Archive for October, 2009

Roommates. I’ve been lucky, the closest I’ve ever had to a roommate was the sister.  Yeah, that was bad enough.  To say me and the sister don’t do well together in confined spaces would be a slight understatement.  Good job we got our own rooms after a few years. 

You see, I never went to boarding school (but that life in the novels always appealed to my younger self) or university so I never had the chance of sharing a room with a random stranger.  That said, university may not have helped on that one; I can’t remember the last person here who had to share a room at uni. 

So, I have no nightmare stories to tell, no hilarity or moments of connection.

Now, you could say, my roommate is the husband.  I love him, but he’s messy, and snores (louder than a rocket launching) and hogs my side of the bed as well as his own.  At least I can say he’s cuddly in the middle of the night.

I remember the last time I met a blogger: he ended up co-oerced into marriage and a kid and now I’m up the duff again!  Luckily for Lulazoid and Milo no marriage papers were signed and there was definitely no production of babies (or at least not whilst I was around).

We were highly organised and didn’t even have a venue until mid-afternoon, but straight after work I hot-footed it over to a Cafe Nero by Leicester Square to meet them both.  It was a good job they recognised me cos after a quick glance around downstairs, I was all for trying upstairs where they definitely weren’t sitting.  In my defence, I’ve only ever seen pics of Lulazoid with her hair down so tying it back was a cruel trick to play on me!

Both were exactly how I’d expected them to be, which is always good.  No nasty surprises and good conversation.  I was disappointed that I didn’t get to meet the Munchkin this time around but it sounded like she’d had a pretty full day already.  Anyway, seeing as her potential playmate, the boy, didn’t turn up until we were leaving, she didn’t miss out on much.  That’s right, despite me thinking that the husband and boy would arrive before me, we were leaving and they still weren’t there, nor was the husband answering his phone.  But, as we stepped out on to the street, there they were.  At least we can all say we’ve met each other now. 

We would’ve got a good pic but no-one had a camera.  In the end we snapped one on a phone (which may at some point appear on either of their slightly more private than mine blogs).  Of course, when I later asked the husband what was in his rucksack, he replied “TB’s jacket, my camera…”  Good to know he’s on the ball at all times! lol.

There’s some scents that stick in your mind, not necessarily perfumes, but simple scents.   Bread baking reminds me of childhood afternoons spent at Nan’s, the salt air by the sea brings back summers spent at Cardoness.  The musty scent of deep underground tube lines is comforting; you never smell that on the shallow lines.

Then there are other scents that you’d rather not remember: like the scent of the hospital ward I stared upon, a cloying scent that stuck to the back of your throat, quite unlike any hospital I’ve visited since. 

There are scents I’ll never forget, scents I crave to smell again.  The wet, orange dust of Brasilia, London rain just before it starts to fall, the pine of a South West Scottish forest.  I could bottle them up and wear them like perfume. 

Unfortunately I’m not so lucky.  We get bad smells in our house.  I live with two boys, soon to be three.  Good smells only come when I release my perfume bottles.  Bad smells get covered with things like deodorant, but it never really covers eau de fart that well.

I love perfume, but I’m particular.  Diesel’s Fuel for Life and Paco Rabanne’s Black XS are my regular choices.  I love Lacoste’s fragrances, especially Touch of Pink, but I don’t love the rash they bring out on my skin. 

Of course now I’m pregnant, I can smell better than a dog.  A number of our neighbours smoke, and I can tell every time they light up.  It doesn’t matter whether they’re out front or back, I can smell it through the letterbox or through the tiny bathroom window that’s open upstairs.  The husband thinks it’s funny that I notice.  He’s not the one it makes heave.  The scent of butter melting on toast turns my stomach, just as scrambled egg does now.   I always thought it would be pretty cool to have a wolf’s ability to sniff out scents (yeah, i read too much urban fantasy, I know) but now I have to wonder.