Nothing ventured, nothing gained

I won a small battle this evening.  It may not mean I will win the overall war (not that there is one) but, this mini victory alone has taught me a lot.  That 'Christmas Bonus' idea has not fallen by the wayside.  Let me give you the back-story:

Recently, one of my friends posted on the dreaded f***book (as someone once called it) that he had got a Christmas bonus this year.  And I posted back, "I gotta get me one of those!"  And that gave me the idea of putting a 'Christmas Bonus' box on my table at meetings to see if meet-ees might want to contribute, in the same way that office workers get Christmas bonuses, so that I too, as a self-employed person could have a little bit of money to go towards a nice Christmas.  (Or at least help to cover the cost of losing money due to cancellations and people taking time off for Christmas.)

So I have been drafting an email to send to all my meet-ees to explain what this box on my table is all about and more generally, to thank them for coming to meetings with me and wish them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  In the spirit of 'Thanksgiving', I thought that it would be a nice way of introducing the idea that it's possible for people like me to get some kind of tip, if they think I've helped them this year, in the same way waiters and waitresses get tips.

So I got my good friend to help me translate it into Czech, knowing full well this isn't a Czech way of doing things at all.  It's just not done.  It's not 'Vogue', if you know what I mean.  And even though she thought it a little bit strange, she read my email in English and concluded that she thought it was brilliant.  She said she loved the line, "if you like my work, please feel free to give whatever amount you feel is appropriate."  And she kindly translated all of it.  She said she would be very interested to find out what happens.  (Me too.)

So, the real test before sending out emails came when I told the architect about this idea.  I knew he would be totally against it.  And initially he was.  "It's strange," he said, "it's not a Czech habit".  To which my response was, "It's not a British habit to learn Czech, and dedicate oneself to learning foreign languages but that's what I've been doing."  How limiting it would be if we all had to stick to the acceptable habits of the country we were born in.  Surely the whole point of my meetings is to inspire people about a different culture and open a door to a different way of seeing and doing things?

The architect required more convincing.  "You're going to ask them for more money? It's like begging on the street or something!" he said.  So I read him the email verbatim, about how I appreciate my meet-ees speaking English with me, I appreciate the opportunity to work with them and in that spirit, they should feel free to give whatever they feel appropriate.  But there's no obligation so if they'd rather not, that's absolutely fine.  There was a chink in his armour for a moment.  I reiterated that I was thanking them and wishing them a Merry Christmas.  I also reiterated that office workers get Christmas bonuses, so it's not a totally unheard of concept.  He began to crack.  

Eventually, the penny dropped.  This isn't an evil thing to do.  It isn't begging.  It isn't asking for too much without having given anything, it is just a slightly strange idea from an even stranger person.  No-one has to feel bad about it, because I'm not going to talk about it in meetings, and it's absolutely fine for meet-ees not to say a word about the email and pretend the box isn't even there.

As my grandma used to say, "nothing ventured, nothing gained."  What have I got to lose?  At the end of our conversation, the architect apologised and said, "actually, I think it's a good idea."  Those of you who've never even spoken to a Czech person will have no concept of the enormity of the impasse I just overcame with that one, but take it from me, that was a HUGE turn-around in attitude in one conversation.  And if I just won over the equivalent of an old-fashioned working class bloke with an "I ain't no charity case!"-type attitude, then anything's possible.  They may have tried to instill a 'don't get ideas above your station' attitude in me when I was growing up in a not dissimilar world to his, but, hell, maybe this is an idea below my station.  To quote a very famous, old film, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

Little eccentricities and other aspirations

I have discovered a chocolate bar that seems to be 50% sugar (quite literally) and is called 'Margot'. It's sort of a coconut flavour, but without the desicated coconut bits of Bounty bars and with an added dash of rum flavouring too.  I'd take a picture of it, but of course, I can't, because I haven't got a camera anymore.  Needless to say, the architect introduced me to it.  (All of the food I'm addicted to that's terribly bad for you has been discovered thanks to him.)  So I'm trying to ration it out like Kendal cake, to help me through each draining day. 

I started organising things for meet-ees at 7.25am today.  This is a miserable way to start the day, made worse by having to survive on Czech coffee, which is ok, but doesn't do the job of waking you up quite as well as the Fair Trade Peruvian packets of coffee I used to just about be able to afford back in the UK.  And the stupid institution I still have to work another month for, is still messing me about and causing me all sorts of stress.  I've had enough.  More than enough.

I shall have to fantasise that one day, one of the meet-ees will lavish great gifts on me, such as sponsoring me to have regular French lessons or commissioning me to write some songs or just offering me a week's holiday staying in their sumptuous chateau.  Or maybe something totally random but thrilling like a free course to get a licence to ride a motorbike.  Except I think I know now that the likelihood of that, even if I had the money, is zero.  Because I'm too short.  My legs are not long enough for me to sit on a motorbike and still put my feet flat on the floor either side of it.  Which is enormously humiliating and makes me feel really rather pathetic.

I did go on the back, as a passenger, on Saturday again, but the weather was awful and we froze our socks off even with a fleece jacket on underneath the extra gear.  It was so cold, that I was shivering by the time we stopped at our destination.  We actually did a very strangely grown-up thing.  We went to look at a flat.  No, please, let me explain...

It was a flat that the architect was thinking of buying as an investment, because he feels that money put into something is better than money sitting around in stupidly low-interest savings accounts.  He wanted me to come with him.  But, let's get this straight, it is another world to me.  The idea of money you can invest...  The idea of having property.  Absolutely alien to me.  He already has a flat, albeit a less than typically desirable one, in a 'panelák' in Prague 4.  This he inherited thanks to both the socialist state and his, now both dead, parents.  I have no intention of ever moving into either.  That's the other important point.

I don't see myself living with anyone else, ever, except when rents go up and I'm priced out of the rental market and forced into sharing again, of course.  To move in with a boyfriend would require some gargantuan re-thinking on my part.  Not least because I am a musician (whether I like it or not) and I cannot conceive of a time in which I would feel comfortable enough with another human being to haggle over what pictures are on the wall and where my books would go and all of the necessary inspirational things around me that would either help or hinder in my ever being able to write anything ever again, let alone sit and play.

I suppose I never even thought of it with my ex.  Even when we looked around places he was thinking of buying, when he left the West Country and moved east.  But more importantly, I never feel I have any right to anyone else's money or advantages due to that money.  When ex-partner saw his projected pension, I refused to think of that as a 'done deal', even for him, as things can so easily change with government policies and financial crises and so on.  And as for this flat the architect was looking at, I saw it entirely as his and even imagined that if he did buy it, he would probably have someone else in there with him by the time he got his hands on the keys.  

But it strikes me that this is an unusual way of thinking, at least in this country.  Women somehow see their partner's money as theirs.  All of those hours of work, even if the work is better paid for men than for women in the same job, still add up to funds that do not have anything to do with me.  I didn't work those hours, so I don't deserve to benefit from them.  But somehow, some women almost automatically start adding up these material goods and bank balances as part of assessing a potential partner, let alone while in a relationship, as though they will automatically belong to them.  Why would anyone do that?  I just don't understand it.  I want to earn my money fair and square.  The fact that I can't f***ing find a way of ever doing so, is MY problem and MY fault and always will be.

In anycase, the architect needs to find someone PROPER to be with.  Someone capable of growing up enough not to need about a hundred pictures on the wall to encourage creativity, someone who can do a 9-5 job without it nearly killing them.  Someone NORMAL.  And that, I am afraid and sad to say, I just can't ever achieve.

Apocalyptic weather and other irritations

"Sometimes the trouble with life, I find, it gets you in a corner with no way out, fills your head with doubt. Somehow the good things in life, I find, they seem to be beyond the far horizon, just the other side. Struck down with a heavy load, getting heavier day by day, now a real go-getter wouldn't talk like that, he would get up, get up and say, 'don't turn back, now you've got this far' "  [Bucks Fizz]

This morning was so apocalyptically bad weather, the kind you know is 'out there' being imposing before you've even got up, the kind that forces you to keep the lights on all day, that I resorted to listening to Buck's Fizz.  Not necessarily to cheer me up, but just to have a sense of finding an old-fashioned sort of comfort that used to hold some hope, even though it's since been overridden by reality.

[Buck's Fizz.  Yes, I know.  How could I admit to this?  Oh well, sod it.  It was comforting.  And it helped me retrieve some degree of energy that I had been struggling to find.]

I got through my worst meeting today without losing face.  I love it when people make it easy for me to look competent, by showing up unprepared and clueless, even when my reluctance to prepare something so dull threatens to uncover my greatest weakness: i.e. if I'm not interested in it, you can tell straight away.  If I find something completely tedious and without the slightest merit, I will indeed be quite literally 'bored to tears' by it.  (Filling in tax-returns and doing my accounts or looking at anything in 'Excel' [spit, spit, spit]  does this to me for example.)  My idiot meet-ee seemed to think I was there as some sort of Jeeves to his rather more arrogant Wooster, and would simply supply him with everything he required so that any work on his part would be rendered unnecessary.  He seemed absolutely astounded when I suggested he would do well to actually write a few sentences down.

Sometimes the sheer incompetence and ignorance of others is my saving grace.  There I am being the typical perfectionist, seeing all the flaws in my side of the bargain, and I'm wandering around trying to get down to work when the weather and the work itself are making me want to either slit my wrists or eat inordinate amounts of chocolate cake, and it turns out I needn't have worried all that much afterall.  The person sitting in front of me when I arrive is in fact still a newcomer to the concept that sometimes you actually have to do some work yourself in order to get a skill.  And it doesn't matter how much money you have, my dear little meet-ee, you won't acquire skills and qualities by sitting and waiting for a proverbial plate to be handed to you with a silver spoon to help you swallow the capabilities you wish to acquire.

But, hey, if you're happy to waste your money on hiring me to sit and watch while you discover this, that's fine by me.  It's like they always say, "an idiot and his money [and surely it's almost always his, not hers] are soon parted."

Despair and despondency

What a difference a day makes.  

I thought a full day-off would help, but of course, it only serves to allow me just enough time to see how horrible my day-to-day existence (it would be wholly inaccurate to call this 'a life') has become.  Given the chance to see the number of hours I'm working and the dramatically non-corresponding financial reward, I'm tempted right back into despondency.  I cannot live like this.  It's not just the work itself, which is denying me any time to be creative unless I take the risk of making myself ill by regularly getting only as much sleep as a new parent, but it is the lack of appreciation and consideration for all that I am managing to do, which threatens to overwhelm me.  I may as well have embarked on motherhood.  The problem of unpaid, hard-work that goes unappreciated is absolutely identical.

There must be a way out of this?  Surely my efforts to learn Czech and continue to practise French and continue to play music in the last spare minutes I have left, must count for something?  Come on someone, hire me for work I can actually excel at.  Or at least make a headstone saying 'she really did try' and lay a comfy blanket and pillow in the grave for me to lie on and bring me the barbiturates to see me on my way out of here, so that I don't have to go out and source them myself.  Because, frankly, I don't have the time.  Or the money.  Dammit.