Distance

I didn't spend much time in London lately and for the first time, I think, it felt nice to get out of the dirty big city for a while. It is hectic and noisy and rough. In the last week I spent less than 24 hours there and only yesterday I started missing it a little bit, when I attended the traditional wine feast on a parking lot in Konstanz and wished so badly for some hipsters to ride by on bicycles without breaks.

It is nice to breathe some fresh air for a while. I think it makes me very drowsy, though, I didn't sleep like this in months. Or maybe I still have to catch up on sleep from our weekend with M&J who spoilt us for a couple of days in their lovely new home in Sussex, where we spent a lovely time, including tarragon chicken and Amy tribute drinking.

I feel very calm inside these days.

Bohemians

It's all about the weddings this year. So it's obvious that the first film I saw in cinemas this year had to be a comedy about weddings, too: Bridesmaids. I thought it would be a half amusing, half silly, cliche packed chick flick. But I found it actually quite the funny film. So yeah, my cinema hunger is back and I will most definitely go and see Harry Potter when I am back in London.

This week turned out to be the busiest in a while. On Tuesday my friend Tony played a gig in Islington, so I went to watch him and have a catch up. It was very nice, cause I hadn't seen him since I left Galway. Also, the band he was with was very much to my liking. I kind of feared it would be one of his weird psychodelic electro projects. So that was a nice evening. Tony sounded very happy and very Irish. I never even noticed his accent before. It's about time I pay the green island a little visit, I think...

But obviously that is not possible before I have a job. Job situation is looking up slightly, tho! After sending out loads of applications and CVs and hardly even hearing back from anyone for months, people now start contacting me! That alone is a nice change, because even if nothing comes of it for now, I know that my efforts are not totally in vain.
6 agents called me withing the last two days and chatted my depression away. Yay!

But first Germanland, of course. I am looking forward to it very much now. I will cook for my folks and then tell them stories of my bohemian life style over a bottle of red wine.
There's why I love my parents: While I go depressed and insane over being unemployed for two months, they respond in a much healthier way; as my mother said: "Our daughter is a bohemian. We can't read the bohemians our whole life and then complain when we've got one ourselves."

I love you, nio-parents.

And now I am off to M&J's in Sussex somewhere for a weekend of country walks and sleepless nights! Hurray!

Puppy Puke

Imagine this: a gay mens'* nice little flat in posh Islington, looking out onto pretty New River Walk. Massive flat screen TV, big balcony, A fridge full of food and a freezer full of vodka and ice. For a couple of days Ros and me took some time off from being boozing Hackney lesbians and became Islington pet mummies. Our babies for the weekend were Napoleon, a 1 year old English bulldog, and a 7 months old beautiful, spoiled little tomcat named Balthazar. We even left the vodka untouched as if it was just for decorative purposes.
Breakfasts were lush and eaten in bed and the rain outside made the film afternoons on the massive couch just seem all the cosier. White wine was enjoyed - in moderation - on the balcony. We walked the dog and played with the cat and wiped up the dog's vomit and fed the cat like real responsible people. It was a proper little mini holiday!

Next week I will take another one. I booked a flight to Germany last night. I am going for a week to see my parents and some friends and my triplet uncles who are turning 165 or something (Judith, help?) and are having a party which I am looking forward to very much.
I hope I will catch a couple of days of Proper Summer, too. I want 35 degrees in the shade and lots of mosquito bites, please. And a BBQ or a campfire and everything has to smell of sunlotion and burning rubber.

Arrange that for me, please.





* Only emphasizing this to let you know about the niceness of the flat. They have a throne and massive pictures of gorgeous women in bikinis all over the walls.

Phew

Ok, I am feeling a little better. Spent yesterday bumming around on the internet and doing nothing to improve the job situation or the friends situation or the talk-to-parents situation. Or the health insurance situation. I just watched silly reality TV programs about lesbians making tits of themselves and drank lots of water.
And today I will leave the house.
Ros and me are going to spend the weekend dog, cat and house sitting in Islington. Which is about 30 minutes from here. But it's a house looking out onto the canal, apparently and rather posh. So that will be a nice little holiday!
On Saturday I want a fun night out. I want to go to a pub and mingle with people I know and people I've never met before and feel like an actual human being.
And just knowing that next week can only be better than this one, that my low point is over, already cheers me up.

Breakfast now.

Walls moving closer

Bummer. I was meant to meet my friend Vanessa today and it didn't work out, because she ended up being too busy with uni stuff. See how I used the word "friend" here? In the English way. I met Vanessa once and we had a really good chat for a coupe of hours at an exhibition opening. Quite a few facebook chats since, but that's about it. We clicked immediately, tho, which is always a nice feeling, isn't it. When it's all nice and effortless. So yeah, was really looking forward to seeing her again today, even if I was just allowed to drink tea or coke. It's still nice to get out of the house and I don't do often at the moment. Spend my days writing online applications and doing housework and my evenings watching films or How I Met Your Mother, cause it's the only bloody thing I have on my hard drive. Meh. It's only day 4 of my No Booze Month and it is raining, but the urge to sit in a beer garden has hardly ever been so complete. Just cause there's people there, you know. And fresh air. Maybe I will go for another walk in a minute. Walks are good and healthy and productive, but also they make me cry. And last time a homeless guy threw himself off a bench in a park in a very dramatic fashion and then lay there like dead and I was just about to call for help when he started laughing madly and told me he was just kidding. So now I am scared. Walks in London are not quite the same as walks around the lake or the Irish countryside.
So anyway, maybe I will meet Vanessa next week instead. I hope so. She wants me to be part of one of her very interesting photography projects. And that would be good, cause it would be something fun and different and new and naughty.

Dicks

I went a long walk last night after leaving the internet cafe. That's something I hadn't done in a long time. It's been wayt too long, actually.
It made me remember that no matter how shit I feel right now, there is one thing I am good at: Getting back up from the floor. At least when I am down there on the bottom I know where to go: up. When I am somewhere in the middle I get confused and distracted and quite frequently take wrong turns. And I haven't been on top of everything in a long time, so...
Anyway. After my walk I met Marcel. We talked a lot about penises and I drank lots of tap water with lemon and lime, which was somewhat comforting. Cause, oh, I am not drinking for a month, which is weird, because I do tend to soak my sorrows in lager and turn them into a driniking game. Not this time. Have to say, sometimes all it takes to cheer me up actually is a detailed conversation about dicks. Thank God for gay men.

Somewhere in a dark corner

So yes, Lisa and also my friend Friederike have left, which is sad. But the good thing about London is that every week another one of your friends is here on holidays. Last week it was my friend Rebecca, next week my friend Tony is coming over from Ireland. Also on the upside: My friend Ulrike has just moved over here from Doha and Gabby will stay here FOR GOOD, once she's back from her holidays in Italy next week.

And of course the usual: London is still ace bla bla bla. Who am I kidding, sometimes the most acest best city in the world is not enough. My optimism re job search has been hit on the head with a hammer a few times now. And in a way I was still running around a little confused, cause everything is so different here, so that now it feels like I was fouled out of the game before anyone even explained the rules to me. All my fault, though, I know.
Nonetheless I could do with an ego boost. Or some lemon ice cream. Of course the next proper ice cream parlour is about an hour away and hopelessly overpriced.
Also today I signed on the dole, which is something that makes me cry (like literally, actually, in an internet cafe, cause I still don't have fucking internet at home) cause it's something we just don't do in my family, but I have no choice, innit. I'm broke. Don't tell my parents, please please.

My mum hasn't called me in almost two months, anyway, tho. Plus I am bleeding out of all the wrong places and am not health insured. I am definitely on the way down. And yes, I am quite aware that I sound pathetic and am drowning in self pity right now. But sometimes you have to say things as they are and I am. I am not mostly happy anymore.

BUT - and that is good news - I am not just going to run away this time. Watch me. I'll stick this one out.

HARRRARRRR Hello!

OK, enough. New start. I won't even try to sum up the last month-or-so and will just restart this blog where I am right now: Sweating like a pig in Ros' room in Hackney where I am using her internet to look for jobs and... well, revive my little Ponderland.

Summer has eventually arrived in the UK. It crawled up and jumped at us from behind an ice cream van and burnt all those lovely pale freckled faces.

Umm... and now...

Let me try to sum up what happened since my last blog entry.

- I went to my cousins wedding, which was lovely, mainly because she seemed very happy and I saw most of my relatives having a good time. And I danced with my mum to some pop song I can't ven remember now. It doesn't happen often, but it's nice, cause it always makes me feel very close to her.

- I went to Rough Beats in lovely Yorkshire with about every single person I know in England. It was fun for a while, but then I downed a few litres of Jägermeister and spent the rest of the weekend with my head sticking out of our tent's entrance so the vomit would be washed away by the inevitable rain and not ruin Ros' expensive designer clothes and quality camping gear.

- I went to visit Lisa in Laurel Close for the last time E V E R. You know my old flat and first little home here in London in Tooting. Bit weird, but not very sad. Not about the flat. Lisa has left me, though. She's travelled on to India, where she's probably having a blast right now and won't have to complain about not being able to sleep because of it being soooo coooold anymore. I miss her.

- I went to the seaside with Ros and her housemates Jo and Rob and Florian and we built a sandcastle and swam in the ocean and I killed a little boy with my frisbee skills.

- I went on a bike ride with Mathilde and I realised I am very much out of shape since I stopped pushing wheelchairs.

- I made a video for UKuncut with Ros and a few other friends, which is a bit outdated now, but you can watch it here, if you want to see my face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucQ48ScFH1E

- Got pissed lots.

And now: On to newer things and better things and bigger things, like finding work and stuff.

Oh yeah, have moved into a new flat, too, and fallen in love with a BOY!!! But more about that tomorrow.