Highgate | Not Just a Granny

Posts Tagged ‘Highgate’

Ahhh!!!! Coffee

Posted in It's my life, Travel, tagged Club loyalty card, Costa Coffee, Highgate, hooked on the internet, http://3daysinlondon.info/, internet, percolating coffee, tavel in London on June 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

What is it about the early morning smell of percolating coffee that sets the olifactory senses in a whirl and the tastebuds drooling!

I arrived back in Highgate this morning (Wedn June 2nd), a glorious summer day in London, bright and early (too early), so I stopped off at Costa Coffee to hook-up to the internet. As I walked through the doors I was assailed by the heavenly smell of percolating coffee.

Costa coffee in Highgate

I often visit Costa Coffee in Highgate (one of my favourite places in London) and meet up with friends, my business coach and sometimes my daughter (although we more often go to High Tea of Highgate). Coming back to the same place again and again is like the feeling you get when wearing a favourite jumper…warm and cosy, and I have been back so often that I have qualified for a Costa ‘Coffee Club’ loyalty card.

Costa Club loyalty card

Although I am a dedicated tea drinker, my favourite being Twinings English Breakfast, my day cannot start without the first mug of tea; like nectar on the tongue – there is something about the smell of percolating coffee that assails my senses.

So here I am hooked-up and hooked-on to the internet, enjoying the cosy ambiance of fellow patrons sitting relaxing, the quiet buzz of conversation and the heavenly smell of my cappucino.

Cappucino with chocolate sprinkled on top 🙂

and yes I do take four sugars with my coffee, but I make up for it by not having sugar in my tea 🙂

I am back in Highgate for the next three months – in sha’a Allah, and love the feeling of visiting the same place again and again;

warm and cosy inside Costa coffee shop

That is the corner of my suitcase you can see in the foreground! I do indeed live like a gypsy, although these days it feels more like a tortoise 🙂

And just to make it perfect, in the background I can hear the sounds of ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon 🙂

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just life

Posted in It's my life, tagged freedom, Highgate, http://www.notjustagranny.com, Law of Attraction, life, London, Personal Development, the secret, Travel on March 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

…how funny life can sometimes be. I had a very productive afternoon springcleaning my daughter’s flat in return for a bed at night for a few days (not a requirement; I offered). Whilst whizzing (ok so maybe not whizzing) but while manipulating the hoover (actually it’s a morphy richards POD), round the flat upstairs and down, I had time to reflect on life.

Like how did I get to this place. I don’t mean London as such but to the place in my life. Here I am almost 55 & I have no home of my own, I don’t own a car, I have no furniture and all my possessions are in storage! Is that a good or a bad thing?

A few years ago (blimey it really is almost 3years ago), I embarked on a helter-skelter journey of personal development. At one of the courses I did we had to list our five highest values. My top value is freedom, my 2nd travel and so on. My absolute passion is to travel. Be careful what you wish for….

I work as a Carer for the Aged and in that capacity I get to travel round the UK, sometimes to larger cities like Cambridge, or Oxford, (see my previous blogs), other times to tiny little villages that don’t even have a Postoffice or grocer. Now although that sounds great and I get to see some fabulous, interesting and quintessential places, and although I am travelling, this is not quite what I had in mind!

I tend to get jobs in far-flung places like Newton-Ferrers or some tiny village in Norfolk, or a farm in the depths of Kent where I can’t even get phone reception never mind internet, and yet I am travelling, living my passion; albeit my highest value is constantly challenged.

How does the law-of-attraction work like that? A few months ago I saw a fabulous house in an estate agents window in Highgate, and secured a portfolio of the house, saying to my daughter: “I am going to live in that house”. Now I have a job that I start on Monday in Highgate on the estate, but not in the house I admired. All well and good you might say, except I get to live in someone else’s house on the estate….not my own. So how does that work then?

I have read a lot about the LOA and listened to ‘The Secret’ dozens of times (literally), and yet it still baffles me. If I say ask for £1million to be in my bank account by a particular date….that doesn’t happen. So how is it that when I said one of my highest values was travel, do I get to travel and yet not in a way that I would like.

Is there something I am missing? Some ‘secret’, some point? I find it exceptionally frustrating, that although to be honest I do love what I do, expecially when I get to care for someone really nice, I find my highest value is constantly challenged: freedom.

Yet if I look at the other side of the coin, I have no overheads in terms of mortgages, council taxes, bills, no transport problems/frustrations and it takes me maybe 2minutes to ‘walk’ to work….ie leave my room and walk to the next, it would appear that I do have freedom of a sorts, yet again, not the sort of freedom I would prefer.

During these personal development courses we are instructed to write down what we want, to be specific and itemise the list carefully. Is that really what it takes? Is that what people really do?

Anyways, so that’s it. Just wondering!

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