This is a letter which i wrote to a very good friend who also reads this blog. I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing it here. It's just that I described all my recent activity in it, and I don't want to have to repeat myself. There's nothing too personal in it about him.
Dear Mr K,
Why do you not reply to me?
Do you even receive these letters? You are a vague but essential source of hope and communication to the outside world. I sit here, on my barren desert island, and cast these messages, rolled up and pushed into an old bottle, into the ocean, hoping that the waves will carry my words to you.
Only joking. The situation isn't that extreme, but every day I do run to my metal mailbox only to find it full of letters which arn't addressed to me.
I've only been back here a week and it feels like forever. My Spanish au-pair friend has yet to surface. She was due to arrive back yesterday, but her phone has been going direct to answerphone.
The other day, I mooched to the little primary school to face three hours of hovering around awkwardly next to the teacher (who is the one really leading the lesson) occasionally being used to demonstrate the "proper English pronunciation) and then have her get confused because my accent doesn't correspond with the crisp newsreader pronunciation she learned from "Teach yourself english" CDs
Sometimes I feel quite superfluous in the classes, but hey, I'm getting payed for it.
The cute children always cheer me up though. I always leave school at the end of the day feeling bouncy and happy. I don't know how they do it. I guess you can't stay unhappy when surrounded by such sweet innocent cheeky little people who ask the cutest questions.
At the weekend, I was determined not to just spend all my free time in grubby chain smoking isolation, so I called up a sweet boy called Renan who I met on the train one time. He's twenty on, has a certain playful innocence, very blonde hair and very brown eyes, and lots of muscles, which contrast with his baby-face.
He wants to join the French air force, but must do lots of rigourous exams and training if he wants to get selected.
At the moment, he's unemployed, and so has lots of free time to show foreign girls around his city- which is Nantes.
Unfortunately, as he lives with his parents, I couldn't stay over, so it was there and back in the same day. Nantes is almost two hours from my dull little town. It has a magnificent castle, and a big, but not exceptional cathedral.
We ate at a fast-food, "pasta in a cardboard carton" type restaurant, and he showed me all the perfumes he owns in a cosmetics shop. I've never known a boy who owns so many fragrances, and all the expensive ones too.
He didn't try anything with me, was I was grateful for, since I didn't really fancy him. He kept getting phone calls from an irate sounding female, so I assumed that was probably his girlfriend.
On the train home, two guys came and started playing cards next to me. We were sat on one of those "four seats and a table" places.
After repeating the sentence anxiously in my head, I asked them "What are you playing?" I hoped it would be blackjack, I remember I had a bit of talent for that, when we gambled together on that machine. But it was poker. I tried to join in anyway, and did indeed have beginners' luck, beating them several times in a row.
One of them told me they were headed to Quimper, (a fairly big town on the end of the railway line) He was a rapper/singer and had a gig in a club.
The other guy was a childhood friend, who was coming to see his mate perform for the first time.
They invited me to accompany them. The rapper dude had that air of superiority and self-assured confidence tempered with a vague hint of aggression. I didn't think he was a bad person as such, but someone who might fly off the handle if provoked and challenged. He had that look in his eyes.
I thought, why not? So I agreed to go with them. I got off the train in my town, dolled myself up, and then got on the next train to join them.
And so followed a night of only half understanding the rapid and very slangy conversation (in French). The rapper said his producer paid for him to stay in a hotel, and for him and his entourage to eat out in a fine restaurant. I now formed part of this entourage, which was an interesting situation to suddenly find myself in.
(I have to go and teach an eleven year old boy in a private lesson now- so see this as a little interval, like they used to have at the cinema)
I'm back. Now it's the evening, and I'm sat in my attic. I'm going to make some "slop" as Miss James always used to refer to her slapdash cooking. Rice, vegetables and curry sauce out of a jar all mixed together. I know, I know, it's not very French.
I wish you were here and we could eat together. Drag my desk into the centre of the room. Sit on unmatching chairs, and position tea-lights seductively around the room.
Anyway, I was telling you about my weekend. This rapper called himself Tj (Tee-Gee) Soundz and I've never met anyone so pretentious (aside- ok maybe that's a bit unfair. I hope he doesn't come across this piece of slander after treating me to dinner and all). Since I had no idea of his vague fame, I treated him like anyone else. The club was in the middle of the dark countryside, and we had to drive twenty minutes down dark country roads to get there.
Our driver was a gorgeous french woman of albanian origin (I only found this out later by facebook)
She had dark blonde hair and fake tan (or maybe real?), impeccable make up (I later found out she works in Sephora on the make up counter. Which is the shop where my friend in Nantes was going mental with all the perfumes- we left that shop stinking.) and stylish clothes (dressed all in black in jeans and a tight-fitting jumper)
I overheard and half-understood a conversation in which I think , but am not sure, she said that she was safe from the tainted batch of "toxic" implants which have been causing such a stir on the french news, because she had hers done in Tunisia. Boobs, that is. She looked older than her apparant thirty years though, probably because of her unfortunate hairstyle and tan, which made her look like a "Desperate Housewife".
I'm always shy of older women, and often I'm right, they do scowl at me. But she was brilliant. Driving to the club TeeGee and she sang to whichever song came to mind, often in French so I couldn't join in, but there was a sweet rendition of "Let it be" as we swerved along country roads.
She told me she neither drinks nor smokes, because she "doesn't like the way drink changes people", but despite her sobriety, when we got to the club we had fun together, although we didn't really chat at all.
We either danced, or slumped in the corner re-gaining our energy. She was right, drink does change people, and soon enough we were being harassed by a Turkish dude, who kept saying "I love you" to me, in heavily accented English.
TeeGee himself tried to persuade me to kiss him "just for a laugh, between friends" but I refused. Then this horrible little teenager who he was sat with turned her malicious little face to me and declared that she wanted to kiss me too, in an almost bullying way.
I ran away to dance, and did an obscene little performance on the pole. The night ended at half seven a.m. and I was glad.
So there you go. There's always more to write but I'll save it til next time. Now i want to hear all your news. How are you my precious, unique and sparkling Paul-cake? How is your health doing these days? What have you been reading? What have you been writing? Does your brother have a date for the wedding? Do you have a crush on anyone? Are you still going to university? How do you feel?
Please write back, whenever you find the time,
Here's sending you good vibes, and ducks
Susie (I might as well admit that that's my name since it's in the blog address which i can't change now)
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