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!

Starbucks, being a loser and a 'how to'...

I have decided on a theme for blogposts this week, in a sort of attempt at trying to spice things up a bit, as a cunning distraction from the current turmoil in my life. (More on that topic later...) 

As if to make matters worse in my desperate grief over having to leave my lovely flat, I discovered today that a Starbucks cafe has just opened up almost directly opposite Paul's bakery around the corner.  It's as though it wanted to point out to me how much this area is gentrifying and I am now too much of a loser to live here.  

I have resolved that if no new meet-ees respond to the many adverts I've put up over the last couple of months in the next week then I will have to accept that I do not have enough money to afford to move into another flat on my own and I'll have to move in with the cowboy.  Which fills me with dread because I need lots of support when I'm losing something as significant as my privacy and work and living space all at once.  I need extra support if I'm forced to move to a more suburban area too, which his flat is in, and all this means that I will have to run away for coffees rather a lot because the cowboy is not at his best when he has to be the kind, understanding, patient and supportive person in the relationship.

Enough.  I shall get to the point.  This week's blog post theme shall be...(drumroll) a series of 'how to' articles.  Starting with today's mini-'how to' with a stupidly long title:

'How to survive going to your boyfriend's friend's birthday party in a foreign country where you still don't speak the language very well and everyone is the same age as you but they act 10 years older and all have kids:'

1) Play up your posh British accent by exclaiming, "oh gosh, wow!" when tasting and almost choking on the 'vodka melon' pieces that were passed to you that you didn't really want.  This provides great amusement for everyone else, which means they won't hate you (yet)

2) Speak the foreign language in question so slowly that anyone who sits next to you and starts a conversation regrets it within minutes and uses their child as an excuse to have to abruptly get up and go somewhere else

3) Pretend you like cooking your own food while out at a party and grill some big fat sausages over a fire on a stick just to 'join in'

4) Keep your mouth shut and fake not having understood when an ill-informed guest asks your boyfriend how he met his wife (meaning you) and the thought makes you want to exclaim very loudly, "I'M NOT HIS WIFE!!"

5) Be enormously grateful when you get home that you don't have a bunch of screaming kids who'll wake you up in the morning and take advantage of this by having a 'recovery lie-in' till 10am the next day

Uh, that's it.