The life of a nomad

Posts have been scarce over the last, hmm well, lets just say for quite a long time. My life has changed almost completely since I was a regular blogger and I suppose it’s fair to say that I’ve had more important things to do such as my degree, which is now finished! Hurrah!

Maybe now I’ll have more time to write it.  Although saying that, blogging is essentially the same as talking to yourself so I sometimes question the point in doing it. Fair enough, if you have thousands of readers keep at it but quite frankly I’ll never come close to that.

Is there any point??

Hmm.

We’ll see.

I am starting a new chapter in life, so perhaps putting my thoughts down in a blog would be a good thing to do. It is a strange time in life really. As I said, my life has changed a lot over the last couple of years and now, even though I know what ‘work’ I’ll be doing for the next year, I know it’s only temporary. I have little idea of where I’ll be heading after that.

Throughout my entire life, even when I was to-ing and fro-ing from boarding school, I always had ‘home’ to go to in Germany. But that no longer exists. Actually, in a way, it’s like I left a little bit of me behind there. I haven’t left England since last September and that’s the longest time I’ve ever stayed here in one go. The strange thing is that I really feel like I’m on an island and I can’t wait to escape.

I don’t even know what that means. I mean, I don’t know why it’s like that.

England has never felt permanent to me in all my life. Over the last year I’ve been constantly reminded of that fact. It’s like wherever I go there’s a little voice calling to me from over the sea in Europe somewhere. France?

I don’t know what the voice is, but at the same time as being ever so discreet and in the distant corners of my mind it is still there and determined to make me notice it nonetheless.

I can see, I’m destined to feel like a nomad for some time yet… Who knows where I’ll end up?

I know this isn’t Facebook but I’m putting it on because I like it

This is a great way of wasting time when you’re supposed to be working.

 

The rules for making your album cover:

1. Click on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first article that comes up is the name of your group

2. Then click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last few words of the last quote on the page is the title of the album

3. Click on http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Take the 3rd image, whatever it might be, for the cover picture.

4. Put them together

5. Post it all!

Voici les règles de la pochette d’album aléatoire:

1 – Clique sur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random  Le premier article qui sort est le nom de ton groupe.

2 – Clique sur http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php

3 Les derniers mots de la dernière citation de la page sont le titre de votre premier album.

3 – Clique sur http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

La 3e image, quelle qu’elle soit, sera la pochette de ton album.

4 – Associe ces 3 éléments.

5 – Poste le tout sur Facebook (dans un album intitulé “Cover Game”) avec cette règle du jeu dans la description de l’image ou dans un commentaire, et Taggue les amis que souhaites voir participer à ce jeu.

Here are mine…

If only real life was like a musical…

I freely confess it. I am a fan of musicals. The Sound of Music is the all time winner in my book, but Le Roi Soleil is my current favourite. In one sentence, it’s all about the life and loves of French King Louis XIV and it is briiiilllliant.

Apologies to those of you that don’t speak french because you won’t understand the words, you’ve just have to believe me that it’s great. (Hang on. What?! I’m not going to apologise to you for not being able to speak what is possibly the best language on the planet, that’s your own fault).

This is the most popular song from the musical and is called ‘Je fais de toi mon essentiel’.  There is a translation into english on the youtube page for the video, but I promise you now, they SUCK. You still get the idea of it at least I suppose.

Long time no posts…

It has been absolutely ages since I wrote on my blog (understatement of the century…)

I think I got bored of it when I was in Paris because even though I did loads of fun stuff in the evenings and weekends, while I was in the office I was slowly losing the will to live a little more as each day passed by and typing even more at the computer on my blog was the last thing on my mind.

Also, I guess I knew that my blog, being one of millions of other pointless ones, wouldn’t be missed anyway. So I didn’t bother. In all honesty I’d forgotten that it even existed until just now!

I have an insane number of assignments to do for uni at the moment, but I’m going to try to pick up on my blogging again anyway. Keeping a diary, however public it may be (!), helps you put things into perspective in life, and besides, I used to enjoy it, so why wouldn’t I now?

I don’t really know what I’ll have to tell you about seeing as 90% of my life over the last few months has been spent in the library, but we shall see what strange things my mins conjures up to rattle on about. Hmmm.

Sunny days and time machines

Ok, so I didn’t really have a time machine this weekend, but the days were sunny and it did still feel like I had been thrown back in time.

Finally, the French weather man has decided to tick ‘non-stop, annoying, horrible rain’ off his list and has started shining some sun on us all. There is nothing that can revive me like a warm sunny day and yesterday was no exception. Not only that, but I spent a long while discovering the library in the building where I live. Most of the books haven’t been touched for the last 45 years and they are all so old and, well… like something out of a book! I know I wasn’t really in a grand old mansion discovering long hidden treasures, but it sure felt like it. Half of them were falling apart, and I managed to find some real gems! (Like some smashing books about Britain and our way of life, allbeit 50 years ago, and ’The Book of the Scots’ – I could hardly understand most of it, even Wee Willy Winkie, so I’m not sure how it came to be living in a little Parisian library…)

Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun,
Up stairs and doon stairs in his nicht-goun,
Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,
‘Are the weans in their bed, for it’s noo ten o’clock?’

‘Hey, Willie Winkie, are ye comin’ ben?
The cat’s singin’ grey thrums to the sleepin’ hen,
The dog’s spelder’d on the floor, and disna gi’e a cheep,
But here’s a waukrife laddie that winna fa’ asleep!’

Onything but sleep, you rogue! glow’ring like the mune,
Rattlin’ in an airn jug wi’ an airn spune,
Rumblin’, tumblin’ round about, crawin’ like a cock,
Skirlin’ like a kenna-what, wauk’nin’ sleepin’ fock.

…

Not only are there loads of French books, but a good stash of English, as well as Arabic, Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese…… all old and all amaaaazing to look at! There was also an old illustrated Bible so huge that you need both hands to pick it up and….. to my surprise and pleasure I found a ‘Teach Yourself Italian’ book. Perfect! Just what I wanted! It is such a cute little hardback in blue, printed in the 1940s, pages already slightly brown and in English, which is a little strange for a French library to say the least…. Along with that I found a vocabulary book with French and Italian (two birds with one stone, bingo!) that is even older, more brown and more amazing.

The library is all wooden and has that glorious smell of old books. It was great. And naturally, when I left I just had to pick up the little copy of Pride & Prejudice… it would have been wrong of me to leave Miss Austen behind…

There’s nothing quite like spending a sunny day travelling in a time machine with little Miss Jane.

I’m back. But I still have nothing to say. Not yet anyway.

Why haven’t I posted for a few weeks??? ……….. because in all honestly I couldn’t be bothered. There you go, that’s the truth. I had nothing interesting to say, so I thought I might as well spare you all from it.

Life hasn’t been that exciting, it’s just going on as usual.

BUT it’s already Tuesday lunchtime, which means I’m already 30% of the way through the week (hurrah!) and by the end of this week I’ll only have 4 1/2 months left. Joy joy joy! Febuary went pretty fast, so hopefully March will too. (Apart from 20th-25th, that is, I want that to go slooooooww so that I feel like I’m with my friends for longer in Austria…)

Why oh why?

I’ve become a regular in the boulangerie around the corner from work. It’s got to the stage where they know what I’m going to ask for everyday and the man at the till always asks “pain au chocolat aujourd’hui?”

But horror of all horrors, today they had a sign that said from the 22nd February we will no longer be accepting Restaurant Tickets. (If you don’t know what they are then click the link. And if you can’t read french, tough.)

WHHAATTT??? Why would anyone do that?? At least three quarters of the people that buy lunch there use their restaurant tickets! And plus they are one of the only places I’ve seen that lets you use your old receipts so that you can use ALL the money from your ticket – normally you have to use your whole ticket because places don’t give chznge for them.

Sucketh. Major sucketh. Where am I going to buy lunch. I sure as heck can’t eat McDonalds everyday. I don’t want to!

In other news……

I’m going to Austria at Easter! Yippee! When I found out that I could go I literally wanted to squeal, but I couldn’t because I was in ”The Office of Silence” where thou shalt not disturb the peace or thou shall feel the wrath of the Office Monster. Seriously. You’ll see why this is the most amazing news ever when I get back and show you the pictures and tell the stories…..

This week has actually not been that bad compared to normal. Time has gone quicker and I’ve been having fun outside of work…..

I’m considering starting a petition to ban tomatoes in sandwiches. I have nothing against the little red dears, but they quite simply ruin my sandwich experience and frankly I’ve had enough of it…..

My sister is coming this weekend!! ……

….and the most important news:

I AM HALF WAY THROUGH MY PRISON SENTENCE!!! 

Oh sorry, I mean placement… how silly of me to get confused.

I must be living in Never Never Land

Ok, I’ve been (don’t laugh) listening to one of those ‘teach yourself a language’ cds. And no, I don’t mean French, I’m a bit beyond learning how to ask directions merci beaucoup! It’s Italian.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to understand (when it’s written down at least) after having learnt French.

Anyway, that’s not what I was going to say…

One of the tracks is about ‘going to the airport’ (this cd will make you a great tourist, seriously…) and every time I hear it, my thoughts go exactly the same way without fail… ahh I’m such a child…

Woman: ‘Può chiamami un taxi?’

Man (repeats phrase in English) : ‘Could you call me a taxi?’

Me: ‘YOU’RE A TAXI!’

I promise to never grow up….

The Sights, Sounds and Smells of Paris

Paris really is one of a kind. Tourists think of it as beautiful, romantic and exciting. But I have to be truly honest with you: it is, to put it simply, an armpit.

Someone tried to convince me that Paris was the centre of the world recently – “Well of course, France is right in the middle of the world map, and everybody knows that Paris is in the centre of France, soooo….”. Be that as it may, that still doesn’t stop it from being a big, smelly, minging armpit.

Everybody knows the sights: Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe…

Everybody knows the sounds: angry drivers beeping their car horns, the chatter of people, the thundering of the metro trains, sirens, tourists asking for directions…

But the smells… they continue to surprise me (apart from the ‘doggie presents’ that are nicely placed all over the city of course). The French don’t have the reputation of being the sweetest smelling bunch, but I haven’t actually been able to prove that theory correct since I’ve been here. What I mean by that is that it’s not the people that are a bit whiffy, but the places. In the last week alone, I have been confronted by two blasts from the past, neither of which were particularly pleasant.

The first, lets call it, “experience” sent me back to a visit to York as a child… and to be more specific, the the Jorvik Viking Centre. I enjoyed it at the time, but anyone that has been there knows how disgusting it smells. My sister came home with a scratch ‘n’ sniff post card, and the smell of it still continues to haunt me. The smell of a Viking toilet isn’t really what you want to be horrified by on the way home from a particularly sucky day at work. I never figured out what it was that smelt so bad either. Gross.

The second was this morning on the way to work. The street smelt like what we used to call ‘the fish glue’ at school. Everybody always wanted to use the pva glue pots but there was always one unfortunate child in my Y1 class that got stuck with the fish glue pot. We always felt sorry for the one that got it (but weren’t willing to swap, naturally), it really is a MINGING smell. 

 I wonder what other horrors await my nostrils…

I want to run around the office screaming

I’m having a hard day.

Well… when I say day, I mean week…

…and when I say week, I mean month…

…actually, 5 months, to be exact. 

And it’s hard for different reasons. My job is one of them. And the office that it is in is another.

A severe lack of social interaction and brain stimulation during the day is steadily, but surely, sending me insane.

I want to cry, scream, jump up and down and throw a tantrum, but alas I cannot…

… it’s not exactly ’office behaviour’.

There must be millions of people like me around the world. Except I’ve only been here 5 months, some people have done it all their lives. I expect some kind of data entry job in a cube farm would be the worst. I would literally want to kill myself after a few days.

I need excitment and activity. I’m usually like one of those hyperactive puppies that bounce off the walls like a crazy thing when they hear “walkies!”. But right now I feel more like a caged bird that’s had it’s little wings clipped so that it can’t get away. I’m dreaming of trees and sunshine but all I’ve got is the miserable hum of machines, the tapping on keyboards and whole heap of time that is ticking away far, far too slowly.

It makes me think of the tv adaptaion of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, the one with Jonny Lee Miller in it. There’s a scene where Fanny is reading a book alone in the library and she is disturbed by Henry who then takes her book from her and reads it aloud…

“‘I can’t get out! I can’t get out!’, cried the Starling.”

Can’t get out.

Hmmm.

Indeed…