The small things

I can't believe that the wedding is now less that 6 months away... it feels so soon all of a sudden... it's really crept up on me! The big things will be fixed when we go to Israel, but I am dealing with the small things. The small things for our wedding and for our life together.

Marc is sometimes surprised by how much I care about the small things in life, but I really really do. I know that every bride says she won't preoccupy herself (and drive others mad) with small things and that almost every bride does end up succumbing to weddings perfectionism syndrome, but my preoccupation with detail extends to my normal life as well.

One such detail is my mug, which is what brought on this conversation in the first place. I have a mug that I love to drink from. I've had it since I was 11, and it was given to me by a school friend that I've sadly fallen out of touch with. I love her though, and the mug reminds me of her. It's rather large, which makes for large cups of tea. It's probably not the most attractive mug, to be fair. It's hand painted, with a pig on the front. But I love it: I've been drinking from it for 15 years.

It can't come to our new home with us, sadly. It's not kosher - we will need all new crockery. Also it depicts a pig. Hardly appropriate for a kosher home! I've pondering this slightly, because it's hard to let go of those familiar things that have made up our surroundings for so long. There will be many such things I'm sure.

My post wedding life will be full of new things that will surround me, new attachments, new habits.

For now though, I've found a replacement for the mug at least, and here it is. From English crockery designer Emma Bridgewater. I think it's perfect!

The small things

Marc is sometimes surprised by how much I care about the small things in life, but I really really do. I know that every bride says she won't preoccupy herself (and drive others mad) with small things and that almost every bride does end up succumbing to weddings perfectionism syndrome, but my preoccupation with detail extends to my normal life as well.

One such detail is my mug, which is what brought on this conversation in the first place. I have a mug that I love to drink from. I've had it since I was 11, and it was given to me by a school friend that I've sadly fallen out of touch with. I love her though, and the mug reminds me of her. It's rather large, which makes for large cups of tea. It's probably not the most attractive mug, to be fair. It's hand painted, with a pig on the front. But I love it: I've been drinking from it for 15 years.

It can't come to our new home with us, sadly. It's not kosher - we will need all new crockery. Also it depicts a pig. Hardly appropriate for a kosher home! I've pondering this slightly, because it's hard to let go of those familiar things that have made up our surroundings for so long. There will be many such things I'm sure.

My post wedding life will be full of new things that will surround me, new attachments, new habits.

For now though, I've found a replacement for the mug at least, and here it is. From English crockery designer Emma Bridgewater. I think it's perfect!

Celebrity sighting

A few nights ago I went out to a lovely restaurant with Marc and a good friend of ours. 

As soon as we walked to our table, I spotted Amy Winehouse. Or at least I thought I did. You see, I am remarkably talented at spotting people who look like people, but aren't them. And whenever a celebrity and I are in the same place a friend or Marc is bound to notice, whilst I miss it engrossed in, erm, picking china (happened just this Sunday). 

Well this time it really was her. And you know what? She looked radiant. Yes, radiant. I know the drill: Amy Winehouse is described as (1) gaunt; (2) drugged up; (3) wearing last week's makeup; (4) tatty... the list goes on. 

She wore a bright pink fluffy jumper, her skin glowed, she looked young and healthy.

This just makes me think that the media manipulates our view so much. It suits papers and magazines to post ever shocking photos of a young talented artist. That is, after all, what sells papers. Media can be such a harmful medium - it plays with our brains. On the one hand, it makes some people falsely gorgeous, airbrushing their flaws, changing their physiques, on the other I'm sure it uses those same tools to make people look larger, to print a story saying they've gained weight, or gaunt with shadows if they have a drug problem.

Shame on them, and kudos to Amy for a year being clean. It shows! And whilst I'm not celebrity focussed, it is a bit of a thrill to see someone famous and to think and appreciate that I live in one of the world's coolest cities (at least I like to think so). 

Charity

So these past few days I have been manically clearing the house. Why? Well, because I have time on my hands and because, at the back of my mind, I feel I should start to organise my stuff in some way in preparation for moving out when I get married. Isn't it lovely to have space?

So off I went yesterday to give two huge black bags of things I no longer needed to charity. Was what I was doing charitable? In all honesty, the sentiment wasn't entirely charitable. I needed space, minus the guilt derived from throwing things out.

Anyway, I couldn't even get close to a charity shop in my area, so I went to Kilburn. This is a more deprived area with lots of immigrants, unemployed residents and shops that seem to come and go. You'd think it would be depressed, as a lot of its residents live in counsel housing, but actually it's buzzing. Lower rent means there are some independent shops - not of the quirky pretty variety, admittedly, but independent none the less, selling cheap household goods, tupperware boxes and the like. The charity shop was buzzing, too, with people buying things I would never have thought would leave those racks and shelves - people really appreciate things that I take for granted or would never wear. Seeing that gives me perspective on all that I have and on how spoilt I can be.

I felt SO good dropping off my goods at Cancer Research UK. I hadn't realised what a good feeling giving would give me. I literally left the place elated. Elated and armed with a good find: this beautiful shirt (that perfectly matches my new Etsy headband, I might add). It's several sizes too big but I'm going to take it in using my sewing machine. Yay - I love a good find.

A small way in which the current economic climate is opening up my eyes to a different life, to people who are better than I at being careful and at appreciating what they have.

Charity

So these past few days I have been manically clearing the house. Why? Well, because I have time on my hands and because, at the back of my mind, I feel I should start to organise my stuff in some way in preparation for moving out when I get married. Isn't it lovely to have space?

So off I went yesterday to give two huge black bags of things I no longer needed to charity. Was what I was doing charitable? In all honesty, the sentiment wasn't entirely charitable. I needed space, minus the guilt derived from throwing things out.

Anyway, I couldn't even get close to a charity shop in my area, so I went to Kilburn. This is a more deprived area with lots of immigrants, unemployed residents and shops that seem to come and go. You'd think it would be depressed, as a lot of its residents live in counsel housing, but actually it's buzzing. Lower rent means there are some independent shops - not of the quirky pretty variety, admittedly, but independent none the less, selling cheap household goods, tupperware boxes and the like. The charity shop was buzzing, too, with people buying things I would never have thought would leave those racks and shelves - people really appreciate things that I take for granted or would never wear. Seeing that gives me perspective on all that I have and on how spoilt I can be.

I felt SO good dropping off my goods at Cancer Research UK. I hadn't realised what a good feeling giving would give me. I literally left the place elated. Elated and armed with a good find: this beautiful shirt (that perfectly matches my new Etsy headband, I might add). It's several sizes too big but I'm going to take it in using my sewing machine. Yay - I love a good find.

A small way in which the current economic climate is opening up my eyes to a different life, to people who are better than I at being careful and at appreciating what they have.

Choices

I have never left it so long without blogging and I have missed it. There has been the issue of work, of course, but it has also been Passover. I love Passover but since we keep it more strictly than not, there can be no baking. And let's face it, Kosher for Passover baked goods just aren't that good and definitely not worth the effort. But when I get home I will post photos of our Seder - it was a most merry one!

I have a question for the parents out there. Would you always want your child to be at the best school they could get into, even if you felt they would struggle at that school? And what about your choices so far in life: to what extent have they been guided by pragmatism?

The reason I ask the question is that I think I have been hankering after the best and the best ranked for so long, and I feel such a sense of relief at admitting that to myself and admitting that the best is too difficult for me. It's funny, I do not have a competitive bone in my body and I have never sought to be the best at anything, so it comes as something of a surprise, when I look at the course my life has taken so far, that I found it important to attend the highest ranked high school I could get into, the highest ranked university and workplace. Why? Because it was objectively the best thing, not beause it was good for me. Not because I ever really thought it through. I preferred to struggle a little but be somewhere 'better' than to be somewhere mediocre.

This firm, its top clients, its smart lawyers - it is out of my league. I'm not made for it. And I'm happy to admit that. I am going to leave and handing in my security pass will feel so good, will feel like regaining my life.

I don't think that my parents made bad choices for me - in fact, I made most of my choices myself. Still, I hope that, one day, if I am fortunate enough to have children, I will be able to guide them to make choices that do not relate only to their tangible success but also to their wellbeing. Where will they be happy? Where will they thrive? A balance must be struck. I want them to think about their choices with an open mind in a way that I didn't think about mine.

I always wanted to go to the best, because that's mindless, isn't it? It doesn't require a choice - the choice is made if you live your life only by objective standards: A is better than B - I'll attend A.

I don't know what's in store for me next, but you can count on my rational side giving way to the more creative, spontaneous side that has been held back these past few years. I'm excited!

No coffee, thanks

On Saturday morning I had to wake up very early and get a bus with my luggage. I was sitting at the bus stop at 6.30 in the morning, when the city was still asleep, waiting. Then a man from the apartment block across the road comes and brings me fresh coffee in a glass cup. He said he had seen me waiting and had made me a coffee! Some background: my firm has rented out a flat in a very nice residential area for me. The apartment block in question is respectable, and the man well dressed and polite. He didn't seem 'interested' in me, if you know what I mean. He said he just wanted to offer me coffee because he could see had waited for a while and it was cold. A lovely gesture. Or is it?

I'm not much of a coffee drinker, I have to say. I prefer not to drink things that really alter the way my body works unless it's an emergency, and I just don't like the taste that much, particularly French espresso. More to the point, I didn't know this man. He was probably completely innocent (how many people offer a date rape drug in a coffee at 6.30 in the morning) but - sadly - you never know. I felt awful refusing his potentially kind and sincere offer, but how could I be sure? I feel sad that we live in a world in which we can't trust others, but I can't change that and I didn't think it would be right to accept. So I politely declined, and you know what he did? He offered me an orange juice.

Was I right to turn down the coffee? What would you have done?

The violinist

Dear everyone,

I hope you have lovely Fridays. This morning I received a newsletter from a Rabbi I admire in New York. It contained the following article and I really wanted to share it with you because I think it is amazing and reminded me of the importance of casting judgements aside and being ready to find beauty in the mundane.

Hope you enjoy it,

Love,

Vanessa

'A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work. The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context? One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing.'