Flying South for Winter

I am currently enjoying what's known in the trade as 'gardening leave', although why they call it that, I've no idea. Barely anyone I know has a garden, and about 80% of the ones that do employ someone else to do the actual gardening bit for them. Plus, it implies a level of activity that's frankly unrealistic, when you're as pathologically lazy as I am. What it should really be called is 'Pajama Leave', as there's no need to get up before 10am, and you don't have to get dressed at all if you're not venturing out of the house.

Yes, it's true, for those that don't know, I'm leaving Edinburgh and moving back down South. Edinburgh is prepping for my departure by being absolutely freezing (I went to see a friend in Glasgow on Tuesday and was surprised by the amount of snow on the fields as I whizzed along on the train). I am currently to be found not only wearing flannel PJs in bed, but also a long-sleeved thermal top underneath. During the day, I'm spending a lot of time when indoors in my puffa coat and scarf, wondering quite how high my heating bills will be if I have the radiators on all day. It's a bit like being an invalid (spending all your time in your dressing gown), but in the Arctic. The upside is, I'm encouraged to go to the gym just to warm up through doing some exercise and using the sauna.

I assumed when I embarked on my gardening leave that I'd automatically morph into the kind of woman who goes to yoga every morning, then sits around in chi-chi cafes sipping chai lattes whilst reading Grazia. Sadly, this has not really come to pass - although I have done a fair few yoga classes, I'm not suddenly some wheatgrass-imbibing detox type. No, I spent this morning:

• Cleaning the fridge. Well, I got halfway through that, then got bored. I have thrown out most of the foodstuffs that had an expiry date of the end of October, though.
• Thinking about whether to go to a Body Pump class or not. This is my new thing - an hour or so of grunting about with weights on a bar in a class, surrounded by men with no necks, and quite a few superbuff girls. Needless to say, the amount of weight I can cope with makes it look as though I'm lifting a cocktail stick with an olive on each end of it. It's also pretty dull (the only variation is whether you're going '2 up and 2 down' or '3 up and 1 down' or even 'up for 4, down for 4'. The real high point is when you only go 'halfway up' - yes, paint drying seems like watching Usain Bolt set another 100m record in comparison). Still, it definitely works; after one class, my arms were shaking so much, I couldn't put any mascara on. However, as I went to a class yesterday, I can't face another one today. Fail. I'm now wondering whether if I fill a rucksack full of books to take to the second hand shop and trek for the 40 minutes to get there, that will be equivalent as a form of exercise. Let's say yes.
• Buying a danish pastry the size of my head and a coffee from the lovely cafe next door, and then settling down to watch Frozen Planet on iPlayer. The cafe is staffed by a number of nice looking young men, which is always a bonus. There is one who is particularly handsome, who makes the coffee. He looks like he should be some sort of conceptual artist, really, and is only there by accident. I curse myself every time for going in there with no make up on and with unbrushed hair. Because obviously me requesting 'a date slice and an Americano with hot milk to take out, please' is the ideal romantic opener, and if only I were more spruced up, then Art Boy would immediately light up, say, 'no, don't worry, that's on me' and, er, invite me to see his etchings. He was serving again today, and I've now got to the point where I can't look him in the eye when he hands over the coffee. So I say thanks, he says, 'no problem' and I scuttle out. I wondered today if, in a few weeks time, he will think to himself, 'I haven't seen that scruffy, blushing ginger girl who has such a thing for date slices for a while. I wonder where she is.' I doubt it, but a girl can dream.

My Dad keeps asking me 'how I'm filling my days'. He gets up at about 6.30am, so has quite a lot of day to fill. I keep reassuring him that as I don't generally get up till about 9.00am, and then that's usually to make a cup of tea and return to bed with a magazine for a bit, I have considerably less day to fill. It's extraordinary, actually, how little you can get done in a day, if your weeks have no structure to them. Putting a wash on suddenly seems like an achievement on the scale of engineering world peace, or an end to the melting of the polar icecaps. Plus, for an arch procrastinator such as myself, it affords endless opportunities to think, 'oh, I'll do that tomorrow'.

Recently, I've whiled away a whole day reading Russell Brand's second book. I've embarked on a series of improving facials, which see me having my face prodded with a number of electrical 'wands' in order to improve my crepey eyelids and get rid of any forehead wrinkles. I know no-one else will notice the difference, but I think it's working, and it makes me feel like one of those Ladies Who Lunch. My internet connection is so slow that checking emails takes forever. There's all that catching up to do on iPlayer, now my TV's been taken down South for the winter (it's frustrating that I have a huge box set of Mad Men, which I've never seen, but which I know I'm going to love, as part of my leaving gift from work, but nothing to play it on. Although perhaps this is a good thing - I really wouldn't leave the house if I could just watch DVDs 24/7).

I'm also finally wading through the last mountain of paper in preparation for moving out. As per usual, when boxing up all my possessions, I had a near breakdown about how much stuff I have. I thought I'd made a conscious effort not to buy loads of things, but somehow, when I produced a vague list as to what I'd acquired in the last 18 months, it was still alarmingly long and included things such as 'huge Rob Ryan framed print' and 'massive rug', plus duvet, airbed, pillows, baking kit, cake tins and at least 3 pairs of boots. The worst of it is the paper, though. How on earth do I accrue so much of it? What makes me constitutionally incapable of throwing out magazines, not ripping out recipes which I'll clearly never make and having thousands of envelopes everywhere with scrappy 'to do' lists and random phone numbers on them? Every time I move house, I swear it will be different, and every time I end up flicking through 6-month old magazines (you can't just throw them out! There might be something useful in there) and making hundreds of trips to the recycling bins. I should be taking the time to do improving things like going to galleries and museums, but no, I'm hefting massive bags of rubbish around and cursing. I never tested out whether the fireplace in my sitting room was in working order, but this week might well be the time to try - keep warm for free and get rid of all your crap? Win-win, I'd say.