Autumnal chills

I have realised, now that things in my flat actually work the way they are supposed to, that there is one remaining thing in my flat that does not work:  Me.  I used to be adept at getting work done even when the weather was bloody awful and I may have struggled but I still managed things.  The last few days of this miserable, cold and drizzly weather have sent me into a kind of semi-sleep.  I am tired and achy and my eyes are sore all the time.  It doesn't help that I have tried to retain some of my early morning meet-ees this week, while also packing in some boring work that had to be done.  So it's not entirely 'my' time and my time alone, as it was meant to have been.

In a desperate attempt to stay awake this afternoon, I took myself off to the bookshop cafe, in hope of writing something interesting fuelled by coffee and a bit of inspiration, but there was some kind of book launch on and it was incredibly busy and distracting as a result.  I did have a chance to wander around longingly, looking for a novel that might catch my eye, though in some ways I'm glad nothing did, because I do not have the budget for it.  I wish I could have a reading allowance from a rich aristocrat who would pay for my literary whims and would think it a noble thing to do, supporting a working class girl with middle class tastes to read more.  Wouldn't that be simply fantastic?!

Ah the idle dreams of the lone foreigner, who has just passed the one year mark of living abroad...I must be losing my mind.  (Or is it just waaayyyy too late for that?)  Yes, it has been over a year, and this time the transition from summer to autumn has hit harder (maybe because last year I was coming from a UK summer, which means of course, no sun or warmth at all to differentiate it from autumn or spring).  The distinct chill in the air today was a bit of a shock.  I woke up and had to force myself to get up quickly, and as I got out of bed to go and make some tea, I shivered, even though I had a long sleeved top on.  I had thought the pyjamas-like get-up would be enough, but no.  Woe betide the person who underestimates the chill of the 6 am October morning air.

Having said that, I am nonetheless basking in the glow of being liked, indeed loved, by the architect, since we hadn't seen each other for about two weeks and he had missed me.  He seemed full of affection all of a sudden, where normally the TV holds about equal, if not greater interest.  I would almost conclude that I should make myself unavailable more often.  But that would seem to be defeating the object, surely...

Hlavní nádraží

I left him for the last time here.  Kissed him as he got on the train and haven't seen him since.  

He arrived in his bright, spacious, beautiful new flat yesterday, having driven across the continent successfully to reach his destination.  Cars and trains.  I can't decide which are preferable.  A car is more comfortable, but it's so nice to be able to get onto a train and know that that's the end of your hard work and the train will do the rest.

The coffee at the station bookshop, our last together, was delicious.  I was so wrung-out by then, that I really needed it.  Urgently.  I got two books out of that painful day.  One, a children's book in Czech, another a bilingual (i.e. translated into Czech alongside the original English) Gerald Durrell tale that begins with reminiscences about travel, appropriately enough.

I love bookshops, and travel, so this environment should have taken a little of the edge off of my sandpaper-rubbed wounds, but I don't think it helped.  The songs I listened to there and back, the same ones I listened to when I had been a more valued person for an evening, accompanying him to the airport after he'd been sort of found out, were of greater comfort in the end.

I haven't been to the station since.  Not sure how I would manage it.  It's waiting for me and I acknowledge this every time I have to pass it on the metro on the way to a meeting near Nádraží Holešovice, once a week.

I think I've decided I cannot ever see him again.  I just can't.  The Shakespearean nature of the trick we both fell for is too great and the injustice too unpalatable to be able to watch him forgetting it.  As he must do to survive.  How I am to survive is quite another matter.  It's asking a hell of a lot, in my opinion.  

The edge of the platform looks ever more appealing, as I gaze at the railtracks and imagine my escape from this.  I beg for it every day, but the world seems uncompromising in this regard.  No easy way out for me.  No helping along the way to a quick end.  No "100% solution".  If I want that, like anything in my life, I'll just have to do it myself.  So far, I'm resisting, if only for the fact that it requires more time than I have to plan and get absolutely right.  The saving grace for most of us, no doubt.