Pop the champagne!

Happy birthday to me (for tomorrow). Officially into the last year of my 20s, one step closer to dying alone and being eaten by Bob (the cat). Ha ha.

I had decided I wasn't up for doing a big thing for my birthday this year. Hosting parties tends to stress me out - will everyone turn up? Will there be enough food? (There is ALWAYS enough food, since I come from the "prepare for an attack from the eating equivalent of Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde" school of catering, as exemplified by my father, but doesn't stop me stressing about it for the next time.) Will they have fun? Will it be awkward and everyone will hold an impromptu ceremony to crown me Worst Hostess Ever? So I decided just to have a drink with Liz, my best friend in Tours. Also, I'd bought a bottle of champagne (Taittinger, in honour of our visit to the caves and the fact that it is delicious) and, being the selfish type, I wanted to share it with as few people as possible while not being sad and drinking a bottle of champagne all by myself on my birthday. However, just before I left work on Friday I got a facebook message from Stephanie, the American girl I met recently and went to the pretend-80s club with, asking if I wanted to grab a drink with her, so I decided to invite her around too. Again, because I'm a selfish person, I told her to come over an hour after Liz, so that we could quaff the champagne before she got there. Ha, I feel bad, but if you can't be a greedy champagne hoarder on (well, just before) your birthday, when can you be?

Liz blew me away with my birthday present. Way back last Christmas we were in Paris for the day together before flying out to Liverpool and Bristol, respectively, in the evening. Liz knows Paris better than I do, so she took us trawling through the Asian clothes shops by Republique. I think she wanted gloves or something. Anyway, I really wanted to buy this bag, but in the end I didn't get it because I was worried I was already going to be overweight with my luggage on EasyJet - I was going back to the UK with something like 5 bottles of wine, plus all my Christmas presents. When I came back through Paris to put my parents on the plane back to the UK, I tried to find the shop again - after all, usually when I stay in Paris I stay in a hostel right by Republique, so it should have been easy. But I couldn't find the street even, let alone the shop with the bag. So almost a year later, you can imagine how chuffed I was that Liz remembered the bag I wanted (I haven't thought about it or mentioned it to her since I tried to find it last January) and found it in Paris for me. What a star! And here it is, modelled by moi:



I then made Liz take a million photos with me and the champagne, including pretending to drink it straight from the bottle (ugly chin wattle photo not pictured), so we were concerned it might be shaken up upon opening. Liz stood by to catch any spray, but the bottle was opened without incident. 5 minutes later when I opened the fridge again to get some canapes out, the shelf, unable to take the weight of a bottle of champagne and 2 bottles of bubbly, collapsed. Hilarity ensued as I acted swiftly to save the champagne, which first spilled on the floor and then started foaming out. Not being the type to waste good champagne, I drank as much as I could straight from the bottle for real this time, until it stopped spraying. Bit of a bummer, but we didn't lose too much champers I don't think.

This wasn't even the first time that evening that the fridge had let me down. The fridge is officially known as the Frozen Fridge of Doom, since it is ridiculously cold. I've tried turning it all the way down to 1, all the way up to 6 and leaving it in the middle, but it still insists on freezing all my stuff. I often dive in for some hummus, or the cat's food, for example, only to find it frozen solid. It is good for keeping things like vegetables fresh for longer though, I must admit. But even I was surprised when I went to get some lemon to squeeze on to my smoked salmon canapes and found that the lemon was frozen solid. Who knew that was even possible?


The Frozen Fridge of Doom. This is to show the ice build-up at the back, not the apparent lack of human food in there.

Champagne time!


Me and my Taittinger, we love each other. Me and my Taittinger, always together...


Cheers!


Liz enjoying the privilege of getting some champagne


Bit blurry, but a nice photo of me and Liz having a larf I think


Me, Liz and Stephanie

Anyway, it was a nice evening, good to catch up with Liz, who I haven't seen in ages because she's been taking a course 9-5 and then teaching her classes at night, so busy busy. I have my actual birthday off tomorrow, so I'll have to think of something nice to do with myself. It was raining non-stop yesterday, so I was quite happy (well, as happy as humanly possible under the circumstances) to be in bed with a hangover all day.

A couple of random photos:


The evil spider who attacked me within seconds of my sitting down on the couch the other day. Credit where credit's due, he was still in the same spot when I got back from work, so I was able to kill him right away instead of worrying he might get on my knee again. Shudder! He's dead here, so imagine him not curled up and scary and on your knee. Eek! It took me about half a can of fly spray to kill him, then a lot of courage to dispose of the corpse. And then I had to wash the blanket he'd been on, partly because it had fly spray all over it, and partly because it had had a spider crawling all over it.


I've already ranted about how I paid La Poste 23 euros to redirect my mail, even though I'd changed my address with everyone I could think of, just so I could get the tax bill, and how it turned out they have a policy not to forward mail from the tax department. Well, here is the one and only piece of mail I've had redirected so far, an ad from the Monoprix supermarket. This is the side that the original address label was on...



And here's the other side:

Talk about useless! Not that I really care about a Monoprix ad, but supposing I did, way to stick a giant label over half of the information. What if it had been a postcard or something? Why not just stick the new address label over the old one? Or even just take a slight bit of care as to the label's placement? Nope, don't give a monkey's, La Poste.


And here's Bob, during cuddle time on the couch. He comes and hangs about on the floor next to the couch but won't jump up, so I have to lift him up and then he snuggles in between me and the back of the couch, often with his little paws on my shoulder (hence the blurry close-up). Look at his little round head, aw. Good news, Liz is staying in Tours for Christmas, so she is going to feed him. Yay!

What am I reading? Land of Eagles

Fortuitously, I finished 1Q84 and the very next day 2 books that I'd ordered from Amazon turned up in my letter box. I am now the proud owner of an ex-library book from Illinois. The internet eh? Crazy.

A few weeks ago I happened to see a comment on a travel blog. Someone had written in asking for ideas for their honeymoon, and someone had commented and suggested Albania. The comment was only a couple of lines long, but this is just exactly the sort of place I'm always raring to go to, and it caught my imagination. I, probably like many of you, think of Albania - if I think of it at all - as a bleak, communist hole. But I hopped on to Google and was confronted first with the (obvious) fact that it's right there on the Med above Greece and across from Italy, which screams sea, sand and sunshine. Then I looked a bit further and liked what I saw - not too touristy yet, apparently some nice beaches exist amongst others that are skyscraper-ridden communist disasters, there are some great archaeological sites etc. etc.

So anyway, before committing myself any further, I headed to Amazon and ordered the first travel narrative book I saw - Land of Eagles: Riding through Europe's Forgotten Country by Robin Hanbury-Tenison. It got some good reviews, and apparently Hanbury-Tenison is something of a doyen of English travel writers, so I overlooked the fact that they were doing it on horseback. I've never been a horsey type (perhaps surprisingly, logistics aside - I was a very Lisa Simpson-ish kid in every other way), but that didn't seem an important factor when selecting a travel book.

However, as soon as I opened it up and saw their route map, I realised it wasn't quite what I was looking for. The vague idea I have in my head (after about an hour's internet search) is to fly in and out of the capital, Tirana, and to visit a few spots on the coast and the big archaeological site down south. They are taking their horses trekking through the mountains in the interior, with a stated goal of not setting foot in a city the whole trip. Not very me.

Well, that would still be okay if it was an evocative guide to the history, people, culture and landscape. It started out promisingly enough, with some brief but interesting background on the history of the country, the horrors of Enver Hoxha's regime and subsequent Balkan Wars, but for the most part I've gotta say it's just dull. He goes into great detail a lot of the time, but about stupid stuff like how his "much younger" wife divided all their stuff into four distinct boxes, and how that made it easy to find stuff and quick to pack up in the morning. Tons of stuff about the difficulties they have following whatever bridle trail it is they're on, getting lost in the scrub, horses balking at crossing rivers and so forth, none of which is really of any interest to anyone not planning the exact same horse trek.

Here's a sample from the page I happen to be up to:

I had photocopied in colour all the maps, so that I could give our driver an identical map to the one I was navigating by. In theory that would mean that we would always be able to find each other. But it didn't work out that way. We arranged to meet them where the clearly marked side road to Surroj peeled off. There we planned to enjoy the packed lunches with which the hotel in Kukes had provided us and which, to save them from being jiggled about and pulped on the horses, we had put in the Landcruiser. We reached the junction but there was no one there. They had either driven past or, knowing that we would be taking it, decided to go down the side track and continue until it ran out and became suitable only for horses. There was no signal on the mobile. It turned out they had driven past, and so we missed out on lunch.

Bored yet? It's certainly not inspiring me to visit. Where's the local colour? The crazy old man who, I dunno, drags you in to his house, tries to make you marry his daughter and tells you tales of fighting the Italians in World War I - or something. Where's the glorious descriptions of majestic mountains and soaring eagles? Where's something your average traveller, who's not going to start off on their voyage with champagne provided by the Acting British Ambassador (I kid you not) can use? It's a bit like reading someone's journal in which they've written down every single thing that ever happened to them. Well, I am 72 pages in since picking it up this evening, so I can say one thing for it, that it's a relatively quick read (over 100 pages to go though). Might have to invest in a guidebook or something to help me decide whether Albania 2012 is really a winner.

Why no-one's going to hire me as a professional Photoshopper anytime soon

Thought I'd jazz up a photo of me and Jess in the fancy Reims restaurant a bit. It was really hard though, mostly because the wall was the same colour as the (now wonky) table. I also forgot that one of the prime qualities of glass is that it's transparent. I now have a full-to-the brim martini-style glass instead of my wine glass and I just got rid of the water bottle altogether. I also got rid of the wine bucket, but seemingly digitally spilt its contents on the tablecloth in the process. On the bright side, I made my arm a bit skinnier!

What am I reading? 1Q84

Inspired by The Guardian's list of the best books of 2011 (the first of many such round-ups, I expect) I thought I'd kick off an occasional series of posts on (surprise, surprise) what I'm reading.

I briefly had a blog back in the day in which I decided I would read one book by everyone who's ever won a Nobel Prize, after realising I had read hardly any of the laureates. Looking at the blog now, I see I managed to get through 16 books, which is more than I thought. I actually have no memory at all of most of them (this is a general problem for me, that I forget books I've read, and even some I've studied, quite easily). If you'd asked me, I would have said I'd never read any Anatole France, despite him being a favourite of the French board of street names. But apparently I read him, and I didn't like him - "Pointless, that's the best summary of The Amethyst Ring by Anatole France, pointless from start to finish". I think the only book of the lot that really stayed with me was The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, which is a masterpiece. But I see that I read that just before starting the 'project' anyway!

But anyway, while the constraints of reading a whole bunch of obscure Swedish writers and people chosen as much for their political beliefs as their writing wore me down (actually, I come across of a bit of a philistine in the blog - apparently I wanted to punch Jose Echegaray, 1904's winner, in the face ha ha), I thought it would be quite fun to blog about books that I had chosen to read of my own volition. So after that lengthy introduction, here goes.

I'm still ploughing through the 900+ page epic that is Haruki Murakami's latest, 1Q84. It's been quite a while since I read any Murakami, but I am definitely a fan. As I said to my mum a while back, it's now seemingly become obligatory to like Murakami. He's the perfect "I have pretensions to literariness, yet I like to think I'm a bit alternative" go-to guy. Not that I'm trying to say I was on the bleeding edge of Murakami appreciation and now I'm too cool for school.

I think I first read Murakami - Kafka on the Shore - when I was in Moscow in 2006, so I think I hardly "discovered" him. I have vivid memories of picking up that first book, with its white cover with a picture of a cat on it. I used to buy a lot of books at the big Dom Knigi (House of Books) on Novy Arbat, but I think I might have bought this one at the English book shop in Kitai Gorod. I ended up with a whole shelf of them in my bedroom, all of them abandoned when I left Moscow precipitously shortly afterwards. I used to read a lot - and spend a fortune on books I was later to discard - when I was in Prague and Moscow. The joys of having (some) time on my hands and no TV (or Russian/Czech only) and no computer.

In Prague I used to go to Shakespeare & Synove (Shakespeare and Sons) a lot. (I imagine it's probably something of an homage to Paris's famous Shakespeare & Co.) Shakespeare & Synove was a wonderful place to hang out - used and new books in the back (and they'd buy your old ones back too) and a coffee shop where you could install yourself by the fire with a hot chocolate and read for hours without being bothered. A rarity indeed in Prague, where generally a waiter will swoop within two seconds of you finishing your drink and ask if you want something else. At the time, I was unemployed, waiting to go to Moscow, and spent a month living in a hostel dorm room before spending a couple of weeks sleeping on the concrete floor of my friends' basement apartment (in one of their bedrooms, in fact), with only a folded blanket between me and the floor, and another thin blanket to sleep under. I used to wake up aching all over when my friend's alarm went off at about 6 am. The good part was that I was authorised to climb into her bed for a few more hours' sleep once she left! There was no spare key, so once I decided to leave the apartment for the day, I was out on my own until whatever time they made it back from long days teaching. I saw a lot of Prague, but it was getting cold by that stage (beginning of November, I think), and I'd been in Prague for a couple of months already, and so I spent a lot of time trying to drink hot chocolates as slowly as I possibly could in cafes or even sitting on the floor outside their apartment waiting for them to get back.

Very different to how I've been reading 1Q84 - on my Kindle, with no real sense of the weightiness of such a book, the pages left unread diminishing with every day; on the bus, in my lunchbreaks, or perched on the stationary bike at the gym. I found that Vol. 1 and 2 (sold separately from Vol. 3 in the UK, where my Kindle is registered) zipped by quite quickly. Even though I'd read some spoilers in articles and interviews before it came out, it did a good job of drawing you into its world and allowing some of the connections between characters to only gradually dawn upon you. There are definitely parts where it's genuinely gripping and you can't wait to see what happens next. But it's quite unevenly paced. Vol. 3, in particular, seems to be dragging somewhat in comparison, although there still is a desire to know how it all turns out. Somehow the surreal elements of the book seem a bit lacking in purpose. One feels that exactly the same essential plot could have been achieved without any of the Little People and air chrysalises etc. They don't really seem to be *doing* much in the book, and yet they're not so out there that you really go "wow, what the hell?" Or maybe that's just because we're all used to this sort of magical realism guff by now?

There is a good story there though, and I'm still looking forward to see what happens at the end (which I have heard is disappointing...) If anything, though, it's made me want to go back and re-read some of those books I read back in Moscow and see if I can recapture the magic.

PS Next time I will try to get down to business a bit faster...

123€ poorer, any wiser?

All the ins and outs of the situation are too complicated to bore you with (anyone wanting to follow the flatmate from hell saga can look here, here, here, here, here and here - for starters...), but to be (kinda) brief (this may not seem like the simplified version, but trust me), I saw the agent last night, who gave me a copy of the lease, as requested by the taxman. She also let me know that she has no idea where G is these days; that G had been charging me more than half the rent when I was living with her - not really surprised at this stage, but unsure why that never came out before; and that G's dad had said she has always been a liar. True dat. Plus more stuff about how even when the agent had turned up to the apartment to bust her, she was spouting lies about how I (and she pretended I was 'Géraldine' and she was my flatmate) worked nights and wouldn't be back and she should come back during the day - whereas she knew I was right behind her, since we'd been at a mutual friend's place, but she was obviously hoping that she could get rid of the agent and I'd never find out.

Anyway, armed with the lease, I went to the tax office this morning (the whole thing took about 2 hours total). Unfortunately, didn't get to see the guy I saw last time, who got the whole sob story and told me how to sort it out. Instead, I got a woman who seemed much less sympathetic. To be fair, I didn't lay all the cards on the table at first, since I was thinking that, as I had been told I wasn't legally responsible, it didn't really matter what G had done to me. But she started off by saying I could have forged the agent's signature on the lease. I mean, first off, the agent had crossed out the girl who had lived with G THREE flatmates before me (and was never taken off the lease), and just written in that she left in 2008 but G was still there until the end of July this year. Why, if I were the legal-document-forging and lying-to-the-tax-department type, would I have bothered trying to absolve this other girl of responsibility? Wouldn't it have been easier just to leave things as they were?

After a bit of back and forth, thankfully she decided to believe me that I hadn't turned my hand to fraud to get out of a 450€ bill. Then she said she could cancel me off the tax (and thus make G solely responsible for it) but for some reason she couldn't take the TV licence fee out of my name. Why couldn't she? She just couldn't. Of course. Sigh. I pointed out that this was pretty unfair, since it was G's TV (technically - and I didn't tell her this - I did have a TV in my room too, but it belonged to G and I watched it max once a fortnight when the F1 was on, plus it's one fee per residence, not per TV, so didn't make a difference anyway) and she turned all snippy and said that normally everyone had to pay the taxe d'habitation, and I had been living there, so I shouldn't be complaining. Which was infuriating. At this stage, I had mentioned that G had stolen from me and not paid the rent (since she had initially suggested that I just sort out paying the tax between ourselves), so don't bloody talk to me about moral obligations! However, there was no budging her on this standpoint, so I just paid the 123€. At the end of the day, it's less than half the amount, which is what I was expecting to have to pay, and it's done with.

The only thing is, I'm left wondering if the situation is truly resolved now. She said (again, I don't know why) that G would now receive the bill for this tax in January or February. Somehow, I'm not picturing her leaping off to the tax office to fulfil her obligations (obligations? Obligations are for suckers). The agent said that if she doesn't pay, they will end up chasing the landlord for the money. In that case, she mentioned using a rent cheque I gave the agent for June and July (which she hasn't yet cashed because of accountancy issues chasing up the money from G's family - again, won't go into the details) to pay the tax. Sure, I was in the apartment in June and July, so I'm not contesting that I owe rent for those months, but it seems unfair to have that hanging over my head for who-knows-how-long. And the thought that she might just merrily not pay something AGAIN and not really have to deal with any of the consequences AGAIN really, really annoys me. And I feel that that's like, best case scenario - I just have visions of her somehow harrassing me.

This whole thing has been such a drain for the past six months. Even today, I was feeling physically sick to my stomach in the tax place. I just wish I knew it was over.

Fast times in Tours

Anyone else impressed by the lack of typos in that 6 am post? I would like to say that's because I always perfectly master the keyboard arts, but here's how I sounded a bit earlier in the evening:

Lime IS the best of the flavours (with gin) and I think you can see the shots of vodka that took place between 1.27 am and 2.44 am. I didn't show the bit where I tried 10 times to spell 'bye' correctly

This chat also involved the immortal lines: "Hey, super good news! I just got news from the future from [mutual friend in New Zealand - and, therefore, 'the future', time zone wise]." The news from the future was "There was a cat and she looked like a Japanese lady! And then I laughed a lot and she said I should call her tomorrow." This was received with confusion, as you might imagine.

So, anyway, it was a fun night. In case anyone's wondering, I had my laptop out (with Skype still logged in) because we were gearing up for the supposedly-80s-but-secretly-not club with a YouTube-assisted walk down music's memory lane. Stephanie, a girl from Ohio who I met recently (and asked out on a girl date, go me!), is only 25, which is not that much younger than me, but which kinda showed when Marion and I were singing along to Tiffany at the top of our lungs and she was just sitting there a bit bemused. Whatever happened to Tiffany anyway?

Also Roxette, Heart, and Dragon - although that one is less an age thing than a not-being-a-Kiwi-thing (all the rest of you have been missing out big time):


Dragon - always reminds me of nights in the 80s bar in Wellington dancing it up with Ruthie G. Particularly one night when we were out on the smokers' (slash, I'm sweaty and I need some air) balcony and the rain really was coming down like sheets. That's Wellington for you... Good times :)

And then Marion introduced us to the most hilarious thing ever. Particularly after you've been drinking for several hours. I have to preface this by saying I do the opposite of endorse a guy who got caught pissing on a teenage girl on tape, but this is seriously comedy gold:



Just be warned, this "hip hopera" goes on for 23 "chapters", so set aside some free time if you're going to watch them all (I'm not all the way through, but trust me, it's insanely worth it).

Other highlights of the night involved arguing with the bouncer because he wouldn't let me take my handbag into the club (the other bouncer gave me his card on the way out though, so I don't seem to have burned all my bouncer bridges at the club) and stealing someone's Red Bull. Um, sorry about that... I have to laugh though, I basically said to Stephanie "Hey, look, someone left their Red Bull on the bar" (for at least 5 minutes, come on people, fair game) "should I steal it?" Stephanie: "Dunno, I don't really like Red Bull", Me: "Okay then, I WILL!" There's not needing much encouragement to vice, and then there's not needing any encouragement at all... I will note that I'm very unstealy when sober. And I would also like to note that 'dancing like a bunny' consisted of jumping up and down, not like hopping and doing the bunny arms or anything super embarrassing like that!

Luckily, I was tired and a bit brain-foggy yesterday, but no hangover and no return of the sickness. I have to go back to work tomorrow, which I'm kind of nervous about. I always feel like I'm being judged for having time off sick, even though in reality everyone is actually really nice and I do have a doctor's certificate (I got a call actually, someone found all the papers I lost and handed them in, which was nice. At least they're not all floating around Tours any more). But still. I haven't been at work at all for over a week, and before that I only had one afternoon after my Photoshop course, so it's been like 2 weeks since I was really there. I just feel weird about it and like Monday is surrounded by a cloud of impending doom. Well, I just have to get out of bed and go and it will be okay, right?

6.11 am

And I'm blogging post-club. Post-what-was-meant-to-be-an-80s-club, but wasn't. On the other hand, I was expecting a "30s and over" club would be full of creepy old men, but it wasn't too bad. I danced with one guy like a bunny (I was dancing like a bunny, he wasn't like a bunny) and he said that no-one else there was dancing like me. Well, duh, when was the last time YOU saw a French girl dancing like a bunny? I don't think the concept of dancing like no-one's watching has taken off here (or probably most places, to be fair). Then it was too loud to catch most of the rest of his conversation, but it seemed to centre on how nice the toilets were and how we should check them out, which I thought Did Not Bode Well, so I left him to check out the toilets on his lonesome. I also danced with another guy, who I thought was quite fun. I am happy to dance with anyone, as long as they can do more than shuffle on the spot, so I had no particular complaints with this fellow, but my friends told me later that they nicknamed him "The Greek" because he kept dropping to his knees (which, I dunno, Greek people do?) and I was "The Highland Dancer" because by comparison I looked like I was undertaking almighty feats of leaping about. Maybe I was being a bunny again.

Anyway, I think I will regret it tomorrow, when I'm sober (hungover) and have probably regressed into officially sick once more. But at 6.18 am, I'm happy to report a fun night out. Time for bed.