceptionally friendly Asiana staff, an extra 10kg of luggage allowance (little bit late but handy for the return leg) and a Korean dinner that I got to build myself (well, I added the chilli paste and the sesame oil to it).

Low points included the journey taking about 36 hours end to end, and being accompanied by a streaming cold that I had picked up in the UK.

It’s tough to pull off that glam air travel look at the best of times, but I apologise to anyone in the vicinity (especially Andy) as I flopped through Icheon airport with an air of pleurisy.

3rd January 2013

At around 1am (Thailand is seven hours ahead) we landed, and by 3ish we finally made it to Fern House, our home for the next month. Body clocks be damned, it was time to settle in and get ready for training again.

18 hours in just ten paragraphs

So, last Friday was the Day Of Travel. Post binning, bagging, boxing and baying, this is what I’m left with.

Suitcase number one is holiday clothes. We are banking on California living up to its ‘Sunshine State’ reputation. On the upside, vest tops and cut downs don’t take up a heap of space.

The drawback is that since we stashed our winter garbs up in the Warminster loft, London has decided to get all autumnal on our asses, which lead to me going out in Havaianas whilst this was happening.

Here’s hoping the desert air can cure another bout of snottiness.

Suitcase number two is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu apparel. Whilst the boyfriend’s primary motivation for picking the US of A is to worship, correction, *train* at Multiple World Champion Andre Galvao’s Atos academy, my own dalliance with the sport has been touch and go of late. Still, I’d hate to have an epiphany and then find I have nothing to wear.

The mini suitcase is full of camera equipment, leads, computer harddrives etc. It’s breaking the two bag rule a bit, but it’s hand luggage and we’re hoping to wear and ditch some of the other stuff on the way back.

Onto Heathrow airport, and flight BA 273. By some strange twist of fate, the Worst Possible Idea’s launch day was accompanied by The Day I Was Picked As The Security Control Passenger. Or so they told me anyway. Between online check-in and boarding the vehicle, I was stopped and sent back twice, had my belongings unpacked twice, and was patted down twice. After five separate incidents where staff surreptitiously flicked over their paperwork to confirm my name was on their secret list, even I was questioning my connections and wondering if I’d accidentally joined an extremist sect. After all, I do like talking to strangers and I’m not the best at concentrating.

Boyfriend and I took up residence on the plane, which was kindly chilled to match the outside air temperature (at 30,000 feet). I bravely battled on by stealing every blanket in the vicinity, doing my best ET impression and tucking into the free wine.

Ten and a half hours later (three of which were spent unconscious on my part) we landed, and were greeted by Homeland Security, and an hour-long queue. If anyone is thinking about illegally hopping into San Diego, I’d say skip it, those guys have a talent for analysis that would shame Sigmund Freud.

This is what people look like after half a day in the air travel system. The rings under my eyes could be exhaustion or a migration of mascara, by this point I was past caring. It was time for a taxi to the illustrious-sounding ‘California Suites,’ our home for the next two weeks…

The seed of an idea

Anyone who knows me, knows I love a list. I also take pessimism and risk-assessment to award-winning levels. If there was a yearly trophy for ‘Most Likely To Find 100 Obscure Reasons Why Something Will Go Wrong’ I’d have a cabinet full.

Whilst that particular skill comes in handy in my work as a television producer (“Watch out for the moving vehicle/rain-bearing cloud in the east/man making V signs in the corner of the shot/imminent presenter meltdown”) it has on more occasions than not, also made me miserable. And (as I’m sure my other half will testify) a bit of a pain in the arse. I might yearn for a life full of arthouse-inspired passion, but when you can shoot down even a walk to the corner shop within milliseconds (“What will we buy, how does that fit into the eating plan and should I take a jumper?”), it rather kills the spontaneity.

I’ll be 39 at the end of October, and with the encroaching birthday comes the realisation that I’ve probably spent half of my life governed by an over-arching need to stop everything going belly-up. In jobs, houses, relationships…I’ve stuck it out with the mantra of “it might be grim, but imagine if it got worse.” Ironically quite often it has – I’ve lost jobs, boyfriends and houses anyway – but even when things are going ok, I’ve managed to find something to fret about. I’ve had dream jobs (filming all over the world for MTV, spending all day thinking about colour palettes as a Creative Director, chatting on Facebook in the name of Social Media Strategy), and I’ve had a fairly dream salary bracket too. I’ve still found something new to worry about - what my boss will say if I take a day off, whether my shiny new laptop will get stolen, whether that mark on the leather sofa will cause me to lose the deposit on my flat. In short, I’ve built some very gilded cages for myself.

When I met my boyfriend, he was planning a six-month sabbatical, a trip across the world to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And whilst our relationship developed, and the prospect of missing him loomed ever larger, another less-romantically-admirable emotion was building too. I was jealous. I’d watched friends, family members and exes follow their dreams (or even just a whim) and head off to foreign shores. And they all seemed to be doing ok. And yet I was still tied to that sofa, watching my bank balance, sniffling into my tissues (I have a real talent for colds) and muttering “Well, that’s great for them, but there’s so many reasons why I couldn’t do it.”

I don’t know why or how or when, but there was a moment where I just got bored of myself. It was probably less “Carpe Diem” and more “For Pete’s sake, how long is this game going on for?” but I came to the realisation that a few potential mistakes have to be better than a lifetime of feeling mildly disgruntled.

At the end of the day, it was just a decision. Right or wrong, I am going to put trying to control everything on hold, and just live a bit.

It started with a click...

Yesterday afternoon, we booked two tickets to San Diego. On 28th September, me and my boyfriend will be off to 'America's finest city.' So far, so same as the other 31 million tourists who drop by.

Before we fly however, we'll get rid of our houses in the UK. We're ditching our jobs. We're eBaying and bin bagging and loft stashing till we can fit everything left into a couple of 23kg suitcases. And we're hitting the runway with an Esta, a two week budget hotel booking, and not much else.

Where we end up this time next year, both mentally and geographically, is a gamble. This could be the worst possible idea. On the other hand, it might just work out.