Monday 7 June 2004

Week 68, Day 437

How life changes again in only two weeks. Do I have news for you.

Let me start from where I left off. I attended Zoe's funeral two weeks ago which was honestly the most beautiful service I've ever been to. It really was a celebration of her life and while there were many tears, there were so many smiles as well. There were close to 300 people who attended, and pretty much all of them lined up to say goodbye to Zoe at the end. Alex and Nancy (Alex's mother) both gave what will probably be the hardest but the best speeches of their lives. The get together back at Nancy's place was a lot livlier than what you'd expect. Again, there were a lot of laughs and smiles. Alex's friends Lyndon, Steve, Mike, Fuery and Nina all turned up, and we spent the evening having drinks and chatting. We were later joined by Annie, a nine-year-old who outwitted us all. She was most entertaining and subsequently gave us all new nicknames. The best had to be Mike's - she called him Chickenhead which we all agreed suits him perfectly. The others were Extraterrestial Loser (Lyndon), Potato Head (Fuery), Billy Goat's Gruff (Steve) and Leg Breaker (Alex - due to him picking her up by the legs and hanging her upside down all the time, though she then gave him the nickname of Computer Whizz Loser, which is equally amusing). I got called Cheese Girl, but don't ask why!

The following day Alex and I hung about and then met up for dinner at Annie's father's, Kenny's place. He's a Scot with a taste for liquor and absolutely hilarious. The dinner was lovely, and Annie spent a lot of her time trying to win Alex's heart over with play fights. She really does have a big crush on him which is rather cute.

I worked quite hard over the weekend, having to do the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night shifts after swapping my original shifts so I could get time off for the funeral. That made me rather tired but the shifts were brilliant. I drove down to pick Alex up from Cambridge on Sunday and it was that day that changes were made.

With all the time I've spent travelling back and forth between Cambridge I've had hours to think on my own. And in light of Zoe's untimely death, I thought a lot about life, what it means to me, what I want from it, and other deep and meaningful thoughts. I came to the conclusion that it was time again to focus on what I want to do. I realised that while I want to advance my career, it conflicts with the fact I want to see the world. While I love my job, it doesn't allow me to do the things I wanted to do when coming over to the UK. And when I think about what is important to me right now, settling down to a job and a house will have to come later.

I expressed my feelings to Alex on the way back from Cambridge and as it turns out, he too is feeling the travelling bug. So we've decided to go together. September is what we have in mind and I've already handed my notice in at work (my last day being 26th August). We're looking into travelling Australia/NZ during Sept-Dec, and who knows what from there. I'd like to take a week off to visit friends in London before I go so looking forward to that, and also visiting anyone else in the UK. Maybe even say hello to my family in Portugal. Not sure yet, depends on time and money.

Andy and Les are upset that I'm leaving but they know it's the right thing for me and are glad I'm happy about it. Just means they need to find a replacement. What I find funny is how I'm leaving at a point that I'm doing the best I've done so far at work. We've been doing our staff's reviews and the feedback I've been getting has been great. I was most surprised when one of the girls told Les that she looked up at me as a role model, and that she loves working on my shifts. Another girl, Emma, then told me on my shift that she too loves working on my shifts because they always go smoothly and they always have fun. That really meant a lot to me especially after all the crap I had been through to start with. At least I'll be leaving the restaurant at my best, rather than my worst :)

So stay tuned, it might not be long before I'm in your neighbourhood again. And with that in mind, it's time for me to search the net for some flights ;)

x
Vanessa