The adventures of Miss Despina

You can’t keep a good girl down for long.

Things are going well.

I am really really busy, very productive, not stressing too much though!

I’m throwing away everything I don’t want, and keeping and making worthwhile what’s important to me.

I have some fun projects coming up - not too much though.

I’m getting on top of my health problems.

Funny and interesting things keep happening to me but I’m too busy to blog.

Like when despite being the best soprano to audition (I have it on good authority), I didn’t get the part I wanted in Candide, and was asked to understudy instead. Two minutes later, yes, really, I was into a production that some friends are putting on at the local conservatoire, which just happens to be the same dates as the Candide. So it looks like I’ll never learn how to poison a fellow soprano’s dinner. But I do get to prance around on a stage singing Sondheim with some great people.

Like the time I accidentally stood on someone in the Co-op the other day. I turned round to apologise, and on the way out of the shop said to Jez "oh well at least it was a chav"!

Like last night when I was practicing in the kitchen, the neighbours put on some crap disco music very very loudly.

Like the new 15 hours a week job I have in Boots where everyone loves me because they don’t have to train me because I’ve done it all before.

Like the friend who phoned me up and offered me just the sort of help I need, that only she can give.

Like going round Ikea with Jez doing the cake dance, the kelpie dance, and the new ikea dance. Then jumping out on him on the other side of the door and licking the window… only it wasn’t him, but a complete stranger. 

Like the gorgeous house we are very likely to be moving into in a month’s time. Yes, really! I’m so excited! 

But enough about me, how are you? No, really? If you can fight my spam-bots, I’d love to hear how you’re doing :)

Are you looking for "the one"?

If so, you could do worse than go to this website.

Hours of fun! Just don’t blame me when it all goes tits-up :)

Jez and I just popped down to town for some cleaning stuff, and decided to go to PC World to buy an ink catridge. It’s a store which I totally shun, incidentally. I think the staff are generally stupid, the quality of service rotten, the products miserable and the whole place just stinks of the mediocrity of corporation. So there.

So I’m standing there in PC World gazing blankly at the ink cartridge boxes, wondering which of the strange numeric codes corresponds to the model of my printer (which has decided it needs to be filled with colour ink before it can print plain black text). And since it’s over a year since I’ve had to buy ink, I really have no idea which cartridge I need to get. A young man comes up to me and says very brightly:

"Hello, can I help you at all there?"

I am grateful to see him.

"Yes," I say, "I’m wondering which ink cartridge I need to get for my Epson. I know that the black ink has a teddy bear on the box but I don’t know which coloured cartridge I should buy, they all look the same."

"Ah…" he said. "Hmmm, you see, I don’t actually work for PC World."

"Whu-"

"But what I can offer you is a promotion I’m doing for users of digital TV! Do you have a digital TV?"

The young man shuffles his feet enthusiatically and is poised, pen in hand, ready to take our details. Jez and I, incredulous, say together:

"We don’t have a TV."

"What? You mean - "

"No, we don’t own a television. Goodbye." 

Tonight, there’s a young salesman eating pizza in front of the TV, wearing the same bewildered expression he was when we left him, and wondering what on earth people who don’t have a television actually do all night!

 *****

Jez and I simply decided that we didn’t have any use for a television. We watched it for about an hour once every month. For culture, we’re Radio 3 addicts and get all our news needs from the BBC website. We have lots of DVDs, hundreds of CDs between us, and we’re both complete bookworms. (In fact one of the best things about meeting him was all the new music and literature I discovered.)

So one day in July I logged onto facebook, and saw a notice saying something like "Jez is feeling liberated from the power of the gogglebox after giving away his telly on freecycle." And I worked it out and realised I hadn’t watched television since the first week in April.

I don’t want to sound like a highbrow culture snob here. I did enjoy certain TV shows (my favourites were Rick Stein and company) but I just couldn’t cope with the crappiness of the rest of it! We only had the standard five channels and had considered upgrading by getting freeview or whatever it’s called, but then we realised that actually, TV had just ceased to be a part of our lives.

Has anyone else had this epiphany? 

It will be so funny when we go back to uni, walk into lectures and say "Ahoj", drop words like deki and prosím rather than saying thanks or please, and just generally speaking our special English person Czech.

I got fined 100 crowns the other day - I’m not telling you what I was doing, but you wouldn’t get fined for it in England. Two policemen came over, tutting at me. But I’m afraid I always find it hard to take them seriously because:

1. They’re usually quite young, tall and cute,
2. The writing on their shirts "Městská Policie" or something, is the same size and font as the writing on the barista’s t-shirts in Caffe Nero.

It’s a non-starter.

So anyway they’re standing there all masculine and sexy, telling me what I’ve been found guilty of, I’m sticking my chest out, flicking my hair, and protesting in Czech that I’m English and we don’t have that rule in England and I don’t understand because I’m English dammit! Alas, he was writing out a chit with my name on it. So I gave him my best Despina pout and asked in Czech

"Do I have to pay?"

The two policemen just looked at each other, then at me, then burst out laughing. Then I realised. What I had said was

"Musím plavit?"

which means

"Do I have to swim?"

Oh God. I corrected myself -

"Platit. Platit! Musím platit! JežíšMaria!"

- and threw in the Czech national swearword for good measure. Great, swearing at policemen will get you everywhere.

Then he couldn’t spell my name - like thousands of English people before him - so I handed him my bus pass to copy my details from. Did I mention that on my ID photo I look like I’m wanted for genocide?

But being ditsy pays. He gave me the minimum fine, obviously the entertainment value made up for my misdemeanour.

Meanwhile, I realised that my favourite Czech word (meaning self-service) also contains one of my favourite English words. And the word?

Samoobsluha

Could you tell me what your favourite words are?