Offline

Quickly jumping in from work to say I'll be offline for another week. British Telecom can't seem to get their act together at all, but we are stuck with them as we don't want cable or Sky. It's perhaps a blessing in disguise though: I start maternity leave this Wednesday and have a busy start to my leave - arranging and waiting for numerous deliveries and a room clearance, having friends and family over to visit, going out and about to this or that concert and this or that restaurant, attending antenatal classes and appointments, sleeeeping... I don't need to be distracted by the net - although I still haven't bought anything for the baby, so need to be online pretty soon, eeeekkk!

See you in a week with a proper post.

House update

The move went surprisingly well. Though we are pretty much unpacked, there is still much to do in terms of waiting on deliveries, buying new things and arranging rooms to just how we like it. We keep wandering around the house not quite believing it's all ours and also trying to work out what extra hard and soft furnishings we need now that we have so much more space. Moving from a one-bed flat to a three-bed house is quite a leap.

We're back at work now and getting back into our usual routine. I only have another week before I leave for a year's maternity leave and I am really looking forward to enjoying this house at my leisure. We won't have an internet connection until next week, so I may be offline for a while if I can't find any time to update Planethalder from work.

On the move

We're moving on Saturday. The cleaner is in the new house sprucing it up as I type. The post is already being redirected. The new PC is on its way. We are ordering a new fridge freezer, washing machine, rug and guest bed tomorrow. These boxes (above) are filled only with books. Poor M is doing most of the packing. We've still got a long way to go.

Intimacy and solitude

I was raised a happy and contented only child, I've been single for more years than I've been coupled up, and I enjoy solitude so much I have joyously spent weeks in my own company not socialising with a soul. When M said he had to go away to the States on business for two weeks, I thought to myself, "This will be fine. I love my own company. It's been a while since I've been truly alone to operate at my own pace only." And I've been enjoyably busy, booking the removals, arranging the parking suspensions, finding the cleaning company, buying a new PC, scheduling BT to install the phoneline and wireless broadband, showing friends and family around the new house, cooking all my meals, reading, writing, dreaming, and of course working. But I miss my other self. I am so much more of myself when I am with him. He enhances me. My life was good before him. But now it's so much better.

29 weeks

A little blurred as I don't have a scanner so had to photograph the scans with a slightly wobbly hand, but here is Little Planet in full 3D gloriousness. We got some video footage of her moving around too. Our little girl. She already has hair. Doesn't she look like a baby alien!

After the scan on Harley Street on Saturday, we popped over to Marylebone for lunch at Café Divertimenti of spinach and bacon quiche, Iberian platter, blackberry and amaretti tart, almond and raspberry shortbread, and coffees. In between bites, we eyed up the pretty little Indian toddler lunching on Hipp organic baby food with her parents. Then to John Lewis to look at carpets for upstairs in the new house, rugs for the living room, a spare bed, and curtains. And then, to the Barbican for Hou Hsiao-Hsien's new movie, Flight of the Red Balloon. Though not as compelling as his previous Café Lumière, the film spun a chaotic human story around a calm and serene heart in an elegant and beautiful way. Then a hearty dinner of lamb chops and kebabs at our favourite Turkish restaurant Antepliler.

Most of Sunday was spent in the new house, dismantling old wardrobes the previous owner had left behind, measuring areas to see where things should go, and generally enjoying ourselves in our first official, privately-owned place together as a couple.

My home, my family. This weekend was bliss.

Completed

It's official. We've completed. The house is ours!

Waiting to leave

• Singing nursery rhymes to my bump
• Playing Baby Einstein classical music to my bump
  
• Stroking and talking to her for hours on end
• Reading and listening to music in a big, comfy armchair
• Doing pregnancy meditation
• Doing pregnancy yoga
• Pottering around my new home
• Sitting in my new garden with a mug of hot milk or chocolate
• Listening to DAB radio in my new kitchen
• Daydreaming about our baby
• Cooking meals for M
• Having long, candlelit soaks in our new bathroom
• Envisioning how each room should look like
• Surfing the net from the couch, in bed, at the kitchen table and in the garden, because finally we will have wi-fi
• Watching classic old movies on DVD
• Buying things we will treasure for the baby and for the house
• Being alone and free to reflect, to prepare and to nurture myself and my bump

These are the things I am most looking forward to doing when I start maternity leave in a few weeks. Some of these things I can do and am doing now, but in snatches of time. In my new house and with uninterrupted hours, I will have space and time to simply be, before my life becomes three. Sigh.

Weekend doing

Marvelling at Alexander Rodchenko at the Hayward...



Giggling with Juan Muñoz at the Tate Modern...



Lunching on a cheese and ham toastie for M and steak pie with mushy peas for me at the Hayward's new terrific Concrete café... Browsing rugs, furniture and camcorders on Tottenham Court Road... Dining on kimchi, fried chilli chicken, deep-fried oysters and dolsot bibimbap at Bi Won on Coptic Street... Being both captivated and appalled by Woody Allen's neglected masterpiece Interiors on DVD... Savouring pears poached in a vanilla syrup and served with fresh raspberries, prepared by M... Flicking through back issues of Living ETC and Elle Decoration dreaming of each and every room in our new house... Breakfasting on clean-tasting Portuguese goat's cheese brought back by M from Lisbon... Finishing Don DeLillo's cinematic debut novel Americana and starting Natsume Soseki's The Tower Of London... Burning my tongue on the lime and chilli pickle that accompanied our lunch of samosas and dahi bora... Shamelessly being sucked into the irrepressively lighthearted and saccharine Pollyanna DVD with Hayley Mills... Sorting through, binning and filing away several months' worth of paperwork, from banking to work... Shortlisting removal and cleaning companies... Dining on homemade Hungarian goulash and potato salad with M and his sister, followed by blood oranges, passionfruit and dark cherry chocolate while perusing the cookbooks, as my sister-in-law is also a big foodie.

Exchanged

We've finally exchanged contracts on our house today. Bearing in mind we first had our offer accepted late in October of last year, this has been an unusually long process. We could have pulled out months ago and relooked for a place to buy, but to be honest we weren't in a terrific hurry to move and as we had found our ideal (for now) house, we were willing to wait. But last week we decided enough was enough and that we definitely had to move in before my maternity leave began. We gave all concerned a deadline for completion, after which we said we would pull out. And the threat seems to have worked. The solicitors have said we can collect the keys next Friday. Hurrah!

Unfortunately, M is in the States for two weeks thereafter but this gives me time to arrange for a removals company and for a cleaning company to come into the new house and give it a good scrub and other necessary things. All I care about, to be honest, is having those keys in my hands.

Very excited.

Whirlwind

It's been a whirlwind at work leaving me little energy afterwards to blog about my weekend. My highlights since Friday... On Friday we popped into the Crafting Beauty In Modern Japan exhibition at the British Museum, which showcased some truly beautiful and intricate ceramics, textiles, lacquer work, metal work, bamboo and glass work. Afterwards, we ate at the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Kikuchi on Hanway Street. One of my favourite Japanese restaurants, along with Umu, Roka and Matsuri - the delicate, fresh food belies the dowdy exterior and the place is packed with Japanese people. We ate turbot rolled in plum sauce, red miso soup, tempura crab, fatty tuna, sashimi selection, deep fried tofu and ginger, scallops with ginger and citron miso, green tea ice cream and red bean ice cream. All washed down with buckwheat shochu, barley shochu and green tea.

On Saturday, we popped into JP Books on Haymarket and bought some pretty Japanese print notebooks (below). Saw the interesting Painting In England 1957 exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, featuring the muted post-war palette of British abstract expressionists such as Frank Avray Wilson and Denis Bowen. Francis Bacon's Figures In A Landscape (above) was elemental and sexually charged. His painting of two lovers tustling in the grass has not been visible for 50 years and was one of his earliest attempts to paint figures in movement.


We also saw Karen Kilimnik's wonderfully childlike paintings at the Spruth & Magers gallery. Her magical paintings set against striped Regency-style wallpaper and mouldings were like illustrations in old children's books or like the amateur paintings sold by the side of Green Park - the romanticised world of English teas, old London, and bucolic paradise. John Maeda's computer installations at the Riflemaker gallery (above) always mesmerise. But I most enjoyed the post-Independence collection of modern Indian paintings at the Aicon Gallery off Heddon Street. K Laxma Goud's powerful, earthy and vital line drawings, etchings and watercolours (below) particularly impressed and we had a great conversation with the Director about modern Indian art. This is a gallery I'm going to keep a keen eye on.


In the evening we witnessed the amazing vocal feats of charismatic Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, who I last saw way back in 2004, at The O2 - or "The O Queue" as my husband impatiently calls the old Millennium Dome for the intolerable people congestion and long queues inside the vast venue. As I wrote back in 2004, "N'Dour has an amazing 4-5 octave range and his voice soars and swoops with such ease, it transfixes its listener."

Sunday was spent walking off huge breakfast bacon sandwiches M is fond of making on weekends now - trekking 4 hours up and down the hills of Crouch End and Highgate Village looking at roads we'd like to buy on. Eventually we collapsed on Hampstead Heath to nap and chat and read and people watch. I love this area - we both have roots in the Hampstead area and we were married there earlier this year. I aspire to retire to a lovely old detached house off the Heath one day. A girl can dream...

Then we went into Pimlico to meet a friend who's stopping over from India and Tanzania. We chatted about development work, making or adopting babies, mutual friends, falling for married men (!) over some rather bland and overly salty Indian food at Nutmeg. Drinking Staropramens in The Warwick was so pleasant now there is a no smoking ban. It makes such a difference. Now they just need to ban sports TV. I was going to say, "Even if it's only mellow cricket" but M informed me it was actually golf. Oh well...

Also this week: bought a pretty polka dot silk dress from DKNY on Bond Street, spent a night drinking with colleagues and clients in Soho, booked our flights and hotels to Tokyo and Kyoto at the Japan Centre Travel Agents, and taken too many taxis.