Back again

It was a dark and stormy night. The sound of footsteps shuffling across the kitchen floor could scarcely be heard above the swish of the rain. The click of the bathroom light was hardly heard above the monotonous whoosh of the wind. A thick silence filled the flat.

“AAAARGGHHH!!!”
Waggle.
“AAARRGGHHH!!!”
More waggling.
“AAARRRGHHH!! You’re back! You were gone!”
Bounce, bounce.
“Go! Leave! Begone!”
Bounce. Waggle. Bounce. Pause. „Nerozumím.” A slightly cynical bounce.
“I banished you! I made the typhoon winds of death with the floppy bottoms of my pyjama trousers at you and you scuttled away. Then I hoovered up your web. Several times. And mopped the floor to remove scent trails and spider germs. In case you use scent trails. You were gone!”
„Nerozumím.” Defiant bounce.
“What do you mean you don’t understand? Of course you understand. I will make the typhoon winds of death again. Understand this, you eight-legged freak!”
Wwwhhhhhffffff. Flap. Flap.
Bounce. Bounce. Snicker.
“Damn. Wrong pyjama bottoms. Can we talk about this?”
„Mluvte česky.”
“What do you mean, ‘Speak Czech’? Have you been talking to Mrs. Jana? You’re a spider. Spiders don’t get to be picky about language choice, especially when they invade my loo.”
„Mluvte česky.”
“No. I refuse. And stop with the Czech speech marks. It's annoying. Like your legs. Get out.”
„Mluvte česky. Or I will crawl on your pathetically exposed big toe.”
“AAARGGHH! No! Gerroff!”
„Chachá!”
“Now you’re being weird. Just because ballroom dancing is strangely popular here, and still an extracurricular activity pursued by many teenagers as part of a well-rounded education is no reason to be making laughing noises in a knowing dance-referenced way.”
„‘Ch’ is like loch. This is how Czechs laugh. Stupid foreigner.”
“I know that. I am trying to distract you while I reach for the loo brush. Stupid spider.”
„Co? Co že?”
Swish. Splat.
„Áááááá!”
(slightly muffled by the wooden door lintel) „At last, my revenge is complete! This door corner is forever mine! Never again will you be able to blithely visit the toilet in the middle of the night, with carefree unshod feet! Know this, stupid toilet-brush-wielding speaker of inferior Czech! I Vill Be Back! Chachachachachá!!!”

Oh crap.

Bugger structure. I never really liked the idea of it anyway

So… blah. Blah, blah, blah...

(alert: fearful navel-gazing of blogger with existentialist crisis ahead)

For the first time in absolutely ages, I’ve got working internet, laptop, and nothing pressing to do apart from creatively dodge the guilt-driven instinct to alphabetise my books or something. What better time to catch up on all those must-visit websites? The ones I used to go by every day. The ones I would post at. Or (shock! horror!) perhaps even write a post or two here, to stiffen the sinews of this rather weedy-looking blog.

Except I can’t. Somehow, the vim has gone. It left months ago, slamming the door and leaving behind nothing but a lump of wet laundry in the washing machine.

Since this blog and my old internetovating haunts have or had a lot to do with books, perhaps it’s not surprising. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come to the hardly earth-shattering realisation that it has been absolutely bloody ages since I last read a book that got me really excited. They’re all, sort of… blah. Neither dreadful, suck-your-brains out, pound-your-eyeballs into mush crap that forces me to keep reading just to stagger, reeling at its sheer awfulness, nor oh-my-god-i-love-this-oh-my-god-yeeeesss wonderfulness that leaves me blissed out and re-reading my favourite bits for days on end.

Nope. They just sort of all hover in this middle ground of bland, boring, blah. Okay to pass the time between metro stops, but instantly forgettable to the extent that TWICE now this year, I’ve bought a second copy of a book because I forgot that I had already read it.

Anyhow, I know it’s time to worry now, because after pretty much a day of on-and-off surfing through romance etc., websites, blogs and so on, the book reviews that have me most fired up (at least to the extent of looking up the delivery charges on Amazon) are two from the Fortean Times: Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, and an anthropological study of the history of cannibalism written by the daughter of a paleoanthropologist and a master chef.

I think if I had to put my finger on what’s made the books I’ve read recently so unexciting, it’s perhaps that they take themselves too seriously. They’re just not as much fun as they used to be. Same thing for a lot of the sites I used to frequent. The humour seems just a tad forced, the reactions and posts a tad predictable. The joins seem to show. It’s like there’s less joy in it now. And I don't feel like writing because I can't help worrying that the same applies here. Sigh.

Is this a consequence of the last few years of looming doom and gloom? Or even that I'm realising this now because of the current doom and gloom? Or is the change in my own attitude and outlook? Are these the first symptoms of conservatism-with-a-small-c that strikes so many as middle age approaches? As the new austerity creeps in this deadly pace, will I develop preferences in reading and blogging that are serious, earnest and meaningful? Okay, maybe not the cannibals. But they could be leading me in a merry dance towards an inclination to seriousness. Who knows where this could all lead to? Discussing oven cleaning? grammar? central heating? (patience, my lovelies) *blushes*

I should never have done that course in economics.

I will blog more often.

I will blog more often.
I will blog more often.
I will blog more often.
I will blog more often.
I will blog more orphans.
I will blog meer ooftans.
I vill bleurg moo raftans.

Oh soddit. Or is this just the death rattle of this blog, aka its râles d'agonie? This, by the way is neither big nor clever, but just an indication of too much Zola at an impressionable age.

Possibly it is merely ras-le-blog. Ouch.

Actually, come to think of it, I do have an idea... Hmm...

It's been so long that I almost forgot my password...

...perhaps, this should become the greatest ever blog of excuses for not writing blogs?

Except I don't think I have the stamina and determination for that either. Or else, those trivial minor details of life get in the way. Like work... and the other stuff. What was it again? Oh yes. More work.

Anyhow, this is probably not the best place to go into detail about the truly disgusting ex-summer-cold-now-officially-diagnosed-hay-fever that I have managed to develop. My doctor knows that it is hay fever owing to the subtle nuances of my mucus coloration. I know it is hay fever because a) it won't go away and b) no one else is as miserable as I. Oh woe.

But of course, along with hay fever comes hay fever remedies. Teeny tiny pills. Counsel that I should cycle more in open fields. Advice that I should cycle less in open fields. Recommendations that I should source local Praguish honey and ingest it for its local pollen qualities. Earnest discussion about the healing properties of natural yoghurt, dried figs and industrial-strength quantities of vitamin C. Lavender pills. Horsefly tincture. Snorting of fresh water. Of salt water. Cold team.

But will anyone shut the ****y window?

Moving stairway to nefilim

Somehow, while I have had enough time to stumble across ideas for blog posts and even managed to worry them around enough to find some of the rough edges, I haven't really had the time to bash them into shape. Consequently, when I do sit down at a keyboard for bloggish purposes, I don't even know where to start. It feels as if all these whirling fragments of posts have clogged up my back brain and it takes enormous concentration to get anything down - even a hopeful list of topics.

Personally, I blame the escalators. Escalator-based differences are one of those things that I noticed when I first arrived here, but which rapidly became part of the day-to-day pattern of my life. When I was first getting to know the glories of the Prague metro system, my thoughts when escalator-bound would go something like this:

"Ticket stamping machine… where's my ticket? Oh yes, here. No that's used, okay, yes, here it is."

Silent squishing noise (yes, it is possible) as ticket collapses in ticket stamping machine. Squish again. Squish again.

"Okay… not the ticket. Different machine."

Whirrrrr. Bzzpp. (electronic date-stamping noise). Walk to escalator. Stand. Stare at the back of people's heads, trapped by the lack of appropriate Czech verbiage. Stand some more. Brain flips into the same semi-meditative trance of resigned boredom that causes me to read the ingredients listing on cereal boxes at breakfast and starts looking for escalator equivalent of a nutrition label.

"Ohhhh. Strange-looking Czech words on posters. I recognise that brand. And that one too. But not that one. Hey, I know that word. I think that one is advertising a language school. Yes, "jazyky". I know that word. And "anglic-with-a-hacek-tina" too. Wow. I can read some Czech. So I wonder what that is? Oh "divadlo". That's theatre. So maybe a play? Or seasons? It's a black and white picture of two people with angst in their eyes. With an owl. Must be a play. What's the owl for? How far? What? I'm not even half-way down this thing yet. Bloody hell, this is taking for-ee-vaaahh. Borrreeed.

"What play has an owl? This is a long escalator. I wish that man would move to the right. I wonder what Czech for "please stand on the right is?" Hmmmm… trees of the year. The June one is nice. In London, there are signs and announcements. Very leafy, that May tree. Tree of May. Whatever. Why aren't there signs and announcements? Or is it moving very slowly? In London, heavy breathing makes people move. Don't Praguers understand the meaning of heavy-breathing-at-the-neck? Damn. I think that was my train.

"Yes, look, people are getting on the escalator from that side of the platform. Isn't this light a strange yellowy colour? And the ticket machines are yellow too. This is a really long escalator. I wish I could walk. Or speak enough Czech to ask them to move. Maybe they're tourists. Tourists in London don't always understand the heavy-breathing-at-the-neck thing. Even though they have pictures with big red "X"s. And announcements. But the announcements are only in English. Which is pretty idiotic.

"And there's that whole slow time thing too. Maybe they don't get the need to rush. That's nice. It probably means fewer heart attacks. I'm sure I read somewhere that the faster people walked in cities, the unhealthier they were. These people are probably keeping me healthy. Which is good. Really. But also annoying. Hey, so that's what Bourne Ultimatum is in Czech. Could I get a tree of the year? I would probably feel healthier about the not rushing if I wasn’t breathing in this incredibly unpleasant smell. Especially through warm air. How do people do things like that in ventilation?" Ad nauseam (ahem, big klew about smell there).

Three hours later (okay, actually 2 and a half minutes. E timed one once. But it's a veeerrryy sloooowwwww 2 and a half minutes), I am at last able to admire the unique platform architecture and dulcet tones of the (occasionally) trilingual announcements, where the Czech takes twice as long as the German or English versions, leaving me in a permanent state of anxiety about what important travel-related information I might be missing.

"Bing-bing. Dear passengers, for your safety, you are please asked to remain standing behind the white line." Well, it's white and black. And more grey than white, actually. "Bing-bing. Dear passengers. Already this Saturday Prague will become the venue of the Mattoni Night Grand Prix. The night run in the streets of Prague will affect the city transportation in the centre of Prague between nineteen thirty hours and twenty-two thirty hours. There will be tram service disruption in the section…"

But these days, everything just blurs into the getting-to-another-place zone of empty-headedness. It takes something spectacular along the lines of battling clowns to shake me out of auto-pilot. Familiarity breeds contemptplation (hurhur). So as my daily two to four escalators become the only point in the day where I can actually go into slow time, they give me just enough time to get irritated by a bit of mental grit, but no more. Actual coherent structures would require a bit more of, well, everything.

Like Frankenstein, I did it my way

In some circles, they call me Typhoid Marika

Late last week, I decided to beat this head cold into submission. Well, either that or at the least assuage my fears that the strange goings-on in an auricular direction weren't signs of some incipient horrible secondary infection that would leave me defeated; a broken woman in neon wraparound visors, weakly humming stadium rock riffs. So off I hied myself, my Czech Health Insurance Card and my fug of rhinoviruses to the clinic with the English-speaking doctors recommended by a friend (it seems illness withers up my Czech language gland).

Two stops across and four stops down on Prague's rather crowded metro, I arrived and battled with the very complicated entry system to greet the doctor himself.

For 'twas indeed a male doctor and one quite attractive in a grey-blond sort of way. Things began to appear rosier. The tiny part of my mind not wholly occupied on working out precisely when I have felt more miserably ill before in my entire life perked up and started to take an interest. It glowed with approval as I explained my symptoms, deftly skirting around the whole Pink Floyd issue.

"Hmmmm…" he frowned, just like every other doctor in the universe. "Do you have fever?"
"Umm… no. I don't think so."
For a brief moment, I wondered if now would be a good time to bring up overstated twin reverb and dry ice. The tiny non-illness-obsessed part of my brain moved with the speed of (laser) light to stifle this urge with a barrage of sneezing. There was a pause while I mopped up with a scrap of tissue. Bit of an own goal for the mucus-brained one.

After a brief hand movement reminiscent of an amateur (pre-bunny) magician's, the still-attractive but more elusive he-doctor lunged forward and grabbed my forehead. Paralysed by shock and a strong Czech accent from a man in a white coat, visions of brain-sucking machines danced through my head.

"No. You don't have fever."
"Oh, well, that's good." Did brain-sucking really require complete cranial rigidity? "But it's really my ears that I'm worried about." I pointed at my ears. They stick out a bit, but are not unattractive.

His hands shifted and his thumbs pressed down very hard on the bumpy bit of skull behind my ears. "Does this hurt?"

Strong hands or not, torn by the brain-sucking issue, it was something of a relief to find him less attractive from this perspective. "Well, you are pressing quite hard."

"No. But do you have pain here?" More pressing.
"Not really. It's more sort of here." I did my own pressing, this time on the squishy bit behind my jaw where the crackling noises seemed to originate.

"Then you do not have ear infection."
"Well, that's a relief."
"You have a cold."
"Yes, I knew that. It's just my ears…"
"There is no medicine for a cold. You must rest. You must drink water."
"Okay."
"And if you still have the hearing problems after the cold is gone, you must see an otologist to clean your ears."
"Okay."
"Now, goodbye."
"Goodbye."

And so, suitably chastened, I took my dirty ears home to tune the air guitar.

Division ding-dong.

It's slightly less obvious than "The Wall".

With the usual seasonal irony, it's been absolutely beautiful and warm for the last few days while I wrestle with a filthy cold. The evil germ has done weird things to my ears that make me feel as if I'm listening to a Pink Floyd album in a submarine. In other words, I have very blocked ears because of sinus inflammation, can hear sloshing and crackling when I move my jaw, and my left ear generates a peculiar tinny echo for all but the lowest-frequency noise.

Given my age, the Pink Floyd reference is a good indicator for the extreme noncool level of my de rigeur "I'm-miserable-and-ill-now-go-away-you-bastards-and-stop-hassling-me-about-borrowing-the-ironing-board" flannel pyjamas, striped socks and bad hair. I'm too old for it to be ironic and/or retro (the fact that I don't really have a clear idea of which it's supposed to be probably speaks volumes), and too young to be a first-time hard-core fan with original vintage concert T-shirt, who can sneer at the wannabe pj's in their pastel-snowflake-printed sadness.

Worse still, I've been this way for a very long time. But illness tends to bring out the dark side of my stadium rock/big album secret vice. One of the reasons that I avoid medication for the average cold-type bug is a sneaking fear that one too many decongestant tablets will find me in head-to-toe denim, and BIG hair, waving a zippo lighter with enthusiasm at a Status Quo gig. It could happen. I once bought a tape of the best of Bon Jovi while under the influence of one too many medicated throat sweets/cough drops and ten years later, not only can I still sing all the words, but I even know the track order.

So somehow it all made sense to my mucus-addled brain to go trawling through the archives and dig out this photo from an excursion up to the castle last summer. At least it might help to illustrate why I'm anticipating the coming summer with not a little dread. While last year, leopard-print ruled, I think gold and "brights" are supposed to be in this summer.

Mysterious Dimensionless Points

Polyps update: mysterious brooding.

Mysterious cause of camera refusal to download photos to laptop: assumed mysterious battery.

Imagine some pictures of snow here - I was in the mountains when I wasn't stuck in the portakabin or the smallest hotel room in the world (very clean, but mysteriously kettle-, drawer- night-table- and electric-socket-less).

The most mysterious thing, however, about the recent jaunts abroad is what has happened to my default foreign leungwidge. The DFL is the massacred version of an otherwise innocent and inoffensive foreign-to-the-speaker language that pops out in the absence of any decent command of whatever local language might be. It often bears absolutely no resemblence to the actual language you should be speaking, unless by doing so it can cause insult to the local person with whom you are attempting to converse (badly).

The DFL may be accentuated by the atrocious and yet irresistable urge to mime if doing so will cause acute humiliation. These days, however, it is only rarely the speaker's own native language spoken Clearly. And. Distinctly. In. A. Loud. Voice. With. Odd. Em.Pha.Sis. Or. A. Funny. Accent. Normally, it's whatever language you studied least and worst or most recently quite badly. It should not be confused with those foreign languages which a person speaks with any degree of fluency. Oh no. Far be it that you should be confused with a reasonably articulate speaker of anything apart from helpless grunting noises that never quite sound the same no matter how hard you try.

Nor, however should the DFL should be confused with those bits of language you pick up while abroad ("Do not flush/use the toilet while the train is standing in the station", "Do not feed the monkeys children - they bite"), watching films in smoky arts cinemas, or reading those books where the mysterious, foreign, tycoon hero peppers his speech with exotic endearments, curses and the odd (ungrammatical/mispelled/or both) sentence in his mother tongue. ("Efharisto!", "Querida!", "Avec les roberts comme ça, ta rhumba est exceptionnelle" and, "Non credevo che 'impotente' volesse dire 'non può divertirsi'", my darling.)

Anyhow, over the last few months, my default foreign longwidge has now become Czech. Heaven and Mrs. Jana both know I can barely manage a word or two in Czechland, but it seems that distance has an effect rather like that of half-a-bottle of Becherovka. My Czech actually gets more fluent the further away I am from the country where my mangled efforts would be most useful.

Those poor Italians hardly knew what hit them, what with my volley of "Prosím"s and "Promiňte"s as I hurdled through the Milan metro and fervently embraced the whole of the south-Tyrolean train network with a deathless passion.

Of course, now that I'm back in Czechland, 3 whole days of being indoctrinated into the vagaries of Italian (can't speak it, can follow some, thanks to french, music and a whiff of distant latin) by Our Mutual Friend and boyfriend, means that I'm now apologising and thanking people in dreadful Italian. Probably just long enough to annoy the bilingual flatmate of Sicilian extraction.

Knee of the non-Vampyre

Gross coral scrape update: inflamation down about 35%, madly itchy in unlined wool trousers and surface area about 1 1/2 inches across. The world needs to know these things.

In other news, I've fallen off the wagon. Last weekend, while in the throes of the sort of giddy ecstasy that can only accompany an all-to-rare visit to my favorite bookshop, I bought another vampire book. Well actually, a few of them. I am weak. I am also an idiot. Why do I do this to myself?

Normal people would think, "No. That's it. I have vowed no more angsty wounded creatures of the night and their terminally drippy soulmates. Enough fang jokes. Enough use of the word "feeding" in any context except those which involve fresh hay and domesticated animals. Or maybe situations supervised by animal nutritionists in zoos at a pinch. But no more of this cod-gothic twaddle that makes me feel vaguely bilious. All that black leather will probably give me sweat rash. Sunshine is good. Daylight is your friend. Now settle down and glom a few nice historicals set in ancient Rome."

And I tried, I really did. But on Saturday afternoon, my pathetic excuse for a subconscious signed a pact of mutual alliance with the billions of polyps in my kneecap, took advantage of my weakened, jet-lagged state and decided to work its wicked wiles on my pocketbook. Legless and brainless, that's the goal.

"Ooohh, shiny orange cover in reasonable taste. And hey, it's okay if there are werewolves too, like in this one. Besides, lookee, this is the one that looks as if it may turn things on their head. It had good reviews. I think SmartBitches liked it. Oh, and in this one, it's not as if she's a vampire hunter. I mean, she hunts bad creatures of the night with fangs that drink blood. But they're not vampires. So that's okay. And hey, this is a book by she-who-usually-writes-about-vampires, but it looks as if this one doesn't have any of them in it at all. Must. Add. To. Pile."

Then I had to lug them back here. Only to discover that the one that isn't remotely about vampires and the one that isn't-about-creatures-called-vampires-this-time-but-they're-probably-lurking-somewhere-close-by both contain stupid mistakes about something I'm familiar with.

Polishes halo. Shows restraint.

Oh soddit. It's stupid scuba stuff.

Bites through restraints with vampire-sharp teeth

Normally if I'm enjoying a book, I tend to gloss over minor niggles. After all I'm no expert anything. There could be exceptions or variations. I might have remembered wrongly. But in the here and now of the splish-splash subaqua fun that is scuba diving, I've just finished a refresher course and buddied a novice, so all the safety stuff and basics are swirling around in my head. When clashed with a fly-by-night mistake or three, they turn me into one of those angry know-all nit-picking pedants who writes letters to newspapers in posh ink that start, "Dear Sir. Imagine my mortification and appalled intellect upon reading in line twenty-seven, page one hundred and seventy-six of the newly-published novel, "BlahBlahBlah"…" Aarrrgghh. Aarrggh. Aaarrgggh.

So I need to get a couple of things off my chest somewhere reasonably safe, where hopefully no one will ever know of my shame, or consider me a total nut job since they've given up reading this post around paragraph two due to the incomparable grossness of my knee scab.

First of all, aarrrggghhhandsignalsaaaarrggghh pleeaaase not thumbs-up for "ok" pleeeaasse. Just get one of those cards, or look it up. Pleeeaaasseee. Secondly it's air, dammit, AIR in the tanks. NEVER OXYGEN (okay, maybe for some shallow decompression stops but they were going DOWN heheh).

You thought that was bad? Incoming pedant alert

Oxygen gets toxic at depth. Even the 21% in normal air is bad for you if you go deep enough (instead people use kinds of funky stuff like trimix that I've never tried, because it's also cold down there, and I'm a wimpy-arse diver with nerves of jelly who likes being warm and looking at pretty fish). Oxygen toxicity makes you nauseous. It makes you twitch. It makes you spit out your regulator. Its effects can very easily kill you. It's a very very bad thing.

But in this book, h/h filled up their tanks with *shudder* oxygen, leapt blithely into the water (without checking their spare regulators, sigh) and immediately plunged to their horrible convulsive watery deaths. Maybe. That's when I stopped reading.

It's like the ceti eel. But worse.

There's what you might either consider a really gross or really cool looking scrape on my knee where I bumped it against some coral last week. The offending coral was the type that resembles a brain, (and after a spot of quick googling, I have just discovered I'm not the only one to have this genius idea, because - surprise, surprise - it's actually called brain coral. Who'd a thunk it?). Consequently last week my right kneecap sported a raised red pattern that looked a bit like a clutch of alien worms doing a bit of synchronised twisting around on their way to resemble some kind of mystic celtic knot pattern.

I accepted this as my punishment for being stupidly careless, and watched it slowly fade away over the following few days (although I did take a picture, just to check that it wasn't progressing up my leg in a really creepy parasitic way). But yesterday morning, it spookily reappeared, bigger and redder than ever.

I panicked, convinced that billions of tiny coral polyps had been aggravated by my wool trousers and staged a revolt. Having marshalled their forces, I could see this but leading swiftly to virulant septicimea and the doomed march of my leg to the guillotine to liberate my patella from the rest of my body, while the little bastards knitted away, chuckling with glee. Of course, it was possible that they would have instead promoted agrarian land reform and the collectivisation of industry, but I was convinced these polyps had nefarious intent.

So off I limped last night (and scratched when it could be managed with discretion) to the nearest chemist's (pharmacy) for a bottle of industrial-strength disinfectant, armed only with a couple of scribbled phrases from one of my colleagues. Except that I got there too late. The chemist's/pharmacy/lekarna was closed. The polyps snickered. The cold wind sucked away my extremely unpoetic wails. The sleet fell in a particularly miserable way.

And then… then... a ray of hope shone through the circular series of holes in the front door. A ray of light too, which from a practical point of view was even better. A flap opened, and a woman in a white coat appeared. Before she could tell me to go away, I rattled out my new Czech phrase: "Yeeuurgh haff some dizinfektant fur skeen?"

"What?"

"Furr skeeen. Skiin. Skan." I rubbed the skin of arm, and contemplated pulling up my trouser leg to show her the disgusting wormy scar on knee.

"Oh. Like Hydrogen Peroxide?" (actually, it sounded more like "Peroxided Watery" to me, but I got the drift)

"Yes. Yes." Frantic bobbing of head.

The slide shut and I strained frantically to hear any noise from the inside. Preferably fizzing.

Two minutes later, the slide opened, and the woman's head appeared, along with a hand brandishing a small brown bottle.

More nodding and frantic "Yes. Yes's", as I did my best to impersonate an adorable stray puppy begging for shelter and scraps.

The woman was unimpressed by my pathetic attempt to tug at her heartstrings. "Twenty-four fifty. There is no change."

"Oh. Okay. Wahn minutee."

I rummaged through purse and pockets frantically, scattering metro tickets, pens and old bits of paper into the puddle at my feet. Arrrghh... Arrgghhh… Panicked… Made sobbing noises…

But reader, I gave her the exact change.