Nexit

Today is the exit day that was not.  The UK Government has been given 11 further days to come up with a cunning plan to avoid crashing out of the EU on 12 April.  Given that in the previous 1008 days, 23 hours and 35 minutes, the Government has come up with fuck all, I don't have much confidence.

Incidentally, I know the man who coined the term "Brexit".  This is one of my very few claims to fame.

In more parochial news, it is a little over four months until my departure.  This knowledge should create some urgency but I've done nothing so far.  In my head things are moving around, like a very cumbersome Rubik's Cube.

Somewhat impulsively, I've decided to do some stand-up comedy, on the day after I arrive back in the UK.  My friend P runs comedy nights and what better way to celebrate my re-entry into the UK than by humiliating myself publicly, in a pub?

I used to be good at parallel parking, reversing neatly into a spot with ease.  It feels like that is what I'm trying to do, except I don't really have anywhere to reverse into or, indeed, a car.

Chips With Everything

I am old. I am so fucking old. Last Friday I turned 57. Fifty-fucking-seven. Nobody wants to be fifty-fucking-seven, except that the alternative doesn't sound like much fun. So there we go. As I was walking up the hill (listening coincidentally to Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush) into work on Friday, I realised it was ten years to the day that I will be of pensionable age in the UK.

How did that happen? In my head I'm still a vaguely youthful 30-something, with a waist, and enough slightly slutty beauty to turn heads.

I should not complain too much. I celebrated my birthday with a young man (no, not like that) who bought me dinner and then took me to a casino.

They say every seven years, the cells in your body are completely replaced. Which means that the person who came to Belgium in 2012 no longer exists. Of course, I still do sort of exist, but the replacement cells are all a bit droopier, with only a homeopathic memory of what my face and figure should look like.

But this bunch of newly-minted saggy cells can still have a good time. I have no idea if I won anything at the casino because I was really quite bloody drunk (thanks to some industrial strength margaritas at the restaurant). But I was happy, and safe, and with someone nice. It was a good birthday.

A Nose For It

The interminable saga of my sinuses continues. 

I went back to see my surgeon this morning.  I find going to the ORL (ENT in French) department very stressful.  Even though I knew I had an appointment, I was convinced I'd been forgotten.  Well, I wasn't seen until an hour after my appointment time, so this was entirely possible.  Apparently he'd had to fit in some emergencies.

We looked at my scan.  Seeing my skull on a screen is always sobering. It's like looking at yourself dead.  One side was good, one side not good.  I still have blockages all above my right eye.  So I have to go back in for an intervention.  It's day surgery but not a full on operation that leaves you with bruises on your shoulder (no idea what happened there).  He said it's more like a revision.  I just want it done.  This has been going on for five years.  I want sinuses that do what they are supposed to do.  I have spent far too much time in hospitals since I've been here.

Work is sucking donkey balls too.  I feel like I have been trying to catch up since my hospitalisation in January and it's fucking March now.  But the main donkey-ballness is the lack of joined-up thinking and action in the place.  I found an email from a year ago when I was still full of righteous anger and energy and wanted to change things and...now I couldn't give a furry fuck.  The various parts of the organisation are so disconnected that it's not worth the fur or the fuck.  I'm out of energy. 

On the plus side, I've found out what to do with my cobwebs.  My dear friend T wants them.  So I'll be sending them to her along with some used coffee-stirrers for use in her beautiful dioramas.

Hot or Not

Since Thursday, when I came home from a scan at Saint Luc Hospital, I've had a fever.  We English people don't say that.  We say "I'm running a temperature". I can't say that any more.  I've become too foreignised.  I suppose it's like the way the rest of the world says ananas and in English it's pineapple.  So I have been battling a fever.  And a cough.  And feeling like shit.

I didn't have a thermometer until I was recently hospitalised.  Yes, for 56 years I have managed without a thermometer.  Now I take my temperature slightly obsessively, and have discovered that I have a resting body temperature bordering on hypothermia.  35 degrees is very low, but that's my normal.  I am cool, it seems.

I think the fever is on the wane now so hopefully I'll be able to go back to work tomorrow.  Also, more importantly, I have another hospital appointment in the morning for aspiration of my sinuses.  Last time the surgeon couldn't get in because of swelling.  If he cannot get in tomorrow I will be tempted to say look, I've had the local, just keep going, and apply my knee to his elbow.  What's the worst that can happen?

20 weeks today to my departure.

Tessellation

I'm at that stage where I don't know who knows I'm going.  I know that I've upset some people by clumsily getting drunk and posting a link to my blog on Facebook.  I am sorry about that.  But I've never been good at saying goodbye and it's really hard to explain why I want to go.  In truth, I've wanted to leave Brussels for some time. 

I'm sure I've said this before.  I feel like I've said it before: it's like when you are going out with someone and they are nice but you don't love them, and there's not really any reason to break up.  So you just stay together.  Brussels is that boyfriend who you don't really love, but he hasn't done anything to make you want to break up. Which isn't really a good enough reason to stay.

I've met some wonderful people here.   Really lovely, wonderful people.  But as I tried haltingly to explain to one of those lovely people, I just want not to be here.

And now begins a sort of reverse Tetris, where you remove the components of what makes up a life until, on the last day, you are just left with space.  On 31 July, I return to London.  That is the only certainty at the moment. 

Between then and now will be a removal, by small, persistent degrees.

Spam Spam Spam

Last night's posts were brought to you by some pear liqueur.  Potent stuff that left me with a mouth like a badger's gusset.

Going back to the UK this year seems like the most stupid thing of possibly many stupid things I've done in my life.  I'm not sure there will be a UK that I recognise.  It will be mainly Spam, and all the roundabouts in Slough will be given over to crops.  People will wander about shouting spit about getting THERE CUNTRY BACK.  There will be no medication to speak of.  If you get a headache you'll have to chew a willow tree.

But I want to go back.  I feel like my poor stupid fucking country needs me.  Of course, it doesn't, but that makes me feel noble.

It actually feels harder than moving to Brussels seven years ago.  I'm a lot older.  No wiser.  Although I do know about Google docs now.  And I know more French.  Somehow I have to remake another life there.  "There" being an unspecified destination that could be London, York, Leeds, Bristol, Bath, Brighton, Edinburgh, or Croydon.  Yeah, maybe not Croydon.

Perhaps I should move to the place with the most willow trees. 

Seven Year Sitch

What has happened over the last seven years?

Mate, I wish I could tell you.  It's been mainly pasta.  There's been a fair bit of me staring at people like "you have to be kidding, seriously, don't fuck with me".  And the rest has been wine and chips.

I still haven't been to the Atomium.

DID YOU MISS ME

So this feels like the equivalent of wiping my cock on the curtains and then leaving but:

I'm now Belgian and I'm planning to move back to the UK in the summer.

Which is like moving back to the Titanic while the band plays.

Far too many metaphors here.  Have a kitten instead.

And no, that isn't all I want to say.

I moved here on 4 January 2012 without the faintest idea what would happen.  Fucking crazy idea.

But, I got work and have been gainfully and continuously employed since I arrived here.  I learned enough of the language to trick them into thinking I could be Belgian.

And now, although my native country looks like a wet pigeon in the rain I want to go home.

I'm going home.