Forbrydelsen and other Scandinavian-like Distractions

Dear Reader,

December is a real drag. I hate the necessity for more money that the lead up to Christmas entails. In many ways, I hate Christmas. I like fairy lights, candles and sparkly things, so I'm not entirely sure why this is. I think I mostly hate it for its focus on family instead of friends. Family may well be lovely (or not) in their own way, but we CHOOSE our friends, often for the very fact that they are nothing like our family, and it's a shame that at Christmas, they have the same duties to see their families, so it's impossible to meet up.

But enough about Christmas. The thing that I've been obsessed with since discovering a free Netflix trial opportunity, is catching up on what everyone with a brain in the UK has already seen, namely "Forbrydelsen". That Danish series with the woman I was once compared to by some Danish directors, Sofie Gråbøl, who was once (unbelievable though it is now...) known as an actress playing really emotional roles. Having been out of the country with no access to BBC4, I hadn't been able to see it before now. And now I'm hooked. Which is funny, because though I'm learning lots of Danish, via reminders of Swedish and the general similarities, I'm also being dragged down emotionally at a time when I'm really struggling with the lack of light in this country. It's not a great combination really. I suppose it makes me really grateful for the tiny, rare, moments of mirth in the show. A little joke about the Swedes or a little dig at the politician who freely admits he's slept with half of Copenhagen, "only half?" says Lund, in a rare moment of playfulness, suddenly becomes a precious gem in an otherwise stark, hopeless and loveless atmosphere.

I still can't get used to the fact that the sun can't be bothered to get up before 8am, which is making me sleepy and sluggish, moody and irritable and not very efficient. I've got to get things together and get myself out of this country as soon as possible.

Yours strugglingly,
Ms Platform Edge.X

How do I resume without feeling guilty that I left?

Dear Reader,

I may have lost you by now. Why would anyone check back in with a blog that has been left dormant for nearly 8 months? Maybe that makes this quiet return much easier for me. Knowing no-one's reading, kind of lets me off the hook.

I feel drawn to write again, perhaps because I'm undergoing as much of a battle as I was in Prague now that I'm back in the UK. Mainly because I can't seem to get things together enough to find a place to live in London. So I'm stuck living in the provinces, where the buses know no means of being a reliable form of transportation and the sun forgets to shine rather more frequently than I quite know how to handle. I have caught myself feeling simultaneously an outsider and ex-pat in my own country, and a duck getting back in the water when it comes to picking up on the latest literary offerings. Not only have I been familiarising myself with the regular columnists in the Times, Independent and Guardian but I've also found myself drooling over the latest anthology of writings about London that was shown off in a window of Waterstones that I went past recently. I say, 'went past' but I of course mean, went into, spent about half an hour mentally notching up approximately £150 worth of books while looking through and reading a generous handful of delightful tomes, and left, walking past the shop forlornly wondering how I can still be in this position of wanting more books after the number I have so far accumulated.

My latest obsession while in 'middle-of-nowhere-land' is the local library DVD collection. Namely the 'World cinema' section. I have already borrowed two French films for this week. Which is timely, because I now have some French-to-English translation work to do, about a letter of complaint from someone in a building in St. Petersburg. (I haven't looked at it in detail yet, so I'm still not sure why this piece of writing is in French, not Russian, but anyway, I'll get to it in due course.) And the film I'm starting with tonight is a French film by a Polish director - Pawel Pawlikowski, the director of 'My Summer of Love'. It's called 'The Woman In The Fifth'. With Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke in it, it can't be bad. Unless it's bad in a 'totally annihilating all optimism' way. Which could still be kind of funny. Extremes sometimes just turn the corner into their polar opposite. It can happen.

Wishing you a darkly warm and comforting evening. If you know what I mean.

Ms. Platform Edge. X

Highlights of a day in an endless winter

Dear Reader,

I know that things are not as good as they could be. I know that I should leave asap if only for the sake of giving the cowboy a fresh start in time to still have children, but I still cannot find a definitive plan to move on and indeed move away. So we still  try to look after each other as best we can and enjoy today. One day at a time.

On the way here I provided the entertainment by being a sort of living juke box. I sang for about an hour somehow, on and off, with a limited variety of songs that work accapella that I could actually remember and start to sing in roughly the right key. I think the 'setlist' went something like:

'Caught A Lite Sneeze' Tori Amos

'A Sort of Fairytale' Tori Amos

'Get Outta My Way' Kylie Minogue

'Timebomb' Kylie Minogue

'Fine Day' Opus II

'The Fear' Lily Allen

'Den Andra Dagen I Mai' Idde Schulz

'Little Digger' Liz Phair

'Army Dreamers' Kate Bush

'Fuck and Run' Liz Phair

'Help Me Mary' Liz Phair

'Divorce Song' Liz Phair

'Smells Like Teen Spirit' Nirvana

'Extraordinary' Liz Phair

Not a great deal of variety of artists, I'll grant you, but it must have been entertaining enough because the cowboy didn't put the radio on again. And when we got to the flat, I somehow felt I'd just been warming up for a gig and felt a little deflated at having to be quiet now, in this sleepy little tiny town.

Ironically, today, the day the clocks went forward to summer time, it's been even more like winter than when we arrived. It snowed overnight and continued today. I had disturbing dreams and really didn't sleep well at all. Lots of memories from the past that I really could do without right now. And a dream about searching for a Muppets mug before leaving the UK. What the hell was that all about? I think a gremlin lives in my head. A Muppets-loving gremlin, of course.

We went for a walk in the snow and I wore so many layers I felt like a small, fat michellin man. But thankfully we didn't walk for too long and it was nice enough to enjoy walking in the snow, scrunching and crunching about without my toes being wet and cold for too long. 

I just don't move well in 6 layers, that's all, and I'd rather leap about to Kylie Minogue as exercise than traipse through the snow while it gathers in my eyes and on my scarf and my nose runs so that I frequently have to take my gloves off to blow my nose.

But when we got in we treated ourselves to a strange kind of cake in the shape of a ram (they were everywhere in the supermarket, so the cowboy bought one) 

and had a cup of tea. And I did get an egg for Easter. Though it wasn't a chocolate one. It was a big plastic one with a bag of m&ms inside, which was lovely really. 

I'm quite happy to have some m&ms to munch on from time to time, and it reminds me of the snacks we had with us in the car when we went on our road trip across the US. Hard to believe it was nearly a full year ago now.

I guess that's all I had to say.

I've still got tummy ache which doesn't seem to have gone away since yesterday. I think it's an underlying feeling that this has got to stop soon. I have got to formulate a plot, an exit strategy, a way to move onwards and upwards.

Fond Easter wishes,

Ms. Platform Edge.XXX

Tax return fun while ,,jdu do hájzlu"

Dear Reader,

If you've ever known the excitement of sitting down to a nice big form in English where you have to read accompanying notes and fill in the details of your income or loss over the last year, then you are lucky enough to be living in a very different world to me. Yes, I admit it, the system for filing a tax return in the UK was easy. I made a huge song and dance about it, of course because I hate accounting, but in the UK there was help. Free help. (At least, that was when Labour were still in power. I imagine one or two things may have changed on this front by now). For starters, at the time I first registered as self-employed, it was possible to sign up for a free morning course at the lovely inland revenue building somewhere along Kensington High Street and get all the info you needed just incase the notes accompanying the form hadn't helped.

Now try doing all of that stuff, with no free course, no notes and it all being in Czech. And there being three forms because for some reason the social security department and health insurance department are not capable of checking the amounts that you've paid were accurate and want proof, independently of having to deal with the tax office themselves (that would be far too integrated and efficient), that you don't qualify for a higher rate. And you cannot post these forms. Oh no. They need you to go in person, for maximum wastage of everyone's time, presumably. Can you say, 'job creation', anyone?

So, of course, I hadn't a hope in hell of working this out on my own, and two weeks before the deadline, the cowboy having reassured me previously that he'd help me fill in the form because I really hadn't earnt very much so it 'couldn't take long', declared that it all looked a bit too complicated actually, so I had to get an accountant to do it. Who of course gets paid for what amounts to about 2 hours' work in total (at most) including the meeting up with me to hand over the info I needed to provide and return everything to me at the end, the same amount as I get paid for 5, 90 minute meetings. So that's 7 and a half hours' work of mine spent entirely on getting a tax return done. But it doesn't end there.

Oh no, of course, the accountant can only return me the forms which I then physically have to take to each office (finance office, health insurance office and social security office), taking away yet more of my time. And the first stop is the financial office in Háje. Let me tell you a little bit about Háje. It's not only the end stop on the C line (also known as the red line to people who don't actually live here) and looks like the kind of place where hope goes to die a miserable death (see photos, yes people, this is the other face of Prague...) but it happens to bear a linguistic resemblance to an unpleasant phrase stolen somewhat from German. The expression is, ,,jdu do hájzlu", meaning 'I'm going down the toilet'(In other words, 'I'm screwed/there's no hope for me'), but the word for toilet is more like, 'bog' or something ruder. And people tend to say it when they've got to go somewhere that feels like the pit of hell. Hence, whenever I think of Háje, I cannot separate it in my head from this delightful expression.

And taking a look at these pictures, perhaps you can appreciate why. To be fair, Chodov isn't much better. And Chodov lacks the Dr. Who-reminiscent tardis decorations at the metro station that Háje has. 

So, I guess it's much of a muchness.

I'm glad I decided to brace the tedium of the tax office by wearing my ironic beret that says, "La vie est belle." 

I somehow felt that it was the perfect kind of attitude to walk around with when surrounded by dull buildings, run-down shops and tax return people who don't seem to know any more than I do what was actually required to do with my form. (Turns out all I needed really was to get both copies stamped and to leave one of them with them there, but you'd think this was a totally unheard of practice the way the woman at the counter reacted.) Thankfully, there was no queue and I was in an out of there in five minutes. Now, you can be sure, if this sort of thing were required in London, there's no way it would have taken any less than an hour. So, I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies.

And I hope I'll be getting some nice chocolate soon, to make up for it. The cowboy will be getting this:

I am trying not to despair that I will probably not get anything more than a Lindt bunny and a cursory, ,,Veselé Velikonoce", but I guess I can live with that. For the time being. 

I hope you are eating lots of very good quality chocolate as you read this. Not that nasty, cheap Cadbury's stuff. Even the cowboy thinks that kind of chocolate is something the UK should be ashamed of. I have to say I agree. One must get oneself to 'Hotel Chocolat' or something of that ilk for the sake of retaining a reasonable level of mental health, quite frankly. I mean, if you can't get good quality chocolate, you may as well throw in the towel and move to Belgium. Or something.

I bid you a fond and very Happy Easter dear Reader. Thank you for indulging yourself in these frivolous tales from the edge of the platform in my mind.

Yours unapologetically,

Ms. Platform Edge. XXX

Fittings and failings

Dear kind and patient reader,

How are you doing? Is Spring actually "springing" where you are? Here it's still bitingly cold, so much so that as I left the flat this morning I was worried that my hair must have thinned so much in the last few days, because without a hat on, my head and ears were in pain as the piercingly cold wind hit. But I don't think it's the lack of thick long locks that is responsible. It is simply COLD here. Still.

It's been a busy time, and I'm juggling so many things that I don't know where to start in trying to fit in having time to myself. The only non-negotiable time I can stick to is my aerobics and pilates slot three times a week, but that's not so much relaxing as an onslaught on my fears about ageing and my attempts to encourage my body to stay with me, work with me and give me half a chance of still having a career in music and being visible as a woman, despite not being a spring chicken.

Anyway, enough of my complaining. I went to a most interesting 'fitting' for the now already being reported on, film '1864'. They're starting shooting on it in a couple of weeks in Denmark, but shooting doesn't start here until June. In the meantime, they wanted to check out a few possible hairstyles and, indeed, hair pieces for my role. Which involved lots of comparing my hair with the fake hair for the colour comparison and my having to try to retain some dignity in my mind while being faced with the slightly disconcerting reality of the sheer number of grey hairs I now have. Centre partings reveal it all from face shape, to spots, to grey hairs, it's the most unbecoming look ever. 

The make-up director - the only Danish person there, who ironically was called Björk - seemed quite happy with the results though. One 'look' involved having my hair down in a long plait - which was just a plait of fake hair added on the end of my own, plaited in. And the other two were variations of an 'up' do from the 1860s. Both of these involved considerable back-combing, hairspray and about a hundred clips so that when they were finished, I felt like I was carrying a bag of rice on my head. 

There was some lovely repartee as we went along though, which was kind of fun. Some of which was in Czech, some in English. One of the guys there, whose job remained unknown to me, reminisced about working with the lovely Libuše Šafránková, who, from what I can tell has been in almost every Czech film ever made over the last 3 decades. She was apparently always so nice to everyone, all the crew loved her. 

Then I mentioned how funny it had been to notice while watching the Czech film world awards, called, ,,Lev" [lion] that the presenter obviously knew one of the actors, Ondřej Vetchý, as a friend, because they 'tykat'-ed each other (i.e. used the 'tu', not 'Vous' form equivalent) while talking about presenting an award. I felt like this would never happen in England even if we did have a 'tu' and 'Vous' form to differentiate between. I think people often switch to more formal language for formal events such as awards ceremonies, regardless of who they are talking to. But maybe I'm wrong. Would the French disguise a personal relationship by switching back to using 'Vous' with a friend for the purposes of presenting an awards ceremony? I feel sure that they would, having seen how a friend who worked as an au pair was suddenly referred to as 'tu' during a party the family had one night, but was back to being addressed as 'Vous' the next morning when she was looking after the children. Hmm. Is this somehow insincere? Is it wrong? It's certainly easier to disguise in English, as there is no grammatical distinction to be made in the same way as exists in French, Czech or almost any other European language infact.

I also had to laugh, when I was marched back and forth to the plain white wall where a photographer took pictures of each actor's finished 'look' to log it for reference, and I felt like I was being taken to line up for a firing squad. And in the midst of all that, I was referred to as ,Slečna Herečka', which translates as 'Miss Actress' and sounds ridiculous in English, but is what Czechs do all the time when they don't know someone's name but they know their job. So, ,Paní učitelka'  ('Mrs Teacher') is very common, for example. That's what all the kids in schools call their teachers. It sounds so baby-ish in English somehow, and even more ridiculous when used for an actress, which I barely even see myself as, because acting work happens so rarely, that I'm only an actress for a few hours or days while a film is being shot, but thereafter I revert to just plain old me. (Getting-old, me, actually.)

But for the Czechs, this seemed a logical and easy way to deal with all of these actors and not having to remember my difficult and unusual name. I also got measured for the costumes they'll be making for me, which was funny too, because you're suddenly this thing to be poked and prodded and remarked upon. My tiny stature being something noteworthy to some extent, as it's not very typical, especially not for an actress. They took all sorts of strange measurements and said that I'd probably have to come back for a proper fitting at some stage, to make the skirt really fit tightly around my waist. However, they said this in Czech and I'm not sure if I totally understood all of it.

As for the 'failings' part of this letter, I made an effort to cook something healthy, though rather expensive here, unfortunately, and got some salmon and broccoli and brown rice and put together a good, healthy meal, the like of which is not easy to make often, due to the lack of choice of affordable meals one can make from things available in supermarkets here, especially in the depths of godforsaken Chodov. I liked it. I put basil and lemon with the salmon and I liked the fact that it was simple, healthy and well-cooked to a soft, delicate texture. There was some left over for the cowboy when he got back, and he, rather hungry, ate it quickly. But then he came and found me washing up in the kitchen afterwards and said, in his inimitable way, "Um, sorry, but did you even add salt to it? Did you add salt to the broccoli?" To which I replied yes, because I had, but I hadn't added more than a few turns of the salt and pepper grinders, along the length of the salmon and around the saucepan of the broccoli, and clearly, this was far too healthy an approach. It is not Czech. "It was tasteless", the cowboy complained, having eaten it all. 

From which I conclude two important things: 1) The cowboy is only satisfied with a meal if it contains enough salt to kill a small child (and that may not even be enough because you can kill babies quite easily with tiny amounts of salt, so I imagine a small child doesn't need a whole lot more) and 2) the cowboy is the kind of man who expects things he does not bother to communicate and when they aren't there and he could feasibly do something about it (like get off his bottom and go to the kitchen to get some more salt) opts to play the victim and complain when it's too late to change as though he's been really hard done by, instead of actually taking action himself. I hate to say it, but it strikes me that these two things are inherently Czech attributes. Neither of which I have any time for.

It's time to leave. And discover the unfortunate attributes of another culture that I first  felt drawn to. I am not meant to stay in one place too long, methinks. As the TV theme to 'the littlest hobo' goes, "maybe tomorrow, I'll wanna settle down. Until tomorrow, I'll just keep movin' on..." I hope. Please, soon, allow me an exit strategy of some sort, I implore you, world.

I bid you goodnight for now, kind reader and wish you calming, if not actually sweet, dreams,

Ms. Platform Edge.X 

Skiing. Or not.

Well, all I can say is, "Thank god I didn't bring my camera". I was right to think it might get damaged. And I didn't need any photographic evidence of my incompatibility with skis and snow.

My first attempt at skiing on real snow (having once had a bit of a go on a 'dry slope' in Gloucester) went predictably badly, but ended up better than I'd expected, I suppose. I did spend about 50% of my time on my bottom, but at least I learnt how to ski across the slope, if not actually down it. Which, I know, isn't quite the idea, but then I didn't get to practise on a beginner's slope - I had the 'sink or swim' school of training methods. Otherwise known as the Czech, 'muddle through and hope for the best' method. They clearly believe there's no point in having an actual lesson or training area to learn in, especially as this is for something which is unlikely to lead to earning you a living. Goodness knows, they barely believe in having a good, well-paid teacher for learning something as useful and business-applicable as English, let alone something as 'natural' as skiing. 

The cowboy was as sympathetic as ever, of course, shouting at me to "listen!" to his instructions in Czech using vocab I'd never had to know before, and telling me off for not doing what he'd told me to. Things like not looking at other people and just going ahead and focussing on where I want to end up. Which resulted in my narrowly escaping a collision with a snowboarder, when I actually followed his advice. He also helpfully instructed me to watch the 3 and 4 year olds zooming down the slopes and copy them. As though just watching what a four year old does and copying it were perfectly manageable. To be honest, I had envisioned this. The cowboy, for all his other skills, isn't the best teacher. He hasn't quite learnt to do the 'being patient and kind' thing. And I happen to consider that part kind of vital in a teacher of any kind. 

Thank god for my new, warm skiing trousers and my amusing recollections of 'Ab Fab's 'The Last Shout'. "Snowplough, snowplough, I must. Snow. Plough", says Edina, struggling alone on a slope. I couldn't help but laugh at the thought that I was closer to Patsy in my attempts at skiing, and could easily have ended up 'going round again' on the skilift and asking, "now, Eddie, now?" until midnight like she did. (Instead, as 'the ground came up' at the end of the ski lift, I was thrust forward at considerable speed and felt that the only way to prevent myself careering into a nice family gathering at the top of the slope sitting on deck chairs (no, seriously) was to aim for the ground and hope I would stop quickly rather than continue to travel forward but on my bottom instead.) Thankfully, skis create drag very easily when at right angles to the ground.

Pity I didn't have a bottle of champagne to soothe my ailments, like Patsy in the Last Shout. That might've been more fun. Instead, I followed instructions, learnt how to turn around, first by purposely sitting on the snow and in a most undignified manner, raising my skis up one by one and turning them in the other direction and then slowly working my way up again. Secondly by learning how to use the sticks (poles?What are they called in English? I only ever learnt they were 'hole' in Czech) to push against almost directly behind me, as I shuffled my skis up and around to face in the opposite direction. Carefully avoiding sliding backwards. But these are two ways to turn around, neither of which are used by anyone with a modicum of skiing skill. But nevermind. 

I did learn to ski across the slope and then step down the hill for a while sideways to make up for the fact that going across hadn't got me more than a few centimetres closer to the bottom of the slope, which the cowboy found infuriating, but whenever I actually tried to ski even remotely in a descending fashion, I ended up speeding up beyond my control and the only way to stop was to desperately try to turn back upwards, which invariably meant I ended up on my arse again within seconds. But I did make it down the hill by the end of the day. I let the cowboy go down the hill and take a couple of turns going back up and skiing down again, in other words descending a slope that had taken me all day to get to the bottom of safely. Heigh-ho, we can't all be great skiers y'know. Some of us come from places where this skill is far from interesting, let alone useful.

Thanks to Ab Fab, I still haven't got the humming of Marianne Faithfull and the bassline that leads into the chorus, "we gotta get outta this place if it's the last thing we ever do. We gotta get outta this place. Love has a better life for me and you..." out of my head yet. But I don't suppose that's vitally necessary at this juncture. Indeed, it could be deemed rather appropriate.

Back in business - a retrospective Part 3 'Thoughts from the Paddington to Swansea train'

Dear Reader,

Here's another little instalment from my dark purple notebook:

"Oh I've missed the Welsh accent! I'm sure I couldn't tolerate it on a daily basis for long, but nonetheless, there is an innocuousness about it that warmed my heart as I asked the train ticket inspector which one of the three bits of train journey confirmation he actually needed to see. And he proceeded to hold a short conversation with a passenger who was also Welsh. There's just something completely unpretentious about it, totally approachable and utterly endearing.

Which is rather helpful as this train to Swansea that will get me to Bristol is not only packed with people around almost comically reduced-size tables and spaces between seats, but even featured a Harry Potter-like, "missing carriage".  I walked up and down the platform, looking for coach 'D' only to find that the more I looked between coaches 'E' and 'C', the more coach 'D' wasn't there. Another British rail-related impromptu intelligence test. Which I failed. The correct response is to get onto coach 'C' and imagine it as 'D' in your mind, and lo and behold, the ticket details above the seats reflect this newfound mental re-wiring. They should hand out leaflets entitled, "The tricks we like to play on people with our sheer incompetence - also known as 'the joy of travel in the UK'" to any unsuspecting passengers, particularly foreigners, or honorary foreigners like me, just to give people a fighting chance of coping with what is a shockingly provincial and almost useless train service. (But that would be far too helpful.)

I have to admit, with all due trepidation at using the following introductory phrase, but, "I remember a time when..." there were actual table-sized tables on these trains. And when it felt rather grand to travel on the train, compared to the coach. But it seems that the trains have gone in for dramatic cost-cutting and super-sardine-like packing of the carriages themselves. So much so, that when sitting in an aisle seat, where a full sized case will barely make it past me as though it was measured down to the millimetre to make sure it would officially fit, but only with the straightest-lined dragging of an expert, I am almost forced to hold my breath and certainly not cross my legs, in order to fit in. And if that weren't enough, the guy sitting opposite me is so overweight that he's just lucky that the 'table' on the aisle side actually tapers towards the aisle, which allows him extra room for his rotund belly. Or is he in fact averagely sized, it's just the miniature proportions of the train now making him look overweight? I can't tell."

---------------

I made it to Bristol ok and even had the help of a kind, or crazy, passenger to carry my case up the stairs (I didn't stand much of a chance of doing that myself, because there were rather a lot of steps and a lot of people hurriedly trying to get up them and I just kept getting in the way, and getting knocked from side to side with them - hence the passenger-pity) but then had to laugh that having done that, the way out involves going down the same number of stairs to get to the main entrance/exit. Thankfully at this point there was actually a lift.

Bristol was its usual, grim, boring and more run-down and dingy than I remembered it, self (but I imagine that's partly down to the recession) and I am SO glad I no longer live there. Even if I've only swapped it for a similarly 'run-down-in-places' city, where the central area architecture certainly compensates for the rest but the mentality of the native residents is just about as provincial, unenlightened and full of despair as in Bristol. Just with fewer Polish bus drivers. Just imagine if Bristol were full of Czech bus drivers. My head would be so very confused...

That's all for now dear reader. Tummy ache of the nastiest kind has struck again and I think I'm going to need to lie down with a hot water bottle...

Good night.

Ms. Platform Edge.X