Nothing - the best product you can ever own

A weekend of nothingness is somewhat cathartic. There's a reason why we feel better for doing nothing even though we should be doing something. And that reason is most likely to be that we can do it all tomorrow.

Except that, for the few that are like me, tomorrow very rarely comes. I'm slowly coming to the realisation that I'm a more practical person than I believed myself to be. By being somewhere, and doing something productive, I feel as though my existence on this planet is valid. Having to sit in front of a computer without any real motivation does not make my existence valid, however.

And sat in front of my computer I have been this whole weekend. It's made me feel very relaxed (i.e. I have done nothing else so I can't say I'm exhausted) but also very pensive (i.e. there is so much more I could be doing with my time). I now, at 7pm on Sunday evening, feel ready to tackle some work. However, it's too late to even try to begin to decide where to start. All day, I've been trying to motivate myself to do something that will get the adrenalin/productivity flowing which would hopefully result in work being done. Truth is, I'm not busy enough to force myself to do it all. Pressure is the name of the game I think.

Testament to this new theory begins this week. I'll be in school full time, and so time to do other niggly things is limited forcing me to do them as and when required. The clock is always ticking, but now it really kicks off as I try juggling 3 ways of life all at the same time (maybe 4, depending on how you look at it)...

Besides, the worst that can happen is that I have a few all nighters and skip a lot more meals, right...?

Hate the sin, not the sinner

It has just occurred to me that my first blogging birthday passed me by without so much as a whimper. I don't know whether I'm indifferent about this, or whether I feel slightly overwhelmed by my inefficient commitment to the blogging sensation. I started out with 1001 things to say, suggest, complain about and record. And I seem to have complained about 1001 things, rather than there being a pleasant, humorous mixture.

And so, to try evening out the ratio of moans to smiles:

How does an elephant ask for a bun?

He smiles politely and says "Can I have a bun, please?"

Boom boom, as good ol' Basil Brush would say....

Humdrum and Rigmarole

It's been a while my friends. And not a lot has changed. The ridiculously short assignment that I spoke of last time was finished (after three days of editing it to within the 10% allowance over the limit) and handed in. Since then I've been extremely complacent and taking advantage of iPlayer rather than focusing on my next looming deadline in just over a week's time.

That complacency is probably also the reason why I've been ill this weekend. As is always the case, I'm fit as a fiddle (or so it seems) until I'm able to relax, and then when I can actually enjoy myself for a few days, I feel like crap. Normally I just fight through the pain and keep on enjoying myself. But this weekend has been hell on wheels. I spent all day yesterday between the tap and my bed. Today I managed to get up and stay up, but I've not done anything productive. And trust me when I say that I have plenty I could be getting on with.

Somehow, though, during my hours of inactivity, I managed to read a few news items and columns. For the first time since I can remember, I read a column from start to finish, understood the majority of what it was talking about (political references and the like that I'm not too familiar with) and formed an opinion. All while I was comatose.

I wonder if I should be ill more often. Clearly I have an adverse correlation between health and productivity.

So long as the productivity is in activites I don't really need to be concerning myself with that is....

Progression Leads to Regression

I think we can safely say that I'm well stuck in to the new chapter in my life. It's tough yet rewarding at the same time; interesting yet frustrating. How well I'm coping with returning to studentdom remains to be determined... some days I'm full of the joys of spring, others I want to be in a dead-end office job just because it brings in the wages at the end of each month. So currently, in-between looking through my window at planes flying precariously low on their final descent en route to the nearest airport, I'm bemoaning this new chapter.

In case I haven't explicitly mentioned, this new chapter is a PGCE (or teacher training, for you international readers). Now while the thought of teaching and igniting the sparks of motivation in the next generation ignites my motivation, I'm not so keen on the academic side associated with my course. Not because I don't understand it (unlike my undergraduate degree), but because I'm limited in words. For the first time since I was at school (really...) I'm reading and writing about stuff that invokes a reaction in me: a passionate reaction. The literature I read at uni caused a reaction, don't get me wrong, and it's definitely having a bearing on my reaction to the new stuff I'm reading now. In fact, I'm even able to link part of my undergrad course to my teacher training assignments.

As an aside, my course carries Masters credits, which basically means that if I get a mark of 50 or above in each assignment, I get 15 Masters credits per assignment that can be transferred onto a Masters course in education or specialist teaching. At the moment, I have no desire whatsoever to do a Masters in the near future, but I know I need to push myself to get that mark of 50 in each paper, just in case I change my mind. I am very prone to doing that. It's having this thought at the back of my mind that's causing me to struggle, I think, with getting back into the habit of writing critical essays.

Having spent all day today trying to write the introduction to my first assignment, I realised that I've already used up around 20% of my word count - and that's just in one side of A4, single spaced. I dread to think what my pre-editting total is going to end up being. The course handbook specifies:

Student teachers sometimes submit assignments that are far longer than required, in the mistaken belief that a longer assignment is a better assignment. In order to encourage student teachers to focus on the quality of their writing rather than on the length, the following penalties are applied.

Now whilst I agree with this in principle, when you look at the assessment criteria and the list of objectives for the assignment, the first thing you think is "how the hell will I write all that in so few words?!?" And seriously, I have no idea how I'm going to edit it down - 20% is taken up in my introduction...

I just had the brainwave of analogising something in the assignment, but quickly dismissed it because of the word count problem. And I've already forgotten what the analogy was. If it comes back to me I promise to write it down.

Then I'll bore you with the details.

Some you win, some you lose... At the end of the day it means next to nothing

This week I returned to my new abode "up North" having had rather limited success with the estate agent about the cleanliness of my flat. Luckily, I can happily update you, my faithful readers, that just one of my complaints was attended to. I had numerous conversations with the office last week as a result of a letter of complaint - that was simultaneously a disclaimer for any damage they might try stinging me for at the end of my contract -, where I was told that the maintenance manager had inspected my flat and that it was clean and up to standard - my objective opinion is that he doesn't do much cleaning; my subjective opinion is that he didn't go there at all. So as it was so clean, how come I ruined three cloths cleaning the kitchen alone on Wednesday morning? Note that just cleaning the outside of the fridge (I couldn't bring myself to do the inside just yet) took one of those three...

Needless to say, the place is looking rather homely and relatively clean (although I'd like to give it the once over again when I move in permanently in the middle of next week) in comparison to what it was. Making me a lot more smiley than I was when I last posted, you'll be pleased to hear (read?).

So onto more pressing matters. Yesterday saw the first day of my PGCE course - the induction day. As induction days go, it was pretty painless. Menial introductions, reluctance to talk to one person for too long and forgetting names as quickly as they'd been introduced was pretty much the agenda for the day. As for the organisation, well it was pretty well managed I'd say. I've seen a lot worse and most of the problems were for the people who'd made late applications for the course. The only thing that affected almost everybody was that everyone had to print out their registration certificate they could get their student card and suchlike - which, of course, many hadn't as it didn't say at the time that we would need a print-out. So those who generally obsess about printing everything just in case, myself included, were OK and got through the process quickly enough with enough time left for a coffee before the next session.

Then the wonderful habitual repetition so commonly associated with inductions began. As you can imagine, it got rather tedious at times but as the staff and we all very well know, there'll be at least one person who still won't quite be up to speed after being told a gazillion times. I hope to God that person isn't me.

Dirty filthy things

Students, that is. Not all, but most. I am just as guilty as the next person for leaving the washing up for a week, or not making my bed, or taking clothes off the airer so that I can wear them straight away.

But there's a huge difference between being very messy and being dirty. I took over my new flat this past week, and at first was rather pleased with everything - I had a nice spacious flat, very near the university campus with parking spaces nearby to boot. What else could I ask for? Then I drove up with my brother at the beginning of the week, with all the stuff that I don't need with me at home for the moment. What's the first thing he notices when we get there? That what I thought was mainly dust that had settled over the past few weeks since the last person moved out, was in fact actual muck and stains that shouldn't have been there for the new person moving in (be it me or anybody else).

There is currently a bunch of newspaper/magazine pages stuffed around a pipe in the bathroom. I haven't taken it away to see what purpose it is fulfilling - just in case there is a leak, or worse I manage to pull the pipe clean from the wall. That would be a bit of a big problem. Then there's the filthy oven and the rusty hobs. Just a matter of it being used over time, you might say. Maybe so, but there's burnt food in the mix there too. Then there's the broken blinds, the broken electric socket, the broken and disgustingly filthy shower curtain, the (now removed) hair and God knows what else all over the bath, the burn marks above the heater on the wall and other grubby marks on the walls (in rather strange places). And then, as I opened the door to get back in the car to come home again, the handle came off in my hand. What a welcome!

Put it all together and it makes for a very annoyed little Welsh girl. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting the place to be sparkling when I moved in, but I also wasn't expecting to have the give the place a deep clean before being able to unpack my things.

I've written a rather blunt (but exceedingly articulate) complaint to the estate agent, and submitted a maintenance request form (two in fact) full of the repairs that need to be done, that I shouldn't need to be dealing with. It can take up to a month for all this to be done, if anything gets done at all.

I'm sure I'll keep you updated on any progress (if any...) that's made. Don't expect any good news any time soon, though. We all know what these property types are like....

Let's go back to basics

I'm fed up of hearing about the government's initiatives for 'going green'. Especially when it comes to transport. Hiking taxes onto fuel and air fares is meant to help deter the nation from using these modes of transport. But it's not working.

Watching Panorama the other day, there was a report about the electric car, which - if successful - should cut carbon emissions immensely. In principle, it sounds like a good idea. The government is advocating this, and the report looked into the poor facilities available for owners of the electric car. Local councils don't have the recharge points needed (not enough, or none at all in many cases). On top of this, the electric car can't travel long distances on full charge - something that needs to be worked on before the scheme can become commercially viable.

But if the electric car is deemed the saviour to our carbon emissions dilemma, surely the effect would be cancelled out by the huge increase in the amount of electricity the nation would be using? I mean, there's only so much CO2 reduction possible with this 'solution'. And the electricity companies (as well as increasing the cost of supplying electricity) try and lure us to give them business by telling us they are the best in terms of carbon emissions created by their input into the national grid. So, if we all switched electric companies to the lowest CO2 producer, and exchanged our cars for the electric car, would it really get us anywhere?

This is where I propose my contribution to reducing carbon emissions: public transport. As far as I'm aware (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the taxes we pay on fuel and in our air fares are supposedly meant to be pumped into improving the public transport system (rail and bus in particular). Unfortunately, I don't see this happening. In some ways I'm in a better position to judge on this, having experienced the efficiency of the French rail network. As well as being heavily subsidised by the French government, there are rarely any huge disruptions to timetables - except when they go on strike, but that's a whole different ball game. Forgetting the subsidy that our government could potentially provide (they may do already, I haven't looked into it enough to know if they do or not), if the extra taxes we as a nation are paying are going where they are supposedly intended to, surely we should have seen a vast improvement by now? Instead, we see rising train fares resulting in no chance of people leaving the car at home and travelling or commuting by train. Maybe this is where the subsidy could come in (if it doesn't already...) to try and influence the population of workers and travellers to abandon cars and planes in favour of trains and buses.

Do you agree with me? Am I looking at this from an angle which has already been exhausted? Or am I being biased because I've just bought a car and have the prospect of high petrol prices and traffic jams ahead of me? If I could wholeheartedly depend on the public transport system, I probably wouldn't have bothered with my new car. But given my experience particularly with the trains in this country, I refuse to take the risk of arriving at school an hour late because the bus was late. At least this way, I will be in control of my punctuality.

Decisions... decisions...

Deciding whether to do one thing or another is tough.

Especially when you're rather indecisive when it comes to yourself (as opposed to what's best for other people).

It's taken me a while to decide to write this post, for starters. OK, so I've been a bit busy sorting myself out, but surely I had a spare ten minutes here and there to moan to you all (or to myself?) about the fears of getting fat, being skint and growing up. Seemingly I didn't...

Something I did make a decision about was the next chapter in my life. Which brought another bunch of indecisions with it. Where to live? Who with? What do I need in my new humble abode? How do I prioritise? Trust me, there were many more questions, and even fewer answers. Advice from family was scarce - "Do what you think is best" was the standard response from most people. And so I prioritised. And decided. And found myself a new home. "Result!" I hear you cry... Not so fast...

Now that everything but material things are sorted, I have to prioritise and decide on a more material (or superficial?) level. Do I want to get a car of my own? Indecision. I either don't want the extra expense, or will have trouble finding a parking space. In essence, I do want a car of my own. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in this dilemma. Then, there's the new-found dilemma (a somewhat stolen idea from my mate at Beetroot Soup) of whether to set up a new blog to chart the next year of my life and all its new experiences, or to just chart them here. Or to set up a blog with the same aim as Beetroot Soup, and keep Assistant Voyager to chart the random events that may or may not present themselves before me. I will still be assisting and voyaging, so maybe I should keep everything here until I'm not doing one or other of my name...

Indecision. You gotta love it.

The record shows I took the blows

The title of this post sums it all up really. With just over a week left in my current position as a language assistant, I'm thinking long and hard about what this year has been to me. The optimist in me tells me I've grown as a person, learnt to take the rough with the smooth (moreso than before), and above all, I'm more focussed on what I do and don't want. However, the pessimist in me tells me that this may have been one of the worst years of my life, what with a nightmare flatmate, horrible children to teach and a lot of uncertainty over whether I am who I thought I was.

Luckily for me, I'm an optimist. But even though I look back positively on this past year, I won't be missing it too much once I get back to the UK. I'm going to miss my new friends, and I hope that like my last experience as an assistant, that we stay in contact and keep each other updated on developments in our lives - particularly our globe-trotting locations. And I guess I'm going to miss the sunshine, although this year's summer so far has been rather disappointing on Toulonian standards. Seems I brought the luck of the Irish, I mean Welsh, with me after all. But it can't have been that bad, I have a lovely tan to show for my life in the sun.

France will forever be a place that I associate with escapism and good times, but at the same time I could never commit to coming back here on a more permanent basis. Not until I'm old enough to retire, anyway. Yearly holidays to visit friends that are still here will be enough to satisfy my nostalgic yearnings, which will surely come to the fore in about a year's time.

How do I know this? Because I'm having many nostalgic episodes about my time at university these days. When I left a year ago, I swore to high heaven that it would be a long time before I was ready to go back. I actually visited for a few days in February and it was amazing, but I wasn't quite ready to subject myself to the memories of finals and the like. But now I am ready for that - I'm ready to think about and recount the stress and difficulty of finals. I guess that's what graduation is for - to close the book on the best and worst years of your life, for whatever reason.

And so, as I foray into a summer of the unknown before continuing my life path in September, I'd say this year has done at least one thing for me: it's let me go back to being me.

Damn it, I've forgotten what I came in here for...

Knowing when to stop or give up has never been easy for me. Knowing when to give myself a kick up the backside and get started has also never been easy. I seem to be one of those people who sits in limbo forever and a day, thinking about starting something or finishing something else that I managed to get started without actually taking any action.

Even now as I sit here and lament my state of limbo, I have unfinished business. I don't even want to think about the unstarted business. There is a reason why I can't get things done, though. It's the fear of having nothing to worry about getting started or finished respectively once the to-do list is all checked off.

I live for my to-do lists. The longer the better. That way, crossing off the half the menial tasks that get done makes me look like I've had a productive day. Unfortunately, those menial to-dos probably only took a total of about twenty minutes to actually carry out. Leaving me with the time consuming to-dos that have been on the list since the dawn of time. One day I'll be done with to-do lists. I'll go back to my infant days where I stored every detail in my brain and got it all done. Something went wrong in my teens, I lost the memory function in my brain - or at least the function reduced itself to a selective rather than functional memory.

What irks me most are those little distractions that make me question my sanity. Take my little detour to the supermarket on my way home from work. I went in for the purpose of buying some envelopes. I came out with a nice full bag of groceries, but no envelopes. The groceries will come in very handy, given that my shelf in the fridge is extremely bare en ce moment, but the fact that I went into the shop for one single thing, and came out with many things except that one single thing really drives me up the wall.

The onset of some debilitating illness that affects me for the rest of my life? Or a simple case of consistent superficiality - the filling of my stomach over the completion of 1001 administrative tasks? You tell me. Because I keep forgetting to think about it.

Figuring it all out

Yesterday I made a first in my life. For the first time ever (and this is rather shocking given my addiction to the internet) I legally downloaded my first two music albums. And what a buy they were! After taking what seemed like an age to get all the tracks to add to my music library in media player, I cracked it and have been playing them ever since.

I'm not sure what I'm most proud of though; the fact that I was a law abiding citizen, or the fact that I downloaded music by someone I found randomly on YouTube about two weeks ago and who a lot of my music savvy friends haven't heard of. I'm usually the last person to discover good music - I'm not the biggest MySpace surfer in the world. Usually I'm the person being introduced to random acts through MySpace and YouTube links over MSN.

So for once, I'm the one doing the discovering. And boy, the feel good goes a long way.

Tick tock... tick tock... I've only got four minutes, I mean weeks, to save the world

Time flies when you're having fun. I hate to admit it, but it's damn well true. After all the stress and horror of September to May, now that I've started to really enjoy myself and be able to appreciate my situation, I suddenly only have a month left to do so before moving on.

Yes, dear reader, I said enjoy myself. You see, I got out of the horrible situation I'd let myself stay in for 7 months, and moved into a new flat with a new, lovely (and, consequently, English speaking) flatmate. And the past month has been utter bliss. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I seem to only be able to write when frustrated/angry. I don't often feel motivated enough to write when everything's going good, even though I should push myself to write sometimes, just to be able to say that I've done something productive with a small chunk of my time.

And so the time has come to start stressing about the next step. Not about the uncertainty of the future, but it's near certainty thanks to the way I've mapped it out. And although it's what I want, and the only thing I can honestly see myself doing, it's still very scary. I don't know how well suited I'll actually be to teaching, but at least I'm finding out. Face the fear head on, that's how to overcome it, right? It better be.

But, the silver lining is cracking. Despite being much happier both in myself and my surroundings, I still manage to waste a horrific amount of time. It's not like I don't have a to-do list as long as my arm, so why do I do it? I can't decide between it being a result of having nothing to do once it's done, or just being too damn lazy to get on with it in the first place. Either way, it has to get done. All I need to do is push myself to do it.

I'll let you know how many boxes I manage to tick.

Je n'aime que moi

My hiatus got cut short. Within an hour of their return I was upset and going stark raving mad trying to stop myself from murdering one of them.

I even had a 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' moment after the disastrous reunion, albeit in a much less romantic fashion: I got off the bus and walked through the streets without realising it was raining. Heavily. So I got extremely wet. At least it cheered me up, anyway.

If I can take anything away from this horrible situation I've been living in of late, it's that I've learnt a lot about myself. I think I can look at things less subjectively now, for want of trying to see what I've done and how it might aggravate the atmosphere in my "home". So at least I can walk away from the situation knowing even though my head's been messed up in more ways than one this year, I'm a more encompassing person for it. I was never highly intolerant before, but on occasions I would make false judgements based on one or two encounters. Now I like to think that I live by that age old saying "time will tell". Because, after all, the passage of time allows us to accept and explore new people and things, and that time does tell us exactly how we feel about something or someone having changed our minds several times throughout the course of any given period.

Time teaches us who we are, and where we figure in the grand scheme of things. Which is probably a good thing. It's nice to think that I'm the centre of the universe from time to time - even if it is a little selfish of me.

Hiatus

After an extremely stressful few weeks, a two-week break is gratefully welcomed. I have a little break away in a different place, I come back, and do nothing. Doing nothing spills over from one day to the next, until suddenly I realise that I haven't left the flat properly in almost a week.

Some would find this worrying. Before I went away last weekend, I'd have agreed. But at the moment, it couldn't be better: I don't have to go to work, where I get stressed out, and my flatmates are away, thus relieving the stress of my homelife. This hiatus is amazing, and I've made a remarkable recovery. To a certain extent.

Half-way through the last school holiday of the academic year, once I go back to school next week, I will be working for ten weeks straight. There is a long weekend at some point in May, but that can hardly be regarded as a break, as such. But next week also marks the return of my flatmates, one of whom will probably darken my mood and let me sink back into the near-depression I experienced just before this holiday.

There was a time when I was this confident, outspoken individual who was clear about who she is and where she's going. Now, when my flatmate is around, I feel like a shell of my former self. I feel that I should be conforming to what my flatmate questions me on with regard to my approach to how I look. Then, I get flashes of anger that I'm even questioning whether I have the wrong approach. Everyone has their own opinions on this subject, but the bottom line is, whatever makes the individual happiest portrays the best image to others. And the fact that I don't give a stuff if I have a hair out of place to go to work, or that I'd rather have an extra half hour in bed every morning than to get up and cover up a few flaws on my face says a lot about my character. Or at least I thought it did. I guess it still does, in a sense that even though I feel much less confident about myself these days, my stubborn streak hasn't faltered, and so I'm sticking to my guns as a form of rebellion, protest.

I wasn't broken before I came here. But somehow in my mind I'm trying to fix myself, trying to bring myself round to my flatmate's way of thinking. Then I get all upset about it and realise that I'm being silly even contemplating changing who I am because of someone I've known for less than three months. And so I carry on as I am, resulting in this merry-go-round of emotions that is cutting me up but also making me stronger, bit by bit, insult by insult. The only thing that rings true in my mind these days is something my mother has said all my (and her) life:

"Take me as I am, or not at all."

That may sound stubborn and uncompromising. But all it says is that I have my principles, my reasons, my own mind. If a person can't respect that, then maybe that person isn't worth getting to know and becoming friends with.

Teething problems

Everything has a dodgy first few days/weeks/months/years. Babies have those horrible few weeks of pain as their first teeth start cutting through. Businesses have a worrying first few months wondering whether they're going to be a success or not. Heathrow's T5 is having the first week from hell.

But why? BAA have been banging on for months and months that T5 was going to be the best air transport facility in the world; that it was going to be the most efficient terminal of them all at Heathrow. Yet they've managed to cancel upwards of 400 flights in this first week, with no real idea when the chaos will end. A backlog of 28,000 bags in transit just makes the situation even more farcical. State of the art baggage system that can process 12,000 bags per hour? I can see a bit of blame shifting in the near future, what with the considerably higher luggage allowance for long-haul flights and all that.

Did anyone look at the logistics of moving the location of all BA's operations in one go? With all that's gone wrong since opening to the public last Thursday, it makes you wonder. But then, Eurostar moved all their operations from Waterloo to St. Pancras over one night, and as far as I recall it went without a hitch. Granted that wasn't on the scale of T5, but honestly, if a load of trains can find their way from one side of London to the other between the hours of daylight, surely a couple of planes can veer their way from one spot of tarmac to another within the same hectare? It's not as though T5 is out of the way of the rest of the airport now, is it?

The question on everyone's lips now? 'Will BA and BAA be fined for the chaos this hideously expensive venture has caused?" Personally, I think they should - Network Rail gets fined for having more than a certain number of late running or cancelled trains, why shouldn't BA/BAA be subject to the same? I know thousands more people are affected by late running or cancelled trains every day than they are delayed or cancelled flights, but it's the principle I'm getting at. In such a short period of time, after such high-profile (and, in hindsight, overhyped) publicity in the build-up to the opening of T5, the parties involved have really shot themselves in the foot. Maybe the government will shoot them in the pocket now... it won't buy back any time lost by all those poor poor passengers, but it'll hopefully make BA think twice about new terminals in the future...

Je suis sérieuse, je ne veux jamais boire comme ça encore! Promis...

It appears I may have learnt my lesson. I know it's the classic line when one suffers a hangover, but I honestly think the years of my mother telling me to drink more responsibly and stop bingeing may have paid off. So, as the clocks spring forward and I have an extra hour of daylight to call my own each evening, I've made a summer time resolution: gone are the days where I'll drink just for the sake of it; arrived are the days where I know my limit, and don't go past them, no matter what the occasion.

It's so simple to write down, and say, but after the torture that was yesterday's hangover, I think this may be one resolution that I'll manage to keep. And I may keep hold of my principles en même temps that way too. For instance, in the bar we were in on Friday, the bar staff had many gimmicks which were not too funny at the start of the night. A few cosmopolitans later, and they were hilarious. Why? Thinking back now, I'm totally ashamed that alcohol changed my view. But as is always the case, it did.

And so now the main goal in life is to enjoy it, savour it, and - most importantly - remember it. Summer will mean no hanging around, the sunshine will motivate me to get things done that have needed doing since forever. Getting that oh-so-desired beach bod won't happen if I have many more wild night like Friday, will it? Once I open up the shutters and let the sunshine in that is. And then I have to get over the shortage of sleep imposed upon me by daylight saving. That gives me an excuse for continued procrastination for the next week or so, at least.

Saying goodbye to winter always makes me feel good though. Living on the Cote d'Azur, I had the good fortune of welcoming spring around three or four weeks ago. Slowly but surely, the woolly jumpers and winter jackets are finding their way to the back of the wardrobe, and the pretty floral spring/summer outfits are coming to the fore. I surprise myself by how much I smile just at being able to wear something pretty to match the nice weather, as opposed to wrapping myself up in as many layers as possible to match the dismal cold weather of the winter months.

Boo winter. Vive l'été! Just let me wake up first, eh?

Tears on my pillow

It takes quite a lot for me to get so upset about something that it makes me cry.

But this morning, my flatmates managed it with ease. Not content with constantly disturbing my sleep pattern with their bedroom antics, it would seem that my contribution to the household isn't quite how they would like it. My rent is paying for their utility bills (at their own admission, might I add), and I myself contribute as much as is physically possible to the chores, despite being awkwardly confined to my bedroom most of the time (from where I'm writing this post).

They went away on Sunday morning, and returned last night. Rather than notice that I'd done a lot to clean up the kitchen, which is filthy as a result of the renovations they started last week - namely knocking down interior walls resulting in an insane amount of dust everywhere, particularly in the unprotected kitchen -, this morning they hang on the fact that the bathroom and toilet floor hasn't been mopped. Yes, that's right, because of all the dust throughout the rest of the flat, the bathroom and toilet floors don't stay clean for long. And so given that I was out all day Monday and working yesterday, the bathroom and toilet floors haven't been mopped since Sunday. Oh dear, that should surely result in a penalty rent rise, don't you think?

Now, normally I would just take this on the chin, and grin and bear being called "evil", "a villain", "lazy". But this morning that's just not possible. Not when I had to use my mobile phone to guide me through my apartment when I got in last night so that I didn't walk into the fridge or get electrocuted by hanging live wires. This is the last straw. There seem to be no niceties passed between me and them any more: our only topic of conversation is whether or not I've done the housework in the last six hours.

J'en ai marre. J'ai ras-le-bol. Je n'en peux plus. Faites-moi quitter cet apart. J'en ai marre de ce putain d'inquiétude. Mais qu'est-ce que je peux faire en fait? I don't have a plan B...

This isn't cold feet... It's more a case of frozen limbs...

You know when you decide to do something, you put the wheels in motion and get all excited about the next step that you've manufactured for yourself in life's path? You start daydreaming about how good it's going to be, how good you're going to be and how it's going to shape you for years and years to come. And then one niggling doubt creeps in and the dream's over.

You start wondering whether it's going to be as good as you first thought; whether you're going to be as good at it as you thought you might be initially; and above all, you question whether you're ready.

Am I ready to go through the paces of the part of life commonly termed as "growing up and settling down"? Am I ready to have to prove myself in ways other than academic? Am I ready to grow up? Am I mature enough to go through training and then hold down a job? Have I reached the stage where I'm ready to "settle down" should the opportunity arise?

Who knows. All I know is that I'm questioning whether I've manufactured the right next step for myself. This isn't nerves or cold feet.

This is downright fear.

Full Throttle Ahead

It appears I'm taking steps in the right direction. The future may not be orange, but it's most certainly bright.

What am I talking about, you say? I speak of the next chapter in my life, once my time as an assistant comes to an end. It took me long enough to decide to apply for teacher training, and it took even longer to arrange an interview. But arranged it I did, and offered a place I was.

Then came the hardest part: accepting the place. I heard last Tuesday that I'd been accepted at my first choice training provider. And it took me until yesterday (a whole 8 days later) to make a firm acceptance. All the forms have been filled in and sent. And now it's down to one key element: organisation; it's key so that I can breeze into my new life in Angleterre du nord come September. This is going to be hard. Not only am I pretty much incapable of organising myself more than a few days in advance, there's the disadvantage that not much help is provided to aid me throughout the process. Nope: it's all down to me.

So as I embark on the first step towards the aforementioned organisation, namely getting all my crap sorted so everything is in order, just do one thing for me:

Make sure I'm doing it!!

New beginnings

After some stern words from my loyal readership, I've decided to come back to the fray and try blogging a bit more often. Part of me stopped for fear that I was a little too negative in my blog, my most popular label is 'moan' taking poll position with 10 out a possible 18 entries. Rather depressing, don't you think?

Trying to be positive is painful. My creative juices flow when I'm in a bad mood. In fact, I do most things best when I'm in a bad mood: psychoanalysis, anyone? I wonder what it says about me, about my personality, about everyone that knows me... Jack shit, most probably, but it would be interesting to see what Jack Shit came up with...

Truth of the matter is, I only blogged when something or someone was getting on my tits. My lack of blog action is not down to me being more tolerant, or my not being pissed off so much - that's no different to what it was two months ago - it's actually a result of me being continually annoyed. Nothing's changed, and I didn't want to inflict my negative vibes on everyone who reads this...

Excuses out of the way, the bottom of the barrel reason is that I've been too damn lazy. Or preoccupied elsewhere. The past two months has panned out roughly as follows:

• continuing my assistantship
• trip home to visit friends and family
• trip to London to see a show and make a bit of a tit of myself in front of one of the stars
• back to France to carry on with the assistantship
• being told mind-numbingly irrelevant things by flatmate (who thinks I don't understand much of what she says, hence the need to demonstrate that broccoli isn't cauliflower)
• just about sorting out where I go once this is all over

And so you see, nothing much has happened since I last posted on my high-brow, controversial, reader attracting blog. And even less has happened that's been worth writing about.

Now that I'm back though, I'll try and hang around to answer any niggling queries anyone may have...

A sign of the times

Maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm just irritable. Or even plain impatient.

I speak of the mentality of the kids I teach. Particularly the one older pupil that I give private lessons to. I guess the kids at school are young enough to ask questions that annoy me. But my private student doesn't seem to use common sense or his initiative at all.

Yesterday's lesson was a prime example: I set him an exercise, and he wrote something that was wrong and crossed it out to correct himself. He turned to me and asked if it mattered that he had crossed out an answer on the page. Bear in mind that these lessons are essentially informal, in that I pretty much decide on the spot what areas are going to be covered in the hour that I'm paid to take charge of this boy. Now also consider that this boy comes along to my flat, uses my paper (because he 'forgets' to bring an exercise book/pad of paper of his own every week), and my pens to write with, and he asks if it matters that there's a crossing out on the page. I'm all for neat work, but come on! There is a rather large grey area when it comes to how one gauges neatness.

So the kid isn't big on making his own decisions. Not exactly a big deal, you may think. But then there's the frustration of him being reluctant to actually think for himself during this hour that he is with me.

I set him something to gauge what he knows and doesn't know, and explain that he just has to give it a go so that I don't tell him something that he already knows - what's the point of that? But because I term some things differently to the text book he uses at school, he assumes he's never done it. And for the record, I usually do the first one as an example to show him, so he can see what he has to do.

So I leave him to it while I go potter about with coffee/coke/juice etc. I come back, he tells me he's finished, and he's not even attempted it half the time, prompting a conversation (in French) along the lines of:

Him: I'm not sure I'll get it right.
Me: You pay me to tell you if you've got it right or not. And if not, I'll explain it to you so that you know in future.
Him: But I'm not sure.
Me: Try. You learn more like that, than from being told what to do with you having made no effort.

And so he gives it a go. And eight times out of ten, he's bang on the mark.

So is it shyness? Laziness? A genuine fear of being wrong? Or maybe he's trying too hard and making it more complicated than it actually is? Whatever it is, I'm struggling to find a way to get him to work things out for himself. Why make it simply a lesson in English when I can teach him lifelong skills (namely multitasking) at the same time? Thinking and working are generally considered to go together anyway, aren't they?

It takes two to tango

The other night I watched Crash for what must be the fifth or sixth time since I bought it on DVD. I also saw it at the cinema when I was living in France two years ago as a late showing as it had won the Oscar for Best Picture.

What surprises me about the film is I find myself sympathising with different characters each time I watch it. There is something that makes me despise the subject content of the film, but at the same time, it is something that has been addressed with sensitivity and attention to both sides of the story. Look at the plotline on the part of Anthony/Peter. Anthony portrays himself as the typically opressed black man, expecting to be discriminated against because of his skin colour. Peter takes a more optimistic view, suggesting that Anthony is being oversensitive. When we are first introduced to these two characters, I'm inclined to sympathise with Peter rather than Anthony. Anthony is simply feeling sorry for himself and because of the history of black people, he simply lives up to the stereotypes associated with his race. Especially when he and Peter then carjack Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser's characters.

At this point the shoe is on the other foot. We are not sympathising at all with Anthony, and much less with Peter than before, until Sandra Bullock's near-monologue ranting about how as a white woman fearful of two black youths she feels the need to remain silent for fear of being labelled a racist should she cross the street or look the other way. This, in essence, totally backs up everything that Anthony has already said - particularly when Jean (Sandra Bullock) insists on the locks being changed yet again because the locksmith is not white. But he's not black either. And this really confuses me.

Where is the line drawn? When are the barriers constructed thanks to stereotypes going to be broken down? It is these persisting stereotypes that means the issue of racism persists. But one stereotypical image of racism is very very wrong: that which depicts a racist being white. A racist can just as easily be black. Just look at Anthony in 'Crash' and you'll see what I mean.

Broken suitcase, Broken faith

It's amazing how one little incident can put you off something for a while. After managing to hump my heavy suitcase on and off trains without so much as a relatively big knock, you'd think that big strong baggage handlers would manage to take care of it.

But, for the first time ever, I reclaimed a suitcase damaged to the extent that to use it again with an airline I will have to sign a liability disclaimer. Upon reporting the damage on my arrival in Nice last Friday, I was told that I have seven days to get someone in a suitcase-selling shop to sign and give me a certificate that my current suitcase is irreparable, and to buy a new one, then send the airline a bunch of paperwork, including said certificate.

Now, buying a new one is not a problem. I walk into the shop; I decide which one I want; I tell the man/woman; I pay for it; I take it home.

But how and where on earth do I get a certificate of irreparability? It's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while - I mean if it wasn't damaged, surely the man at the airport who I complained to would have been able to tell me "You're wrong there love, there's nowt wrong with it"?? The fact that he didn't (and he did inspect the damage) kind of presupposes that I'm not lying, does it not?

So now I'm in a quandary as to whether to bother pursuing a claim. The airline does point out that it's liability is limited and that I might be better off pursuing it through my own travel insurance instead. But for the sake of a suitcase, I'm not going to do that. What narks me is the principle that I can't take all my possessions on board with me, but by checking them in they're not safe. Granted, this has happened to hundreds of thousands of people over the past however-many-years-of-commercial-air-travel, but until it actually happens to you, it's hard to really imagine how much it actually pisses you off.

Needless to say, I'll be avoiding this airline at every opportunity in future.