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

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

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

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

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

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

'Clueless-ness', coffee and communism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 'donate' button and other emotionally blackmailing things

It's a miserable day here in Praha.

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

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

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

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

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

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

£1.60 covers the extravagance of a hot chocolate instead

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

And if we're really pushing the boat out: 

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

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

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

The bitterest cow in Christendom

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

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

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

A run-in with the police

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little snippets from a Thursday

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

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

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

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

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

Autumnal chills

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

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

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

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

The Annual Czech 'Maintenance Vocab' Lesson

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

Lesson one:  Kitchen vocab: 

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

Sink = dřez

Lightbulb = žárovka

Cooker = sporák

Screw = šroubek

Greasy = mastný

Firmly = pevně 

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

Glue = lepidlo

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

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

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

The Inside Outsider

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me and camera three

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

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

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

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

Postal failures and other dramas

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

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

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

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

3) A month overdue edition of a monthly magazine

None of which appeared.

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

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

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

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

Last call for summery shoes and acts of selflessness

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

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

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

Sweet Little Something Else

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

Support Lesbiens:  'Sweet Little Something'

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

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

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

Fashion, freaks and frivolity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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