Feelings and Thoughts, 2003, by Topolino

I miss my dog. He died over two years and a half ago… It seems much longer than that. I miss him terribly.   I was 10 when my father gave him to me. I opened the door and there he was, a small head with two glittering and frightened eyes coming out of my father’s jacket. “Only milk and biscuits and a small box for him to sleep in – that’s all you need for him”, my father had said in order to convince my mum it was easy to keep a dog. From that night on he slept only in my bed and ate nothing but meat J. For 16 years. We grew up together; or rather I grew up because he always stayed the same cute little thing, always so playful and so young and so full of joy and life. I wouldn’t say he was like a brother or like a friend. Nothing like that. The truth is that he was my dog, I was his owner. He was mine, I was his. We were one.  I left him. After 15 years.  I came to
London. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I thought that my move wasn’t for good. Or that he would never die?! While I was packing he was climbing into my bags… I was so amused at the time, now I think of it and it breaks my heart. He wanted to come with me…. During the first year of my absence his health got worse and worse; in the summer I went home for my vacation, I saw him, I played with him, but it wasn’t like it was before. I wasn’t even sure he recognized me. Or maybe he was upset with me. Or maybe he was just very sick. One month after my visit he died.This dog, this tiny being, brought so much love and joy into my life and I am not sure if I gave him back enough. Or maybe I did but then I screwed everything up in the last year of his life.

Money well spent

Many are the things in life on which I could spend less. The mobile phone bill, to use a prime example, closely followed by food that ends up in the bin.

What can I say, one should talk less… One should also stop going to the supermarket straight after work before dinner time. How else can I explain enough vegetables, milk and ready made meals to feed the Russian army? Bought by ONE person who lives mostly on her own.

Anyway, now that I have identified where I should start cutting down, please do not for a minute think that the purpose would be saving for killing a debt, buying a bigger flat or a car maybe. Oh no! I know exactly where my expired milk money will go from now on. The little things in life. The really important ones, though: the beauty salon, weekends away and pretty much identical shoes that come in different colours ( and sizes, depending on how brave I feel)….

What prompted me to write this article, you might think? Well, here’s why: I came home all excited about all the free pampering that I was going to do MYSELF. Why pay £20 and look decent, when you can pay nothing AND end up looking like a cross between Vanilla Ice and Marilyn Manson?… Do you see where I’m going with this? Saving in the wrong places is contra-productive. It’s a buying-a-fake-Prada bag-type of experience. The effect will never be the same as the real thing.

Similarly, I am going on a lovely trip to Istanbul tomorrow. Why stay for two nights in a nice, well recommended hotel, when I can spend twice as long and as much in a posher one?

And the golden shoes that I bought the other day, yes they are identical to the pink ones I had before, but why fix it if it ain’t broken? They are comfortable, pretty and, very importantly, flat – which saves me and/or my boyfriend the embarassment of a suddenly obvious height difference. One of us, and I won’t mention who, is taller than him…

I guess this is a mini manifest for indulgence vs. reasoning, for quality vs “makeshift-ness”, for living life to the full. Is the equivalent of buying organic food. It’s almost a protest against rules. They say rules are there to be broken and I’m embracing that, wholeheartedly. I suppose there is quite a degree of masochism in this liberation from all things wise. It’s living life on the edge, it’s a dead cert recipe to speeding up the appearance of grey hairs.

But I like it this way. I like not denying myself the little pleasures in life. It makes me happy to spend on something silly than to save. I think that has long been established….

What do you do? Are you wise, balanced or do you spoil yourself rotten and beyond your means? The door for debate is open.

Have a great weekend!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone! Thank you for all your comments during this first blogging week. I look forward to having you back.

Los Ex’s

How do you solve a dilemma like what to do with your “X-men/women” ?

You meet them, you fancy them, you introduce them to your family and friends and for many months you become B & John or B & Pepe. During a significant slice of your life you hold hands, look into each other’s eyes, make plans for the future, you do the “together things” couples do, including the not-so-good idea of slacking on your longtime friendships. Even DIY jobs are romantic when you do it with HIM/HER.

You then hit the “passion-is-kinda-gone-but-thank-God-for-the-bond-we-built” stage. You finally admit that modern art galleries aren’t really your thing, nor do you enjoy listening to The Libertines and you are much happier humming away to George Michael’s Faith ( well I guess it will be NICE/if I could touch your boooody…).

Then, for many reasons ( boredom, jealousy-fuelled arguments, imperdonable acts, differences of ambitions) you decide on going your separate ways. Fine, if they weren’t worthy of your sublime love, you leave them behind when you’re done with the sadness, hysterics, begging him/her to come back (usually with a rather low success rate). But what about the ones you did like? Do you stay in touch right away and act like best mates, essentially doing the same things as before but without the sex (which had faded off anyway, towards the end). Do you let some time pass and then you become buddies with them and their new love, gregariously laughing away at remote holidays faux pas back in 1998? When is a good time to get abck in touch? .. Do you still sleep with them if you are (both) single? Hmmm, difficult one.

I am the proud friend of a couple of ex’s. Which is good, because their friendship indicates to my new partner that I am cool. That the previous men in my life have not changed their identity and do not live in Texas under protection with their now re-assured boiling-water-phobic rabbits. If I’m lucky, the topic of why we are not together anymore doesn’t come up very often.

It’s always amazed me over the years how I’ve manged to move on and not blush at some naughty thought from the past when having coffee with an ex.

In the beginning, there’s a bitter-sweet feeling when you morph a romance into a strictly platonic friendship. Basically, a lot of the things you really didn’t want to see happen are now in full swing; like they are happy with someone totally the opposite of you; and when that someone leaves them they come to you to cry on your shoulder rather than telling you that you were the best. But with time, I’ve come to cherish these friends. They are different and they are great and there is a beauty to not leaving those people in your past. I am sure many of you will agree. I have moved on from tearing up the pictures by the sea to carefully putting them in an album. Not a frequently re-visited one, but one that is THERE.

HAPPINESS – a genuine question

I’ll start by asking you all a question. Are you happy? “Wow, this is too big a start, I don’t want to think about this right now, let alone share it with a faceless online community”. But go on, stop for 5 minutes and give yourselves an honest answer. This is not a debate about the concept of happiness, but merely an invitation to inquire into how close you’ve come to your own interpretation of what happiness should be.

I guess I am asking for your friendly help. If you come back voicing doubts and sighing about how you are not where you would have liked to be, I’ll be honest with you: I’ll feel selfishly relieved and reassured. If there are, however, many amongst you who will rejoice in sharing their happiness and inner calm with me, then I’m going to start to think that I am doing something wrong here.

Let me get to the specifics of it all. I am a 32 year old person who – in many outsiders’ eyes – has done well for herself; there is nothing wrong with me or with the way I live my life. I speak a few languages, have relatively good work experience, lived abroad ( in fact, LIVE abroad), have lovely interesting friends, the lot. Also, in spite of an ongoing ( or should I say UPgoing) weight problem, I am not bad to look at. That is, if I scrub up well and part with a few quid at Selfridge’s make-up counters as well as some posh hair salon in town. In fact, reading these lines does cheer me up a little, why lie to you?

If one would have possessed the magic secret of revealing the future and showing me today’s life, I guess the 20 year old dreamer would have been quite chuffed with the prospects, really.

What I am saying is that I dreamt to be where I am, my friends and family think I am in a good place and yet I am not entirely sure about this happiness business. Is that normal? The article on normality will follow soon…

Yes, I know all the cliches, so please spare me the obvious comments of the “the grass is always greener” variety. What does that mean? That we are condemned to a neverending circuit of re-newed sets of ambitions? That we have to eternally “strive” rather than enjoying a perfectly happy complacent life? What do you think? I am more interested in the complacent’s point of view at this stage. Pessimists or overly ambitious characters need not apply. Just kidding, of course. I am open to hearing the success stories out there. After all, I can make mine sound like one if I wanted to.

Taxi Driver(s)

TAXI DRIVER(S)

You come back from abroad and what do you get asked about?

Let’s think:
1) how the food was
2) the landmarks ( “Did you go up the Empire State Building? Only 2 hours in the ticket queue? Lucky you! I was there for 4.”)
3) the weather
4) what you bought (there is often a subtle but questioning look as if to say “anything for me, maybe? possibly?”)

Lately I’ve come to believe that one should also ask about the taxi drivers. No, I have not gone mad, I truly think taxi drivers and their stories are a relevant barometer of aspects of the far away places we visit. More than once have I been tickled by memories of stories heard from them. A delightful shot of such-and-such culture in a 15 minute car ride. A refreshing lack of political correctness, rarely encountered in our overly cautious times.

As an experiment, I am going to mention some conversations with men and women driving me around throughout my trips abroad. I am not going to say where they are from, I’ll let you guess that. I am confident you won’t be far off. And thus you will be proving my point. Taxi drivers are indeed a good way to start to know the culture you emerge yourself into during a trip abroad.

Here it goes:

“TAXI DRIVER: Where do you live?
B: London
T.D: Oh, it’s terrible over there, isn’t it?
B: Have you been?
T.D: No, but I have heard a lot about it and it’s terrible.
B: The weather may not be the best, but it is a great place to live in.
T.D: I’ll tell you, miss, ours is the best place to live in. We have the best food, the best lifestyle, you name it, it’s the best. You should move here. Now let me tell you all about my daughter’s upcoming wedding…”

So? Where was I? Apart from it being “the best place in the world, nothing like terrible London”….

Moving on:
“TAXI DRIVER: Where to, miss?
B: Such and such hotel, thanks.
T.D: OK ( followed by 25 minutes of polite silence)
B ( paying and getting off): Thank you!”

What about this one? :0)

Next:
“TAXI DRIVER ( driving a car which looks nothing like a taxi, still wonder why I kept getting on those): Hello, miss, where to?
B: Pretty much the other side of town from where you are heading.
T.D: No worries, I just got off work, but I could do with the extra cash, so I’ll take you anywhere.
B: How do you manage?
T.D: Well, I have a family to maintain and can’t make ends meet. So if I see someone waving a car down I’ll take them anywhere for USD 5.00. We’re lucky that the taxi network in our city is completely disorganized and allows us to make a living. Be it as unpredictable and exhausting as it is.”

Or:
“B: Could you please take me to this place which I know is half a mile from here but have no idea how to get to?
TAXI DRIVER (with an irritated sigh): Ok. Actually, No, I can’t!
..and he drives off with an angry pout.”

One last one:
“TAXI DRIVER ( speaking with a thick foreign accent): Where to, please?
B: To this restaurant in the centre, in this place that everyone and their mother know…
T.D ( with a puzzled look on his face and driving like the wind past the place): Excuse me, I don’t know where is it…
B ( giving it a shot): Do you speak Russian?
T.D ( relieved): DA!”

You see, to me, these slices of local lives are priceless. It’s not about someone leading you into forming an opinion. It’s about hearing a personal story or observing an attitude. Pay attention next time you are in a taxi abroad. They make for good social observations, even if I would not go as far as calling them representative.

I’ll be waiting for your guesses.

WHERE TO, MISS?