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. 

The 'donate' button and other emotionally blackmailing things

It's a miserable day here in Praha.

And that's not just how filthy my windows are.  (Though they are rather dirty, aren't they?)

I'm wondering why she's so desperate to live up to London's reputation.  Somehow, in the midst of all this horrid weather and after a tough evening's meeting with a guy who seemed to think it funny to suggest bigamy was a good and, get this, "natural" idea, I am reaching breaking point.  ,,Tak dost!"  I have had enough of getting nowhere, being treated like a low-skilled manual worker and being paid the equivalent of a trained monkey, I am 'making some changes around here...'  Which all sounds, quite frankly, rather frightening.  So get a mug of Lapsang Souchong tea and a biscuit and hear me out...

I've put a 'donate' button on my page (and am currently wrangling with the paypal people to sort out linking my bank account to it properly because it's being difficult, but hopefully that can be resolved one way or another) because I just thought I should let it sit there and see what the faeries bring.  On the other hand, if the forces of nature and the universe in all its wisdom (or whatever) have treated you favourably lately and you find yourself in a period of financial abundance, people are free to offer a little donation-ek (if we're going to Czech-ify it) to help me find time to go to a cafe and write, or even buy a magazine or a book to read and help me amble along with this attempt at creative writing (or humourless drivel, whichever way you see it) for many more weeks to come.

If it's any incentive at all, I'll make a note of any donate-ees and I promise to email them an original and previously unpublished piece of writing of mine as well as a scanned copy of an original piece of my loosely-termed 'artwork' as a thank you to whomsoever sendeth the donation-ek.  The amount is entirely up to you to decide on.  

If you want an 'adopt a goat in Somalia' - type low-down, here's a quick guide: 

£1.40 buys Ms Platform Edge a coffee in the bookshop cafe

£1.60 covers the extravagance of a hot chocolate instead

£10 (yes, sadly, it's that expensive here) will buy her an imported UK or American magazine or novel.  

And if we're really pushing the boat out: 

£17.60 enables Ms Platform Edge to cancel a peak-time meet-ee so she can have almost two hours (as the meeting would be an hour and a half, the preparation about 20-30 mins) of precious writing time, instead of having to present and prepare things.

(Oh and, the delightful paypal people, in their infinitely superior business acumen to me, charge me 20p plus 3.4% on all transactions.)

I trust this may be the beginning of things moving onwards and upwards for all of us in these dark and chilly days.   But if not, I'll just go and make another cup of Lapsang Souchong tea and whine quietly to myself about how little I earn while eating too many pepparkakor biscuits.  It's ok.  No, really.

Little snippets from a Thursday

07.30 Lie-in.  Seeing the sun emerging through the blinds without my already being up and out of bed.

09.45  Drying my hair.  Noticing grey hairs, one of which was a new, strong but very short one, sticking up out of sheer defiance and static electricity.  Too short to curl around my finger and yank out easily.  Took 5 minutes to finally harness and pull the damned thing out.  (Had pulled out about 10 other perfectly fine brown hairs by then.)

10.00  Seeing the steam coming out of my cafetière after I'd just poured in the hot water.  The frothed up milk having stayed frothed up.  Result: delicious mug of coffee.

14.30  Learning the expression, ,,dát pryč'' (lit. put away) meaning, 'get rid of'.

15.00 Going to the post office (yet again) but actually having a nice time, because my Czech teacher/friend with the most amazing patience with my level of Czech, came along with me.  We chatted about my maintenance guy experience and how I stupidly didn't use the polite, 'you' form a couple of times.  She laughed and said it wasn't that bad.  Then I remembered that at one point when he was fixing the cooker with the tiniest little screw imaginable, that seemed determined not to fit or indeed stay put, he had exclaimed, ,,do prdele!" right in front of me.  This is the equivalent here of saying, "f**k!", but said a tiny bit more often.  To which my Czech teacher said, " Aha, so he's not exactly a paragon of politeness himself, is he?"

New Yorku, Miluji Tě

I got so desperate today, that I found myself not only listening to Limp Bizkit and making rash decisions, but I also ended up drawing a rough map of New York and told a couple of meet-ees about where things were.  Mostly the airports.  Which is kind of stupid.  But it made me feel closer to it somehow, as though it isn't unimaginable that I could go back there one day.  It's rather sad that I've been fantasising about the place so much lately.  I think it's just the spring weather that brings it on and makes me think of what a good time of year it is to go there.

I also miss the idea of that kind of creative holiday of wandering around museums and the park and buying coffees (or iced coffees in warm spring weather) and reading newspapers and magazines, and above all, indulging in some people-watching.  I would kill for that right now.

Instead, I shall have to face the demands of the strait-jacketers around me and keep my fantasies to myself.

But just for old time's sake, here are a few fond corners of New York I wouldn't have wanted to miss, not least for the daily diary-writing at the cafe, which culminated in a typical New Yorker, "Good luck with the writing" comment from a random fellow coffee-drinker:

Where else would you get blue sky in EVERY picture?  I even miss travelling on the  rather 'ghetto' JMZ train.  The view as it ambled across to Manhattan from Williamsburg was truly a delight in itself.  I just hope they haven't done a 'Northern Line' kind of re-vamp on it or something awful like that.  I don't think New York can take any more 'disney-fying', quite honestly.  It's just not her style.

Architects and Path People

I've been thinking about Cookie Mueller and her writings.  She had a way of comforting me like no other with her vignettes about various people she came into contact with and how they shaped her life.  I'm thinking about the people in my life, most of whom are dotted about all over the place, and yet there are people emerging in my immediate surroundings who deserve due credit, as well as the ones I miss and long for overseas.

It's odd to compare people you've only shared a coffee or two with, or a desolate evening in too fake a setting to be able to still my restlessness, with those from years of combined paths.  I carry those 'path people' with me; the likes of L-Star, Faerie Godmother Trainee and my coffee and cake friends.  Even the Russian Countess, now exiled to Germany, comes along with me in my mind.  Particularly since my current connections to Russia are stronger than I'd envisaged being here in a country so detrimentally affected by that nation.  To all of these and the other path-walkers, I give you my utmost respect and gratitude.  And I miss you.

To those who are emerging in my present path, I must be more embracing.  I have so little background information to go on that it is childishly unfair to start to compare those who have shown themselves to be kind and thoughtful with the familiar 'knowns'.  I'm sorry for being so dismissive.  Sometimes I can't decipher the divide between a world that allowed what's happened and the one I inhabit.  There must be a border somewhere, a frontier I can cross and be safe from what went before.  I want to feel at home with the providers and architects even though I used to hang out with poets and painters.  Maybe the architect has a fine wine collection and a soothingly warm sofa and prints of buildings I really ought to see? 

I'll be bringing my peace offering tomorrow.  I hope it will suffice.  And I am, truly, sorry.