Back in business - a retrospective Part 2 'Thoughts from London'

Dear Reader,

I know it's the old thing of you wait over an hour for a bus and then two come at once, but it's been crazy-busy since I got back (and not in a bad way, necessarily...) and this is the best I can do. Here are some 'thoughts from London' written down in my lovely purple leather notebook:

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Is this simply what always happens - what must happen - when I come back to London for more than a couple of days? There is the initial euphoria of being back, and seeing places I love again - being able to get things I wanted, to wander around bookshops again, to see friends, to get a decent glass of red wine in a bar, but then there are the memories, the sense of loss. The sadness that I never fully managed to have a home in London. I never fully fitted in. But one wonders if anyone can truly fit in, in London...

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My last day in London before moving on to Bristol. I've decided to come out to Bertie's Bar at the Royal Garden hotel for a really good glass of red wine and a chance to reflect. And to compensate a little for not being able to afford to actually stay here. (And, indeed, before the horrors of packing and trying to fit yet one more magazine into my case begins.)

I've never been here before. I arrived at around 8.45pm, having caught the bus from Gloucester Road, and it strikes me that this particular bar lacks...people. There are two occupied tables at this time of day, apart from me, and both of these happen to be occupied by a small group of Arab-looking men.The music being played here is a little incongruous, being that it has so far been an eclectic mix of Latin dance rap and a few old 60s Brit pop hits. 

Being that one of my part-time gigs now is ghostwriting a (if I say 'cheesy' is that being unkind?) relationship advice blog, I am reminded of a number of classic SATC scenes right now:

1) The scene where Miranda goes into a bar, expecting to meet Carrie, but gets a phonecall cancelling and, ticked off, orders a Côtes du Rhône and meets Steve for the first time. Who promptly reminds her to sip slowly, when she seems to be angrily getting through it a bit too rapidly. "Enjoy", he urges. My glass of Malbec is superb and definitely worth enjoying. I doubt I shall have as good a glass of red wine for quite some time now that I'm going to Bristol tomorrow, to spend time with my non-wine-drinking sister, before heading back to Prague.

2) I am also reminded of the scene where Carrie purposely goes out for a glass of wine at a restaurant on her own, no book, no notepad, no laptop, nothing but herself, a pair of 70s style shades, which she bravely takes off as she kicks back and settles into sitting in the New York sunshine to spend some time on her own.

People think this is brave. I'm inclined to think this is the 'wuss' option and that coming out to meet a bunch of disparate and single-minded people is braver. Here, I am in fact cosseted from the outside world, as this bar's good seating largely lacks any opportunity of a view outside. And it's so quiet in here, there are few opportunities to feel I'm being watched. Apart from by the very attentive bar staff.

I have brought more than just a notebook too. I can rest in the company of Tracey Emin, as and when I choose to do so, having borrowed a friend's copy of 'My Life in a Column' and brought it with me. She has already, from what I've read, been quite comforting as well as inspiring and entertaining. I'm really rather lucky to have been able to stay in a writer's flat. Such lovely books to dabble in...

An American couple has now joined us in this now, less empty bar. The woman is dropping names of cars and countries and cosmetic companies she's worked for or in. I love how Americans somehow speak loud enough to be heard as clear as a bell across a crowded, or at least potentially filled with distracting things, room. How do they do that absolutely everywhere they go?

Here are a few favourite sections from 'My Life in a Column':

[30th March 2007]

"Sometimes I have to remind myself how void and totally empty my life would be without art. I take art for granted so often and I shouldn't and mustn't. It's something that should be fought for because, so often, even in our society, art is so easily dismissed. Something, a presence, which has graced this earth, in terms of man's consciousness, for thousands and thousands of years is still disregarded and put down at the bottom of the list of what we need to survive."

[15th June 2007]

"It's strange when you vent your spleen. It's so difficult to direct it at the right person. Every time my period is due...I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm not allowed to write about that sort of thing! (Because half of the people in the world don't have a menstrual cycle and may be offended!) In fact, I am now going to "open brackets": mild anger is not a bad thing. We should all scream a bit more. The world has just become a bit too polite for its own good!"

[22nd June 2007]

"I've had a very strange week, running around breathless - tired and over emotional. Every thing feels as though it's in a heightened state. The hot clamminess of the clouded skies. Perspiration running down my neck on the Central Line. All my thoughts cluttered and mashed up. I feel like I'm desperately waiting for a cooler time. I'm still coming down from Venice. And believe me - it is a comedown. At this point I could lay into all the critics who gave me really stinking reviews, but I'm not going to. I just think it's such a shame they missed the trip. They weren't on my boat. And they never will be. Being an artist is an extremely personal, intimate, pursuit. It never ends. Only when you close your eyes and die. And then we don't know."

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I am now the only person in the bar. The staff are bored and keep asking me if I'm ok. (Well, only a couple of times over the course of the evening, but I think I'm getting a bit bemused by their concern, not to mention irritated by the odd collection of records they seem to have here..) It's given me a chance to dive into the borrowed T.E. book, but I wish they'd stuck to playing lounge jazz, like they did for one track, or segued into a Massive Attack-like bunch of trip-hop stuff, which seemed incredibly apt for a woman from Bristol who's travelling back there tomorrow.

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Thoughts from the train to Bristol will follow in due course. As will other news.  But for now, I bid you good day, dear Reader.

Yours most fondly,

Ms. Platform Edge.X

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.

All quiet on the Central Eastern front

The sunshine has come back to Prague!  Hurrah!  I have felt all the better for it, after a confusing and challenging whistlestop London visit where the weather was predictably dull.  I am so grateful for sunshine and warm weather these days, as though my life depends on it, as there seems to be a very quiet 'calm before the storm' theme developing in my life now that I'm back from the epic road trip.

I'm deliberating many things and trying to work out where to start.  First and foremost, I need responses to my ads for offering Skype meetings for anyone with a music career that needs bolstering.  Secondly, I'm trying to pitch article ideas to magazines and am getting stuck in a chicken and egg situation as to who to approach first where an interview is involved.  Thirdly, I'm wondering if I should sign this momentous publishing deal that would last twelve years (that's why it's momentous, not because of the money they're offering of course!) because if they sit on it and do nothing for twelve years, that's my music career well and truly finished and nailed in its coffin with a Black and Decker power drill.

I am imploring the universe like never before because something has GOT TO CHANGE and significantly so, because I have done the work of researching new things, taking new actions, freeing up time for new and better work and now, comes that deafening silence of the wait to see if this time it will be different.  Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual guru type, but not as annoying as some of the usual crowd, said,

"Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and can afford to wait without anxiety."

So I shall not worry and fret.  I shall take the steps I need to take and then switch off my insistent brain and do something I enjoy instead.  I am watching my world get smaller around me here in Prague, as my realisation that I cannot live here forever finally dawns on me, coupled with the realisation that I cannot return to London either and I stand alone in my little waiting room because I don't know what else is left to do.  I felt that emptiness and pang of being "cut-off" here again today and was going to (dangerous though it was) flick through a few magazines in the bookshop I always go to just to maybe cheer myself up, only to find that the magazine section no longer exists and the magazine racks have been simplified and put right behind the cashier desks now.  

So there will be no more taking magazines up to the cafe to read and then put back because I can't afford them.  It's like a strict school mistress has decreed this terribly naughty behaviour a nasty habit that must be eradicated.  I know I want to move to the next level and stop wasting money on overpriced imported magazines or magazine subscriptions that never arrive because of my remote and foreign address and get myself an iPad and a subscription to the online versions of my favourite publications, but I'm waiting to see if that can even be possible within this year.  Have I risked too much by whittling my accounts down to nothing due to going on this road trip?  Have I been too trusting that new actions will yield new results?

I honestly don't know the answers.  I don't feel anxious because I am sure that I have done the best I could, and I wouldn't have done things any differently given a second chance on the last few months' activities, but there is a sadness, a loneliness, indeed a questioning of my relevance to the world while in this waiting room-type silence.  I can only keep going and feel that sadness (instead of frantically trying to do something about it) and hope that something better really is just around the corner.

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.

These Mighty Things

I feel tired.  No revelation there, I realise, but late nights catching up on watching some films I missed out on at the cinema, due to no evenings off have left me unable to sleep at 2:30am even when I have to get up at 6.  Which is rather unfortunate.  I'm also tired of a number of other things:

1) Meet-ees cancelling and generally treating me as though they were just dropping round for an informal little chat and a cup of tea, instead of something I plan for and make reports in advance of.

2) Semi-friends doing the same lame-ass texting that they'll be an hour late to do something that interferes with my carefully put together timetable, like when I'm going to do aerobics, which is hard enough to stick to at the best of times, but is really on the verge of being jeopardised if delayed, when I'm so tired and hungry already.

3) Stupid sections of magazines telling me things I don't give a damn about, like how Geri Halliwell loses weight or how some actress with a personal trainer keeps in shape for her latest film (clue: she has a personal trainer force her to do stuff, because she has enough money to fritter away on buying her willpower and self-motivation). 

4) People assuming that the reason I failed to do the things I thought I was good at and had a future with was because I didn't work hard enough at it.  Yes, the business side of it was harder to work at, but I used to do four hours' piano practice a day when I first got my own piano.  But I made the mistake of thinking that hard work and talent are all you need to succeed.  Turns out a full social circle and hard cash are rather more helpful.

5) Being a cynical cow sometimes, when underneath, down below in some part of me that hasn't seen the light of day since 1996, I am a sprite-like optimist, feeling the freedom and wonder of walking back to my flat and knowing the city is mine, whenever I need to use it.  (I had a flashback today of the days when I used to know the carefree prospect of two week holidays when I could go out for meals in the evening and dress up and not have to worry about what everything was going to cost.  It was truly painful to come back from that little reverie.)

Anyway, my PLAN OF ACTION to eradicate this tiredness and ban these sad and lonely thoughts and try to leave room for more positive ones, however unfounded the hope they encapsulate may be, is to put on my silly little black shorts and my sports bra and pretend I'm 16 again and leap about and do leg stretches and high kicks and even, when I've warmed up enough, the splits.  All this while listening to desperately un-cool music at full volume (because my cheap stereo can't get up to anything unbearably loud anyway) for about an hour and reward myself afterwards by watching ER episodes, as I attempt to catch up on that final series everyone else has already seen.  That's my fitness regime in a nutshell.  Now all I have to do is wait for that semi-friend to get her arse over here and pick up what she has to and leave me in peace to achieve these mighty things.