Living for Disco

It’s been a month since I moved to Cambridge, and I haven’t been to the supermarket once. I’ve hardly been in my flat except to sleep, and even then it’s been fleeting. I’ve forgotten what my flatmate looks like and I haven’t even finished unpacking. There’s going to be no point soon, because in just under four months I’ll be gone.

I seem to spend my whole life rushing from one place to the next. Got to get here, got to see them, got to do this.

I have lost all perspective. I burst into tears at the slightest provocation. Sometimes I look down on myself from a height, and see myself blindly hurrying, wrapped in a cloud of worry, and I wonder what happened to the real me.

Please, please can I have a bit of time? Is it too much to ask that my life not slip through my fingers in an unstoppable flood of wasted hours and seconds? For what do I spend four hours a day in the company of strangers on a train? For what do I go to bed one minute and get up the next as the unstoppable days rush through the millwheel, and drift off into the tranquil landscape of the past?

I want some time to appreciate my time in Cambridge with the BF before I go. Some memories of a summer without stress would be precious.

Does anyone know how to stop time?

Today on the train I shared my carriage with:

*1 middle-aged lady with reactolite glasses, nursing a croissant the size of a small hedgehog, who spoke very loudly in a posh voice about the fact that hopefully soon, she and her husband were going to sell the house in Cambridge, and shuttle between the flat in London, and the house in Burnham Market. Which is lovely, because you don’t have to drive for miles to get groceries – Tesco delivers! Failing that, the local butcher does organic meat. Hurrah.
*1 middle aged gentleman whose startling ginger nose-hair seemed anxious to venture out and taste the fresh morning air
*1 girl with a nice velvet skirt on, who entirely failed to notice that she was exposing a large expanse of upper thigh on her left leg, and occasionally her knickers
*1 fold up bicycle (new)
*13 cups of Costa coffee
*4 copies of the Guardian
*3 copies of the Telegraph
*and 3 laptops of varying sophistication

I’m attempting to do some kind of social demographic survey of the 8.15 into Kings Cross. If I fit it, I’m obviously an upper middle class multiple home-owner, with an aversion to Victor Kayam, and a penchant for horrible coffee. Perhaps this was not a comprehensive sample.

I was tempted to take a photo of the next carriage though – it was filled with men in suits, a large proportion of whom were displaying a taste for silly socks, reading a combination of broadsheets, and saying things like “Sarah, get Roger on the line for me. It’s about this morning’s 9.30 – I don’t think the graph on page 312 of the presentation has the right colour coding…” into their blackberry email-phones.

I wonder if the 7.45 is any different…

I was in heaven. The music was mid-90s indie pop. The Stone Roses, Pulp and Sleeper pulled me irresistibly towards the heaving dance floor: a sea of waving arms, jumping bodies, beer arcing gracefully over the waving, seaweed hair. I was sucked into a whirlpool of frenzied, drunken, snogging, groping humanity, and I let go.

Twenty minutes later, flushed, sweating and covered in beer and bruises, and was washed up onto the bar, where I flopped happily. I recognised a bloke standing next to me – I saw him at a party a couple of weeks ago, where thanks to some mild mind-altering substances, I was convinced that his dredlocks were the hybrid offspring of a pineapple and a coconut, and was transfixed for hours. I felt the need to explain.

“Hello”, I said. “I saw you at a party the other week. I was a bit stoned, and I thought you had great hair”.

His face froze in shock. “I’m sorry?”

“I thought you had great hair! I was a bit stoned!” I was starting to feel embarrassed, and not a little stupid.

His expression didn’t change.

“You were at a party, and you gave me great head? I’m sure I would have remembered that – are you sure it was me?”

With a fresh insight into the inner workings of the rumour factory, I went back to the dance floor, and surrendered myself to the Cure.

Still nothing. Nothing tempting on the mat last night, no bright white envelope smiling up at me as I scrambled down the stairs on my way to buy coco pops this morning.
I hardly slept last night. This morning when I woke up (at 6.30am – crazy talk) I had to really push myself to do some yoga, but I’m glad that I did. It relaxed me a bit. I couldn’t face my daily banana though. I had to have a chocolate fix.

The worst thing is that I won’t know if something comes on Monday because I’m heading up to Cambridge to spend a few relaxing days with the BF. Flatmate said she’d call me if there was something, but that just means I’m going to get the collywobbles every time the phone rings. I’m in a state.

On a different note, I just emptied flatmate’s washing out of the machine, and found my lovely black cashmere jumper in there. Now, I’m confused. I wore that jumper on Thursday, and thought I’d put it in the wardrobe. Not only is it not there, it seems that it found its way out of my room, and into a pile of washing in her washing basket. I’m going to have to establish some kind of curfew on my woollens, clearly. If they can’t be trusted, action must be taken.

OK my little dears, I’m off. And I probably won’t be back until Wednesday – BF hasn’t paid his NTL bill, so no internet. Take care y’all!

God. Don’t know what got into me yesterday. Perhaps some horrible misery demon. I feel slightly ashamed of my inner judge, but also relieved that I have somewhere that I can put my thoughts, and spill out how I feel.

Anyway, I am now in Cambridge: a town that I love. I’m in a warm internet cafe, surrounded by people speaking what sounds like Russian. It reminds me vaguely of when I worked in the Czech Republic. And oh, how the memories come flooding back…

I used to have a job ferrying groups of people around exciting parts of the world. I started off in Egypt, which has burrowed into my heart and found a home there. I then went to take tours around Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, which was more lonely and more difficult. I began by hating Damascus, because it was so alien to me – the first time in my life I ever had culture shock. I ended up loving it. I look forward to a day, sometime soon I hope, when I can go back, and wander through the dizzying noise and colour of the Soukh, and pad quietly on bare feet around the peaceful, green gold square of the Ummayad Mosque, which is filled with birds, eating green almonds and thanking God, or Allah, or whoever, that I am alive.

After that, I took walking tours up in the mountains of Slovakia, and worked in Prague and parts of Hungary for a few months. I just happened to be in Prague during the floods a couple of years ago. The problem was, I didn’t know it at the time.

I had a group of people (bear in mind please, that this is a tour that takes people up mountains that are mostly more challenging than Ben Nevis), most of whom were over 70. This in itself posed a problem, but I would have been fine had it not been for Barb and Reg, the two ancient Kiwis, who I swear should never have left New Zealand. All they did was complain about how awful everything was compared to home. Their tip for me was some Kiwi fruit liqueur chocolates, which they had been carrying around a sweltering, heat-enveloped Europe for the better part of 3 months. Nice.

Anyway, I had arrived from Slovakia, where it was raining, to more rain in Prague. This wasn’t anything particularly unusual. Our first day was a city tour, and I have to admit, the river looked a wee bit swollen. No matter, I thought. It’s just a bit of rain. Ha.

I then took my group off to take a little walk around some stunning countryside outside Prague – Karlstejn Castle. Lovely place. We got on the train, all jolly and looking forward to our jaunt. The river looked a bit rough. There appeared to be cars floating down it. Hmm, I thought. Things are a bit out of the ordinary today. We stayed on the train. A garden shed careered past us, crashing into trees and scattering planks into the torrent. We arrived in Karlstejn to find the bridge washed away, and the road waist deep in water. The locals appeared to be having lots of fun daring each other to wade across it.

When we got back to the station, we discovered that the train we were on was the last one to be going back into Prague, and it wasn’t going to make it. Barb and Reg nearly had a heart attack. Reg only had two packets of hob nobs with him, and there was some debate as to whether this would last him the morning (he was not diabetic, by the way, and therefore deserved no sympathy. I was in the market for finding a way home, and my first priority was not finding a biscuit shop).

Anyway, much fruitless searching for taxis later, we decided to stay on the train, which eventually got us back to Prague. I dispatched my group to go sightseeing, and I went to pick up the train tickets. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was trying to get out of Prague. I had to queue for 3 hours to get those tickets. When I finally got back into the centre, most of it was empty, save for a few Czechs putting sandbags around the centre of town, and some tourists in Wenceslas Square, waiting for the clock to chime. Unfortunately the electrics had been turned off, so they’d been there for a while. They were still there when we left. I found my OAPs in the Square, comparing flood stories (I saw a refrigeration lorry the size of my house floating under Charles Bridge!!). Oh, the horror. Barb and Reg thought they might catch the plague.

It wasn’t until a few days later, thanks to the fact that I couldn’t get English language news, that I realised the enormity of what had happened. Perhaps I’m not very bright. Whatever the reason, I paid for it. Barb and Reg tormented me to two solid weeks before I was free of them. And on the same trip, I lost two of my passengers at the early morning border exchange between Slovkia and the Czech Republic because they had the wrong visa. The last I saw of them was their backs retreating in to the creeping dawn, escorted by a rather good looking border guard from Bratislava, who was not open to bribes (cash! I’m not that sort of girl).

Anyway, I’d better pop off and meet BF before he gives me up for lost and goes shopping. It’s been nice having a trip down memory lane.