¿Qué?

Oh the joy of having two grown men in my room, standing around and looking at me, expecting me to communicate efficiently in Czech...

Yet again, my flat has had to be invaded by more strangers - this time it was a cleaner, a guy who looked a bit like an old and worn-down version of Manuel from Fawlty Towers, but with no trace of a Spanish accent.  He came with his pimp, sorry, I mean, 'agency supervisor' who attempted to hold a conversation with me while 'Manuel' seized a moment of extra sunshine to see if it would be possible to clean the windows on the outside without them freezing.  (If you saw the photos of the view through my window that was as murky as the window itself, you can imagine the grime that came off it as it was cleaned...I felt supremely embarrassed.)  When it was done, they were so clean you hardly knew there was a window there.  All I could say was:

„Ty jo!”

„¿Qué?”

Oh sorry, that means:

"Wow!"

The other shock to the system that took hold today, is that it's bloody freezing outside!  The temperatures have finally dropped to what a normal Prague winter would dole out, and they are meant to drop even more.  So I must prepare myself for -10 degrees celsius by the end of the week. (¡Qué va!)  Which is all well and good, but I just feel there should be some kind of winter bonus for people like me who have to traipse across town on foot at 6.30am.  

I'm so close to quitting that particular meet-ee...Except I can't afford to.  I absolutely have to find a way to save up enough money for airfare to the US.  The architect has decided he definitely wants to do the 'road trip across America' thing, meaning a 3000 kilometre car ride from Chicago to San Francisco in three weeks.  Or maybe a month.  Which begs the question, how the hell am I to save up about £600 in the space of two months, and then take a whole month off and manage to pay the rent?  Are you kidding me?

„¿Qué?”

I don't see any Princes or Sheikhs offering to pay me to write my own travel guide, all expenses paid, so I'm not sure how this miracle is supposed to happen.  [Note automatic conversion to US English already there.  In Britain we say 'can't see'...]  Especially when I really had wanted to save money to set up my own sparkly new website and I wanted to hang back on the 'taking on tonnes of meet-ees' thing, to see if some writing work would fill the space....

So perhaps I'll cling to the hope that if I manage to find the money to go, maybe there'll be a surge of demand for the travel writing that comes out of it.  Let's go with that scenario for now.  I'll give Simon Winchester a run for his money yet.  And if that doesn't materialise, I'm going to learn Spanish from Sesame Street, emigrate to Mexico and live a life of crime for the rest of my days.  

¡Qué va!

*Disclaimer:  Please note that the very limited usage of Spanish in this blog post was in no way intended to offend, rebuke, displease or humiliate anyone from a Hispanic background, or any resting comedic actors who happen to have an affinity with playing characters who speak Spanish.  No implication of linguistic ability with regard to Spanish should be derived from this, as I am about as Spanish as Jonathan Ross.  Unfortunately.

Thirty-five

A little hint of fun, the soft scent of sadness, 

A little quiet, some predictable madness.

A soft and small world, a kind of open prison

A tentative optimism, a certain careful decision.

Red roses already, ensures no disappointment,

A great self-reliance, no expected appointments.

A beautiful vase, a selection of accessories,

A surprise leather notebook, no further necessities.

First words in the morning from new partner's own lips

First text in the morning, from ex-partner's fingertips.

A top on its way - a new friend's gift

Something difficult to say - a new family rift.

A late night silence, a fresh kettle boiled

A new headphone appliance, a music-lover spoiled.

A Sesame Street book- an old birthday present,

An old Barry White hook, a sad birthday lessened.

A trick of the light or a fantasy blurred?

A Mexican night, but tummyache stirred.

A few margaritas, a sleepiness found,

An old señorita, to her ,,cama" bound....

Looking after myself and birthday blues

Tiredness is getting the better of me, but I'm glad I had a lie-in this morning and forced myself not to work today.  Coincidence has meant I might not see my boyfriend for more than half a day on my birthday (it's a bit of a chunky one this year) which is tomorrow, due to the fact that he's got extra work to do today and on Monday morning to try to secure a new job.  But this not only comes at the same time as my 35th birthday, but also at a time when I've been unable to avoid frequent thoughts of ex-partner as well as my sort of homesickness for west London. 

I've recently picked up a couple of bits of writing work and begun to open my mind a bit in a 'fake it till you make it' way about the possibility of one day having a proper budget for things like clothes - something my sister has never gone without, but I've done for years.  Which has only made me miserable.  The contrast with yesterday, when I finally spent some leftover Christmas money was immense.  I bought a top I really wanted and some jewellery too.  Amazing.

Today I finally bought myself a big glass vase as well as some files to organise my work a bit better from now on and I bought myself some red roses too, so that when the architect fails to buy me any flowers at all, let alone the kind I like the most, I won't need to feel sad about it, as I'm doing my utmost to cover the shortfall.  Which is vital, in order to avoid the waves of grief and sadness that might otherwise drown me in seeing the depth of what's missing in this relationship, compared to one I know is possible for other people, so why not me?

Off to play the keyboard now to see which songs vie for attention now that I need music again somehow....

A Year On - That New Year Concert (minus the Bolero)

Flashbacks of old, familiar things are juxtaposed against the absurdity of sitting and writing at my Macbook in a Star***ks cafe, looking like everyone else who comes in here.  Except this time the woman opposite with the next generation-up Macbook is infact Czech.  This is very unusual.  I'm obviously hobnobbing with the glitterati of Czech society now.  Infact, now that I recall it, I will be this evening.  It's got round to that time again when the new year concert, sponsored by an electricity company, pass on tickets to certain employees and the architect and I have tickets to go to hear some Dvořák (of course) and a few other composer's pieces at the Rudolfinum.  This will require my dressing up and attempting to look posh when, just like last year, I have earned so little lately, that I still don't actually have a clothes budget.  

So this means choosing from three possible dresses, which are all I have for such formal occasions and opting for the nicest, most comfortable, least edgy one, which I've had for about 17 years.  Yes, seventeen.  What can I say?  It's hard to find dresses that suit me and when I do, it's best to cling on to it, as I never know when the incredible coincidence of having enough money to dare to step into a clothes shop and finding a dress that fits and suits me will come together in some miraculous stroke of synchronicity.

The concert itself turned out to be fine - nothing too exciting and thankfully, nothing to get upset about.  It was freezing cold there though, so looking elegant when I needed a cardigan and scarf to remotely keep warm was nigh-on impossible, but nevermind.  The food laid-on afterwards was rather lovely and so were the two glasses of red wine I had.  Followed by a much needed coffee and a mini-crème brulée.

All this does not, however, mean I have escaped thoughts of ex-partner lately.  On the contrary, my brain happily tortures me in my sleep with all sorts of stories conjured up with him as part of the plot.  My sense of homesickness does not seem to entirely be abating either, which seems very unlike me somehow, but there it is. 

Homesickness and attempts to run away

I never thought I'd actually feel homesick, but lately I've been ashamed to notice that I miss my Sunday lunchtime option of being able to pop to Portobello Road or a handful of charity shops and second hand places in and around Notting Hill.  I miss the overcrowded cafe I sometimes used to go to for scrambled eggs on toast or a pain au chocolat, and the bookshop around the corner where I found big Moomin books and other delights.

Of course, I also miss the company I used to have when I went on those little trips, although I sometimes went on my own too.  Maybe it's because of the enormous invasion of privacy I'm having to withstand at the moment due to builders marching in and out of my flat at will, to do more ,rekonstrukce' [renovation] but it feels more like 'deconstruction' to me.  It's been over two weeks now (the time they said it would take to finish was two weeks, so I can take comfort in the fact that my cynicism that this estimate would turn out to be a total lie was well-founded) and I'm fraying at the edges in every conceivable way.

I have no washing machine, no cooker, no sink (so I'm washing dishes in the washbasin in the bathroom) and I even had to clear my desk the other day so they could get to the holes they made in the walls to fill them in again.  Clear my desk?!  Are you mad?  There's stuff that hasn't seen the light of day since I moved in well over a year ago and you want me to clear it all up?!  Consequently it's not only my rooms that are in disarray.  My brain is probably starting to resemble the same walls that surround me now.  Momentarily it holds together, until the next unexpected quiet trickle of wall dust comes tumbling down onto the floor to remind me that all is not well...

So, I have endeavoured in this time of turmoil, to escape to cafes wherever possible.  First it was the old haunt of Palac Knih Luxor, full this time of Czech intellectuals and arty reminders of London suddenly and unannounced-ly on the wall:

Their hot chocolate is the best and cheapest in all Prague-dom though:

Then there was the resorting to a coffee chain place for the sake of free internet, but I was lucky to get the best spot to sit in with a good view out onto Vaclavák and the candles around the statue that are still commemorating Havel:

And then, today, I really had had enough of no hot food, constant drilling and dust everywhere as well as general lack of nice surroundings, so I hot-footed it to a tip-off of a bookshop cafe in Prague 1, which looked rather lovely on their website but was rather smaller and in the case of the bookshop, less well-stocked than I had hoped.  The cafe was good, however, and I was so grateful for a hot bowl of chilli and a safe place to sit and write on my laptop:

But I felt so tired and so low, I couldn't even face speaking to anyone, even though the people around me were all Americans or speakers of English no matter what their nationality and one very loud and confident Australian.  I somehow didn't feel any more at home there than in the Czech bookshop.  Perhaps even less so.  Infact, when it came to paying the bill, I was so confused by being able to speak in English again, I sometimes slipped back into Czech when it was totally unnecessary and I even tried to follow Czech conventions for paying the bill, which made the waitress think I was mad.  I felt like a lost lamb.

You see, this is what happens when you make a concerted effort to integrate yourself into a new society, a new culture, a new language.  If you try really hard, you can get used to all the right conventions and the right kinds of expressions for certain situations, but then, when you go somewhere that's a bit 'in-between' culturally (either an American bookshop or indeed somewhere like the French Institute) you can end up feeling utterly lost.  Nothing is quite right, things don't quite fit in and the thing that fits in the least is YOU.

So that's how I came home, in the uncharacteristically drizzly Prague rain, feeling utterly alone and without even a physical place to call home, as I got in and found the builders still finishing up, having done only a bit of painting and patching up, none of the hard work stuff, which they strongly assured me will all be finished tomorrow.  Somehow, I think this may be another lie and another opportunity for me to feel pleased that I am a total cynic and no matter what language you lie to me optimistically in, I'm not going to fall for it.  At least something's still intact, eh?

Unlike my flat:

Reasons to be ashamed of being British (the edited version)

Having dared to criticise Czech culture in my last post, I feel compelled to counter-act it with all the things I hate or feel ashamed about in British culture.  But that could take more than one blog post to do.  Thus, I shall compile a little list:

1) There is no tradition of good quality cuisine.  We just steal everyone else's.

2) We claim to be ever so polite but we merely moan and curse inwardly or pass comment, passive-aggressively while waiting in queues.

3) We don't applaud other people's success.  We merely go about finding as many ways in which that success was flawed, unmerited, the result of nepotism or outside help in order to undervalue the achievement in question.  In essence, we don't believe hanging out with successful people means that success will rub off on us, but rather that their success will deny us any chance of our own.

4) We have the worst public transport system imaginable.  It is overpriced and consistently so bad that we use the example of 'a long wait and then two buses coming at once' as a common metaphor for similar such agonising waiting in our careers / love lives etc.  We also brag about having a 'good service' by writing it next to a tube line when that tube line is, for a rare moment in time, not experiencing any delays or service limitations such as half the line not running for the whole weekend.

5) Our appalling record at speaking foreign languages.  Made worse by a government who now thinks it's ok to abandon learning languages at the age of 14.

6) Our despicable habit of referring to 'Europe' as though it's got nothing to do with us and is some entity 'out there somewhere' rather than a continent we are actually a part of.

7) Our abysmal recognition of the advantages of being a part of the EU and the consequent moaning about 'people coming over here and stealing our jobs'.  (If you bothered to learn another language, you could 'go over there and "steal" their jobs' if you wanted to.  That's the point.  We're able to share.  If you make the effort to open your mind to another culture, language and way of life.)

8) Our relationship with alcohol.  Everywhere we go in the world, the British reputation for drinking too much and consequently behaving atrociously precedes us.  The attitude that this is normal, is even worse.  Our language is full of expressions that are acceptable in social circles, even though they are all about being so drunk, you no longer had control of your own body.  Saying things like, "yeah I got so rat-arsed / wasted / pi**ed / wan**red / paralytic / slaughtered / plastered / s**t - faced" in a mock-embarrassed but really quite tickled by the idea way, shows just how acceptable it is in British society.

Don't even get me started on those who come to Prague for stag nights.  I would purposely cross the road to avoid walking alongside people like that.  I should be spending every minute of my day apologising to Czech people for this fact alone.  How dare such an ignorant nation as us Brits use a country for its cheap beer?

9) The British attitude to sport and music in schools.  It costs too much to teach properly and make enjoyable, so we just don't bother and leave it up to rich kids' parents to pay extra for these areas of education instead.  

10) I've saved the best till last: 

The British inability to say something directly.  Such as, "I'm not sure that's a good idea", when they mean, "Hell no!"  Or, "We really appreciate your application for this job but on this occasion we're unable to offer you anything", when what they mean is: "You are totally wrong for this job."  Or else, "I think I might have to cut back on our meetings for a while", when they mean, "I want to stop our meetings for good".  

Worse still is the extreme self-deprecation, ingrained from birth, that dictates you must override any compliment regarding your achievements with an explanation of how you're normally not that good, had help or copied someone else, or it was a total fluke, which really translates as, "Gosh, did you really think I was good?  That's amazing!  Tell me more..."  (If you seriously are that desperate for approval, for god's sake own up to it, show some maturity and say, "Thanks very much for the compliment.  I've been feeling really quite unsure of how much I could manage, so I'm pleased it went so well.")

With all of that off my chest, I can feel a little bit better about daring to criticise an aspect of Czech culture and assure you that I have been, and always will be, rather ashamed to be British.

Normality and other assumptions

In the midst of an incredibly stressful week due to impromptu renovation work in my flat, leaving me with a non-functioning toilet, I have begun to recognise one of the down-sides of a Czech quality that I had previously appreciated.  When I was meeting up with Czech friends back in London, prior to coming here, I used to be amazed and hugely comforted by the fact that whenever I was having a spectacularly difficult time and I needed to cry and talk it over time and time again, these kind Czech friends would say, "it's normal."  The kind of despair or ongoing battles I faced did not faze them.  With British friends, of whom I had very few, most were unable to tolerate too much of this bleak state and they were detrimentally affected by it.  Mainly because it frightened them.  If it could happen to me, maybe it would happen to them too.

Czech friends, on the other hand, displayed no such fear.  But the reason for that, I now realise is that they don't expect to avoid these kinds of pitfalls.  Czechs are always being told to expect things to go wrong.  That relationships probably will go wrong.  That you probably will live in abject poverty all your life.  That your skills and talents will more often that not,  count for nothing.  "It's normal."  And suddenly, there it is.  Something's wrong with this picture.  

Everyone knows life can be one hell of a struggle, most certainly, and a lot of people do get overlooked or miss out on great opportunities because they don't have enough outside support to be able to get beyond the time and energy involved in mere survival.  But to say, "it's normal" seems at least fractionally defeatist, not to mention desperately sad.  And so it is with this renovation work, that I find none of the builders sympathise with the fact that I work from home most of the time and this work is therefore very, very disruptive.  Nor have they considered the kind of stress (and the detrimental effects on my health this is causing) that not having a functioning loo in my flat will generate.  It is of course, a 'normal' consequence of living in an old block of flats.  Renovation was an inevitability I should not have expected to avoid or have any say in.  (Thank god my landlady is not typically Czech and has apologised for this terrible inconvenience and given me a key to another flat to be able to use the loo.)

Equally, when I stayed with the architect in his flat in the mountain town, having a hot water supply that ran out after both of us having a shower and doing one big amount of washing up, was 'normal' and I was accused of being a princess for expecting otherwise.  Hot water is a luxury, afterall.  Well, I can agree with that, having not had hot water for several weeks in previous places I lived in, in London.  That just means that I appreciate it all the more when there is hot water, and I like to be able to relish and enjoy it, rather than worry about its extremely limited supply.  The same goes for material things.  If you're brought up in a low-income family, there is often an emphasis on the virtue of being someone who can live without many of the commonly sought-after material things.  It becomes a noble attitude to be able to cut back and survive on very little and say things like, "we didn't have much, but we were happy."

Perhaps this notion is genuinely true for some, but for others, 'not having much' results in a battle to get as good grades as others who have the privilege of extra home tutoring, or those who have extra books and resources bought for them, to aid them in their studies.  This is not happiness.  There is no real pride in getting a 'B' grade and saying that it was, "good when you consider I did that without any help".  The music GCSE exam was a prime example of that.  In many schools, music education is an oddity.  You can pay extra for lessons on an instrument as an extracurricular activity but you can't get that kind of education as part of the free GCSE tuition alone, so that exam is one whereby the noble poor pupil with no after-school instrument teacher will get a low grade or even fail because having that extra-curricular teacher was a vital element in the others' capacity to pass the exam.  That's not happiness.

Nor is it happiness to be proud of not being affected by 'material things'.  If having a washing machine that works, having a kettle to make tea with, having a piano to write music on has no impact whatsoever on your level of contentment and ease with which you can conduct your life, not to mention the added joy you could derive from these things, then what kind of person are you?  What kind of person says that they are entirely unaffected by these types of things?  What kind of person is disinterested in having the choice between buying cheap, bad quality red wine and a spending a bit more for a decent bottle of Bordeaux because they are only interested in getting the lowest price?  Dare I say it, oh god forgive me, a Czech.  Or at least, a miserable, hopeless kind of Czech who's had the joy and hope knocked out of them on a regular basis.  The effects of a totalitarian regime do not die when walls come down and governments are changed.  The walls have already been formed in your head.  And those take far, far longer and an even more concerted effort to tear down.

I had one of these types as a meet-ee.  He really said it makes no difference to him having a computer and a washing machine and those kinds of things.  He wasn't grateful for them.  I suggested that he would be pretty annoyed if they suddenly broke.  And I'm sure he would be, though he's earning enough that he could simply replace them at the drop of a hat.  So the inconvenience might only last a couple of days.  And there are members of my family, with no such, "we lived through years of communism" for an excuse (though years of unquestioned Christianity might have had a very similar effect) who still buy cheap chocolate and don't think it's worthwhile spending more on getting something with more cocoa content than sugar in it, for a better taste and less damaging effect to one's health.  (Even the architect can tell the difference and would actually prefer the pricier stuff, so that's really saying something.)

I certainly feel a great deal happier when I do have functioning 'material things' in my life.  Access to a working loo within my own flat for one thing.  And I certainly enjoyed it when I used to have a piano to play loudly when everything else around me seemed doomed.  And today I'm grateful to have a warm new jacket to wear when it gets chilly, and a lovely new fluffy cushion to lean against and make the place feel homelier with.  All of these things bring or brought me comfort and happiness when I had them.  It is not noble to try to live without as though we're still living in a cold war.  I'm not in favour of wasting things, but nor am I in favour of not appreciating things when I do have them.  A life of drudgery and limited resources is not something I should accept and be content with.  It is NOT normal.

A sea of changes, an ocean of resistance and surprises from an old friend

I feel worn-out from a day in which I have sought to achieve more than was ever going to be possible, but nonetheless have made progress.  Much to the consternation of some.  It was always going to be difficult, having to put my foot down to some meet-ees and actually say, "no, this is not how it's going to be anymore."  I cannot afford to provide favours for all and sundry and keep my rates to an acceptably lowly 'female helping profession' kind of level any longer.  The saying, "no" part has come easier in many ways, than I expected.  Czechs prefer you to be clear, not wishy-washy so saying an outright, "I cannot continue with this" is preferable to, "I don't think I'm going to be able to continue" and is exactly what I needed to say.  This has by and large been accepted without quibble.  After all, a clear, "no" leaves no room for negotiation.

Asking for what I need from new, 'met-once but not established into the timetable' meet-ees has been a little bit harder.  So has asking for what I need from friends who thought they could have endless favours and fashionable amounts of freedom to come and go as they please.  But it is all necessary and worth it in the long run to actually clear my timetable of so many hours of dead time where I'm virtually drawing blood from a stone and barely getting paid enough to allow myself to eat and drink healthily that day.

So, enough is enough.  I'm being 'reasonable but firm' about what I can and can't tolerate.  And I'm trying to work around problems as they arise and see if I can knock down the most persistent and pervasive ones.  The next hurdle is another visit to the bank.  My favourite thing.  Camping out in an over-the-top affluent-looking waiting area with a fountain no less, waiting for my number to come up on a screen, not only makes me think I must have ended up on a stopover in bankers' heaven but makes me spit with fury at what nonsense they're spending my banking fees on.  If I spent my meet-ees fees on champagne and oysters, it would be close to the equivalent of this I suppose.  (Mind you, champagne and oysters would actually be rather nice and a definite 'pick me up' for my otherwise lethargic and melancholic state, whereas an indoor fountain and wood panelled 'pods' to either sit and wait on or stand and write at, offer no such succour.)

And so it is that I find myself at the end of this long and busy day of once again trying to achieve the impossible, sipping hot chocolate with coconut liqueur and marvelling at the surprises that have befallen me today.  Namely, a parcel I collected from the post office from the Russian Countess, containing a stash of chocolates, including a chocolate covered marzipan bar I had wanted to buy myself over Christmas but ran out of money for, some German champagne truffles, a lovely traveller's notebook and a card with sentiments expressing some unfounded belief in my achievements.  I can only stare in amazement at such luck and cherish the thought that there is someone out there who thinks that the work I do, the stuff that so far seems to have no commercial value whatsoever, is somehow highly significant and is revered by another creative soul.  That warms the cockles of my heart better than the hot chocolate.  And that is truly saying something because I'm becoming something of a hot chocolate fanatic these days.