Blogfolks, this is what I've been doing: checking the weather forecast at regular intervals, to check things are still in limbo. Watching the weeds grow in my garden. Ignoring people, not returning phone calls, generally shrugging. Doing grammar exercises in my head like some form of mental yoga, not to keep fit, but rather to attain some kind of calm. Looking at the half-painted walls in my bedroom and not caring one bit. Playing old memories in my head. Burrying my face into my cat's furry belly until she gets pissed off and prises herself away.

Cushion

1. At first it's exciting being an expat, of course, because it's a zillion times better than just leaving home, and you learn the codes of this country you picked, and you get used to being a foreigner; perhaps you even like it, because it gives you things to compare (where-I-come-from-we-do-this-so-much-better) reasons to bitch (deeply-ingrained-xenophobia-lalalala) and an accent to cultivate.

2. The hardest times come with the phone calls, somebody has died, grandparent, brother, friend. It's hard being far away, and easier too, because you're cushioned from the reality of what's just happened, of what's happening. And the practicalities, they're excellent for extra cushioning :I can't possibly go, not now, I can't leave work, and anyway ryanair will never have seats left for tonight/tomorrow, so the logistics of flying over there take precedence. I can't/won't have to face that grief.

3. actually I don't even think I want to talk about it so I'll sign off here, blogfolks. Don't let your friends and relatives near tall bridges, ok?

1. My excuse for not doing something is usually that I'm lazy, but this time, Blogfolks, it's just that I've been very busy.

2. I went to Madrid for two weeks, you see. In my decision to love most things about the country whose language I'm learning, I'd decided to love its capital city.

3. What's there not to love? It's as famous for its nighlife as I'm notorious within my circle of friends for my hatred of clubbing. The only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is the thought of a lush breakfast, and the food in Madrid is rather shit. Friendly staff in a café in the morning can make my day, and Madrileños aren't exactly famed for their great sense of service. I rented a shithole of a flat (precious little light, not much more hot water, a flamenco-loving overweight upstairs neighbour) with two strangers and found classes to go to; then I proceeded to elect my favourites out of the 300 000 bars of Madrid.

4. In Spain they say that a bar can be judged from the quantity of crap on its floor. The more crap, the better that bar will be. Because in Spanish bars you eat with your drink, there are olive stones to spit out (onto the floor), gambas shells to drop (onto the floor), and various bits and pieces and morsels and crumbs, too.

5. Number one favourite: Cañas y tapas (off calle mayor): the nice cross-eyed waiter plied me with enough tapas with my beer at lunch that I wasn't even too drunk for my afternoon class.

6. To sever myself from a two week-diet of beer, tortilla española and coffee, tonight I went to the chip shop. I'm just a b ig, fried potato.

7. I have more to say, but I'm really too lazy. Hope you're well!

Bloggente, I've been in Madrid for two weeks and I might come back to Blighty tomorrow

If what they say is true and we are indeed what we eat, then I am turning into one gigantic tortilla espanola.

I'll tell you about the rest when I'm back. Be well!

The Practice Easter Egg season has started again in the House of Y.

Every year around the end of January, J sits me down for a serious chat – mostly to remind me that

1. Easter is just round the corner.
2. When it comes to chocolate, it’s not Quality, it’s Quantity.
3. to make sure he gets to live his Easter Experience to the fullest, he needs, in chronological order:

a. a Practice Egg about three (3) weeks prior to the actual event.

b. A second egg just to make sure he is getting it right.
c. Another practice egg purchased by me to show my support in his endeavour.
d. The Proper Easter Egg (again , hint: quantity, not quality)
e. Any other egg I might be receiving in the course of my professional activity (I've been known to come home with seven)
f. The post- Easter egg(s), on sale at Woolworth’s.

Yesterday at sainsberries', you could get 3 crap eggs for a measly £3.75! You should have seen the glint in his eyes.

March, I think

Hello, blogfolks, do you know what day it is today? I do. It's freezing and geeting hailed on day. It's also give up all plans about going into town day, because of Sudden Grumpiness. It's also Wear a Wooly Hat at Home day; because I won't turn the heating on before 7pm. I don't want to talk to anybody, nor do anything constructive or useful, so I might book myself a flight to Madrid instead. Hope you're well.

1. It started like this: I've been trying to find something to write with, and it got me thinking:

2. Blogfolks, do you know what the STASI used to do to break people psychologically? This : they would break into their house, remove one type of household items, then leave without trace. Sponges; lightbulbs. Something. A week or so later, they would break in again, remove some other item. Spoons. Then disappear without trace. And finally, a week later, one last time, shoe laces, or corkscrews. They knew that by then the house owners , no matter how close, no matter how trusting, would have turned against each other and started to disintegrate. Of course that could work because no-one in East Germany knew that that's what their police was up to. Clever, huh?

3. I really wonder where the biros go in this house.

I think I have finally broken up with my shrink so I poured myself a glass of wine, and I've been crying into it ever since.

It's not that I don't want to go anymore. I tell him I can't afford it any longer, which is the truth, but not the whole truth.

Fifteen Things I do not like, in no particular order and just because I feel some bile coming up

1. The anxious feeling I get when, sat on the top deck of the bus, I hear a gaggle/herd of screeching teenagers come up the stairs. It's a mixture of intense, armpit-moistening annoyance, and fear; I'm not impressed with myself about the fear aspect.
   
   2. Blue mascara. On other people, since I would not touch the stuff unless they paid me. Sometimes My Own Mother wears it and this feels me with Horror. Ensues a Serious Talk (from me to her) reminding her of all the people we don't like who also wear it and why we don't want to be like them.
   
   3. Waking up every morning, unfailingly, at 4.40. Then waking up again at 5.011, which is too close to 6 for me to fall back to sleep properly.
   
   4. Not getting over what my dentist once said to me: today, you've had more work done that I ever had in my entire life. I had to make him repeat to make sure I'd heard it right. What??
   
   5. Scrabble.
   
   6.Beige. Navy blue. Bottle green. Maroon. As well as pastel colours on adults.
   
   7. People who don't return what I lent them. Books, DVDs, socks. I just don't understand.
   
   8. Seeing children, especially girls, wearing uncomfortable clothes. Frilly pink frocks. To me, it only confirms that some parents have the worst reasons for having children in the first place.
   
   9. Parents screaming at their offsprings in public. Because when they do it in private, I'm not there to see it. Clearly.
   
   10. Loud little boys with hair shaved down to a 1 wearing football shirts. It makes me very very sad.
   
   11. Yappy little dogs and usually their owners. Which is unfair. It's not the dogs' fault if they look like retarded rats owned by bipeds who really want fluffy toys.
   
   12. The fact that Spam and corned beef did not disappear after the end of Rationing. And the fact that it's all that some people can afford to eat.

   13. Trifle, cucumber sandwiches, fish paste for sandwiches, cheese and onion crisps – those monuments of British culinary tradition.

   14. Being patronised. Being told something I already know.

   15. Long nails on hands or even worse, on feet.

Shrinking, in more ways than one

Blogfolks, it feels like I'm disappearing, and not just because yesterday I bought a skirt one size smaller than I usually need. In so many ways I'm disappearing: because I was tempted to lie and write 'trousers' because skirts are what my job requires and I can't condone that and that is swallowing me. I'm disappearing because for the past month I haven't been eating my normal amount, hence the dropping a size. In a perverse way, I celebrate this by looking in the mirror several times a day. Hello, size 10 ass, I hadn't seen you in a few years. I'm disappearing on this blog, because all I post about is not eating and the odd comments are about how good mash is. What? Perhaps disappearing too the same way i am with this therapist I have, trying to break up but he won't let me, saying I am not taking responsibility for ending this process, and I get annoyed because it's true, and just not going anymore will be disappearing, too. I'm disappearing from friends' lives because I don't want to do what they do or have fun and they don't want to know about that. I'm disappearing from my relationship with my girlfriend because she's busy and rightly so, and I'm not very good at being her girlfriend anyway, because I'm shrinking.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself, just looking at things and realising what's happening: spending time vicariously – Ugly Betty is really very good, I saw all 16 episodes- and I had to put down 'Traité d'athéologie' because I feel dumb. Today I listened to a friend tell me about her sex stories, and asking for advice, and I couldn't admit I didn't care. I like to blame it on winter but perhaps there is in me a mechanism, do you know? I've come to care very little about what is not little.