Dahab photos

I thought I'd put a few photos up from my week spent windsurfing in Egypt. Unfortunately, you won't see any shots of me on a board on here yet, as any of those are on friends' cameras, which I haven't had time to raid yet!

Playing pool with the instructors on the first night at the beach bar - they very nearly whooped our asses (probably because they knew about the cheat-y back cushion that stopped all balls dead instead of rebounding them, and the fact that middle pocket shots were impossible on the left side due somebody having clonked the sides of the table out of a straight line - it was pool Dahab-stylee, as so much stuff is out there!)


Jo heading out to sea on the first morning with the red sail.


Jo and I up by the kite-surf lagoon at the other end of the beach after a nice walk - see the ugly fence - not sure whether that's to keep the windsurfing nutters in, or the kite-surfing ones out!


Self-explanatory .... mmmmmm, shisha pipes!!


The first appearance of the dreaded fish-bowls - think this one was mojito - and Jo and Lucy get stuck in. I felt ROUGH the morning after this!


Everything seems funny after fish-bowls .... even Mike the instructor!


Alarm ... spot the "cool" windsurf-ering "dudes", or the drunk ones at least.


View from our balcony at the hotel ... not that we spend much time out here, apart from collecting our dried out kit each morning, and the occasional cheeky vodka and coke from our stash, at dusk before dinner.


Elvis ... last seen windsurfing ...


... and heading out to sea .... this was one of our friends from a group from Manchester, who we also met last year. Great bunch.


Just before the "can we fit 5 people on one windsurfer" experiment began. The answer was yes, but they couldn't actually sail anywhere. They had fun trying though, as you can see from Jo's mischievous grin in the middle there.


Cat / dog standoff on the beach. The resident bar cat wasn't having any of it and was not giving any ground ... the beach dog just thought it was amusing to wind the cat up, and was having a great time!


Jo, and new friends Duncan and Steph at the beach.


Me, taking it easy.


Baby Bay the day Duncan and I waded across the lagoon to watch the big boys show us how it's done. UK Freestyle champ Andy "Bubble" Chambers had just arrived back at Club Vass to coach, so it was cool to watch them all doing their thing.


James and Sala, ably demonstrating that even instructors can look wildly uncool when they try and dance, the night of the closing party.


Us rowdy lot, being, well, rowdy ... and drunk ... at the closing party! In case you're wondering, the fancy dress theme was Egyption Gangsta ... don't ask ...


My poor foot after I rammed it over some rocks in the lagoon whilst attempting to windsurf in force 7 winds. Ouch. That whole funny 3 sided empty outline under the top scab is a missing chunk of skin.


And so endeth a fab holiday!

The Wanderer Returns

I'm absolutely gutted that my trip has flown past already, and I'm now back once again in the dreary UK, feeling more restless than ever.

We had an absolutely amazing week out in Dahab, with some absolutely howling winds for windsurfing. Generally, everything went pretty smoothly - the flights were a bit longer than expected, but not majorly delayed and there weren't any major problems during the week.

I've definitely learnt plenty of stuff this week: I've been using a smaller board all week and have finally graduated away from the daggerboard (been a long time coming), my beachstarts are now consistent, even in strong winds, I've been using my harness more, going quicker and starting to plane, and my sailing is generally more stable. Basically, I've got safer, stronger and quicker.

I also realised how much I wish I'd sailed regularly throughout the year, where I've allowed myself to get distracted by mountain-biking, the gym and learning to run. Jo said the same and we've both vowed to make sure we get some decent time in on the water this coming year, including a couple of weekends away if possible. I also want to give kite-surfing and wake-boarding a crack now I'm finally feeling better about my weight, and much fitter to boot.

We got lucky again this trip with the people we were there with. We were a bit worried before we went that it would be a bit of a let down this year, because the people we met last year were so nice, but we had an absolutely ace bunch again this year, including one big group we met last year!

I always feel sad saying goodbye to people at the end of the week, as we all form such a strong bond over the week. We live in each other's pockets for the week - meals together, on the beach together, lessons together and then out together in the evening, either in the beach bar or out in town. They feel like your best friends by the end of the week, but experience says that we don't really stay in contact once we're back in the UK.

The other thing that always gets me is the instructors. I'm so incredibly jealous of them as they are living their lives doing exactly what they love doing in amazing locations around the world. They seem so young and glamorous and cool and have so much fun, and I just wonder what the hell I'm doing wasting my life being miserable. It feels a bit like I live most of my life in a grey fog, and it lifts when I'm away on these holidays, only to come back stronger then ever when I get home. I'm seriously considering how I can jack it all in and go and have some adventures before it's too late!!

What else happened this week? We had a couple of wild nights out, I picked up a stomach bug mid-week which flattened me for about 36 hours - annoying but it happens, got picked up by the rescue boat several times, broke my rig twice on the final day (it's slightly disconcerting when you surface after a wipe-out, grab your board and find that your sail is no longer attached but floating about 15 feet away!), and generally gathered an impressive collection of scrapes, bumps, cuts, bruises and mosquito bites over the week, including getting smashed in the face by a sail in high wind resulting in a nosebleed.

All in all it was an absolutely freaking awesome holiday and I cannot WAIT to go back. Photos to follow, along with life plans to drop out and go and do something more fun with my life whilst I'm stil vaguely young!


-- Posted from my iPhone

A pit of despair

I'm not quite sure what's up with me at the moment, but I have to confess I'm feeling pretty low about my life. It sounds so stupid, as I honestly recognise that there's so much that could be worse for me ... and I mean seriously worse ... and yet here I am, in the middle of a great big slump I can't explain.

I forgive you now, if you don't feel like reading on to see how seriously self-pitying this gets!

There are so many things I thought I would have achieved by the time I was 30. Maybe my impending 29th birthday is what has triggered this, but I think I've been feeling restless for a while now.

Things I thought I would have achieved by 30:

• A sucessful career that I both enjoyed and was damn good at, earning over £50k a year.
• Be on the property ladder in my own house / flat.
• In a stable relationship with some nice guy.
  

Maybe that list sounds incredibly conceited to you, but I really, really thought, as I was leaving school and then uni, that all those things were completely realistic. And how many have I achieved?

Precisely none of them.

And how many of them have my friends achieved? For the most part, at least 2 out of 3. At the very least, they've all managed at least 1 of them, whilst I flounder around feeling like a bloody failure.

I have a good-enough career, but it just didn't pan out the way I thought it would. Even though I secured the same graduate jobs that my most sucessful friends did, my career has been up and down whilst theirs soared away to the giddy heights I thought mine would. This has been bought home to me this week by an email conversation with my old schoolfriend Koks, who is just about to start another glamorous new job as an investment fund manager for a media investments company in Soho, London. At a conservative guess probably on about £60k a year. And me? I work in finance too, but can't seem to apply myself to it the way my friends do to their jobs ... and consequently, I don't feel like I'm going anywhere fast, and I'm frequently unhappy in my job. Or at the very least unsatisfied.

I've proven to be a disaster with my money. I left uni with debt, and despite earning a relatively good salary, I'm in more debt now than I've ever been. How can I be an accountant that can't manage her own money?? Owning property looks to be further away from me than ever, and the only way it looks viable right now is waiting for inheritances ... that sounds dreadful doesn't it? Whilst my friends jump onto the ladder fairly easily with joint mortgages with partners, I plan my future based on my solo salary (since right now I can't see any potential for anything else) and wince.

Which brings me to my final failure. And please don't get me wrong - I'm not a total bunny-boiler, man-eating, romantic idiot, but I'm getting mighty disillusioned about love. Or ever finding anyone. It's literally been several years since anyone showed any interest in me. Do you know what that does to a girl's self-esteem? I actually seriously wonder what's wrong with me that I just don't seem to be at all attractive to the opposite sex. Long term relationships have never featured in my life, but recently, neither do short term ones. And logically, since I've lost several stone in the last year, you'd have thought things would start to pick up; that I'd see at least a spark of interest from someone, but no.

Friends tell me (I had this same old discussion with Bec last night in the car) that you find someone when you least expect it, when you're not looking, and then, in the same conversation, that I don't put myself out there enough, that I don't chase after guys, or make a move. I'm confused - which is it? Am I supposed to back off, and try and forget about the fact I feel desperately unattractive right now? Or throw myself at every man until one responds? God, I'm confused. Maybe I should just learn the lesson that talking to people who are smugly settled in long term relationsips is not a productive thing to do.

I think what this all boils down to, is my fear of the future. I don't think I'm so worried about not getting married / having children from a point of view of not feeling fulfilled. I think my feelings of failure on my 3 goals are firmly rooted in my morbid fear of being lonely and poor in the future. I have a small family, tiny really. There's pretty much just my dad and my grandma that I know well. Grandma's 94 and Dad's 70, and I worry about both of their health. I'm 28. There will come a point in the not so distant future when they are gone, and I will have no close family left. The way I see it, or fear it, happening - I'll be on my own, still precariously renting and balancing my financial fortunes on a knife-edge, and all my friends will be married, with kids, and thus totally absorbed in their own lives. I'm terrified that I will be left behind and lonely. I can't tell you how the thought of Christmas's alone depresses me. Holidays on my own. Old age on my own.

This week, I've been unable to stop thinking about it. Maybe because it's largely beyond my control. Even if I can get the money thing sorted ... money can't buy you love, huh?

I'm talking myself into an emotional funk, I'm going to stop now. Yes, I being sad and pathetic, but this is what is weighing on my mind this week.

Phew - Flat Stress Over!!

I am so, sooooo relieved. My friend Sheena texted me yesterday afternoon to ask what the situation was with my current flatmate moving out, and whether I wanted to meet for coffee today. We've briefly discussed the possibility of her moving into the flat over the past couple of months, but she wasn't sure what her current flatmate was up to in regards to moving in with her boyfriend, as it was on the cards, but the timing was unclear. You can therefore imagine, that I've been on tenterhooks for the last 24 hours, wandering (and hoping) if she was going to say it was a go for moving in together.

And it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whooooooooop!!

For once in my life, the gods are being kind and a housing situation has resolved itself nicely. Sheena's hoping to move in just before Xmas. I'm so pleased as she's going to be an ace flatmate, and we get on really, really well, but also because it's such a worry off my mind and means I can keep my flat which I love. That's a total bonus as I was quite prepared to move to another flat if she wanted to, but she actively wants to move in here - awesome!!

I'll prob have a month therefore where I have to cover rent and bills on my own, as we don't think we're going to quite be able to synch their flat's notice period up with ours, but that's not a problem as I want to ask the landlord about redecorating the 2nd bedroom anyway, as the wallpaper's started to peel off and it could do with a lick of paint. I'm thinking that if I offer to do the redecoration for them they may well let me just pay half rent that month anyway, or at least a reduced rent (especially as they're mortgage was paid off years ago, and they've had 5 years of my friends and I renting from them and successively finding them new tenants as we go). It's totally a case of "don't ask, don't get", so I'll put it out there and see what they say. It's all very exciting anyway, and means that my money situation now looks far healthier, and I don't have to feel guilty about juggling my finances round so I can go skiing in January. Extra wahoooooo!!

Had an awesome weekend with the girls, Hannah and Bec, and now just feeling a bit shattered back in my flat, and trying to summon some energy to do any of the tasks that need sorting. Of which there are many!