Type OH!

I spent three and a half hours this morning being tested and interviewed at an employment agency.  Such was my relief to sit down at a keyboard and perform familiar tasks without whining interruption or demands that I felt really relaxed, and aced the whole test.  Well, except the bit where I had to correct some French.  You'll be pleased to hear that my English spelling is excellent.  In Excel I had to work out some averages and then do a 3D bar chart - my first ever, and under test conditions.  I'm afraid I shouted "YES!" and laughed when it came out right.

The interview was partly in French and was extremely thorough.  I mean, can you remember what you did in a two month gap between jobs twenty years ago?  In all it was a very positive experience and, although there is certainly no guarantee that I'll get work through them, they are happy to have me on their books until such time as I do not need to be.

Now I'd better change into my drone clothes and go where the nappies are full and the days are long.

Wile E Coyote

I think I'm losing it a bit, to be honest.  There are only so many times you can be hit with a cartoon anvil before it actually causes damage.  Having someone who is looking for his next wife dismiss you even for routine girlfriend duties in the middle of the night seems to have left me with an anvil-shaped dent in my guts.  It does make me wonder why we keep trying.  Why I keep trying.

Part of me is mildly stunned that I can still get an audience at all; the rest is screaming PLEASE STOP.  THEY ONLY WANT TO TRAMPLE YOUR LADYGARDEN.  At my age I should know much, much better.  Perhaps it's the Joan Collins in me refusing to look back, and blithely ploughing new and similarly crap furrows to last year's.  Perhaps it's the only kind of gardening I can really do.

All over the place you see couples.  It isn't that much to ask really, is it.  I know they are probably bored with each other and are envious of my racy single lifestyle but flip me, wouldn't it be lovely to have someone who saw something and the first person he thought to tell was me because he knew I'd pee my pants about it.

I'm not entirely sure this will ever happen.  For some people it just doesn't.

Heavy and Light

It wasn't until nine-thirty this morning that I realised I had my trousers on inside out.  Perhaps at my age people just excuse this sort of thing as eccentricity.

I've had a lovely few days, hosting my friend C from the UK.  We've known each other about eleven years and there is a great comfort and giggliness.  There has been a fair amount of drink taken too, but mainly because I have discovered a bar not five minutes from me that is open all year.  All day, all night, all year.  They close for Christmas Day and New Years' Day, for which I will forgive them.

After Thursday's melodrama, having a good friend here has been a wonderful balm.  I still feel the echo of a boot in my guts and the question "What is wrong with me?  What is wrong with me?" is not far from my ears.  But having C here has been absolutely lovely and makes me think that if being wrong is this much fun I don't want to be right.  Sort of thing.

On Sunday, we got up dreadfully late and, wandering out for some lunch, surprised a market on my local shopping street - a brocante.  Loads of people selling whatever shite they could probably not shift on Ebay.  In diagonal seeping rain I bought a heavy and old Anglepoise lamp for €25.  I waited till it dried out (despite appearances, I'm not a fool) and tested it.  It works!  Am very happy with my ancient Anglepoise.

   

Night Moves II

It's been a pretty shit day.  Two hours sleep after the chucking-out, a really poor French test on the phone (for a French course), and a couple of waffles with jam.  This is what happens when you have relations with men you do not value you.  And really it should have ended there but he just keeps sending me messages.  I think he is not so much thick-skinned as possibly just thick.

I unfriended him on Facebook so he sent me another friend request.  He sent me a long self-justifying email.  He phoned me, several times.  I did not answer.  He invited me out to karaoke tonight, despite the fact I'd thrown him out in the middle of the night.  I mean.  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK?  And this is someone who does not want me to be his girlfriend, and whom I've quite categorically told I will not be his fuck buddy or mate.

I am baffled by people.  But then he is a Scientologist, which probably takes WTF to whole new levels of fuckery.  If I believed in God I would think he is having a right fucking laugh at the moment.

 

Night Moves

Please forgive the personal nature of this post.  I'll try and keep it as unmessy as possible, and there will be no identifying details.  In a year where there have been many "firsts", there has just been one more.  For the first time ever I woke someone up at 3am and threw them out of my apartment.  That sounds a little harsh, and maybe it is.  Prior to his falling asleep we had been chatting amiably and he said that he would tell his ex-wife if he had a girlfriend but not about something like this as there would be no point.

This was the first indication that what was happening between us was something like this.  I had thought that perhaps I was in the early, tentative stages of perhaps becoming his girlfriend.  That's what I was feeling anyway, about him.  Boyfriend, not girlfriend, obviously.  There had been a clutch of lovely dates leading to this evening and things, I thought, were going really well.

In the profound silence that followed his comment, I pretended we should get some sleep, which he then did.  I lay there being cuddled, feeling sick.  It took quite some time to get up the courage to put on the light and apologetically wake him.  He had thought it was clear from the outset that he was only looking for (that most sinister and dismissive of words) fun.  I'm not sure how it was clear as it hadn't actually been mentioned.

Standing in a bath-towel shaking, I un-double-locked my front door and told him to go.  No tears, no real hurt, just a sort of outrage that this has happened again and I didn't see it coming.  For the last couple of weeks this man lightened my days, in both a sense of shining a light, and a sense of defying gravity.  That was, of course, clearly bollocks, but it did feel real.

One day someone will be honoured to call me their girlfriend.  In the meantime I think I'll double-lock the front door again.

 

The Only Really Good Thing About Summer

 

Different Drum

I think I'm acclimatising a little to the heat, but am still at the pink and itchy stage.  This is a good combination with sun-induced highlights.  Also I'm delighted to say that there is something which overwhelms the smell of dog poo in the parks.  Parc du Cinquantenaire is drenched in jasmine.  Last night as I walked through the park it was glorious.

A sound system was being rehearsed for today's Brussels 20K run and One Direction and Duck Sauce blared out.  Tightrope walkers bounced at a height of three feet between massive chestnut trees.  Crowds surrounded the boules pitch, and the park was crossed peacefully by Muslims and Hassidic Jews.  Well, one Hassidic family anyway, that I've seen often, who look as if from another time with four little girls all in matching white dresses with long brown hair.  The very tall trees afforded stippled shade throughout the park and I walked as far as Merode, deeply inhaling the jasmine.

At a zebra crossing just outside the park a lady tripped on a tram rail and fell, with a very loud "AIIIE!" sound.  I've read a lot about how people don't really care in this city, about how you shouldn't expect any help if anything bad happens.  Within seconds, there was a little swarm of people around the fallen lady, cars stopped to see if she was ok, and one car parked diagonally across that side of the road to put a safe barrier between her and the traffic.  I did not see the end of this episode but I found it very heartening.  People are the same everywhere, I think, and some will always care.

This morning I sat up a hill while the Boy slept (yes, working on a Sunday - his parents were running the 20K) and waited for the front-runners to pass on the Avenue de Tervueren.  I nearly cried when the first runners passed, to cheers and applause, between two competing samba bands.  Not sure why, it just seemed such a bloody big achievement on such a fucking hot day to pass the 17K marker only 55 minutes after they started.

Later we waited by the road for the Boy's parents to pass us and I was overwhelmed with respect for the thousands and thousands and thousands of people, wet and red and shiny, struggling uphill towards and past us.  I was also a bit overwhelmed by the heat by this point so went and had a nice cup of tea.

One thing I decided, when I was up that hill sitting between two samba bands...I really want to play with them.