Holiday Blues?

January is traditionally the time for heavy advertising for holidays. I can remember when I was a kid the adverts on the TV on Boxing Day were always holidays, and there were pages of adverts in the Christmas TV papers too. In those days it was more likely to be Butlins and Blackpool rather than trips abroad. Yes, I am that old. With a new year, a few brave brochures trickling through the letterbox, intense fedupness with the same four walls and the prospect of vaccinations as a tiny speck of hope on the horizon, I've been thinking about my bucket list. It won't be for a while, but I am sort of making plans. Or maybe thinking about making plans? 2022 Maybe?

I have to say, I am a little worried about the big world, not having been much further than ASDA for nearly a year, not even into Cardiff! I expect I shall get used to it. So - what's on the list?

Cardiff first - baby steps!

Then in no particular order - 

Bristol - for my favourite fish and chip shop and the Egyptian galleries at the Museum - research for the book after this one. 

Bath - my second favourite fish and chip shop, the theatre and shopping

Oxford - I have my eye on the Pre-raphaelite exhibition at the Ashmolean and made a tentative date with a friend for viewing and afternoon tea, but really not sure if that will happen. Probably a bit too soon for jabs and relaxation of rules.

London - for theatre, bookshops, museums galleries, concerts - you name it - and events for the Romantic Novelists' and Crime Writers Associations. My London trips have been one of my greatest lockdown losses - I usually make at least half a dozen a year. The last time I was there
was 29th February 2020, at the National Archive in Kew, doing a last minute sweep for references for the PhD. I had a  lovely day - archives being one of my catnips. And then the world turned upside down. I miss it.

I also want to go to Scotland - I've never been and I have a family pilgrimage I want to make, I'll tell you about that another time. And Cornwall, ditto - but no pilgrimage. 

The trips abroad would fill a page - but the Riviera, of course, is top of the list and I do have a holiday paid for and 'banked' as it were, so I do hope I can make it. The other place I have a hankering for is Paris. When I lived in London I sometimes used to hop on the Eurostar and go for the day, but that was a long time ago now. I have a whole list of things to see from the Pere Lachaise Cemetery to the Cire Trudon shop selling specialist scented candles. I could get them here, but somehow the idea of buying them in Paris has taken hold. I also want to go to some of the places mentioned in Eloisa James's memoir of her year spent living in the city, Paris in Love. That would be following in the footsteps of my heroine Nadine, who did the same thing in A Wedding on the Riviera. 

Will I make it? Who knows? Maybe not this year. But soon? 

I'm also interested, if anyone would like to comment - what's on your bucket list? 

Things to do in London

I'm just back from a research trip to London - at least, that's my story, and I am sticking to it! No question about enjoying myself, or going to theatres, or anything like that. The research is supposed, one day, to become a book. And a thesis. In the meantime I thought I'd share a few odds and ends about being in London. Some are odder than others. A kind of unofficial guide book.

• Trail following. These trails pop up from time to time - decorated objects on display around the city. At Easter it was Faberge type eggs, at the moment it is Wenlocks and Mandevilles, for the Games. Apparently there are 82 of them. I came across 6. My friend in the picture is the Novel Wenlock (I'd have said Oscar Wilde was drama, but as you know, I have theatrical leanings.) He's just off the Strand, behind St Martin's church, alongside the Wilde statue.  

• Plaque spotting. Blue plaques, recording the former homes of famous people. I find who lived where fascinating. 
• Looking up. This actually applies in any city - all sorts of things are visible on the tops of buildings - my favourites in London are the occasional weird glimpses of trees that indicate a (probably very posh) roof garden. 
• Window boxes. London is full of them. Usually they have predictable stuff - bizzie lizzies, geraniums, begonias. I spotted one, outside an up market restaurant, that looked like a small wild flower meadow. I might have thought they'd forgotten to weed it, but there were contract gardeners carefully renewing the planting at the time.  
• Scooters. If you see someone on a scooter with a map propped up in front of them it may be a would-be cabbie, doing The Knowledge. Black cab drivers have to have an exhaustive knowledge of the city and are tested on it, hence the riding around the back streets. Someone I once worked with was studying to apply for his licence. Lunch times were spent testing him on fictitious routes. 
• Buskers. For some reason all the saxophonists in the city seem to emerge in hot weather. 
• Walking. The centre of London is not as big as you think. On Sunday morning I was on Hungerford Bridge (the pedestrian, Jubilee bit)  looking at the newest landmark on the London skyline, The Shard. Three quarters of an hour later I was standing almost underneath it. It's big - and a very strange shape for an office block. 

So- that's it, my odder guide to London.