Single Person Behaviour Night - Yay!

I finally have a weekend to myself. An evening to indulge in 'single-person behaviour', which couldn't have come at a better time. I've had such a strange week. I got dragged into a series of strange interviews with a language school-cum-consulting company whereby I couldn't tell how they separated the two and it took hours to understand even the beginnings of the aims of the company because the person explaining it to me spoke English as his fourth language and it was rather hard to interpret at times. I had to do a 'test' of phoning the Director of Sales of the Four Seasons hotel here in Prague and get him to agree to a meeting at the hotel about how we could send him some clients. Except it was based on the premise of a business card for a less than luxurious German travel agency that this guy at the language school/consultancy company had the business card of. It was all so confusing and pointless and seemed like merely an exercise in blagging. Which I loathe.

As it turned out, I got paid £10 for successfully arranging the meeting (and therefore 'passing the test') then I tried to negotiate a fair rate (£11.53 an hour instead of £6) for the work going ahead and in the end got turned down because the guy at the Four Seasons (rightly) cancelled our meeting on the basis that he really didn't think we were in a position to offer him clients appropriate for the standard/price of the hotel. So I didn't get the job. And I can tell you, I am SO relieved. I did learn a lot about how I CAN negotiate afterall (well, at least, when I know I'm in a strong position - I mean how many other Brits in Prague can speak Czech to intermediate level, French to advanced level [at least on a good, 'brushed-up' day] and understand German and even a bit of Spanish?) and I know how to prepare myself for setting my limits. I carefully calculated that the number of hours he was proposing amounted to half my working hours in a week overall and that therefore, I could not actually live on £6 an hour for the work. Simple. 

In other news, I got through ex-partner's birthday for another year, having sent him a little card and sent a text message on the day. It feels so strange. So odd to realise I haven't actually spoken to him in a year or so. In the meantime, the cowboy is still finding it amusing to torture and judge me about this former relationship because he's not mature enough to let bygones be bygones and accept that he can't really understand how something may have felt for another person. (Having recently got a new meet-ee who's a teenager and whose Dad set up the meetings, the cowboy thought it appropriate to ask about the Dad as soon as I mentioned him, making a sexually suggestive face. I told him this was unacceptable, but the cowboy disagreed with me on that.) So I am more determined than ever that I deserve to be with an adult man, just like any other adult woman is, and I would very much like to be able to move out and be on my own to enable that as soon as possible. The cowboy knows that we are not compatible in the long term, as for some strange reason he really wants children (and I certainly do not want two in one go, i.e an infant and a baby I actually gave birth to, too) but he is incapable of handling that information in a rational way and sits and sulks about it instead, saying things like, "I'm not talking to you, because you don't love me".

So life goes on as usual. I have made professional progress in the form of updating one of my websites, contacting another casting agency with whom I shall register properly on Monday, making a video to go with one of the aims of one of my websites, and contacting a couple of music producers, one of whom seems interested in knowing more about my music. Sadly, he wants some chord charts that I either don't have and will have to set up my keyboard here, where there's not really room for it, to work out, or that I do have already but are in a box in amongst other boxes in a cupboard. (Have I mentioned I don't want to live like this?) Oh and I spoke to my sister about ordering some things from the UK, one for a Christmas pressie for the cowboy, and the rest for me, but she'd already bought a bunch of things I sort of needed, meaning I have less budget left for what I really wanted and was going to sacrifice the 'needed' things for, out of sheer urgency in cheering myself up more, so I have to strike a few things off the list. (Because, much as I really didn't want that consulting job, I really needed the goddamned money of course...)

So, for tonight, by way of compensation, the cowboy has gone to the flat in the mountains and I have bought myself some salmon and cooked it with new potatoes, broccoli and mushrooms and have been sipping rosé wine from Australia from a year prior to losing my ex-partner (here's where I am pathetic) because it was one of the few decent rosé wines in the supermarket here in the back-of-beyond that is this Prague 4 suburb, and I've been watching old SATC videos, reminding myself of a time when my former flatmate, the now super-famous pop star in Denmark, used to sit on my sofa and watch them too and sob because her producer at the time was being a total asshole to her. You know what? I am so glad that she escaped and made it. She bloody deserved it. And I love how much better pop songs sound in Danish. It's almost faerie-like. (Even though the Swedes think the Danes sound like they're speaking with a potato in their mouths.) And it works as a good subterfuge, so that I don't notice that lyrics like, "when time goes backwards, I will love you again and again and again" sound a teensy bit naff. But maybe that's just my own aversion to lyrics about love. I just don't believe in them. It's just too "icky". I really can't explain why.

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.