Moving house

Now I've finally moved, and am settled, and HOME, I can be found here: chezmarianne.posterous.com.

It doesn't feel right to say I'm struggling to stay afloat anymore, so time for a change (TOUCH WOOD TOUCH WOOD - you just know I'll be back here bawling my eyes out by Christmas)

a toot!

I am very immodest

Yet very talented at the same time, so surely just honest and example to all? Yes, much better.

I love my job, most of the time. Ok, some of the time. I love my job in theory, but in practice it often spirals dramatically out of my control and even when it goes well, I can very often come home feeling a little blah. Blah, as in "so what have I actually achieved today?". Well, a nice day's salary to put a roof over my head and fancy shoes on my feet is what, but my angst is a 21st-century service economy angst, and will not be satisfied with such bagatelles. My soul is that of a pre-Industrial Revolution lace-maker.

[Not having any pictures of pre-Industrial Revolution lace-makers to hand, I turned to the archives put at my disposal by Google, and found this "cottager" with the information that she: "Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night/Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light."* This is just one of the many reasons I will never be a "cottager". A scanty pittance will not keep me in lipstick]

As I have shortsightedly chosen to live in one of the few countries where there is glut of hand-made lace, I had to turn elsewhere for my sense of achievement. I am very very bad at it, and it will cost me a fortune in wrongly-cut fabric and runaway sewing machines, but look! I am a skilled labourer who can bring tears to the eyes of pregnant friends!








* William Cowper, via Stuart King

Channelling Miss Pettigrew

I have been a wee bit anxiety-ridden recently, and tears have been shed, more often than not in public. It's times like these that a girl needs a stern role model to see her through.

" ' Guinevere,' screamed Miss Dubarry in a panic. ' For God's sake, control yourself.'
' Guinevere,' gasped Miss LaFosse. ' Control, I implore you. Your make-up. Remember your duty to your make-up.'
Miss Pettigrew made a valiant effort.
' Most certainly,' said Miss Pettigrew with dignity. ' " England expects ! " ' "



(I haven't seen the film, and do not intend to, but the book is a gem. An absolute joy, especially the illustrations. I think I might take a taxi for pure frivolity later today)


From Persephone Classics, a joy in and of itself.

The extraordinary was in my own vision

I'm dusting off keyboards, rifling through page after page of crap looking for passwords, and metaphorically clearing my digital throat: I might well be back. I hope so.

Reading down the last few posts, I note that, with quite astonishing optimism, I believed I was upping sticks and becoming a Frenchie waaaaay back in 2008. I also apparently thought I had got my paperwork sorted and would be on strike with the best of them by now. Hollow laughs all round, please!

I'm still here, waffle rather than baguette, endive not onion. But! I have taken the definitive actual I'm-off steps, and will have nowhere to live in Brussels as of December. Possibly no work, either, but today's about focusing on the positive. The rule is, pessimism tomorrow, and pessimism yesterday - but never pessimism today.

Anaïs Nin was, by all accounts, quite a goer. No better than she should be, as the mother of an old boyfriend would mutter, cryptically (not of me, I hasten to add. I don't think), but also a fascinating mind to be discovered in 60 years worth of diaries. Born in France, with Cuban-Danish-Catalan heritage, she mingled with the inter-war Parisian intellectual and artistic elite, the friend, and occasional close ladyfriend, of Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Otto Rank and Gore Vidal, among others. Given the contents of her diaries, it seems astonishing that she would write that upon hearing her friends tell of their soirees, walks and projects, she "always listened with a kind of jealousy and envy, as if [she] had never known, or would ever know such nights". She goes on to realise that she has indeed had many such nights, and they were all contained within the pages of her diary, but that it was the dramatization her friends gave to their stories that meant "I felt nothing could parallel them, even whilst I was experiencing similar moments in my own life"

Sometimes all I have to say to people is "Well, I work in Brussels at the moment, but I spend my weekends in Paris and come the New Year I'll be - " and they're off "Oh, but I can see you now, the walks by the Seine, the eclairs, the sophisticated parties, oh but look at you, so ELEGANT..." and I'm thinking, well, no, it's me, remember? I still like a cheese and pickle sandwich, my tights are laddered, and come the summer I'm not ashamed to admit that there's nothing I like more than an icy white wine spritzer. They won't be making me an honorary Parisian any time soon, even if I do manage to file the 47 duplicate copies of my last six-months' earnings in time.

But maybe Anaïs had a point:

"It was this that made me so restless, this disparity between the imagined and the actual. But now I see that the extraordinary was in my own vision..."

Maybe I do live this extraordinary life. Maybe I need to sit down and tell myself all about the weekend I just had, the party, the croissants in bed, the Sunday evening aperitif sitting on the banks of the canal, and maybe then the restlessness and the sideways glances at other people's lives can stop.

I imagine my life in Paris is a little more sedate than Anaïs Nin's, what with the erotica being cut down to a minimum, but maybe it's time to learn to tell it like Henry Miller. And to rock a mantilla like Anaïs.

You win.

Brussels, you've done it again. Much like the La Poste/no stamps incident, you have bemused me to such an extent I don't whether to be pleased I get to live here or start building a rudimentary bridge to Britain. Which I will then burn behind me.

Brussels, your shops: I can understand no Sunday trading. Fine. I find it a little harder to get my head around the no Monday trading, but I'm willing to roll with it.

But, Brussels. Brussels, Brussels, Brussels. Only here would IKEA have special one-off opening hours for Sunday the FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.

I'm almost tempted to head down there myself to see just how many happy Belgian couples have been relentlessly lobbying the management for a special Valentine's flatpack.

Interim

I'm going through a tricky period right now. I've been having these feelings, disturbing ones, and I need time to deal with them. The thing is...I might be starting to like Brussels. This has come as quite a shock, and and has made me question the very fibre of my being. Revulsion when I step out my front door has been such a large part of me for so long I'm scared about what might happen without it: will I technically cease to exist if it is replaced with mild appreciation, or even a cosy warm feeling?

You'll understand that all this is very difficult for me to deal with. Have a video to be going on with; it's an old one, but it never fails to penetrate my hard bitter shell, and I've even been known to tear up a little if it's been a hard day.

Look out for the joy on the grannys' faces, above all

Three months later...

I been gone.

I had ever so much to say whilst I was gone, but I never managed to coordinate having my own laptop and internet at the same time, and I am a secret blogger so no desire to go faffing around on other people's computers. Computers with histories I can't wipe without them thinking I'm a closet porn junkie who can't spend a pleasant weekend away without creeping away into a corner for a fix.

But now I am back, and my mind has gone blank. Today I managed half a day's work (read 2 hours) before going home for lunch and my key getting stuck in the door. It was an unfun afternoon, remarkably unfun, and even after the excruciating call to work saying, er, I can't come back, someone else must be called in on their afternoon off and please don't hate me or stop giving me work please, even after enlisting the help of the corner-shop man, and calling the landlady, and two locksmiths, even now I am still sitting here at 9pm with two extra keys wondering if the couple below are even coming back tonight, but how miserable would I feel if it were me coming home at 1am and finding the locks had been changed...

I realise it shouldn't strictly be up to me to play concierge, but the landlady is otherwise quite quite wonderful. I just couldn't quite remember closing my window before the summer....I was sure I had, but just couldn't....quite...remember. She popped over to check. She also popped over when I couldn't find the fuse box. And when I'd run out of hot water. In fact, she's probably the one who changed the locks on me in the first place.

On the plus side, I just got lent the first series of The Wire, and I don't work tomorrow (or possibly ever again), so staying up for the kids below might just fit in with my schedule.