Eleven

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone! 5 days into 2011, already... They were boozey and sneezey days.

New Years I spent in bed, with a cold and a headache and feeling so miserable that all my attempts to drink any kind of alcohol failed miserably. Just before midnight I got my achy bones out of bed, though, and climbed up to the roof with 5 drunken people to watch some fireworks. Beautiful! I could hear Dick van Dyke whisper into my ear... "On the roof tops of London... Coooo, what a sight..."...
Twenty minutes later I was asleep - not quite as rock and roll as the other volunteers, who went partying in Shoreditch and didn't get to bed until 6 in the morning!

Also I spent the last four days in pain. My teeth hurt. I NEVER have tooth ache. I didn't even know what that felt like until... well... 2011. And now, look at this, I live in England. Where everything healthcare is free, apart from dentists - of course. It is very unfair, cause I also went to a free dentist in Germany only a month ago and then nothing was wrong with me at all, but I will stop complaining now.

It is a new year and that means: make new plans. I shall start thinking about what I want to do next, what kind of jobs to look for and for when. I told Loreena MacKennit I'd stay with her until April, but after that, I don't know. That means that half my Shad time is over already. That was quick! I am getting excited. I really hope I will find a proper little boring job with a desk in an office where no one expects me to work any weekends at all. 9-5. That sort of thing.

And then maybe I'll also find a little, cheap room somewhere. Somewhere less far away from the Pembury Tavern than Tooting Broadway. I'm sure I'll find something affordable. I don't need much space, cause all I have in this country is three books, a toothbrush and a monkey-frog named Jacques Chirac. And he's only tiny. Also I am used to mice and slugs in the kitchen, open fires in the bathroom, no heating at all and regular bomb scares. The places I have lived in during the past 5 years, I can tell you...

I am looking forward to it all. Taking the next little steps on my how-to-be-British ladder. Drink more tea. Find a football club to support. Drop Ts. Register with a dentist. You name it.