Update 9: Spring forward ...

Hello to all my favourite people around the world and beyond :)

This is Margo happily checking in to update you on my life, if you are still interested and not weary yet of the saga (tick here [ ] to unsubscribe. If you unsubscribe you will be bombarded with junk and spam till you resubscribe. Heheheeee).

You may have realised by now that my sense of humour, pathetic as it is, is returning. There are so many things that are helping to restore my equilibrium, not least of which is the incredible and stunning blue sky that I am looking at right now. It is hot. Yup, HOT out there. People smell funny out there in the streets, a combination of steam, sweat and stuffy jackets thrown over shoulders. Scarves have disappeared and skin is the fashion of the day. Too much of it really; girls in sleeveless tops suddenly look horrendously underdressed, and cleavage is IN, baby!

Amazingly however, there are many tanned bodies out there. I can't work out if it's fake tan or actual tan from holidays overseas, and of course I'm far too polite now to reach out and try to scratch it and see .. heeeheee. Yup, I am acquiring some of the typical British reserve; holding back from laughing too loud, yelling across rooms and generally making rude comments.

In fact, a funny thing happened on the Tube the other day. As I stood there in the aisle, among the other heaving bodies jam-packed into the hot, stuffy tube-shaped space, I looked down and happened to see the top of some guy's head (as you do), and on it was a single leaf from some tree, that had clearly floated down and landed on his balding pate (the leaf, not the tree). Now if this was SA, and the really normal abnormal me, you know that I would have leaned forward and with some sparklingly witty comment, happily removed the leaf from his head. However this is England, and we don't speak to strangers on the tube here, you know. So for several very happy minutes and through a variety of stops and starts at stations, I gazed down in a pleasant daydream at this leaf. On this man's head. And when I left he was still peacefully, blissfully unawarely wearing his leaf. For all I know, he still is.

Are you laughing yet? Good, because it only gets better.

I have had lots of people adventures. One of them was meeting up with Hubert the Pole on the weekend. That's Hubert a Polish person, not an actual lap dancing Pole. Hubert was at American Summer Camp with me, and Dinah (you dog you!) gave him my mobile number, and he promptly called me up. We ended up in an Irish bar in Covent Garden, and got drunk. Yes, it was a veritable Polish South African Irish Reunion in an English city. What more could you ask for. Well, respite is one thing. He wouldn't stop feeding me Polish vodka, making me (yes that's right, really forcing me) drink it like tequila, with a lemon. It was ghastly. Although Hubert will always be an entertaining devil, eventually I could bear it no longer, and with a quick goodbye, picked up my bag, turned around and simply walked away. He was quite taken aback, I think.

But really, I just cannot, cannot, cannot cope with the drinking here. I realise that once I drink, I only end up drunk. Every single time. It makes me really fearful of going out in this town. Which yes, I know, is quite unlike me. But I really don't mind turning into a non-alcoholic, middle-aged old fart, if it only meant I could avoid the hangovers! So I have some bridge-mending to do with a Pole, but I'm sure we'll be alright in the end :)

I also had a lovely dinner with Andrew and his father, C on Sunday. It was so nice to meet C, and get to know Andrew from a new angle. His dad is lovely, and lives in an amazing flat on the 17th floor of a building on the central/east side of London. We spent hours at his gorgeous windows looking out at magnificent views of London, including close-ups with binoculars (no, no nudity in the parks out there yet). We could see everything from the London Eye to Hampstead Heath - and you realise what a peculiarly compact and flat city London actually is; quite, quite strange.

Then I had dinner with K and G last night, which was yet another surreal experience. They really do exist in a different city from me - funnily enough also called London. Their London is filled with rich black taxi cabs, and gorgeous Zen-decor bars with the Beautiful People and restaurants with glamorous names. It must be a nice place to visit. Sigh. Well, I did visit their London last night (in my high heels, which made me feel like I kind of fit in a bit better, so my feet ache like 'se moer' today).

We drank at a bar called the Rockwell. Yes, amazing Zen-decor. The drinks were a minimum charge of £10 each. Yes, that's ZAR100 a drink. My Martini was called Thai Martini, and featured lemongrass, coriander and sake. Hers was a Rose Petal Martini, featuring real rose petals and a rose petal liquer specially ordered in from some third world country where the poor people die on the hillsides, crushing petals for us Beautiful People in the Zen Bars of London. lol

Then we went on to Wagamama's where we stuffed our faces with Yaki Udon and Egamama. No, I still don't know either what it was we really ate. Could've been fish, could've been chicken. Of course by that time we'd had way too much to drink, so we could've been eating crocodile for all we cared. No matter, it tasted delicious. And the conversation got downright rude. I felt right at home!

Staggering home through Leicester Square at midnight in my f&*(king high heels, I was gobsmacked to see queues, that's right QUEUES of people lining up to get into at least 10 hot clubs in the Square. What's the matter with these people; don't they have jobs to go to!?!!?

Speaking of which, my job is going fabulously. I am enjoying myself tremendously, helped no end by the cool emails I get every day from M in South Africa; he and I have these long intellectual discussions which have nothing to do with my work, and take hours to construct and research, and keep me fabulously entertained at work. So far we have covered the global eco-crisis, string theory, stereotypies (correct spelling as far as I know, hey M?), instinct vs learning, and modelling behaviour.

That's all in between working for my 4 bosses, whom I love to bits and would protect with my life. [The next bit is censored, in order to protect their interests, and my job hehe]. Don't you all just love me and miss me too much?!

The most interesting piece of news is the most delicious, and I'm keeping most of the detail to myself, and one other (he knows who he is). I have been involved in a lovely flirtation on my mobile phone with a friend of a friend, whom I've met and quite fancy. We plan to meet up on the weekend again, and I have high hopes. I'm tired of being celibate and sweet.

So wish me luck, my friends, I know you will. I feel this sense of coming back to myself, a sense of regaining my equilibrium and a feeling of wellbeing.

But don't worry, because I'm still coming home in December and yes South Africa is still home in my heart.