All You Can Eat

Something that you often hear, after yet another lucky escape, is "never mind you have to kiss a lot of frogs", and that somehow this winnowing process brings you closer and closer to the Holy Grail of Chaps, somewhere in your and his future.  Yes, right now he is sitting somewhere with a coffee, reading the Guardian and picking his nose, completely unaware that I'm on my way.

But what if kissing frogs is just kissing frogs.  You may well end up with a pile of discarded amphibians behind you and yet another pile in front.  Just more and more and more frogs.  A endless frog buffet.  To use another analogy, you're sorting through that haystack looking for the needle and at some point you realise it's just hay. 

It's not as if I deliberately choose men who aren't really interested - there isn't a separate bunch who are camping on my doorstep and bringing me frites in the middle of the night and begging me to go to Oostende with them, that I am studiously ignoring.

I think I've said this before, but I'm fine on my own.  I like my own company a lot and find it necessary for recharging, and I've never thought that having a boyfriend would complete me.  I'm fairly complete, apart from a few bits which I suspect are down the back of the sofa.

But, like most people, I want to be loved, and to give love.  And to have someone kind and a bit filthy to have a good laugh with, who will think I'm great.

Fuck. Off.

Well, the feeling in my ancient bladder was right and the young man sent me an email today, the day before we had planned to meet, about some girl, etc, and about it being inappropriate for us to meet.  He hoped I didn't feel disrespected.  I did. 

I am sick of this, of all of it.  Men treat me like I'm nothing.  And I'm so bloody fucking something. 

The Story So Far

I now have two job interviews.  And the organisations have both been splendidly co-operative in allowing these to be on Wednesday mornings when I do not work.  The second job I haven't even applied for - a few weeks back I mentioned that an employer phoned me within the hour of my sending a CV, and that I could not make the interview.  Well it's them - they said they'd get back to me about another job and hey presto they have.  Once I'd hung up the phone, I went back and read stories to The Girls with renewed nanniness.  If that is not a word, it damn well should be.

In other news, my 25 year old date appears to have evaporated.  I could be wrong, but I feel it in my ancient bladder.  I think in theory these young and pert bucks like the idea of, to use a tabloid term, a romp with a lady of some vintage, but the reality might be a bit much.  A bit like tupping your mum.  Or perhaps he just got distracted by something new and shiny.  It happens.

Still, maybe it's for the best.  Much as I like romping with the young, because I'm a filthy old ho, women of a certain age look dog-rough in the morning.  And at any time of day, you have to be careful not to be seen in profile.  Gravity is an absolute cunt in cunt's clothing.

In other, other news, I seem to have started writing something, other than this blog.

It's a story that has been knocking about in my head for some time and recently I have been coming home and actually writing it.  All day I have dialogue going on in my head that I cannot wait to get home and transcribe.  Either that or the voices are getting worse.  The story is resolving itself into something very dark and very funny.  Well it's amusing me anyway. 

I think that what has inhibited my output before is that I'd get to a certain point and stop because "I don't know much about..." whatever.  Now I have decided I will just do a bit of research and make the rest up.  It seems to work for Steven Moffat.  This is not a picture of Steven Moffat.  It is a gratuitous Joseph Fiennes.

Bicep Watch

Everyone needs a hobby.  Mine is perfect because you can incorporate it into everyday life.  You don't have to buy any equipment or join any awkward groups.  The only problem is being caught looking, but I think I can pass it off as something else most of the time.  Especially in sunglasses.

Bicep Watch 1:  chap on a bike in the Parc du Woluwe yesterday doing the bins.  I faked uninterest behind my sunglasses.

Bicep Watch 2: on the way to the Parc du Woluwe today a nicely nerdy looking chap with enormous biceps unloading some stuff from a truck.  I mean, really obscenely good biceps.  If you looked up "bicep" on the internet, there's probably a photo of him.

Bicep Watch 3:  while I was with the girls this afternoon I heard noise out the back in the garden and, lo, there was a chap next door cutting the ivy.  I had to think of all sorts of reasons to keep observing the weather or put things in the bin.

One of these days I'm going to be caught with drool on my top, and it will all be very unpleasant.  

Lingua Franca

It occurs to me that I spend a good part of my day in a linguistic fog, or perhaps fug.

I understand bits of conversations, and was able to laugh scoffingly (I like to think I laughed in French) at the woman who told us all to move down the tram this morning as there was plenty of space.  About 50% of what goes on around me is still something of a rapid and foreign mystery.

And then I go to work and spend the morning interpreting the pointing of a finger accompanied by "Ugh!".  But that is exhausting and I've taken to telling The Boy that I do not know what he means, will he please tell me.  One day he will surprise me with a full sentence.  Probably telling me how I've given him a complex.

Afternoons are somewhat better linguistically, although the Big Girl often talks to me like I'm a simpleton.  This could be, of course, because she speaks more languages than me.  The Little Girl, despite only having a few words so far, is a very good communicator. 

Soon I start my French course.  I do not expect miracles of it but it feels like the absolutely right thing to be doing.  I need things to be much less foreign and mysterious.  On the same day that I start the course I have my job interview. 

I got a phone message from the Agency to say I needed to confirm by email the time they had offered.  There was a slight problem - I was at work and the girls' father was downstairs.  Stealthily, with one ear cocked to the stairs, I switched on their Mac, started "in private browsing" (kind of nonsensical now that I've broadcast it), and logged on to my emails.  Confirmed the time and date, stopped "in private browsing" and shut down.  All the while thinking he was going to come in and catch me.  It was like a spy film, but with no Russians or anything vaguely dangerous.

So think of me on the 27th.  Lots going on that day.

And There Was Light

Down to the murdery cellar to collect my washing and I was confronted with profound, Hollywood horror-style darkness.  My first thought, as I was feeling my way down the stairs, was go back up the stairs.   I've seen those films, I know what happens!  Fighting the instinctive certain knowledge that there was a murderer in the murdery cellar, I went back up for my wind-up torch.  This isn't a torch that likes to take the piss, it is a genuine wind-up torch.

Back to the cellar, holding the torch high like they do in CSI and stuff.

The lights in the hall weren't working either, so my logical brain was telling me that something had tripped a circuit.  Or that the murderer had.

In the cellar are all the electricity meters for all the flats, a whole bank of them on the wall, plus two other switchy box things underneath.  I isolated the one that had tripped and flipped it back.  Light! Washing Machine!  Tumble-dryer!  Thwarted murderer! 

All is well again, and I am proud of myself for my problem-solving skills in the face of certain death.

Big Jobs

After receiving yet another standard rejection letter from a job I applied for, despair was beginning to creep in.  You see, I've never had a problem finding work.  This is a new and somewhat challenging experience, to be turned down, and turned down, and turned down, and turned down, and...you get the drift.  You start to question everything, and your future is just all cacky bottoms.

Then my phone rang and I hurtled down the stairs at ankle-sprain speed.  The agency that has been sending out my file has had a positive response, and the employer is one I would be really keen to work with.  I will have an interview with them in about two weeks' time.  This will be only my third interview since I started applying for jobs in Brussels, a year ago.  (Ironically, the first job I was interviewed for has just been advertised again.)

I need to find those nerves of steel again and drag them clanking with me to the interview.  If I don't get this job, there will be others, but I'd really quite like this one.