Oink

There was a book that The Girls loved me to read to them: a re-issued Ladybird version of The Three Little Pigs.  Leaving aside for one minute the culture of entitlement that allowed these feckless piggies to ask of honest tradesmen "Please will you give me some *******? I want to build a house for myself",  it was quite a fun tale to huff and puff through.

I feel like the third pig.  Built my brick house, and I'm all inside with the wolf nicely bubbling away in a pot on the stove.  (Actually it was pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce and mixed leaves, but let's allow some licence.)  So once you've had your wolf stew, wolf pie, wolf on toast and then wolf rissoles, what next? 

The first seven months of living here have been devoted to finding bricks and evading the wolf.  Now there is space to think about what to put in the house.  Not a Billy bookcase or new plump cushions - you know what I mean.

It's time to start building a proper life here, now.  Although I say there is no homesickness, in my heart I am still pulled back, quite a lot.  This will probably go in time, but I need to put my heart here.  And other parts.

 

Spud-u-like

My first love was not Scott Tracy of Thunderbirds.  He was second.  My first love was Smith's Crisps.  I am old enough to remember when crisps had no flavour and they came with a little salt bag that you emptied in.  I then augmented this with vinegar, which lay in a cheek-puckering pond at the bottom of the bag, and the last crisps would be soggy and tart.  Quite why a small child was allowed to pour vinegar into a bag of crisps and eat them is a mystery.  I was the fifth child and my mum was probably exhausted.  She did say it would dry my blood up; a threat which, fortunately, turned out not to be true.

This love affair with potatoes and potato products has been the enduring joy of my life.  Nothing says comfort like a roast potato, crisp and fatty on the outside, fondant on the inside.  Forget the chicken.  There is nothing like a good bag of chips for restoring a sense of rightness with the world.  And there is nothing like a damn good bag of crisps to fill the interstices of the day.  Christ, I've come over all Nigel Slater.

I'm fairly certain the health risks of salty, fatty, carbohydraty foods are...well dead boring to read about, frankly.  The security and comfort offered by a lifelong potato habit outweighs any risks and, thankfully, potatoes are still legal and can be consumed indoors or out.

One strange thing - I will happily share my food, as long as it not potato-based.  Do not ever ask for a chip or a crisp.  Do not attempt to steal my roast potatoes.  Somewhere is a bag with heads in it, of people who tried that.  I can only think in a previous life I lived through a potato famine.

A Metaphor Is A Glorious Thing*

If you perceive everything in life as being a bit like something else, you run the serious risk of looking a bit of a knob.  However, I can't help it, life comes at me in images; in metaphors.  So, knob it is then.

And whilst one should never, never mix metaphors, maybe it's ok to serve them on the same plate. 

There seem to be three main ones at the moment:

1.  I'm a vessel.  Mrs Szklarek at school would often tell us "empty vessels make most noise".  This vessel is not empty.  Like a magic porridge pot in reverse it is constantly being filled but is never full.  New bits of language, new bits of job, new people, new names, new stuff, new procedures, new everything, seeping in constantly.  I can't really keep on top of it all, so I'm just sculling away somewhere in the middle.

2.  The old tightrope is back.  One would have thought by now that I'd be putting my plates of meat on solid ground but I'm still forty feet up, still walking, no wire.  No wire.  No net.

3.  Until my boss comes back from holiday, I'm the gatekeeper on her email inbox.  So it was with a strange little twinge yesterday I noted that there was an email from The Agency, with my reference from my former boss.  It remains unread.  Momentarily it was like looking across the river Styx into a life I cannot re-enter.  And in that closed world is someone who knew me well.  You see, that was really knobby. 

Anyway.  I'm still working out what I like best about my new job.  One thing is that I'm in charge of all supplies.  I love that. 


                                  *

Grade "A" Capon

Enough with the modesty, although it may be genuine.  84% in my French test and I can skip the next level.  Wooooooooooooooooooooo-ooooo.

If asked, I would still say I'm rubbish at French because that's what it feels like on the inside.  However, there seems to be some improvement.  Comprehension is getting better, if not the actual speaking.  And although my job is allegedly in English, the only phone calls I received today were in French.  Unfortunately the first was from a very distressed lady whose husband had died and she wanted to know where he was.  The second was from a hotel.  (The two calls were not related).

Apart from that the greatest struggle today was trying to master the Belgian keyboard.  It appears they put the letters in the wrong order just to annoy me.

Testing Testing

Last night I babysat for my morning family of recent months. I'm not sure why I agreed to do this as I probably don't need the extra cash now. But it seemed like a nice thing to do, and it is easy work. It is work though, and on a Saturday night. Bah. They were at a wedding do and sometime after 1am called me to say that, if I wanted, I could get a taxi as they were on their way home. This would have meant leaving two children asleep, alone, in a large house. Stuff of nightmares. Ask Alfred Hitchcock. The mother in me could not do this. What if something happened?

So anyway, I got home eventually about 2.15am, so tired I could not give the taxi driver the right money. Today was mainly about sleeping off the weird necky headache got from exhaustion and watching the Olympics at a funny angle, I think. Eventually I surfaced to go and fritter my babysit money at Carrefour, inexplicably dressed as an American tourist - white plimsolls, raincoat, and stupid bucket hat.

Tomorrow evening I have a French test. Examinations of any kind congeal the blood in my arms and head so that I go into a kind of anxious paralysis. This test needs to be passed in order to go up to level 2C. I am not at all confident of passing, despite having studied a bit. It just doesn't go in. Instead I retain words from handwritten signs in the street: Ce trottoir n’est pas un crottoir. Merde alors.

Working Girl

Day three, and it already feels like home.  Today I had my picture taken for the website.  I look a bit special, but maybe that will discourage people from phoning.

It will not always be so quiet (August is notoriously quiet as most of Europe flees desperately to the frothy edges of the continent), but being able to concentrate on one thing at a time without somebody whining feels very much like a luxury.  Walking on the pavement without wheels and bags and babies is a luxury.  Having clean clothes all day is a luxury.  Having adult colleagues, all of whom are great, is a luxury.  Leaving the office at 5pm, is a massive, massive luxury.  And this is all before they've even paid me or given out the luncheon vouchers. 

Buzz

The first day in my new job left me with a head full of bees.

With two hours spare until French, I went and slumped in the Parc Royal, and thought of nothing for a bit.  Then I found a bar.  Unfortunately the proprietor was serving nothing more adventurous than sandwiches, so I had a half baguette with marg and some processed cheese.  But the wine was €2,30 a glass - this must be the cheapest in Brussels!   That's about £1.80.

So, good cheap wine, a very basic sandwich, and the Olympic Chaps' Gymnastics on a big telly.  That quietened the bees for a bit.  The bar was all brown melamine and sort of olive vinyl, just the kind of unpretentious place I like.  I had two glasses of extraordinarily cheap booze while watching all the biceps. 

And as it turns out, I speak much better French after a couple of drinks.