Mumbles Pier, March 2009 © KRI haven't been posting the calendar pictures for a while, since they are all images I posted here at the time we took them - in February, the snow on Cromwell Road on my way to work; in March, the Crooked House in Windsor, where we had lunch on our anniversary day trip; in April, the gorgeous Modernist spiral stairwell at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea... But this month we have this beautiful photograph that K took of the run-down benches and ironwork on Mumbles Pier, when we went to Swansea en famille for my father's birthday last year.
The pier dates from 1898 and was originally 835ft long. It functioned mainly as a landing jetty for steamer excursions from Swansea to other towns on the Welsh or southern English coast, and my father talked of how he remembered coming down to meet his grandmother alighting here, when he was a child. There's something so elegant and picturesque about the flaking paintwork in this photograph, and I love the two jumping dolphins with entwined tails...
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I have been feeling rather frustrated recently. Turns out this mortgage business is fraught with frustration! People often say that buying a house is the most stressful thing you will do in your life - well, K and I have done some pretty stressful things (up there at the top of both lists would be finishing PhDs...) so that has not been our experience, just an initial flurry of excitement and activity and then long anti-climactic waiting... The first mortgage company we applied to took two weeks to get back to us! And to cut long and boring stories short, it is turning out that it is not so easy to find a mortgage company willing to lend for the purchase of flats in buildings taller than 4 or 5 storeys, such as ours. There is also a lingering distrust of the fact that it was originally built under the auspices of the London County Council. Basically, the companies think we live in a council estate, and without doing any valuations for themselves are not exactly turning us down, but not giving us generous terms. I think K and our mortgage advisor have finally cracked it between them, but I can't feel excited about it, because there is now a sense of that's all very well, until the next problem arises... So watch this space.
I have finally signed up for an iPhone - which I am quite excited about except for i) I was extremely frustrated (note recurring theme) at waiting in the flat all day on Friday (the last of my Fridays off) for DHL to deliver it, only to be told when I rang to check on it at 3.30 in the afternoon that it had never left the depot. I cycled over to Nine Elms to pick it up, and what was more frustrating is that I had been working in that area - at our store by Battersea Power Station - on two separate days earlier in the week, so could have gone and collected it, if I'd known they wouldn't bother to deliver it!!
and ii) it's taking aeons to have my number moved over from Vodafone, who in the meantime have been calling me every day trying to persuade me to sign up for other deals with them. Hence further frustration.
And I was frustrated with the annoying length of my hair - until I went and had a haircut on Friday!! This is actually a significant moment for me, as I literally cannot remember the last time I had my hair cut professionally - not during my adult life I don't think. My sister cuts my hair, and I cut hers. We've done that ever since we were children - although then we weren't supposed to... I have basically straight hair and I never do anything interesting with it, just have a few inches chopped off the bottom, and I have always resented the extortionate rates charged by hairdressers to do this for you - £40 seems to be an average price in London. And frankly, until now, I have never been able to afford this. Throughout my student days, it was literally a choice between food, or a haircut.
So, my regular coiffeuse having moved to the Outer Hebrides, I pondered whether or not I could hold out until mid-June when we go and visit her (tickets booked, Icelandic volcanic eruption allowing!!), decided I couldn't really, and then noticed for the first time a little hair salon on Brixton Hill that I must have walked past a hundred times... I enquired within about the cost of a hair cut and was told £15. It turned out to be £19 for some reason, but I decided this was entirely reasonable. They even gave me a cup of tea and a piece of cake! Somewhat oddly, there was an elderly Irish lady hanging around - not a customer, not an employee, but obviously known to the staff - who then proceeded to have a row with the lady who had cut my hair! I was hanging around at the counter drinking my tea and waiting to pay and not really knowing where to look... Still, I'll probably go back at some point - I need a long-term alternative to having my hair cut once a year in the Hebrides!
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I turned in my portfolio (for my promotion) on Wednesday last - writing and assembling it was a pretty painful experience (this is how fantastic I am etc etc). But at least now I can forget about the process for a while - the interview is at the end of this month. And on Saturday - the god Vulcan permitting - I am off to Tunisia!!!! So there will be a bit of radio silence here for a while... But then you're used to that...
