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.

Concorde and other marvels

I put up my old poster of Concorde flying past Manhattan in my bedroom today and somehow I've cheered right up.  It's probably superimposed and it's certainly a bit of a cliché, but there is something pure about the idea behind Concorde, however capitalist a symbol it is to have a picture of it flying over a very 80s-looking Manhattan.  The innovation that was Concorde shouldn't be forgotten.  Who'd have predicted a step backwards in aviation such as losing the possibility of getting from London to New York in 5 hours?  Progress is never constant.

Not that I would ever have been able to afford to fly in it though.  It was horrifically elitist, but I'm still glad that it existed; that some people were able to use it.  I wouldn't begrudge anyone that privilege.  It was just reassuring to know that it was something you could do, travel from London to New York so quickly.  You wouldn't lose anytime at all, flying in that direction.  New York is five hours behind London, so you'd get there at the same time that you left.  That must've felt like a kind of space-age time-travel in itself.

The fuel consumption was pretty astronomical though and I suppose one or two people in high places realised that there were more efficient ways of making money.  A Boeing 747 to name just one.  Get a few people to fly first class on that, and you're making a killing, surely?  This doesn't seem right in this day and age of climate change and global warming, but I've got a soft spot for aeroplanes.  They are undoubtedly extraordinary feats of engineering and harmony with the laws of physics.  Of which I know absolutely nothing, but that doesn't stop me from marvelling at them.  (And reminiscing fondly of the time I once got to fly a small one.  Not for long, and only at a safe height when the plane was virtually flying itself, but that's the point, really.  Get a plane to the right altitude and speed and it really is quite happy to fly itself.  That's what it's built to do.)