Raining Pouring

I appear to have moved to the wettest place in North Western Europe.  It is as if all those years of my saying that I really like rain have come home to roost.  I still do like it, although would prefer not to be pushing two children in a soggy buggy through it, in a stupid but effective hat, pulling my wet cardy sleeves down over my wet knuckles.  It comes to something when you think "oh well at least it's vertical rain and not that bastard diagonal stuff!".  It would not surprise me if Belgians had 50 words for rain.

Occasionally it still very much surprises me that I am here.  Because I don't do things like this.  I stay within a five mile radius of where I was born.  I cling to security.  And then I didn't.  Unsurprisingly, or perhaps surprisingly, life feels pretty much the same here as it did in London, despite the shifting of tectonic plates. 

There is a feeling that I'm waiting for something.  Whether this be an event, a person, a change within myself, I am not sure.  What is certain is that the only sensible thing is to ignore that feeling.  If one waits for an event, or a person, or a change within oneself before engaging with life, life will trot on anyway.

Don't wait for the rain to stop. 

 

Spring Forward

A day of heightened feelings from top to, literally, toe.  I can't really explain why.

A lovely weekend with my daughter and extended family in Paris left me feeling rather more sanguine about things generally; that and that fact that a job application on Friday solicited a phone call an hour later with an invitation to interview that afternoon.  I was not able to go, but the chap asked would I be interested in other vacancies coming up soon, and he emailed me shortly after saying he would contact me again.

It may or may not result in anything, but the realisation that my CV can provoke an almost instantaneous response is heartening.  And somewhat amusing.

All the recent rain has left parts of Brussels scented with lilac, and the horse-chestnut trees move heavily in their new leaf, as if at the bottom of the sea.  Today I saw a family of coots, with implausibly small babies.

I spent my morning walk in ridiculous longing again, but hopefully this will shake off soon.  I have spent too many years of my life in ridiculous longing for someone or other and, frankly,  it's a waste of good flesh. 

My toe hurts quite badly.  I've kept it splinted for a week but maybe I shouldn't walk on it quite so much.  I tend to ignore it and think fuck it, I've got nine others.

And all my children were lovely today.  None of them pooed either.

 

Headcase

Just been to the doctor again for a tetanus jab (seemingly obligatory here?) and more migraine tablets.  The terror of preparing for such occasions does not seem to leave.  What if I say the wrong thing, something completely unintelligible, and am sent away in shame, with no drugs?

As I sat in the waiting area, alone but for a large box of single-use vaginal specula and a wall full of filed patient notes, it occurred to me I could hear a chap's voice.  Oh it was the man doctor who speaks English!  Hoorah.  Charming man, with photos of his gap-toothed children on the wall.  He gave me drugs and has referred me to a specialist. 

Just need to prepare language for that now.  Maybe the terror will go, one day.

Orwell And Good

It's got to the point where I've written so much that I'm not sure if I've covered this already, or just thought about it at length on my lengthy morning walks.

When first I read George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London at the age of 19, the baby cynic in me thought it was all a bit pretend.  He was just playing at being poor, wasn't he?  It seemed like a social experiment and, indeed, he was neatly rescued by a friend offering employment as a tutor, at the end.  At least I think that's what happened.  The book is probably under several hundred others in the wardrobe.  According to Wiki, 'Orwell left Paris in December 1929 and returned to England, going straight home to his parents' house in Southwold'.

In fact the seriously poor Parisian period, which seems quite long, greasy, hungry and bug-ridden to anyone who has read it, actually lasted only a few months.  A couple of years later, when he was "tramping" in England, 'he ended up in the Tooley Street kip, which he found so unpleasant that he wrote home for money and moved to more comfortable lodgings'.  My 19 year old instinct may have been right, then.  It was a sort of experimental poverty, relievable by the odd fiver from distant, slightly bewildered parents.

Hemingway was in Paris a few years earlier, living a poorish existence, but there was always money enough for drink, someone to watch over their child, and trips to Pamplona and Schruns.  In fact that's not really poorish at all.  That's relatively bloody well-off.  But they did live over a saw-mill in a slightly sleazy area.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  There has long been a tradition for writers to go and live somewhere cheaply, where they can buy good wine, write from the front-line of Expatria, and generally appear a bit romantic.  Look at old Byron, swimming the Grand Canal in Venice, with his club-foot.

I'm not a writer.  Not really, despite the kind comments I've had on here.  I have written all my life and have published the odd thing, but it's been off and on.  Not so much the Grand Canal as the Thames at Runnymede.

And I'm not here in Brux living a sort of faux poverty in order to furnish a book with authenticity.  In fact I'm not really living in poverty.  Granted there are no trips to Pamplona planned but heck, I can go to Paris any damn time I want.

Which brings me to another Orwell book.  In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Inner Party member O'Brien says 'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.'  Well, my Nineteen Eighty-Four  image of oppression would be a child's arse pooing—forever.

So, yeah.  I think what I'm saying is, I want to live authentically, and well, but not with the intention of this  being for some literary purpose.  It never was, anyway.  The blog is a by-product.  And I want an end to poo.  I think we can all agree that is the way forward. 

Venn Is Now

It's a very long time since I have been part of someone's domestic staff.  I think the last time was about 1983 when I was a self-employed babysitter and one of my families also hired a nanny.  She had the misfortune to live in.  (I was a grown up, lived out, and paid my own taxes and NI.)  Misfortune, because the gentleman of the house would contrive to walk in on her while dressing.  Even now it makes me shudder.  He once offered me a shoulder-rub one night, while his wife was in hospital just having given birth. 

Anyway.  At my morning job there is a cleaner.  I cannot remember where she is from but she speaks perfect English and it is likely she is capable of more than cleaning.  I feel really uncomfortable when she is there because I seem to be slightly up the domestic scale.  I am permitted to help myself to Nespresso, and food from the fridge.  If the Boy is sleeping when we come back from our walk, I entertain myself by reading shiny magazines.  The Cleaner hoovers aggressively.  She does seem quite nice, although she pointedly said "So he's still not talking, then?", as though it might be my fault.  Actually he says five recognisable words now, none of which count as swearing.  It is still mainly a one-sided conversation, but I can talk for hours about nothing.  As is probably fairly obvious...

It feels like we are a Venn diagram.  She does her domestic thing; I do mine.  I try and keep us out of her tornado path.  And then there is the intersection where we kind of do the same thing.  We both clean in the kitchen, we both tidy a bit (though I tidy better).  And she sometimes tells me when the Boy has woken up, as she hoovers aggressively and I read the shiny magazines.  I feel guilty then. 

You would think that both being domestics there would be a certain camaraderie, but perhaps this is what it was like in service - a kind of suspicion of each other, an odd feeling of being resented for having Nespresso privileges.

Sur Le Pont

Something that has occurred to me in recent weeks is - I'm not done yet.  I suppose in my head "Move to Brussels" was such an enormous and ridiculous thing (like "Move the Pyramids" or " Move Kilimanjaro") that I had not looked much beyond that.  Move to Brussels, learn French, get a reasonably good job; that was the self-briefed brief.  

When you go anywhere, the horizon changes.  The world being round, it offers new things to lure as you travel.   I'm nowhere near learning French - although there was a semi-convincing conversation with a postman this morning.  Oh and one at the crèche.  I'm not that near getting a job.  But the horizon has changed a little.

In my head there has for several years been this lightly-jangling idea of retiring to the South.  I don't know why.  Hot weather and me don't really go.  But my joints don't like the cold and believe me, it's still cold even though May is hanging about backstage.

The brief is changing to:  learn French, get a reasonably good job, and buy a small property in the South of France.  I think within a couple of years I could then move there and work and, ultimately, retire.  Avignon is the name that keeps popping up.  Avignon.

You read it here first. 

No Fear

You'll pardon me if I'm not my normal, polite self, but I got very wet coming home, have a broken toe, and stepped in dog shit.

I subscribe to an expats group on Facebook and it has come to my attention that there have been several incidences of mugging on my local tram.  One incident was where I board the tram.  In most instances the tram drivers and the police have more or less shrugged.  In some they have been insulting and rude.  The most surprising thing is that the security cameras on the trams only record the driver.

I'm a city girl born and bred.  The countryside makes me nervous and I'm sure it's full of murderers and sex-criminals.  I lived in London for nearly 50 years and would like to think I'm careful and streetwise.  Only once in all that time did I have my purse nicked from my bag.

Moving here, I found a neighbourhood I love, which delights me to walk in, and trams that (when running)  still enchant me.  I know there is crime here, of course.   But the edgiest part of my day is the Roma kids on the Metro with an accordion doing a mash-up of The Anniversary Song and Sous Le Ciel De Paris, and then collecting paltry sums in a plastic cup.

I want to feel safe in my home, in my street, on my cute and annoying tram.  I do not want to live in a state of fear.  It makes me angry that I might have to.  It makes me angry that in my head I am preparing for the event as if it were inevitable.  I do not want to live in a state of fear.  

Also, if I may, consider the recent fatal attack on a bus supervisor here.  It resulted in a six day walk-out while the transport unions mourned their colleague and negotiated for more security on the buses, the trams, the metro.

For them.  Not for us.  As I mentioned above, the security cameras only record the driver.  So far I have not seen an increased police presence on any trams. 

This makes me incandescently angry.  Someone on Facebook suggested the public go on strike and not use transport until it's safe.  If only we could.