It's beginning to look a lot like Winter...

     Everywhere you go. And I for one am delighted! Even though Summer is a big event in my calendar, there is no season I love more than Winter. Nature slows down for a few months. The sun goes on a well deserved holiday to the other side of the world, the animals go into hibernation, the flora takes a breather before the regeneration of Spring comes to get them, everything just takes a step back and slows down. I think its the Earth's way of saying 'Slow down, rest a while, you've had a tough year', the natural way of saying, have a break, have a Kit Kat. The dark evenings make it perfectly acceptable to go home from work and not leave again until the following morning, as if its OK to embrace your inner mammal and do some hibernating of your own.
     You get some amazing weather at this time of the year too. The air is completely crisp and frosty, clear skies in the evening are displaying some beautiful moon shots, and through the light pollution in the city, you can see some of the gorgeous stars that the Milky Way has to offer. Yes its cold, but at least it's not raining (just yet) You can wear your hats again! Mine have been angry with me for not being taken out much during the last year, and have been languishing on the back of the door for some time now. So I am picking a hat a day to come on a trip from my house to the office and back again. You can wear massive woolly scarves! They too are clamouring for attention on the door, fighting off the flimsy cravats and neck ties I donned during the Summer months. It's time to bring out the big winter coats, your good coat to keep you warm. I think it makes me feel like a child again, being all wrapped up and feeling secure in big winter boots, hats, scarves and gloves, with twenty-seven different layers underneath to keep me extra cosy.
     But the best thing about Winter, is that it goes hand in hand with my favourite holiday: Christmas. I. Love. Christmas. I am a total Noelphile! You can say what you want about it being over commercialised, I don't care. You can keep your issues about the decorations going up in shops too early, or the true meaning of Christmas being lost, I just don't want to know anymore. I want to stand on the hill and roar to everyone that I am at my happiest over Christmas. Yes, it is a religious festival, and working for the Catholic church as I do (don't ask, its a long story!) I am constantly reminded of where this holiday came from and the true meaning of it. But that will never stop me from being excited as a kiddy about the upcoming event.
     The lights, the baubles, the tinsel, the cards, the presents, the weather, the mulled wine, the turkey dinner, the stuffing your face with Quality Streets, the terrible Christmas films, the entire Christmas buzz sends me into a tailspin of happiness. Its not just about all of the above, for me its so much more. I get to go home to my friends who I have had for years and see them and go out in my home town and get lairy drunk and do it all again the next day. I get to go back to my old room in my home house and spend the week with my family, annoying parents, talking the dog up the mountain, eating my brothers crisps by mistake, making turkey sandwiches for breakfast, have my mother call me to get up at 3pm in the day. Its a time where is perfectly acceptable to have a drink before lunch time. A time to get crap presents and give crap presents, but also to receive some excellent stashes of things you really wanted. Its a time, without going too cheesey, for being together with people that you don't get to see all the time. Its a time for acting the eejit, and a time for fun.
     I throw myself wholeheartedly into Christmas celebrations. I have my Santa hat complete with pigtails that I like to wear around the house. I like singing Feed the World in late November. I love to do an air guitar solo to Wish it could be Christmas Everyday. It's never too early to roll out mulled wine, mince pies (even though I don't actually like them) and Bailey's Coffees, nor is it ever too early to hear Christmas pop tunes in the supermarket.
     I know it can be a stressful time for all involved, but when the arguments with your sister have ceased, and you are all concentrating on how to moisten your turkey around the dinner table, and your mum has just quaffed her fourth Pinot Grigio, and you are surreptitiously moving the bottle of Jameson away from your dad and pushing a G n' T into his hand as whiskey doesn't really agree with him and in turn he doesn't agree with you when you mention it, and your uncle that no one invited shows up unannounced, and your brother is no longer talking to anyone as all he wants to do is watch The Wire on the box set that you bought him, take stock of what you have and let the lovely gooey Christmassy warmth spread over you. Enjoy it! And if you cannot stomach it all, then here's a tip not just for Christmas, but for life.: keep your "pint of water" discreetly topped up with Russian Standard and some white lemonade.
     Here;s to Jingle Bells and two day old Turkey Sandwiches. 

Hi diddly dee, a spinster's life for me

So I've only gone and ruddy done it. After what has felt like years of interminable waiting and mooching off others, I am now shacked up in a great little apartment in London, with only myself for company. Yes, I have reached the stage of personal maturity where I am now living on my own. Do I love it? Hell yes! Have I been lonely? Hell no! Do I think that living on my own and effectively cutting myself off from society will have an adverse effect on me and turn me into an even bigger lunatic? Resounding Hell no! I've always wanted to live on my own. For me, it has been a very personal goal, not really an ambition per se, but more of a want, like when I wanted to move to London. Granted, it took me nearly four years to do that, but I did it! The same with this, ever since I discovered what it was like to live on my own, all those years ago in Galway. And what a place to make that particular discovery.
     But in getting to this quite grown-uppy place, I had somehow managed to regress through the years and found myself almost re-living my pre-adult life to actual adult life. (Yes, I said pre-adult. I am no longer using the word teenager to describe myself or my friends around the ages of thirteen to eighteen. Teenager for me, evokes the goth-haired, be-hoodied, gangly, spotty, acned, hipster, mobile phone, dip-dyed hair we see today. And yes, while we were just exactly like them but without all the money and annoyingness that we see in most of them, I like to think we were slightly more mature and grown up than they are. But I guess that's what all pre-adults feel like...) Anyway!
     The first stage in my never ending story of how I got to live on my own, began when I managed to secure a job here in London. As I was fortunate enough to have my sister living here along with friends I had collected along the way, I had a solid base upon which to build my new life. While waiting for my then boyfriend to move over, my aforementioned sister graciously invited me to come live with her and her boyfriend until I got myself set up and settled in. Instantly, this felt like moving back in with my family, a place where even though I did feel like I belonged, I also felt that my freedom was somewhat limited. Now, don't get me wrong, I will be eternally grateful for my sister taking me in like this, but I did feel somewhat restricted. A bit like a pre-adult who has been given a week to have their home house to themselves while the family goes on holidays somewhere (why the pre-adult didn't go with them is anyone's guess, maybe they weren't going to a cool enough place, who knows, you pick the reason) only to be brought back down to earth and being reminded that they are in fact under the thumb the minute the family comes back to the house. They had a taste of freedom, and then it was pulled from under them. I had moved out of home when I was eighteen, lived with friends, lived with a bunch of Aussies in a tiny two-bedroomed attic apartment, lived with another friend, then strangers, then my boyfriends room, then my own place, then my new boyfriends place, and so on. Having gotten used to pottering about my own space and living by basically my own rules for quite some time, it was hard to re-adjust to living with, essentially, a family unit again. It did my sisters head in, it did her boyfriends head in, it did my head in, however I like to think it gave them basic training as to how it would be if they had a child, or a bold puppy that broke things. It was hard on everyone. 
     Pre-adult stage over and done with, after wrecking my London Family's head for nearly two years, I decided to branch out and move into a house where friends where currently living. This, would be my London Student years. It was almost exactly like when I first moved to Galway, I was living with two of my best friends and two guys that we had already known for years. Not exactly pushing the social experiment boundaries, but come on, we were only eighteen, and we did our best. My cousin already lived in the house, I had bonded with and become good friends with one of the other house-mates over an afternoon of frozen margaritas in Covent Garden, and had known the other house-mate through various visits. The room was a bit grotty. The house itself, not through fault of my house-mates, but through the obviousl maltreatment by previous tenants and neglect from the landlord, was a bit of a kip. But I still loved it. I felt like I had just made my first real foray into the adult world. Bit deja-vu-y but at the time, it was just what I needed. I needed to re-establish myself as Laura, not someone's girlfriend or sister or buddy, but as me, and finally find my feet again. And I did that, with roaring success! Old friends introduced me to new friends, as I did to them. People I had known for years were living at the top of my road so I had friends to drop into! I was responsible for paying proper rent and bills and buying food! I had a nectar card! I had re-useable shopping bags! Je suis arrivé!!  
     However, I feel, in retrospect, that the house was a stepping stone. It cemented the now amazing relationship I have with my sister, which has gone back to being more than just a family tie. We both now know we shouldn't live with each other, but love and adore and enjoy each other when we meet up, yet go our separate ways home. It was also a stepping stone on the way to me finding my literal Happy Place. I have my internal Happy Place, it's my Fairy Bubble (one which my sister told me to "eff off back into" one Christmas. See, told you, we shouldn't live together) but I needed to have my own place. My Happy Place with a postcode if you will. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I moved out of my Stepping Stone quick smart, and through a series of marvellous misadventures spanning a spell living with Jesuit priests, going to France and living like a refugee with a Kiwi, French and Spanish person all in the same room), I managed to wind up in a lovely house. One with a lovely bed, a lovely fat ass TV, lovely bathroom, lovely garden, lovely super secret side entrance, lovely kitchen, lovely couch, lovely storage space. But the most lovely thing of all, is when I come home, I am greeted by no-one except myself, by the smell of last nights dinner that I cooked and is now packed away to eat later, by the clean smell from the bathroom from my cleaning products, by the non-mess that I have made, and get to spend time with myself, reading in silence, watching whatever rubbish I want on TV, or simply lounging in my own house listening to music. I'm happier than I have been for a long time, and seem to have finally reached a place I never thought I would get, London Contentment, Tooting. I intend on enjoying my career as a Liver-Alone for a good long while, its been years in the offing, and now that I am here, there's no getting rid of me. I want to depend on myself. I want to enjoy my own company. I want to learn a little bit more about myself. I want to enjoy my own space. But most of all, I want to clean up nobody's mess but mine!