Thank you for opting for the meatier version. Grab a cuppa/glass of wine and have a self imposed Kitkat moment to read below. I hope you’ll find it telling. It’s a personal thing really. The change. This intentional autonomy, this self imposed potentially disastrous financial & career enhancing adventure. Yet it remains something I mustContinue reading “Integrity Bloom and where it came from.”
Author Archives: She went to Shanghai
Three years later and I remembered!
Dear little lady beneath the window sill, I’ve missed your rendition of Twinkle Twinkle since my return to England; watching only the end of your bow peek above the window sill as you repeat, and again, then perfect. The fact that your grandma attempted to sing with you in a language evidently alien toContinue reading “Three years later and I remembered!”
A Trip to the Woods
Still, here was some drama; the sparse, beautiful yet harsh surroundings; the fact that the red light had just appeared beneath my petrol gauge; the intimidating realisation that I had to make a 360 degree turn in a mud sodden field in my tired little 207.
Dear Mr man in the Van #2 of 3.
You pay me no attention and I don’t blame you but I wish you good luck and want to remember your call. The lights have changed now, Mr ‘Bring out your dead’, you’ll be needing to unfold the legs you raised and rested on the ‘crossbar’, release the brake, ring your bell, call and leave.
Dear Mr Man at the Station
To the small group who stroll chatting, slapping various joints to increase circulation and to the lungers, striders, slipper shufflers and park dancers, you are…
Does boot camp mean no more pubs?
I am not a typical ‘boot camp’ kind of person. I do not respond well to being shouted at; I do not like to fail and my vacillating commitment level to exercise varies somewhere between stubborn refusal and fearful avoidance. Still, I knew no one would expect me to do it so this grim assumptionContinue reading “Does boot camp mean no more pubs?”
Room 101: My Favourite place in Shanghai
Mad Cat Lady only ever knocks gently on my door. It’s as if she’s nervous, half wandering whether she should knock or not. I was outside scrubbing my rough clay Arabic water jug, which was playing welcoming host to a thin green moss, a moss encouraged to grow by the creeping dampness invading my caveContinue reading “Room 101: My Favourite place in Shanghai”
A year ago: there appears to be a theme…
A few older posts to paint a picture of a weekend a year ago while I construct a blog that tells of the summer of 2016; a return to Shanghai when everything had changed but nothing had changed and finally finding a foothold in this most colourful of places. 10th September 2015 Crickey! Three wholeContinue reading “A year ago: there appears to be a theme…”
From her Poppy
It’s a very different ‘blog’ I write today. You see, I left Shanghai for summer in London and the jet lag barely subsided before we were called to the hospital: my nan had suffered a heart attack and was critically ill. Perhaps one day I will write about tubes, vigils and being lost but forContinue reading “From her Poppy”
Finding feet
Reviewing the blog I intend to publish today nearly a year later, I deliberate the extreme difference in life and perspective that moving from Pudong to Puxi inspired. As opposed to the occasional grey bleakness of my journey to work from the Pudong side, I now feel part of a life in Shanghai which isContinue reading “Finding feet”
She went to Shanghai 