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.
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