Motorbike chick

The thing about being the passenger on the back of a motorbike is, that you don't have to do much.  It's blissfully easy to just snuggle up into the seeming slipstream of the line of air flowing around you that has already had to go around the driver, so you just keep in behind it and you're fine.  At high speeds, it can be harder work to keep aligned and pull your head forward against the G-force, but to all intents and purposes, you have to just focus on not moving out of that alignment, otherwise the force would be much greater and threaten to pull you off altogether.  But it's such fun.  And I somehow feel that inside the helmet I feel so enclosed and my mind is so focussed on keeping tucked in, that I hardly think about the danger of it.  It feels like I'm cocooned.  It doesn't feel like I'm exposed at all.  Exposed to the elements, somewhat, yes, but in my own little sphere of protection.

It's a pretty damned fine bike though, I must admit.  

I'm rather chuffed at having been able to be a passenger on it.  It's certainly slick and fast and cool-looking.  And I got quite enamoured with the 'motorbike chick look' I sported as well.  Though the jacket is too big for me, it's all we've got for now.  

And I don't care that I look like an American footballer in it.  [And I love decapitating myself with the crop tool!  It's like a Halloween Simpson's episode thing to do!]  I had the honour of being dropped off just outside my flat last night and I hopped off, took off my helmet and swished my imaginarily loose long hair (it was tied back in plaits actually, but I can pretend...) and felt so superior.  Even as I walked up to my flat, carrying the helmet and gloves with me, I enjoyed my moment of feeling cool as I glanced at the former-hotel of sexual horrors across the road and wondered how the girls there feel 

about having to fake being interested in dancing for/sleeping with some horrid man, almost certainly a tourist, for a mere 1000Kc or something.  I bet they'd rather be driven off into the sunset on a CBF 1000 Honda.

The choice that wasn't

I just re-read a bit of one of my posts and had to correct a really stupid spelling mistake.  I had written, 'a line or too', when I of course meant, 'a line or two'.  There I was, feeling pleased that even if my content is boring, it's at least well written and a high standard of English, but no.

I am writing this on the eve of a trip on the cowboy's new motorbike to stay in his flat 'in the mountains' (or rather, in that tiny town near the mountains - believe me, if you live in the Czech Republic for a couple of years, you get sick to death of hearing the expression, "in the mountains") and celebrate his birthday.  I'm quite pleased with myself for the presents I've managed to get him, including one or two extra special surprises, so I hope he'll be pleased.  

He helped me by taking some boxes of things last night, in anticipation of the big move.  Having seen places that have only made my heart sink, and nothing else coming up that's a good fit for me and my bank balance, I think by default I've decided I have to move in with him.  Some could argue this is a choice, but I still feel the "choice" between spending money I don't have to move back to stay with family in a small town in the UK or spending money I also don't have to move in with family in the US versus staying here and spending no money isn't so much a "choice" as a realisation that this is what my budget will allow and that's that.

As A A Milne so delightfully put it, when it comes to my money in my bank account and my so-called 'choice' about where to live, "the more [she] looked, the more [it] wasn't there."

Sunset, signs and sighing

I'm feeling a rather tired and somewhat despondent today.  I keep sighing.  I must remember, that in the same way that the cowboy has a choice, (he can focus on how old he feels this weekend and moan about it, or he can appreciate my being there to celebrate his birthday with him and the presents I've got him) I've got a choice about how I see this period of my life.  I can focus on how much I'm losing, or I can focus on the nice little moments I'm having because of being forced out of my flat to go and look at other flats or go and contemplate how to handle packing up all my things.  I have managed to enjoy some lovely walks lately, not least the walk to a flat in Žižkov yesterday.  The place didn't fill my heart with joy and I'm concerned it would be super-freezing cold in winter, but I suppose it's still an option.  Nonetheless, I got to see a part of Prague that at this time of year feels very mediterranean.

The sunset as I walked there was lovely.  The view of hlavní nádraží as I walked all the way past it was sort of bitter-sweet but beautiful against the pinky-orange sky.  The glass of wine I had when I got there and we got chatting about the flat (a friend's flat, as she's moving out in September) was also rather enjoyable.  And the walk back up Italská on my way back to the incredible area of Prague I live in, that I am most fortunate to still inhabit, was really soothingly wonderful too.  It just makes me all the sadder to have to leave here.  Perhaps though, the heat and my resulting tiredness is a way of anaesthetising me to the worst of this so that I can stay calm and still get on with things without truly losing the plot.

One minor problem is that I can't get a response from my landlady about the terms of leaving and I really need to establish this to know for sure what my remaining options are.  Maybe she's on holiday in blissful, remote peace and quiet while I stew about how I'm going to handle all of the stress that lies ahead.  Either way, I need to just try to hold tighter to the reins of self-care that I must take to get me through this and make the most of every opportunity to go for a walk in this area while I still can, as it gentrifies before my very eyes with the new Starbucks 

and a soon to be built Costa coffee 

and a certain 'je ne sais quoi' about the vibe of the area in these late summer balmy evenings.   What do I have to do to prove I'm cool enough to still live in this area?  I guess that's actually a no-brainer - obviously all I have to do is wave the right amount of money under a landlord's nose in cash and that would solve everything.  I just don't have that kind of money, though, unfortunately.  Who knew writing and singing and helping people to learn how to say things in English were not lucrative professions?  If only I'd been warned....

And to think I even went to an interview today, in a desperate attempt to see if there's any hope in being able to generate enough money to be able to eventually come back and live in this area.  What a fool I was.  They don't pay enough, want tonnes of proof that I'm super-good at what I do before they'd even begin to pay enough (minimum of a 3 month wait, she said) and they expect me to give a damn about them when they didn't even bother to click on the links in my email signature to find out more about me when I applied to have worked out that she was expecting a female candidate today, not a man?!  Sorry babe, you scratch my back; I'll scratch yours, that's how it works.  I was interviewing you as much as you were interviewing me and that not checking out my other work by clicking on a simple link means you just FAILED the test, babe.  Na shledanou!

How to learn a foreign language

1) Believe Saffy from Ab Fab when she explains that when it comes to learning a language, "you just have to learn it.  It doesn't just happen because you wear the right shoes or smoke the right cigarettes."  

2) Find an online publication in that language that has a really short horoscope and sit and read it with a dictionary every day.  Jot down some of the recurring words about work, feelings and relationships or any other things you're most likely going to want to be able to discuss.

3) Find a good teacher, get lessons, pay him or her well, do your homework, show up on time and generally stick at it.

4) Indulge your inner child by reading children's stories in that language.  If these are too hard and based on old-fashioned language, find translations of children's books you already know and read them in the new language.  Sometimes it's even more amusing than the original. 

5) Listen to the radio, songs and any free podcasts you can get on topics you are interested in in that language and even if you still barely speak a word and only understand about 5% of it, listen for the words you DO know and repeat them to practise the pronunciation whenever you hear them.

6) Find some online flashcards with audio that give you some basic vocabulary or basic verb charts that you'll need to know.  (If you're a total beginner, start with the obvious - 'to be', 'to have', 'to go' etc and then you'll have learnt the hardest ones, because the most common verbs are usually the most irregular.)

7) Repeat and continue.

P.S. Going out with a friend and having a couple of drinks and then speaking in that language for a while also works quite well.  You tend to hesitate less and 'go for it' with the language you do know, which is much better than stumbling along slowly, trying to find the correct ending in your head before you come out with anything.

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.

How to lose your head when all about you are keeping theirs and looking boringly normal

1) Read your favourite huge Sesame Street book when things get tough even though you're 35.

2) Draw butterflies everywhere and make butterfly pictures with Lentilky [Smarties] in an attempt to bring bright new beginnings in your life by focussing on the biggest transformation nature has provided.

3) Live in total denial of having to move out of your flat until the last minute, other than tentatively looking at a few flats and pretending you have enough money to rent them.

4) Tell yourself it's going to be ok, repeatedly and out loud so you are now not only totally lying to yourself, but talking to yourself out loud.

5) Wear glamourous high heeled shoes indoors for the sheer hell of it.

6) Shout at your boyfriend about how you have never wanted to live with anyone ever and you never wanted to do the conventional thing and have kids and that you just want a f**king career so that's why you're dreading moving in with him.  (This will give him all the proof he needs that you're a super-bitch and you'll feel really bad about it afterwards but by then it'll be too late.)

7) Refuse to acknowledge that you will have to do this stupid job you hate all your life because you cannot start accepting the outside truth about things or that would send your whole world crumbling around your feet.

8) Wear that black shorts jumpsuit thing with a pink scarf tied around your waist even though you know it makes you look fat and is particularly difficult to get in and out of when you want to go to the loo.

9) Go to your boyfriend's place for the weekend because when you're totally stressed out it's a super-duper time to be with someone with a short temper and you're a glutton for punishment at heart.

10) Drink cherry tea and eat cherry-filled chocolate and lust after cherry jam like there are no other flavours worth having in the whole world.

11) Forget that the washing machine doesn't go onto a spin when you put it on the 'wool' setting and open it to see a flood of water coming out because you forgot YET AGAIN that the machine lets you do that when it shouldn't and go berserk at it while gathering towels and cursing it at the top of your voice at 11.30pm when you should have finished doing the laundry by then anyway.

12) Go to bed at 20 past midnight and tell yourself you'll still be able to get up at 6.

13) Write a stupid blogpost about how insane you are just to list the evidence for future reference to the police who will surely find you in a heap on the floor in due course.

How to recover from being a tortured musician (particularly one whose career has totally failed to materialise)

1) Accept the situation you are in.

2) No, really, accept the situation you are in.  (Not the fantasy one in your head.)

3) Go through lots of therapy of all different kinds including CBT, psychotherapy, visiting a psychologist (like, for fun!) and working through a 12 step programme...in order to ACCEPT the f**king situation you are in!

4) Ask yourself what things you can enjoy right this minute such as, wouldn't if be nicer if I had a cup of chai tea and a piece of cake right now? Go get 'em.  And enjoy every delicious second of having them.  Live in this 'moment to moment' appreciation of everything, even if you're stuck in a traffic jam.  (Being stuck in a traffic jam gives you longer to enjoy listening to your favourite silly pop songs, right?)

5) Remind yourself of things you used to enjoy before music screwed everything up.  Painting?  Do some.  Writing?  Start a blog.  Dressing like a mad eccentric?  Put that pink lipstick on with that green and black striped top right now and don't forget the peacock feather earrings.  Or the tartan green and black shoes that you got for $9 on the Lower East Side.  

Work it!

6) Learn new stuff.  Such as a new language, a new profession, how to make a website, how to make interesting and informative videos, how to act in films (and then go and act in some) and if possible, find a way to make some money from it somehow.  Even if just by raising your rates because of this new-found extra skill.  (Or by putting a donate button on your website.  Not that I'm implying anything by that...)

7) Remind yourself of the kind hand of fate inherent in failing in obscurity rather than in public.  People like Britney Spears, Angus Deayton and Jacqui Smith had to do so in full tabloid splendour.  Be grateful you weren't one of them.

8) Change direction entirely with a new career.  Catherine Zeta-Jones tried a singing career (Remember? No, neither does anyone else) and was just dull.  But that didn't stop her, did it?  Al Gore certainly didn't sit at home sulking about losing the presidency even if he should have won, but got right on with another project.  Turn it around.

9) Listen to Kylie's "Things Can Only Get Better" as your pick-me-up song and, preferably do aerobics to it too, because working out will keep you strong and healthy and you'll need to be both if you want a second shot at things.  And leaping about to this feel-good pop track can only enhance the exercise endorphins.  In anycase, being fit makes you feel TONNES better because you can punch the air and do spectacular high-kicks like a 9 year old without instantly having to lie down.  Which is more than you can say for most [insert your own age here] year olds.

10) Watch Ab Fab episodes.  Repeatedly.   

If ever there were comfort in the schadenfreude of watching other total losers, it has to be multiplied by 100 in watching the characters Jennifer Saunders can create.  (And it always comes in handy to know a line or two that you can trot out at parties in a pitch-perfect Edina impression, such as, "Within the law?  Within the law?  Well what on EARTH is the point of having an accountant if he's within the law?!")

11) Write a big fat gratitude list.  What things are you really glad you have in your life?  (I.e. if it were taken away you'd really miss it.)  Note down everything you can think of including the little things such as that big fluffy cushion you love having on your bed, 

or having a gas cooker you can froth up milk for your coffee on, or the fact that you've only been doing Pilates for two weeks and already you've built up the stamina to get through the whole workout because you are pretty super-fit, actually.

12) Watch the first Sex and the City film and remind yourself of the affluent fantasy that everyone was happy to buy into in 2008, right before the financial crisis of the century started and know that even the highest paid, most effortlessly rewarded people on the planet (i.e. bankers and economists) get it spectacularly wrong at times, and hey, you haven't done so badly in comparison.  Alternatively, if you can't bear SATC (and who'd blame you, really) watch the Dutch film, 'Antonia's Line' and see how the ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs of life are all part of a much bigger picture.  [Favourite lines:  Genius kid: "Grandma, isn't it sad that nothing really exists?"  Grandmother: "That's why there's so much."...]

Finally, resort to the age-old British answer to everything and make yourself a cup of tea.  

And then get on with your life.