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

Moving out, moving in, but moving on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Normality and other assumptions

In the midst of an incredibly stressful week due to impromptu renovation work in my flat, leaving me with a non-functioning toilet, I have begun to recognise one of the down-sides of a Czech quality that I had previously appreciated.  When I was meeting up with Czech friends back in London, prior to coming here, I used to be amazed and hugely comforted by the fact that whenever I was having a spectacularly difficult time and I needed to cry and talk it over time and time again, these kind Czech friends would say, "it's normal."  The kind of despair or ongoing battles I faced did not faze them.  With British friends, of whom I had very few, most were unable to tolerate too much of this bleak state and they were detrimentally affected by it.  Mainly because it frightened them.  If it could happen to me, maybe it would happen to them too.

Czech friends, on the other hand, displayed no such fear.  But the reason for that, I now realise is that they don't expect to avoid these kinds of pitfalls.  Czechs are always being told to expect things to go wrong.  That relationships probably will go wrong.  That you probably will live in abject poverty all your life.  That your skills and talents will more often that not,  count for nothing.  "It's normal."  And suddenly, there it is.  Something's wrong with this picture.  

Everyone knows life can be one hell of a struggle, most certainly, and a lot of people do get overlooked or miss out on great opportunities because they don't have enough outside support to be able to get beyond the time and energy involved in mere survival.  But to say, "it's normal" seems at least fractionally defeatist, not to mention desperately sad.  And so it is with this renovation work, that I find none of the builders sympathise with the fact that I work from home most of the time and this work is therefore very, very disruptive.  Nor have they considered the kind of stress (and the detrimental effects on my health this is causing) that not having a functioning loo in my flat will generate.  It is of course, a 'normal' consequence of living in an old block of flats.  Renovation was an inevitability I should not have expected to avoid or have any say in.  (Thank god my landlady is not typically Czech and has apologised for this terrible inconvenience and given me a key to another flat to be able to use the loo.)

Equally, when I stayed with the architect in his flat in the mountain town, having a hot water supply that ran out after both of us having a shower and doing one big amount of washing up, was 'normal' and I was accused of being a princess for expecting otherwise.  Hot water is a luxury, afterall.  Well, I can agree with that, having not had hot water for several weeks in previous places I lived in, in London.  That just means that I appreciate it all the more when there is hot water, and I like to be able to relish and enjoy it, rather than worry about its extremely limited supply.  The same goes for material things.  If you're brought up in a low-income family, there is often an emphasis on the virtue of being someone who can live without many of the commonly sought-after material things.  It becomes a noble attitude to be able to cut back and survive on very little and say things like, "we didn't have much, but we were happy."

Perhaps this notion is genuinely true for some, but for others, 'not having much' results in a battle to get as good grades as others who have the privilege of extra home tutoring, or those who have extra books and resources bought for them, to aid them in their studies.  This is not happiness.  There is no real pride in getting a 'B' grade and saying that it was, "good when you consider I did that without any help".  The music GCSE exam was a prime example of that.  In many schools, music education is an oddity.  You can pay extra for lessons on an instrument as an extracurricular activity but you can't get that kind of education as part of the free GCSE tuition alone, so that exam is one whereby the noble poor pupil with no after-school instrument teacher will get a low grade or even fail because having that extra-curricular teacher was a vital element in the others' capacity to pass the exam.  That's not happiness.

Nor is it happiness to be proud of not being affected by 'material things'.  If having a washing machine that works, having a kettle to make tea with, having a piano to write music on has no impact whatsoever on your level of contentment and ease with which you can conduct your life, not to mention the added joy you could derive from these things, then what kind of person are you?  What kind of person says that they are entirely unaffected by these types of things?  What kind of person is disinterested in having the choice between buying cheap, bad quality red wine and a spending a bit more for a decent bottle of Bordeaux because they are only interested in getting the lowest price?  Dare I say it, oh god forgive me, a Czech.  Or at least, a miserable, hopeless kind of Czech who's had the joy and hope knocked out of them on a regular basis.  The effects of a totalitarian regime do not die when walls come down and governments are changed.  The walls have already been formed in your head.  And those take far, far longer and an even more concerted effort to tear down.

I had one of these types as a meet-ee.  He really said it makes no difference to him having a computer and a washing machine and those kinds of things.  He wasn't grateful for them.  I suggested that he would be pretty annoyed if they suddenly broke.  And I'm sure he would be, though he's earning enough that he could simply replace them at the drop of a hat.  So the inconvenience might only last a couple of days.  And there are members of my family, with no such, "we lived through years of communism" for an excuse (though years of unquestioned Christianity might have had a very similar effect) who still buy cheap chocolate and don't think it's worthwhile spending more on getting something with more cocoa content than sugar in it, for a better taste and less damaging effect to one's health.  (Even the architect can tell the difference and would actually prefer the pricier stuff, so that's really saying something.)

I certainly feel a great deal happier when I do have functioning 'material things' in my life.  Access to a working loo within my own flat for one thing.  And I certainly enjoyed it when I used to have a piano to play loudly when everything else around me seemed doomed.  And today I'm grateful to have a warm new jacket to wear when it gets chilly, and a lovely new fluffy cushion to lean against and make the place feel homelier with.  All of these things bring or brought me comfort and happiness when I had them.  It is not noble to try to live without as though we're still living in a cold war.  I'm not in favour of wasting things, but nor am I in favour of not appreciating things when I do have them.  A life of drudgery and limited resources is not something I should accept and be content with.  It is NOT normal.

"That'll do, Pig...that'll do"

I'm writing this in between eating leftover chocolates from Easter (seriously, I'm currently typing one-handed, while the other gently feeds me the necessary medicine...) because I've just finished one of those gut-wrenching, all-out, going out of fashion, weeping-like-a-lost-and-desolate-soul crying sessions to end all crying sessions.  You know the ones, where you find yourself practically praying by the end of it, just begging through the sobs, "look, just help me or kill me, I don't mind which", except suddenly I find myself angrily bargaining with the universe that if it is going to kill me, it had better bloody sort out the lives of the people who might be a bit ticked off or even, maybe upset, about it, by bringing them lots of love and miraculous lives to make up for the grief they might otherwise experience a bit of.

That should actually go down as a significant improvement on previous sobbing sessions.  I never used to say that before.  I must have developed a modicum of self-worth.  Where the hell did that come from?  Don't tell me that working for a heartless, unappreciative director from the depths of all that is heartless and unappreciative, who treats me as though I could be replaced tomorrow (and yet still can't actually find another person to do the same job as me...) is actually a self-esteem booster?!  What cruel irony is that?  So, what, I only stand up for myself when someone treats me like dirt? 

Well it doesn't help much anyway.  No good having a remaining amount of self-esteem when the world couldn't give a damn that I exist.  I toil meaninglessly to survive one week to the next, contemplating stupid things like whether I can afford printer ink again. (Printer ink - seriously, isn't that just the most tragically pathetic part of all?)  And isn't it a sorry a state of affairs when you have to regularly get up at 6 am but the job you're getting up to do doesn't pay you enough to afford the decent coffee you need to actually stand a chance of being properly awake by the time you start work?

All humour aside, I wonder if this is some genetic defect that pre-disposes me to gargantuan amounts of depression hormones (or whatever causes this) or am I right that music has tortured me from beginning to end and just as I try to escape it, it comes back for another round of its own brand of 'water-boarding'?  Is it my fault?  Have I brought this on myself?  Have I made music my drug of choice and now become so addicted that I cannot live without it?  Or is that just the usual curse of being a creative person.? And I do mean curse.  I wanted to be normal so that I could just about live with this meaningless existence of working all the hours in the day to pay for the roof over my head that I so longed for, but have little time to enjoy, but somehow I still cannot come to terms with it.

This Catch 22 is the story of almost everyone's life - you do a job you hate for the majority of your time, to pay for the food you need to fuel doing that job you hate, and only get enough free time to just about stave off death so you can work another meaningless week.  Other people have learned to live with this.  But I can't.  I find this fact just about the most desperately hopeless, despair-filled, depressing thing about life that there is and I will NEVER get used to it or learn to accept it.  Even in the midst of my crying, I was still angrily threatening the universe that I would never accept it.  That I'd rather die than accept that this will be the way of things for the rest of my life.  And I know that even if I do have to carry on like this till the despair and meaningless work kill me, I will still be adamantly refusing to accept that this is the way it was meant to be.  Even if that defiance is the first stepping stone to my demise, I will never accept that this is simply the way life is.  I don't fucking care.  IT SHOULDN'T BE!.  

I worked hard to try to avoid it and to do something that had meaning for me.  I worked hard to build myself up from absolutely zero support, no 'pre-disposed to a musical education' for me.  I paid for every bit of that 'music education' myself.  And it may well have bankrupted me, but I had to do it.  There was just no way I was going to miss out on playing the piano just because I was born into a working class family that didn't know the difference between a casio keyboard and a Yamaha C3.

Wow.  I think the chocolate really kicked-in there, right?  Or else I really am that bitter and twisted.  Probably the latter.  But I can't be bitter and twisted if I'm still capable of appreciating those who might still succeed instead of me and can be pleased for them that they will/they have escaped the Catch 22.  Those I thought of today, the Russian Countess, the coffee and cake friend, the Faerie Godmother trainee.  All of them have or will succeed and rightly so.  I just still don't know what it is I have done to be the one who didn't and won't.  But I mustn't forget, Francis Bacon has the definitive word on this one: "Life is so meaningless, we might as well try to make ourselves extraordinary."  I mustn't forget that life for some, really is meaningless (especially if ill-health robs you of opportunity) and maybe ultimately, with the way in which things can come to an end, it is meaningless for everyone, it's just a matter of time before you realise it.  Before you're forced to see it.

So I have thought all these thoughts today and cried till I had nothing left to express, and I've done my best by those thoughts and that crying, and all I could find to say after all that, was not some kind of solution or wise insight, but the words from a children's film:

 "That'll do Pig...that'll do."  

God bless you, James Cromwell, wherever you are.