Fire (and other reasons not to sleep naked)

Last night I was awoken by someone ringing my bell and banging on my door as though the world were coming to an end.  It was about 2.30am and I had that initial 30 second process of thinking it was a dream and then realising that the noise was real.  Then I got a bit scared because someone banging loudly on my door like that means there's either a big emergency or someone is very angry.  Which is the more likely scenario?  Well, in this case, I noticed tiny reflected bits of blue light flashing near my window and I realised that this might mean the former instead of the latter.  The only slight problem in all this was that I wasn't wearing anything.

The evenings and late nights in Prague have been very hot lately, plus I was probably already experiencing some hormonal fluctuations that could raise my temperature. (No, not the menopause - I'm not that old.  At least, not yet.)  Thus, I had been sleeping naked.  Is that slutty?  Is it uncouth?  Or just sheer laziness?  Either way, I suddenly felt rather vulnerable.  There's nothing worse than the thought of big, burly firemen breaking down my door while I'm standing there starkers desperately scrabbling around for where I might've put my dressing gown.  Mind you, the thought of the irony of the building burning down now that I've got 3/4 of my stuff out of here because I'm moving out in three days did kind of make me smile in a totally 'back of my mind and only requiring 3% of my attention' kind of way. 

I took a look out of the window and saw a fire truck and a police car ("oh dear, that means it's potentially quite serious," ran through my head...) and I finally found my dressing gown and put on some knickers and opened my flat door to see what kind of situation we were dealing with.  There was no-one there.  But there was a distinct smell of smoke.  And a fuzziness to the black of the night.  In a stroke of spectacularly bad timing, the hallway lights have recently stopped working so the only way to see your way down the stairs is to take your mobile with you and hold it like a torch to see the stairs, so it wouldn't be a case of a quick dash outside.  On the other hand, that also meant I couldn't see much to tell if it was a serious fire or not.  I couldn't see any flames.  Which was a good start.

Nonetheless, I felt pretty scared from the shock of being woken up so rudely and the fire truck outside looking so ominous, so I went into panic mode, grabbed and put on some proper clothes, which turned out to be a pair of leggings and a top and then the dressing gown on top because I still couldn't find any jumpers and my long coats are in the cowboy's flat now already, and put on some shoes, grabbed my handbag and ventured out of my flat (locking the door behind me - why did I do that?) and used my mobile to see my way down.  I didn't encounter anyone on the stairs (thank god, because I didn't really fancy trying to talk to a bunch of old ladies in my dressing gown, asking in Czech if it was serious or not having had a sum total of 2 and a half hours' sleep) and I couldn't see any kind of flames, definite source of smoke or, for that matter, any burly firemen.  (Sod it, I know I should say, "firefighters" but this is the Czech Republic and one thing they do really well is sexism, so there really weren't going to be any firewomen and if there's a f**king fire, then, quite frankly, I'm past caring about being PC.)

I got as far as the ground floor and looked out of the windows and saw a few strands of mobile phone light to accompany mine in the distance but nothing else.  Still no discernible smoke source and only faint, hazy smoke inside.  There were no loudspeaker announcements, no hurried rush of inhabitants and above all, no fire.  So I kind of decided not to bother wandering outside to talk to the firemen and or residents because I must've looked frightful anyway and I had had enough of this stupid drama.  I decided that if it were serious, there would have been someone shouting, 'get out' (in Czech) by now.  And there hadn't been.  And nothing had escalated into major drama in the time it had taken me to get dressed and figure out what on earth to do, so it couldn't be that serious anyway.

So I just went back upstairs.  I looked out the window again to see how things were progressing with the fire truck, but there were no firemen rushing in with hoses and no queue of residents lining up from what I could see, and as the police car drove off, I realised this was probably all some kind of over-reaction from a little old lady who'd smelt smoke and panicked.  I also realised how utterly rubbish I was at reacting sensibly and calmly under these circumstances.  I'd had the sense to throw on some clothes (by then it was infact a little bit chilly outside) and take my handbag with me, but where was my sensible reaction of grabbing my laptop and harddrive?!  Good god, what was wrong with me?  I would have lost everything without those two items.  My brain had totally shut down on that front and I had wasted precious seconds wondering where my nightie that I hadn't even been wearing was.

I suppose that's where the firefighters would have actually helped if we had really been in danger as they'd've told us all to grab a coat and get out and then I could blame them for not giving me time to think to get my laptop.  Which I now know, that on 2 and a half hours' sleep I didn't even manage independently, with a fair amount of time.  Thank god I didn't bump into anyone though.  I'd've felt so stupid.  It's kind of funny, I suppose, how much scarier everything feels at 2.30am when you're in a foreign country and don't even know how an evacuation procedure would be worded.  I still feel embarrassed at the idea of being sleepily undressed and wandering about looking for knickers like some floozy when at any moment a uniformed Czech guy could have been about to ram down my door.  Especially as just across the road there are people getting paid for that kind of thing as part of a night's work.

Incompatibility, fantasy and time travel - (two days for the price of one!)

There was a hint of autumn in the air on Friday.  Not in the temperature, like the chill in the air that came about a couple of weekends ago, but in the appearance of the landscape.  The sky was cloudy but it was still warm.  Hot infact, despite Thursday night's storm.  

As I walked back up the hill from Václavske náměstí I noticed the yellow leaves all across the path of the little park by the museum and they were still being blown off the tree as a gust of wind pushed them right towards me.  

It was strange to see that without the accompanying cold feeling.

There's something about the onset of autumn that kind of scares me even though I am a winter baby and I have better winter and autumn clothes than summer ones.   I think it must be to do with both the sense of horror of that 'back to school' feeling that has somehow never left me and also that dread of the dark mornings that are worse here because everyone starts work at 8am and getting up at 6am is distinctly worse than getting up at 7am.  Particularly when the nature of my type of work usually dictates working evenings too, so there is no corresponding end of the working day at 4pm to compensate for the early starts.  Which I hate.  I really don't do well on 6 hours' sleep.

Maybe it's also the reality of the fact that September, October and November don't bring anything to look forward to.  Funds are so low that I can't plan a really sumptuous evening meal out somewhere I can dress up for.  Maybe it's partly because the cowboy doesn't know how to savour anything.  When I do make an effort to buy a nice bottle of wine for us and a good film to watch, for example, he gulps down the wine in a bid to finish it because it's Saturday night and the next evening we'd be driving back to Prague.  (And on Friday nights we're just too tired from all that 'only 6 hours' sleep a night' problem.)   He somehow doesn't think it's safe to put the cork back in and bring the rest of the bottle back with us.  So he always wants to finish it off, whereas I'd rather savour it and enjoy sitting on the sofa with him, relishing a quiet moment of peace and a bit of a romantic atmosphere.

But maybe it's been my fault that I haven't managed to find good enough films to watch that suit his taste.  Or maybe it's because the flat is missing the black shiny piano and soft woollen throw for the sofa that would make me feel truly welcome.  Maybe I just want too much.  Or we're just too different.  For example, he never listens to music except in the car, is always (almost constantly in fact) watching TV and he likes to wear super-casual clothes for walking in, while I like dressing up a bit.  Except, even when I do have an opportunity where he would want me to dress up, he always finds something that's not posh enough about me.  Like my shoes are a bit too scuffed or I haven't had my hair cut in over 6 months because I can't afford it.  Or the posh dress I'm in is the same one he's seen me in before because I never have enough money to spend on clothes and certainly never on a really good dress.

I think it's really the lack of piano that makes all the difference.  Then I'd put on a posh dress and heels and drink red wine and play my heart out all night.  Until the cowboy realises that the heels are damaging the wood floor as I'm pedalling at the piano and orders me to take them off.

----

Saturday:

The thing about the homogenisation of shopping areas, cafe chains and department stores is that you now can't tell where you are at first glance.  Everywhere looks the same.  I could be in London, Prague or even Chicago.  (But for the missing American flags that would be the one main difference in the latter.) And in some cases, you can't tell when  you are.  In the Czech Republic, for example, the clothes store C&A never went bankrupt, so I can sit in a generic coffee chain cafe and look across at the C&A shop front in this shopping mall and this could even be London, circa 1998.  Somehow there are things my brain is willing to take on as true, when logically they cannot be.  This cannot be 1998.  And no matter how many times my brain half-sees it, ex-partner cannot be the next older guy coming around the corner.  He's not here.  He doesn't even live in Prague.  He doesn't love me anymore.  He doesn't even look like him anymore.  Not the him I knew.  That version of him has gone and been replaced by a body double with a few more years behind him, an earring and a bunch of tattoos I'm not convinced make him look edgy and rock 'n' roll, but rather more 'sailor dude'.

So why does my mind trick me like this and imagine him being about to pop in and find me after he's just been to get something in another shop? It's as though my brain is capable of erasing the last 4 or so years and can just take me back to the beginning of 2008 when things still had a chance for improvement.  A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.  I must confess, I still try to buy bottles of wine from 2008, as though doing that might supplant me into a better, more optimistic time and space.  And yet I know, deep down, that our relationship could never be absolutely right.  Even one that caused me to feel, as Alina Reyes puts it in her book, 'When You Love, You Must Depart', "I know that I love him because with him I have fun.  A simple walk in town becomes a real party, the world is a universe overflowing with dreams to be realised, with people and places that are either extraordinary or infamous, but never unimportant, with him everything is funnier and larger than life, with him, everything, everything is better", wasn't enough.  It was a relationship that cut me off from some quite important things.  And towards the end, it did not make me feel the above scenario at all.

But neither does being with the cowboy.  I don't normally feel that places are transformed when I am with him.  They are simply the same.  Sometimes they even feel more restricted because of him.  Sometimes however, on a rare special occasion that no-one planned, we find in the midst of a totally uninspiring location, that we can have a good laugh about something within our experience that takes us away from the drudgery, that transports us from the mundane world surrounding us and reminds us that we are not trapped here.  That we can go home and have a laugh or get on a plane and hire a car and drive across a foreign country and muddle through together pretty well and at least still be alive by the end of it.  He and I haven't had a lot of laughs lately, that's true, and I have been having a prolonged bout of homesickness for London as well as, strangely, for New York and Chicago, but there was that one redeeming moment last night when I felt like the place we were in was better and less damning because of our being together and I would never have wanted to be there alone.  And that's got to count for something.

Banks, boxes (yes, again) and other bothersome things

A whole day of packing.  Oh joy.  My break from it all is aerobics and Pilates.  Hmm.   That's not strictly speaking what I'd put in the 'fun' category...  Well, on Monday night I did have the luxury of going out for a meal with the cowboy.  Even though it felt as hot as Las Vegas that day.  Reports say it was something stupid like 38 degrees..!  No wonder I made pretty slow progress with packing that day.

I don't think the cowboy really realises what's involved in packing your things up and putting them all into boxes.  Especially when you're self-employed.  I'm not just packing up my home.  I'm packing up my office too.  Which means reams and reams of papers to sort through and files to organise as well as books and photo albums and clothes and stationery things to put into boxes.  (Preferably labelled boxes so I can find it all again.)  Thankfully, it was a stormy night last night and the temperature in Prague has dropped a bit, but it's still very hard work to get through the day with no air-conditioning.

It's hard to deal with all of the bits and pieces from the past as well and I don't like having to decide which letters and cards and things to keep.  By and large I'm being quite ruthless and just chucking everything out unless I really use it, but I'm not so good at being ruthless with pictures.  I have a big box of pictures alone.  I need to cut back on those.  My trouble is, I haven't grown out of the teenage habit of sticking pictures up on the wall with blu-tack.  So I can hang on to pictures easily, knowing I will indeed put them up on the wall again and change them over every few months.  I'm also somewhat disheartened by the number of files of boring admin type stuff like bank account info, tax forms and accounting things in general.  How is it possible that these things can take up so much room when I've got virtually no money in those damned accounts anyway?  Isn't it preposterous?

I actually had a very funny letter from the bank here the other week.  My Czech bank has decided that I am a "valued customer" because I have been with them two years and so they want to invite me to come into a branch and...collect a free photo frame.  Wow.  That's got to be one of the lamest rewards a bank could give out.  This is a bank who charge me a fee for every little transaction I have to make including standing orders and direct debits, cash machine withdrawals, phone top-ups and so on.  And the best they can do is a free photo frame that I actually have to go in to collect?  What is the world coming to?  I know the Czech Republic isn't exactly renowned for its customer service skills but this is just ridiculous.  I would feel less disgusted with them if they hadn't offered me a measly photo frame but had announced instead that they were stopping all the fees on my current standing orders.  Obviously, I am not that "valued" a customer afterall.  

I'm wondering why I'm bothering to carefully pack my things up anyway.  I fear the cowboy will either have a heart attack when he sees how much stuff I have or will have an almighty fit of rage at me at some point that this is all too much and just throw it out of the window.  He's never had to do this, so is unfamiliar with the concept that moving house is incredibly stressful, fraught with emotional consequences and generally takes a long time to do.  He was hoping we could take the majority of boxes over to his tomorrow night so that I would be free to help him finish putting up some doors on cupboards in his flat in the mountains for him this weekend.  When I mentioned that this was the last weekend I would actually have before having to officially be out of my flat, he said, "What, you're STILL going to be packing things?"  As though during the final weekend before moving out it is actually possible not to still be packing things. 

I don't know what planet he was born on, but it's obviously not the same one as me.  I come from a place where if something is an ongoing problem, you just grit your teeth and see it through to the end.  You don't try to pretend it's not happening and run off for a weekend in the mountains.  You might run off round the corner for a much needed frappuccino and chocolate muffin from time to time, but that's different.  The good news there though is that I just got a voucher for a free frappuccino whenever I next fancy one for filling out a questionnaire online about the behaviour and service of the staff on my most recent 'visit'.  

I don't think I was particularly complimentary about the staff because in fact, that day I had not had a particularly great experience with them, because they've got into that habit of asking your name and writing it on the cup (which I find a bit irritating) and I insisted on checking her spelling of my name, because I told her in Czech and I wanted to be sure that she'd understood my pronunciation, and she looked at me like I was wasting time.  But I figured it was already wasting time to write everyone's name on the damned cups in the first place, so you may as well spell it right, you know?  But anyway, it doesn't matter.  I still have a freebie waiting for me thanks to my diligence as a customer who fills in questionnaires.  Hmm.  I should become a customer service advisor.  Or consultant.  A customer service consultant.  That sounds better.  More scope to be an arrogant arse with the title, 'consultant'.  I'm sure I'd be ever so good at it and I'd at least give people actual value for money rewards for their custom.  Free coffees from cafes.  And, accordingly, free money from banks.  Not photo frames.

Boxes, boredom and being boiling hot

I'm living like it's mid-2008 today.  After such a tough weekend I decided to treat myself and do something I rarely do - go out and buy myself lunch.  And not just from Tesco but actually go around the corner and across the road to a coffee chain place and get whatever I fancied, which meant three things instead of just a coffee and one thing to eat.  This feels like the sheer reckless spending others delighted in, in 2008 before the financial meltdown.  My sister is quite capable of doing this without huge guilt even now, but I am having to battle the voices of my childhood that tell me this is a terrible waste of money and something that could have been obtained for a fraction of the cost if only I'd made the chai tea latte myself and made the sandwich, not bought it.  But I feel so happy to have been able to just pop out and take a bunch of recycling things to the recycling banks and then come back via the cafe.

What sheer abundance it is to have such a treat in the midst of this otherwise dreadful state of affairs.  Just look at it.  

Boxes and papers and files everywhere.  I feel worn out already and I've barely done anything today.  Just looking at this pile of stuff to do would be enough to make anyone want to crawl under a duvet and hide though, I think.  But I must persevere.  Despite the continuing Prague heat.

I have found things as I've gone along that I decided to document.  Like this diary cover I made for my appointments diary for 2010:

And the very old pic of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore I put on the inside cover of it:

(I don't know why, I think I just liked the juxtaposition of his nordic-like blonde hair in contrast to her practically black hair and the fact that they possibly don't even like each other anymore, which is somehow sad, but god knows why I care) along with a copied picture from one of those silly-sweet postcards you can buy in Ryman's.

And I've had to take down from the wall the inspirational page from a magazine that got me longing to see San Francisco:

The cowboy is meant to be popping round tonight.  We're at that 'year and a half' stage in our relationship now, and I think he's getting a bit bored of me.  He's probably glad I'm around now and then, but mostly, the day-to-day drudgery of his job and the lack of funds situation I continually find myself in means he's less than inclined to come and see me unless it's really convenient.  Like if he can stay over and get up later tomorrow morning before walking to work from here, which saves him a bit of time to get him about 15 minutes' more sleep in the morning than usual.  Except this evening he's only going to come and see me before heading back home because I'm on the way to the metro station anyway and tomorrow he's got to get to a meeting in České Budějovice.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he calls and says he's too tired and goes straight home instead.  To be honest, I'm feeling especially tired myself.  It's just so boiling hot, it's exhausting.  Perfect weather for lazing on a beach, not so great for packing up boxes and trying to concentrate on what needs to go where.

It's funny how you get used to things being quite nearby here in Prague.  It becomes an arduous journey if it takes longer than half an hour.  Which, of course, is ridiculous.  But this is coming from the city where there's no direct metro link back from the airport to the city.  You have to take a bus.  (How provincial.)  So travelling to the airport feels like you're leaving the boundaries of Prague anyway because you have to go to the end stop on the green line metro and then take a 20 min bus journey to the airport that makes a fuss about the disctinction between Terminal 1 and 2 but the two are so close together that you can walk from one to the other within 10 minutes and without leaving the building anyway.

Back in London, people get used to the fact that if you want to see a friend at their house, you'll probably have to travel for an hour and a half because they'll be right the other side of London or at least on another tube line, so you'll have to head for the centre and then change.  Here, I've become totally complacent and want to stick to meetings with people based near stations on the same line or preferably in the centre anyway, so I can just walk there.  And everyone here forgets the letter of the line they're referring to, and just says "the red line" or "the green line" and it's funny because I thought that would make you stand out as a tourist.  Like, calling the Hammersmith and City Line 'the pink line' would if you said it in London.  Everyone would know what you meant, we'd just all be snobbish about it and know that you were a foreigner or at least 'non-Londoner' from your having said that.  But here, it's fine.  People who've lived here for years still say, 'the yellow line'.  And there are only three metro lines in total, so it's not as if it's hard to learn.

Motorbike chick

The thing about being the passenger on the back of a motorbike is, that you don't have to do much.  It's blissfully easy to just snuggle up into the seeming slipstream of the line of air flowing around you that has already had to go around the driver, so you just keep in behind it and you're fine.  At high speeds, it can be harder work to keep aligned and pull your head forward against the G-force, but to all intents and purposes, you have to just focus on not moving out of that alignment, otherwise the force would be much greater and threaten to pull you off altogether.  But it's such fun.  And I somehow feel that inside the helmet I feel so enclosed and my mind is so focussed on keeping tucked in, that I hardly think about the danger of it.  It feels like I'm cocooned.  It doesn't feel like I'm exposed at all.  Exposed to the elements, somewhat, yes, but in my own little sphere of protection.

It's a pretty damned fine bike though, I must admit.  

I'm rather chuffed at having been able to be a passenger on it.  It's certainly slick and fast and cool-looking.  And I got quite enamoured with the 'motorbike chick look' I sported as well.  Though the jacket is too big for me, it's all we've got for now.  

And I don't care that I look like an American footballer in it.  [And I love decapitating myself with the crop tool!  It's like a Halloween Simpson's episode thing to do!]  I had the honour of being dropped off just outside my flat last night and I hopped off, took off my helmet and swished my imaginarily loose long hair (it was tied back in plaits actually, but I can pretend...) and felt so superior.  Even as I walked up to my flat, carrying the helmet and gloves with me, I enjoyed my moment of feeling cool as I glanced at the former-hotel of sexual horrors across the road and wondered how the girls there feel 

about having to fake being interested in dancing for/sleeping with some horrid man, almost certainly a tourist, for a mere 1000Kc or something.  I bet they'd rather be driven off into the sunset on a CBF 1000 Honda.

The choice that wasn't

I just re-read a bit of one of my posts and had to correct a really stupid spelling mistake.  I had written, 'a line or too', when I of course meant, 'a line or two'.  There I was, feeling pleased that even if my content is boring, it's at least well written and a high standard of English, but no.

I am writing this on the eve of a trip on the cowboy's new motorbike to stay in his flat 'in the mountains' (or rather, in that tiny town near the mountains - believe me, if you live in the Czech Republic for a couple of years, you get sick to death of hearing the expression, "in the mountains") and celebrate his birthday.  I'm quite pleased with myself for the presents I've managed to get him, including one or two extra special surprises, so I hope he'll be pleased.  

He helped me by taking some boxes of things last night, in anticipation of the big move.  Having seen places that have only made my heart sink, and nothing else coming up that's a good fit for me and my bank balance, I think by default I've decided I have to move in with him.  Some could argue this is a choice, but I still feel the "choice" between spending money I don't have to move back to stay with family in a small town in the UK or spending money I also don't have to move in with family in the US versus staying here and spending no money isn't so much a "choice" as a realisation that this is what my budget will allow and that's that.

As A A Milne so delightfully put it, when it comes to my money in my bank account and my so-called 'choice' about where to live, "the more [she] looked, the more [it] wasn't there."

Sunset, signs and sighing

I'm feeling a rather tired and somewhat despondent today.  I keep sighing.  I must remember, that in the same way that the cowboy has a choice, (he can focus on how old he feels this weekend and moan about it, or he can appreciate my being there to celebrate his birthday with him and the presents I've got him) I've got a choice about how I see this period of my life.  I can focus on how much I'm losing, or I can focus on the nice little moments I'm having because of being forced out of my flat to go and look at other flats or go and contemplate how to handle packing up all my things.  I have managed to enjoy some lovely walks lately, not least the walk to a flat in Žižkov yesterday.  The place didn't fill my heart with joy and I'm concerned it would be super-freezing cold in winter, but I suppose it's still an option.  Nonetheless, I got to see a part of Prague that at this time of year feels very mediterranean.

The sunset as I walked there was lovely.  The view of hlavní nádraží as I walked all the way past it was sort of bitter-sweet but beautiful against the pinky-orange sky.  The glass of wine I had when I got there and we got chatting about the flat (a friend's flat, as she's moving out in September) was also rather enjoyable.  And the walk back up Italská on my way back to the incredible area of Prague I live in, that I am most fortunate to still inhabit, was really soothingly wonderful too.  It just makes me all the sadder to have to leave here.  Perhaps though, the heat and my resulting tiredness is a way of anaesthetising me to the worst of this so that I can stay calm and still get on with things without truly losing the plot.

One minor problem is that I can't get a response from my landlady about the terms of leaving and I really need to establish this to know for sure what my remaining options are.  Maybe she's on holiday in blissful, remote peace and quiet while I stew about how I'm going to handle all of the stress that lies ahead.  Either way, I need to just try to hold tighter to the reins of self-care that I must take to get me through this and make the most of every opportunity to go for a walk in this area while I still can, as it gentrifies before my very eyes with the new Starbucks 

and a soon to be built Costa coffee 

and a certain 'je ne sais quoi' about the vibe of the area in these late summer balmy evenings.   What do I have to do to prove I'm cool enough to still live in this area?  I guess that's actually a no-brainer - obviously all I have to do is wave the right amount of money under a landlord's nose in cash and that would solve everything.  I just don't have that kind of money, though, unfortunately.  Who knew writing and singing and helping people to learn how to say things in English were not lucrative professions?  If only I'd been warned....

And to think I even went to an interview today, in a desperate attempt to see if there's any hope in being able to generate enough money to be able to eventually come back and live in this area.  What a fool I was.  They don't pay enough, want tonnes of proof that I'm super-good at what I do before they'd even begin to pay enough (minimum of a 3 month wait, she said) and they expect me to give a damn about them when they didn't even bother to click on the links in my email signature to find out more about me when I applied to have worked out that she was expecting a female candidate today, not a man?!  Sorry babe, you scratch my back; I'll scratch yours, that's how it works.  I was interviewing you as much as you were interviewing me and that not checking out my other work by clicking on a simple link means you just FAILED the test, babe.  Na shledanou!

How to learn a foreign language

1) Believe Saffy from Ab Fab when she explains that when it comes to learning a language, "you just have to learn it.  It doesn't just happen because you wear the right shoes or smoke the right cigarettes."  

2) Find an online publication in that language that has a really short horoscope and sit and read it with a dictionary every day.  Jot down some of the recurring words about work, feelings and relationships or any other things you're most likely going to want to be able to discuss.

3) Find a good teacher, get lessons, pay him or her well, do your homework, show up on time and generally stick at it.

4) Indulge your inner child by reading children's stories in that language.  If these are too hard and based on old-fashioned language, find translations of children's books you already know and read them in the new language.  Sometimes it's even more amusing than the original. 

5) Listen to the radio, songs and any free podcasts you can get on topics you are interested in in that language and even if you still barely speak a word and only understand about 5% of it, listen for the words you DO know and repeat them to practise the pronunciation whenever you hear them.

6) Find some online flashcards with audio that give you some basic vocabulary or basic verb charts that you'll need to know.  (If you're a total beginner, start with the obvious - 'to be', 'to have', 'to go' etc and then you'll have learnt the hardest ones, because the most common verbs are usually the most irregular.)

7) Repeat and continue.

P.S. Going out with a friend and having a couple of drinks and then speaking in that language for a while also works quite well.  You tend to hesitate less and 'go for it' with the language you do know, which is much better than stumbling along slowly, trying to find the correct ending in your head before you come out with anything.

Laziness, creativity and a "showpark"

How I love these kinds of Sundays.  The flat I love all to myself.  Books and magazines and online newspapers to read.  

A big empty bed to lounge on.  My laptop playing Ab Fab episodes.  Chilled water with lemon.  My leather bound journal and lots of post-its.  Bliss.

Add to that the thought that it is 29 degrees C here and yet in London it's cold, cloudy and rainy (as usual) and I just know I don't want to be anywhere else.  Nor do I ever want to move back to London.  Who would?  It's vibrant, yes, but expensive, takes ages and ages to travel across and it's almost always cloudy and damp.   I am so glad I don't live there anymore!  

My creativity is faltering, however, in this stifling heat, as my flat is somehow built to keep the heat in and opening the windows makes no difference.  I can barely think at this temperature.  And this being a former communist country, no-one believes in the super-flash expense of air conditioning.  Except in restaurants aimed at tourists, where they frequently get it a bit wrong, or at least, not quite right, by writing, 'air-condition' on the windows.  

I think that if they aren't going to go for air-conditioning as standard in flats here, then we should all be allowed to have a siesta between 14.00 and 16.00 because it's just too hot to get any work done.  Quite frankly, in this flat, between 15.00 and 18.00 is the hottest time, as that's when I have to put the blinds down because the sun comes pouring in and sends the temperature up by another couple of degrees.  

And there's something a little disconcerting about someone putting their blinds down in the middle of the afternoon.  Or there would be in England.  Except, now that the hotel opposite me has become a brothel known as "Showpark", I don't think anyone's going to give a damn.  Which is more likely to raise eyebrows, closed blinds on my side of the street at 4pm or red lights lining the windows opposite me at 7pm?  I suppose you can always rely on the sex trade in a recession, right?  One major financial crisis and the hotels shut down, bookshops become banks and sex shops and brothels make a killing.  Why is that?  

I suppose if I really wanted an answer, I'd be sure to find an economist across the road, taking a break from predicting a further downward financial trend in order to gaze at a future Czech porn star.

How to lose your head when all about you are keeping theirs and looking boringly normal

1) Read your favourite huge Sesame Street book when things get tough even though you're 35.

2) Draw butterflies everywhere and make butterfly pictures with Lentilky [Smarties] in an attempt to bring bright new beginnings in your life by focussing on the biggest transformation nature has provided.

3) Live in total denial of having to move out of your flat until the last minute, other than tentatively looking at a few flats and pretending you have enough money to rent them.

4) Tell yourself it's going to be ok, repeatedly and out loud so you are now not only totally lying to yourself, but talking to yourself out loud.

5) Wear glamourous high heeled shoes indoors for the sheer hell of it.

6) Shout at your boyfriend about how you have never wanted to live with anyone ever and you never wanted to do the conventional thing and have kids and that you just want a f**king career so that's why you're dreading moving in with him.  (This will give him all the proof he needs that you're a super-bitch and you'll feel really bad about it afterwards but by then it'll be too late.)

7) Refuse to acknowledge that you will have to do this stupid job you hate all your life because you cannot start accepting the outside truth about things or that would send your whole world crumbling around your feet.

8) Wear that black shorts jumpsuit thing with a pink scarf tied around your waist even though you know it makes you look fat and is particularly difficult to get in and out of when you want to go to the loo.

9) Go to your boyfriend's place for the weekend because when you're totally stressed out it's a super-duper time to be with someone with a short temper and you're a glutton for punishment at heart.

10) Drink cherry tea and eat cherry-filled chocolate and lust after cherry jam like there are no other flavours worth having in the whole world.

11) Forget that the washing machine doesn't go onto a spin when you put it on the 'wool' setting and open it to see a flood of water coming out because you forgot YET AGAIN that the machine lets you do that when it shouldn't and go berserk at it while gathering towels and cursing it at the top of your voice at 11.30pm when you should have finished doing the laundry by then anyway.

12) Go to bed at 20 past midnight and tell yourself you'll still be able to get up at 6.

13) Write a stupid blogpost about how insane you are just to list the evidence for future reference to the police who will surely find you in a heap on the floor in due course.

How to recover from being a tortured musician (particularly one whose career has totally failed to materialise)

1) Accept the situation you are in.

2) No, really, accept the situation you are in.  (Not the fantasy one in your head.)

3) Go through lots of therapy of all different kinds including CBT, psychotherapy, visiting a psychologist (like, for fun!) and working through a 12 step programme...in order to ACCEPT the f**king situation you are in!

4) Ask yourself what things you can enjoy right this minute such as, wouldn't if be nicer if I had a cup of chai tea and a piece of cake right now? Go get 'em.  And enjoy every delicious second of having them.  Live in this 'moment to moment' appreciation of everything, even if you're stuck in a traffic jam.  (Being stuck in a traffic jam gives you longer to enjoy listening to your favourite silly pop songs, right?)

5) Remind yourself of things you used to enjoy before music screwed everything up.  Painting?  Do some.  Writing?  Start a blog.  Dressing like a mad eccentric?  Put that pink lipstick on with that green and black striped top right now and don't forget the peacock feather earrings.  Or the tartan green and black shoes that you got for $9 on the Lower East Side.  

Work it!

6) Learn new stuff.  Such as a new language, a new profession, how to make a website, how to make interesting and informative videos, how to act in films (and then go and act in some) and if possible, find a way to make some money from it somehow.  Even if just by raising your rates because of this new-found extra skill.  (Or by putting a donate button on your website.  Not that I'm implying anything by that...)

7) Remind yourself of the kind hand of fate inherent in failing in obscurity rather than in public.  People like Britney Spears, Angus Deayton and Jacqui Smith had to do so in full tabloid splendour.  Be grateful you weren't one of them.

8) Change direction entirely with a new career.  Catherine Zeta-Jones tried a singing career (Remember? No, neither does anyone else) and was just dull.  But that didn't stop her, did it?  Al Gore certainly didn't sit at home sulking about losing the presidency even if he should have won, but got right on with another project.  Turn it around.

9) Listen to Kylie's "Things Can Only Get Better" as your pick-me-up song and, preferably do aerobics to it too, because working out will keep you strong and healthy and you'll need to be both if you want a second shot at things.  And leaping about to this feel-good pop track can only enhance the exercise endorphins.  In anycase, being fit makes you feel TONNES better because you can punch the air and do spectacular high-kicks like a 9 year old without instantly having to lie down.  Which is more than you can say for most [insert your own age here] year olds.

10) Watch Ab Fab episodes.  Repeatedly.   

If ever there were comfort in the schadenfreude of watching other total losers, it has to be multiplied by 100 in watching the characters Jennifer Saunders can create.  (And it always comes in handy to know a line or two that you can trot out at parties in a pitch-perfect Edina impression, such as, "Within the law?  Within the law?  Well what on EARTH is the point of having an accountant if he's within the law?!")

11) Write a big fat gratitude list.  What things are you really glad you have in your life?  (I.e. if it were taken away you'd really miss it.)  Note down everything you can think of including the little things such as that big fluffy cushion you love having on your bed, 

or having a gas cooker you can froth up milk for your coffee on, or the fact that you've only been doing Pilates for two weeks and already you've built up the stamina to get through the whole workout because you are pretty super-fit, actually.

12) Watch the first Sex and the City film and remind yourself of the affluent fantasy that everyone was happy to buy into in 2008, right before the financial crisis of the century started and know that even the highest paid, most effortlessly rewarded people on the planet (i.e. bankers and economists) get it spectacularly wrong at times, and hey, you haven't done so badly in comparison.  Alternatively, if you can't bear SATC (and who'd blame you, really) watch the Dutch film, 'Antonia's Line' and see how the ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs of life are all part of a much bigger picture.  [Favourite lines:  Genius kid: "Grandma, isn't it sad that nothing really exists?"  Grandmother: "That's why there's so much."...]

Finally, resort to the age-old British answer to everything and make yourself a cup of tea.  

And then get on with your life.