Sadness, failure and a Swedish Faerie Godmother

The tiredness and confused thoughts in my head do not seem to have abated much.  I apologise that I didn't succeed in harnessing them better, and untangling them enough to make my last post comprehensible, but it was a case of having a 'jumbled-up haze' post or none at all.  Maybe none at all would have been better, I honestly don't know.

As it is, things here so far have been a sad reminder of how I no longer belong here and perhaps, how I never did.  I have been confronted with all the mistakes I made and all of the consequences of not having found confidence in what I was doing soon enough to make use of it and it's been painful to look at.  As I waited last night for a bus to take me back to my lodgings from Victoria, I felt like a scorned visitor, who has no real place here anymore.  As though unless I have some important, well-paid work to do here, I have no right to consider myself a Londoner.  How long do you have to live in London before you can call yourself a Londoner?  And does that get revoked if you have to leave in the end, no matter how long you were there in the first place?

In New York, there was a phrase going round that 'for up to 8 years in NYC, you're merely a 'zoo-yorker', just one of the millions who try and nestle in to a choice spot, but have to face the horrors of housing competition among the huge numbers of people who require it.  During those years, you have to put up with some barely habitable places before you finally find somewhere (if you're lucky) viable to live in.  Some never make it to the finding somewhere habitable stage.  Maybe that's my experience with London really, although I lived here earlier on, years back, when it was still vaguely possible to afford to live on my own, albeit in a gloomy basement flat with no washing machine.  

I had enough hope left back then, that made living somewhere dingy more bearable.  Plus it was really very central, which is something I loved about it.  The rent was quite high, but nothing like today's standards, and I was still prepared to spend a greater percentage of my income on rent than most people, even if it meant I never had enough savings to buy clothes anywhere other than in charity shops (a state which, sadly, has not changed in over ten years) and no money to go out for meals.  I suppose that was my downfall and still is, but living alone means that much to me, that I continue to sacrifice all else, because it really does make such a big difference.  

After a day full of crying (embarrassingly frequently) and feeling bleak about everything yesterday, I suppose I need to make an extra effort today to do fun and frivolous things.  A silly film is lined up for viewing tonight and I think some chocolate ice-cream is in order at some point today.  Other than that, perhaps I can say a fond 'hello again' to my old haunts , especially Kensington Gardens, and see if I can stop worrying about the future and how much I've screwed it up, for just a few hours at least.  Funnily enough, the wise Swedish Faerie Godmother told me yesterday, "it's strange but sometimes when you think you've screwed life up completely, you find there are second chances."  I hope she's right.  She usually is, in fact.  Being that she is both wise and utterly nutty, two qualities I very much aspire to having myself, she's always got a good point.

Airports and the British Sense of Humour

When the plane touched down in Heathrow with a gentle bounce, I was flooded with thoughts about what home really is and, more importantly, where it is.   And I suddenly had tears in my eyes.  It was mostly me questioning whether I could really think of London as any more of a home than Prague, and seeing as I had to leave London because my existence there was almost certainly killing me slowly but surely, I had to admit, that London felt more like a familiar yet sometimes hostile friend.  And I then thought of the town I was born in, and how I don't have time to go there while in the UK this time, so I won't be able to see my sister or any other relatives/family friends there and I felt like, yes, I'd feel a huge familiarity there and of course I'd feel really happy to see my sister, if it were possible, but it's not home.  

Of all things, I ultimately had an imagined conversation in my head with my Mum, whereby I was trying to justify what things I'd done and not managed to do.  I was saying to her in my head, that yes, I have reached my mid-thirties and I failed to make London work for me, but I have come a long way from the background she grew up in.  And I may not have made a great success of it, but at least I've fought time and time again to avoid the safe option, the default option, and I've pushed to do something more challenging instead.  I may not have succeeded in proving that it's worth doing that, but I have at least tried it, with the spirit of a pioneer and the bravery that comes from years of doing things on my own and knowing that being an outsider is painful but there is a kind of freedom that comes from already having been ostracised, so there's no loss in leaving people behind.

I was very tired indeed when I got into Heathrow, so I have to put some of my over-emotional state down to that, but it was such a strange feeling.  Just setting foot in the UK again caused a monumental re-assessment of what I've achieved and what price I've paid for what I've endeavoured to do.  In the queue at Border control, I was reminded of one of the few endearing qualities about the British:  a sense of humour in the face of sheer incompetence, tedium and difficulty.  The electronic passport system was a note of confusion for some, and the queue for those still without one (that would include me) seemed both long and slow-moving, but the family behind me, who sounded like they were from up north somewhere, just made light-hearted jokes about it all and it made me smile.  

Even the Border control officer made me smile as he announced that families could come forward in a group, only to realise, as I alone approached the desk, that I was not a part of a family.  Indeed, if he'd have asked, I could have told him that trying to get our family together all in one country would take quite some doing these days.  But he just 'welcomed me back to the UK' by name (a smart move on the 'final check for note of recognition' illegal passport holder detection front) and I felt sort of at home, but also partly in some kind of surreal world of luggage and passports.  When it came to baggage reclaim, a dimly-lit twilight zone that gave me a feeling of deja-vu because I could swear I'd dreamt of being in a baggage area just like it, though in fact I had never set foot in Terminal 5 before, I really did feel like I was mid-transfer between the recent familiar world and the old known.

So, the tiredness of 4.5 hours' sleep last night and not much more than 5 or 6 the previous few nights, took their toll and I still felt half in the Czech Republic, at least in my head, when I had a strong urge to tell a shop assistant in Boots later, ,,na schledanou" as I left.  (Woe betide you if you don't do this in the Czech Republic.)  I suppose I'll adjust better tomorrow.  In the meantime, I have some absolutely beautiful flowers to greet me when I wake up:

Sunshine, errands and photos

London is awaiting me tomorrow, along with the Faerie Godmother Trainee.  But the sun decided to come out today (I knew it - the one weekend I won't be here in Prague and it decides to heat up and be sunny - typical) and it's amazing what a difference a bit of sunshine makes.  I went on a little walk to get a few last things to bring with me to bestow on friends in London, but I didn't have time to enjoy much of it.  So I took some photos instead, to be able to look at them and marvel at the lovely weather later.  

While I was out, I stupidly decided to try a bit of light-hearted banter with the woman in Tesco, but she was probably too young to indulge in such things and my comment that, ,,konečně je to léto, že jo?" ["it's finally summer, isn't it?!"] was received with a teenager-like look of simultaneous incomprehension and disdain.  Maybe I was being overly friendly and thus impolite with such an informal phrase as ,,...že jo?" or maybe she was just miserable because people kept telling her what a lovely day it was outside and she was stuck working in an air-conditioned, no natural light to speak of, branch of Tesco.  In which case, ,,takže, chapu." ["I understand then."]  Or maybe my Czech is worse than I thought.  Occam's razor would decree it has to be the latter.

Anyway, I thought I could bypass any further need to attempt to write something interesting, seeing as I'm pushed for time and really should be packing my case instead, with some of the photos I took . There's one extra one from the other day when I realised they'd vamped-up Václavské náměstí with flower beds down the middle, just in time for tourist high-season.  Ah, the vanity...

Looking up to náměstí Míru, the church in the background, this is the general theme of where I live, banks, banks and more banks.  Oh, and a tram.  Of course. 

Then the view from the bank on the corner by the metro station, looking past yet another bank. You can just about see down to the shiny and copper-topped building in the background, which is part of the national museum at the very top of Václavské náměstí:

And here are the roses [um, sorry, you'll have to zoom in and look closely to see them!] in the middle of Václavské náměstí (or ,Václavák' as it's affectionately known to us 'locals'):

Adventures in Deutschland

What can I write in 10 minutes, bearing in mind I really need to get some sleep before I have to be up bright and early at 6, and munching some breakfast in order to be able to plan things for further meetings by 7.30/8am ish?

Well, let's see, I curled my hair and wore wholly inappropriate shoes to the restaurant the architect and I went to for his birthday on Friday.  He liked the results of both the curling-tong-ed hair and the shoes and kept staring at me all evening as a result.  

Then on Saturday we ran away to a tiny village north of Prague near 'Česká Lípa'.  And on Sunday we went to a place called 'Luž' and crossed the German border, where they call it 'Lausche' and much fun was had by all.  Including realising I had forgotten the word for 'mushroom' in German and that even linking words, like 'like' in German had gone out of my head and had been entirely replaced by their Czech equivalents.  Thus resulting in an Identity crisis for the girl who got an 'A' in her German 'A' level (before A* existed).

Here is photographic evidence of having made it to Germany (though what 'Stiftung' in the main sentence means is currently beyond me, but sounds suspicious nonetheless)*:

Here's a sign that proves Germans are the epitome of efficiency and forward planning with notices for everything imaginable, including the 'free-time area' for sitting and eating your packed lunch, overlooking a podium where one could stage a small performance of Shakespeare, should one so wish, though you can't see it in the photo:

And here are some German cows (though the zooming in only made them look even more like chickens instead of cows, but oh well...I tried) that the architect remarked were too clean to be Czech ones: 

And this is the beautiful lush green hill in Germany overlooking both Germany and some strangely German-sounding town in the Czech republic named 'Varnsdorf', that reminded me of the T'ai Chi scene in Calendar Girls where someone ends up suggesting, "Does anyone fancy some chips?", to which I would happily have replied, "hell yes!" had I been given the opportunity:

And with that, I have been writing for over half an hour and shall suffer for it tomorrow morning when I will not be happy about how my body feels post-aerobics and only 5 hours' sleep.  But "that's life, eh?"  Or rather, "to je život, že jo?"

(*According to Google translate, it means 'foundation' or 'establishment'.)

The Czech language, Slovaks and cheap hair dye

It's been an odd kind of day, mostly exhausting because I had so much to prepare for my meet-ee this morning and then only an hour and a half in between to try to do some Czech homework, but my Czech lesson went quite well.  I'm getting to a point where I know most of the main things necessary for a basic conversation in Czech, but I sometimes still don't know the perfective verb that pairs with the imperfective one I know.  (I like how my spell check is currently underlining these words as if they don't exist.  Obviously my spell check never had to learn about Czech grammar.)  

Yes, perfective verbs exist.  They are the ones which signify an activity done once, whereas the imperfective ones are used for regular activities.  So if I want to say, "I have to go to the shopping centre," I would have to ask myself, "hmm, which verb do I need here - do I mean I have to go to the shopping centre every day for a meeting or I have to go to the shopping centre now, just once?"  Not that hard, but the verbs for 'to go' (and I mean 'on foot' here) are 'jít' and 'chodit'.  I go (once) carries the meaning 'I will go' and is 'jdu' but 'I go', every week, every day etc. is 'chodím'.  Quite different aren't they? 

It's quite complicated that there are two ways of saying future intentions, (though English sort of has three) you can either use a word that functions like 'will' or use the present tense of the perfective verb which is always future in meaning.  But that requires you of course to know both the perfective and imperfective to have the choice.  And I can't believe the number of verbs where I do know both but can't for the life of me remember which one is which.  So I end up saying the equivalent of, "I'll be doing it" instead of, "I'll do it".  (Actually, that one I know both forms of [dělám/udělám] like the back of my hand.  And it's easier than in English anyway, because there isn't another verb like 'make' that requires you to know which nouns go with it and which don't.  Hearing any foreigner say, "I do so many mistakes", highlights this difficulty rather well.)  But I'm sure I've recently said something like, "I was remembering" instead of, "I remembered", or, worse still, "I'll try", instead of, "I'm trying".  So, having told you all that, I imagine you're thanking your lucky stars that you don't have to learn Czech.  Yes, well good for you.  Hmmph.  Some of us have to work hard to survive, you know.

The almost tragic thing is, however, that I know, in spite of Czech being a language that drives me insane with how "challenging" it is, I will miss speaking/hearing it when I come to London.  I'll be dying to find some way of keeping in touch with it, so I'll probably have to read the online newspaper I always check (www.idnes.cz) in order to not feel too far from it.  And when I come back, I'll feel pleased to be back in this quirky little country with its seemingly unintelligible language and it'll feel like home the first time I hear someone say something typically Czech, like, ,,to víš, že jo!" [you know it is! / of course it is!] or just, ,,ježiš marja" [=lit. "Jesus Mary!" = "oh my god!"] Which is utterly looney, is it not?  But I kid you not, I do enjoy speaking Czech.  I love the fact that it's so incomprehensible to most English speakers. It's like knowing a special code and I've always rather liked the idea of codes.  

It's a way of having a secret club only for those who know the lingo.  Except in this case, my secret club is a country of about 10 million, all of whom speak it a hell of a lot better than I do.  And there's also the fact that Slovaks speak such a similar language, that they understand Czech perfectly too, so there's another 5 million. And when Slovaks move here, they adapt to saying things in Czech instead as and when necessary, so they speak it better than me too.  I still find it really confusing listening to Slovak speakers on TV, as I start wondering why I can't understand as much, but think it has to be Czech, but then I realise it's a Slovak programme and that's why everything sounds sort of...skewed.

And with that, I'm feeling really rather tired now and must go to bed.  I washed my hair this evening and it's already looking less than professional (it really does look like I dyed it myself with a cheap bottle of Wella hair dye or something) so I just hope the architect won't be totally disappointed tomorrow.  It's his birthday and I want to make him feel happier, not make him feel ashamed that his girlfriend looks like someone who never grew out of henna-ed hair and tie-dyed dresses...

Wish me luck.

The brunette strikes back

I tried to write on Monday, but got nowhere, as I ran out of time after my meetings and aerobics and other sources of duty or tedium.  Then I had Tuesday, a day with no meetings except for an appointment with the hairdresser, and then an appointment in the evening with a friend to go and watch a Czech film in the local art-house cinema.

I actually had a delightful morning and realised what a difference a day-off makes.  Anyway, by the afternoon, I had just enough time to stop for a spontaneous coffee in the downtown department store, known as 'My,' though it's pretty much a big Tesco-owned Debenhams-wannabe, and I wrote this:

09/08/11

Maybe it's fitting that I watched SATC The Film, dubbed into Czech yesterday, the day before dyeing my hair back to its natural colour.  It was also was my Mum's birthday and today I look more like her than I did before.  It's really rather strange.  A lot of 'coming full circle's going on.  In addition to this, I came back to writing music and now I'm back in the department store I used to come to quite a lot when I first moved here and still had enough money to buy things now and then to cheer myself up.

Except I'm here today to buy the architect a birthday present.  I've already got him a few things, but I need a 'crème de la crème' present to round everything else off with.  (Though secretly I'm hoping that the fact that I've had my hair cut and dyed a glossy dark brown will be its own 'crème de la crème' kind of present.)

Most of all, even though I'm hardly a huge success here, I feel I can permit myself to say, "you've done ok, kid".  I mean, I haven't earned pots of money (nobody ever got rich by helping people, I suppose) but I've made ends meet, I've embarked on a new relationship, despite the fact that it may only serve to save us both from despair in the short term, and I've managed to learn enough Czech to survive and even do well going to a local hairdresser's where they don't speak a word of English.  I had no photo with me, just a few vocab notes and I explained how I wanted my hair dyed and cut.  I defy anyone to manage as much, after losing both the relationship they were in for well over 10 years, and having to call it quits with a career path that came to an end at the same time the relationship did.  I may not be free of the pain of that loss, but I have at least progressed to new and different shores, and though my home may now be a landlocked country, I can still sing of the sea.

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So now I'm a proper brunette again, it was back to work as usual today.  (6am wake up call and knuckling down to work by 7.40) I am shattered as a result, seeing as I didn't finish till 8.45 this evening.  Ach jo.  To je život.  Můj život.  I have been hanging on for dear life and now it looks like the architect wants me to stay over at his brother's at the weekend.  Not much warning, but I guess it's good that I've got two Czech lessons this week as well as having extra practice on Tuesday evening.  (The film I saw with my friend was weird but the music was good, though wholly anachronistic.)  I just don't know if I'll feel free to just communicate as best I can, or whether I'll end up silencing myself, for fear of all the horrid case ending mistakes I'm unable to avoid making flooding out in a wave of horribly unbearable pigeon-sounding Czech.  

On the one hand, a foreigner (especially an English one) speaking any Czech at all here is some kind of revelation, but on the other, Czechs are therefore not exactly accustomed to hearing their language mangled by someone who not only gets case endings wrong but sometimes chooses imperfective verbs instead of the necessary perfective alternative.  And don't even get me started on the effort involved in trying to remember what's correct Czech, and what's 'Prague' Czech.  Worse still, the architect swears like a trouper at times, so the phrases I've learnt most readily are all the slang, Prague-colloquial, possibly really rather offensive, ones.

God help me.  I must be speaking the equivalent of something like, "That bloody cow was such a bitch!" instead of, "she was most unkind towards me", with the added problem that it has wrong endings all over the place.  Which I can't really come up with an equivalent of, because it doesn't exist in English, but maybe it sounds as bad as, "that cow, she not been liking me lately", or something equally awful.  I need nerves of steel to survive a weekend with 'family' surely?  Why has no-one given me adequate training for this?!

On the up side (and there really is one, "hurrah!", but it's totally unrelated) the flower that came with the chocolates I got from a meet-ee last Friday has nearly lasted a week!  Here's what it looked like upon first delivery:

And here's a more recent pic, after it had opened up to say hello to what fleeting sunshine we had a day or two later:

And with that, I must bid you goodnight and attempt to get at least some beauty sleep.  New hairstyle or not, I certainly need it.

A dripping tap is the source of all inspiration

The dripping tap in my kitchen, that today became unstoppable, has cast a strange spell on me that caused me to creep back to music, like a teenager sneaking back home after a huge row.  I got a candle and my notebook, loaded up Garageband on my Mac and sat at the kitchen table and sang.

These are the scribbled words written in May that I found in my notebook to use:

you took me to the river and showed me The Bridge

you said you had to go back but I could go on to the other side

where I might find a home

so you left me there

by the bridge

expected me to cross over

all on my own

and as I climbed the hill with someone else

I looked down

I could see the trees and rocks beneath

was that my home?

would that be where I would fit in?

my fascination startled you

like a moth caught circling the light bulb

you caught me staring at my potential demise

playing with it in my mind

magnetised

magnetised

magnetised

It's funny that I should manage to write something (the melody at least) today.  I had a text from ex-partner, just as I'd got through a day haunted by the dream of mine that he featured in last night.  It seems our lines of telepathy were not cut off by the universe and its plans to take us in different directions.  This is at least a second, if not third time that that's happened.  Somehow we still seem to have a thread of connection, like the initial anchor line of a spider's web that has stayed intact despite a blustery storm.

And all this just as the platform edge was looming large in the frame of my relationship with the architect too.  I don't know how we'll pull back from it, but I know it'll take a lot of effort, and I'm not sure the architect is a fan of effort.  I've always been one to think that making an effort is the only way to escape the misery, but maybe the cynical Czech mentality here harbours a valid point, that effort and hard work don't always bring results.  Sometimes there are just glass ceilings that no-one can fracture and there's nothing anyone can do about it.  I suppose it's exactly those times in which the thread of a spider's web can come to look rather welcoming.

Batmobile

I've been listening to a lot of old Liz Phair songs recently, and this one, called 'Batmobile' in particular:

"Fire up the Batmobile 'cause I gotta get out of here

I don't speak the language

And you gave me no real choice, you gave me no real choice

You made me see that my behaviour was an opinion

So fire up the Batmobile 'cause I gotta get out of here

It's the mouth of the gift-horse I know

But I gave it my best shot, I gave it my best shot

I gave you the performance of a lifetime

So I hope you all will see

There just isn't a place here for me

Look around and feel like somebody must be fucking with me

I just can't take any of you seriously

And I can't keep keeping myself company

Fire up the Batmobile 'cause I gotta get out of here

Big shoulders block the view

And you can't get your money back, you can't get your money back

You can't pretend that isolation is the same as privilege.."

It's one of those kinds of songs where you don't really know what she's going on about, so you just relate it to your own life, and funnily enough, there are certain lines in this song (can you guess which ones?) that encapsulate my current predicament perfectly.  Except I don't exactly have a 'Batmobile' or indeed even a car to just run away in.  And I can't afford to run away anyhow.  Which is sort of tragically funny.  At least it means I'm definitely in the right place, because if ever a country did a good line in 'tragi-comedy' it would be the Czech Republic.  No doubt about it.  They've made film after film about this kind of amusing interpretation of despair.

I watched the film 'Samotaři' ['Loners'] the other day, which is (unsurprisingly) about a bunch of fairly isolated or, at least, lonely people, all with their ideas of what they should do, and how they're all watching the gap between where they should be and where they are in their lives, and observing it perpetually widening.  Except for the stoner guy, who has an affair with a woman who just broke up with her boyfriend, only to remember, or rather be told by his friends that he's actually got a girlfriend, it's just that she's gone away to visit relatives for a month.  

The stoner guy has the best time of all of them, because he just can't remember what he's supposed to do, and by the time he does, it doesn't really matter anyway.  All the other characters suffer and don't gain anything except more confirmation that nothing's going to improve.  Some of the bad things that happen are so bad, they become comical, but mostly it's quite a subdued and depressing film with a very odd modern-industrial electronic music soundtrack.

Maybe if they'd had a fittingly 'tell it like it is' Liz Phair soundtrack, it would have been overwhelmingly depressing.  She has her own style of tragi-comedy in her lyrics as well as the profanity and references to sex.  Some people have accused her of selling-out with her more recent work, but I think to some extent, she kind of had no choice.  She certainly had to change something.  And it's probably better to change something, knowing it's only an answer, not the answer in the hope that it might open other avenues of possibility.  Because it's better than doing nothing.  And that's why I'm here.  I still don't have the answer, only a bunch of inadequate possible answers and none of those are exactly working out well.  But you've got to do something.  And in the meantime, while that something isn't solving the problem, at least it's a little less boring.  And I can at least say 'I tried'.  Though the comfort of that declaration is perhaps overrated and I certainly feel that the reassurance I derive from it fades with every passing day.

August, money and Madonna

August has set in as a mean and nasty month determined to eliminate my savings by disrupting my timetable and encouraging everyone to stop work and suspend meetings so I don't get paid.  I knew this might happen but July lulled me into a false sense of security that nothing too bad would really occur.  Now I'm haemorrhaging meet-ees at a rate of knots and I'm getting little warning of it, so my timetable lies in tatters and my sleep pattern is screwed and I end up being exhausted as a result, even when I've had a little bit more sleep than usual.  

I even mistakenly finished a meeting almost half an hour early today and sent my meet-ee on her way ahead of time due to this lapse in brain function.  But she's not coming back till September now (or never) so I'll have time to get over my embarrassment.  I really am losing the plot due to all these re-arrangements.  I can't be trusted to know what day of the week it is, let alone what time I'm due to finish a meeting.

And to cap it all, I am in that stage of longing for things to get a bit easier because I've been so careful all month not to spend too much money and to keep accepting new meet-ees even at inconvenient times.  A month of doing this has ensured I can pay the rent, but little else.  This is just at a time when I am being reminded one way or another how normal people with disposable incomes live.  Those kinds of people could treat themselves to a flamboyant glass vase and some flowers to put in it, or some new underwear, shoes and bags.  Those kinds of people do not have to re-sew a gaping hole in the bag they've had for about three years, use old wine bottles as either candlesticks or vases (or both) and scrounge paper from their boyfriend's office from time to time because notebooks are getting rather pricey these days.  The same kinds of people do not need to worry about whether they've got enough money to take the metro a second time this week or if they've been hasty in thinking they could afford to try that pilates class with a friend on Thursday.

What a weight must be taken from your shoulders when none of those things are any great concern.  What great levity is theirs to be able to afford clothes from high street shops and not just charity shops (or 'boutiques', as the Swedish fairy godmother creatively calls them) and be able to go for a coffee and slice of cake afterwards.  Why is the fact that I am not one of those people and that I have no hope of ever being one of those people, unless I can radically change my career (and we all know how well that's been going over the last twelve years or so, don't we?) such a hauntingly troublesome, and indeed traumatic, thought for me?

In light of all of this, I did what I always do:  I did my aerobics to Madonna songs and pranced around like a teenager who's convinced she is Madonna (with a certain amount of flair, I might add...) and proved to myself that even if I'm a total failure, I can still do high kicks and fast turns and salsa dancing moves like a pro.  Don't say I'm not at least trying to stay fit as long as possible to, if nothing else, give myself a few extra years to pretend that there's still hope for me and my career aspirations yet.

A fool and his money may well soon be parted, but a fool and her pipe-dreams are, on the other hand, rarely prised apart.  At least not for long enough to prevent her from ever dancing to Madonna's very own divorce song, 'Til Death Do Us Part' (featuring expertly mimed reaction to being hit in the face [or 'contemporary dance interpretation' of] to coincide with the breaking glass sound-effect) again.