Leicester Life

So here I am in Leicester, feeling so rusty at writing I'm going to need a bucket of oil to fix me.

Where to start? Crumbs, it's late. Can I delete this thing or do I have to post it now even though I'm numb from the efforts of moving city and introducing myself again and again with a false grin on my face, wanting to wail inside about missing my home in Cambridge with it's terrible carpet and mould up the walls.

The new house is great. Big, grown-up, and full of vocabulary I'm simply not used to, like 'utility room', 'conservatory', 'cupboard under the stairs'. The garden is equally daunting. It's actually long enough that I could do my running right here, at number 23, without fear of passers-by staring at me, dogs nipping my feet etc. Although we are in view of the church we now go to, so plenty of potential for midweek teenage groups to have a good old laugh at the red-faced slummy mummy trying to get fit in her back garden.

The man two doors down is very chatty and has lent me his book on cycling, with diagrams to help you negotiate roundabouts and scary traffic etc. So far I haven't had the nerve all the same to get on my bike. The cars go so much faster here, it's a job just staying alive as a pedestrian. Or so it can feel.

In the absence of friends to share my Freddie-filled days with, I have become acquainted with the odd cafe in and out of town just to break up the hikes up and down hills pushing a yabbering three-year-old to swimming, gym group, Nippers etc. We like Fingerprints Cafe, Dominoes (complete with giant toy shop next door featuring a wooden train tickety-ticking round the ceiling), the posh deli on Queen's Road, the Loros bookshop and cafe, John Lewis, the Cradock pub... Freddie now cannot scoot past on his Mini Micro without shouting 'I wanna go in THERE!' to all of the above venues. Gone are the days of whooshing by, leg cocked up like an ice-skater, a jubilant 'Wheeee!' emitting from his chocolate-stained lips. Sweeties and crisps are the foodstuff of choice these days, in my efforts to entice the small but mighty Ridge out on escapades across the streets of Leicester in search of The Library, The Leisure Centre, A Cashpoint that Actually Works...

And I am muddling through it all, getting a lot of fresh air, making a lot of mistakes, uttering many a bad-tempered gripe and just trying to remember that I'm not on planet Mars but just in Leicester, a mere hour and twenty minutes from Cambridge and not much further from London. I have the internet now (after three weeks of living in a weird phone-less, internet-less, friend-less bubble) and can at least start to write about how it's all going - the good and the bad. And God still loves me, despite my grumblings.

So Leicester life is not so bad really. It'll just take time to feel like home.

Good night, all.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx