Thursday

1.
I got fed up with not knowing when the deadline for submitting my PhD for publication was, nor what other documents I had to provide and fed up with waiting for answers, so I decided to nag. This time the university press did reply (miracle!) and provided all information required, which I read with great care and attention and decided that was that. The deadline was on the 30th (that’s bloody Tuesday!), and yes, my edited text could be ready by then (if I didn’t do anything else until, but that was not going to happen) but they also needed a presentation of its academic values (which also could be done, even if I had no idea what I was supposed to write) and the endorsement of the Head of Faculty on the application letter. And there is no way in the world that one could be done within three working days I had left.
So that was that. I had blown it. I should have worked more. I should have nagged earlier. Now it was too late.
So I went down to the lounge, put the TV on and watched two episodes of Scrubs in total dumbness and resignation.
Then I went back upstairs and managed to get hold of my supervisor… who told me not to worry, she was going to take her copy of my PhD to the publishing committee’s meeting, fill in an application form and get the Head of Faculty to sign it.
“Oh…” I gasped with cautious half-relief “but your copy is not edited!”
“Don’t worry, you’ll do that once they’ve decided to publish.”
WHAT?! All these hours spent trying to make it on time, hard work, stress and all?! WHAT?!
“But, but… it’s more than 300 pages, you said 300…”
“You’ll just have to cut it down slightly to some 350 pages.” she said in the same time.
WHAT?! All those things I have already cut out with bleeding heart to get it under 300 pages, why? It already IS under 350 pages! WHAT?!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. And relieved. Because after all I haven’t blown it. Because it’s still all on. But still. Seriously!
Anyway.

2.
After all that I was relieved but still shaky and there was no way I was getting back to work, not with all that information, and I needed to calm down first anyway, so I started surfing on the Internet, which eventually led me to the Times Educational Supplement website, where they publish all the job ads for teachers. I put in all my criteria without much hope, after all I had checked it the day before, and there it was: “French Teacher, permanent contract, secondary school… Milton Keynes.”
I had always thought that at one point I might have to consider moving to MK, I also said I was going to let life decide – apply for jobs both here and there and see what I get first.
But this made it real. There is a job running, I am of course going to apply, and then I might get it, and then I will have to move, to a place where Paul is the only person I know, and I’m not scared of turning my life upside down for my own fantasy, been there, done that, was fun, but this, this is scary!
At that point I could distinctly feel an impending panic crisis come down on me, so I went out, got a bottle of wine, poured myself a huge glass and just sat there waiting for Susanne to come around so that I could properly vent.

3.
Susanne was coming around cause we were going to the Yardbird for a jazz gig as part of my birthday celebrations. We had some dinner (I had forgotten lunch in all that upheaval), I had another glass of wine and we sat there talking, or rather I was talking, and gradually calming myself down. By 7.30 we were all ready to go and just waiting for a friend of mine who was going to give us a ride, and I had just decreed that if I had not had a heart attack today, I was probably safe for ever after, when the knock on the door came. So I went to open… and there stood Paul.

Apparently, my first reaction to my boyfriend’s surprise appearance was: “Oh fuck!”.
But it really was all about the tone of voice. Really.

4.
At the Yardbird I’ve managed to get drunk on two pints of beer.
After we got home I cried a bit and then had a full blown głupawka (which is that state where you get into fits of uncontrollable laughter over things that really are not that funny at all – no other language has a good word for it).
And then I lay sleepless next to my snoring boyfriend and tried not to start freaking out again.
But all is good.
Life knows what it’s doing.
At least I hope so.

Visit to the local Meat Market

After four years of going out in France I thought I had seen it all. But Jongleurs, where we went for Susanne's Hen Do last night made the meat markets I had seen in France seem really pleasant places. I genuinely didn’t think such a place could possibly exist. But it does.
It all started by a comedy act, which was really funny at points, but for me a good comedian is one that makes you laugh without explicit and crude references to body parts and physiological functions. The three we saw last night apparently did not judge themselves funny enough to be able to make people laugh without mentioning penises, faeces and using the f word as a comma. Oh well.
This came with the worst burger I have ever had in my entire life, it was a piece of cardboard with something inside pretending to be meat and failing miserably at it. Could you believe that there is such thing as tasteless onion? There is. I still ate it, cause I needed something to soak up the liquid that was pretending to be Sex on the Beach and also failing miserably at it (later I saw them make one, and well, it was vodka orange with a suspicion of some red juice that made the whole thing sort of pink).
Then, after the comedy act, there was dancing. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was meat market in all it’s glory, girls on the dance floor trying to look appealing and blokes cruising around, appreciating the goods. It was so obvious it was disgusting. At least in France they were discreet about it, even if no one was fooled. And I was regretting with all my heart having worn that skirt, I wished I had worn baggy trousers and a big t-shirt. Cause even if I wore what I wore in complete ignorance of the nature of the place I was going to, still wearing what I was, I was considered to be goods. And it probably didn’t help that I was looking around which undoubtedly got interpreted as making myself available while it was sheer curiosity and total bewilderment with what was going on around me.
Worse still, the place stank of what I could only tentatively identify as years of spilt beer, vomit and urine combined with unwashed bodies and drying sweat. It made me sick. Naomi said she could feel a whiff of something unpleasant in the bar area, but my smell being more acute than that of many people, I could smell it everywhere and the aroma in the bar area was literally contorting my insides.
The final straw was when my bum got pinched by one of the cruising clients (testing the goods, I presume, finding out if the meat was firm enough to suit his liking). It was around 11.30 and I realised that they were all still relatively sober – I decided not to wait to see what would happen as they became properly drunk and I fled. Don’t get me wrong, I still had fun. I was there with really interesting people I appreciate a lot, Susanne in her Gretel costume was absolutely fabulous, some of the comedy stuff was genuinely funny and my inner cultural anthropologist was very much fascinated with the phenomena around. But I'm never setting my foot in that place again.

Vikings

We went to York for the Vikings. Well no, we went to York cause neither Susanne nor I had been before. But then we found out about the Viking festival. So we wanted Vikings. At least I wanted Vikings. A lot. And there were Vikings all right. The first thing we walked into were hoards of Vikings training for battle. The problem was that, as we have later discovered, a big part of them were… Polish. The taxi driver who took us back to the hostel on Saturday night told us that each year there were loads of Norwegians coming for the festival, towing their long boats and all. So, in spite of the fact that on Saturday the ‘Vikings afloat’ were nowhere to be seen, on Sunday we’ve set out to find them anyway. Cause, of course, I wanted Norwegians. Unfortunately, the ‘Vikings afloat’ were still missing in action and the warriors swarming all around York were still, well, mostly Polish. That to say that when we went to see the Jorvik reconstruction I was sort of surprised that the sound effects were voices in Old Norse and not in, well, Polish.
I bought my Thor's hammer from a Swedish merchant, so at least there's an ounce of hope that it is more or less authentic and not, well, Polish.