H is for...

Holiday.

It's only the beginning of April, but already I'm dreaming of going away, getting away, being somewhere else. I don't even know if it's going to be possible to go away somewhere with the girls this summer - my finances are really, really dire and by the time things get sorted out (assuming they do, actually, get sorted out) it might be too late.
Also, my dad apparently wants us to go to Scotland for 2 weeks, which is just unimaginable. What the hell would we do? The weather would most likely be crap (no surprises there), we'd have no means of transport other than the extortionately expensive and very slow public transport service and my dad's getting too old to do much driving about. I would like to take the girls to St Andrews, just so they can see it, but it's an awful lot of hassle for an afternoon in the East Neuk.

Plus, more importantly (and, no doubt, more selfishly), going to Scotland really wouldn't feel like a holiday for me. Especially as I'd most likely have to work too.
So. Yeah. Holidays.
I like to take the girls to new places, new countries, new cultures. In their short (holidaying) lives, apart from England and Scotland, they've been to the Alps (La Toussuire, 2006), the Pyrenees (St Lary Soulan, 2007), Lake Como (Varenna, 2008), St Jean de Luz (Ciboure, 2009), Bilbao (2010) and Genoa (2011). This year, I'm fancying either Italy again (but you already know that from Saturday...) or possibly Lisbon, another city I loved the one time I was there.
But it's expensive and we can't afford to go for long - as I'm travelling alone with the girls, self-catering is out of the question; I do enough shopping-cooking-washing-up-laundry-cleaning at home as it is. I don't want to do the same on holiday. That wouldn't feel like a holiday either.
No, if we're going anywhere, it has to be a hotel, and preferably (for the girls' sakes) one with a swimming pool. And that, obviously, pushes the price right up.
And, as I'm clearly totally delusional right now (despite not having had any Easter chocolate whatsoever), I'm ALSO thinking about taking the girls away for a couple of nights in a hotel in May, just to thank them for being so understanding about the crappiness of these last few months, so good about lending money, so sweet when the tears have flowed down my face like rain.
I mean, I really can't afford that, but it's nice to dream...
I remain hopeful that we'll get some time away, just the three of us, this summer. We've done it twice, and it's been fun. I'm sure it can happen again. I've found that the Holiday Inn in Lisbon is only €67/night, and it has a pool on the roof. We just have to find reasonably priced flights...
But it's all a pipe dream right now. I can't afford to book anything. I can just dream of a day when I'm not here, sitting in front of my computer, day in, day out.
Do you realise that there hasn't been a single day - including Sundays, public holidays - that I haven't done at least some work since we came home from Scotland at the end of December? And that there most likely won't be one until this maybe-maybe not holiday in August? (Unless I can pull things together in May, but I'm not sure about that at all.) Do you realise that I haven't been outside of Montpellier, haven't been anywhere other than the university and the city centre, actually, since about November (except for Scotland at Christmas)? Seriously, I lead the most boring life in the world.
Oh, how I need a holiday this year!

G is for...

Genoa.

*sigh*
Oh, how I love Italy!
Each visit has been different, each has left me with wonderful memories.
My first trip to Italy was when I went InterRailing with my dear friend J in the summer of 1989. We spent time in Florence and Rome, a night in Venice, Turin and Pisa and many, many hours in trains. We had such adventures (particularly at Roma Termini railway station!), such fun. It was the most magical part of our month-long holiday, the part I remember with the most fondness.
My next trip to Italy was in early June 1994, with my American friend D. He and I had spent the year working as English assistants and had become friends, and decided to travel to Italy for a week together. We went to Florence and Siena and Turin. We drank dessert wines and ate icecreams, we wandered around museums. It was lovely. Really.
Next, I convinced D (my ex, not American-D) that we should travel to Lake Como with the girls in the summer of 2008. It was amazing. So far, Lake Como is the most beautiful place I've ever been. It was stunning and perfect, a wonderful holiday.

And then, finally, last summer, I took the girls to beautiful, wonderful Genoa. So much to see and do, so interesting and varied, so dynamic yet laid-back. The perfect place for a holiday with two not-so-small girls. A magical place.
I wish I'd studied Italian rather than Spanish - I wanted to study Italian, but St Andrews didn't have an Italian department, so Spanish it was. I like Italy so much more than Spain...
And Genoa? I'd go back tomorrow. In fact, if my finances allow it, it's one of the possibilities for our summer holiday again this year. I know the girls would like to try somewhere new (maybe Lisbon?), but I think they'd be happy back in Genoa too.
I even like cheesy Italian pop songs! Like this one, or this one... Tell me you can listen to these and not have at least one of them in your head afterwards! And even though I don't speak Italian, it's close enough to French and Spanish to be understandable.
Bellissima Italia, ti amo !

F is for...

France.
Easy, this one.
My first experience of France was when I was almost 15, on a school trip. We went to Paris for a few days, just a group of girls from school (yes, it was an all girls' school. Yes, it sucked) and my two favourite teachers. I remember little of what we actually did, though I have a vague idea that we went to the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre. I do remember undercooked steak in a restaurant and the hotel with the lights on timer switches meaning we had to go up to our top floor rooms in a relay...
After that, my parents and I drove through France every summer for 4 years on our way down to Spain in the summer for a couple of weeks, but the French scared me and, even though I theoretically spoke more French than both my parents combined, I could barely utter a word.
I'm not entirely sure why I chose to study French at university. I was probably better (then, anyway) at English literature. But I chose French, added in Spanish and there you go. My dad's disappointment in me started there.
I spent 3 months in Paris in my 3rd year at university, studying French at the British Institute and working at the (now no longer) Burger King on the Boul'Mich (boulevard St Michel for the uninitiated). It was not a particularly happy time, as I recall it, though the flat I shared with two friends (on avenue Daumesnil) was lovely.
So it's kind of surprising that I voluntarily returned almost immediately after graduating. And have been here ever since. Amazingly, I'll have been living permanently in France (first Paris (very briefly), then Lyon (7 years), now Montpellier) for 20 years this summer.
My French is pretty much fluent. Yes, I still make careless mistakes about "le" and "la", mainly because I can't be bothered to make the effort to learn them correctly, but I think my accent is pretty damn good.
I've only ever worked in France, my children are essentially French (more than they are British, anyway), my whole life is here. Yet I've never taken out French nationality and I most certainly do not feel French. Not at all.
Many things about life in France bug the shit out of me - lack of civillity being the main one, I should think - but many others make me sure I could never move back to Britain (the standard of living seems better, though maybe living in the south with a generally pretty wonderful climate has something to do with that).
As a non-citizen, I can't vote in the upcoming Presidential election (less than 3 weeks to go!), though I'll be watching the results come in on TV like everyone else, and will moan if Sarkozy wins again.
My daughters have dual nationality (though France is pushing for the abolition of this status, which would piss me off mightily) and I hope that one day they will choose to spend time in Britain.
France is a beautiful country and I have no regrets about my decision to come here. I don't miss Britain (apart from year-round proximity to Creme Eggs and hot cross buns, I mean), but I do miss my friends.
What is true, though, is that I don't really feel like I belong anywhere anymore...

E is for...

Emotion.
When I look back at the 14 years D and I were together, I find it hard to remember the good times. That's mean of me, because there WERE good times. In fact, people used to comment on how well we got on together, even though D rubbed many people up the wrong way very quickly. Through my working-from-homeness and his not-working-very-much-at-all-ness we spent huge amounts of time together, much more than most couples. And we really didn't argue that much, considering.
Yet, as I say, I find the good times hard to remember. My anger levels are still so high, after 2 years, that I'm beginning to think it's unhealthy (even though he continues to do and say things that bug me, so it's not like I'm solely angry for stuff from the past). And it's just so much easier to remember the bad times, the sad times.
One thing that should maybe have put me more on my guard than I was before he walked out was a criticism he made of me with relentless monotony. Every single argument we ever had, I should think, ended with him making some version of it. And whilst one of my (probably many) failings is that I take criticism badly, I am now adult enough most of the time to accept it (sort of). Except, of course, when I feel it is so blatantly untrue.
What was that criticism? Ha!
D used to tell me I lacked emotion, that I lacked that wonderful human capacity for feeling. In other words, he was basically telling me I am a robot.
Oh, how that hurt!
Even when I explained certain things, he wouldn't back down (for example: when our first baby died in utero back in 2000, we were both distraught. We displayed this in different ways, obviously, but I pretty much sank into total depression. We'd had a holiday booked before our baby died and we decided, even though it was literally days after she died, that we should go ahead and go, it would do us good. So we travelled by train down to Murcia to stay with a friend. D soon got into the full swing of things, and seemed to be having a good time. Me, not so much. I was leaking milk for a baby who was dead, my baby was dead. My baby was dead! And D, just 10 days after the most traumatic event in my entire life, told me to "pull myself together because my miserable face was ruining his holiday". After that, I decided that showing him how I felt bored him, so I bottled it up, kept it to myself).
I know I can appear cold and distant - I'm painfully shy and socially pretty awkward, but also extremely OVER-emotive. I cry very easily, I blush easily, my voice shakes, my hands shake... So OF COURSE I try and keep things in check. So for not particularly close friends or acquaintances to find me distant seems reasonable. But for my partner, of multiple years and much time spent together, to feel the same? Blew my mind.
How on earth could he know me, understand me, so little? It was clearly a warning sign.
Funnily enough, pretty much the same could be said of my parents - my mother in particular never seemed to have the least idea who I was or how I ticked; I think my dad does know, but a) he's an elderly British man so he never shows emotion himself and b) he disapproves of my lifestyle choices so much that he can't quite get his head round who I am.
*sigh*
Clearly, this song was written for me...

D is for...

Damocles.
The bare bones of the story of Damocles are pretty well known, and the expression "the Sword of Damocles" has become part of everyday language for a lot of people.
Right now, my own version of that damn sword is swinging perilously over my head, attached to the figurative rafters by a strand of horse's hair.
For once, I'm not actually talking about money (though obviously the image fits that situation pretty well too). No, this time, I'm talking about work.
I translate for a living. You know that. I translate mainly scientific and technical texts, often articles for publication in peer-review journals. I also translate a lot of websites, commercial correspondance and newsletters.
Recently, though, the focus of my work has changed. Yes, I did a lot of words for a pharmaceutical firm last month, but not nearly as many as there are in the book on history and museums I'm wading through right now, or the university exchange programme. There's also a media website.
So where does Damocles and his sword (so to speak) come into all this? Well, as a professional translator, I'm bound by deadlines. And deadlines? I have them.
Being poor and freaked out about money has resulted in me taking on waaaaay too much work. And now the deadlines are starting to seem horribly real and very scary.
A quick run-down for you: 150,000 words (yes, you read that right) by 15 June (that's the history/museography book); 22,000 words by 20 April (the university exchange programme); 2,800 words by this Thursday (the media website). Plus a couple of things to proofread, student translations to correct, exams to mark. I mean, I've done some of it (30,000 of the book, for example, about 3,000 of the university thing), but there's still so very much more...
Panicking much? Er, yes, actually.
I can almost feel the tip of the sword on my scalp...

Of course, maybe the most famous version of the story is actually THIS...!

Teaser Tuesday Posting Frenzy

It's been a while since I fell down a meme-shaft, but I saw this one on The Warrior Muse, who in turn saw it on  Should Be Reading and I (of course) couldn't resist...
The rules are pretty simple:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
So, here are my two teasers:
"It was Acheron Hades, the designated evildoer and antagonist from The Eyre Affair. Inside the book, he was a homicidal maniac who would surgically remove people's faces for fun, but outside the book he collected stamps and wrote really bad poetry."
Jasper Fforde, "One of our Thursdays is missing" (this is actually the 6th book in the "Thursday Next" series; if you haven't read any, then you really need to read them in order, starting with the aforementioned The Eyre Affair...)

C is for...

Collège.
Here in France, "collège" is the equivalent of middle school. Most kids are 11 when they start collège, and they stay there for 4 years, before going to "lycée" or high school for a final 3 years.
My sweet girl, C, will be starting collège in September, and she's already pretty excited about it. So am I, to be honest. I got a letter in the mail today inviting us to an open day at the collège she'll be attending (which is the sister school to the primary school she's at now) and it's in less than a month. We'll be shown around and the first year (6ème) programme will be explained. I'm guessing we'll meet teachers too...
We've already had to decide which language options she'll be doing - she outright refused to do the "élite" bilingual German class (even though she is most certainly capable of it), preferring instead to do just English for now and then add in Spanish in 2 years. That suits me fine. The German bilingual class is basically what she's going to be doing, but with 2 extra hours of classes to study German. I have no interest in her doing that (I'd have been quite happy for her to do it if she'd wanted to, obviously, but she didn't. End of story) and much prefer that she's decided to do Spanish.
The change from primary to collège is a big one - kids are expected to be autonomous, pretty much all of a sudden. They're given more freedom and have to learn how to manage their time, their homework, their revision. But it's an exciting step and I'm delighted that she's reached it. She may only be 10 (she won't be 11 till the end of December, which will makei her one of the youngest in the school), but I can see that she's ready.
My sweet baby C is growing up!