It's December! Looking at the stats page i have to try and get more pageviews this month than the last in order to keep my little statistics line rising.
Today I'm feeling absolutely horrible. Itchy eyes and a headache that won't cease. Feels like my head is being tapped constantly with a spoon like a boiled egg. Hopefully it'll get better.
Last night I went out to a bar in the town called le contretemps. They had a live band, which was two men playing a saxophone and a trombone. They had a sort of backing track going too. They were quite young, stylish bearded types, and spiced up their act by occasionally blowing through big conch shells and recording the sound to play back repeatedly. With the headache just starting to take root, it was really the last thing i could cope with. Was so loud that i couldn't hear anything that people were trying to say to me, which was annoying, since what's the point in socialising with people if you can't communicate with speech? What else is there to do? smell one another?
It seemed that everyone was getting along very nicely, except me, who sat on the sofa a little away from everyone else, twisting my hands in my lap with awkwardness.
I had decided to introduce my spanish au-pair friend (Marta) to the only other assistant in Auray (a half-italian girl called Laura). Laura turned up with her spanish housemate, and Marta brought along the other au-pair she works with, an italian girl. Thus, everyone fell to excitedly communicating in their own languages, and the odd number of us meant that i was paired off with nobody. There was a bookshelf behind me with books in English, so i paired myself off with a huge book by Satre. I couldn't understand it though, not with all the din and the headache blossoming in my brain.
I felt bad for making myself antisocial and knew that the others would be feeling mildly guilty for not talking to me, while at the same time resentful at feeling obliged to break off the exciting conversations that they were having with their compatriots. I tried to talk to people a little, but i had to shout over the music and my throat was hoarse, added to the fact that it is hard to pretend to be bright and happy and sociable when one is in pain.
I texted my greek friend from university, (shall we call her Lena- she is quite a private person, so i don't think she would appreciate stumbling across her real name online) Eternal source of comfort that she is, she advised me to just say my opinion, even if i have nothing to really say. Ask the italians whether they like the film Cinema Paradiso, and turn the conversation to philosophy, ask them what they believe in. Find out about them, and realise at the end that you've managed to avoid revealing a thing about yourself. Lena seems to effortlessly gain the trust, confidence, and friendship of whomever she chooses.
By the time she texted back, however, I'd made my excuses and wandered off into the night. The town centre was illuminated with fairy lights strung up high across the streets. It was the first of December, and the first night of sparkly christmas fairy-light magic.
I got home and wrapped myself up in blankets in bed. I lit candles and instead of logging on to skype, read books, which was a far more comforting activity. Perhaps, i should do book reviews? I finished off reading the collection of short stories (well, three of them) by H.P. Lovecraft, that my boyfriend gave me as a gift when i visited home for half term. They are all very creepy, but mildly ridiculous horror stories. The final one, which i read while nursing my headache, was about a couple of macabre grave robbers, who take delight in the gruesomeness and romanticism that they think their hobby holds. After stealing a cursed amulet from a graveyard in Holland, the spirit of a dog starts to follow them around- they hear barks at night and strange footprints appear in the snow.... All the stories seemed to have someone being pursued by an unknown evil while it slowly destroys them.
He is a strange one, my boyfriend, maybe i should give him a name, because i don't like refering to him with the posessive pronoun all the time, as though he is someone who belongs to me, like a pet. Let's call him Beau then, inkeeping with the french theme and sounding like the real first syllable of the name he goes by. A few weeks ago, I said that i didn't believe in faeries, and he threw a tantrum and hung up the skype on me! (If you care to disagree with me, you can write me a little essay about why faeries do exist in the comments.) Important to note that he was somewhat drunk at the time, but also worth noting that he is a quarter of a century old.
I agree that there are many things which science has yet to prove, and just because they are not yet proven does not mean that we can say definitively that they don't exist. Ghosts, faeries, spirits living in a realm parallel to our own, yet invisible to the human eye. Maybe there is a world unseen co-existing with this one, home of faeries and all those other mythical creatures?
He told me that he once emptied an ash tray over someone's head in a rage, after telling them to stop repeating "faeries don't exist". Something about that phrase deeply upsets him, he said. I tried to suggest that maybe clinging to this belief in faeries hints at a psychological issue, an unwillingness to let go of childhood, or perhaps the desire to re-create a childhood in later life that was missed at the time.
He cut me off, however, telling me that nothing i said would dissuade him from these beliefs, due to the fact that he has seen faeries in real life, while completely sober and not at all under the effects of hallucinatory substances. Once while waiting for a tram at the big shopping centre in my city, the other time while sitting on a patch of grass in the town centre of my city with his girlfriend. (Do faeries only show their faces in Sheffield?)
The last sighting, he said was shared with his ex-girlfriend, who said that she saw the same thing at the same time, a floating flash of colour, flapping wings, a faery. I refuse to believe it, as anything which links them together makes me feel irrritated. I doubt we would ever have such a spiritual connection for creatures from the other realm to materialise to the both of us. Therefore i prefer to screw up my face and say that they can keep their mutual delusions to themselves, i want none of that lunacy.
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