Looper, Lars and not many laughs

I seem to be having one of those weeks where it's super-busy to the point of insanity but then there's a total slump afterwards where my body refuses to keep up the momentum and relentlessness any longer. I also seem to be observing odd little things as I have wound my way throughout the week. First of all, I sort of reached a milestone with a professional project this week, so I decided to sneakily celebrate it by going out to the cinema with the cowboy. Except I didn't tell him that it was my way of celebrating my achievement because when I'd mentioned the completed work to him earlier he just said, "yeah, but you've been doing that for ages and I don't even see the point of it". So it was my own way of marking the milestone, giving him an opportunity to have an evening out which he needed too and just try to enjoy doing something fun together for once. 

We went and watched the film, "Looper", which stars Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis (looking somewhat shockingly old) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I hadn't come across before. Emily Blunt was great and performed with a really convincing Southern-ish US accent without sounding OTT and her character's bravado made me laugh. It was one of those time-travel themed sci-fi films which get hard to follow because you spend half the time thinking, "so did that happen in the past and now they're trying to go back and correct it? And if so, why are they bothering to go back to the present..." and you end up giving up because it's, frankly, not worth the hassle because you miss the next part of the film if you sit there trying to figure it out. Which they kind of made a joke about in the film anyway, perhaps to appease the audience who would by then be getting a bit lost. I still think it was worth seeing, even though it was kind of depressing. And Jeff Daniels was a hoot as the ruthless boss/chief character just by being so unnervingly unpredictable. So it was kind of worth it for his scenes alone.

Afterwards, we wandered around like lost sheep trying to find our way out of the shopping centre, where the cinema is located (following the impossible trail of escalators that don't run all in one line down, so you keep having to walk out of your way and come across more random shops in order to find the exit) and we came upon a small supermarket (called 'Albert' - no, seriously) and realised we were out of bread and milk so we should at least pick up those things. And that's when I came across the "Duff" beer that I've seen out in stalls in the centre of town but saw for the first time in a shopping centre. 

I don't know who decided to give that a go and how they got permission from the Simpsons to do it, but there were not only cans of it but bottles too. 

Which then sparked a mini 'supermarket photos frenzy' (Czech soups - including Goulash soup)

and 'Lentilky' (the Czech kind of Smarties)

and the cowboy remarked how this kind of behaviour could get me arrested. Well, it could have in the US. Sadly, no-one batted an eyelid here.

And the rest of the week has been a mad rush of meetings and an entrepreneurial conference online, making videos for music-y things and trying to keep up with admin. Until this afternoon/evening when I decided to watch three films back to back because the cowboy is at his brother's and I have several films I've wanted to see for ages but couldn't because I never have the time or the cowboy wouldn't be interested in that kind of film. So I watched an old one for comfort-viewing which was just a cheesy chick flick but with Joan Cusack being utterly brilliant in it, which is so typical for her that I know that that doesn't narrow it down for you... Then I watched 'Salt' (as the cowboy would normally like this kind of film but he hates Angelina Jolie for some reason, enough that he won't watch a film with her in) and found it very entertaining but with an annoyingly open-ended and 'unfinished' kind of ending. Followed by, 'Lars and the Real Girl', which just made me cry even though the premise is so ridiculous (and the doll looked strangely like Angelina Jolie infact..!) but the underlying feelings of the characters are so sad and yet so caring. I don't know why it made me cry so much. Maybe it was the sense of everyone going out of their way to be kind to this guy who was obviously in a huge amount of pain. It's so unusual. And that in itself is sad. 

But Ryan Gosling blinks a lot, don't you think? I've only seen him in this, one other film I've already forgotten the name of, and 'Fracture', and he blinks a lot in all of them. Maybe that's what makes him so endearing. It certainly helped him seem more of a nutcase in this film. (Maybe nutcase is too harsh. I catch myself calling myself a nutcase from time to time, but I think that's just my Mum's voice infiltrating my brain again, as it sometimes does.) And in the middle of all that, I got a lovely email from a friend saying how artistically fashionable and gorgeous I looked today, which was not only super-lovely, but also surprising because it was one of those, 'hardly anything left to wear because there are piles of washing to do' days and I'd worn my greeny-blue jeans, my cookie monster t-shirt and a couple of cardigans (it was cold) and I thought I looked so scruffy, I'd better do my best to compensate by wearing (fake) pearls, chunky glass-gem-looking earrings and pale pink/purple lipstick. I thought I probably looked like some kind of freak. But maybe that's just 'artistically fashionable' seen from a different perspective. I guess only the likes of I-D, Dazed and Confused and NYLON magazine would know about that. And I'm probably too old for their demographics anyway. Who knows.

I feel so frustrated today that so much effort has gone in to achieving what feels like so little. I can't even finish recording the two songs I want to finish before Christmas without difficulties of organising time with the guy I know here who has a studio (well, is moving to a new one actually, so currently only has a home studio) and organising time to practise. The cowboy is very concerned with how thin the walls are here in this council-flat like place and doesn't want me to sing or play aloud in the evenings, so I have to try to fit it in around meetings and so on during the daytime. Which hopefully will get easier to do soon, once I've done enough on the videos I've been doing. But doing any recording here seems just out of the question. Even for something fun and simple like recording a cover song on the keyboard with just that and vocals.

I think I'm rambling too much now, so I'd better get to bed. Goodnight readers, wherever you are.

Single Person Behaviour (Part Deux)

I'm so thrilled at having this time to myself I can't get over how wonderful it is!  I therefore had to create a second part to my previous post. I had a somewhat unfortunate start to the day in that I was woken up by period pain, even though that shouldn't be happening for at least another 5 days so I had to take some painkillers right away but that kind of gave me a good excuse to have a longer lie-in as compensation. Snuggling up with a hot water bottle always feels cosy even when the reason for making a hot water bottle was the pain that came unexpectedly. I am so lucky that I kept a good lot of magazines out and in bags instead of boxes because that means I've been able to plaster the bed with them and browse, read and lounge about looking at pictures avidly. I'm feeling a bit mournful about all the lovely old copies of Vogue I had to get rid of before I even moved to this country though because I had some great ones, mostly bought for half-price at the second-hand exchange bookshop on Notting Hill on Pembridge Road. Oh how I miss that shop...But I did keep a whole bunch of pages from my favourite editions including a few Paris Vogues, and I'm glad I've had a chance to look through those. Nothing like covering the bed with fashion pictures and mini-articles (zoom in on the middle left of the photo) on people like Daniel Auteuil.

I have also continued my practising of new make-up techniques after educating myself that it's not entirely about the make-up you buy but how you use it, thanks to this Lisa Eldridge video in particular. But I amazingly found that I already had one of the lipsticks she mentioned - the 'New Black' no17 one! Which is exactly the dark shade I most wanted - yay! I vainly took a few pictures of myself (how shameful is that?) using PhotoBooth on my Mac (Macs are just so brilliantly full of useful and totally free software!) sporting that very dark red/mauve lipstick. This is where it gets tricky to remain anonymous and show the fruits of my labour...

(Well, it wasn't exactly labour. There are tonnes of other things I've done that are far more creative and took wayyy more work but that I really can't share here as it would indeed be too much of a giveaway. Though I'm pretty sure at this stage the only people reading this are people who know me anyway. (Leave a comment and prove me wrong if that's not the case!) 

I enjoyed my lie-in today and I made a terribly unhealthy cooked breakfast (but not exactly a totally English cooked breakfast) of eggs, baked beans, mushrooms and Czech spicy sausages, with a mug of coffee. It was rather yummy. And I can't tell you how delightful it was to realise there's so much less washing up to do even after making something as messy as a cooked breakfast when there's only one person's washing up to do! Wow - it only took about 15 minutes!

The other thing I have been doing is trying for the life of me to come up with a good present for my sister's birthday. It's the big 'three - oh' and I want to get her something special, but anything good and something I'd feel pleased as punch to get her is out of my price range and is something I've failed to get for myself and yet have always wanted. Such as a proper silk camisole or chemise like this or a sumptuously sparkly handbag like this. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be able to a) make her proud of me that I can actually afford to buy her something really special for once and b) if I'll ever be able to have any of these things myself. I suppose while even copies of Vogue are out of my price range, I have an amazon wishlist that I still can't even afford to get any of, and I've declined to buy ice-cream this weekend because I couldn't afford that as well as a bottle of wine and salmon, I can safely assume the answer may well be 'no'. I really want to turn this around. My sister deserves some luxury for once.

She is the epitome of the brilliant bargain-hunter where I aspire to be more Parisian and spend a lot on something that will truly last and do me well for being better quality (but usually I can only manage this by buying it when it's already 10 years old from a charity shop) so she has a revolving list of items in her wardrobe that she gets rid of on a regular basis because she buys from Primark, H&M and Kohls. She's got it down to a fine art to get my Mum or Dad to buy things for her while she's seen that they're on sale and has built up a remarkable range of clothes on this basis. I just wish I could treat her to something she would never want to replace.

Heigh-ho. Time for some more old pages from Vogue perusing (and in this pile is one of the pages of photos that inspired my main music pic for social media and google use for my music work at the moment. I had such fun working with the Russian Countess on that shoot - I wonder if you can guess which one...)

and a huge amount of denial about the fact that tomorrow the Cowboy is coming back and tonight I have to deal with a meet-ee on Skype and that that damned expensive festivity - Christmas - is not far off and I'm possibly more broke than when I first started out as a student. I'll find a way to get through it somehow but I just wish I could at least be doing it all on my own, in a flat of my own, with my keyboard set-up in a space befitting it and enough money to buy myself at least one treat, if nothing else, as a means of celebrating getting so much done on my websites all by myself from working out stuff from free training videos.

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.

(Not as bad as) A Cow's Life

So winter has come early here in the Czech Republic and I feel weighed down just like this little bluebell-ish flower.  

(Is it one of those Spanish ones that have overtaken the English ones? I'm not very good at botany. As you may have guessed.)

The clever rescue plan of moving in with the Cowboy got me out of my flat and avoiding life on the streets or randomly on someone's sofa (actually I don't know anyone grown up enough here to have an actual sofa...)just in time to avoid financially overstretching myself into bankruptcy, but it has left me in a flat so inaccessible and so undesirable that no meet-ees really want to come here. Thus my income has remained so low I can barely save anything and now I feel utterly doomed to having to spend Christmas here. And I really didn't want that at all. But I'm rather used to being backed into corners forcing me to choose what I don't want. It's horribly familiar now.

Enough. I mustn't feel sorry for myself. This weekend I got to see beautiful countryside covered in snow. 

And by this morning there had been this much (see the level on the balcony ledge)!

And I must be grateful that I am not stuck sleeping out in the cold.  Unlike this cow.  

Chudák!

Autumnal grumblings and a nasty cold

Autumn has set in with a cloudy, mist-filled vengeance and gloom and darkness now seem to be the order of the day. Even here in Prague. Consequently, in my over-enthusiasm to workout harder in my aerobics sessions to develop strength and avoid colds, I miscalculated the difference in temperature in this flat and exercised without a jacket to begin with, and got a cold. Or was it just the stress of never knowing when I'll have time to myself these days and a lack of soothing candles and lights and things that make me go mmmm...?

This cold has been particularly nasty and I'm only just getting better, but in my slowness to recover, I've bought myself some time to do some much needed ground work in trying to build up meet-ee numbers again as well as get better paid writing work and improve my website to be more of a showcase of all my areas of work. So I guess I've been working hard without realising it. As usual. I even got out to a networking event. God forbid. Actually, I surprised myself and actually followed-up a couple of acting related contacts. Joining one more casting agency can't do any harm I suppose.

In the last few weeks, the cowboy and I have managed to get out for another couple of mushroom-picking trips, which has made me an above average foreigner when it comes to recognising edible varieties.  This, for example, is edible:

These, on the other hand, are not.

See, expert, right?

Well, not exactly. But at least I'm occasionally capable of picking the right ones so that not everything I gather has to be discarded. Although sometimes, the ensuing mushroom soup with potatoes that the cowboy has made, has given me the worst tummy ache ever. And you do not want to know the side effects of that. I shall not go in to such matters. Ugh. 

The gorgeous autumnal trees and colours of the leaves have been cheering me up though. 

And having a nasty cold has given me a good excuse to curl up in bed more and catch up on some old David Attenborough documentaries. Which is soothing, fascinating and in the case of the mole-rat things that live underground and gnaw away at soil to make their burrows, disgusting all at the same time. The platypus was just amazing though.

Politeness and the British Way

I just came across this article the other day, which came as quite a surprise actually. I didn't really think that Americans, much less New Yorkers, would think British English is either cool, or good to use to try to sound, 'posh'. Most of the time, it just sounds poncey to use such unfamiliar language. But then again, if you travel back and forth between the UK and US it could seep in and start to get all mixed up. I have had compliments lately from a couple of Americans that my British accent is lovely to listen to, but mostly because they were exposed to other kinds of regional British accents that they had found incomprehensible. I suppose the standard RP accent (what most people consider 'BBC English') is the preferred kind of British accent but it makes you wonder how others are perceived if they can't even be fully understood. I read in the Guardian, that had a whole round up of 'comedy news' yesterday (whatever that is) that the actor/comedian Rob Brydon will play a Welshman living in LA. How ever will Americans understand him? Will he purposely have to talk more slowly?

As an interesting follow-on discovery from this NYTimes article, I came across the blog 'Separated by a Common Language' where one of the latest articles deals with the issue of politeness. I'm quite interested in this because the word 'politeness' brings up all sorts of connotations for me. It reminds me of my childhood and having it drummed into me as though the world would collapse under a sea of despicable, immoral conduct if not used, that 'please' and 'thank you' were the most vital elements of any conversation at the dinner table. Quite rightly, my Mum wanted us to be grateful children, who always respected the people around them and would be polite at all times in either requesting or receiving something. On the other hand, this stretched to asking permission for all manner of things that perhaps went a bit too far. Was it really necessary to ask, "please could I leave the table now, as I've got homework to do?"  And worse still, was it necessary to decline kind offers from neighbours or family friends, when you really wanted to accept, just because it was the polite thing to do, not to take 'too much'?

This last point leads into the idea of self-worth. Too much politeness or an overly self-deprecating manner can cause its own problems. Perhaps these are not readily recognised in the UK, but I've noticed the differences I've experienced in both the US and here in the Czech Republic, not to mention comments from Russian and German friends. Elizabeth Gilbert in her book, 'Committed', (that I've been avidly reading and have just finished) explains the uncomfortableness of finding herself caught in a 'permission-seeking' situation with her own partner. She knew what she wanted to do, (go to Cambodia on her own without her partner) and she wanted to check that her partner would be ok with the idea, but she didn't want to put herself in the position of making her partner some kind of authority figure from whom she had to seek permission. As she puts it:

"When it came time to discuss with Felipe my idea of going off to Cambodia without him for a spell, I broached the topic with a degree of skittishness that surprised me. For a few days, I could not seem to find the right approach. I didn't want to feel as though I were asking his permission to go, since that placed him in the role of a master or a parent - and that wouldn't be fair to me. Nor, though, could I imagine sitting down with this nice, considerate man and bluntly informing him that I was heading off alone whether he liked it or not. This would place me in the role of wilful tyrant, which was obviously unfair to him."   

I recently struggled with learning the protocol of polite language usage here with some friends of friends who were Czech. First of all, there's the question of whether to use the 'Ty' or 'Vy' form, i.e a friendly form of 'you' or the polite, respectful one. And then, there's the question of how often to use the more polite conditional forms, such as 'could I help with something?' instead of a straightforward, 'can I help?' and you can forget about adding 'please' to any simple request to pass something over or ask where the loo is. That would just seem a typically apologetically British approach that has no place in this country. 

So it's something I'm still battling to learn. Having been accused of being too polite by ex-partner, who often said, "you don't need to apologise for breathing, you know!" about my tendency to say sorry too much, and yet at the same time being brought up to avoid asking for too much because that was rude, I'm in a bit of a pickle really. Maybe I just need to be British-ly polite in the UK and assume a certain sense of 'everything's ok' in places like the US and here in the Czech Republic and try very hard NEVER to get confused and mix them up.

Jimmy Savile and other revolting characters

Having read and researched the allegations about Jimmy Savile in the British press recently, it is hard to shake off the sense of disgust that I feel about him and the kind of uncomfortable, 'icky' feeling he elicits. I remember watching the Louis Theroux documentary about him and sensing that he was not an affable eccentric type at all, but rather someone who was mentally unstable and had only built up a greater defence of that dysfunctionality as he had got older. There was just something about him, a certain readiness to stand his ground and defend his strange behaviour as his right, that seemed somehow 'off-kilter'.

The sad truth is, that there are probably a lot of women who have come across someone in their lifetime who has been this kind of character - seemingly kind and gregarious, avuncular and well-liked by lots of people, but who underlyingly, sometimes imperceptibly to others, definitely has a problem. Most of the time, other people around them sense this odd quality about them and know to be careful or to monitor this kind of person more closely. Other times, young women or even girls are subjected to uncomfortable situations such as a hug that goes just that little bit too far or a congratulatory pat on the back that lingers too long and settles too low. Coleen Nolan describes this situation that she experienced with Jimmy Savile here. This is the type of thing that somehow goes on without anyone ever calling the perpetrator up on what they're doing because there's no outright crime to be accused of and, the worst thing in Jimmy Savile's case is the fact that he believed himself to be above recrimination. He would have laughed anything off as 'a bit of fun', no doubt, and nobody could argue with that. Until evidence emerges to the contrary. Which in that day and age, with no video-enabled mobile phones, would have been hard to produce. The fact that there were rumours, at the time, made little difference because Jimmy Savile had so much financial influence and because, as Janet Street Porter attests here, the rumours would have been laughed off in such a male-dominated industry if the only complaints emerging were from women.

In other cases, for women anywhere where there is no further act than a little 'over-enthusiasm' that physically manifests itself as an ambiguous touch or lingering hug, there is no way to take the matter any further, but the feeling a young woman has to deal with is at best, very unpleasant. It's a rite of passage that no-one would wish on a young woman but one that often takes place one way or another due to the nature of the confusion around new emotions and sensations experienced as a teenager and the lack of confidence in one's attractiveness or worth. A young woman unsure of herself but in need of affection is such an easy target for people like this.

And the other consequence is that these kind of sleaze-bags give the decent, kind, respectful guys a hard time figuring out how to negotiate the beginnings of a relationship when women have been subjected to so much deceit, so many instances of a 'smoke and mirrors' subterfuge of a sexual advance, that starting a relationship with someone becomes a frightening thing to do, where nothing feels safe. Add to that the humiliation involved in being a victim of someone like this when no-one will believe you or else they'll think it was your fault, and you've got the perfect breeding ground for a terrible wound to be carried by that young woman throughout her life.

This kind of experience, of the sort Coleen Nolan describes, is something that is hard enough to explain and describe as a fully fledged adult, let alone a young woman. The complexity of the confusion of conflicting emotions, such as 'Did I cause this?' to, 'how could I cause it - I'm not even attractive?', to, 'I feel violated but nothing happened' would give anyone pause in voicing their complaint about an isolated incident. All I can say is that my deepest sympathy goes to the victims who may not even consider themselves as such, because the word victim has such disenfranchising connotations, but who surely must feel that flood of conflicting and confusing, skin-crawling revulsion all over again just seeing his picture all over the media. The man had a screw loose and there's nothing anyone can do to compensate for that now, how ever it occurred, and how ever he chose to override or indulge that. Though Mark Lawson's beautifully written piece in the Guardian offers the poetic justice of the graveyard slot programme consigning Jimmy Savile's reputation to the scrapheap, it offers no real comfort for the women who know there was a nasty, horrible, screwed-up man who lived the high life, hurting and humiliating teenage girls along the way, who got off absolutely scot-free.