Full House

My mother said, to get things done, you'd better not mess with Major Tom.  My mother said to get things done, you'd better not mess with Major Tom.

In fact she said nothing of the sort, mainly because she was probably draped over the railings down by the 88 bus stop.  (Yes, unfortunately that is where we found her once, completely passed-out over the railings of a small park where the bus turned around.)

I have been feeling rather like an octopus in a jar of late.  This flat that I love, in this area that I love, is just too small.  It would be too small if I were 3ft 6.  My books, which are sort of like my blood, are stacked up in the wardrobe.  In the same way that other people dream of having fantastic kitchens or hot spa whirl pool things, I dream about having all my books on shelves and letting out a sigh.

Gent/Ghent is suggesting itself to me more and more.  I have realised where all those people were striding to, across the park where I sat on my first day in this job.  The Gare Centrale is about a twenty minute walk from my office, and Gent is a further half an hour.

In Gent, for what I pay here, I could rent an entire HOUSE.   

Yes.  An entire house.  Ashes to ashes; funk to funky.

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Now You See Me

I don't want this to be about self-pity.  This is the story of how I became invisible.  I mentioned before that I can go pretty much anywhere untroubled by attentions and this may explain it, in part.

When I was a child, being silent and invisible kept me safe.  There was a period between about 1970 and 1973 when everyone got hit pretty badly.  My eldest brother was thrown down the stairs.  My sister had her jaw broken.  My next brother up from me had his head held down on little brother's highchair and punched.  And my mum was beaten up all the time.  I did not get hit.  Whether this was down to my becoming invisible or because I stood up to my dad and said if he ever laid a finger on me I would call the police, I don't know.  But in my head silence and invisibility were what kept me safe.  It didn't always work in the outside world as I grew older, but most of the time.

And it sort of stuck.  The good part of it is you can go anywhere and do pretty much anything, because nobody notices.  The bad part of it is that nobody notices. 

I've decided to come off the dating websites because the lack of anything approaching anything is causing me physical pain.  In the real world it is likely I'll have no greater success (because of the invisibility) but it will hurt a bit less than putting oneself up for grabs and relentlessly not being grabbed.

The fact that I'm thinking about maybe doing Calendar Girls is connected with the invisibility.  Nobody is going to see me so I can just go ahead and take my clothes off in one of the most prestigious arts venues in the city.  In worse times it has felt as if I'm a ghost haunting my own life.  In better times it just feels like I can do anything I damn well like.

So this isn't self-pity.  It's about how a child learned to survive, but not really live properly.  And I wish I knew how to change that but I think it's hardwired. 

On The Money

The last few days I've been carrying around a wad, a veritable wad ( €132) of luncheon vouchers, not quite having the courage to use them.  Many shops and brasseries take them but I don't want to be caught out at the counter by an out-of-date peeling sticker on their vitrine.

Tonight I chose my shop with care.  A little grocery place on the way home (please note NOT the Delhaize on the Chausée d'Ixelles, with its skirt-blasting vents out the front and one aisle for exit and entry and the longest queues in the known world) with a chatty lady on the till.  I had my bank card ready just in case. 

And lo, they accepted my voucher!  So I bought bread and wine, just like Jesus would if he had had luncheon vouchers, and LU Pim’s Framboise which are like jaffa cakes but raspberry and with dark chocolate.  Because this is pretend money, you see, and you can buy frivolous shit with it.

So now I've broken my luncheon voucher duck, I will take myself somewhere exotic (Chez Papy, two doors down from here) at the weekend, sit in the garden where I can actually see my own windows, and eat and drink with pretend money.

Salut.

Come Into My Parlour

I feel like a very still spider in the middle of lots of possible flies at the moment.  Just poised there with all eight legs waiting for a tug of the web.  Which means, of course, that I end up doing nothing because I can't decide which fly looks tastiest.

There are so many things you can do here in Brussels that it would be possible to be out every night of the week, and that's before you even start on the bars, restaurants and men.  These are some of the things currently under consideration:

•     Samba class (the drums, the drums!)
•     Salsa class
•     Bachata class
•     Zumba class
•     Joining a choir that does all sacred music and stuff
•     Auditioning for Calendar Girls (and yes, the play does involve middle-aged nakedness)
•     Signing up for the next level of French
•     Joining the Brussels Brontë Group

Having some sort of social programme going on would help to balance life, I think.  I might stop getting the WORK HORROR dreams.  My job is going just fine, but in my sleep IT'S ALL GOING HORRIBLY WRONG.  I get these looped nightmares that convince me of their reality.

Of course, appearing on stage naked would not only uphold an old family tradition (my mother was a Windmill girl) but it would hopefully give me calm, bucolic Dubonnet-ad dreams.

Word Up

Despite the 84% in my French test, my spoken French tends to be me looking confused and repeating back to the person in front of me what they've just said.  If I can understand it.  So this week:

At the boulangerie picking up a lunch order for a meeting the only thing I understood was when they asked me if I needed a receipt.  The rest might as well have been Icelandic.  It probably was, on reflection.

On the phone yesterday I managed to cobble together "Je ne comprends pas tout ce que vous avez dit...est-ce qu'il y a quelqu'un là qui parle anglais...?"

And today in the pharmacy I mainly just repeated words back to the pharmacist looking confused.  It wasn't that I didn't understand the words, but that I didn't understand what the fuck he was asking.  Why would I be in your computer?  Tant pis, and all that.  At the end of the day, it's still the end of the day.

I long for a time when conversation is not something that gives my eyebrows a double workout.   I reckon it's going to take years.  Tomorrow I have to take something back to a shop and ask to exchange it.  This is going to be most amusing.

Meet and Eat

It was my first big meeting today. Not big by any means but it meant a lot on a personal level that it should go right.

Some spectacular sandwiches were ordered for lunch. None of your limp triangles here. J went out with me yesterday to get fruit, fancy biscuits, dried fruit-and-nuts. Last night I put water to chill in the fridge. Checked the flipchart and pens. You don’t want to run out of flipchart pens. Wrapped knives and forks in napkins. Washed the coffee maker. I really should have given the coffee maker a dry run, if you see what I mean.

This morning I could not get it to work. While our guests made light but slightly thirsty conversation I was faced with a coffee machine that just refused to do coffee. I went hot and – well not cold, just hot. Tried another socket, bingo. Fucking thing. I have no idea what the coffee was like as I hadn’t tried it out first, but they all drank it.

Then to the sandwich place – actually it’s a quite fancy boulangerie-nosherie type place. I had my French phrases all sorted in my head and then couldn’t understand a single word they said. It was more the vocabulary than anything. Anyway, two cellophane-wrapped platters the heavier, back to the office.

I was all Cinderella at my desk while they laid into the fancy tartines until I was invited to join them. Hoooraah! Under the guise of quality control I tried several different sandwiches.  And we have loads left.

After lunch one of my colleagues helped me clear.  All dirty dishes are left for the cleaner, who comes twice a week. As an ex-nanny I know how little I liked to come back to the house to find a load of dirty dishes. It wasn’t part of my job, but I washed them – if I was preparing food for the kids it was impossible on a counter full of last night's food.

I have the cleaner’s job description here and it isn’t part of our cleaner’s job either. So I did the washing up with the kitchen door closed so they couldn’t hear me do it. I think if you’ve worked in a role like that you feel a certain empathy.

Anyway, the meeting is still in progress and everyone seems happy. But it’s a bit too early for food poisoning to manifest itself, I suppose.

Naked Fear

I have a fan.  It was the last reasonably priced fan with any sort of muscle in Brico and it is mine.  I am naked, with the fan on.  I almost didn't get it because all the fans were in the window, and it meant talking to the staff.  Because it was the last one, they thrust it unboxed into my hands.  Puis-je prendre un sac, s’il vous plaît, I asked slightly disbelievingly.  So they found a little bag into which the bottom of the fan just fit, a bit like those strange mankini things.

I have the fear a bit at the moment.  This may seem odd after having merrily deleted an entire UK life and having settled like a nesting hen on a completely unknown city.  If I was going to get the fear, shouldn’t it have been long ago?  Perhaps the day I handed in notice on my job and flat?  Or the day I sat on the Eurostar feeling like the air was sucking out of me?  Or any day in the last few months when it seemed that ever after would be measured in nappies?

Maybe.  But I suppose fear is what happens when you get something and don’t want to lose it.  Or doubt whether you should have it in the first place. There were three interviews to get this job, but there is part of me that will forever be raising a dubious, pencilled eyebrow.  Perhaps everyone feels this way deep down, and sits there raising an eyebrow at their own achievements.