Other reasons to give up smoking

- It's cold outside.

- If, like me, you own a crappy lighter, you end up with a sore blister on your right thumb.

- You tend to date smokers only, not to feel too self-conscious about your breath. Dramatically reduces the possibilities.

- You get in trouble with your family.

- Spending more than 24 hours with your parents makes your teeth yellow, because you are left with no choice but chew on those awful nicotine gums in order not to commit murder.

- If you are as clumsy as I am, you regularly set random things on fire. Especially your hair. (or how to quickly get an original and unique layered cut)
A friend of mine is well-know for having got rid of her nose hair when her lighter exploded. Her words: "It smelled of burnt pork for weeks!"

- You sweat a lot more through customs at the airport when you know you are bringing much more cheap cigarettes back in the country than technically and legally allowed.

- You are ten times more likely to catch a cold than a non-smoker, because since the smoking ban, the amount of time you spend outside has been multiplied by ten.

- You get chatted up by those awful guys who would never dare to do it if you weren't happening to be having a fag at the same place at the same time.




I'll update when I find new ones. In the meantime, I'm going out for a smoke.

Being social

Last night with French Guy didn't happen. For the "good" reason I fell asleep in the bath and woke up in cold water three hours later. Lovely.

And a shame, really. Our next meeting is postponed until Wednesday. I can't wait, all this internet/phone foreplay is driving me nuts.
And what can I say, except that when we eventually see eachother, any sort of conversation might be slightly compromised...
It's getting worrying; how can you make any kind of relashionship develop "normally" if each time, you are both literally starving-craving for the other one that no time is left for words?
Oh well, I'm not going to complain, am I?


Tonight, I'll be catching up with Liz and the Schmookin Creek.
Even if I am looking forward to it, I am finding my social life a bit overwhelming. Especially after that long-and-intense-and-tiring Europe tour where I caught up with so many good friends, some of them I hadn't seen in years.
It was nice, but emotionally a bit too much, and now I'm back, I am left with a lot of catching up to do amoung my London relations. All my nights are already taken this week, and I don't even have time for a pub night with the Usual Suspects. Let's just say I am lucky that Brooke and Stella are not back yet from their China tour... I really couldn't have coped with a few mad clubbing nights on top of it all.

London

London

I swear the tube carriages have not seen anyone grinning that much since the seventies. I am so glad to be back that I would have been jumping around for the past half-hour if hadn't it been for my extreme exhaustion. I've been up for 10 hours and had three meals already today, and it's only 12.

To make things even better, as I opened my inbox, French Guy had left me the sweetest/sexiest message. Ok, I'm really happy with that, but not to the point I could gather enough strengh to jump around either... I barely managed to empty my suitcase into the laundry machine, and I'm feeling really proud for that.

I'm off to a well diserved and well needed bath. Then I'll think about tonight's proposition...

I am back at the hostel. You might think I'm a silly and blasé tourist, who'd rather be blogging about instead of visiting Oslo, but the reason I came back so early is that the said hostel is located on the highest hill around, and I wanted to see the sunset over the city and the harbour. The sight is absolutely breath-taking and I have been taking pictures for the past half-hour.

Another reason for my early return was the bloody cold outside. Sorry, but I can't hang around the streets for that long by minus I-don't-want-to-know-how-many degrees, especially knowing that I shall be leaving the hostel tomorrow at 4am latest. Bracing.


This, and if I want to be really honest, I somehow thought that the earlier I'd be in bed tonight, the sooner the day on which I'm coming back to London would arrive.

After almost three weeks away, I am entirely, completely, totally looking forward to it. I am usually the kind of person who feels at home wherever she goes (and that helped me a lot seeing how much travelling I did since I was 16), but I have to say, I never felt so much at home like in The House. Might be somehow related with the fact that I never lived for that long in any place before, even for half that time...
And I miss it.
I can picture it from here: my room, my futon, my bath, my bed, my kitchen, the Usual Suspects, my friends, "my" places to go out, the shitty but warmer British weather, the "joys" of London transports...

And sex.

It is only fair to say I haven't been getting any since I left, and I am slowly loosing my mind.

I don't know how anyone can disagree with this, but to me, London is the only place where getting laid is that easy. (Unless you need to pay, in that case, go to Amsterdam) I've lived in quite a few capital cities, and let's face it, probably because of its specific drinking culture, London is the world capital of the one-night-stand.

I am not saying that it is difficult to find a willing partner in other big cities -believe me, anywhere is easy as long as there are people around- but merely that the whole dating/casual-drunken sex scene is so normalised it's a wonder the British population hasn't tripled last year.

Anyway, I am loosing my track. I wasn't saying that I couldn't get laid because I was too much used to the London standards, but just that I was very eager to go back to them...
It is not entirely fair to say that I didn't because of constant work and constant travelling, since I always managed to fit everything in while working back home.
I think I didn't because of lack of opportunity, and I didn't really wanted to "go and get the opportunity" either.

And I know, whatever I decide, that I won't have to do that much work on it either once I'm back.

OG is being VERY insistant, even though I only replied to one out of four or five of his messages. I really don't know what I am going to do with that one. I don't even know if I really want to see him again. It's been so long! What if I give in, open the door to him, only to take a good look and say: "Sorry darling, I don't think I desire you anymore"? It would be so bad for my karma that I'd probably have to retire in a convent straight away.

And French Guy...
Who writtes me how glad he is to know I'll be back soon, but at the same time reminds me he's still in the middle of his exams, hence can't really do anything before next week-end. (This being said, it suits me perfectly well, as my period is due anyday now.)
Still I don't know what to do with all his mixed messages, and I'd like to see him again very soon, especially if a shag like the last one we had is in the cards...

Cannes to Oslo

Cannes was a bliss. I did nothing but catching up with A, long walks on the sunny beach, window shopping (too skint to actually shop in Vuitton), getting a new haircut (I am still wondering if it wasn't a mistake, seing the result is very close to the haircut I got rid of at the beginning of the nineties), watching the first season of Lost, and smoking pot on the balcony with A and his friends.
My idea of a holiday. Of a well needed break.


Still, on Friday morning, again for work related reasons, I had to fly to Oslo.
After spending the first flight to Copenhagen thinking I was going to die with my fellow passengers, and looking for an island by the window (bad luck, it was the Alps!) because of way too many turbulences than required -I know I shouldn't have watched Lost the night before- I very classily threw up in a plastic bag on the second flight.



But when we landed, what a change from Cannes and Nice!
There are no thermometers around, and I think it's a state decision to avoid mass suicids amoung Norwegians.
It's so cold that if you go out for a cigarette, you can rest assured that your two fingers holding the fag will stay in the same position until you next need one. Useful.
I am sporting not one, not two, but four big bruises on my ass because of the number of times I landed on it thanks to the black ice.
Yesterday, with some collegues, we were trying to work out how many hours of daylight the Norwegians could claim to have everyday, and we came to the conclusion it didn't go past 4 hours a day.
And I am sharing a room in a hostel with the largest German girl I've ever met, whose number of decibels she produces while snoring, I swear, is proportional to her size.


Still, I am enjoying it a lot. Today is my last day here before I fly back to London tomorrow (YEY!), I don't have to work, and I woke up this morning to find it had snowed a tremendous amount during my sleep.
I am probably going to bring home the biggest cold ever, since my inner child, faced with that much snow this morning, couldn't help but have a snowball fight with a friend of mine who's staying here as well. All on the way to breakfast, before the sun rose, and still in PJs.

I am coughing already.
But it is still early in the morning, and I first went online to work out which kind of tourism I shoud do today...

I realise I am growing a very distinct English behaviour towards the weather.

In the way that whenever the rain stops, and the weather can be described as vaguely sunny, I will be the first outside and take my sunglasses out of my bag as fast as any character out of a Western film would take his gun out.

I've been living in England for too long now not to consider the sun as an amazing and rare opportunity to be outside.
My friends here thought I was a real freak when I proudly said I had spent the morning outside in the sun: "But it's January!"

And then what? It's sunny, warm, I'm on a vacation, and right after my coffee, I am taking a book with me and will go and read on the beach. Little does it matter to me, if the French around here think it's too early in the year to do this, it means I'll have the beach for myself!

Cannes at A's

I am right now sat in the sun, wearing only a night gown and sunglasses, on my best friend A's balcony in Cannes. I can see the sea from here, and it looks blue and wonderful, and makes me regret we're still in January. Still, it is such a nice change from Berlin!

I've known A for four years now, and he is still the only person on earth with whom I can be completely myself, and probably the only person who knows me so well he can predict what I am about to do or say. The only person who is "like family" to me. (The one person I can be comfortable with without wearing any make-up, which means a lot seing how lost I feel without my eye-liner...) Almost a year we hadn't seen eachother. God, I missed him so much!

A is my true sibling. We met during our first study year in London, and were for eachother the only thing which made those two very harsh years possible to go through. I remember, at night, during our many insomnia nights, when we were too skint to go out and couldn't meet in our hostels because of our respective room-mates, we would, during summer time, sit down at a random bus stop with ice creams from the local Food and Wine and talk for hours, whereas, during winter, we would get on the first night bus where at least we wouldn't be in the cold weather, and go around London for hours.

I also remember the day I started smoking, and didn't want to tell him in order not to smoke when we were together -most of the time- and told it first to my friend Stella, who started to laugh and explained me A had told her the exact same thing five minutes ago... We started exactly the same day at the same time, in two different cities, without consulting eachother! How many cancer sticks did we share since!!

I also recall fondly how hard it was to explain to my then boyfriend that he shouldn't be jealous, but that A meant the world to me, and that he could consider himself very lucky because for the first time, I had ignored my best friend's advice to be with him! A happened to be right in his disapproval because that relashionship left me considerably hurt and resentful...

I helped him coming to terms with his sexuality (he now assumes perfectly well the fact he's bisexual) and he helped me cope with all my family/food issues...

Sometimes, at the risk of sounding cheesy-sentimental, I really wonder where I would be and what I would be doing right now if I hadn't met him.

He came to Berlin to join on my last day of work there on Sunday. We stayed in a hostel, which saved me a night at J's place (thank God, although I bought her about a kilogram of chocolates to thank her for her hospitality), and, of course, both having fewer problems money-wise, went out for too many drinks, before catching our plane to Cannes yesterday morning, both tremendously hangover, and both sporting a huge pair of sunglasses!

I'm not actually working here, but, before flying to Oslo, I figured out I might as well spend a few quiet days here (ok, I know, Cannes is not exactly on the way from Berlin to Oslo) instead of crossing back the Channel for such a short time.

I met A's friends here, who are undoubtfully as crazy as the two of us, so get on well with them. I'm already invited to a French birthday party tonight.

Being here in such a nice, warm, French environment makes up for the fact that I am starting to get a bit homesick. And, truth to be said, a bit French Guy-sick as well...
Come on, less than a week to go!

Almost a week here, and I am starting to find the Berlin tube (or S/U bahn) a bit less of a mission, and can now take it on my own without ending up even further from my destination.

So that's almost proudly (at least much more certain of where I was going) that I stepped on the S6 this afternoon and sat down next to that very fit German guy.
Two stops later, he decided to smile at me and it stroke me how similar to Hihes he looked.

I got off the train at the next station, realised I had missed my stop and felt the urge to cry, along with the will to kill Hihes-German-look-alike.

I don't wish to proceed with the introspection any further...

It's all very nice to be working here at the moment. Moreover, I just found a really charming little cafe in Western Berlin where they let you use their wireless connexion if you brought your own laptop. I am planning to stay here until my battery dies.

But I am getting quite bored of the wake-up, work, internet, bed routine. Didn't go out since the Vienna fiasco last week-end, and it is starting to feel really strange. Something needs to be done. But then, I am working early this whole coming week-end as well. But I know I just can't keep going like this!

This morning, I bumped until an old collegue from a London job, we exchanged numbers, and hopefully, she has a little more knowledge about Berlin night life than I do and we should plan something very soon. Like, tonight?


I am still staying with J and Hubbby, and make a point of coming back home only very late at night, to let them time to get the business looked after before my return. Seemed to have worked yesterday... Phew.

Another night like the first ones and I would have started to scream/run around like a mad woman.

All this makes me feel quite eager to come back to London, somehow... I miss the Usual suspects, and being in a country where having a drinking problem is the norm.

I have a longing for something else too, but can't seem to nail it.
Is it French Guy? I'm not sure, but he keeps behaving like the boyfriend, and well, it's all very sweet, but I just can't believe he is genuine. I simply don't want to believe it. If it didn't work out better a few months ago, there must be a reason, right? I wish I'd remember which one.

It's all way too suspicious, and in order to keep myself from going too fast too far with him, I keep in touch with OG. I know I know: Sadomasochism!
And anyway, I'm not really sure I want to see any of OG when I come back. I haven't seen him in ages, and our last facebook conversation quickly went down to yet another row... So I'm starting to think that keeping him where he belongs to (my facebook inbox), is the way to go.

We'll see what happens and who with when I'm back. But I'm dying to find out and waiting another week and a half is doing no good to my already quite bitten nails...

I am "still" in Berlin, and enjoying work a lot even if it's currently taking the best of me and waking up in the morning feels like righteous torture.

It's not that I am sleeping very well either. K, my very first boyfriend, whose place I was planning to crash for the week (even if he's still unaware of my presence in the country) has apparently changed his phone number, and it also looks like he's too busy to check his facebook. In the mean time, I am monopolising his wall with desperate messages and staying at an old collegue's flat, J, in South East Berlin. J is a very nice girl and does everything to make me feel at home, but she lives with her husband with whom communication is nearly impossible as my Hebrew is almost as non existant as my German...

Still he's a nice bloke (and even if I should't be saying that, a very fit one too...) and we share a joint together in the kitchen at night. I thought exhaustion was getting the best of me and was purely hallucinating when I first stepped in the flat as the kitchen table was entirely covered by a whole bunch of weed which wouldn't fit in my suitcase was I willing to take it home through the customs!

Thank God for the weed, though, because I am currently sleeping in a sleeping-bag on the floor of the living room, and should I precise that there is no door separating it from J and her husband's bedroom?
Yup. No door. No curtain. No nothing.

With my luck, of course they both have a high sex drive.
Fortunately, J is not a "screamer", but the hubby is a groaner. And a propper one too.
Lucky me.

So, each night, I lay there for a few hours, wishing I had taken at least a teddy bear with me, and thinking of England, literally. Well, at least of London, and of the lovers who are -or not- waiting for me back home... (Especially with the few messages I keep getting from French Guy and OG) ...and of what I could be doing to them right now.

And right now, I don't have the time/will/energy/German skills/room to be looking for a German one either while I'm here. Although, now I'm thinking about it, surely, in a big capital like Berlin, I could probably find another French one (I'm getting quite addicted to those, you see...).

I just hope that K will make himself known very soon, because I know I'll be insane by Sunday if I stay here, and it would be a shame to pay a hotel room for such a small matter...

I am now a bit everywhere in Europe, and didn't have any easy access to internet until now, so here are my notes day to day...



Friday 11th January 6am, coach to Luton Airport

Ewrg. Honestly, I am full of great ideas! If you're ever running short of a great idea on how to put yourself in a weird/unecessarily stressful/embarrasing/absurd situation, please get in touch. I frankly consider myself as an expert; that's what my life is all about!

Whoever is "upstairs" and gave me all those bright inspirations must have accumulated more serious laugher lines than a weed chain smoker from having so much fun at my expense!

Anyway, -don't listen to me I am probably still drunk- I had to deal with at least two of those specific situations in the past twelve hours... Lucky me!

Let me explain.
Today, I'm flying to Europe for work and probably a few job interviews as well...(let's see how it goes)
When I'm saying Europe, understand Germany, Austria, Italy, Noeway, another country I can't recall right now, all, in no specific order!

It might all sound very glamourous, but believe me, (at the risk of sounding somehow blase) it is not that glamourous when:
-you're doing this for the 70th time of your life,
-you absolutely entirely hate flying, (I gte seriously plane sick twice out of three times, hence my somewhat agressivity at the checking desk when I have to really insist "YES, an aisle seat. NO, NOT a WINDOW one! Understand I NEED emergency access to the bathroom!"
-you have to pay for your flights yourself, which explains why I am currently on a bloody coach to Luton. And, If I arrive on time (had to wait for said coach 50 minutes under the London pouring rain), lucky me, I'll have the great honour of paying eight pounds to enjoy an EasyJet sandwich than even the squirrels in Hyde Park woudn't want of...

But that's not today's topic.

Trying as hard as I can to be organised, when I recieved my plane ticket last week, I immediately put it in the very-important-safely-closing pocket of the handbag I was going to travel with.

Thta's where the problems come in.
That very-important pocket is also the one where I usually keep the condoms and a small bottle of lube...

There you go. On Monday night, as you do, I got somehow so worked up and eager to fuck French Guy's brains out that I threw all the content of the infamous pocket flying across the room... I didn't think about it twice, or not even once, if you ask; I was somewhere in between 5 and 20 orgasms in, so my brain had long ago given up on basic functions.

Until yesterday night, when I realised while finishig packing that my plane ticket and my passport had gone AWOL...

I was tired, stressed out, and really didn't have the time, or the will for any action below the belt, but my only option was to call French Guy and ask if I could pop by to get the papers back. Well, pop by, not exactly, because Monsieur's place is at one hour and fifteen minutes away from mine...

So I braced myself and spent the whole journey on the Hammersmith and Shitty line telling myself "Concentrate, concentrate, get the papers and out of there, you don't have the time for sex!'

Obvioulsym when I got there, it was the hardest part of the task.
Or, litteraly speaking, maybe not exactly. . .

I am proud to say I stayed under control and managed to escape 20minutes later before any action below the belt happened!

Terribly horny and frustrated, I had to take the tube back home. Not fun.
Especially since they decided to make it the Hammersmith and Very Very Shitty line for the night. I had to let to trains go before managing to squeeze myself in. And it was so packed it was pratically impossible to expand your ribcage just enough to gulp some overly smelly air.

Apparently, there was no roo for my bag either.
And no room for me to do anything but scream HOLLY SHIT!! when my bag started to make some weird cracking noises.

Yup. The bottle of lube. Exploded.

Once home, I spent the best part of an hour cleaning up my passport and plane ticket, not easy, since there's nothing on Google on how to do that!
And the papers are still, how would you put it, a mixt in between sticky and slippery.
A good look for me at the desk in a minute if you ask!
This, and the terrible hangover face I must be walking around right now, because, as luck would have it, the Usual Suspects, facing my not-so-good mood, insisted to drag me to the pub " for a very quick pint", which became maybe a dozen pints...
Clearly, I have no will power. And I might have just enough alcohol left in my system to fuel the plane to Hawai instead. Another great idea...
Oh yeah, I forgot, and my current state is sooo going to help with plane sickness!



12:30pm

In Vienna, I was supposed to stay at my good friend V's place who was unfortunately working whole day and couldn't give me her keys to the flat. So I dragged my suitcase along with my old bones from one coffee to the other until 6pm.
After all, Kafe Konditorei are, with Mozart Kugeln (litteraly Mozart's balls) what Vienna is famous for, right?
I did my cultural bit then.



11:30pm, V's neighbour's House Party

I stumble across the corridor, hurt my head against the door handle, eventually manage to crouch down and start searching for my bag and leather jacket amounst the huge pile of coats, scarfs, etc. I find it, struggle for a good five minutes to work out how to put it on with my spinning head, call out "Danke shon!", make my way through the door when I realise someone has managed to re-strip me off my jacket in a pathetic attempt to keep me in the room.
I turn around.

The Russian Guy. Again.
Handsome in a kind of way, but weird in many, many ways... First of all, I'm not even sure he's straight.

"Pleesss! You can't leave naow. Come weet I: Vodka und smoking gestures, ok?
-Fuck off! I'm off my tits and i have to work tomorrow.
-Pleess!"
Obviously, I gave in, but only after warning him that I'd sue him, was I to loose my job because of the hangover which would inevitably follow the next day.
Silly me, I didn't even take his name, but I am proud to say I didn't even loose my job!

Because my memories become kind of blurry from that point on...
I remember smokimg way too much pot with Russian Guy.
I remember trying as hard as I could to remain serious, hence sticking to the Gin tonic -that I was downing by the pint before long...
I remember the music: whoever did the selection was a pure genius!
I remember dancing with all those fit, very fit boys who took their shirt off. (V's neighbour happened to be a ballet dancer and had invited mostly collegues)
I remember catching a glimpse (ok, to be fair, I took more than a good look) of some serious action going on in the bedroom in between God knows how many girls and boys. Not the couple kind.
I remember mentally screaming at myself "NO, no NO! Focus! You're not here to get any action of any sort. You're working early tomorrow, and you are very dedicated to your job, remember?"
But, I also remember myself on a sofa, kissing someone while stroking his perfect torso... The Russian Guy?
Let's hope it was him indeed, because he's the only one whose face I can recall...



Saturday 12th January, 6am, local time

Aaaargh. Things would have been so much better if I had died last night. Quick check: Am on V's sofa. Alone. No naked body around. And am myself fully dressed.
I might start to believe in God.
This, or Russian Guy is gay and still in the cupboard.


7:05am

Amazingly so, I'm at work, and 5 minutes late only!
"SHIT! Anyone knows how I did to get here from my friend's flat?"
Apparently, some collegues saw me arriving in a taxi. Wow! Wise move. I'm self impressed. I just hope I didn't gibe the driver a too generous tip, because I really don't remember anything. Just happen to get my spirits back at work. Meaning am probably still drunk/stoned. Shit.


7pm

"V, I'm sorry but I'm going to bed. Am too old for all this!"
Mental note: Never ever stay at a friend/coke addict's place ever again, unless you're planning to indulge. Being coke free, no way I can keep up.
Even if V is a very nice girl and it saved me loads of money.



Sunday 13th January

No party. Work work work. In a much more civilised state.



Monday 14th January, or official train-day.

What I did and where:

-stocked up on Sudoku books in Vienna.
-smoked a fag in Bratislava.
-slept.
-smoked a fag in Brno.
-took pictures of the landscape through the window.
-smoked a fag in Prague.
-tried to have phone sex with French Guy in the train's toiletten, but gave up after half an hour and no success because I grew bored of "Honey, hang on a minute, here comes a tunnel, I'll call you back!"
-got into a conversation about long distance relashionships with a train controller.
-caught up on notes.
-sudoku.
-smoked two fags in Dresden.
-slept again to wake up my head resting on the shoulder of an obese german woman. Eww.
-slept in the first internet cafe I could find in berlin instead of worrying a bit more about where I am going to stay tonight...

Yes, I got rid of the spider webs! And very nicely so, indeed...

Last night was a pure bliss. French Guy welcomed me with a "Happy new year ma cherie" and sat me in front of a glass of great wine from his father's vineyard, while he was coming to terms with his mushroom risotto.

The risotto was great, so was the wine, and so was the rest. We were all over eachother in between each mouthful...
The risotto polished off, he told me to wait for him for five minutes and disappeared to the bedroom.
Another glass of fabulous wine and two cigarettes later, I decided the five minutes were over and walked upstairs... Monsieur was struggling with dozens of lit candles around the room!

Who said French romance was dead?

I did't fail to notice the addition of mirrors on the ceiling above his bed either...

The sex was great. Amazing. Terrific. I'm running short fo adjectives to describe it.
Which makes me wonder what the heck was going on, because months ago, last time we saw eachother, it wasn't even near to that standard.
But who cares? I lost the count of times I came, and I swear I came once for what seemded twenty minutes.

I saw God numerous times, all the angels, the saints, the clouds... I thought I was having a heart attack and would never be able to breathe normally again...

While I was lying on the bed, smilimg like stupid for the hundredth time and trying to catch my breath, my French lover asked mewhat I was thinking about, and I answered as honestly as I could seeing the state I was in: "I'm far too gone and too high to be able to think about anything right now..."
I'd recommend that feeling to anyone, really.

What a great, great night!

Well, this moring wasn't exactly up to expectations; I had to carry him all the way downstairs into a cab and straight to that osteopath-friend of mine, because it appeared my French lover had thrown his back... WOOPS!

On the way back, I recognised Catherine Towmsend on that carriage of the Hammersmith and Shitty line. She was even more beautiful than the various pictures of her would show, and was carrying what very much looked like a sample for the cover of her new book. Of course I read the title, but I'll keep my mouth shut. I wonder when it'll be in the book shops. I'll be buying it first thing!

Yesterday night, wanting to have a quiet one in, I sent my housemate John to rent a DVD to go with the weed someone left at some point during the past week in The House.
My sudden decision to clean the micro-wave earlier that afternoon was rewarded by my finding a whole bag under it...

John came back with that French author film, Dans Paris, and, before I knew it, I was madly fantasizing about "Jo", one of the main characters; that very charming French guy who spends one day running around Paris as a favour to his depressed brother and ends up accidentally sleeping with three girls on his way...

He awfully reminded me of "my" French Guy, only that mine is even cuter.
Or so I was reminded of him in my stoned haze (John and I had to watch the film twice in a row to eventually understand what was going on...).

So, just before I went to bed, I texted him, welcomimg him back on the other side of the Channel.
He called back exactly 30 seconds later, and I had the great presence of mind to grab a paper and a pen before answering, just to be able to remember the content of the conversation later on...
I couldn't help but laughing when he read out loud a text he received while we were talking and commented:
"What does she want, that one? I didn't even tell her I was back!!!
-Seriously, mon chou, what do you think she wants...?"

Apparently, I didn't sound that bad, because, according to my notes, it looks like he's cooking me dinner at his place tonight.
Nice French food cooked for me tonight, what else can you ask for?
AT LAST, I'm going to get rid of the spider webs I've been growing down there for more than a month now... and, hopefully, nicely so!

Now, I just have to re-find out how to get to his place and go on another Boots mission!

For some unknown reason -and I am seriously starting to believe in karma- the internet connexion our dear neighbours used to generously share with us for most of 2007 suddenly stopped reaching The House. I very much doubt they ever were aware of such generosity, but it looks like they decided to welcome 2008 with a brand new password. It's a shame, really.
Surely, new year resoulitons are supposed to be all about a regain of generosity, but it seems our neighbours didn't see it that way...

That explains why, after defying the night, the cold, the buses, the English keyboard (all with a massive hungover), I am now being charged to sit in front of a screen going back to the last century in that seedy internet cafe...

What about my 2008 resolutions<
I'm not sure, but I hope that "not-making-any-resolution" counts as one...

This whole week seems to have passed in a sort of haze of drinking, dancing, cocktails making, clubbing, etc... to the point I can barely put two and two together and put a specific memory on a specific day.
I guess it was fun though. Except maybe that hungover day when I didn't make it out of bed before 6:30...pm!
Or the night in Turnmills when, having checked my bag in the cloackroom, I had the great idea to slip the shots' change inside my boot. My left foot rang harmoniously all the way back across London, and, once home, I had the nice surprise to find the head of the Queen "tattoed" in red all over my foot. Trendy!

Oh yeah! This and the consequences of one too many drunken texts. To celebrate the New Year in style, God knows how, I got myself back into an old-not-so-glorious pattern; the one called OG/Frenchie!
My friend Brooke is now convinced they know eachother, but I'd rather think about the fact they're both back in London and asking me out tonight as a mere coincidence...
Absolutely unable to make a decision, as usual, I decided tonight was going to be a bit of "me-time". Understand two hours sat in between two weirdos looking at porn websites (Hello dear internet cafe neighbours!!! Yes, I can see your screens, so if you happen to be as curious as I am, know that: nope, you're not that discreet!) and as for tomorrow, I'll improvise!

Back

I feel like I'm back to life. Back in London... HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Nun-like lifestyle in the country side under the parents' close surveillance is everything but my cup of tea, and I'm really glad to be back.

Last Friday night, though, I managed to escape the watching-the-cows/eating organic food/going to bed at 9:30pm routine and drove to the next town for what was supposed to be a catch-up dinner at the only restaurant around with old girl-friends from high school.

After voluntarily sending my cholesterol level up the roof by ordering not one, but two extra servings of cream and fresh bread (one has to make up for one week of muddy parsnips soup, fresh from the garden, and yes! even on Christmas day!) the girls insisted to bring me to the new English Pub, which was a new addition since the last time I came home. (about a year and a half ago...)

Ok, they didn't have to insist THAT much...

This place being the only one in the area NOT dedicated to cows or people above the age of 280, everyone from "back in the day" was there.

Still it seemed that a lot of change had taken place in my old school-mates over the years, especially regarding hair styles and sizes, which gave us girls quite a good ground for bitching away. (What else do you when you're reunited with your high-school bitching partners???)

It also looked like everyone had taken up smoking, which I thought, after a few pints, was a great idea, especially in a still-blessed country where the smoking ban does NOT apply!

Unfortunately I had come completely cigarettes-less (if I wished to spare my life, it was best to spend those few days chewing furiously on nicotine gums than letting the parents know). But I figured out at thatpoint that I could always blame the smell on my (non-smoking) friend, threw the evil gums back at the bottom of my bag, and walked to the next table, where I had noticed loads of rolling was going on...

"Excuse me can I bu...Aaaaaaaaah!!!"

With my luck, I had gone straight to my High-School-Fling,

I pulled a chair, sat down with the guys, rolled, smoked, rolled, smoked, drunk Stella and talked about sex, exactly like "back in the day" when it was really really really cool...

Three hours, a whole pack of tobacco, and way too many of those Stellas later (all on the guys of course!), the girls came to drag me back to their table.

It was probably a good idea, seeing that both the booze and talking out loud about our first sexual attempts with HSF had made me extremely horny, and I was becoming outrageously flirty. I had completely forgotten the present new girlfriend. Woops.

The girls drove me back with two cars and didn't let me back in the parental nunnerybefore I had swallowed a whole liter of water and what felt like a thousand mints. Just like the teenage years!!

This was about the only kind of fun I got while away.... i promise to make up for it very very soon!