Morning!
It's been quite the week here, too much news to tell you all of it. Here are some highlights and a couple of them get the full treatment below.
- Day off on Monday to go up to London for a posh lunch with Cath
- Tuesday - a plumber visits, and so does a gardener - prepping this place for moving house in a few weeks' time
- Still nowhere to go yet, but I have left it in Abraham's hands, having put the cosmic order for my next home into the vortex, relaxing and enjoying the excitement of the adventure and the anticipation
- I've got a sniff (thanks to Heidi) of a 6-12 month sit in the 'burb my parents lived in for 25 years
- I've enjoyed a third PPI win, another big one. Thanks, Yvonne!
- I've uninstalled the three news apps from my iPad - left, right and centrist. I feel less informed in a vital political week and have relied on Twitter much more, but I am thrilled at the time this has freed up and the anxiety too. Not missing at all the neg emotions the news causes and I felt it was out of keeping with my Abraham vibe of wow and wonder. I am reminded that when I gave up the news for ten years once before, life was happier and anything important ALWAYS gets through somehow.
- Day trip last Friday to visit a friend in her new home; I'm so happy she's happily settled.
- Day off on Wednesday this week, just because I could. Look at me! I've been having a lovely life.
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How Lucky Can One Girl Be?
Having booked three months in advance, on Monday client/friend Cath and I met at Tom Kerridge's Bar & Grill in the very luxurious Corinthia Hotel in Northumberland Avenue, London. You'll know it from the Monopoly board.
I used to be much more of a foodie than I am these days, but Cath is in the hospitality industry and loves good food. The food was wonderful, see the menu in a raft of Cath's photos below. For a luxury lunch out, I didn't think it was expensive either.
We wanted to go because we'd seen the restaurant and the hotel in the BBC TV show called A Hotel for the Super Rich & Famous which aired in December, just before Christmas. And yes, it looked just as glorious as that on Monday in the spring sunshine in my wonderful, wonderful home town.
I already knew that if I bumped into the Corinthia's GM, Thomas Kochs, I would be talking to him and fawning all over him. I love him. I love him. I love him. And this was not his only TV show, he'd been featured previously when he was the GM at Claridge's. Fortunately for him, I did bump into him but he was on the phone, so he was spared my fangirling. I managed to hold it together in a dignified fashion.
His attention to detail is awesome, and his management style impressive. I love him, did I say? He is also, at times, very funny. Sadly if you watch that clip above, I know you'll want to watch the show but it is no longer on BBC iPlayer. I wonder if it's on YouTube. Let me check for you...no, I don't think so but there are lots of clipettes of it and of my Thomas.
The hotel was bliss. I cannot wait to move in for a week which is only going to cost me Will.i.am type money.
Fast forward in the story to Sunday night when it looks like Cath might not make it due to snow on the train tracks. Yikes! I'd just accepted their £75 no-show fee on the Saturday. But I had a secret weapon, Cath. I felt sure the hospitality PR lady could talk us out of that one, but no need.
We both arrived where we supposed to be when we were supposed to be there and were immediately transported into the world of seamless service, delicious nosh and Benedict Cumberbatch talking Shakespeare to us in the rest rooms, instead of muzak.
I had the chicken and the rice pudding and a glass of Riesling, Cath went for the mackerel, then the bacon and eggs main and the other pudding. She foreswore the booze, it was only a Monday lunchtime after all.
We will definitely go there again. The experience was glorious, and I haven't finished telling you about our miraculous goings-on that day yet, see more in the next story.
Since both Cath and I can chat till the cows come home and her next appointment had been cancelled, I decided to drive her to Gatwick (the long way home) so that we could keep chatting and swapping our news. And as we left the hotel and drove down Whitehall towards the Houses of P, there was the full regalia of colouredy flags blowing in the sunny breeze on Parliament Square and the bells of Westminster Abbey ringing out at 3 o'clock on a Monday afternoon. What's occurring? Later the 6 o'clock news revealed the Queen, the royal family, and gazillions of foreign dignitaries in town for Commonwealth Day.
Gatwick was easy, of course it was even though we were still chatting as I dumped Cath rather unceremoniously as the airport requires before they start to sanction you. Cath is sunning herself in the Balearics as I write this and I am wishing I could have another lunch at Kerridge's at The Corinthia a.s.a.p., especially in view of what I am about to tell you.
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Things Are Always Working Out For Me
As you know, I am in the middle of a few weeks' (perhaps a lifetime's) rampaging fest with Esther and Abraham-Hicks.
As luck would have it, on Monday morning I found a viddy on YT called Things Are Always Working Out For Me. Normally I don't like them with music but this was perfect because I was doing my emails at the same time, prior to setting off for London, and all it does is repeat just a couple of sentences about things always working out for me. It also had subliminal messaging about pure joy. Not terribly subliminal TBH and all the better for that.
In my planning for driving up to Westminster, where I have lived for eight years relatively recently in my life, I'd downloaded an app from Westminster Council about parking there now that I do not have a resident's parking permit. I knew where I was going to park - right outside!
The app told me not just how to pay to park and how much, but how many spaces there were and how many of them were free in real time. I'd been monitoring it at lunchtime for a week and I knew there was always plenty of room for me and my nippy little car, not least because it is expensive to park and pay the Congestion Charge and most people don't drive in on a Monday lunchtime.
I am an expert at London parking. People are amazed but actually, the secret is always to agree to a meeting point where I already know there is a superfluity of parking, as I knew there was at The Corinthia. I'd done my research. I was confident. I knew it was going to be easy.
Imagine my surprise then when I arrived to discover the situation was anything but.
What the app did not reveal was that Northumberland Avenue's parking was all closed off with yellow cones and urgent messages not to even think of parking there. And all adjacent streets too, Great Scotland Yard, Scotland Place, Whitehall Place, Whitehall Court. I'd driven around the block several times and was sliding into panic. Thankfully I arrived in plenty of time because I prepare for all eventualities but the mahoosive building projects, cement mixers, beep-beep-beep reversing trucks and men in hard hats and high viz vests took me by surprise and not just outside the hotel but quite far afield too.
Who is going to tell the app developers about this epic fail?
I started to pray to the parking fairy as I was squandering my spare hour looking for a space, hopelessly. At one point I turned onto the Strand and, trust me, you never want to do that. It has the slowest traffic in London by a long way. It takes about twenty minutes to drive about twenty metres. No idea why it jams up outside Charing X station, but it does. I knew that. Why did I do it then? Desperation. Anyway, I was praying by now and as we ace manifesters know, parking is a small ask and the parking fairy usually delivers and pronto. But not today, even though I had actually put my hands together for that prayer. After all, I wasn't using them to steer in the standstill.
Next, I had the genius idea to start saying (again, out loud) the very thing I'd learned that morning - everything is always working out for me, everything is always working out for me, everything is always working out for me. On repeat. And then my miracle happened.
Going around the block for the third or fourth time, a man asked me was I looking for a space. He too had cones, shut off parking bays and a high viz vest so I thought he was part of the general building works in progress posse. But no. He'd shut off the parking in the road behind the hotel for a film crew because they were making a Marvel movie! He offered me a space at no cost to me from 12 noon until 2.30 and he asked me to leave my mobile number on my dash and he called me at 2.30 to chivvy us up. We were en route so again all was well. He wouldn't let me pay him the £20 I had in my hand which meant we parked for 2.5 hours for free in the centre of London when EVERYTHING was ramjammed. Wow!
And if that's not a wondrous miracle I don't know what is.
Drizabone Steve, as I like to think of him, and I exchanged texts on Tuesday/Wednesday, my thanks, his "my pleasure" response. Quite restores your faith in human nature, doesn't it? I had perhaps lost that faith, but not my faith in miracles. Never that.
Here are Cath's photos. Meat fridges decorating the walls, menu, amuse bouches, and my rice pudding. When the lady who took our money asked what was our fave, I said the rice pudding definitely, and she agreed. I should have asked for several portions to take away with me! Never mind, because that's such a good reason to return as soon as poss and although Drizabone Steve won't be there next time, that street will be empty because that was a movie, not the ongoing semi-permanent building projects. Yay!
May the wind be always at your back, and a Drizabone Steve shepherding you into a free parking space in front of the hotel for the super rich and famous. I enjoyed being among their number for lunch on Monday.
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Annie - The Crystal Whisperer
Before Christmas, I think I told you here in my newsletter about a couple of sessions I had enjoyed with Annie, the Crystal Whisperer. If not, then I certainly should have done so. I know I did on the podcast.
Annie dowses using the crystal and her focus is very much on health so we talked about a couple of little niggles I had, but I didn't realise that was her expertise so I wanted to talk about other things too and she indulged me. Let's face it - mind, body, spirit etc. How can you separate one anxiety from how it manifests in health issues and challenges, I wonder? Annie'll know.
Annie said she would let me know when she was ready to take on clients, 'cos I was keen to recommend her to the whole world right then and there. And that notification came through earlier this week. That is something she would rely on the crystal to tell her.
So I helped her with some suggestions about her wording and pricing etc. and encouraged her to bang up a Facebook page so I could share a link with you. And here it is.
Facebook.com/TheDowsingCrystalWhisperer
Please tell Annie you heard about her from me, and do let me know how you get on. Without breaking any confidences, I'd love to know.
Until next time...
Judith
x
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