Back in business - a retrospective Part 2 'Thoughts from London'

Dear Reader,

I know it's the old thing of you wait over an hour for a bus and then two come at once, but it's been crazy-busy since I got back (and not in a bad way, necessarily...) and this is the best I can do. Here are some 'thoughts from London' written down in my lovely purple leather notebook:

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Is this simply what always happens - what must happen - when I come back to London for more than a couple of days? There is the initial euphoria of being back, and seeing places I love again - being able to get things I wanted, to wander around bookshops again, to see friends, to get a decent glass of red wine in a bar, but then there are the memories, the sense of loss. The sadness that I never fully managed to have a home in London. I never fully fitted in. But one wonders if anyone can truly fit in, in London...

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My last day in London before moving on to Bristol. I've decided to come out to Bertie's Bar at the Royal Garden hotel for a really good glass of red wine and a chance to reflect. And to compensate a little for not being able to afford to actually stay here. (And, indeed, before the horrors of packing and trying to fit yet one more magazine into my case begins.)

I've never been here before. I arrived at around 8.45pm, having caught the bus from Gloucester Road, and it strikes me that this particular bar lacks...people. There are two occupied tables at this time of day, apart from me, and both of these happen to be occupied by a small group of Arab-looking men.The music being played here is a little incongruous, being that it has so far been an eclectic mix of Latin dance rap and a few old 60s Brit pop hits. 

Being that one of my part-time gigs now is ghostwriting a (if I say 'cheesy' is that being unkind?) relationship advice blog, I am reminded of a number of classic SATC scenes right now:

1) The scene where Miranda goes into a bar, expecting to meet Carrie, but gets a phonecall cancelling and, ticked off, orders a Côtes du Rhône and meets Steve for the first time. Who promptly reminds her to sip slowly, when she seems to be angrily getting through it a bit too rapidly. "Enjoy", he urges. My glass of Malbec is superb and definitely worth enjoying. I doubt I shall have as good a glass of red wine for quite some time now that I'm going to Bristol tomorrow, to spend time with my non-wine-drinking sister, before heading back to Prague.

2) I am also reminded of the scene where Carrie purposely goes out for a glass of wine at a restaurant on her own, no book, no notepad, no laptop, nothing but herself, a pair of 70s style shades, which she bravely takes off as she kicks back and settles into sitting in the New York sunshine to spend some time on her own.

People think this is brave. I'm inclined to think this is the 'wuss' option and that coming out to meet a bunch of disparate and single-minded people is braver. Here, I am in fact cosseted from the outside world, as this bar's good seating largely lacks any opportunity of a view outside. And it's so quiet in here, there are few opportunities to feel I'm being watched. Apart from by the very attentive bar staff.

I have brought more than just a notebook too. I can rest in the company of Tracey Emin, as and when I choose to do so, having borrowed a friend's copy of 'My Life in a Column' and brought it with me. She has already, from what I've read, been quite comforting as well as inspiring and entertaining. I'm really rather lucky to have been able to stay in a writer's flat. Such lovely books to dabble in...

An American couple has now joined us in this now, less empty bar. The woman is dropping names of cars and countries and cosmetic companies she's worked for or in. I love how Americans somehow speak loud enough to be heard as clear as a bell across a crowded, or at least potentially filled with distracting things, room. How do they do that absolutely everywhere they go?

Here are a few favourite sections from 'My Life in a Column':

[30th March 2007]

"Sometimes I have to remind myself how void and totally empty my life would be without art. I take art for granted so often and I shouldn't and mustn't. It's something that should be fought for because, so often, even in our society, art is so easily dismissed. Something, a presence, which has graced this earth, in terms of man's consciousness, for thousands and thousands of years is still disregarded and put down at the bottom of the list of what we need to survive."

[15th June 2007]

"It's strange when you vent your spleen. It's so difficult to direct it at the right person. Every time my period is due...I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm not allowed to write about that sort of thing! (Because half of the people in the world don't have a menstrual cycle and may be offended!) In fact, I am now going to "open brackets": mild anger is not a bad thing. We should all scream a bit more. The world has just become a bit too polite for its own good!"

[22nd June 2007]

"I've had a very strange week, running around breathless - tired and over emotional. Every thing feels as though it's in a heightened state. The hot clamminess of the clouded skies. Perspiration running down my neck on the Central Line. All my thoughts cluttered and mashed up. I feel like I'm desperately waiting for a cooler time. I'm still coming down from Venice. And believe me - it is a comedown. At this point I could lay into all the critics who gave me really stinking reviews, but I'm not going to. I just think it's such a shame they missed the trip. They weren't on my boat. And they never will be. Being an artist is an extremely personal, intimate, pursuit. It never ends. Only when you close your eyes and die. And then we don't know."

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I am now the only person in the bar. The staff are bored and keep asking me if I'm ok. (Well, only a couple of times over the course of the evening, but I think I'm getting a bit bemused by their concern, not to mention irritated by the odd collection of records they seem to have here..) It's given me a chance to dive into the borrowed T.E. book, but I wish they'd stuck to playing lounge jazz, like they did for one track, or segued into a Massive Attack-like bunch of trip-hop stuff, which seemed incredibly apt for a woman from Bristol who's travelling back there tomorrow.

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Thoughts from the train to Bristol will follow in due course. As will other news.  But for now, I bid you good day, dear Reader.

Yours most fondly,

Ms. Platform Edge.X

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.

Prague and provinciality

I don't know why it is that I keep hitting my head against the same brick wall, but there's no doubt about it:  I'm stuck.  Counsellors call this habit of constantly pondering the same thing (willingly or by way of a kind of "mean-thoughts-invasion") 'ruminating'.  Which is suitably evil-sounding, enough to make you feel ashamed and humiliated, which makes their job easier - more stuff to do for them!  Maybe it's my own fault for watching SATC re-runs.  Maybe it's just that I cannot accept that life will always have to be this dull and meaningless (though I know, Francis Bacon did try to warn me) and I am desperate and determined to fight that inevitability until I get it in some kind of 'lock-down' on the floor, begging for mercy.  Maybe it's just that I need a lobotomy because humans weren't meant to get clever enough to realise the futility of their own lives and the trap of poverty they are most likely to get caught in, because it only leads to self-destruction.  

I was thinking about erasing that last line, but this is something I was discussing today, how women are not allowed to accept and acknowledge a strong quality in themselves because it comes across as aggressive.  It is not acceptable for me as a woman to say, "I'm clever."  However, I feel it's all gone too far, when you've suffered the bullying, the ostracism, the perpetual 'not fitting in' of being intelligent, that you aren't allowed to say, "damn, I'm clever and I know I am".  It's outrageously boastful and uncouth.  Is this just a British trait, or do we all suffer from this necessity for self-deprecation and is it only women who are subjected to it?

I feel compelled to explain that I'm not suggesting I'm extra clever, or remarkably intelligent, just clever enough to notice and analyse the injustices in life, as well as know I've screwed things up and blown all my chances (what few I have had) due to bad timing, ill-health and a lack of awareness equalled only by my lack of support, about how to go about pursuing the kind of career I wanted.  And now, it's too late.  I've got myself caught so far in the pit of failure, there really does appear to be no way out.  I didn't adapt fast enough, I didn't recognise the possibilities that were really there soon enough and I didn't have enough money after moving my piano (which I'd wanted all my life but only got when I was 21, so it was hard to part with) from house to house to be able to afford to do frequent recording or gigs as well.

So, I shall always envy the fictional world of SATC, where even in the bad old early days, when no-one had so much as a decent pair of earrings, let alone shoes, they had their high paying jobs, one of which allowed her to write her opinions in a creative way for a living, and their apartments in Manhattan and their highlighted hair and copies of Vogue and The New Yorker.  I read the New Yorker online today, or at least a couple of articles from it, and looked at the lovely and inspiring illustrations, but I can't afford a regular copy, or subscription.  And I can't afford their delightful desk diaries or book of paintings or drawings of New York which have graced their front covers over the years.  And I don't live anywhere near such a vibrant city.  I know Prague is a regional-seeming little place.  It's not rough around the edges, just dog-earred with neglect (in places).  

What I fear the most, right now, is that Prague and I are almost the same and always will be:  A good idea with lots of potential for inspiration, but too beaten down by the past and a prolonged case of underfunding to ever escape its provincial roots.

The brunette strikes back

I tried to write on Monday, but got nowhere, as I ran out of time after my meetings and aerobics and other sources of duty or tedium.  Then I had Tuesday, a day with no meetings except for an appointment with the hairdresser, and then an appointment in the evening with a friend to go and watch a Czech film in the local art-house cinema.

I actually had a delightful morning and realised what a difference a day-off makes.  Anyway, by the afternoon, I had just enough time to stop for a spontaneous coffee in the downtown department store, known as 'My,' though it's pretty much a big Tesco-owned Debenhams-wannabe, and I wrote this:

09/08/11

Maybe it's fitting that I watched SATC The Film, dubbed into Czech yesterday, the day before dyeing my hair back to its natural colour.  It was also was my Mum's birthday and today I look more like her than I did before.  It's really rather strange.  A lot of 'coming full circle's going on.  In addition to this, I came back to writing music and now I'm back in the department store I used to come to quite a lot when I first moved here and still had enough money to buy things now and then to cheer myself up.

Except I'm here today to buy the architect a birthday present.  I've already got him a few things, but I need a 'crème de la crème' present to round everything else off with.  (Though secretly I'm hoping that the fact that I've had my hair cut and dyed a glossy dark brown will be its own 'crème de la crème' kind of present.)

Most of all, even though I'm hardly a huge success here, I feel I can permit myself to say, "you've done ok, kid".  I mean, I haven't earned pots of money (nobody ever got rich by helping people, I suppose) but I've made ends meet, I've embarked on a new relationship, despite the fact that it may only serve to save us both from despair in the short term, and I've managed to learn enough Czech to survive and even do well going to a local hairdresser's where they don't speak a word of English.  I had no photo with me, just a few vocab notes and I explained how I wanted my hair dyed and cut.  I defy anyone to manage as much, after losing both the relationship they were in for well over 10 years, and having to call it quits with a career path that came to an end at the same time the relationship did.  I may not be free of the pain of that loss, but I have at least progressed to new and different shores, and though my home may now be a landlocked country, I can still sing of the sea.

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So now I'm a proper brunette again, it was back to work as usual today.  (6am wake up call and knuckling down to work by 7.40) I am shattered as a result, seeing as I didn't finish till 8.45 this evening.  Ach jo.  To je život.  Můj život.  I have been hanging on for dear life and now it looks like the architect wants me to stay over at his brother's at the weekend.  Not much warning, but I guess it's good that I've got two Czech lessons this week as well as having extra practice on Tuesday evening.  (The film I saw with my friend was weird but the music was good, though wholly anachronistic.)  I just don't know if I'll feel free to just communicate as best I can, or whether I'll end up silencing myself, for fear of all the horrid case ending mistakes I'm unable to avoid making flooding out in a wave of horribly unbearable pigeon-sounding Czech.  

On the one hand, a foreigner (especially an English one) speaking any Czech at all here is some kind of revelation, but on the other, Czechs are therefore not exactly accustomed to hearing their language mangled by someone who not only gets case endings wrong but sometimes chooses imperfective verbs instead of the necessary perfective alternative.  And don't even get me started on the effort involved in trying to remember what's correct Czech, and what's 'Prague' Czech.  Worse still, the architect swears like a trouper at times, so the phrases I've learnt most readily are all the slang, Prague-colloquial, possibly really rather offensive, ones.

God help me.  I must be speaking the equivalent of something like, "That bloody cow was such a bitch!" instead of, "she was most unkind towards me", with the added problem that it has wrong endings all over the place.  Which I can't really come up with an equivalent of, because it doesn't exist in English, but maybe it sounds as bad as, "that cow, she not been liking me lately", or something equally awful.  I need nerves of steel to survive a weekend with 'family' surely?  Why has no-one given me adequate training for this?!

On the up side (and there really is one, "hurrah!", but it's totally unrelated) the flower that came with the chocolates I got from a meet-ee last Friday has nearly lasted a week!  Here's what it looked like upon first delivery:

And here's a more recent pic, after it had opened up to say hello to what fleeting sunshine we had a day or two later:

And with that, I must bid you goodnight and attempt to get at least some beauty sleep.  New hairstyle or not, I certainly need it.

Incompatibility?

Watching episodes of 'The IT Crowd' on his PC, a PC which is currently infected with a virus called 'Windows XP Antivirus 2011', was both highly entertaining as well as ironic.  The virus kept intercepting with 4 minutes left of the episode to watch, so we did indeed have to, "try switching it off and on again".

(He's got a PC, I've got a Mac.  How very apt.  How very SATC.)

He watches Top Gear (in Czech) and I watch David Attenborough documentaries.  He has hot chocolate for breakfast on a weekend but I have tea, followed by an essential cup of coffee.  He seems older than he is (nothing like a few tragedies in someone's life to make them ever so mature rather quickly) but insists I look younger than my age.  (A 'meet-ee' of mine today guessed my age as 12 years younger.)  He eats white bread rolls (or "housky") and I eat wholemeal ones.  But we both wish we had enough money to train as a pilot and at least get a PPL for flying a little Piper plane.

All this frivolity could end tomorrow.  The hugs, the smiles, the cracking up at either of our linguistic errors; all of it could just disappear.  I know this better than anyone.

I'm getting my Saturday back this weekend.  I shall have to do some thinking.  Good, quality thinking-time is a luxury I haven't had in a while.