Well I awoke, freezing but happy, and reached for my nose lotion for a good old scab-rubbing and lymph-clearing, the morning activity that lends my day, by itself, a great sense of personal satisfaction. But - treachery was afoot!
My delightfully jewelled nose had lost its ring and had begun to seal up. NOOOO! I scrabbled around the sheets until I spotted it and tried to get it back in. No joy! It was with disproportionate disappointment that I threw on my office clothes and drove out into the morning fog, my nose now as plain as the nose on my face.
After work I returned to my piercer, Elaine (my piercer, aren't I so hip? aren't I so terribly haute couture? No? Ok.), who kindly butchered it back in. She had to check first if it could squeeze in, which I painfully learned it most certainly could not. It would seem that the ring itself was not sharp enough to pierce the flesh. So she took her giant needle and repierced the cartilage, and I can honestly say that it was the most painful 12 - 15 seconds of my entire life. When I opened my eyes, a sea of involuntary tears poured down my face, and with them numerous boats of hungry immigrants. Elaine refused to charge me, saying that she could not take money from someone to whom she had just caused so much pain. What a woman.
However, now the jewel is back in its home, as am I, STILL freezing my nips off, having only just managed to get home through the frighteningly thick fog. K drove, and Stig and I shivered and trusted in his superior navigating-as-though-blind ways. Truly: the fog was so thick that we drove at 20 miles per hour and could see no further than 1-2 feet in front of the car. It was the scene of a horror movie. We prepared ourselves for all inevitable catastrophies: knocking down a pedestrian, being seen by a witness, and then getting hacked to death by the witness a few months later...getting eaten by werewolves...ending up in a carcrash that gets used in an ad for safe driving. "It was the one without the seatbelt that did it," the sensitive and psychic policeman said sadly.
So the moral of the story is: wear a plaster on your nose at night or face being eaten by monsters...or at least enjoy a similarly gruesome fate.
neuro-praxis -- Got Bored Near The End And Gave Up
France was French, and I continue to struggle in an angst ridden way about the desperately unsure nature of my future. We ate cheese and I fretted a bit: the others ate shark but I just rubbed its skin to get that sandpaper-feel - I didn't eat it (although I admit it is the ultimate revenge). I did help cook it: I am sure I achieved karma points (karma! ha!) in my roasting of the evil one's flesh.
The little village we stayed in had gone to sleep. I wanted to inject it with stimulants so they'd open a goddamn restaurant or a cinema or something. Not that we were bored. We talked, a lot, and played cards, and got a bit drunk on cheap wine. I didn't sleep well - the mornings were so dark and so hot, and my bed was funny, with two mattresses, but it was good and I would go back. The locals were sweet and let me bumble along in pigeon French, and while waiting for takeaway pizzas one night, me and friend Gavin were given complimentary wine while the other (French) customers looked on, mildly disgruntled. Presuming their thoughts were in English, I can only assume they were thinking "Hey! How come that foreign muck gets wine and we get nothing?"
I am sure that under their handsome leader they desired to kick my brains in, but they resisted, thank goodness. I arrived home safe and sound with K to a house filled with normal beds and a complete lack of garlic sausage.
Work is...work. It gives me a cheque.
I wrote a long letter to ex-housemate teragram but have not yet posted it. This is one of the stupid things I do. Teragram, it will come. I promise.
SAD THING
All my life, I have had a similar route to get home. I have moved further and further west in my different houses, but always have had to pass a particular bridge from the city centre. Since I was a young girl, there has been a plaque on this bridge where a young man fell (?) off and died. Every day, and I mean every single day, that I have passed it, there have been fresh flowers there.
Tonight, on the way home from the cinema, I saw that there were no flowers, and now I am worried that the person who has faithfully been placing flowers there every day for years and years has died. K says maybe they're on holiday...but I just don't think so. There were no traces of flowers whatever, not even two week-old remnants of a pre-vacation visit.
This makes me sad.
I am cold, and I am also tired. I know this is not much of a journal entry and I apologise, especially to faithful reader OG. I promise I will buck up and get some comedy gold out here just as soon as time and inspiration permits. I am still recovering from a weekend in Kilkenny with K and Stig. We drank so much tequila I went blind! No, that's a lie: it was a Christian conference but I was too ashamed to say.
I will return.
neuro-praxis -- Watering the Sockets