feelings tbc

Oh this toothache really won't leave me alone! I haven't been to the dentists for years, and think I am probably no longer registered with them anyway. Perhaps it is mischievous wisdom teeth come to torture me? I just want to ramble at you about my twisted thoughts through a pain-infested haze.
My landlady noticed that i seemed unhappy, and grabbed me when i slinked out of my room like a shy cat earlier, to ask me if I was ok, since i had appeared to have "l'air triste"
I was pleased that she noticed, although as soon as i could i sneaked back into my room, and felt suddenly provoked to tears. I guess I just miss my mum (lol). When one is feeling low, one shies from company and then moans about feeling lonely and isolated from others. But to make oneself attractive and acceptable to others and the world-at-large, one must be bright and cheerful, full of ideas and life. When I am feeling low, i feel incapable of putting on a happy face, and don't want to burden anyone else with my malaise. I feel they would find me hateful if they saw it, so best to keep the disgusting face of depression away from the world.
Also- it's hideous to moan about it, even here it's quite shameful, since there are some people who have real problems.
I'm feeling OK now, except for the teeth. Am sat in the dark in my room, have lit six candles. (just cos that was the number of available candle-recepticles that i could find, not for any particular significant witchy reason) Outside I can hear a wind raging, and earlier there was rain battering the roof. But i'm inside, away from the world. Cocooning myself from harm, like a cat by the fireside. Or rather, like a grumpy child kept from playtime by the weather, it's sulky chocolate-smeared face pressed against the rain-spattered window. In any case, I feel too tired to go out. If i was totally desperate for some air and society, there is the local bar full of outrageous horrible drunks, but the thought of it now makes me curl in on myself, like a snail that contracts and shrinks back when you touch it.
Last night and the one before, I had long long online video conversations with my boyfriend. Conversations which go nowhere and leave you feeling far more dissatisfied and blue than when you embarked on them. It's not his fault, moreover it's mine. (talk of the devil, he just texted me to tell me he has read my letters, and that they "somehow made him love me slightly more". He had them for two full days, without taking the time to read them, but then he has been working non-stop the past couple days)
I wonder what he would think if he scrolled through my ever-growing blog? Would he feel offended that I am putting my feelings up here for whomever stumbles across them? Would he be upset that i chose to keep this aspect of my life private from him, while brandishing it aloft for all the world to see. My mother would call this sort of behaviour "washing one's dirty laundry in public", and would probably advise against it. I think I have decided not to show him this, because I want to write freely, and perhaps, despite my best efforts, i can not bring myself to be my true self with him.
Perhaps it comes from an uncertainty over who i actually am, what is my real identity? or perhaps it comes from a fear of exposing myself to other people. For example, i shy from revealing my opinions to people, save for a small bunch of people who are my friends. It makes my heart quicken to have to choose a song to put on at a party, even something as small as that, for the excitement and fear of revealing my intimite inside feelings to the outside world. Or maybe my taste in music is just that embarrassing.... lol.
 Perhaps i should give you a song in every blog? I don't think I'm so abnormal really- just when i compare myself to some of my stridently confident, loud and eloquent peers, who like nothing better than to verbally strangle those around them......

Lesson one: How are you today?

I really am starting to think in french sometimes, almost wrote "so i want to aboard subjects more personal" but then realised that made absolutely no sense in English.

Gosh i'm in a bad fuming mood, with no outlet. It's probably good that there's no outlet cos i wouldn't want to unleash my inner fury on my dear friends. 

I think that if i study my personality i'm probably quite a control freak, maybe the most disorganised one you will ever meet though, and for this i'm constantly disappointing myself and raging against myself.

Today I was supposed to go and teach the headteacher's daughters at his house, but I couldn't find his house. I began to furiously berate myself for having a shit memory, and for being generally hopeless all round. I'm constantly comparing myself to other people and coming out bottom, and detesting them for it, and detesting myself even more.

Well- that's just the mood I'm in now.

Since I couldn't find the house, despite having gone there twice before (albeit in a car), I took to wandering in circles around suburbia. Everything was sunny and green and neat, not to mention unbelievably hot for November. I took my coat and jumper off, and was sweating horribly and miserably. There was no one about, so i probably took the opportunity to talk to myself, and insult myself in the highest, calling myself a "snivelling piece of useless crap" and thus making myself cry. 

In my wandering though, I came across a patch of green surrounded by fragrant smelling pine woods. Everything shone bright and colourful in the sunshine. However, there was no one about. It was easy to imagine that all the people in my town might have suddenly, unexplainably disappeared, as happened with the Marie Celeste. It was truly a ghost town.

 In the centre of the park on a mound, was a round  white building like a fancy cake, with a cross on top of it's roof. Perhaps a church? I meandered up to it, sweating horribly, and found the big door locked. One could peer through a grille and see inside a sort of fancy mansoleum tomb thing, and a blot of colour on the floor- perhaps some flowers? I had my crap glasses on and so couldn't see properly (perhaps the reason finding the house was so tricky/impossible?)

It turned out it was the tomb of someone historical- in fact i'll find out for you so as not to be horribly unhelpful and vague http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cadoudal

There you go- he is a royalist who struggled against the revolution and was eventually executed... hmmph. He was born in Brec'h though which is maybe ten minutes from where i am now. (Gosh, I'm really not being very discreet about my identity...) In fact, I have already given the blog address to a few friends- will they mind if i use their real first names? I suppose they won't if i only say very neutral things about them and avoid discussing anything personal relating to them. If, however, you would like to become a fully embellished character, do speak up in the comments now. I really am quite vain arn't i? I admit that i do quite enjoy the attentions of other people. Being somebody who is known, is quite comforting to me. Perhaps that is why being an unrecognised outsider in this town, with no friends, passing almost invisibly through the half deserted streets bothers me?

Now I'm back in my little room. Today in England, it's a big strike of public sector workers... just thought i'd mention it for reference when i look back at this rambling- just so i can see what was going on in the wider world. I wonder if my sister will be off school? I haven't been in touch with my mother for a few days, but I have a card waiting to be posted, on which I have drawn a picture of my landlady's cat in expensive pencils that i bought from the local art and craft shop.

Everything is expensive here. My rent is ridiculous- when you take it out of what i earn- it leaves just three hundred euros spending money per month. When you consider that i have to eat and pay for train fairs to amuse myself a little at the weekends, it means that I'm saving nothing from this. Gaining no financial gains from this miserable exile.

I have considered being a webcam model, wherby one can make money simply from one's own bedroom, however even signing up for that is a hideously long formality. One must scan a document to prove one is over eighteen- i guess i could get that done at the school- but i feel guilty for using the school equipment for things related to such sleazy business. 

Not that i see it like that: I think- why not. It's an experience. You can lounge around chatting to people, and you only have to get your tits out once they're paying you by the minute. I'm probably not really going to do it.. perhaps it's just the thrill of thinking that i could... that i might. What do you think?

a trip to ANGERS

Saturday morning, I got on a train in my town. The whole world was icy cold and covered in morning-mist. As the train pulled out of the station and began speeding through countryside the sun began to triumphantly show it's face. It's big round yellow face. The fields and hedgerows were covered in frost, which the sun-rays slowly melted as the morning progressed.
I wrote a letter to Emily, and a post card to the jazz bar in Newcastle where i used to work on weekends.
Then I settle down to reading a book which I had borrowed from the local library called "les filles de Riyad"- the girls from Riyad. It is the story of a tight-knit bunch of friends, who belong to the upper classes of Saudi Arabian society. Some of them finish their university studies, and others give it up to get married. It is an eastern version of sex and the city, with the girls exchanging thoughts and discussing problems relating to their engagements and marriages. I think it was quite controvertial upon it's release into the arab world, because of the girls' intelligent questioning of long-held traditions. Enjoyable stuff really and an interesting insight into a very different culture.
When I eventually  arrived in the big train station of Angers, I almost walked into Alice, despite the station being  bustling with travellers. This was fortunate since neither of us had noted the other one's number down.
Alice lived in the same student accomodation as me during our first year of university, and is also working as a language assistant. It seems she is fortunate to have a bunch of other assistants living in the same town as her to socialise with on a regular basis though.
She is a very sweet girl, and in universtity formed part of a firm and slightly impenetrable friendship group. A bunch of funny, geeky and loyal friends- perhaps the joyful alternative girls of our uni? Maybe i would have been part of that group had I not become close to Emily?
We chatted and found we had plenty to say, as we drifted down a busy main road towards the tourist information centre, where we armed ourself with a  map of the city. There was no need to use the map to find the castle. It is an enormous thing.
The castle is really just a huge wall, towering neck craningly high above us. The wall has round turrets at regular intervals in the wall- these turrets had a curving form, and resembled power station cooling towers rising out of a deep mist. The castle had a deep moat around it, which perhaps in medieval times was filled with dirty defensive sludge, but now was decorated with pretty flower beds.
Entrance to the castle was free, and we crossed a drawbridge to enter. Then we amused ourself into the afternoon, walking along the castle walls, looking down at the murky river far below and the tiny boats in it. We spied a boat which had a pizzeria aboard.
One of the turrets had previously been used as a prison, and a sign told us that up to sixty people at a time had been locked into the small round cornerless room in which we stood, inhaling the smell of damp and fumbling with cameras. Castles do have a particular smell of the past, of cold stone and ancient forgotten memories.
There was a chapel in the confinement of the castle walls. It was empty and cold, stripped of it's interior furniature. It had also previously been used as a prison, but the glass windows had been restored with modern designs- colourful glass attempting unsuccessfully to purge the place of it's atmosphere of quiet suffering.
After our castle-tour, we crossed over the brown river and found a fun fair. Colourful tarpaulins dripping with the rain of a previous shower covered many of the attractions. We bought churros and crepes from a stall, and a grumpy gypsy informed us that the fair would open in twenty minutes.
We  walked around the quiet fair, watching it slowly awaken. Goldfish flitted and flashed in tanks, ready to be won as prizes. Alice said she was too stuffed full of churros to go on any rides so we moved on to explore the town.
The cathedral was huge and massively impressive, with a great organ- Alice said the largest she had ever seen, and she is quite a church enthusiast. I am not a church enthusiast, so I won't go into minute details about the church's interior- you shall have to go and see it for yourself-  but i liked the way the gorgeous two-towered building was positioned at the top of a flight of stone steps. Ascending those steps, drawn to the huge wooden door, one felt a sense of the inevitable and one's powerlessness and awe before this magnificient piece of architecture- or before God if you prefer.
In the town centre we wandered into the local Monoprix, and played with the testers for longer than was reasonably acceptable. I left the place having bought a turquoise nailvarnish and a black eyeliner crayon, and with my face smeared with lime green and black makeup.
Of course we did other things, cups of tea, chips in a takeaway, an arty cafe, discusion of mutual aquaintances and paragliding, an exhibition of persian rugs, and Alice divulging details of the society of which she is president- the nerd society!
But i'll leave it there. Of course- any questions for me on any subject and you are most welcome to leave a comment.

eating crepes with spanish, english and italian girls

I suppose Christmas must be approaching because there was an advert on French TV featuring singing reindeer.  Sometimes I leave the TV playing without watching it, in the hope that I will perfect my french and expand my vocabulary through a process of osmosis, or rather that all the confused sentences blaring out will sink into my subconscious somewhere for future use.
 It's monday afternoon and i have to hurry a little because I have a class to teach in less than an hour. Just time for an update though.
I have made a new friend here. We met in french class. She is a twenty five year old spanish girl full of enthusiasm to meet people and make connections. I instantly recognised that she was new to the town, and was still hopeful that this place might have something bright and interesting to offer her.
After class one day, she took my number and offered  to drive  me home in her beat up old car. A few days later she got in touch, and we had a lovely trip to the local cinema- a small cinema, slightly reeking of damp, with three auditoriums and tacky blue neon lights framing the archways on the exterior of the building. We had to sit on the front row because the auditorium was full up- the first time i have seen it so packed- and peer up at the screen.
The next morning, she came to pick me up in her car. It was great to have a rendez-vous, to be in demand, to have someone in a ramshackle old car parked outside my house honking the horn for my attention. She had brought along an Italian girl- both of them are working as au pairs for the same family, looking after one badly-behaved four year old girl.
I was quite stressed in the back of their car, because i was late to meet the geeky but quirky english assistant Grace. Spanish girl- Marta- had the radio blaring out flavourless French pop music, and at the same time kept trying to make conversation with me. I could hear  a jumble of words over the noise, and see her warm-brown kohl-rimmed eyes peering at me through the rear view mirror, but could not join the words i was hearing up to make a coherent dialogue.
They had been half an hour late to meet me, and now were making up for that by powering full speed on the motorway. The fourteen year old car could barely take it, and was making unhealthy noises, like a aeroplane about to take off. Eventually, after struggling to find somewhere to park, we arrived well in Lorient, and met curly-haired cheerful Grace, who took  us to her favourite crepe restaurant.
How lovely to have female company- to have a lunch date with three lovely women- I was very content eating my shallots, tomato and egg crepe- the only issue was knowing which language to speak. During lunch we settled on English, as this was the easiest way for Grace and i to fluently catch up, but afterwards switched back to French.
Grace- I feel slightly bad using peoples real first names without their permission, but if I don't it will become too confusing- told me she was meeting a man after our lunch-date, someone she had met at church, and seemed somewhat nervous about this rendez-vous with an almost unknown person.
"Just follow your intuition" I advised "Don't go and walk in any isolated woods, or go to his house if you have a bad gut feeling about it" I suppose it doesn't hurt to be over precautious- not that i ever am.
She laughed at my advice and said that she had infact thrown such advice to the wind before, when she was living in Germany. Despite having the air of a little girl sometimes, she has had a lot of experience living abroad, and is perhaps not as naive as initial impressions suggest.
She told me how she used to take the train along the same line every day- perhaps to get to work- and would see a woman on the same train each day- travelling without a ticket, and dressed in a manner to perhaps suggest that she was homeless, or indeed very much a down-and-out.
Grace told me how she started chatting this woman, making small talk, and one day they decided to arrange a rendez-vous to get to know each other better. Nervously she took the train to the next small town, which was where the woman lived. When invited to go to the woman's place, she declined, taking heed of all the advice one is given as a child- don't got to strangers' houses. The woman confessed that where she lived was "pretty much outside" and led Grace to a cluster of caravans huddled in a green field.
From then on they formed an unlikely friendship- the unkempt middleaged German woman, and neat, perfectionist, cautious Grace. She would go to see her every week and drink tea and chat in the caravan, until they became quite relaxed in each others' company.
 I asked what sort of things they had to talk about, and she said they didn't really have anything in common- but she was content to just listen to the woman ranting on about her failed romances with other women in the caravan-dwelling community. The last news Grace heard of her was that she had decided to pack up and leave for the bright lights of Berlin.
I think sometimes friendships are unlikely, but they are very important. I think without them people wither and curl in on themselves like sick plants with no sunlight.

Being unkind to old men

Lots of conflicting thoughts have been going through my head the past few days, and i'm not sure if i'm happy or sad, of if things can be defined that easily. I feel completely confused about my relationships with people, and find myself pushing people away.

To update you on the narrative involving the sixty year old sailor-artist- I had a rather unpleasant exchange of words with him which ended with me pretty much terminating our friendship. He had asked me to go round to translate his book, and i'd agreed on the time and date a few days before and written it in my diary.

Such a lover of control is he, that were i to break off our rendez-vous, i knew he would take offence and accuse me of being "méchante", leaving me with a feeling of guilt and and a bitter taste.

So it was that i reluctantly went round to his studio, feet dragging on the floor. My eyes were closing with weariness- probably because i'd spent all night online to my boyfriend looking at pixilated versions of each others faces and not really saying anything interesting.

Upon entering his flat, I think i visibly shrunk away in disgust when he kissed my cheeks, a gesture which could be considered quite impolite and contrary to french norms and customs. But i felt irritable and vowed that i wouldn't allow myself to be persuaded into doing anything to please him that was contrary to my true desires.

On my previous visits he would instruct me: "lift up your top, i need to see how your belly is" or "take off your jumper so i can see your figure better" all under the guise of needing to know my body better in order to make a sculpture of me.

Naturally very compliant in character, especially when up against someone with such a dominant personality, I would of course acquiesce, but nonetheless would leave feeling as if a part of myself had been eroded, like some sort of cheap whore. 

Which may seem like a very harsh comparison- but he was always offering me money, which did prick my ears up. Fifty euros for translating the book plus two euros for every copy sold. Two hundred euros for making a film in which we film each other: him acting as himself and me as a student enraptured by him and his work... the projects go on... always involving some sort of role in which i have to "show the sensual side of my character".

After some consideration, and talking to Emily on Skype, I had firmly decided on following her suggestion, which was to just say no to his projects. One can always earn money some other way. My expenses are not really so great here, so hopefully from my teaching, I should end up with a few hundred euros in my bank.

I sat on his sofa, with my bag next to me, creating a defiant distance with both my words and my body language. 

He was very disappointed when i  told him i didn't want to do the film, nor the sculptures, almost angry, and after that took an unpleasant tone with me. He began criticising the way I speak french, pulling me up on every preposition that i might get wrong (which verbs go with "de" and which with "a" it really is a matter of guesswork to me).

I maintained that this nuance of french grammar wasn't something to get all het up about, since the most important thing is that you can make someone understand you- regardless of small mistakes. He told me that the way i spoke was the same as someone who knows nothing of the language, and that i better change my attitudes, otherwise i would never be a french teacher. All the while he was talking to me, he was stood at the other end of the room, fiddling about angrily with a sculpture of a skinny naked girl (me), manipulating the clay, his giant fingers fondling it's miniature breasts and legs and neck.

It seemed to me that he was trying to get one up on me on the one area where he could be superior, but he calmed down and apologised. I am very bad at taking criticism. Just try and critisise me and i will become horribly defiantly defensive and flare up in a rage. 

I continued what I'd been saying and explained that when i came to his studio, i often felt trapped, because he always made it near impossible for me to make an excuse and leave. Also the phone calls throughout the week deranged me and the small gifts to guarantee my loyalty made me feel both pleased and sick. The insistence that he book my time in advance, rather than just let me come round whenever i pleased, all this amounted to create a feeling of nausea  and suffocation in me, which I tried to explain in perhaps not the kindest way possible.

I think the last straw was when he tried to give me a gift of cut roses. Don't ever get me cut flowers, they are a token of insincere love and misguided affection, and remind me of stalkers and grasping older men that i've known. I hate to see a flower wallowing in a stagnant vase and slowly wilting and drooping like a disappointed penis.

The scene finishes with me leaving his studio in a huff, and marching off up the steep cobbled street, him waving and shouting behind me, making a hideous and humiliating spectacle of himself infront of all his artist neighbours. "should i call you?!" he kept repeating and seeming not to understand when i shouted "NO" in response.

Something which he said as i made my escape, made me feel somewhat guilty "you've been laughing at me for the past two months", which i think means that he feels i've been taking the piss. But i never asked to be given gifts and food, never wanted that he should try and transform me into his obedient muse. Like with most obsessives, the kindest thing you can do for them is to leave them alone for a time until they start to forget you, and the self inflicted lacerations on their hearts start to heal. 

a spontaneous boat trip to a small village

Today was my day off, so i had arranged to meet a french boy called Pierre-Louis. He is my first francophone friend here, and i feel content to have him as a potential new friend. We spoke french together all day, and never ran out of things to say: the beginnings of friendships with people that you instantly connect with are great- you are eager to learn about each other, everything is new and waiting to be discovered, and you are excited when you feel the warmth of friendship being reciprocated.
I got the train to Lorient at three o clock, and we met in the town centre outside the big fnac (a popular record store- three floors of dvds and cds)
Pierre is quite skinny and still has quite the face of a teenager despite having just turned twenty one. In fact, he had celebrated his birthday the previous week, despite his real birthday being in july. He said this was because he hadn't had time to celebrate it on the actual date. Strange. I think perhaps he is very attatched to his university studies in a somewhat geeky way, that doesn't even allow him a respite on a noteable birthday like a twenty first. He is studying history, and learns languages in his spare time- English, German, Russian, Chinese are just among a few of them.
Even his part-time job is tied in with academia- he had just finished working in the university cafeteria dishing out food to the students when i met him. He told me with a certain pride that over a thousand students had passed through the cafeteria that afternoon and been served.
I asked what we were going to do, but he had nothing planned, so i suggested that i would like to see the port. Being in the city centre surrounded by tall buildings and shops makes one feel a little bit enclosed and chlaustrophobic. The port jutted out to sea and the smell of the ocean penetrated everything. We lazily walked down a cobbled path alongside the water, listening to the seagulls, reading the names of the rows and rows of boats and sniffing the air. At the end of the path was a military building closed to the public.
There was a strange bus shelter too and a board which gave bus times. Times for the BOAT BUS.
That somewhat excited me. I think it's been years since i've been on a boat. (Perhaps the last time was in Fuerteventura when i was seventeen and went on a "glass bottom boat" which was exactly as the name suggests. Along with a crowd of tourist-children i could crouch down with my nose against the glass squeeling in excitement at the different colourful fish.)
Pierre-Louis suggested we get the boat somewhere, and we had a little espresso coffee while waiting for it to arrive. Last time we'd met up he'd blushingly asked if i could pay for his coca cola telling me he'd lost his wallet! I discovered today that this was probably a lie, since the same awkward silence ensued when the bill came on it's little round tray. I asked him if he'd forgotten his wallet again, and he confessed that in fact the real problem was that his grant had not yet been put into his account, and he had not a penny left! I hope he confessed this little white lie (since he is a good catholic).
The boat trip was really exciting. We sat on the top deck on the white plastic seats and began to gather speed, there was not a lot of rolling around on the waves, because the sea was really very calm. In fact i think this may be because we're in a bay- a bit of the sea that juts inland, and this is why it's much quicker to get a boat from one place to another. The boat took us past a wrecked grey military boat, which had a flock of black birds clinging to it's mast. It looked like a ghost ship from a creepy movie, and was clearly no longer in use. We passed an island, an empty mass of land with only one building visible on it, clinging to the side. It began to speckle with rain, which gradually increased in force until we were being pelted with freezing rain and buffeted by the wind like the seagulls which were screeching above us.
 Eventually we arrived on the other side of the bay in a place called Locmiquélic. We wandered down a long road, in the attempt to find life: cafés, creperies, bars. On the right hand side were big, attractive houses painted white with large gardens, which despite their size still had a lonesome air, as if being ravaged by the sea breeze had fixed a sad expression on their faces (if houses had faces.)
We passed one bar, but decided to continue in case there was anything more enticing further down the road. After walking for a bit we returned and entered the first bar we saw.
The propietress was blonde and middleaged and cheerful. She was very friendly to us when she took our order of strawberry syrup in water, a drink which tasted like childhood medicine. The bar was warm and had a friendly air (can you say that? Pierre Louis commented that i anglicise my french, but i think i'm starting to frenchify my english too)
There were amateurish paintings all over the walls, as well as ornaments and plants, giving the place the feel of a communal living room for the village. We chatted about: the history of france (france in medieval times), the different regional accents in france, why the symbol of Brittany is an ermine (stoat/weasel type creature), and who the fuck is that guy in the painting. There was a square canvas on the wall directly opposite us that bore the large slightly weatherbeaten but nonetheless handsome face of a middleaged man, rendered in clumsy thick brushstrokes. He had blue eyes which seemed to be staring right at us. Turned out that he was a very famous french singer which Pierre Louis was astounded that i'd never heard of.
On the journey back, the sun was just beginning to set. It was orange behind the clouds, and trying it's hardest to send it's warm peach coloured rays to us, despite the overcast weather. On the batobus, Pierre-Louis put his arm around me. I'm not at all attracted to him, but it seemed like a fairly pleasant gesture, since it was not too presumptuous and seemed a friendship gesture more than . I think at some point I'll have to slip into the conversation that I have a boyfriend, but i'd hate it if this would mean that he was less eager to hang out with me.
I have seen a small article in the local paper saying that this sunday in a small town which i haven't heard of, but which is nevertheless not too far from my house, that there is a play showing. A play in which all the characters are played by LIFE SIZE PUPPETS. I have to go. I don't want to go on my own. I must go with Pierre-Louis, since I know no-one else.
I'll keep you updated.

a trip to RENNES

Rennes is where i'd initially wanted to be stranded in france. However, I was quite randomly allocated my little town. At five past eleven today, I went to the little train station  and bought a ticket en route for excitement and discovery: Rennes.
I wrote a letter to my best university friend, who is currently located up in the cold northernmost outpost of civilization: Newcastle, England. I sat opposite a curly haired little girl who looked about eleven. I'd watched her anxious parents put her on the train and wave at her encouragingly through the glass for about five minutes while waiting for the train to depart. She kept staring at me in that innocent burning-gaze curiosity that only children can get away with, peeping at the letter which i was writing in enticing multi-coloured fine tip pens. I guess I to her was the mysterious romantic novelesque indapendant girl who captured her imagination. I was always fascinated by older girls at her age in any case, and the world they inhabited, so unknown to me.
When i arrived, my friend was at the station to meet me. We've met up three times now, and i hope is this transforming our aquaintance into a friendship, although i still feel nervous about making conversation flow. Being one on one does force you to bond whether you wish too or not. She's friendly to me and seems to enjoy our meet ups as much as me, which is important, as I'd hate to think i was boring her. She seems to have a dry yorkshire sense of humour to go with her accent, and has a rather cynical tone and mild hostility to the world which perhaps hints at an underlying malcontentment.
We got the metro to the city centre and enjoyed a crepe in one of the brilliant crepe cafes located in a pretty square. In the middle of the cobbled square was a fantastical carousel, which at night became illuminated with yellow-white bulbs flashing and glowing in the darkness invitingly. Rows of tables were layed out in the square- a book fair. I bought Victor Hugo's "Notre-dame de Paris" and a book by Japanese author Ryu Murakami, translated into french. Now it's just a matter of reading them.
We browsed round a few shops, including a dusty narrow DVD store. Up a couple of stone steps a heavy door led into this library of film, our arrival announced by a jangly hanging door-chime. I wasn't interested in buying a film- really I just wanted to stroke the cat. I had visited him on my last visit to Rennes, and this truly witchy cat had enticed me back.
He was sat ontop of an old bulky computer monitor, and when i roused him he miaowed at me with sleepy pleasure. I asked his owner- a grey haired but surprisingly young looking, friendly-vampire? shop-owner his name. The cat's name i mean: it was Grim.
Grim got up and stretched for me. He was missing tufts and fur and you could see his greyish skin stretched over his skeleton underneath. He was friendly and loveable despite his appearance, and he invited me to stroke him and purred deeply, and with a certain wisdom of the world, i thought.

being an artist's unpaid muse

Upon returning from lycée, I found my little-used French mobile phone clogged up with nagging voicemails from the sixty-odd-year-old sailor turrned artist who occupies a little art studio near the port in my little town. I decided to submit to his begging, and pay him a small visit.
His art studio is a square room with a little table covered in a colourful woven silk tablecloth. There is a window in which he has created a haphazard display of his sculptures, exhibited alongside a clutter of found-junk, including a mexican hat and a random book with chinese caligraphy on the cover. These objects are presented on shelves and pedestals, surrounded by brightly coloured scrunched-up tissue paper.
Inside his flat/studio, there is a blow-up mattress leaning against the wall, and a long sideboard cluttered with the tools of his trade- flowers, paintbrushes, tubes of paint, books, and sculptures made out of clay.
A recurring theme in his recent sculptures, which he has been busily crafting in my absence is the figure of a young girl. He portrays her naked, displaying her skinny gold-painted body proudly, moulded and dried rock-hard in various suggestive positions, thin clay legs spread apart, back arched, just the pert naked sculpted bottom and an elbow making contact with the ground, balancing the thing.
This is a depiction of me. I am now an artist's muse. He tells me that some of his previous sculptures sold for sums in the thousands. I'm not sure if this is fact, or just a tale to impress. The jumbled array of stories that he throws me give me a glimpse into his past life, but the narrative jumps and falters, like a scratched DVD. He has lived in the poshest neighbourhood of Paris with a rich model, he has lived in London and the list of mildy famous people who have entered his life is as long as it is unimpressive to my untrained ear. He has been close friends with the greatest sailors in history, those who win races and make round the world circumnavigations.
These tales do render him with a fantastical glow that leaves me more impressed than i would otherwise be, and i think he is aware of that.
He is obsessed with me, and has made me promise to keep our little friendship a secret, which i can somewhat understand in a small gossipy town. I don't doubt him when he says that he will contain his adoration and suppress his desire to make love with me. I wish he wouldn't tell me these desires of his, because they thoroughly disgust me.
I have made the somewhat unwise decision to agree to do a film with him. He tells me that he has made films in the past, which were a succcess, but am i to trust his words? He is somewhat rambling and insists that i stay at his flat for longer than i would freely do so, pestering me for "just another half hour more" while i am itching to spring up and leave. He asks me questions and doesn't seem too interested in the response.
He offered to give me a massage, so i agreed. It's a perfectly innocent and quite enjoyable thing. I told him to massage my neck, which gives me constant achy pain, and my feet, which were cold and overworked as always, but of course he didn't rest "there. I would absolutely draw the line at touching me anywhere that a professional masseur would not, and i think he was aware of that, because he stayed just about in the boundries of decency. I won't let him massage me again though, the whole thing was quite sordid and even though quite innocent, the desire which carroused through his wrinkled old hands and made itself known on contact with my flesh was somehow painfully offensive to me.
He suggested, over our dinner of pasta cooked with egg, tomato and basil (a fantastic meal, and certainly money-saving for me) that maybe one day i would agree to make love with him, even just as an experience, not as a love-binding agreement, just as something which one should experience in one's life. I told him I'd already had plenty of lovers and experiences, and didn't have need for any more, as well as my unshakeable faithfulness to the boy who i love. I might have added, following his probing, that my "number" certainly couldn't be counted on the fingers of both hands, which has probably made him mark me down as an easy catch and increased his hopeless and somewhat disgusting efforts to seduce me.
What sucks about being a woman of your word, which i am, is that you have to follow through with things you don't really feel like doing, simply because you promised you would. I am not a promise-breaker, and in any case, he's made me write and sign contracts for all our artistic projects in biro.
Being a man of my word, sometimes conflicts with my desire to be sincere. I value sincerity highly. If one isn't sincere, one must at least have a fabulous and stylish facade to earn my respect.

Bellydance class

So i returned after a week of joyful friendship, noise, bustle, love and reverting-to-childhood chez mes parents.
Returning home for a week had been a last minute decision, but a very good one, since i had a couple of the best weeks i've had since September, despite getting run down with a lingering infection. Exhausted and with grey hoops under my eyes, panting at the slightest exertion, i was nevertheless radiant with joy.
Landing in France made my face droop on both sides. Nantes is the most dull city i have ever seen. Maybe i should get to know it better before i pass such harsh judgment though. From what i saw, i was little impressed. Tall off-white, architectually-hideous buildings lowering in the grey mist-rain. I was glad to get on the train, but resentful to get off at the tiny little station platform of my nowhere-town.
I swooshed back into town in a jangling frenzy of gypsy skirt. A few days in manchester had opened my eyes to the dreariness of the dress here. I have seen very few alternative people, which is to say that most people strive to present themselves to the world as madame or monsieur normal, and the result is a grey faceless mass of people. Of course, it is up to me, with my "insightful" blog, to find the glittering jewel in the mass of sand, to unearth the freakish qualities lurking repressed under the calm-water surface and present it to you, as a meaningless case-study.
I felt hideous coming back into town in my gypsy skirt, my face speckled with rain. I walked down the grey main road and everything was miserably familiar. The skirt was no longer reminicent of a-thousand-and-one-nights oriental mystery, but in fact made me think of the heavy baggy skirts maman used to wear when she was pregnant, farts seeping unnoticed into the mass of excess material. I felt even more weighed down and hopeless.
Then i decided to fight against glumness. To take opportunities, not to sit around speculating cynically about what might be done, if one had more panache and energy. This new outlook is so far going well, but any slight relapse into my old ways might send me into a fit of remorseful sobbing, we shall have to wait and see.
Today at bellydance class, i half longed to talk to the people around me, but was prevented by some inner block. The most simple block being the realisation that i had nothing that i sincerely wanted to say to any of them. The second was the language barrier walling me in to my own skin, the third being the other women, who were all older than me, and therefore terrifying.
The class involved wiggling about in organised lines in front of a wall-mirror. The instructor is an arabic-looking woman with bleach blonde hair and a divine stomach. Maybe it's my slight belly-fetish that compels me to belly dancing? Also it amuses me that it's such a women-only event. If rugby is a testosterone scented sport, bellydancing reeks of estrogen. Perhaps it's all that focus on the belly, the baby-carrying belly. Looking at the large rounded woman-shaped bellies around me i was reminded of my womanlylessness. Around me jangling coin belts preceded the thrust of well rounded hips which protruded from bodies like teapot handles. My own figure was more like an androgynous worm wriggling imperceptibly in it's final death throws. I tried not to lose hope though, although my mind, caged in with it's thoughts kept turning over self-pitying thoughts about how miserable it is to be a foreigner- to not understand what people are saying and to feel humiliated on a daily basis.
At the end of the class, i smiled at a particular girl and gave her a shy wave, she smiled back with her weird teeth. From the first class, me and this girl have been catching each others eyes in the large mirror. My intuition told me straight away that she was a lesbian, and a non-sexual fascination drew me to her. Every lesson we'll peek at each other shyly in the mirror, but we have yet to really exchange words.