Life, or something like it.

Life and some sense of normalcy has finally resumed. I don't know that I can remember how to do a normal life? I have remembered where the office is and spent time in it doing little work but lots of faffing. I have been all the way to the local town to do essential shopping only to discover that I left my bag of joy with it's accompanying cash and cards in my kitchen in the hovel. It's a good start. Really.

I managed to irritate everybody over Christmas. You know how there is always somebody who everyone gets cross with when you are all together at Christmas? This year it was me. I think the excessive tiredness of not a day off in three weeks combined with a ridiculous diary during Christmas meant that I was so tired I couldn't remember how to be tactful, charming or much else for that matter. Plus the fact that the rest of my family are mean and nasty and were picking on me.... WAAAAAAH.

Chutney Mary insisted that we all get up at seven o'clock to view her precious ones open their stockings. The boys couldn't have cared less whether we were there or not and I was overwhelmed with bitterness that Chutney Mary had not even tried to seduce us out of bed with coffee and freshly baked pastries. Having got to bed at around 1.30 am the night before and been awake every hour through the night (no, not listening for Father Christmas you muppets), I was most grumpy.

Box of Frogs was possibly on drugs - I've never known her to pick so few fights but she did tell me THREE TIMES IN A ROW that she had infinitely better dress sense than me. All this whilst she was wearing a jumper with pigs knitted on it. I'm sorry. I have bad dress sense and you wear a jumper with farm animals on it? Actually, I think you'll find I have totally indifferent dress sense. I wear clothes so that I'm not naked. I like fabrics that feel nice and if my budget allowed I'd only have cashmere jumpers. I don't do dresses and I struggle to do skirts but I NEVER, EVER wear anything with animals embroidered on it. I studiously ignored her for at least an hour after this, and then told Chutney Mary all about it who kept making loud pointed remarks in front of the Box of Frogs about the fact that I was about to put a coat on to walk the loyal hound and perhaps she should help me to choose it.... Aaaah, the joys of a family at Christmas.

I've made only one New Year's resolution which is to find a house to buy rather than continuing renting. I like this kind of resolution. There is very little I can do about it but the prospect of achieving it is nice.

I braved the shops on Tuesday to try and get one of those little notebook computers to have in the house. This is mainly so that I can blog at all hours of the day and night without having to go over to the office but I think that work can pay for it as it sounds like a work kind of thing! I nearly stabbed my pen through the assistant's eye in PC World due to the extreme irritation that she engendered just by talking. Bear in mind that I had had to sign up in a queue just to get her to consider helping me, whereupon she completely ignored everything I said, tried to sell me things that I didn't want and wouldnt' tell me how much things cost other than an airy 'oh around a £100, around £1,00000.00 etc etc. I should have learnt my lesson when the last PC World assistant I spoke to thought I was a hobbit. Needless to say I left without the netbook thingummy and with a blood pressure that could kill lesser mortals.

Anyway, I am in a white world now. The temperature this week has averaged a delightful -3 in the day and -7 at night. My water took two days of lugging buckets of water up from the stream and boiling them up to defrost but what the hell, that's what life on the hillside can be like. I stayed with friends on New Year's Eve and woke in the morning to find the most amazing Jack Frost ice patterns on the inside of the window - they were so thick I couldn't see out! Each day the frost layers itself over the previous layer so that I woke this morning and though it had snowed the world was so white. So, here i am in my silent and frozen world and loving every minute of it.

Happy New Year.

Yes, I am a hobbit.

I've just spent the last 36 hours or so in London and I can't tell you the relief at getting back to my hillside again. I spent 9 years living in London and there is no sense left of it feeling like home. In fact, it sometimes feels positively alien. This is partly because it is hard to be rootless in a place where you used to have a home, but it is also because I don't think London wants you to feel at home. It wants you to feel overwhelmed, a little uncool and envious of all those with whom the force is strong because they live there and you don't.

I think the thing I find hardest is the superiority that so many Londoners seem to feel towards anyone who chooses not to live in the same place as them. I am somehow made to feel as though I have hay in my hair and in place of my brain. This isn't from strangers particularly, but more from London born and bred friends who just can't understand why anybody would leave London. It drives me crackers.

I know it is pointless trying to justify it - they think the whole 'living in the country / not in London' idea sounds like terrifying hard work. They panic at the thought of no coffee in a paper cup (so do I come to think of it), no access to beautiful shoes (valid point too) and probably no electricity, newspapers, internet, radio, or Waitrose. They certainly seem to think that anyone not in London is unlikely to know about what is on at the theatre, or the galleries or the news for that matter.

The irony that vexes me about this is that as a general rule London is so insular it has very little idea of what is going on in the rest of the country, whereas my experience of people who live in the country is that they have a fairly accurate sense of what is going on nationally and give the crime rates in Newcastle the same importance as a tube strike in London. If you don't believe me, look at how snow is reported. Northern Scotland had endless snow this year, with entire areas cut off but the only time the snow gets into the news is when the M25 grinds to a halt because three flakes of snow drifted down onto an unsuspecting car causing untold trauma to a the London driver. It is a terrible divide that I think I notice far more because of having chosen to leave one world for the other.

I know that this is a bit of a rant, but I feel ranty about it. I am fed up with the assumption that because I live in Wales I have given up on any mental sophistication in favour of bucolic bliss. I can survive on a hillside in Wales, and in London. Could they??? So to cheer you up a little and give you a taste of the best example of this type of stereo typing here is a little tale for you - entirely true and pretty much verbatim........

On a trip down to London I went into PC World to look at a laptop. One of the drones working there spent some time trying to persuade me to buy a PC that I didn't want and wasn't remotely what I was looking for. I resisted, strongly and was considering stapling a notice to my head saying NOT INTERESTED when he came up with a plan. In a wheedling tone, he suggested I buy the offending article and take it home where I could appreciate it's true fabulousness. If I still felt the same inexplicable hatred towards it then I could bring it back to him. Fed up by now, and desperate to escape, I pointed out that it was a little impractical as I lived in Wales so couldn't just pop back in and see him with the offending article. The look of amazement on his face was extraordinary. He did a genuine double take before asking me in a lowered, respectful tone the following question:

"You live in Wales, really? So do you live underground then?"

I assured him that yes, I was indeed a hobbit and left, without a computer, to go home to my burrow. Need I say more?