Moving out, moving in, but moving on?

I made it.  I actually got all of my stuff out of my former flat, cleaned the whole flat on the Friday following the final box-exodus and even went to Šumava for the weekend, just to do what the cowboy wanted to do after a long period of him having to help me with tedious stuff.  But I'll have to make up for being utterly useless that weekend because I had period pain of epic proportions and had to stay in bed, drugged up to the eyeballs on painkillers just to survive, by going there again this weekend and being a good Czech-girlfriend substitute and going on a long walk in the mountains.  And then I'm done.  

Then, universe, let it be known, I need a big change.  I need enough income to flood in that I can realistically look for a new flat.  I need enough income to cover getting an iPad because I need access to publications and books without having to rely on the incompetent Czech postal system, which is fractionally worse than the UK postal system.  But only fractionally, and I've been away from the UK now for so long that in the meantime, for all I know, the UK postal system could have become even more incompetent.  Maybe there aren't Saturday deliveries anymore?  If there are, that's the one thing that makes the UK postal system that tiny bit better than it is here.  That's all.

On a lighter note, I've so far survived being in the depths of suburbia out of a sense of novelty, I suppose, although the cowboy is currently in his teenager mode of pointing out how this is what marriage is, boring and hum-drum and pointless.  And he's right.  If it's with someone you don't have enough in common with and if you live together in a flat you both don't particularly like.  But I never expected this to be anything but hum-drum and mildly, if not spectacularly, irritating for all concerned.

I know not to expect sweet little post-it notes left for me, nor random acts of kindness such as  a cup of tea brought to me on a day when I have to wake up early.  The cowboy seems not to appreciate things like this even when they do happen, though.  He didn't even see the little note I left stuck to the lock on the door yesterday.  Which is hard to believe.  But I guess he just shut the door behind him and didn't look in the direction of his hand as he was doing so.

I imagine this is exactly what marriage is like if you marry someone you don't love with a passion.  And it's clear that the cowboy and I have affection for each other, and even at times, a deep connection with regard to our backgrounds and the things we've been through but we don't have enough in common to enjoy each other's company for any great length of time, nor for day-to-day comings and goings.  

Here's a list of ways in which we do not match:

1) I hate watching TV without knowing what programme it is that I want to watch.  Most of it is rubbish anyway, and here it's rubbish dubbed into Czech, which has some small entertainment value and is fun when watching something like 'The Simpsons' but beyond that, I can totally do without the background drone of a TV.  The cowboy, however, always has the TV on.

2) I have two parts to my morning/breakfast routine.  First, a cup of tea and cereal.  Then, after showering and getting dressed, I like to have a cup of coffee and a croissant or pain au chocolat or just a yoghurt and fruit.  The coffee bit is essential though.  The cowboy scoffs down any breakfast all in one go, and doesn't like coffee.

3) I like reading.  Books, magazines, newspapers.  The cowboy hates reading anything except the National Geographic and a plethora of car magazines.

4) I like taking care of my own fitness routine and being disciplined about sticking to it, doing it on my own, in the privacy of my own home preferably.  The cowboy never gets round to planning an exercise routine, yet complains about having developed rather a big tummy and moans about the idea of going on walks in the woods on his own because, "people in the Czech Republic don't go for walks on their own."

5) I like to eat a few squares of a bar of chocolate in one go, then put it back in the fridge for another day.  The cowboy prefers to eat it all in one sitting, in big bites.

This does not bode well, obviously, for a future together.  

On the other hand, here are some important things we do have in common:

1) We both hate corruption and the politicians who make a living telling poor people they need to work harder, while keeping quiet about the bribe they just took.

2) We both know what it's like to grow up in scuzzy working class / communist (very similar, believe me) accommodation with thin walls you can hear everything through, eating cheap food that has never come across the word Mediterranean or, in my case even, 'garlic'. 

3) We both like action films for a laugh and a bit of welcome distraction from the bureaucracy of day-to-day living.

4) We both have an innate perception of others and sensitivity to people's feelings to the point of being able to predict what they're thinking.  We both also need to be careful not to take this too far and start telling people what they think, because that's robbing people of their own opinion.  (I'm working hard to get rid of this bad habit.  The cowboy is not.)

5) We both like nature documentaries.  Especially ones about the wildlife in parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.

So, there you have it.  Is that a relationship?  Of sorts, I suppose.  Isn't it statistically researched that men benefit more from marriage and/or cohabitation than women?  So why is the cowboy moaning about how bad this temporary set-up is?  Especially as I've just done the washing up.  Again.

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. 

Letting go

As I was picking up the inner bits of my cafetière from where they were drying on the washing up draining thing this morning, a glass that one bit had been drying on got stuck and then rapidly unstuck again and broke.  This was one of my favourite glasses originally bought as a pair from a second hand bric-a-brac shop on Pembridge Road in Notting Hill.  I remember buying them and washing them because they were in a bargain bin left on the street outside and they were only a pound or 50p or something like that, but I knew they'd be gorgeous after being washed up.

The loss of this glass today was like an omen.  I'm probably going to have to let go of a lot of things that hold precious stories from my past and discard them to help with moving out.  I still don't know where I'm going to go, but if the worst comes to the worst and I end up having to move in with the cowboy, I know it will mean discarding even more than I otherwise would, which for me is like letting go of my identity.  Books and diaries, scrapbooks and magazines all form a kind of 'family-and-friends' community for me in the absence of geographically close ones of the human kind.  

How I will live with the idea of throwing books into the recycling bin is quite another story.  I used to give them to charity shops in the UK of course, but there aren't any second hand book shops here, except antique ones and those would be books in Czech, of which I have a more limited supply than English ones.

That glass was also a symbol of reward.  A nice little glass of wine in it was like a little acknowledgement that I had worked hard and survived and deserved a soldier's recognition for fighting through the loss and hardship.  Now both that glass, the champagne glass pictured in my profile pic and all the other nice glasses and mugs and things I had to leave behind in London are gone.  Along with my piano, several beautiful photography books and more.  Will I have to get rid of all my diaries and letters from ex-partner and photos from my life too?  Where will I draw the line?  How will I draw the line?

Someone (probably some great leader or guru or someone that I should really know) once said that all pain comes from attachment.  Maybe I have to learn that getting so attached to things is silly.  Or that cherishing things is the root of all evil.  Or something.  I always thought that being attached to things, especially things no-one else would like to steal, but that mean a lot to me, was a better strategy for life than attachment to people.  Because people can up and leave of their own free will and 'there ain't nothin' you can do about it'.  Maybe I got it all wrong.

That glass breaking was like the very beginning of my heart breaking.  It symbolised all that I've lost over the last few years and all that I have yet to be forced to relinquish.  So I burst into tears.  (I hadn't yet had my coffee of course, so that's my excuse.)  Because I'm not entirely sure that this is 'no more than you can handle' as people say about life when it gets tough.  You're not supposed to be sent 'more than you can handle' but I think I'm going to need a helluva lot of help to get through this because the last time I moved I had lots of help.  And then some.  And I bloody well needed it because I had to give up my piano, my country, my relationship and my work all at once.  Not to mention a good few friends too.

This time it feels like giving up the last thing I had going for me: my privacy.  My space in which to do all the things I need to do to keep me going: aerobics, writing without distractions, listening to music, peace and quiet when I need it, being able to sleep in my own bed, having a bath with a chair piled with books and magazines next to me, doing singing practice and even recording.  These are my strategies for survival when there's no money or when there's no-one out there who gives a damn or when hope seems to be beyond the reaches of the planet's atmosphere.  Are there any flats available on a planet in Andromeda by any chance?  I mean, San Francisco would be wonderful, but beggars can't be choosers...