The adventures of Miss Despina

I’m so happy that yesterday my final project deadline has been extended by two whole weeks!

I celebrated all day long. Well, I went to uni and did hours of research, then celebrated.

Firstly by buying two pairs of shoes - one for my friend *Despina*’s wedding in Prague in August, one for stomping around Italy. Then I met a friend and we went to church and prayed a rosary together. It was the first time I’d ever done it, and I really enjoyed it.

Afterwards I noticed that I was being stared at as we walked through the park, and put it down either to his delicious Ted Baker suit, or the huge sunglasses I was wearing (alas, not Ted Baker). He told me it was because I’m gorgeous, which is probably not true, but made me feel good at least! We met up with a fantastic friend of his, a girl very much after my own heart, and several gin and tonics later, I had my first visit to a boys’ school, where my friend is house master.

Then somehow ended up going out and having white wine and moules, yet again! In Café Rouge this time - they were ok but not as good as the Italian ones we’d had the previous time. And then a long conversation about everything, and then three desserts and then more conversation, and a trip to a cocktail bar where the beautiful people are reputed to go, but I don’t find these so-called beautiful people very beautiful. (There’s nothing beautiful about starting drunken arguments about football management and saying the word "fuck" at the top of your voice, whilst drinking imported lager and wearing nasty designer wear.)

And then I got home, which is not something I remember very clearly, except for the point where I was sitting in the taxi aah-ing along to the Tristan prelude and receiving some strange looks for it.

Today I am celebrating by not doing uni stuff. I am learning to make carrot cake. It’s going well so far.

And then moules and Bellinis planned with S for next weekend when I see him - keep him in your prayers because he’s really not so well at the moment. I am so excited about seeing him, it’s really very inappropriate.

Then tomorrow I’m off out for "drinks" - read drinks, expensive food somewhere beautiful and possible carnage - with someone rather sweet. (I can’t come to a decision about what I want from him at the moment, but he knows this, and it’s nice to have him around. And he makes me laugh until I find myself in tears, which is always good!)

I suppose I really should stop being quite so gluttonous. It can’t be good for me. But I love my fabulous lifestyle, and there are other vices than gluttony of which I need to rid myself with more urgency.

What are your favourite vices? Please tell me about them, or simply indulge in one for me!

Thursday:

• A 3 a.m. coursework special after some rather intense conversation with S and a big cry. Finally, finally…
• Handing in of coursework.
• Brief trip to college.
• A complimentary ticket to en excellent gig, where a good friend was playing in the support band.
• Drinking tea til the wee small hours with one of Scotland’s best new folk bands. (I love the way people from the isle of Uist say my name!)

Friday:

• A visit to the naughtiest, loveliest deli in Manchester, where I impressed myself by speaking some Polish.
• Portraiture class.
• Rehearsal with my repetiteur who has decided he is in love with me and is making it difficult for me to work with him. Especially when he keeps going on and on about my life and wasting my time. This is bearable when he’s doing me a favour, not so bearable when I’m paying him. But he’s a great repetiteur and no-one else I know does it half as well.
• Orgasmic risotto. Nothing nicer than spending an hour in the kitchen and creating something truly beautiful. But someone is getting comfortable…
• Self-indulgence.

• Waking up with a hangover.
• Rushing to a modelling job.
• Someone who’d been drawing me for three hours attempting to get my number - not nice! Definitely knocking that job on the head soon.
• Purchase of many beautiful LPs, including Palestrina Stabat Mater etc, and two Deutsche Grammophon opera box sets - Don Giovanni and Figaro! Wish I had an LP player…
• Coffee and cake.
• Religious debate.
• Randomly bumping into friends around the university.
• The bellini hour.
• Three bellinis and many secrets later, decadent Italian food.
• The train ride home where I saw sights no respectable citizen should ever have to see.

Sunday:

• A peaceful start to the day
• Peace shattered: thanks dad.
• A charade for guests.
• Revision.
• A realisation. A big, scary realisation.

Monday:

• More arguing - what could be more selfish?
• Being used for emotional dumpage one hour before my exam (because he thinks it’s preferable to meeting up and talking properly. Thanks for that.)
• An exam that I know I passed, perhaps it wasn’t a spectacular success but I know I’ve passed it.
• An encounter with a beautiful lady.
• A rehearsal for Don Pasquale - one of the most celebrated Wagner tenors of the last few decades singing "You do something to me" - to me. Surreal…
• A trip to HMV for a copy of Sondheim’s Company. Fantastic recording with the delectable Adrian Lester.
• The cinema to see this. Awful. Just awful. I can only guess at how bad the second hour was! My friend and I got through by eating a lot of Ben and Jerry’s, belly-laughing very loudly, and running away for a Nando’s when it all got too much. Do not go and see this film.
• Fabulous conversations about just everything.
• A promise of a night of Poulenc opera soon! Excited!

Now I have to go and continue the increasingly farcical end of my uni career. Take care and let me know what you’ve been up to.

I just can’t begin to describe my holiday in Krakow. I think I’ll let Jez’s flickr stream do it for me. Just click the photo. My photos will probably arrive in installments, once flickr decides it’s heard of me!

It stopped raining for about four hours the whole time we were in Krakow. However this didn’t stop us from having an amazing time. We were staying in a rather bohemian hotel in Kasimierz, the old Jewish quarter, which is out of the main part of the city. There were lots of synagogues, restaurants and cafés to go in and hide from the rain.

One of our favourite cafés in the world is now "Singer", where the tables are old Singer sewing machine tables, the mirrors and pictures on the wall are delapidated, and candles light up the dark décor. At night however, a young crowd come and dance to Gypsy Kings (which brought back memories of our first date) and the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Jez said it would take a lot of alcohol for him to get up and dance. So a lot of alcohol later, we finally danced together in Krakow! Neither of us has any co-ordination or sense of rhythm, but it was still a great experience!

Another favourite hangout is Alchemia club, where the music is extremely varied and for the most part very good, the décor is just quirky, and the drinks are Samoobsluga - almost the same as my favourite Czech word for self-service!

And another lovely café / restaurant we went in for hot chocolate / hot mead / Jewish cuisine was called Once Upon A Time In Kasimierz. It was the interior of four former shops: a grocer, a woodworker, a dressmaker and another tradesman but I can’t remember what, sorry. The restaurant is in four small sections, so around one table there is a sewing machine, a tailor’s dummy, hat boxes and tails jackets, then another section has a carpenter’s workbench, etc etc. It is truly lovely.

And the quirkiest restaurant round there? Klezmer Hois! Where we ate a three course meal (enough for a food hangover) whilst listening to live Klezmer music. We also had lots of apperfitifs, liquers, beers, wines and the most disgusting "cake kiss" in the world. It was just Perfect!

And all of these places were just five minutes from our hotel! 

We went out of the city twice. Once was to the salt mines about half and hour away - well worth a visit, despite the rain. The other trip was to Auschwitz. I don’t really want to describe how I felt when I went there. I will just say that it was harrowing and I’m glad I saw it. You can see the photos.

We could have spent a week just in Kasimierz, but we managed to get into town and see the castle and various churches and monuments, and also the Photography museum which you really shouldn’t bother going to!

Jez took Polish classes many many years ago, and manages to say "I’m sorry, my Polish is not very good" so well that people just assume he’s being modest and speak Polish back. I just kept speaking Czech accidentally - to waitresses, taxi drivers - and I asked Jez, "do you think they’re laughing at my Czech?"
"No," he said, "they just think you’re speaking shit Polish."
"Well," I said, "I managed to speak shit Czech for three months and get away with it!"
His response:
"Ah yes, Operation Shit Czech is alive and well!"

Jez, I love you. Thanks for a brilliant holiday xxx

…or maybe just too much afternoon sleep! I lay awake for hours last night, I just couldn’t sleep, it was so annoying! (Couldn’t even go outside for a walk because it’s not a very nice area.) So I wrote down everything I was remembering about Jez’s visit in Prague. For you, my dear. Blush as appropriate and feel free to add anything!

• Tangoing whilst waiting for the tram (I was word perfect).
• Doing the Monster Mash whilst waiting for the same tram a few hours later. When you realised that putting a hand over my mouth and restraining my arms was having no effect, you simply shook your head and walked away.
• Laughing at the stoopid tourists!
• Playing at stoopid tourists! (Gee honey!)
• The excellent restaurant we accidentally found when it was the only place open at 11pm on our first night there. We returned twice and on our last night ordered exactly the same meal for duck-gasms all round!
• Accidentally calling my university tutor a dick. Oops.
• Espionage.
• Walks through Mála Strána late at night. Those small winding streets, the air of mystery!
• The long, deep, interesting conversations we can have about everything, often just prompted by an interesting piece of grafitti, like the gorgeous graphics from El Laberinto del Fauno.
• The castle we saw for 20 minutes - sorry I made you run up that hill. Bad girlfriend.
• The park on Kampa where you refused to do it with me, even though it was almost empty and everyone else was doing it (with far less style than we would have done, I may add!).
• All the photos we took. The good, the beautiful, and the ridiculous!
• Don Giovanni in the Estates Theatre. Enough said!
• Jazz flute in Agharta at a time when I really should have been in bed! Pulling stupid faces and making rude gestures, when we should really have been pretending to be cool.
• My dubious attempts to cook dumplings and other Czech food. Ahhh, Shmaltz, rapturous foodstuff!
• You dancing around the bedroom in my skirt going "My name’s *Despina*, and I’m a lady!"
• Your singing when we decided to go to mass, even though neither of us even go to church anymore. It was all in Czech and you were word and note perfect. (And the priest had trainers on, teehee!)
• Speaking French almost constantly, especially when drunk, and being absolument dégueulasse!