So I am officially pregnant.  Just over 4 weeks now and the countdown has begun towards becoming more swollen and hormonal. I am having waves of queasiness and have gone the hole hog a couple times and thrown up, once was in public, on the high street as I was heading towards the metro at 7am which was nothing short of humiliating. I was en route to having eleventy million blood tests all done sequentially on Boulevard St Germain. They were testing me for every sexually transmitted disease known to mankind, plus other things I don’t even know how to pronounce let alone what they are all about. I couldn’t find the words to tell them I was not here due to sleeping with barrow loads of infected men, that I was infact pregnant with my longish term partner.  By the end of the tests, I felt weak and was worried about whether they had left me enough blood  in my system to keep me going till my body had time to make some more. I had lost all sensation in both of my hands and had more pot marks in my arms than a junkie.

The night before was just as pleasant. I had my first visit to the gynaecologist, Dr F for fruitcake, recommended to me by my boss. Now me being me, entering into the, having a child phase of my life, for the first time, should not be expected to know the exact in’s and out’s that go on at a first meeting with one of these special women’s doctors.  I thought it would be pleasant, kind of introductory, a sort of question and answer type rendez vous. A celebratory visit if you like.

Of course not.

Not to mention the fact that I am in Paris, not able to speak my Mother tongue, which makes it harder. Frenchy asked me if I would be ok to go on my own.

“Of course” I said, not sure whether that would be true. ” I need to get on with these things on my own, anyway, its good for my french speaking.”

As soon as I arrived outside the door of the surgery in Montparnasse, I began to feel like maybe I had made a mistake. I rang the buzzer and waited.

“Oui?!” Came the reply from the speaker.

“ehu oh oui, oui… bonjour! je m’appelle …..”

“Oui Madame, entrez” He interrupted, followed by a Brrrrrrrrrrrr and a click and the door opened.

I got to his front door to find it half open, so I slid through.

“Voulez vous attendrez dans juste en face madame” Came a booming voice from behind the door the to my right.

I walked through to the waiting room which was like no other I had ever experienced before in a doctors surgery. A thousand and one south east asian statuettes aligned every shelf and surface possible. There was this strange music that harked back to theme tunes from the Moomins or Buttton Moon days. A strong smell of burning incense along with the accompanying heavy swirl of blue smoke that incense always annoyingly has.  There were squashy sofas and chairs with Moroccan throws and Indian silks covering them. For a moment I wasn’t entirely sure that I had made a mistake and was at the local pot dealers place. I was wondering who I was about to meet?

“Bonjour madame!”  I turned around and there he was, my doctor. The man who was going to take me through my pregnancy.

He was surprisingly conservative looking.  No dreadlocks, no little John Lennon glasses, just a white haired, fairly robust middle aged man.

He took me into his room and sat me behind his very large desk. We had a conversation in … french … I think, for about 15-20 minutes.  He asked me various questions about my family background, my marital status, smoking, drinking etc. I thought I answered most of these questions well, though I’m not sure now, because the communication broke down completely after that.

He began to ask me about my regles. Periods. Here we go, I thought. On to the important stuff. The reason why Im here. The me being pregnant bit.

The conversation must have gone a bit like this, I will write it in English seeing as though I can’t string more than 3 french words together, which should illustrate how all the confusions arose.

Doctor So when did your last period start?

Me It should have finished last weekend

Doctor When did it start?

Me Well I have to check, I can’t fully remember

Doctor (throwing eyes up to heaven)  Well call your boyfriend then

Me Excuse me?

Doctor WHY HAVE YOU COME TO SEE ME IF YOU DON’T HAVE THIS INFORMATION?

Me I am not calling my partner! I can tell you, hang on, (pull my phone from my bag and nervously find the calendar bit and start counting backwards)

Doctor WHAT ARE YOU DOING?   His voice becomes more aggravated

Me (I have now lost count due to high anxiety)  Listen, I did a test, ovulation? it was around 4th September. I was ovulating, so we did it.. you know… and it worked… my cycle is 31 days you see?

Doctor Ahhhhh, so your cycle is 31 days?

Me Yes! So I need to count back from the 4th September and that is when my period started

Doctor BUT WHAT DATE WAS THE START OF YOUR LAST PERIOD!

Me I TOLD YOU!  15 DAYS BEFORE 4TH SEPTEMBER!

Doctor That was a long time ago, are you periods regular?

Me Yes they are actually

Doctor So that means that you may in fact be pregnant….

Me Of course I am!  That is why I am here!

So there you go, I felt astonished by the end of it all. He slammed his hands down on the table, rupturing the last remaining nerve endings I had left, and congratulated me. I thanked him kindly, if not slightly nervously and thought to myself, so now can I find out the dates of when I will be due, hospitals, diet etc. I wonder??

“Follow me”  He said and disappeared into the adjoining cubicle.

I followed him in.

“Take off you clothes and lie down here”  He said slapping the leather torture chair and disappearing out of the room.

How many of my clothes? I thought?  All of them?  Just my shoes? Would that do?  I’m not having those meat hooks stuck up my nether regions today am I?  I only had a check up recently. Nooooooooooooooooo.

Then I remembered something even more horrific.

I hadn’t de haired any of my body for a while and was seriously over due and waxing. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I stood at the entrance to the door half clad and peered into the doctors office when he was whistling to himself. He looked up..

“Ready?” He said.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Many thanks first off too Liladreams, Bevchen and Tigirl for your inquiries on how and where I disappeared to. It is lovely to get messages from fellow bloggers and I am feeling the lurrveee!!   I hope you are all well and will be visiting your pages soon to catch up.

It has infact been over 3 months since my last confession. Nothing dark or sinister has happened to make me stop blogging, life got in the way a bit, a feeling of lack of inspirational things to blog about hit me along with some mild lackadaisical laziness.

So in brief, to get me back started on writing in a semi coherent fashion, I think I’m just going to bullet point some highlights of my last three months.

• I got my hair cut. Yes I did. Big highlight seeing as though I have spent the last 9 months razoring bits off myself every time I felt the urge. It was hanging listlessly down my back in ginger type stringiness. I was obsessed with growing it as long as I could even if that meant that I had started to look like a footballer from the 70’s.  I woke up one day and smelt the coffee. It is now in a bob and I am thrilled with the result. I did give the hairdresser a photo of Scarlett Johanssons new do as reference, what a shame I look nothing like her, but a relief that I no longer look like Kevin Keagen.
• Work is work. I have been doing some interesting things such as this:

Which earned me a bit of a bonus in my pay check the month I finished it.  That was good. There is never any good without a teeny bit of bad as far as my life goes though, and the bad with regards to work is that I have been semi feuding with a colleague who I find more annoying than an itch you can’t scratch.  I feel as though there is a massive undermining tactic going on in her corner of the work room and have been forced to bite my lip until it bleeds on more than one occasion. Unfortunately we are like oil and water, she being the oil that sits on top of my wateryness and suffocates me most of the time with her incessant gossiping, whispering of lyrics out loud to her awful r & b music which she plays whenever possible and over use of the word “No” , “Not possible” or “Not my job”.  She also paints her eyebrows green and constantly talks about the fact that she does, like its revolutionary, cutting edge or just too damn cool. Its not. Its awful, unattractive and even our boss asked her last week to refrain from doing so as it does not look good when dealing with clients. Enough of that though.

• My learning of the French language has gone from bad to worse as I seem to live in Paris but everyone speaks English to me. Its like being in Calais. Work colleagues have given up the ghost with me and everyone in the company now speaks English to me all the time. Its quite surreal really, but not surprising seeing as though my grasp of the French language is so far from my reach.
• Frenchy is doing good. Coming off his medication and doing very well. There was a term of very little work coming in for him which was difficult, but seems to be picking up now. I also convinced him to trim his facial into a handle bar moustache and long sideburns, not dissimilar to Nick Cave, who happens to be one of my heroes. Frenchy looks cool as I do too now I have my Scarlett type bob. So we all feel quite smug really.
• I am addicted to playing farmville on facebook. If any of you are not aware of this game DO NOT TRY TO START PLAYING IT. It is bad for your life and well being. It is time consuming and pointless. The only thing you do get from it is a nice looking virtual farm where you can buy workshops you would never be able to afford in real life, cottages to the same effect and far too many trees and cows gifted by neighbours that leave you in a state of high anxiety trying to figure out where the hell to fit them all on your little patch.
• My dear cat Tripod is well and has made a friend in the courtyard called Mimi. She is ginger and has all her paws intact unlike my three legged feline.  They are hilarious to watch as there are evenings when if one is let out before the other, they will croon from the courtyard this kind of come out to play type serenade. Mimi started crooning on Friday night which sent my cat into a frenzy. He jumped on the window sill and started crooning back at her, then sped down the corridor to the front door and cried until we opened the door to let him out. Once out we watched them lay like lions side by side, crooning and meowing at each other in friendly dulcet tones… extraordinary.
• And last but not least, in fact the mostest of the mostest is…… I am pregnant!!!!  After months of trying, we hit the jackpot and I am now just over a month pregnant.  Its early days and I am experiencing the joys of sickness, fatigue and increasingly enlarged breasts.  We are both very excited and I have my first ecography next week.  My visit to the gynaecologist last week was illuminating, I will blog about that separately as it deserves a post of its own.

So there we are, my first post in ages. A brief update and more to come.

Its nice to be back again, so what have you guys been up to?

PPL

It is 4.42 am, in the morning, am. Am, standing metaphorically for am-not-asleep.

Maybe it is a bout of my insomniacal vampire moments, but I have a funny feeling that is the after effects of a vodka night with my Frenchy.  We consumed many vodka/cokes from the comfort of our home and debated in louder and more animated tones as the night progressed, the meaning of life and other such ludicracies, as the transparent liquid drained its way out of the bottle and into each of our glasses.

Because of the fact that I can’t sleep, I thought I might use the time as constructively as I can and post a little post as I feel I have not been paying much attention to my blog recently. This led me to thinking about our Saturday just gone, yesterday, the day before the night came, this night, where I should be asleep, but am not.

Saturday was a hugely eventful day. Frenchy and I made headway into our new and improved lifestyle, moving very effeciently away from the lifestyle where one of us is shouting from the loo;

“Bloody hell! There are no toilet rolls left, What am  I going to do now??”

Or pouring milk into our coffee in the morning only to find that it has turned into cheese of the most stenchiest variety.

Or having a filing system that covers any flat surface, including floors.

We woke up and I went into military mode. I told Frenchy briskly to button up his collar and polish his boots, there was work to do.

We walked in formation down to the Monoprix with our wheely cow trolley and filled it up with necessities. Being the very poor people we are at the moment, we paid attention to the price stickers and were inventive with our meal choices.

On our way back home, we passed a brocante or flea market as I would say back home.  My eyes lit up and I felt a surge of excitement as we neared the swarms of Parisians sifting their way through rows of Formica tables heaving with very odds and lots of ends.

“Lets go!” I exclaimed, not even waiting for an answer.

I dragged Frenchy around, grumbling about how hungry he was and how we couldn’t afford to spend money. We found two crappy tables at the corner of the market just standing there, looking tired and cast away. I decided to buy them in that moment. Frenchy tried to talk me out of it. He kept reminding me that we can hardly afford to get through to the end of the month at the moment, let alone buy two tattered, battered tables.

But I felt the fear and did it anyway.

And how glad I am.

Because it spurred something within us as we dragged them back home.

One of the tables is our new computer corner. Where we can sit and type, organise bills, create tangible filing systems and generally look organised.

The other one has pride of place in our unit- less kitchen. We can fill it with stuff that is crammed on top of the fridge and the top can be used as a work station or Frenchy’s vegetable peeling station to be more correct.

Although these tables look shabby and forlorn, when we got them back home we started to discuss sanding them down and repainting them and for 40 euros for the two, I consider them a bargain once given a little after care.

With the sanding down discussion, came the where exactly to put them discussion, which turned into a massive clean out of bookshelves in the sitting room being moved to the hall way to make space. Drawers started to be opened and sorted, boxes emptied and all crap being binned.

4 hours later, we found ourselves sitting in the living room with a vodka and coke and Kate Bush crooning to us about the man with the child in his eyes, and admiring our new look home, clutter free, organised, homely.

We talked then of going wireless, putting up those shelves we have been discussing for ages and getting the old ones that were separating themselves from our walls fixed. Our enthusiasm mounted with all the talk, skillfully fuelled by the vodka, till there was no limit to what we could achieve.

Amazing how two crappy tables can make such a difference.

Eh?

I have tried to avoid talking about mental health with regards to my loved ones for a while now. My blog started from my partners dissolving mental health over a year ago.  It was a truly painful experience but not the first encounter I have had with someone close to me unravelling.

I have hardly written anything about my Mother or other members of my family.  Probably due to the fact that my childhood and relationship with my Mother has been responsible for so many of my own scars, I have tried to have one place where I can forget, not focus and aim to concentrate on more flippant topics.

The thing is though, that I am affected every day by the stuff that has formed me and that continues to form. My concern for my partner, my Mother, my lack of closeness to my siblings who all have different Fathers to me and to add to this, my own well being at times and my thoughts on how well in reality I do cope with all of my past and present.

I had a text arrive on my phone last night from a friend of my Mother. He is a French guy my age who my Mother became close to whilst he was in London. The text sent me into a state of anxiety as I read his words. He wrote that my Mother had texted him to say that her Bi-Polar disorder had become more critical and the doctors had decided to put her back on Lithium. The way he wrote the text sounded like something specific had happened that day to her,  though he didn’t explain what exactly. My anxiety heightened to a level I have experience in feeling on the subject of my Mother.

I live in fear that she may break again and be admitted to hospital or that the phone will ring one day and I will hear that she drank one Gin to many, popped one pill to many, had one to many a harsh word with my out of control half brother who himself started to hit the self destruct button many years ago.

It turned out that when I called her to see how she was, she answered the phone and was in the gym, burning off calories that she can’t afford to lose due to her fairly recent add on obsession to abstaining from eating.  She lives on a diet of Gin and slim-line tonic and one small meal a day at the moment and her weight has gone down to scary supermodel size.  This does not look good on an 18 year old let alone a woman in her 60’s. She told me she would call me back when she was finished her bone cracking work out and that she was fine.

She called me back a bit later and we had a very unusually long telephone conversation that evening.  Frenchy is away again for 4 days on work and with the pair of us being hopelessly broke, this left me in Paris with no money, no friends and no enthusiasm, so it was nice to hear my Mothers familiar voice.

We talked of family. Which is never positive. We talked about her, which is always worrying. We talked of me and Frenchy, being impoverished and struggling with life. We talked of me and my unending feelings of looserism. Lack of friends, social life and general lack of belongings due to them being in London and me being in Paris and not having enough money to go fetch them.

And I feel decidedly blue.

My Mother was in good spirits despite the fact that my eldest half sister has just kicked her husband out again due to his addiction to alcohol and gambling.  My half brother is cultivating his abusive streak and washing it down with a combination of alcohol and cocaine and a string of unsuccessful attempts to find a job. My Grandmother has become a recluse and depressed since my Grandfather died, despite the fact that he himself gave her no happiness whilst he was alive, suffered a nervous breakdown and was in-fact sexually deviant.  I always knew that he was disfunctionally attracted to two out of five of my siblings. One of them being me. The last time he tried it on with me was when I was 18, he never pushed it thank God, but I was the only one in the family that he confided in about his own childhood abuse by his Mothers friends and a teacher. I always felt sorry for him rather than angry, he was a tortured man and spent his whole life hiding behind a cloak that was only transparent to me. 

I am left wondering how sane I actually am.  Wondering how much all the people in my life have affected me.  I long to go get some therapy but I can’t afford it, so I have decided to spill the beans here and feel paranoid and scared writing about it all.  I feel like a big gaping wound.  The loose stitches that I have personally sewed in order to keep my wounds from showing unpick themselves with every word I type.

I cope by getting up every day and doing what everybody else does, but am I really coping?

I talked to my Mother about Frenchy. She asked how he was doing.  He is doing well and after his breakdown last year, he is slowly putting the pieces back together.  The thing that increasingly worries me though and I am starting to feel anger about, is my inability to understand the mental health system.

Frenchy was admitted to a psychiatric ward last year after complete meltdown. He was let out after a period of about 5 weeks and sent home with a bag of rainbow assorted pills. He spent the first couple of months walking around like the living dead, drugged up on a cocktail of unpronounceable medication. He visited his psychiatrist once a week to “check in” and keep an eye on him. This man is apparently one of the top psychiatrists in France.

Well I think he is a complete fuck up. I am angry at him. On many different levels.

I am angry at the mental health system. I hate doctors. I hate them because they can’t fix my loved ones.

My Mother walks around rattling, as does my boyfriend now. Medication is fine, I understand that there is a need for it, but it took doctors 58 years of my Mothers life to diagnose her with Bi-Polar disorder. She went through several break downs and other atrocities, a painful living existence and putting her family through ceaseless feelings of concern and fear. She now has her diagnosis and we all know the reason why she is the way she is.

But why the hell does the system shell out free medication, but charge extortionate rates for good therapy? I understand that some psychiatric illnesses need a life time of medication, but medication is the bandage for the wound, to keep it from bleeding and oozing pain, therapy is the open air the wound needs to attempt to let it dry out, show itself and be made aware of its very existence.

Since my Mothers last break down 4 years ago and her long awaited diagnosis, she has become even more crazy. She has an ever increasing collection of tattoos, 5 at the last count, with another in the pipeline. 11 holes in her ears and a diamond that has been injected above her lip. Her drinking has become very regular and has taken up asking for pot from my brother on occasion. She frequents the local bars in her area alone on a regular basis and chats up any man that happens to be near her. Her hair changes colour weekly, she has the most extraordinary outbursts of temper and has been know on occasion to get out of bed a 2 or 3 in the morning, get in the car and drive off to God knows where.

So tell me doctors, what have you fucking done for her lately?

Because although on the outside this woman looks like she is living her life in colour and has the ability to be the soul of the party, nobody sees what’s going on inside of her and nobody is forcing her to face her problems.

When she was recently put back on Lithium a few weeks ago, he doctor suggested she go back into The Priory for a “rest”.  At 700 pounds sterling a day, this is obviously not an option for my Mother, and my Mother being who she is wouldn’t dream of going into a NHS hospital again for all the tea in China. So it was left there. No after care, no insistence that she get referred to an affordable good therapist. Just a pat on the back and another bottle of pills.

Fucked up.

Which leads me onto Frenchy. Who I love and care for. Who is my lover and my friend and who I feel needs and deserves more help than he is getting.

Now he pays good money every month for medical care, so why is he not getting it?

He has been on medication for a good 7 or 8 months now. His weekly visits to his psychiatrist have been lowered to once every 3 – 4 weeks. He was referred to an analyst months ago, but at  € 180 a session there is no way he can afford it.  Frenchy being who he is, is too proud to explain that he has not got that kind of money along with the fact that he is not keen on therapy. It doesn’t take a intellectual to work out that he has been avoiding the issue for months now. So why is his psychiatrist not chasing this up?

And why after 5 weeks of Frenchy being admitted to psychiatric hospital and being put on heavy medication, has no-one told him what the fucking hell is going on with him???

No diagnosis. No explanation. Just a shit load of pills.

How can you medicate someone if you don’t know what the cause is???

So Frenchy just keeps chewing his way through his daily doses and I watch him getting more and more concerned with the amount of weight he is putting on due to the side effects of the medication. Our financial problems and the fact that although he is getting work in, what he really needs is his next big project to happen are making him feel down and depressed. 

Why the fuck is he depressed when he is being prescribed an inordinate number of pills??

Why the fuck am I the only one who notices this???

I am angry, pissed off and feel anarchic. I don’t like to see the people I love suffer.

When I first came back to Paris after Frenchy got out of hospital, I asked if Frenchy could ask his doctor if I could come to one of his visits with him. I wanted to hear what the doctor had to say about Frenchy, to see if he had any advice for me as Frenchy’s next of kin so to speak.

The answer I got back from this quack was that he was not there to survey me, it was Frenchy he was treating.

Well let me tell you something Doctor Duck, I don’t need your fucking surveillance, what I need is some fucking answers from you. I want to know what gives you the right to fill my loved one’s gills with meds and not take any fucking responsibility for the fact that maybe there is more you could do to help him.

You, with your nice home and your big fat pay check coming in monthly for anaesthetising your patients into walking around like zombies. 

You, who refuses to give any explanation, diagnosis, or general information on what the fuck is going on.

You, who sits in you office and refuses to speak to me, even though I live with Frenchy’s pain too.

You little shit.

I have decided this week, that when Frenchy gets back from being away and makes his next appointment to go see Doctor Duck, that I am going with him.  Doctor Duck will not know about this until I enter through the door of his office. I will have a list of questions I want answered.

So help me God, if he does not answer them, Hell hath no fury…

I have had enough.

Because I’m wondering if that is in fact what my cat did last night.

We were asleep so I will never know.

He was snoozing in the lounge when we went to bed and when we woke up this morning he was outside our front door which is lacking in the cat flap department.

Before I explain more, let me introduce you visually to my furry three legged friend, Tripod..

I have mentioned him in my blog on many an occasion, but never posted a picture. 

Maybe I am biased because he is mine but I do think he is the most adorable cat that ever was. I feel so close to him, it is almost like I went through the most vicious labour for days to give birth to him…

… and I have to hold back from asking on occasion “Do you think he has my eyes?”

But back to the event in question.

This morning.

I stumbled out of bed in a Saturday morning type fashion. Arms out horizontally forming a radar for locating the coffee pot and remnants of yesterdays mascara encircling my eyes giving me a kind of deranged Gothic look.

I made the coffee and called in Frenchy for his fix. He appeared from the bedroom scratching his….head and we sat down to discuss our plans for our day.

In between the pauses in our conversation, I was sure I heard the faint cry of a cat in the distance. Not from our flat.. no, definitely not. It seemed to be coming from an external source.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Frenchy after a couple of sounds confirmed I wasn’t hearing things.

“It sounds like a cat” He answered.

“Where’s our Tripod?”

“Probably behind the curtain in the bedroom, if not in the laundry” He replied, experienced in the current Tripod haunts.

I heard the cry again. Is it coming from under the floorboards? Has someone buried a cat beneath our Parisian Parquet? Surely not.

The cry came again with a distinct warble to it that I immediately recognised. I got up and searched all popular Tripodeon chill out areas of the moment.

Behind all curtains. Nothing.

Laundry. Nothing but unmatched soiled socks and other atrocities.

I started calling his name. Rien. I have to add that our flat is small and not easy to get lost in.

I heard the cry again.

Frenchy and I looked at each other in disbelief.

“Bloody hell, It’s coming from outside the front door!” I exclaimed.

I ran down the corridor and opened the front door to find Tripod  circling the landing and the neighbours standing at their front door in matching nightwear looking at me .. not looking my best.

I picked him up and explained in my version of French, that I had no idea how he got outside the front door. Cat teleportation had not been invented yet, his inability to walk through walls and not being tall enough to reach the latch on the front door etc….

They looked at me and nodded, then explained that he had been out there all night.

Could they not have rung the doorbell to let us know? More importantly how the hell did he get out there?

We live on the first floor. He doesn’t go out as the Hound Of Hell Gardienne of our block would go mental at the thought of our three legged friend wandering around the courtyard. She has even banned pigeons from entering, I am still trying to find out how she has managed that.

I carried Tripod back in and set him down, he flopped on the floor legs outstretched, looking like an exhausted cocktail stick.

Frenchy and I held a house meeting to work out how this unusual feline escapolgy situation happened. The result of the debate ended up with the decision that he had in fact, jumped.

Did I mention that we live on the first floor of our block and there is a good 9 ft drop from our window to the ground? Well I’m mentioning it again for effect.

Just so that you can envision it;

Our window is the window above the shuttered one, the one on the first floor, the one that is not near the ground.. Just so as we are clear..

Also, just so we can see the birds eye view of what Tripod saw as he kamikaze’d himself off the window ledge, 

Check this out;

A fearless feat for a feline with a handicap wouldn’t you say?

I was torn between feelings of concern and a distinct feeling of pride for having such a talented pet.

I am so glad he is ok. We will have to take more care when the window is open in future.

But what a clever thing! No wings, no Super Hero flying cape, no helium inflated insides… Just a cat with a mission, flinging himself into the unknown, taking a chance, feeling the fear and doing it anyway.. and not letting a handicap get in his way.

Tripod, I admire you… Just don’t fucking do it again all right???

Well, I have only one tip really and that is make sure you visit the country on work.

That way you can spend just as much time on a very rickety airbus plane, followed by a long wait for the proverbial conveyor belt to deliver your luggage upside down. You can stand at arrivals when you reach your destination looking lost and generally confused, searching for a man you don’t know, who may or may not have a sign that has your name mis-spelt on it and doesn’t speak a word of English. He will lead you to a smelly van and take you on a mystery tour to a hotel you can’t remember the name of and leave you at reception with a porter who will then take your very light luggage which you could carry yourself, up to your room and hang around looking uncomfortable whilst waiting for a tip. By the time you clock that he is in fact looking for a tip, you realise you haven’t actually got any change or what change actually is in Kroner or Kronan because you thought that Checkolsovakia was in the E.U and therefore must use euros as their currency (because you are very very silly, and not very up there in the intelligence department).

And..

Because when you got off the plane at Prague and waited some time for Mr Anonymous to pick you up, you got very thirsty with all the travelling. You saw a snack shop located very near arrivals so trudged over to pick up a coca-cola. When it came to your turn to pay, the assistant poured out a long stream of Germanic sounding words, with her tone going up at the end, which you took to mean she may have been asking a question, but you had no idea what. Panic stricken, you realised that you had to make a quick decision and fast. The options were;

a) Try speaking back in her language using similar Germanic melody and make it up as you go along,

b)Speak very bad French or..

c)Ask if she spoke English.

So, You use the little wit you have and decide on choice c). This turns out to be the right move and she replies in English as bad as the French you don’t speak. You hand her 10 euros and she gives you back change of 40 Kroner or Kronan or whatever it is. You find this overwhelmingly confusing, so as you wheelie your pink suitcase back to the arrivals area, you desperately try with your unmathematical brain to work out why she gave you a higher figure back in play money change than what you paid her with.

Hence,

when it comes to tipping the uncomfortable porter, you are not sure how much to give as you may be giving him the equivalent of 1000 pounds or euros or kronan or kroner… So you decide to ask if it would be possible to pay him later when your boyfriend gets back to the hotel..

By then you are completely Europeaned out. I mean please, I am I-R-I-S-H and I have lived most of my life in probably the two smallest islands in Europe. We don’t know much about the Euro mainland.

I have spent the past 5 months swimming freestyle in Paris and suddenly I found myself in Prague for 2 days on work with my brain completely suffocated.

After the uncomfortable and by then, slightly miffed porter left my room, I closed the door and exhaled. Time for my systematic hotel room check which goes something like this;

- Open all doors to cupboards and and drawers.

-Switch on and off all lights a couple of times, then work out the best ambiance collective.

-Airplane myself on the bed from as far a distance as the room will allow.

-Read the hotel instructions, including most importantly the room service menu.

-Take a tour around the bathroom, checking out array of complimentary smellys and lotions.

-Turn the water on and off in the bath to check water pressure.

-Make sure they have triangled the toilet paper (Why do they do that?).

-Switch on the tv and flick through the euro channels en route to the movie channel.

I found it all much to my satisfaction, and with a couple of hours till Frenchy got back from set to the hotel, I kicked off my trainers and dialled room service.

“Errr hallooooo, can I have one gin and tonic to room 215 please?” I said in my hotely voice.

Not long passed before I heard my room service knock at the door. I lay on the fabulously massive bed with BBC world news on and drained my gin whilst watching how the beavers had been set back into the lochs of Scotland on the tv.

Heaven.

Soon enough my tummy started to groan with hunger. I called Frenchy and he told me they were running late on set it would be another hour or so before he got back.

I decided I would have little snack before he got back and we ate.

“Errrr hallooo” I cooed down the phone “Couullldd I pleesseee have a prawn coctaillle to rooom 215?”.

 The room service fairy arrived again, with a little bowl containing a bowl of iceberg lettuce and 4 prawns teetering on top looking completely outnumbered amongst all that lettuce.

Not long after I had finished my lettuce, Frenchy arrived through our hotel door tired and hungry. We both giggled and yelped in an utterly childish fashion at the fancy room we had for two nights, punctuated with “Have you seen this?” and ” Look at the shower!” and “LETS GET ROOM SERVICE, I’M STARVING!!”

“Errrr hellllooooooo” I wafted down the phone receiver “Cud weeee haaave a cluuubbb saanndwich, the laaaamb cutleets and twoooo blaaaackk russssianss pleassse to room 215″.

It was a while before we got our room service this time. We waited and waited and got hungrier and hungrier. Frenchy decided to have a quick shower. Whilst he was in the shower the room service knock came at the door. I opened it to find a shiny silver trolley with a very pissed off room service waiter in the passenger seat. He rolled the silver trolley in and I stood there beaming at him, I was officially having the time of my life. I said thank you very much and he glared at me like I was the anti-Christ.

“SSSsssssssservisssssseeee is not incluuuuuuuddddded” He spat out.

My face turned a shade of pink and I guilt fell on me from what seemed like a fair height. I stuttered and apologised and ran into the bathroom with my tail between my legs.

“Have you got any change?” I asked Frenchy.

“No, why?” He replied.

“Because the guy says the service is not included”.

“I never get asked that here” He answered through a mass of soapsuds “I don’t have any change at all”.

I turned and made my way back to the room service fairy who was standing there as bold as brass and explained that we would pay him tomorrow, we had no change.

“Thissssss isssss the third time I have been up here toniiiiightttttteeee” and with that he turned on his heels swearing all the way and slammed the door behind him.

Shocked is not the word. Maybe I had taken advantage of room service, but whats a girl to do? When in Rome……

That aside, it was a brief but pleasant couple of days. We saw not much else of Prague apart from the following evening after work when the crew congregated at a beer house. We spent the evening pleasantly gluggling huge pints of czech beer, sampling huge sausages with mustard and chomping giant sized pretzels. I managed to snap a couple of shots of Prague on the way from where we were working to the beer house;

And because I am very very naughty, I ordered breakfast in our room again, in a room servicey kind of way on Sunday morning before we left to go home. It was a wonderful breakfast and the room service fairy did not deliver that morning. Instead a kind little lady wheeled a delightful trolley in with a good morning smile and left without slamming the door.

Room Service abuse.

You just can’t beat it!

Along with the many advantages and joys of being lucky enough to move to a different country, comes the wonderful opportunity to find little gems like the one I found, or rather found me this week.

Paris is known for The Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, The Champs Elysees and how could I not mention the Eiffel Tower.

But how many people know there is an old building situated in the 13th arrondissement that was given a re-birth in the 1980’s and is just as stimulating to me as visiting any of the well known Parisian landmarks?

It is the rock and roll version of the Louvre and it is called Les Frigos.

I was lucky enough for my work to lead me here this week. I had read about it on the internet and had mentioned to Frenchy that we should go and take a visit one day. We hadn’t got round to it, but fortunately this amazing building sniffed me out and lead me to its rusty doors to take a peek.

It started its life as a huge refrigerated warehouse in about 1918 as far as I can gather. There was a train that ran from Orleans-Paris carrying food supplies. The railway ran right into the heart of Les Frigos where the food would be off loaded and stored, but in 1945, the building was abandoned due to diminished supply and demand and was left for dead.

In the 80’s, it was re-born again and taken over as a massive squat to struggling artists who couldn’t afford to rent ateliers in the capital. Slowly the building started to breath again and hoards of bohemians gave the it a new meaning, spray painting the walls, inside and out. In return Les Frigos gave these artists something back, a place in which to create and express, to live and be free to do what they wanted to do.

Les Frigos is no longer a squat. It was bought over and is now rented out legally. I’m not sure how this has affected the more struggling artists as I’m sure the rent for a space in this building has now gone through the roof, but the spirit of its artistic re-birth can still be felt.

As we got to the old rusty door, I could feel a surge of excitement. There is something about this place as it sits in its concrete shoes looking old and decayed. You just know that there is something going on in there. Something exciting. Something unconventional and very much alive.

This is the entrance hallway where the mailboxes are;  

I’m sure this is not everyone’s idea of interior design, but as a space it is jaw dropping. As we walked through the corridors and up the central chimney shape with its huge concrete spiral staircase to get to the different floors, my stomach started to churn. It felt to me like a huge magnetic bohemia. A place where it was good to graffiti, a place where everywhere you turn there was self expression in its most wildest form.

The stairway, 

And the corridor,

As you walk down these corridors there are huge doors on either side, behind them lie the personal spaces of artists and musicians, free to do what they want with. Vast concrete rooms, each with a different story to tell. You can hear music coming from different areas. The floor above me sounded like a muffled night club, below I could hear a piano playing the most exquisite classical melody.

I stopped for a cigarette on the circular landing in silence. Looking up, looking down, bending my ear to try to catch every sound, craning my neck to see as much as I could, standing quite still to feel the creativity that was crammed within the walls of this place.

The space that my work took me to belongs to an art director. I was lead to his front door that had his name spray painted in huge letters on it.  The door was as you would expect the door to a massive fridge to be. A huge steel slab with a large handle on the side. My excitement grew as I got nearer to finding out the possibilities of what could lie behind. I wasn’t disappointed.

This particular person had used his Venetian culture as inspiration for where he lived. Once inside, it was like walking into a animated camp version of the Sistine Chapel. Huge murals lined the walls along with golden winged cherubs standing guard nearby. Sumptuous velvets hugged corners and embroidered wall hangings hung from the archways that separated each room. The decay of the building and the urban-jungle feel of the corridors was a complete contrast to the decadence of the way this place had been designed. It was.. it was… Well, it just was.

To give you an idea, here is a picture of the bedroom;

And below are pictures of the main room. The photos do not do it justice as unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, but hopefully you can get a feel of the place.

And just to give you an idea of how different these spaces can look, I found a picture of another at Les Frigos,

So there it is. I had to share it. It is a wonderful, exciting place and if ever you are in Paris it is well worth the visit.

After all, it could be home to the Leonardo Da Vinci of the future and who would want to miss out on that?

An escape from moaning, boring myself, boring the world, boring boring BORING

boring.

I refuse to blog today about what an incredibly unlucky day I have had.

I refuse to blog about the fact that I thought the public holiday that started on Thursday, rolled over into Friday, but I got that wrong (surprise, surprise) and I was supposed to be at work.

I refuse to blog about the fact that nobody at work could contact me due to my mobile phone being completely broken, to tell me to get my ass in there.

I refuse to blog about the fact that my friend who is making Frenchy’s wigs for the shoot he is doing, called me up on my bosses work phone today. I refuse to add that she asked me to pick up the wig she finished for Frenchy but had no time to drop off. I also abstain from mentioning that she forgot that I work at a wig company too and my boss considers her competition and therefore the enemy.

I refuse to blog that she called me again on the said phone of my boss to tell me she had given me the wrong address of where to pick the wig up.

I refuse to blog that I ended up having to stay late at work due to my boss having the hump with me and therefore being late to pick up the wig for my boyfriends job… that has nothing to do with me.

I refuse to blog about the fact that when I was finally allowed to leave this evening, I had to call up the guy who was looking after the wig to tell him I was running late… on the work phone… because I don’t have a bloody Goddamn mobile..because it is ARRRRRGGhh

Broken.

I refuse to blog about the fact that my boss was none too pleased that I had to use the work phone, to sort out the enemies wig job.

I refuse to blog about the fact that when I dialled the number my friend had given me, it was a wrong number, so I then had to call her up in London to ask for the right one, then call the guy who had the wig, then call Frenchy in Prague to let him know that this is not cool.

All on the bosses work phone.

Finally, I refuse to blog about the fact that everyone thinks I am probably living on another planet and  wondering at what stage in my life did I unscrew my head.

I just refuse to blog about all that OK?

So instead I am going to escape to ridiculously, huge photos of  French vegetables..

The Round Courgette.

See how round it is? We don’t get this shape in London.  How interesting. How amazing. What a wonderful post this is.

The Tomato.

See what a beautiful shape it is? Not like the the tomatoes I am used to in London. How interesting, How amazing. What a wonderful post this is.

Another Tomato.

See how there are tones of green, red and purple running through it. Not at all like the tomatoes I am used to in London. How interesting. How amazing. What a wonderful post this is.

And finally,

The Dinner I Cooked On Saturday Night.

Fillet of pork stuffed with black olives, apricots, garlic and parsley. Dauphinoise potatoes and French (native) beans. All that was missing was a little cider or white wine reduction to wet the pork. Though we can’t afford booze to cook with at the moment, seeing as though every drop is needed to soothe our frazzled nerves.

How interesting. How amazing,

What a wonderful post this is.

Sunday afternoon, the time is I’m half past giving a shit and I am sitting in what looks like a flat that has been ram-sacked by some ridiculously untidy burglars.

Frenchy has left to fly to Prague for work and will return on Tuesday night. I am left alone with the mess and instead of getting it together and sorting it out, I choose the,I’m in denial tactic and hang out of my computer and blog moan about it instead.

I am wondering, is it just me?? or do all relationships go through times of complete .. well.. shit?? When money is too tight to mention (obviously Mick Hucknell has experienced it, but was he in a relationship at the time??).  Work and money interfere with having romantic nights out, not being able to afford anything that is even slightly considered a luxury and feeling so stressed out with us both trying to cope that by the time its bedtime, the only thing we can do is fall asleep??

We don’t have any children, so we don’t even have that excuse. I feel slightly guilty moaning about all of this, but as we pinch pennies and lose keys, mobile phones just seem to break without good reason and our home seems to inexplicably fall apart , I start to think that there could be a possibility that our Guardian Angel has taken a holiday without filling in the form to let us know, leaving the Angel of Bullshit to move in and cause havoc.  To top it off, we wake up every morning to find our 3 legged cat has once again done a big poo by the front door instead of using the litter tray, which sums up the whole point I’m trying to make here. 

We have been snapping a bit at each other, then after a brief moment of mutual avoidance, we apologise and try to remind each other that these moments are tough and we need to concentrate on getting our lives back on more solid ground.

Is it just me or are there times when there is always too much that needs sorting out and not enough time or will, to actually .. sort.

Is it just me or does the strain of both partners struggling financially cause wear and tear in the patience department?

Is it just me or do things break down in your home all at the same time? Our drain in the sink in the kitchen is completely choked, 3 light bulbs blew in one day this week leaving us in complete darkness until the following morning, PMS caused me to break several important kitchen items including our coffee maker which is the only thing that seems to get us out of bed in the morning, my set of front door keys have mysteriously been eaten up by the Bermuda Triangle that has found its way into our home, the door of the tumble dryer has broken and we have resorted to having to put a safety belt around it in order to convince it to stay shut and my mobile phone just gave up the ghost feebly, by being in my pocket whilst walking home from work in the rain.

I mean please… do me a favour.

Dear Angel of Bullshit,

Throw us one, or at most a couple of crap things at a time, because we are only human (not like you Mr Nasty), and fairs fair, we understand that life is made up of ups and downs.

Just don’t keep throwing us all the shit stuff at the same time. It’s getting reeaaally boring now…

Yours in a unwelcoming kind of way,

PPL

Spot the difference…

I love it!!  

A coke can in Arabic!!

I have an embarrassing addiction to Coca-Cola. I love everything about it, including the packaging. Shameful I know..

Which has led me to start a collection of Coca-Cola cans from around the world. 

I only have 2 at the moment…. 

But I want my collection to grow, and this is why I am writing this banal post.. 

World… PPLongstocking needs your help!!

If anybody stumbles across this post and lives in a far away land that happens to sell Coca-Cola in their native script, could you please consider keeping the empty can for me and sending it off to my abode in Paris???

I have a creative plan for my collection.

I will happily pay for postage and all costs. Happily.

Yep… euh.. That’s it..

Ta,

PPLongstocking