Problem or solution?

I don't want my focus to be all over the place, but negotiating a relationship (of sorts) as well as a career (of even more dubious, tenuous sorts) is fraught with difficulty especially when I find myself in strange and far-flung places.  It's not as though there is anywhere in particular where I feel 'at home'.  It's probably high-time I gave up on the notion that a sense of being 'at home' somewhere will ever find me or I will ever find it.  I don't have a strong tie anywhere and in each place I seek to make a home for myself, there's always something missing.  In London it was the possibility of speaking a foreign language regularly without having to pay for the privilege.  Finding British friends who can do that was nigh-on impossible and the ones who I befriended who weren't British, either spoke a language I didn't (i.e. Russian) or were about to move away anyway.  Or both.

And here, in the Czech Republic, I seem to finally have found myself drawn to another culture, not my own, not Czech culture, but American culture of all things.  Mainly because it is the polar opposite of the culture which surrounds me.  Is this a result of some innate need to always be the rebellious one?  Do I simply have to continually buck the trend and follow the path less travelled to a destination that only appeals to recluses?  What the hell is wrong with me, if that's the case?  I know, deep down, I actually DO need people.  I would like to be involved in a community of writers or musicians, meeting at cafes or dinner parties and sipping a fine Côte du Rhone and discussing the latest tricks of the trade, but somehow whichever camp I should find myself in, I'm sure I would feel like the fraud, for the mere fact that this one area (music or literature) is not my sole occupation.  Is this part of the problem or the solution?  I simply don't know.

Just for your reference, here's a picture of the "town" I've been residing in over the last few days, just so we can all see another place that doesn't feel like home to me. 

 It's sweet though, isn't it?

Tributes to Havel

I had to go to Václavské náměstí today anyway, so I stopped to take a look at all the tributes to Václav Havel that were displayed around the statue of Svatý Václav (the Saint that Havel shared the first name of) at the top of the square.  I overheard one kid ask about why it says svatý Václav above the tributes and if that's because Havel is a saint, so he was rather confused.  The Mum just told him that it's a coincidence that the saint shares his name.   

Two of the famous pictures of Havel with the Rolling Stones:

This one says, "Thank you for everything you did for us":

And on several billboards on the way home, a photo of Havel by Tomki Němec with a quote of Havel's I've referenced before:

,,Naděje není přesvědčení, že něco dopadne dobře, nýbrž jistota, že něco má smysl, lhostejno, jak to dopadne."

["Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."]

A Sad Sunday

Ex-president Václav Havel has died.  It's the end of an era.  It was a shock to discover it as I signed out of my seznam account.  I went straight to the Czech national paper's site at www.idnes.cz to read the full report.  It bothers me that this means Margaret Thatcher has outlived him.  (Unless she died years ago but it's been a well-kept secret ever since.  Either that or no-one could tell the difference.)  That just seems wholly unfair.

In other, far less important, news I've just had the worst tummy bug of my life and I'm only just slowly recovering from it.  Sipping peppermint tea is just becoming possible without severe pain as a consequence.  I'm recovering.  Slowly.  Very slowly.

Thoughts, fantasies and a wish for adventure

"The vitality of thought is an adventure.  Ideas won't keep.  Something must be done about them."  A. N. Whitehead

I'm feeling quite low today.  Something about the proximity of Christmas and the way in which it seems designed to pinpoint and expose those of us who don't feel we really have a home to go has begun to gnaw away at me already.  Additionally, the reminiscences about this time last year, before the final throes of the end of the dredges of my former relationship has started pecking away at my mind, like an insistent and anxious bird.  This is obviously not helped by an overwhelming tiredness.  I'm not sure how to combat it, when I know what I need is some time off and a bit of hope for the future.  Which, of course, will require some planning.  

I also know this is part of the call of the creative stuff, begging me to come back, when I can't.  How can I come back, when I don't even have a whole day off anymore?  I am doing what I said I would.  I'm paying my way.  I sold my piano to do this, but I have no hope of ever buying a replacement, let alone having a flat to put it in.  And even if I could, it's already too late.  It's still painful to look back at how long it took me to think I could even begin to call myself a musician, how much I dedicated myself to trying to prove I was, to make up for my total lack of formal music education.  And the suspicion in the eyes of many that music was not where my 'talents' lay at all and I was heading for a fall by liking music so much, did so much more damage than anyone could have imagined.  (They were right on the latter, but for the wrong reasons.)

And so it is that I find myself a little lost today, away from a real sense of home, speaking three different foreign languages in one day (French, Czech and German, in that order) and wondering what on earth constitutes 'home' anyway.  I keep thinking of that Christmas when I was cat-sitting in someone else's flat, looking after the two cutest cats in all Christendom and being paid for it.  I knew I was the luckiest person on earth.  I also knew it would never happen twice.  

I was slightly envious that the couple I cat-sat for had such a lovely life of heading off to LA one month, Stockholm the next.  I still have a silly little dream of going to California one day and hanging out on some under-populated beach somewhere there (if there is one).  Oddly enough, on the other hand, I wouldn't mind heading way out to San Francisco instead, even though the two are not even remotely close when you look at a map.  Still, fantasies are fantasies.  They work fine in your head.

Just like the idea of being able to change trajectory and run different groups of meet-ees, maybe even for singing/songwriting or even do some playing, writing and performing of my own, keeps circling my mind but there's great doubt it'll have a real landing place.  And all the while, I long for a couple of days of luxury, such as a long afternoon reading books and magazines, followed by a languid bath with all sorts of potions to pamper myself with.  Or a day just playing and writing and even recording songs.  But fantasies are hard to convert to reality.  Especially when you haven't even got any time to think.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

I won a small battle this evening.  It may not mean I will win the overall war (not that there is one) but, this mini victory alone has taught me a lot.  That 'Christmas Bonus' idea has not fallen by the wayside.  Let me give you the back-story:

Recently, one of my friends posted on the dreaded f***book (as someone once called it) that he had got a Christmas bonus this year.  And I posted back, "I gotta get me one of those!"  And that gave me the idea of putting a 'Christmas Bonus' box on my table at meetings to see if meet-ees might want to contribute, in the same way that office workers get Christmas bonuses, so that I too, as a self-employed person could have a little bit of money to go towards a nice Christmas.  (Or at least help to cover the cost of losing money due to cancellations and people taking time off for Christmas.)

So I have been drafting an email to send to all my meet-ees to explain what this box on my table is all about and more generally, to thank them for coming to meetings with me and wish them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  In the spirit of 'Thanksgiving', I thought that it would be a nice way of introducing the idea that it's possible for people like me to get some kind of tip, if they think I've helped them this year, in the same way waiters and waitresses get tips.

So I got my good friend to help me translate it into Czech, knowing full well this isn't a Czech way of doing things at all.  It's just not done.  It's not 'Vogue', if you know what I mean.  And even though she thought it a little bit strange, she read my email in English and concluded that she thought it was brilliant.  She said she loved the line, "if you like my work, please feel free to give whatever amount you feel is appropriate."  And she kindly translated all of it.  She said she would be very interested to find out what happens.  (Me too.)

So, the real test before sending out emails came when I told the architect about this idea.  I knew he would be totally against it.  And initially he was.  "It's strange," he said, "it's not a Czech habit".  To which my response was, "It's not a British habit to learn Czech, and dedicate oneself to learning foreign languages but that's what I've been doing."  How limiting it would be if we all had to stick to the acceptable habits of the country we were born in.  Surely the whole point of my meetings is to inspire people about a different culture and open a door to a different way of seeing and doing things?

The architect required more convincing.  "You're going to ask them for more money? It's like begging on the street or something!" he said.  So I read him the email verbatim, about how I appreciate my meet-ees speaking English with me, I appreciate the opportunity to work with them and in that spirit, they should feel free to give whatever they feel appropriate.  But there's no obligation so if they'd rather not, that's absolutely fine.  There was a chink in his armour for a moment.  I reiterated that I was thanking them and wishing them a Merry Christmas.  I also reiterated that office workers get Christmas bonuses, so it's not a totally unheard of concept.  He began to crack.  

Eventually, the penny dropped.  This isn't an evil thing to do.  It isn't begging.  It isn't asking for too much without having given anything, it is just a slightly strange idea from an even stranger person.  No-one has to feel bad about it, because I'm not going to talk about it in meetings, and it's absolutely fine for meet-ees not to say a word about the email and pretend the box isn't even there.

As my grandma used to say, "nothing ventured, nothing gained."  What have I got to lose?  At the end of our conversation, the architect apologised and said, "actually, I think it's a good idea."  Those of you who've never even spoken to a Czech person will have no concept of the enormity of the impasse I just overcame with that one, but take it from me, that was a HUGE turn-around in attitude in one conversation.  And if I just won over the equivalent of an old-fashioned working class bloke with an "I ain't no charity case!"-type attitude, then anything's possible.  They may have tried to instill a 'don't get ideas above your station' attitude in me when I was growing up in a not dissimilar world to his, but, hell, maybe this is an idea below my station.  To quote a very famous, old film, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

New bakery and other reasons to be thankful

Welcome to another grey-skied Thursday in Praha.  

('Thanksgiving Day' for some, just another working day for me.) The reason for the lack of posts lately is down to working like crazy to fit in a drama workshop for three days, that cost quite a bit, as well as lost me a day and a half's wages.  So I've been working like a wheel-runnning hamster with an evening cage-cleaning job to just about recoup the expenses.  It's ok.  I've made back the money (just) but I haven't got the extra, better paid work from doing it that I'd hoped to get, so saving up for the inevitable down-turn of work in the lead-up to Christmas, taking time off for a visitor as well as being able to buy Christmas presents is still in question.  (As such, I haven't got a full day off today either, and I'm not just talking about having to do preparation work for tomorrow's epic day of back-to-back meet-ees from 12-19:30 with an extra meeting in the morning from 8-9.30.) 

I'm seriously considering putting a pot on my meeting table with the words 'Christmas Bonus' on it, in hope of some kind donations.  I fear this would just get laughed at though, because Czechs don't believe in giving tips.  At least, not to people like me.  While feeling sorry for myself about all of this, I did at least treat myself to a book via amazonmarket place.  (Thanks to a certain donation from a loyal reader, which I've been careful not to spend all in one go!  You know who you are!  Thank you!)  I was pleased to discover the seller is actually Oxfam books.  So I've contributed to a charity this week.  Isn't that good?

Anyway, I wanted to get out today, while I had a bit of time, so I ventured out to the newly opened 'Paul's' bakery around the corner.  Yes, it has finally opened TODAY!  So, I went along to get myself a pain au chocolat and a croissant, to 'test out'  (for research purposes only, of course) their wares.  

A pain au chocolat is called a 'čokoládová rolka' here though, which just seems funny, somehow.  And I was lucky enough to get served by a reasonably friendly member of staff (quite a find among the usual grumpy types here in the Czech Republic) and I even got a discount on the croissant!  Along with a flyer with a 'free coffee if you spend more than 50Kč' offer on it.  So I'll probably be making friends with these people, as money and trying not to end up the size of a house dictates...

In the meantime, I purposely set aside a tiny bit of 'me' time today to flick through the Czech Marie Claire I got yesterday (buying a Czech version is a third of the price of an imported UK or US one) and I'm actually quite impressed with their fashion pages this time.  They've still got a few silly articles in there that I'm not all that bothered about reading, but I was quite entertained by a number of sparkly things I found photographed on their pages.

I'm not normally much of a gold person, but I quite like the idea of a gold sequinned top reflecting the sun or a lamé top or skirt for dazzling people on a dreary winter evening:

I would also settle for a nice but sparkly jumper:

And if I wanted some new boots and money were no object, why not go the whole ostentatious hog and get these (swoon):

So there's a little bit of Thanksgiving dreaming for you.  (If I'm not going to get some turkey out of today, then surely a bit of ridiculous wistful longing for stuff I can't afford is perfectly allowed, right?)  I am grateful that I at least have a computer with which to continue writing these silly musings and a printer/photocopier/scanner which happily does its job when prompted.  And donations from kind readers who keep me going with my books and coffee fund!  Thank you! 

To nesnaším! [I can't stand it!]

Traffic

Cars

Beeping

Blocked ear

Drilling

Headache

Insistent

Drilling

High-pitched

Drilling

Working

Or trying to work

Banging

Next door

Headache

Pipes whacked

Floors thud

Wall pounds

Head pounds

And in the distance

When there's silence

There's more

Drilling

Unwell

I am most certainly ill.  I tried to pretend I wasn't this morning, on the basis that if I dared say the words, "I'm feeling really unwell right now", it would surely seal my fate.  But I give in.  I admit it.  I had pain and emotional fluctuation last week, guilt from the lengths I went to to try to treat myself to get through ex-partner's birthday, and now I guess I'm paying for it all.  Or am I just cursed because I bit off the head of a vampire?  

(This one's intact, but the others didn't survive quite so long...)

Either way, trying to get through a splitting headache, aches all over, sinus pain and a sore throat is currently not easy.  And it's even less so when there are builders banging away at the walls next door and in the flat downstairs.  Please, tell me, what exactly is it that I am being punished for?  Whatever it is, I repent, I repent, I repent!  (Thrice declared - that must work, surely?)

November tears and autumn colours

"I think pessimism is completely out of date.  I think that's a romantic indulgence. I don't think anybody can afford to be pessimistic anymore.  I mean, there's so much that can go wrong, optimism is the only thing possible[...] I've always thought that an optimist was a person who knew exactly how sad a place the world could be and a pessimist is a man who finds out anew every morning. That's the real difference.  I'm obviously optimistic because you simply have to be.  It's an obligation to be optimistic."  Peter Ustinov

I'm sitting at my desk, in a black dress and black cardigan and I'm on a second glass of champagne and my fourth chocolate, surrounded by three fashion magazines.  This scene pretty much sums up my state of mind, if you are discerning enough to read between the lines.  (Yes, I'm hormonal too.  Why must it be that obvious?)

I ruined a friend's birthday this morning by bursting into tears almost the minute she walked through the door.  It was ex-partner's birthday yesterday (a very significant one) and I somehow failed to mention this in my explanation of why I was in floods of tears.  It's all a mess of various different feelings and situations anyway.  (As it always is.)  It got worse because of not being able to buy my friend a better birthday present.  I really wanted to make an effort for her, because I would want the same if it were me, but she seemed genuinely happy with what I'd already got her and didn't mind that I'd run out of time to wrap it up.

[Czechs appear to have low expectations and even lower hope of any surprises that prove their low expectations to be a little pessimistic.  This is one of the things currently bothering me.  Most of all because when I purposely try to exceed their expectations, just to surprise and delight them, my efforts are met with a look of bewilderment or, worse still, disdain that this is wholly unnecessary and over the top.  Since when has being extraordinary been such a bore? And, for heaven's sake, WHY?]

I suppose my desperate mood all stemmed from the difficult weekend I'd had of feeling snuffly and panicking about losing money for being ill (thankfully, my cold hasn't so far gone beyond headaches, the occasional sniffle and a sore throat) but my Tuesday was a 'task-and-a-half' and nearly wiped me out.  Not least because I had to get through so many meetings, so many questions, so little appreciation and all of it on ex-partner's birthday.  Needless to say, I couldn't face calling him.  I just couldn't.  I knew I'd only burst into tears.

I should have had a lovely weekend.  A list of delightful things were in place:

1) Thanks to IKEA's genius in economical flat-packing, the huge bed and even the sofa (yes!) made it through the door. (And thankfully, we made it through the night of assembling both bed and sofa, still a couple.  Which is some sort of miracle, surely?)

2) There was indeed some sunshine over the weekend, despite a few gloomy, or misty hours

3) The autumnal colours of the trees were stunning

4) The IKEA "Hemnes" bed was even more stunning.  It's HUGE!

5) The flat-screen TV that got delivered on Saturday was pretty damned sizeable too

But there were thoughts in my head that gnawed away at me.  And there were things in the architect's mind that were gnawing away at him too.  He needs to feel proud of having achieved something so urgently, that even the tiniest detail of whether the furniture ordered fitted the size of the room absolutely proportionally, or if the colours worked together, or if the flat-screen TV was at the right height from the floor were huge setbacks if deemed 'not quite right'.  I tried to tell him what a great achievement it was to have this flat in the first place, to have put up with a job that doesn't appreciate him enough and treats him like dirt at times, in order to be able to afford this stuff, but he was hell-bent on focussing on all the possible ways of looking at things negatively and of seeing himself as a loser.  Somehow nothing I said or did was enough to override that for him.

And he sensed that my thoughts were elsewhere too.  The funny thing is, they wouldn't have been, if he could have trusted, believed and appreciated my words of encouragement.  If he hadn't teased me when we went for a walk that I'm so spoilt for mentioning there not being any hot water by the afternoon because the boiler, which only heats up water overnight to save on energy costs, had run out of it, or hadn't teased me about how long a walk it would be if I carried on walking so slowly as it was getting dark, and instead had at least equalled the teasing with a proportionate amount of affection or words of support, I might have been more focussed on him and not on my sense of loss.

But there's something funny about how your perception changes when you don't have someone backing you up and supporting you as much as you support them.  When you've lost someone who used to, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, think the world of you and appreciated your efforts both in your work and within the relationship, that sense of loss is reflected in your surroundings.  In those days, I used to go for walks in the woods with this someone and feel 100% safe and cared for.  I would look at the beautiful colours of autumn leaves and see the trees as friendly beings, just flaring up a last bit of colour before settling down for their winter nap.  Now, in the light of losing ex-partner to someone who fits his life better than he could ever have imagined (and I stupidly believed that no-one, but no-one finds this, but I realise now that good fortune breeds good fortune ad infinitum just as the reverse, sadly, also appears to be the rule of thumb), all I see is the pain of the loss of the trees' leaves and the sadness that they emit in a 'last shout' of colour before they are robbed of their strength and have to 'shut down' for winter. 

I did try to tell myself, that this is my perception, my choice, so I can change it.  But it is remarkably hard.  It's sort of like asking myself to retain the kindly notion of a rickety old bus, in the way that it is portrayed in Mr. Men books, when regularly having to get on the real thing, all damp, leaky and full of miserable commuters at 8am, on your way to school.  It somehow isn't possible.

And I don't feel safe and cared for.  I feel like the isolated foreigner I am.  (Though isolation is not a concept limited to my time abroad, by any means.)  And that foreign-ness was never more acute than today.  I never thought, in a million years, that I could go somewhere and become the optimist of the crowd.  In London I was the pessimist.  In New York, I was the downright suicidal [not to mention far too socialist] pessimist.  In Prague I am the optimist who is living in cloud-cuckoo land.

Tired as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

You know that level of tiredness where you just end up on the verge of tears for no good reason?  That's my day in a nutshell today.  I got to that point by about 4pm when the cloudy, drizzly, miserable weather, coupled with the already fading afternoon light just got to me too much.  And I had my most frustratingly difficult, but well-meaning (those are worse than the arrogant ones) meet-ee in half an hour.  In the end, maybe my surrender to my total and utter exhaustion took over and granted me a sense of humour to cope with it.  Somehow I managed to smile more and be kind enough to get through the whole thing.  Even when she admitted she'd forgotten to draw out my fee from the cash machine and would have to go and get it and bring it during the next meeting.

For ten minutes of that following meeting, I wondered if she would ever come back.  Had she perhaps realised how much I had started to despair at the meaningless, lack of progress of our meetings and had decided to do me out of my final payment before never returning again?

Actually, no.  She did come back, with the right amount.  And I made it through my last meeting of the day, discussing the advantages of space travel as an entrepreneurial venture, where Concorde had failed.  Very different things, I know, but all part of the world of aviation and technology.  We even both agreed that if we had a spare £127,000 we would probably want to try Richard Branson's spaceflight experience for ourselves.

Seeing as I also had an informal kind of Czech lesson today (with someone who has been a friend but has been away for such a long time now, I'm not sure what we are) I am a little dazed, ashamed at my abysmal level of Czech for someone who's been here a year, as well as shattered now.  I even talked about the little discrepancies in my life that are becoming less and less viable to ignore, and still I stayed in control.  I am utterly amazed that I didn't actually burst into tears in front of someone, especially her, but maybe that's what happens when you're on the last of the emergency reserves of energy - your body decides what extra energy it can afford to lose and overrides the usual capacity to cry and says, "nope, that's of no use to you now".

It's just as well, as tomorrow I will be cut off from society (i.e. I'm off to "the mountains" with no internet access) and thrust into a world of assembling flat-pack furniture into things that actually resemble furniture (hopefully) in order to help the architect settle into his new holiday retreat flat.  I only hope the sofa fits around the hallway and through the living room door, as I've had a sinking feeling since the weekend when we looked at possible sofas, that that item of furniture could be a calamity just waiting to happen.

'Clueless-ness', coffee and communism

I realised today that maybe you don't really get to know a new place that you inhabit until one of your friends from your old territory comes to visit.  I met up with some friends at lunchtime, who are in Prague for just a couple of days and the first thing that they encountered was a general 'clueless-ness' from Czech cafes about skimmed or semi-skimmed milk.  I suppose it hadn't occurred to me to ask about it before because I so rarely go for a coffee that when I do, it's like a special 'treat' so I go the whole hog and get a coffee with cream, as if I were on holiday.

I must admit, I've never seen skimmed milk even in the supermarkets, but semi-skimmed is readily available, where whole milk is less so in my little Tesco.  Mind you, lots of foreigners shop in that one, so they have to cater to their tastes a little bit.  But it's funny how these little things suddenly say so much about the culture.  Where in Prague can you buy coffee and retain the choice of skimmed, semi-skimmed or whole milk?  The American coffee chains, of course.  

Ah, America, land of the fee.  If you can pay for it, you can have anything.  The immense freedom of such vast choice seems so enticing.  But the price tag will stand in your way some of the time, and it's that kind of poverty, either of the lowest classes or of a Communist background, that restricts you to the point of altering your own identity.  I perhaps feel more at ease with Czech culture because I'm not from a comfortable, middle class background, so I'm used to things like people 'tutting' if you seem to be developing delusions of grandeur.  Such as expecting to have a choice of three different types of milk as well as the choice of coffee or tea.  Hell, these days, the choice of flavours of coffee and varieties of tea are necessary options to provide people, but something my Nan would have a field day complaining about having missed out on.

Back in my Nan's day, people were "ever so grateful" for a cup of horrid instant coffee with coffeemate instead of milk at a church coffee morning.  They would fall over themselves if you offered them a rich tea biscuit as well.  (Quite frankly, I think they might have achieved a higher number of converts to Christianity if they'd served Irish coffees and chocolate biscuits, but they didn't go in for bribery then.  At least, not with adults.  Sunday school was quite another matter.  Kids are still young enough to be 'conditioned'...)

Somehow, years of Communism has meant many Czechs have never quite shaken off the attitude of having to put up with very little choice and that you shouldn't make too much fuss about that.  But worse still, is the issue of anything that is ,zadarma', as most Czechs would inaccurately translate it, "for free".  Whatever you do, don't get Czechs together in a room and tell them something is free.  Even if it's something virtually worthless, almost every single one of them will take it, just because there's no charge.  (Note that the president, Václav Klaus demonstrated this instinct perfectly, when he decided to take a PEN that had been provided at a conference.  It's just a pen, for god's sake!)

Nonetheless, despite the lack of choice with milk (and a whole host of other things here that you'll only notice once you've lived here a while) my friends were still wooed by the architecture.  As everyone is.  That row of buildings, known as 'Prague Castle' were the only things keeping me going on very early, very cold mornings when I first got here and had to travel by tram across the river to my meetings at a particular institution.  I would look at those buildings and inwardly tell myself, that that's what being in Prague is all about.  I may have been travelling around like the waged poor who clean government buildings for a living, but there was that beautiful array, just across the river on the hill, staring back at me.  And it thankfully never went away.  It was my equivalent of the Chrysler building for New Yorkers.  (Prague could not be more different of course.  But that would require a whole other blog post to cover.)

Suffice it to say, my friends were pleased to have had a chance to see me and see the cafe I recommended, and they left saying they'd definitely want to come back another time.  They liked the fact that so many well-known places are within walking distance and that there are so many interesting buildings.  But one winning thing that grips the hearts of many a traveller from more expensive worlds, won out:  the price of beer.  Alas, I'm not much of a beer drinker, so it means nothing to me, but, hey, each to their own.  As far as I'm concerned, I would be very happy living in a country where good quality red wine were easily affordable.  But alas, Paris was too expensive to find a flat in, so I had to settle for the Paris of Central Europe instead.  Heigh-ho.

The 'donate' button and other emotionally blackmailing things

It's a miserable day here in Praha.

And that's not just how filthy my windows are.  (Though they are rather dirty, aren't they?)

I'm wondering why she's so desperate to live up to London's reputation.  Somehow, in the midst of all this horrid weather and after a tough evening's meeting with a guy who seemed to think it funny to suggest bigamy was a good and, get this, "natural" idea, I am reaching breaking point.  ,,Tak dost!"  I have had enough of getting nowhere, being treated like a low-skilled manual worker and being paid the equivalent of a trained monkey, I am 'making some changes around here...'  Which all sounds, quite frankly, rather frightening.  So get a mug of Lapsang Souchong tea and a biscuit and hear me out...

I've put a 'donate' button on my page (and am currently wrangling with the paypal people to sort out linking my bank account to it properly because it's being difficult, but hopefully that can be resolved one way or another) because I just thought I should let it sit there and see what the faeries bring.  On the other hand, if the forces of nature and the universe in all its wisdom (or whatever) have treated you favourably lately and you find yourself in a period of financial abundance, people are free to offer a little donation-ek (if we're going to Czech-ify it) to help me find time to go to a cafe and write, or even buy a magazine or a book to read and help me amble along with this attempt at creative writing (or humourless drivel, whichever way you see it) for many more weeks to come.

If it's any incentive at all, I'll make a note of any donate-ees and I promise to email them an original and previously unpublished piece of writing of mine as well as a scanned copy of an original piece of my loosely-termed 'artwork' as a thank you to whomsoever sendeth the donation-ek.  The amount is entirely up to you to decide on.  

If you want an 'adopt a goat in Somalia' - type low-down, here's a quick guide: 

£1.40 buys Ms Platform Edge a coffee in the bookshop cafe

£1.60 covers the extravagance of a hot chocolate instead

£10 (yes, sadly, it's that expensive here) will buy her an imported UK or American magazine or novel.  

And if we're really pushing the boat out: 

£17.60 enables Ms Platform Edge to cancel a peak-time meet-ee so she can have almost two hours (as the meeting would be an hour and a half, the preparation about 20-30 mins) of precious writing time, instead of having to present and prepare things.

(Oh and, the delightful paypal people, in their infinitely superior business acumen to me, charge me 20p plus 3.4% on all transactions.)

I trust this may be the beginning of things moving onwards and upwards for all of us in these dark and chilly days.   But if not, I'll just go and make another cup of Lapsang Souchong tea and whine quietly to myself about how little I earn while eating too many pepparkakor biscuits.  It's ok.  No, really.

The bitterest cow in Christendom

What do you do when you have meet-ees who keep cancelling at the last minute, knowing they'll have to pay a cancellation fee, but who don't care, when every bit of work you do feels like it's draining you of the energy you wanted to have left for something creative, and when your day starts at 7am and finishes at 8pm with a meet-ee who thinks it's amusing to discuss bigamy as though it's a positive and 'natural' thing?  God save me, it's days like this when I fear I am a danger to society.  I could freely mouth-off like a trucker at any minute to one of these people, or resort to sticking needles in voodoo dolls (if I had any) just to get the stress and fury out of my system.

And only yesterday morning, I was writing a short children's story in French.  Where did that calm, hopeful person disappear to today?  And why can't I be her more often?  What is happening to me?  I'm wound up like a tight internet cable that refuses to lie straight anymore.  (That would be my internet cable.  No fancy stuff like wi-fi here.  Not unless I want to pay astronomical charges to have my own landline all to myself.  Incidentally, the Czechs pronounce 'wi-fi' as 'wiffy', which always makes me giggle.)

Somebody please save me or sedate me because the chill of winter has already set in and I'm convinced it's bitten in to my hard exterior and somehow made it crust over in even harder, wound-covering fashion, with a view to making me the bitterest cow in Christendom.  Or at least Prague.

A run-in with the police

A cancelled meeting this morning has fortuitously given me the opportunity to write this - finally - after a busy and "fun-filled" weekend.  (This morning was the 5.30am wake-up call, which is usually preceded by an inability to sleep for about three hours, then sleep marred by dreams about not waking up in time to get to my meeting, followed by waking up one or two more times, just to see if it's time to get up yet.)  So, back to the weekend.

I had the fun of an impromptu driving lesson, when the architect took me to an airfield with a disused bit of track I could drive up and down on.  Apart from a few early blunders, I made progress with changing gears and braking more gently as well as learning that it's not necessary to change back down to first gear when you slow down considerably, as it's normally quite happy to carry on in 2nd gear, as long as you're not going up a hill or something.  My irrational fear of stalling prevented me from learning this quickly, so it took three goes in a row for me to feel more confident about it.

The same went for feeling confident about being in neutral, so I could safely come off the clutch without stalling.  I never quite trusted myself on that one.  Hence it was marvellous timing when along came a police car and drove up behind me with its lights flashing.  Hmm.  Great.  So now what?  I happily stopped the car, but the being sure of being in neutral so that I could come off the clutch and then being sure of the car not rolling if I also switched the engine off without putting on the handbrake, just didn't come so easily.

So as the architect jumped out to talk to the police, I sat there like a lost lamb, wondering if it was ok to switch the engine off, wondering if I should roll the window down, even though they were already talking to him, then wondering which goddamned button it was to wind the window down with anyway.  I opted for: engine off, but leave the window buttons alone, for fear of embarrassing 'back-windows-winding-down-instead-of-front-ones' scenario. 

And how on earth would my Czech have fared in trying to talk to the authorities anyway?  What if I accidentally used the 'Ty' form with them?  Would they imprison me for impolite use of their language?  I don't even know the Czech for, "yes, officer."  In the end, they didn't bother to ask to see my licence, which I did have with me, and which you now would not believe I actually acquired by passing a driving test in the UK about 12-15 years ago.  Apparently, we weren't supposed to be using this area for driving around in.  But they did concede that my learning here was a better idea than on a proper road.

The architect came back and told me that they weren't particularly annoyed that he'd been teaching me to drive in this area, but rather, they had instructed him, "just teach your girlfriend that it's polite to wind the window down when the police stop you."  Well, of course I will next time.  Now that I know which button it is.

Little snippets from a Thursday

07.30 Lie-in.  Seeing the sun emerging through the blinds without my already being up and out of bed.

09.45  Drying my hair.  Noticing grey hairs, one of which was a new, strong but very short one, sticking up out of sheer defiance and static electricity.  Too short to curl around my finger and yank out easily.  Took 5 minutes to finally harness and pull the damned thing out.  (Had pulled out about 10 other perfectly fine brown hairs by then.)

10.00  Seeing the steam coming out of my cafetière after I'd just poured in the hot water.  The frothed up milk having stayed frothed up.  Result: delicious mug of coffee.

14.30  Learning the expression, ,,dát pryč'' (lit. put away) meaning, 'get rid of'.

15.00 Going to the post office (yet again) but actually having a nice time, because my Czech teacher/friend with the most amazing patience with my level of Czech, came along with me.  We chatted about my maintenance guy experience and how I stupidly didn't use the polite, 'you' form a couple of times.  She laughed and said it wasn't that bad.  Then I remembered that at one point when he was fixing the cooker with the tiniest little screw imaginable, that seemed determined not to fit or indeed stay put, he had exclaimed, ,,do prdele!" right in front of me.  This is the equivalent here of saying, "f**k!", but said a tiny bit more often.  To which my Czech teacher said, " Aha, so he's not exactly a paragon of politeness himself, is he?"

Autumnal chills

I have realised, now that things in my flat actually work the way they are supposed to, that there is one remaining thing in my flat that does not work:  Me.  I used to be adept at getting work done even when the weather was bloody awful and I may have struggled but I still managed things.  The last few days of this miserable, cold and drizzly weather have sent me into a kind of semi-sleep.  I am tired and achy and my eyes are sore all the time.  It doesn't help that I have tried to retain some of my early morning meet-ees this week, while also packing in some boring work that had to be done.  So it's not entirely 'my' time and my time alone, as it was meant to have been.

In a desperate attempt to stay awake this afternoon, I took myself off to the bookshop cafe, in hope of writing something interesting fuelled by coffee and a bit of inspiration, but there was some kind of book launch on and it was incredibly busy and distracting as a result.  I did have a chance to wander around longingly, looking for a novel that might catch my eye, though in some ways I'm glad nothing did, because I do not have the budget for it.  I wish I could have a reading allowance from a rich aristocrat who would pay for my literary whims and would think it a noble thing to do, supporting a working class girl with middle class tastes to read more.  Wouldn't that be simply fantastic?!

Ah the idle dreams of the lone foreigner, who has just passed the one year mark of living abroad...I must be losing my mind.  (Or is it just waaayyyy too late for that?)  Yes, it has been over a year, and this time the transition from summer to autumn has hit harder (maybe because last year I was coming from a UK summer, which means of course, no sun or warmth at all to differentiate it from autumn or spring).  The distinct chill in the air today was a bit of a shock.  I woke up and had to force myself to get up quickly, and as I got out of bed to go and make some tea, I shivered, even though I had a long sleeved top on.  I had thought the pyjamas-like get-up would be enough, but no.  Woe betide the person who underestimates the chill of the 6 am October morning air.

Having said that, I am nonetheless basking in the glow of being liked, indeed loved, by the architect, since we hadn't seen each other for about two weeks and he had missed me.  He seemed full of affection all of a sudden, where normally the TV holds about equal, if not greater interest.  I would almost conclude that I should make myself unavailable more often.  But that would seem to be defeating the object, surely...

The Annual Czech 'Maintenance Vocab' Lesson

So here we are, another year, another maintenance guy visit.  Another opportunity for me to put my foot in it and accidentally use the 'Ty' form of the verb instead of the polite 'you', 'Vy' form with a complete stranger.  Way to go, me!  Nice one.  Without enough practise of talking to people I don't know who are older than me and require a certain polite demeanour as a result, it's bound to slip in there once, no matter how hard I try!  Damn.  And I was doing so well on the other stuff.

Lesson one:  Kitchen vocab: 

Tap (or 'faucet' to my non-existent American readers) = kohout*  

Sink = dřez

Lightbulb = žárovka

Cooker = sporák

Screw = šroubek

Greasy = mastný

Firmly = pevně 

Torch (or again, 'flashlight' in American English)= baterka

Glue = lepidlo

(*This unfortunately also means 'cockerel'.  How odd.  But in-keeping with the kind of language these sorts of things sound like, according to an old 'Bit of Fry and Laurie' sketch)

All of these words formed part and parcel of the delightful conversation that I had with the lovely maintenance guy.  Who of course, had to go out to his van in between to get a part he didn't have on him, but I was quite impressed he didn't do the 'worried intake of air through his teeth', nor go on to tell me about not having the part, having to order the part, how long it would take and how much it would cost me.  I'm amazed.  I thought that tactic was universal.

So all, in all, a good Czech lesson was had for free and now my flat has things that work in it.  Which is both a revelation and a delight.

The Inside Outsider

It occurred to me as I walked back home from Václavské námĕstí last night that I am now an expert at spotting foreigners in Prague.  I am an 'inside outsider' now.  Not inside enough to belong here, but not an outsider enough to be clueless about what living here entails.  I can now usually tell which couples are here on a city break weekend.  They are the ones determined to dress up and find a nice restaurant to go to in the centre or the Old Town Square.  I saw one such couple last night, the woman dressed in a bright red layered skirt, optimistically looking all set for a night of either a romantic meal or for flamenco dancing, it could have been either I suppose.  

I imagine they'll be disappointed.  Prague has an uncanny ability to disappoint anyone who comes here with a romanticised view of the city due to its stunning architecture.  It's not lived up to by its inhabitants.  They know they've got some amazing buildings to show off, but there seems to be no corresponding desire to enhance that by providing excellent customer service and fine red wines to at least attempt to fulfil a romantic fantasy.  It's only other foreigners who cash in on that gap in the market and provide better service and import better food and drink to compensate who will offer an opportunity to live a fantasy for a weekend.

If you want the real Prague experience, you have to accept not having much choice, being dealt with matter-of-factly, not appreciatively, and settling for a down-to-earthness in place of a succession of attempts to please.  The only way to make Prague work in that romantic way is to go for walks by the river or pay for a table at a really overpriced restaurant with an enviable view and try to ignore the waiting staff's lack of smile or kind tone of voice.  

Prague is like a perpetual working class family who've stopped hoping for things to improve and have settled for a cup of tea and fish 'n' chips as fine dining.  The only way the middle class or the very wealthy manage here is by being able to leave on a regular basis and do their shopping and dining largely elsewhere.  You can have a nice life that way.  Lower rents, lower prices for basic meals, but an opportunity to get to another country quite easily as long as you have a car.  But if you're poor, you don't earn foreign money, then you're stuck because airfare and good quality food and wine are at international prices (or not available here so you have to travel to get them) and you cannot earn enough to reach international prices for things on a Czech salary.  The only answer is to earn money abroad at the same time.  Otherwise you are doomed.

And so it followed that I was thrilled by something small yesterday, that no-one in London would get excited about.  But there in the small branch of Tesco, on the shelf with the cabbages and leeks, was a clear plastic box of fresh basil.  Not once, in all the time I've been here, have I ever seen any fresh herbs in the small Tesco.  I'm always having to travel right across town to go to a big enough supermarket to get exotic things like basil and then there it was on my doorstep yesterday.  I was shocked and amazed. 

It meant I could add it to my comfort food meal of pasta and tomato, mushroom, carrot and bean topping, which I grated some cheese on and finished off with some basil leaves on top for my best efforts at good presentation, as well as yummy food:

(Yes, I know it's rather a big portion.  I was tired and cold and miserable.)

Me and camera three

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."  Steve Jobs

It's so sad that I only got to read this today because Steve Jobs died.  Why hadn't I read this quotation before?  I am reassured by the fact that someone so successful thought the same as me about work.  I can't come anywhere near his level of success, but maybe I can at least try to match his dedication.

I'm certainly putting in the hours.  Today was supposed to be mostly a day off, but it's not possible when I've got such a full-on day to prepare for tomorrow.  I spent all afternoon, and I mean all afternoon just doing the necessary admin and prep work!  To nesnáším!

At least I managed to post a couple of old songs and videos to the ReverbNation website and had a little reminder of the day I spent in front of old BBC cameras that moved forward and back around me like dancing daleks (with red 'recording' lights instead of plungers).  I remember camera three was the 'close up' camera.  It danced towards me from time to time and then its light came on...  What a strange relationship.  'Me and camera three.'  It even rhymes.

Postal failures and other dramas

"Little things break, circuitry burns, time flies while my little world turns, every day comes, every day goes, a hundred years and nobody shows..."   Happy Rhodes '100 Years'

Another night of strange dreams linked back to places from my childhood and very little sleep left me feeling really tired this morning.  Then I discovered that the meet-ee I was expecting hadn't confirmed and thus wasn't coming, so I needn't have got up quite so early.  I was also stupidly hoping beyond hope for something to arrive in the post from the following list:

1) An emergency tea (and possibly also coffee) parcel.  (Lapsang Souchong tea, I need you now!)

2) A surprise parcel, with surprise things in it, one of two in fact, sent from family

3) A month overdue edition of a monthly magazine

None of which appeared.

The Czech postal system's apparent competition with the UK to win the top prize for Europe's worst postal service is now within reach... 

In other 'news', if complaining at the Czech postal system and then moving on to 'emails I have received' could be deemed 'news', a former drama teacher sent an email to say that she'd left London and moved to LA.  From all the things (very few, actually) I knew about her and from reading her new blog, which can be found HERE , I read between the lines and put two and two together and sensed that she may well have gone through something not entirely dissimilar to what I went through over a year ago.  I could be wrong, and like many moments in acting classes when I was convinced that something I'd performed had come over as wholly inauthentic, but others hadn't 'registered' that at all, I could merely be putting my own biased and entirely unfounded spin on it that isn't true and isn't perceived by others.  Nonetheless, the pain and loss that I read between those lines (real or imagined) had a profound effect on me, especially as, if my hunch is right, she had put a positive and optimistic slant on it that I would never be able to achieve nearly as successfully, nor that perhaps, I would I want to.

It's also strange, to read about someone being able to be spontaneous (something she's an expert at, and I'm only good at on 'good days') about travelling.  I wish I could feel that the world is open to me, that I could travel whenever I needed to.  (Or that I would ever have the option of moving abroad again.)  I suppose it helps if you have friends or family in far-flung places who have somewhere to live so that you could stay there too, if funds do not cover accommodation as well as travel.  (Which is ALWAYS the case for me, and I'm sick to death of that being the problem all the bloody time...) Even so, I still marvel at her bravery, her sheer 'force of nature'-ness.  I just hope she's ok and that she has far more support than I do to get through whatever difficulties she may be facing.

I sat and looked up at the clear blue sky in Prague this morning and even though I was crying, from sheer exhaustion and feeling trapped, I thanked Prague for getting one up on London and being consistently sunny for so many days in a row.  And that made me think, hmm, I can see why Gaby would want to move to LA after years of being in London!  There's only so much rain a girl with a sunny disposition can take, and there are limits even for those of us with no such predilection.

Last call for summery shoes and acts of selflessness

I ended up going out this evening, for what I suspect is the last evening until spring next year, that I'll be able to walk the streets of Prague in summery shoes like these:

It was a sad evening for other reasons too.  I'm sorry that this time it's someone else who's suffering huge bouts of self-doubt and feels that the future's bleak, as that's normally my state of mind, not his.  Have I infected him?  I hope not.  I also wish I could do more.  Preferably magic-wand like so that he never has to feel like this again, because it's been an ongoing battle for him.  

In some cases, I could do a fraction more, (e.g. send more texts/emails, give up more of my limited free time and energy) but I've already gone at least 60% above and beyond the support I get in return and I must pull back, lest I end up the one who's in tatters.  In my position, I think avoiding personal nuclear fall-out needs to be a priority, as I'm not far from that at any one time anyway.  (Though it was this thought above all - that I'm not doing the absolute maximum I could - that made me burst into tears out of sheer anguish at being utterly torn by differing areas of rationale.)  In light of the emotional support give/receive imbalance, I have to reign myself in and stay on the edge of the platform (for now) instead of throwing myself onto the tracks.

Sweet Little Something Else

"I get a bit understanding, I see my soul's gonna light my fire/will anybody believe seeing sunshining takes me higher/I do believe when ya legalise, I'll no more mind it/So would ya make up your mind even though I can't tell it is worth trying/Sweet little something in my mouth rolling, it's easy/ sweet little something me swallowing, it's easy..."   

Support Lesbiens:  'Sweet Little Something'

I watched the film 'Jumper' today.  A sci-fi film with Samuel L. Jackson in it.  It was a bit rubbish, but it was fun to imagine for a while what joy would be mine if I were able to instantly transport myself to New York when I felt like it, or anywhere else for that matter.  

I missed New York today.  I wished I could be sitting in Central Park overhearing someone's amusing conversation (hard not to, as so many people talk loudly to each other or on mobile phones without a thought for the fact that everyone around can hear them) or else attending the screenwriter/playwright's group I went to a couple of times.  They used to put on rehearsed readings of their plays to a very professional standard to see if they'd be any good or not and got the group to critique them, almost bluntly honestly, so that they could re-write and edit accordingly.  I also miss the blue sky mornings, sitting and reading The New York Times in a cafe on the Lower East side and writing little diary entries.  Ah, if only, if only, if only...

So it was in keeping with my wishful thinking/surrealist's day that I listened quite a few times to the Drum 'n' bass remix of the Support Lesbiens' track, "Sweet Little Something".  I marvelled at their cunning plan of writing a song with totally nonsensical, non-native English lyrics that could be passed off as merely an expression of how 'off-their-heads' on drugs they would be if they were to take a 'sweet little something'.  Clever ploy boys.  I can be won over by drum 'n' bass when it's this good. 

Fashion, freaks and frivolity

"Crazy ideas are better than too normal ideas."  Karl Lagerfeld

I suppose it was inevitable, having watched so much SATC recently, that I would feel drawn to flicking through fashion magazines and adapting what I've been wearing to be at least a little bit more adventurous.  Having a full day off to myself has done wonders.  A day off, on my own, in my little flat.  I almost never thought I'd get to enjoy this kind of delight.  As such, I had time to both catch up on sleep and read, oh my god, read newspapers, magazines and online articles (see THIS  fashion page linked to the Chicago Tribune site.  Picture number 9 is of a girl with a mismatched set of colours and layers, someone after my own heart) - what a revelation!  I feel so much better for it.  I even had time to form a little idea of how to at least try to improve my circumstances, and even play the keyboard, so I feel like I'm getting back to my old self.

Last night I spoke to the architect about how I'd been discussing an article in the Czech version of Elle, on the last page, written by a well-known Czech actress, Ana Geislerová, and I said how funny it is that she gets to write a monthly column.  The architect personally thinks she's nine tenths a prostitute, which, given her recounting numerous lovers in her latest article is perhaps only an exaggeration, rather than an outright character defamation, but he rested his case that of course a well-known actress would get a column in a fashion magazine, because she will help tell women what to wear.  And this, he attested, is what fashion magazines are all about: getting women to feel inadequate and buy more stuff.

I can't say I disagree all that much, except I know that in my case, buying a fashion magazine, if it's any good, gets me to try to adapt what things I already have to wear them in more interesting ways or try a free make-up trick (rare, as actually, I  usually avoid the 'beauty' pages because the word itself puts me off) or keep me up to date on the latest film/music/literature releases.  I simply can't afford to go out and buy anything as a result of what I see in the magazine.  (Quite frankly, the purchase of the magazine in itself usually uses up the last of my disposable income and causes me to re-think another trip to Tesco to get more food, opting to scale down on bread and anything nice and try to live off apples and cereal for a bit longer instead.)

So in light of this, I wondered how guilty I should feel about my terrible fashion magazine addiction.  I don't buy magazines every month, but some months (such as September) I might buy two, so it's the equivalent of one a month I suppose.  I also bought more in August, because I wanted something to read while travelling and I wanted to enjoy a week 'on holiday' so I did holiday things.  Plus, I wanted to buy a couple of Czech magazines to get me to look up and learn some more vocab.  But is the architect right, and I'm merely being caught in a pre-organised industry trap, which seeks to do me out of all my remaining money and make me feel insecure enough to buy more stuff when I can?  Well, largely, no.  Because I simply don't have money for clothes anyway, and I can use some articles from the magazines I've bought as meet-ee fodder, so it's not entirely wasted money.  And when I do have enough time to really look through some interesting pages of fashion, I actually feel inspired to do other things too.

Like, for instance, today, I had already leafed through pages of shoes, and found some delightful piano-print ones in Paris Vogue, but that didn't influence what I wore.  I nonetheless felt inspired to dress more eccentrically and put on some purply pink things because I was in the mood for colour and something non-classic today.  A couple of weeks ago I got a surprise package from the Russian Countess with two pairs of earrings in it, so I've been wearing one pair on and off most of the time, but decided to try the super-big purply ones today. 

It worked.  I felt so much better.  And that in turn, lead me to play the keyboard and sing a few made up little bits of nonsense that also made me feel more alive.

A month or so ago, I watched this video from Harper's Bazaar (see it HERE) and felt comforted and reassured, because all the famous designers in it seemed like such freaks (with one or two exceptions) and I laughed at the strange little fantasy world they get to live in and how they are allowed to live like a crazy person and it's ok.  So my being an eccentrically dressed nobody in Prague is hardly the crime of the century, right?  It's good to know that there are indeed even weirder people than me out there.