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.

10 Things To Get Me Through The Worst Week In January

It's already been a really teeth-pullingly tough week and it's only set to get harder.  A kind of 'searing earache and simultaneous bitterly-cold-blizzard' kind of harder.  So, to prepare myself, I thought I should make a list of things that have been and may continue to help me through:

1) The remaining chocolates from Christmas.

2) Sumptuous lavender bubble bath, shower gel and moisturiser.

3) The thought of Paris with the Faerie Godmother Trainee.

4) My 'bilingual' copy of 'The Michelin Man' by Gerald Durrell in Czech as well as the original English, which, ironically reminds me of trips to a little village in France called 'Herly'.

5) A rediscovered copy of 'When You Love You Must Depart' by Alina Reyes.

6) My Ab Fab DVDs.

7) My Anna Gavalda short stories book 'Je Voudrais Que Quelqu'un M'Attende Quelque Part' because the title and picture on the front express my current longing perfectly:

8) My naughty, budget-negating (or rather, failed 'Second-World-War-type-rationing-attempt', more like...) copy of American Elle magazine, because it's got such damned good writing in it.

9) This light tea that not only cheers me up with its Ceylon-style taste, but has a reassuringly elitist, 'intelligentsia' design and picture on the box:

10) Emails from kind people who are keeping in touch even though I no longer live in the same country as them.  It still seems strange that I can't meet up for tea and cake with these compassionate souls anymore, when once I could call up and plot to be at the corner of Westbourne Grove and Hereford Road for coffee at 6pm on a Wednesday.  (If anyone's free on Wednesday at 6pm near Václavské Náměstí though, I'm available for tea, coffee and any kind of cake, especially in one of those bookshop cafes...)