...more than a year. Actually, on logging in, I was surprised how recently I've been using LJ, as somehow I'd managed to convince myself I'd quit after breaking up with Neil, in a kind of 'associated with a different part of my life' way.

Things are good. It's been hard work and still a way to go, but I'm pretty damn happy at the moment. Don't know if this is more than waving at everyone to show I'm still alive, or whether I might start using LJ again. I suspect for now it's just the former, as I don't seem to spend a great deal of time online (compared with 3 years ago; all thing are relative and compared to most of my friends, I spend a lot of time online).

Anyway...

I am still here. Not often, but still in the background. Thinks are pretty good - started a new, not terribly exciting but pretty well paid job, and I'm single and starting to enjoy it (though there is someone kind of on the horizon I think. And I still plan to go to China for a while next year, and can actually start saving some money! Anyway, that's my rather boring update for the time being.

Only 3 weeks left of work - yipee! It's not even 3 whole weeks, I have just 8 days left working for them. Never again will I work for a bank - god knows why I took the job anyway (wasn't offered anything better basically).

This probably sounds a bit silly, but one of the things I'm looking forward to most is being able to choose my own clothes and not wear 'corporate wear' again. Corporate wear is just a euphemism for slightly better made and designed uniform. Mine wasn't terrible, in fact one of the suits is really nice, part from having the company name on a little label on the pocket, but it was navy and nylon, both things I avoid like the plague. And it wasn't my choice. I know the idea of the clothing scheme was that you could pick and choose items yourself so you had some say so, but I always hated it and have enjoyed being slightly scruffy at work in an effort to distinguish myself from my colleagues. TBH I've made less and less effort with my appearance at work over the last 12 months and this has a knock-on effect to how I feel about my appearance outside work - well I'll now have the chance to wear all the clothes I've been neglecting. Knowing my luck they won't fit me anymore!

Managed to do most of my Christmas shopping today, not that I have a lot to do. I'll be spending it at my dad's, first time since I was about 3 that I've spent Christmas Day with him - should be good.

Handed my notice in at Barclays the other day. I finish the 2nd to last week of January, the same week as my driving test. Then the following week I am off to Dublin for 3 days with Jo. Then in February I have booked tickets to go and see the Cure in Prague with Matt. So a busy couple of months!
Then I need to get down to the serious business of saving money becasue I have decided once and for all that I want to go and work abroad for a year - have decided on China, not Japan, which has surprised a lot of people, but I have my reasons LOL. My aim is to teach over there for a year and see as much of the country as possible, but try and save up a bit of money so I can spend a couple of months backpacking before I come back to England. Anyway, that's the plan. It feels a little weird at the moment because I've been umm-ing and err-ing about this for so long, but I've actually made the decision. Basically I realised that when I was feeling good about things I wanted to do it, but when I felt down I was coming up with reasons why I couldn't, throwing barriers in my own path. So I sat down and looked at each of these reasons in turn, and started to see that the only thing really stopping me was lack of money, which is something I can overcome. The other things were mostly related to worrying about whether my family would visit, whether my friends would forget me, whether the cat would be okay, and I realised that I have to trust that other people are capable of looking after my cat and that if I'm in China it's up to my family to come and visit.

Swinging from paranoia to calm and rationale on a minute-to-minute basis sometimes. And the thing is, I don't think what's making me paranoid and anxious is even the real issue.

Saw an old friend the other day. She had a baby last Christmas, he's really grown and looks like a small child now and not a baby :-) It's odd to think of the girls I spent my childhood and teen years with having kids of their own - she was only the second of my close friends to have a baby - the first had her first at 18 and is now awaiting her 4th! Anyway, it was lovely to see her, but it's made me think about missed opportunities, about whether I'll ever have children myself - do I even want them?

I've spent the evening on Facebook. I only recently signed up, hardly an early adopter! I'm not generally into social networking sites, but I know a few old friends are on there, friends I'd dearly love to get in touch with. One of the good things about having moved back 'home', so to speak, is that it made me feel a little more rooted, but I still often feel like I have few connections to my past.

I don't think I'm good at letting people get close to me.

This page provides information and some personal experience of moving house with cats - just over halfway down is this advice:

'Don't wash your laundry before the move, especially recently worn undergarments. Bring them along and scatter the garments throughout the cat's temporary room so that he will be comforted by your scent.'

Now I'm all for doing whatever I can to help my cat settle in okay, but I draw the line at strewing my dirty pants all over the place!

Yes, I have my cat back :-) Neil and Stuart drove her up last Tuesday, so she's been here almost a week and so far is settling in really well, including the trauma of meeting my housemate's dog. I was a bit worried about moving here up, since I have only seen her for about 10 minutes in the last year, but so far so good. I've really missed her - not that I haven't enjoyed not having the responsibility for the last 10 months, if I'm completely honest, but it's really nice to have her back. Can't wait for her to start going out in the garedn, she won't know what to do with so much space!

Yay! I have internet access again after almost 3 weeks without - one of my housemates left and cancelled the broadband but didn't tell us he was having the phone cut off so it's been a bit of a palaver - anyway all sorted now :-)

Last weekend camped in the Welsh hills at a friend's party - good practise for this weekend as Matt and I are off to Truck Festival near Oxford - one thing I certainly will be taking is my pillow! And I bought some wellies yesterday though I think I might need to exchange them as they're a bit big and I'm going to be optimistic about the weather anyway :-p

Anyway, lots of catching up to do...

You just know that a film about killer sheep is going to be fantastic!

Ooh, some of my seeds that I planted the other day are starting to sprout! Just the thyme and the geraniums so far - I love seeing seedlings sprout.

Today I have been to Sainsbury's and bought lots of healthy vegetables. Made some lentil and bacon soup when I got home, god is that easy! Fry an onion, add 5 rashers of bacon (chopped), one clove of garlic, 80g of lentils (I used french/Puy lentils) and one pint of vegetable stock. Oh and a can of chopped tomatoes. Then simmer for about 30 minutes - yum :-)

Actually I quite enjoy cooking these days. I've made some pretty nice food, but don't know what I've done with the recipes - I think the nicest was a Morroccan lamb stew which was a modified Martha Stewart recipe, but unfortunately I can't remember quite how I modified it.

Anyway, so I'm having toad in the hole at Matt's tonight, then more of my soup for lunch tomorrow. Think I will make something with couscous tomorrow night as I have 3 bags of it in the cupboard. I bought some lovely rice and couscous salads from Marks and Sparks the other day, so maybe I'll try to do something similar.

Also today I have been making little cardboard monsters, trying to complete my application for the return to teaching course, and doing some gardening, kind of. Planted some seeds - lavender, nasturtiums, geraniums, thyme, basil and coriander. This is the first time in 13 years that I've had a garden, and I moved in a little bit too late in the year to make the most of it, so I plan to take advantage of it this year :-)

Went to see Guillemots in Birmingham on Wednesday - fantastic! I wasn't too sure about them when I first heard the album, I liked a few songs but they sound a bit sort of twee sometimes. But live they are a completely different prospect and are more like, well a mixture of The Cure, Beta Band, Queen, prog rock and jazz. Maybe. Anyway, they were great, and not at all what I might have expected. But we got back pretty late and I've had to get up early the last couple of mornings, so I'm knackered, which is probably not helped by being up at nearly 1am.

Brought some more boxes out of storage. Think I will probably end up selling or giving away the great majority of my clothes, either cos things don't fit or because my taste has changed. I have a bit of a thing about green at the moment.
I also found the spare bulbs for my white feathery lights in an old handbag(!) so I have strung them up across my curtains, bringing the total number of sets of fairy lights in my room to 4. These ones provide more light than the little red chinese lanterns and hopefully make the place look a little less like a bordello (maybe red lanterns and black and red satin bedding is overdoing it?!)

Tomorrow I will hopefully receive the application for the return to teach programme and also I'd quite to a little gardening; well it's the first time I've had a garden in 13 years and I would at least like to plant some herbs and things.

Been to the cinema with my mum today - it's one of those tiny ones which show less mainstream films, in the old Market Hall in Shrewsbury. We saw Raise the Red Lantern, which is about a young woman who becomes the fourth wife of a clan leader (I missed the very beginning but I think he was a clan leader) and the intrigues and plotting going on between the wives. It's a beautiful film cinematically and made me feel very nostalgic for China - considering it was set in the 1920s, I'm surprised how much of Beijing I saw was still like that, at least visually.

Then I came home and ate some butternut squash soup which was quite nice even though I do say so myself. Supposed to be going over to Matt's for Sunday dinner but when I phoned he sounded extremely stressed - he's editing a documentary and the computer crashed and they've lost a lot of work, which is not good. I don't have much food in the house so I can't really offer to cook for him :-/

Nearly finished packing everything, just going to have a quick bath then get te last few bits into boxes. God I'm knackered, slept on the floor the last 2 nights so didn't get much sleep. My dad should be here with the van in the next xouple of hours, so this is it!

Back to Torquay tomorrow evening, don't know how much email access I'm going to have the next few days so if anyone needs to get hold of me then the best bet is by emailing cinnabarmoth at hotmail dot co dot uk

So endeth an era. OK it's not quite as dramatic as that LOL

Oh yeah, and those two women murdered in a massage parlour? That's 2 minutes away from my mum's house!

Weird. Just googles for 'Nokia phone' and on the first page of results it said that 2 results had been removed in a legal request submitted to Google. Appears that said pages broke the German law of Volksverhetzung (German equivalent of hate speech) - I'm assuming that the author of the pages whose results have been removed have used the terms nokia + phone to googlebomb their site but I'm not how as AFAIK the offending article was a post on google groups.

Well, I'd expected to want Finland to win but actually I liked Lithuania best. Still, you've got to love a lyric like 'The day of rockoning is here' or whatever it was.

I had a nice time last week, up to my mum's on Wednesday, only an hour late; pretty good going for me as I always seem to have trouble with trains. I'm not complaining about the train services (though I think I might be the only person who isn't LOL) but I do see to have particularly bad luck (I was an hour late on the way back - would've been two if I hadn't caught the bus at Newton Abbot).

Thursday we went up to Manchester in the afternoon to see Jo (my sister, if anyone reading this wasn't sure), who has recently returned from a holiday in San Francisco. We sat outside a bar and had a meal and looked at her photos, then a wander around Manchester. I'm rather taken with Manchester. I know it's supposed to be very wet and miserable a lot of the time but the only couple of times I've been up the weather's been great and the city looks quite stunning. There's something about the atmosphere, lively. I'd try to convince Neil to move up there but I know he'd say it was the wrong side of the border.

Rest of my stay in Shrewsbury was great too, but I'll probably update in more detail tomorrow or Friday. I bought some nice bowls from a little Japanese shop in Shrewsbury which I want to share pictures of, among other things.