Mismatch

I had to hide your toothbrush.  Like I had to hide my disappointment.  Because you didn't come to my rescue with any words.  Nor gestures.  No attempt to fill the silence.  Or destroy it.

There's linguistic confusion and no wish for 'podrobnosti', but the details of how I felt are separate to those of what happened.

Or am I just too much of an expert at keeping things apart?

You're tired, I know.  And my heart goes out to you.  I'm tired too.  But I could rally myself if you needed me to.

Midnight Caller

On perhaps the most unsettling day I've had in a long time, I resorted to watching an episode of 'Midnight Caller' to settle my nerves.  What a show that was.  I used to watch it on a tiny TV in my old room, seemingly lifetimes ago, as a little comfort in the midst of a world where I didn't belong.  The cliché of a soft voice, a sympathetic ponderer, scripted to say profound things, in reply to callers, such as: 

Caller:  "We gotta fight fire with fire!" 

Jack Killian:  "What happens when everything burns down, Joe?  Think about that",

was soothing to a girl who had no idea how life would pan out.  I had no piano or hope of ever playing one in those days.  No understanding of how people end up finding an area of life where they fit in.

Oddly enough, I feel like I still haven't really found that.  At least, I haven't settled into a sustainable, rewarding way of life.  So it was nice to wrap myself up in an old comfort blanket like this again.  It felt familiar, though very old.  I suppose it was the closest I got today to feeling 'at home'.

And, of course, the smooth, but sensitive guy that Jack Killian is, he always rounds off a situation at the end of the show, lamenting a lost friend or some kind of injustice that couldn't be overturned, in a slow and thoughtful manner.  He then signs off with the ultimate classic (or cliché, depending on your tolerance level) "Good night America.  Wherever you are."  

Those were in the days when you actually watched something on TV.  Once.  I didn't even have a video recorder of my own then.  And there was no You Tube.  So the radio show sign-off within the TV show episode was the end of my viewing.  I didn't switch to another channel.  It was late and there'd be nothing else worth watching anyway.  (I know, I know, this was hardly worth watching either...) So I had those words resonate in my ears while the theme tune played and I reached over to turn the TV off.

So in my day of ups and downs, of various email responses, (most with nothing hopeful to report, with one redeeming, glowing exception...) I suppose I must sign off in my own little melancholic and ponderous way.  A long and thankless day awaits me tomorrow, but I've learnt to pull back from letting it push me to the edge and just admit to myself I can't do everything.  There are some people who really do not deserve my diligence and focus, so for once, they shall not have it.  I will merely show up and 'do what I can'.

As for those of you who have taken the time to read this, please know how grateful I am that you are 'out there', and let me indulge in one closing, Midnight Caller-like signing off, 

'Good night ,,čtenáři", wherever you are.'

Entrapment and other facts of life

Being pushed to the edge yesterday and today has not helped on the writing-front.  You know when people say they felt 'sick with worry'?  That is exactly how I felt today.  I ended up having to reach for a hot water bottle, give myself a severe talking to about how I shouldn't let people get to me like this, and take to my bed for an hour's rest in the afternoon, in the hope that that would enable me to get through the rest of my evening's work.

The architect rang this evening.  I wasn't much fun to talk to, being that I am at the end of my tether.  Poor thing.  Why is it that the people we care about most are the ones who have to bear the brunt of the worst of our experiences?  I feel so sad that this is what he has to witness.  A girl falling apart under the pressure of work that feels like being stuck in an evil computer game, that straps me to its screen and keeps me there.

I'm just barely staying alive while trying to shoot down 'baddies', but the worst thing is that just when I think I can breathe and re-boot, another 50 lines of them come up and I realise I'm going to be stuck fighting for my life for yet another day and no, I cannot have a break.  When you've been going through a hundred goes of that process of getting to the last row of bad guys to kill, thinking, 'Oh maybe I can finally get some control and have my life back soon', only to see another 100 rows come up from no-where, it starts to eat away at you. You can see your life being stolen in great chunks by this struggle of mere survival.  And you just know, that this is how you will always be prevented from doing anything meaningful.  You'll never escape, because there will always be another 100 rows of bad guys to kill just as you think you need a break more than ever before.  And when you do get a break, it's only long enough to see the years of entrapment that lie ahead, spread out in front of you. There's no way out.

Please don't let me be right about this.  I don't want to always be right about the terrible, heart-wrenching, horrid things in life.  To the universe or someone out there, all I can say is: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prove me wholeheartedly wrong about this despairing, hopeless future that I see lying in wait for me.  Please.

A Saturday night in Prague

A few people milling about.  A few drunks.  A few English speakers I tried to avoid (whilst speaking embarrassingly unsophisticated Czech with my friend) most of whom were fitting the 'stupid drunkards' stereotype really rather well.  

It occurs to me that this scene on ,,Václavák" is not unlike your average Saturday night in a small, touristy town, such as Bath in South West England.  And I find that thought really rather depressing.  (Ach jo...)

The slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune

It is a terrible thing to see someone you care about suffer.  I saw a friend of mine today, who has been struggling in her relationship and it's been on and off anyway, but this time, she reported, "I think it's finally the last time.  That's it now."  I feel for her so much.  It's horrible feeling alone and unappreciated.  I know how she feels.  And I wish I could do something to help.  

She was one of the few who saw me in the worst possible state when I was in the final throes of the end of my relationship.  I was amazed that she was still interested in meeting up on another occasion after that.  I'd been such a wreck, but she had simply said, "it's normal", in response to my despair.  How I felt frightened me, but it was as 'water off a duck's back' for her.  She'd seen others go through the same.  And you can guarantee, if she had said to me then, "you'll have found someone else within 3 months", I would never have believed her for a second.  I wouldn't have dared even hope for a moment that it would be possible within a year, indeed a lifetime, let alone 3 months.

Why have I been so lucky?  And is my downfall just around the corner, too?  Maybe my certainty that I care so much about the architect is going to be the thing that hurts the most when he decides he's had enough, or he finds someone who fits his life better than I can.  The potential for more turmoil and anguish is always there, waiting just ahead of me.

I listened to an old song again today that I listened to a lot in the summer months when I had first found out about ex-partner's plans to leave me.  I wasn't having a particularly bad day or feeling especially low, but when I heard the line, "please be stronger than your past.  The future may still give you a chance" ['Cowboys and Angels' - George Michael], I still burst into tears.  I don't know if the future will really give me a chance, or merely confirm my greatest fears, but I do hope it will give my friend a chance.  And a damned good one at that.

Soldiers and Allies

Black nail varnish in the post:  New possibilities for rebellion.  Blue eyes staring back at me:  New hope.  Belligerence and outrage in the face of predictability and straightjacketers: New ally.

I'm so grateful for little moments of solidarity.  Fighting the justified and rightful fight against tedium, slavery (of sorts) and banality with a few fellow soldiers is so much better than doing so on my own.  A free-spirit from DC, a Faerie Godmother from Londinium and a forest boy from Praha (because even an architect can be born among the trees).  All of these saved me from misery today.  And so did my meet-ees who just wanted to talk and who were happy to hear things about my life and my thoughts, and even about my songs.  Bless them.

The architect is winning me over time and time again.  I'm so lucky to have found him.  So amazed that he became my companion after being a meet-ee.  What good fortune is mine that he is there, thinking of me and backing up my attempts at creativity and escape.  There's an expression in German, a line from a Herbert Grönemeyer song, that goes, "schön, daß es Dich gibt" (literally: 'It's lovely that there's you") and it fits what I want to say to him now, and have already said, but had to explain, because he doesn't speak German.  Alas.  But then, I suppose, neither do I.  At least, not enough.

The universe doesn't seem quite so skewed or unfair in this atmosphere of companionship.  Let's hope it lasts.

New Yorku, Miluji Tě

I got so desperate today, that I found myself not only listening to Limp Bizkit and making rash decisions, but I also ended up drawing a rough map of New York and told a couple of meet-ees about where things were.  Mostly the airports.  Which is kind of stupid.  But it made me feel closer to it somehow, as though it isn't unimaginable that I could go back there one day.  It's rather sad that I've been fantasising about the place so much lately.  I think it's just the spring weather that brings it on and makes me think of what a good time of year it is to go there.

I also miss the idea of that kind of creative holiday of wandering around museums and the park and buying coffees (or iced coffees in warm spring weather) and reading newspapers and magazines, and above all, indulging in some people-watching.  I would kill for that right now.

Instead, I shall have to face the demands of the strait-jacketers around me and keep my fantasies to myself.

But just for old time's sake, here are a few fond corners of New York I wouldn't have wanted to miss, not least for the daily diary-writing at the cafe, which culminated in a typical New Yorker, "Good luck with the writing" comment from a random fellow coffee-drinker:

Where else would you get blue sky in EVERY picture?  I even miss travelling on the  rather 'ghetto' JMZ train.  The view as it ambled across to Manhattan from Williamsburg was truly a delight in itself.  I just hope they haven't done a 'Northern Line' kind of re-vamp on it or something awful like that.  I don't think New York can take any more 'disney-fying', quite honestly.  It's just not her style.

Resistance, rewards and leg-warmers

"Is it enough to live in hope that one day we'll be free? Without this fear...I'm going out and carrying on as normal..."  'Discoteca' (Pet Shop Boys)

I used to listen to this quite a bit in the days that followed the shock of finding out about ex-partner's new love.  Actually, I can barely remember the point at which it stopped being that horrific shock, the kind that stops you from eating, and became a more established sense of horror and loss.  I remember I got to a point where I could eat, I could 'carry on as normal' but nothing looked the same.  And even more so, as a musician, no song ever sounded the same.  There was a new sting to anything that was about break-ups or trauma of some kind.  I suddenly understood what it was like to have a three minute song sum up my empty little life.

I appreciated the 'run away' kinds of songs all the more, those that inspired me to start again.  But it took a long time for me to be able to feel anything but trapped inside a bubble of ridicule and abandonment.  So I listened to things on headphones as I travelled about in London and reinforced my little cocoon.  Sometimes I catch myself doing the same thing even now, but I'm mostly trying to establish a territory of resistance, a place of defiance, lest this unrewarding, life-stealing work I do swallow me up entirely.

I have snatched a few moments for fun and frolics, but not enough to have my sense of strength in my own, creative work re-established.  My things are still scattered about and my thoughts are intermittently focussed on escape fantasies and determined task-avoidance, but with a sense of entrapment about the week ahead.  I'm getting more and more infuriated at being asked to do more for no extra reward (I bet I'm not alone in this...) but I have to find a way to zone out from that resentment, because I can feel it eating away at me.

I want to at least be able to take an afternoon off to go for a coffee and sit and read newspapers and write something.  But there is no suitable 'afternoon-off' awaiting me.  Not for the foreseeable future.

So, in the meantime, I spent a day with the architect, which resulted in acquiring a new pair of jeans, since my old ones disintegrated just as I was leaving London.  And now, not only can I wear the jeans, but also a top I've been wanting to wear for ages, which just doesn't go with anything else!  Hurrah to good fortune and a most helpful shop assistant, willing to suggest countless possibilities until, having tried on at least 12 different pairs, I honed in on the best fitting pair I could find.  

With a little inspiration from a stupid action film [starring Nicholas Cage doing an uncanny impression of my dear friend, Mr. Byron II]  and a flourish of my own with some leg-warmers bought in New York (which coincidentally help cover up the fact that the leg is too long and needed serious folding to not drag on the floor) I have cheered myself up thus:

If fashion is frivolity and an indication of my deteriorating mind, then sobeit.  Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

A sumptuous surprise

I had little hope in my mind that today would bring anything other than more work and a little respite in the evening and maybe, if I was really lucky, some fineliner pens I needed.  But, I was in for the surprise and delight of the year.

Someone had accused me of wearing 'such sad colours' all the time and it had upset me rather a lot.  Someone else had listened to my stories from ages ago about shopping disappointments and got me this:

Which, as you can imagine, had a profoundly converse effect.  Which is why I then pranced around in it for ages taking pictures:

  

Not only that, but it came in a box, delivered by my cheery post boy, that I then unwrapped and found opened up to that sumptuous feel of tissue paper with a beautiful note attached and stars and hearts as well.  And I pulled out this wonderful coat and couldn't believe my luck.  A trench coat, which I've been longing for, a purple one at that, and such wonderful quality fabric...I could go on, but I'm practically crying with joy over my keyboard and must stop now to dress up to go out in it.

Faerie Godmother Trainee, you my dear, are a most magnificent, wonderful, (and naughty) and incredible creature!

Umbrellas, fate and nationality

It occurs to me that I should find the fact that it rained today and that I'm feeling like I'm teetering on the brink of having a horrible cold really rather funny, in light of yesterday's post.  But I seem to have had a sense of humour bypass.  I've been feeling utterly miserable. I've even taken a picture of my umbrella (now that it's had a chance to dry off) in an attempt to cheer myself up that at least I do have a nice umbrella and it's good thing that it had the opportunity to serve its purpose today.

I suppose it's fair enough.  I was almost hinting that it was a shame the umbrella hadn't been used.  And it's probably a good thing that my local area gets a reminder that there is an 'angličanka' among them.  (Who else would be as eccentric?)  After all, we are a rare bunch in this architecturally stunning city.  

We had a conversation in my Czech lesson today about how unique it is in our class to have an English girl, i.e. me.  No other English people have set foot in this language school.  Indeed, I have to report that, somewhat predictably, I've been here six months and still not come across one other Brit.  Not one.  Americans, yes, but a Brit?  Absolutely not.  And the only other Brit my teacher knew of (a friend of a friend) had not set foot in a language school either.  Am I ashamed of my nationality and its apparent inability to seriously try to learn a foreign language of any description, let alone a rather difficult language such as Czech? Well, yes, actually.  

It must be in our genes.  Americans mostly came from other places and settled in America.  Brits just grew up and assumed no-where was worth learning a foreign language for.  So they stayed put.  (Mind you, I've met a few Americans here but not one has said they've made an effort to go to Czech classes.)

So the only English girl in Prague with her red, frilly, polka dot umbrella, stands out a mile.  In more ways than one.  But I suppose that's the way I like it. 

Rain and anonymity

The clouds came back today.  So did the rain, briefly.  It's so strange, because I had been thinking what an exceptionally long time it had been since it last rained and how unlike England that is, and then today it rained.  But it didn't last long.  It doesn't seem to rain here in the same way it does in London.  It's been winter and yet it's been months since my lovely red and white polka dot umbrella saw the light of day.  It's extraordinary to me.  I've been so lucky that I've had both heating and a lack of miserable, rainy weather here over the winter.  I can't quite take in how much easier that aspect has been, compared to what it would have felt like to go through winter in London.  Don't get me wrong, it's been crushingly cold, but it hasn't been quite so cloudy and grey.

Not that any of this stops me from longing, aching for a holiday.  The idea of spending even just a few days in a row, pottering about would be blissful.  Or to have time to go to a cafe for a chance to sit and think.  In my fantasy life, I would have gone to the bookshop cafe today, bought a few books on art and photography and spent the rest of the day listening to Maxime le Forestier and Yann Tiersen and  covering notebooks in lots of cut-out pictures from magazines and putting up new photos on the wall.

Maybe it's ok that I don't have my fantasy life just now.  Maybe I needed a reminder of just how easy I have had things in terms of the weather at least, so that I can 'count my blessings', as it were.  I've also still got my health and I haven't come down with another cold yet. (Though this is tempting fate, surely, and I'll no doubt wake up with a runny nose and a sore throat tomorrow...)

And on days like these, maybe the best thing to do is accept the gloom and listen to a few Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Vega songs.  Time to slip into a black silk nightie, get into bed and read a couple of fashion magazines and pore over the hopelessly glamorous darlings of high society and be glad I don't have the burden of an impeccably well-kempt image to maintain.  Ah, anonymity is bliss...

Yay! "Imaginary" Christmas!

You know in The Simpsons, the Flanders family end up having to resort to 'Imaginary Christmas' when everything goes wrong and they lose all their money? Well, I think I'm going to have to resort to that notion now.  How about "Imaginary Rewarding and Successful Life"?  It could start with a few things that actually happened, such as being complimented in Czech today for what I was wearing and for the fact that red suited me.  That was a lovely start to the day, along with the surreptitious compliment in my meet-ee's written work that mentioned my being 'clever' but also a bit of a slave-driver.

Unfortunately, it was cloudy this morning, so in my imaginary lovely life, it was actually sunny and warm and I saw the green parrot-like birds in Kensington Gardens on my much needed walk.  And I bought myself a sugary coffee (this is almost close to reality, as I was brought a small coffee I could add sugar to, so this is as near as dammit) and I played songs at the top of my voice that people on the street heard and applauded.  (I did play today, in an act of sheer rebellion over what I should have been doing and the window was open, but the street outside is in fact far too busy and noisy for anyone to ever hear me from there.)

And my imaginary day culminated in a wonderful evening playing the piano in a studio in Manhattan, making my fingers weary.  And my overall tiredness, is one of a satisfied, fulfilled variety.  (Oh would that this bit above all, were true.)  In fact, I actually really fancy a stroll in Central Park.  It should be starting to pick up in temperature soon.  Maybe in April.  What if I imagine I have a wonderful sponsor who loves my writing so much that they are willing to pay for me to spend a couple of weeks there, just wandering around, buying coffees and cupcakes and reading the New York Times and writing, playing piano in the studio and writing some more?  Will my wishes have any impact?  Will my fantasies shift any energy out there in the universe to bring about an extraordinary course of favourable events?  Or am I picking up on my longing for a trip to New York with a dose of your typical New Yorker unfounded optimism?

Clichés, wishes and motorbikes

Today has been a lesson in stating clearly what you need.  I'm not usually very good at this.  Mainly because I loathe the word 'needs' and cannot reconcile myself with relying on anyone.  However, I have had to resolve to ask for what I actually need, for once, instead of putting forward the polite, edited version and I'm awaiting the barrage of emails of complaint as a result tomorrow.  But if you don't ask, you don't get, right?  So far that has definitely proved to be true in about 80% of cases.

I've had enough of burning the candle at both ends to find I don't even have any matches left, let alone a candle, so we're reaching rock bottom here.  But Spring really might be on its way and I have a few wishes.  If I send them out into the ether, maybe one or two might get answered?

Here are my top 5:

1) I'd really like more than 5 or 6 hours' sleep every night.

2) Give me some time to do music again.  Please.

3) Let all those people who've been ill recently be ok again.

4) Let those who crave fine, Italian ice-cream (or Magnums of the classic or white chocolate variety, when your options are limited) get them in abundance.

5) Let me be able to run away with the architect very soon, preferably on his motorbike and with some kind of sunset involved, just for sheer fulfilment of a cliché.  (I actually got to rev up his bike today, and I really rather enjoyed it.)  

Perhaps some clichés are worth wishing for.

Thatcherism and other reasons not to be cheerful

Pretending my day wasn't another hellish exercise in preventing me from ever doing anything creative ever again is getting harder and harder.  

I know they've won.  I really do.  All you have to do is keep throwing more problems, more demands, more hassle, more stress than a person can take in a lifetime so the best they can hope for is to merely survive, condense the worst of it into ten years until it's too late for them to succeed anyway and just keep laughing while they carry on desperately trying to get their head back above water.  This is suffocation.  That's how I feel.  I am fighting a constant battle to stay alive until the next permitted breath.  And I never know how long they'll make me wait for the next one, so I don't know if I'm just going to die trying to hold on for it.

I now realise that what I've just described is not unlike water-boarding.  I.e torture.  You know, the kind they use on terrorists to get them to confess to their evil plots.  But if the evil plot is to make the vast majority of people work so sleep-deprivingly, health-damagingly hard in order to just about scrape enough money to pay their bills (not to mention health insurance) on their rather modest accommodation* that they never get to prove their worth in what they are actually uniquely best at, then it begs the question: who are the real terrorists?  And where is the Guantanamo equivalent for them?

I rest my case.  (And now, maybe I can also rest my head on a pillow and do that unfamiliar 'sleeping' thing, whatever that is.)

*On a completely unrelated note, I realise that I got talking about the similarity between council flats and ,paneláky' in my Czech lesson today.  And, for all the attitude I get from a certain place for my slowness in learning Czech compared to Slavic language speakers, (which is down to not getting paid enough to be able to have fewer meet-ees, so I've no time to do any homework anymore) it dawns on me that I had a conversation in Czech about politics today. (Yes, albeit a slow, laborious and helped-along one.) So put that in your metaphorical pipe and metaphorically smoke it!  I can now moan about the repercussions of Thatcherism in Czech as well as English.  (Well, someone had to.)

The metaphor remains the same

There was a distinct change in the air today.  The weather is hinting at what summer might bring, even before we've fully seen spring.  The scent of warmth greeted me as I walked in my flat.  That faint reminder of what the air is like when you don't need seven layers of clothing.  

I'm tracing my footsteps that brought me back from the brink.  How did I get as far as this?  The shift that occurred, and is still evolving between my old life and the one I now live, lies somewhere between the edge of the platform and the bookshop cafe back on Václavské Námĕstí.  I know I cannot take up residence in the bookshop cafe (hell, I haven't had the luxury of time to even go and have a coffee there) but the metaphor remains the same.  I was practically holding my head out over the tracks before, in the depths of winter that took hold so early in December and didn't stop till the beginning of February, but I seem to be on a tea-break now. 

Back in December I was listening incessantly to MC Solaar tracks, full of orchestral swells set against distorted guitar, followed by soaring but heart-wrenching BVs: "je veux partir d'ici, cette fois je te le dis, je ne veux plus de cette vie..emmenes-moi"  (roughly translated: "I want to leave, this time I'm telling you, I don't want anymore of this life, take me away")  And I remember trudging through slushy snow and being cold to the tip of my heart as much as my toes and barely being able to see somehow, it was all just too bleak.  I remember the fight against that grief, that searing cold front of emptiness and loss; the anguish, the sense of abandonment.  It was all there in the dark skies, the bitter cold, the barren surroundings and lifeless outlook.

And yet, in the days that followed the Bolero concert, there were moments of distraction, if not exactly hope.  And a few good conversations and even..laughter.  The day I walked back from my meet-ee's office, caught the metro and walked home, I listened to another track full of strings and guitars, but the line in it was "I just jumped out in the open, without knowing my parachute'll save me.  It's quiet and peaceful in this emotional nirvana blue."  And somehow I ended up at that Čajovna, a week or two later, hitting my principles against a brick wall because there was no escaping the fact that I knew I felt something and I also knew I couldn't go on without saying so.

But as we walked back, hand in hand through the late evening foggy streets of Prague I wondered what precise change had occurred? What did having someone's hand to hold really mean?  How was it that I had not had the conviction to hold his hand on the way there but on the way back, suddenly, I was walking with a fellow-traveller?  No longer an interested party, a new friend and flickering hope of an ally, but a companion.  A real and tangible one, walking with me.

As spring begins to grace us with her presence, or perhaps is merely hinting at her arrival in the fullness of time, I daren't hope for too much.  Perhaps, inspite of myself though, I shall savour the way it feels to be able to at least envisage the possibility of pleasure.  I shall trace the outline of the spectre of a future and delight in the comfort of being able to imagine if not the best, certainly the 'not-too-bad', whilst simultaneously preparing, as always and as every good English person should, for the worst.

Songs and other addictions

Before I was even properly awake today, I started singing this:

"I took my love, I took it down.  I climbed a mountain and I turned around.  And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills.  Till the landslide brought me down.  Oh mirror in the sky what is love?  Can the child within my heart rise above?  Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?  Can I handle the seasons of my life? Well I've been afraid of changing, cause I built my life around you.  But time makes you bolder, even children get older.  And I'm getting older too...If you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills, will the landslide bring it down?" [Fleetwood Mac]

Maybe it was the mountain reference, maybe the sense of being braver about things, seeing as I've had to adjust rather a lot lately, but this song got stuck in my mind and kept coming back to me all day.  I noticed I sang it louder and louder as I gradually woke up while standing at the sink in the bathroom.  (I think there's an air vent above the wash basin, through which you can hear everything, so my neighbours must truly love me today.)

I feel a gentle magnetic nudge pulling me back to my old life, partly to old friends and old music habits but mostly to have a little more freedom over my time. I'm tired of being dictated to.  I'm not good at it.  I need the space to think and plan things properly.  And I also need to feel less doomed.  Here, I'm totally written off.  Though only on paper.  This country is somewhat ageist.  Everyone assumes I must still be in my 20s, ("our survey says: X X") which is hilarious.  So when they find out my real age, they recoil in shock.  Why haven't I got a 'proper life' by now?  (Dull, dull, dull.  ,Nil points' on the originality-front there people!)

The deal here is, you're written off as a spinster if you're still single before you get into your late 20s and they'll start giving up seats to you on the tram when you hit 50.  Haven't they seen actors, who've learnt the skill of pushing yourself to keep going, despite your real age?  It's time people here did this.  Stop assessing yourself according to what other people think are the limitations of a number and find out what you are truly capable of.  At least acquire the evidence that you tried reeeaallly hard, but just couldn't do it.  Hey, I'm the expert at this.  I spend my life acquiring evidence that trying reeeallly hard isn't enough to be able to do certain, 'other-people-dependent' things.  

(This really should be written on my gravestone.  "She tried."  Probably next week.)  

Mind you, I can still do the splits, I'll have you know!  And I can lift my leg to head height.  At the weekend, when I did this, the architect insisted I was like a ballerina, which launched me into a tirade of information of why I most certainly am NOT a ballerina.  (Some of which should have been obvious, surely?) 

Oh, and if living and staying young is all about 'change', then it will stand in my longevity-seeking favour that I've started a new addiction.  Pribináček yoghurts.  They're so good, they were made before the end of the communist era.  (Resounding endorsement, eh?)  You can tell they're really yummy because the cat on the front sticks its tongue out in lip-smacking glee.  This is entirely the architect's fault.  "This was probably my very first real food", he tells me.  Real food, it is not.  But it is comforting and after the first pot, I thought I'd never acquire the taste, but the second really reeled me in, just like all the best drugs do:

(I'm currently most addicted to the 'kokosový' [coconut] and 'perník' [gingerbread] flavours, pictured.)  

It may be International Women's Day, but I shall still behave like a child.

Monday Musings

Going away for the weekend does seem to wreak havoc with my capacity to keep up with ,blogeček'.  Not only is it impossible to write over the weekend, but I can't even write on Friday, due to the necessity to work (and plan work) like the clappers from 8am till about 7pm in order to have a weekend free in the first place.  This is of course, ever more tragic, in light of the fact that I had a spare hour or so this morning to go and get some food to replenish my empty fridge with, but the local Tesco is so useless, I had to go again in the afternoon to the big one in Anděl.  Not only that, but then even the big one still didn't have about three main things I needed (for a healthy and varied diet) nor about three other things I can hang on for but would have liked to have got in one go.

Bloody shopping.  I hate it.  That's today's problem in a nutshell.  ,,V kostce", as they say here.  And it gets worse.  Last night, I dreamt about buying a new bag and then finding that it came with a brilliantly reduced, sale-price wallet.  I think my brain has finally lost it.  I mean, who the hell dreams about shopping?!!  And for a bag and a purse?  Heaven help me.  Seriously.  I know I still mourn the loss of my oh-so-delightful fake green leather wallet, that I could quickly pop under my arm whenever I needed to have my hands free, which cheered me up unfathomably, but that purse is long gone.  As is my capacity to buy anything nice.

Maybe that's what it is.  The knowledge that all this recent flat-out work leaves me unable to buy anything delightful and frivolous, or even nice-but-practical.  I had to dip into "birthday money" just to get a magazine and some blank CDs.  ,,Ach jo..."  (This is a common Czech expression meaning, "oh well", which is followed up with a sigh and a sort of 'resigned to despair' kind of look.)

This wasn't how my return to blogeček was supposed to turn out.  I was meant to be revealing the details of my weekend.  Not all of the details, such as my musings on what the hell being in love is anyway, and am I not merely mistaking it for a hormonal imbalance of some kind, but just the ones I have photographic evidence of.  Which is merely, walking up a big hill, known affectionately as a mountain here.  How high does a big hill have to be, before it qualifies as a mountain?  I just don't believe that it is possible I climbed up a mountain this Saturday.  It simply cannot be linguistically accurate in English, even if the Czechs say 'byli jsme na výlet, na horách" all the time.

Anyway, this was the view of other ,,hory" (mountains) from the one I walked up:

And this was the view of the receding sunlight over a hill at the bottom of Milešovka, on the walk back to the car:

And lo and behold, with this, my precious free time is nearly up and I must away...my apologies for such a confused and almost deliriously tired entry today.  But then, I did climb a mountain at the weekend.  That's got to count for something.

Baby, I Don't Care

I have been caught up in a lot of anguish and distress of late, as I always do when someone tries to dictate to me how my life should work, without an ounce of appreciation for my attempts at adaptation.  So I have resolved to think of all the good things that are keeping me going, despite this:

1) My meet-ee's colourful jumper this morning

2) The free coffee delivered thanks to said meet-ee that I SO DESPERATELY needed

3) Transvision Vamp's "Baby I Don't Care" (no-one does pop-rock quite like Transvision Vamp, even if they were irritatingly arrogant idiots) discovered at such a pertinent time.  ("You don't have to say you love me, baby IT'S ALRIGHT, cause honey I don't care...")

4) Cherry-filled chocolate.  (Oh yes..!)

5) Left-overs from the architect's stay, such as a yummy Danish pastry and wine.

6) The kindness and tolerance of the Faerie Godmother Trainee

7) A long and thoughtful email from L-Star, though painful to read how he's suffered of late

8) The Swedish teacher's email noting her recovery from an operation

9) The Czech language.  It may be killing me, but by learning some of it, I'm actually beginning to feel I'm gaining insight that other, less diligent people, do not have a hope in hell of understanding.  (Oh sense of superiority, how fleetingly you grace me with your presence...)

10) The fact that the architect mentioned 'trip to London' and 'May' before I ruined it by questioning if he'd really still want to be with me by then.

Oh and, the fact that my meetee this morning laughed so much when I answered his question with, 'I'm an Aquarius'.  To which he replied,  "Hahahahahaha...that explains EVERYTHING."