Bit of a new look....

still working on it though.....meanwhile here's a photo of what it's like where I live in the early summertime. This view of the Thames is a 5 minute walk from our flat!

Busy times...

Right - finally I'm back here in London as per usual life - it's been a bit frantic recently. In March and April I went to:

- Boston
- Toronto
- California
- The Lake District (almost wrote that as 'the Cake District' - Freudian slip methinks!)
- Poole

OK the last two aren't as impressive but needless to say I've been taking lots of taxis, drinking lots of (not great) coffee and dealing with all sorts of weather - snow, sun, torrential rain, etc.

Now it's back to reality. And it feels pretty good!

BTW thanks for piping up and saying that I should keep blogging. I'm going to try to be better about it (famous last words). I'm glad you still like to hear about my meanderings every once in a while. Oh, and MikeS, yes, it was really a heartbreaking situation with the Mayor. I blame the borough of Bexley.

If you really want to know what I'm up to on a more, ahem, granular level there is is this thing...

Thinking about stuff

So it's months later and I still haven't blogged for a while. I don't know quite why I'm even worse than usual about this medium. I guess it's a combination of a few things.

Firstly, have you noticed that blogging seems to be dying a death? Or at least a particular kind of the form of which this very blog is an example - the sort of self-obsessed 'experiential' blog about the daily lives of individuals. Blogging that's related to an activity, a topic, or a business seems to still be alive and well, but I think all of the self-obsessed stuff has retreated to hide in Facebook and MySpace and all that. A bunch of blogs which I've followed religiously for a while (some from actual people I know offline etc) have all faded away - the last posts always seem to be November of 07 or January of 08...

I wonder if this is because people have realised that they don't want to share the minutae of their lives with the entire Internet? Or is it just *easier* to keep things updated in those darned social networks? I should add here that I am now officially bored of Facebook - it was fun to find people for a while but now there's nothing really to do on there - I'm sick of Scrabulous (and that's saying a lot) and have come to the realisation that the image gallery features are kinda crap - time to get back on Flickr.

But I digress. The other thing about my personal lack of blogging is this - about a month ago I stopped in Toronto for the weekend and it was the first time I had been in Canada for nearly a year and a half. I've been here for 7 years this summer and I feel like I'm losing my essential fish-out-of-water perspective. Canada was still Canada in March but it didn't feel like *home* anymore: I wasn't up to date on the culture, I was surprised by the television shows, and the weather (a snowstorm: see the dog above.) was just a real bugger to deal with. I was staying with my dear friend V and I got very excited about cleaning the snow off of his car - this wasn't because of the inherent fun-ness of this activity, but instead the joyful realisation that...cleaning snow off of a car is no longer part of my life. And it doesn't have to be again. I should say here that it was great to see my Canadian friends in Toronto for that weekend, and, if anything I felt closer to them, and realised that they are *my Canada* now - the anchors that keep me coming back.

So here I am, mired in the middle of the Atlantic, neither here nor there. Should I keep on posting? Or have I closed the chapter on 'Life with an accent'?

Oh, in case you're wondering I still have it. The accent, that is.

Coming out of semi-retirement to ask you....



Is this the worst montage ever??? And from the usually lovely BBC beta site no less! Tee hee. I love how McCain seems to have one huge hand and one little one...

Oh yeah, did I mention that I voted for Obama today? I'm actually a registered 'democrat abroad'....now I just hope I can do the same thing in November. Let's see. I keep telling N that he's gonna win but he sez that's just hope over experience talking.....

Ur happy 08

Yes I'm still here. Waving at you now. Back with something to say later this year! xxx

Attention: the powers that be
Sent: to the CEO of Macmillan and the head of communications

Hello. It’s Izabel here. I’m a Canadian expat web designer who has been living in London for over 6 years now. During these 6 years one of the things which I’ve really loved about living in this fabulous city has been the wide range of independent bookshops peppered throughout town – and my very favourite of all has always been the Pan Bookshop.

My husband and I lived for years down the road and the Pan Bookshop has always been high on our list of local destinations. What a great place to visit, to meet, to chat to the friendly staff, to buy books (obviously) and cards and calendars and to pick up those exclusive signed first editions! I hand delivered a signed first edition of Jane Fonda’s autobiography to my mother in Canada and her jaw dropped – I was thrilled to be able tell her that I had bought it at an independent bookshop down the road from my flat.

The Pan Bookshop has always added so much character and intellect and fun to the Fulham Road: it’s so inviting with those great window displays and cards outside, and it’s such a fixture in the neighbourhood. It’s one of a kind, unlike all of the chain shops and restaurants encroaching on the area – a real gem in the repetitive retail universe.

Before I wrote to you I downloaded all the information about Pan Macmillan that I could get from the Companies House website. I was really hoping to find out that Macmillan made huge profits that could be used towards keeping the bookstore open, but what I found was a more realistic picture of a publishing company in this new media age.

So I must appeal directly to your hearts there at Pan Macmillan: if you truly love books, please save the bookshop, and save something unique and wonderful in this identikit world. London needs the Pan Bookshop: don’t let us lose the best thing about SW10!

My lazy secret

This time last year I was an (almost) GYMBUNNY if you can believe that. The gym was just down the road from work and I was there every lunch hour, body balancing, and in the evenings doing weights and body combat. It was fun but pretty all consuming. Then my office moved. And I had something bad happen to my foot which meant that serious exercise was out of bounds, and instead I was hobbling around with a floral cane (not a good scene but it didn’t happen near the wedding so I’m thankful of that)

But I digress. Anyways, right before the floral cane episode I started experimenting with this power plate thing. You see there’s this really friendly studio just around the corner from the new office and all. As my foot got slowly better I started integrating the power plate into my weekly routine, rather than going to the gym to kick it with weights and cardio. And I’ve not really gone back to the gym. Honestly, the power-plate is better!

OK, so you ask me, how could that be? Well I guess it was designed for Cosmonauts so their muscles didn’t atrophy and all that. But what it means is that when you are on the plate you are working ever so hard – you really feel the burn, and when you leave a session your muscles are tired and your posture is better. You do a bunch of standard exercises (squats, press ups, upright row, etc) on the plate – each exercise is a minute long, and you’re done after 20 minutes of exercise and 5 minutes of cooldown/massage on the plate. It’s so quick (but tough) and just a great way to squeeze fitness training into your day. I’ve done my weekly routine with 3 sessions on my lunch break And then I can go on power walks in the evenings and on the weekends and don’t need to check in again at the smelly old gym.

The drawback? You could guess- its cost prohibitive of course. Oh well.

Anyways, so now you know. This has nothing to do with the power plate but here is a photo of some lovely graffiti’d zebras near where I live. Normally I’m very scoffsome at graffiti but I have a soft spot for this Banksy-stylee stuff. Of course, being London it could be an actual Banksy- who knows!