Still Living It Up!

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This week has thank God seen a full return to form on all fronts, with work going well (suddenly have plenty to do and am being marked highly on all of it!), the sun making a welcome reappearance after weeks of undiluted grey and - best of all - two days off work this week to make the most of this unseasonably warm and spring-like weather!

Happily the week had got off to a good start anyway, with a nice but overpriced curry out on Monday with Alethia (during which we agreed on a hardline strategy in defending our laptops against Elena’s constant and increasingly annoying requests for personal use), drinks with Mariam on Tuesday (not quite as hedonistic as our first spectacular outing, but still fun), pizza and wine with Helen at an upmarket Italian on Wednesday and finally an unexpected surprise of gift vouchers (1000kč worth!) and chocolate at work for to St Nikolaus Day, which I’m familiar with from Germany but until that point had forget all about. In fact speaking of the festive season, the whole town is awash with Christmas markets at the moment, with Old Town Square virtually uncrossable at the moment due to the floods of tourist who have descended on the city as a result - think I’ll be glad when it’s all over to be honest! That said, I’ll still take the presents from work if they’re on offer thank you very much - God, at HP we were lucky if we got a smack in the face at Christmas, let alone bonuses and goodies any other time of the year like we seem to get with surprising regularity over here!

Still, presents or not, I was obviously glad to escape the office for two extra days this week, with Thursday and Friday off to take some photos of the city (have been holding off for a sunny couple of days, and these were it), get a haircut at the cheap and cheerful little salon next door (another one of those occasions where German came in bloody handy!) and simply take a trip down memory lane with visits to that Hare Krishna place Govinda’s and the cheapy Czech place by the castle of my 2002 trip - both just as good as I’d always remembered them, but naturally would have been much better had old friends Claire and Masoma also been along for the ride... And last but not least, to my infinite joy I have actually succeeded in locating a source of my beloved Robinson’s squash within the city!!!! Hooray!!! Well, actually it was Helen who did, but she has filled me in on the secret - apparently there is a British shop out in the suburbs selling all kind of English goods from Robinson’s to Weetabix to Tetley Tea! Somehow I have a feeling that I’ll be doing at least one trip out there a month with suitcase and backpack at the ready to stock up on all these and more essential supplies!

In fact the only two downsides of the week have been giving up smoking for one and staving off the onslaught from my increasingly enthusiastic (some might say “obsessive”) German stalker on the other. As far as the smoking goes, I always knew I’d be giving it up once my life had reached a stable enough point that I could realistically do so - I’ve just been putting off that point again and again cause the fags here are so cheap and I socialize so much, plus the fact that you are not considered a pariah here if you do (in fact probably the opposite is true!). In a way that awful rasping cough I came down with the other week has actually turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise in this respect, as its sheer intensity and dogged persistence as a result of all the cigarettes I have smoked away in the last five months has actually scared me into really wanting to give up and not just talking about it any more. And amazingly, I’ve actually surprised myself by doing quite well in the whole endeavor too - am down to three to five a day now and to be honest I don’t even really need those ones either. Admittedly the first few days were tough (especially on that boring morning walk to the metro and during my lunch break!), but seems I don’t need smoking quite as much as I thought I did after all, and at this rate hope to regain my pre-Africa status as purely social smoker without quite as much pain and torture as I’d originally been expecting. Unfortunately my German stalker Christian, however, has proven a lot more difficult to shake, and I only thank God that he is in Germany now and not the Czech Republic or even bloody Budapest any longer - ever since he first left Prague the calls and emails from him have not stopped, and the fact that I haven’t responded to any of them doesn’t seem to have done a thing in putting him off or dampening his ardor. The other week I foolishly found myself answering a call from an unknown number and surprise surprise it ended up being the man himself, passionately declaring that he’d not been able to get me out of his head since Prague and wanting to know if he could come and stay with me after Christmas. Fucking back off there mate - you only knew me for three fucking days in the first place and after about day two of that you were already getting on my nerves with your unrelenting romanticism and presumptuous talk of an “us” that from my point of view quite clearly didn’t exist. I was nice enough on the phone to him (what else could I do?), but afterwards followed up with a polite but appropriately firmly worded email stating in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome at my place and shouldn’t come to Prague at all if I was the primary reason for the trip. I can’t believe how fucking dense some people are - the lovesick imbecile practically forced me to be that blunt and completely lost any sense of his own dignity in the process (desperation is just not an attractive quality). Or is it just me being the ice maiden again here, as per usual completely unable to empathise with other people’s emotions and as claustrophobic and pissed off at their absolute failure to get the message as I was when attempting to make the break with old what’s-his-face back in 2001. So currently I have three men in my life: a perfect English gentleman in Prague who already has a girlfriend and doesn’t know I exist except as a mere passing acquaintance, a South African who I can’t quite get out of my system but is several hundred thousand miles away and a German stalker who is somewhat closer to home but can’t quite seem to work out that not returning someone’s multiple calls or emails is not a sign of ardent interest - not exactly a fruitful combination of nationality, location or inclination I have to admit. And nor are Czech men much of an option either. I hate to say it, but this country is really not God’s gift to women, with all its menfolk still either as sallow, skinny and cowed as you’d imagine they once were twenty years ago under communism, or as fat, old and beer-soaked as their neighbouring German Stammtisch counterparts. Given this sorry situation just what’s a woman to do?? God, is it any wonder at all I’m a smoker considering???

And actually, as of last night I think I might have further complicated matters on the man front, having gone out with a certain S of first Lazy Vinohrady fame (the one I had to disentangle myself from that first time, and did so again last night). Only this time I did not do it quite so decidedly as the last, having as per usual drunk one too many glasses of red wine and ended up dancing with him to some absolutely brilliant live music by these two excellent English bands. Have to say it was a bloody good night, though at the same time I don’t know quite what I’ve let myself in for there though - didn’t do anything desperately compromising beyond a bit of dancing and flirting, and given the fact that he isn’t all that attractive in the old face department it probably shouldn’t go any further than that. But all the same, to be honest am not quite sure it won’t…

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