Comforts, croissants and Columbo

This may be the last opportunity I have for a while to write and post to my blog, as I'm going on holiday.  Or at least, that's the idea.  It's down to the architect that I can go anywhere at all, but I fear my idea of a holiday really does differ with his so much, and, more importantly, his sensitivity and insecurity about that fact is so acute, that I wonder if we'll both emerge at the end of the week still together.  On the one hand, we need each other really, so it would take a lot to push us apart, but on the other hand, we've both been through hell in our own ways and need some of our 'default comforts' to get us through. 

My default comforts can take the form of any of the following:

1) Reading magazines, newspapers and books that have intriguing things to say, or artistic and creative views on life.

2) Dressing up (which I don't have the time to do as eccentrically as I'd like to most of the time) including wearing stupidly high heels (I WANT to wear my $9 shoes from Delancey in Manhattan, goddammit!) or ridiculous colours of nail polish or provocative lipstick (or just bright pink lipstick when I'm wearing all black, just to scare people off) and strange belts, bags or jackets.  Most of which I won't be able to indulge in on this kind of holiday.  (We're supposed to be climbing up mountains for god's sake...)

3) Singing or playing the piano (well, not so much piano, as keyboard these days of course.  Days since I last played a real piano: 303) and that's certainly not possible on this kind of holiday.  Unless I start singing 'this torturous existence, examine my persistence...' while walking up a mountain.

4) Watching silly comedy programmes, or comedy or action films, or better still, those films that combine the two, such as 'Bad Company'.  (But I'm quite partial to thrillers and the occasional hard-hitting drama too.)

5) Going out for a good but simple meal with a glass of red wine (or two) to wash it down with.  Or even staying in and eating the same in front of the above mentioned kind of home entertainment.

6) Staying in bed till late and having croissants for breakfast and a newspaper by my side.

It strikes me that some of these things are rather anti-social, so I will simply have to try and fit them in to my time when I return and have to slowly ease myself back into proper work again.  So I will do my usual trick of probably annoying the architect by dressing up too much (but I feel certain he secretly likes it, it's just it makes him uncomfortable that I look like I belong at an artists and musicians' dinner party, not in a mountain town in the south of the Czech Republic.)  But I keep reminding him, "No, I don't belong ANYWHERE.  That's the point."  I never have, and I think I'm old enough to know now, I never will.

Oh, and I am saddened to read that Peter Falk has died.  Watching re-runs of Columbo was another 'default comfort' of mine when I was back in Blighty.  I even read his book, a sort of memoir with his own illustrations.  Fascinating man.  It's just so horrid that he got struck down with the evil Alzheimer's.  He just seemed to be one of those incredibly sweet, avuncular types who is not only kind, but very intelligent.

So anyway, I must gather my things into some bags and head off into the day hoping the architect and I can find some reasonable compromise for both of us about what to do with our time.  I'm running out of time now and I really want to be a little more organised today than I was yesterday.  Yesterday seems too complicated and stressful to even go into now.  

A brief summary would be: 

Repulsive meet-ee continues to be arrogant to the point of hilarity, other meet-ees all later attest to my being the best at the job they'd ever had.  Then printer ink runs out, traipse across town for replacement cartridge, come back with only possible available ink cartridges, only to find that despite filing the damned thing down, convinced that would foil the scam of overpriced replacement cartridges, even when it physically fits, the printer says, "no".  30 quid down the drain.  Then end of evening round-up and appraisal of work with boss at institution I've now left.  Managed to be convincing enough, despite gaps in quality of work at times, which I feel were in accordance with lack of adequate appreciation and indeed, salary.  All conducted under absolutely necessary influence of small glass of wine and garlic-tastic salad.  (I did try to lean back away from her as I talked...) Culminating in accounting skills of admin girl inadvertently giving me a small pay rise.  Decided not to alert her to that fact.  End of evening splendid chat with the Faerie godmother trainee (who, incidentally is responsible for the fact that I can now post photos again) and subsequent chat with a very ill sounding architect, who revealed we would indeed be staying in a hotel tonight.

Right, that's it.  I'm off.  Onwards and upwards....

Working Girl

I had to decide in favour of sleep over writing last night, being that I really had to get up at 6 and I wasn't able to get to bed till 12.  As usual.  However, I did have a marvellous rarity of an evening out, talking to a friend, half in English, half Czech.  I realise it did me good to have a proper chat about things, since I've not had the 'meal out with a friend' experience in quite some time and in fact, I hadn't seen her in months, so we had a lot of catching up to do.

In typical Czech fashion, the glass of red wine I had was a disappointment, but the pizza was good.  It was boiling hot, sticky and humid, until about half an hour after we got there, when it chucked it down with torrential rain in a kind of apocalyptic way that made us glad we hadn't sat outside.  Even under a big umbrella, as that wouldn't have been enough.

And today, well, today has been a funny one really...I suppose the main part of it was rather successful.  I am currently about to abandon ship from an institution I've been working for, and it seems some fellow 'holidaymakers on the cruise' want to follow suit.  So I had a clandestine meeting with two of them, in which I was honoured to be told that I was the best at my job she had ever encountered.  Which was rather lovely, obviously.  

And I did something I don't normally do.  When asked of my fee for further meetings, I actually said the figure I really wanted, not the polite version.  Not my usual, 'taking all things into consideration', kind of answer.  It just came out of my mouth, like a pro, and I'm so glad, because the more I think about it, the more I realise how stupid it would have been to say any less and I would have been kicking myself if I hadn't said what I did.  I think they both admire my entrepreneurial spirit, as they are of the same ilk, and truly, there seem to be rather few people here who think like this.  The norm here is just to trundle along, expecting more from government funding.  But that just isn't going to work in these financial crisis, (and indeed, non-communist!) times.

It was in fact rather useful and a big confidence boost for me to meet up with my friend yesterday.  Having not seen me for a few months, she did a sort of 'rounding up of events' out loud as she tried to add up what things I've done over the last few months.  She pointed out that 'I've come a long way' which I agree with (though I always feel a tap of caution on the shoulder at any point like this, when it looks like I'm getting big-headed) because of the depths of despair I reached in the lead up to moving here, and indeed in the process of getting settled (a bit) here.  Some of it is personal stuff, that isn't so much an achievement, as simply dumb luck (the architect) or at least a leap of faith taken because of some good fortune.  However, some of it is sheer hard work.

I've worked for two different places, but built up enough business on my own to be able to charge higher rates and move beyond the confines of the limited degree of promotion I could have got at either place.  Now, I've got meet-ees abandoning ship to be able to continue working with me.  I feel like Melanie Griffith's character in 'Working Girl'.  Having said that, I fear the retribution and backlash that may come from having done something as seemingly underhanded (it isn't at all, but I'm sensitive to these things, so breaking some kind of moral code and lying a bit is enough) as Tess McGill and I wonder what price I will eventually have to pay.  

I did aerobics again today and as I was prancing about to Michael Jackson's 'Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', I felt a swell of achievement and a hint of 80s hope and dedication to the entrepreneurial spirit I've shown.  "I could have money too!" I thought.  But of course, that is hardly the case here.  Even if things work out for the best and I get some more meet-ees at a higher rate, I will still struggle to have enough time to not go insane working myself like a dog to keep enough money coming in.  And everything will change once I'm looking at the joy of paying health insurance.  And I'm hardly getting any swanky new office with a view of Manhattan out of this.  Not even an office with a view of Prague.

What I do have though, is a somewhat more toned, fit and healthy body, thanks to my extra workout this week, and to the 'apples and cereal' for breakfast/lunch that I've been limiting myself to.  You never know, my new Marilyn Monroe-style 50s swimming costume might even look good on me at some point soon.  (Though I mustn't get ahead of myself here...) 

And in the meantime, as per a couple of weeks ago, I should enjoy this rare moment of feeling like there's hope, because, as sure as the rain here is continually following the hot sunshine, I'm bound to feel differently tomorrow.  Or even in the next half an hour, knowing me.

Cherries, aerobics and 'Whose Line...?'

I have been surviving my own particular brand of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with varying degrees of success today (repeat prescription nil,  aerobics bonus session, one) and have ended up just about on top.  Thanks in part to a cancellation from a meet-ee which gave me time to do aerobics again. (Hurrah; I defy anyone to say I am not keeping the figure of a twenty five year old!)  As well as an added bit of success in getting through my 'to do' list.  At least a bit.  

It rained all morning, in a surprisingly London-like way and I struggled to stay awake through my first meeting, but thankfully I managed to cheer myself up later by buying some delicious cherries from the woman on the corner.  So all is not lost.

As for the precariousness of my conversations and correspondence with the architect, it would seem things have improved there too.  I had been so worried last night that I needed the light relief of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' to watch before bedtime to help me get to sleep.  Somehow one look at Colin Mochrie being a penguin, gulping down some fish, or twisting out of an odd stage prop like a cobra being charmed out of its basket and suddenly, nothing seems all that scary anymore.  God bless that man.  He deserves some kind of 'lifetime award of achievement' for cheering people up.

However, poor boy, the architect has a cold.  He came to meet me this evening after I managed to print out some things he needed for a trip tomorrow.  He had the snuffles and a sore throat.  He looked sheepish.  Not to mention a bit green at the gills.  He asked me if I still wanted to go on holiday with him.  I had been expecting him to dictate that he would go on his own, at least for part of the week, but now he was trying to see if I was still interested in spending time with him.  You'd think I had been some kind of unfeeling ice queen (which I can be sometimes, but not often) and yet I was the one to have written all sorts of reassurances and extra affection in an email, and he'd written matter-of-factly in every bit of correspondence he'd recently sent.

Oh how fragile and delicate the precious male ego is.  Who'd have thought it, eh?  One hint of an area of difference, a possibility of a lack of agreement and he's instantly fearing I'll run off with a lawyer.  The poor little flower.  I suppose we both need a dose of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' and I shall administer it to him as soon as he gets back.  They should make it available as a prescribed treatment for stress and fatigue on the NHS.

Two rainbows, a double chocolate Magnum and a few tears

I still don't know what to think about this whole relationship thing.  How does anyone ever survive them?  I feel at a loss after a weekend of such ups and downs.  I actually feel a bit sick.  But that could also be due to my attempts to lose weight by not eating more than cereal and an apple.  But maybe I'm only trying to lose weight because I feel so miserable about everything else.  Or maybe I'm just miserable and that's just me and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Ups:

1) I had a Magnum

2) I tried out driving again, after a two year gap since I last tried and a 15 year gap since I last drove properly.

3) I went for a walk in the forest, which was beautiful.

4) I got to watch some of a film I quite like, snuggling up on the sofa.

5) I had some hugs and kisses.

6) I had some red wine.  Because I brought some.

Downs:

1) There is no downside to a Magnum.  (Apart from getting fat, which is something to consider, actually...)

2) I was abysmal at driving.

3a) It rained just as we went out for a walk in the forest and I was cold, until I walked faster and the sun came out and I got too hot, then it rained again and I got cold again.  Oh and my clothes for walks in the forest are uncomfortable. 

3b) The walk in the forest was about an hour longer than I found enjoyable.

3c) The walk in the forest was a mere fraction of the time the architect would like to spend walking in forests or up mountains on our holiday next week.

4) I didn't get to watch all of the film.  The architect was still tidying up when I arrived (after a planned day off from me for him to do whatever sorting out of his flat he had wanted to do) so we ate late and we didn't have the pizza or any kind of warm food I'd hoped to have, just a sort of Czech-style cold meat pub-snack affair...

5) I don't know if I will ever have hugs and/or kisses again, because the architect seems pretty annoyed that I didn't enjoy the forest walk very much.  Signing off 'bye' in recent correspondence would seem a bad sign, really, wouldn't it?

6) There is no red wine left. 

All I can say is, I hope the two rainbows that appeared in the sky just as I was leaving the architect to go home, is a symbol that there is hope left for us, even though the second one is very faint.

Please let that hope be true.  Please.

Coffee, calm and career-paths

It's been an odd week.  Seeing ex-partner on Tuesday was difficult and I was so exhausted anyway, that the evening proved difficult on both emotional and physical fronts.  In the end, I had to go out for a walk in the evening, even though it had just rained and still looked threatening, because I just couldn't stay cooped up in my flat surrounded by old things of mine and his any longer.  It did chuck it down with rain again when I came back, but I managed to walk to the bottom of Václavské náměstí (or ,Václavák' to the locals) and back nonetheless.

And today, I felt better about everything because I had a day off.  Even though this happened to coincide with a transport strike, causing me to re-think the plan of taking the tram to Kavárna Slavia, I still had a rejuvenating day.

I went to the same place as last week, the Palác Knih Luxor bookshop on Vaclavák, and had the same coffee (,Viděnská káva') as last time.  

Except this time, I took a copy of American Vogue with me to read, which was a delight - full of interesting articles about summer holidays, Penelope Cruz's success and motherhood joy (interesting to someone like me who always wonders why women always want children, as if it were some kind of vital, meaningful part of life you mustn't miss out on, when I just want the career bit, not the motherhood bit) and also a very interesting article about a Russian artist living in Brooklyn.  Oh to have that life of doing the things you love and earning enough money from it to live in your own flat in Williamsburg.  How do these people do it?

Anyway, here's what I wrote while at the cafe:

I am completely enraptured.  I woke up today when I needed to.  I had set the alarm on my mobile, but the battery had run out overnight.  I hadn't intended to get up early anyway.  And somehow, from whatever it was I dreamt, I felt like I was waking up in a completely different place.  The malign influence I had felt of the old sheets and pillowcases delivered alongside my boxes of diaries and photos from ex-partner this week had metamorphosed into a new kind of comfort and sense of home, albeit an isolated one.  I felt like my little flat was on a cloud-and-tree island like the animated green islands in the sky in that awful film 'Avatar'. 

Except my little sky island was a cultured one, with influences from lots of different countries and local delicacies.  What hope and calm.  It was actually quite a surprise that I could feel so far removed from my usual tedious work.  It had no impact.  It still feels a totally separate and distant prospect.  I don't want to even think about it, but even when I do, it somehow has no sting.  I can safely feel it's got nothing to do with me today.

I'm glad I made it through all the pain of the end of my previous relationship and selling my piano and having to accept that a music career was never going to be in my future (though "accepting" this seems to be an ongoing process that isn't even close to completion) but I survived to have today.  A precious and unique day in all my time here.

I've got to acknowledge what I've managed to get through.  It's been colossal.  I've actually earnt enough money to pay the rent for my flat.  I don't have to face hideous boyfriends of flatmates or their entourage of visiting weirdos anymore.  (They weren't really weird at all, it's just that these kind of 'straight-jacketed' people who dream of mortgages and matching furniture are the 'weirdos' to me.)  I don't have to negotiate the cooking or washing facilities.  No-one's going to disturb my thoughts, until I have to invite in my meet-ees, that is.  The morning (albeit usually only until 8am) is my own.

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To contrast with that, I now have to face a gruelling back-to-back kind of day tomorrow, but I have at least prepared a few things in advance this time, so I won't drown.  I just won't have time for lunch.  But that's ok.  I'm only having an apple.  

And then on Saturday, I've been roped into acting in a student film (ah, old acting career, in the loosest sense of the word, hello again..!) playing an innocent and sweet character who goes to the extreme of working as an escort to help support her relationship.  (Why do all student acting roles involve playing 'ladies of the night' or the promiscuous girlfriend'?)  We're starting at 7.30am, so I'll need to get as much sleep tonight (too late already for a good night's sleep, oh well...) and tomorrow as I can, so as not to look like death warmed up.  They want the 'no make-up' look for the main sequences.  God help me.

'Women's problems' and other tales of amusement

So I have literally had to decide that if I write something today, to be posted to cyberspace, then I will not have time to put the clean sheet, duvet cover and pillowcases on the bed before I go to sleep.  And all I can say is: 'why care?'. I will not allow housework to prevent me from being able to write utter drivel!  I slept on the bed without the sheet last night because the sheet was still drying, so what's one more night, eh?

This is what day-to-day life comes down to when you are working like crazy to pay the rent that is nearly two thirds of your average income.  I have had the ingenious idea that I can save money by eating less this week: apples for lunch, rice and tinned tomatoes (and maybe a scrambled egg if I'm really pushing the boat out) for dinner, and lose some weight at the same time.  Except I am aware of the 'dangers' of this clever plan; namely that if you don't eat enough and you're working like crazy while not getting enough sleep, you can be susceptible to illnesses.  And if I get ill, I cannot afford to take time off.  So that would be a bad idea.  So I shall make sure I buy some extra fruit from the stall at the end of the road that sells (rather limitedly, in my opinion) strawberries and/or apricots for 29Kč a punnet.  And I have got some grapefruit juice, so all is not lost.

It's a shame today had to be the day I found out the true cost of being a woman: six months' supply of the pill ordered from Blighty: £59.95.  Bugger.  Seriously, is that not the same cost as bloody flying over to the UK and stealing it from them myself?  And I'm not (only) some floozy who needs it to prevent giving birth to subsequent potential floozies, I am in fact someone who will end up in hospital sooner or later if I don't take the damned blood clot-inducing pill, three packets in a row. (Yes, six months supply doesn't even mean a full six months for me...) All this in order to prevent the worst of what mother nature likes to present to me as 'excruciating period pain added to IBS' or, in other words: 'tummy ache double-whammy'.

Well, that's my hope of ever being able to save any money whatsoever, not even the savings I had (or emergency money in other, more accurate, terms) out the window for good.  Good bye hope and potential scraping-by; hello poverty, my old friend, did you even leave my side for a second?

Ah, well, my meet-ee this morning seemed to think that the UK system of providing the pill free was completely unjustifiable, even looking at the money saved from potential teenage pregnancies leading to Mums having to be on benefits because the teenage 'Dad' scurried off.  "Saving money?!  Just cut the benefits, surely", he seemed to suggest.   Ah, you can rely on a lawyer to not give a damn about hereditary dysmenorrhoea (severe period pain to those who speak English) and more about having the summer off to go and enjoy his manor house in the country.

Am I just an insufferable Leftie?  Did Ben Elton mould me in my formative years to have a disdain for all things pretentious and irrelevant, in favour of a deep desire to uphold 'fairness' above all else?  Oh, no!  What will the world do with me now?  Only the most severe punishment can set things straight, surely?  Oh wait.  It already has.  £60 period pain prevention bill.  Way to go!

P.S. I am sorry this has been a blog posting on housework and 'women's problems'.  There is something wrong with me, obviously.  If only I had spent my time hanging myself with the bed sheet instead of washing it, all would be well in the world.  

Possibly.

Yesterday

I went to a cafe yesterday, grabbed a miniscule bit of time to escape.  Here's all I had time to write there:

Escape to cafe in Palác Knih Luxor bookshop on Vaclavák.  I needed this.  I should try to allow more time for this, if it is at all possible. (I know, immediately, the bank manager in my head says, "NO! IT ISN'T POSSIBLE!  DO YOU WANT TO END UP HOMELESS?!"  But I think he's a Nazi and I'm refusing to listen to him.)

I've got myself a ,Viděnská káva' - one in a tall glass with whipped cream and a long spoon - and I'm sitting behind a woman who must be in her 60s but looks like she's in her 70s (everyone looks older than they are here) who's reading an article headed ,,Sex je modus života", which must translate as 'Sex is a way of living', or 'Sex is the way to live' or some such notion.  I just hope she's getting some, not just having to longingly read about it mournfully.

There is a new row of photography books across the walkway.  I can see about 4 or 5 different Josef Sudek ones, which means they must have re-published his work in  categories, such as portraits, still life, landscapes etc.  He had some beautiful, dreamy pictures of garden steps and of his own little studio and I used to love looking at them.

Once again, I can't stop and enjoy things here.  I've got to get back for a Czech lesson but maybe it's just as well, as there are so many interesting things I could buy here, from Vogue posters (499Kč a pop) to those Sudek collection books, to silly children's books and about a hundred magazines...

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So that was that.  Today, I have had tantalising amounts of free time, but so little energy - I think the heat is making me wilt - and I should have done something useful and important, but I neeeeeded to do something enjoyable.  It was an emergency.  Like buying apricot shower gel and then apricots to eat was a total necessity yesterday.  I'm so glad I spent a little bit of money on frivolous nice things like that.  It has done me good.  I hope the money will just come back to me from somewhere and that the fact that I've handed in my notice to the institution that was killing me (for whom I have to work only two more weeks) will not result in my inability to pay the rent come August.  I am determined it won't.  (By hook or by crook...)

Another List

Things I wish I had or could do RIGHT NOW:

1) To not have to go to work in less than half an hour.

2) To not have to wait an hour and a half between finishing one meeting and conducting another, culminating in a long day so I don't get to finish early on a Friday.

3) Go on a shopping spree for summer dresses, delicious-smelling toiletries and creamy, shiny make-up and silly, frivolous accessories like hoop earrings and butterfly necklaces. 

4) To not have to think of the 'usefulness' of everything I read with an eye on good vocabulary for meetings.

5) A glass of some kind of exotic fruit juice mix with a straw and a colourful cocktail umbrella thing on it.

6) More energy.

7) Time to waste painting my toenails or something suitably superficial like that.

8) A Magnum ice cream.

9) A piano.

That's it.

Perennial problems and lime trees

My meet-ee brought me a sort of cutting from the Czech national emblem tree today.  The lime tree.  Its tiny flowers smelled sweet and it felt like a little romantic gesture, in an innocently platonic setting.  It was sweet, though also funny (both 'ha, ha' and peculiar) to start the day like that.  But I soon got into the swing of being disciplined and back 'down to earth' but I think the miserable-looking sky helped with that.  If it had been sunny, maybe I would have been more inclined to be rebellious and just talk, if not run away to hold the meeting at the zoo or something, instead.

I'm becoming more reckless and stubborn though, I've noticed.  I just want to do things 'my way' and I just haven't the patience for someone else's agenda.  I want to be able to take some days off, even though my bank balance would urge me that this is VERY UNWISE (if it could talk) because I need to have time to do some reading, and of course, writing, but above all, I need THINKING time.  I need the luxury of sitting and thinking and wondering what to do and being able to choose my creative methods for the morning and pursue them.  Then I can find out afterwards if they were a good idea or not.

This is what I had to explain to another meet-ee today.  The fact that most creative people don't know exactly what they're setting out to achieve when they start on a painting or a poem or a song.  They start with a little idea and follow it to see if it will take them anywhere interesting.  So if you read poetry with the hope of uncovering the 'key argument or opinion' of what the author was trying to say, you could be missing the point entirely.  Maybe the author didn't really know until she finished it.  Perhaps the goal became a mixture of several things, not one clear-cut landmark.  My poor meet-ee had been berating himself for 'not understanding poetry'.  Surely the point is, it depends which poem, and which mood the author was in when they wrote it, that will determine if there are indeed specific 'points' to be uncovered and 'understood' or not.  And if you end up berating yourself for 'not getting it' then maybe that particular piece of work just isn't for you.

I think perhaps I am simply too tired to say anything more definitive or, alas, interesting than that.  It's that perennial dilemma: is a boring blog post better than no post at all?  Probably not.  Just like getting bills and bank statements does nothing to fulfil the desire to get some 'post' in the letterbox addressed to you, so this blog post is a dismal disappointment.  Sorry, that's all I could manage on 5 hours' sleep.