different from you and me

An email informs me that I have been given a pay rise of  1.9 percent. At the same time I overhear my boss, on the phone to someone, saying that his daughter turns eighteen in a few months and that he will give her his Porsche.

I should quote Scott F. Fitzgerald to him: "They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard..."

my need to name and shame

I cannot come up with a name for my new workplace.

I need a moniker for every workplace I have, one to mutter under my breath or to make desperate jokes about, to preserve my mental health balance. Perhaps it's only to make my life seem more dramatic. Consequently, I have worked in places known (at least to myself, and maybe to my blog readers) as The Little Shop of Harmony, Heartburn Hotel, The Supermarket  ( a hotel ),  The Chicken Coop  and  Magic Valley.

But the name of this one eludes me. 

It shouldn't be that difficult, considering it's a tiny office with some interesting characters, such as the alpha male boss who just got a new tattoo ( a massive skull and crossbones ) and the tiny Chinese girl who asks me things like "If you say 'Satan', will something terrible come?" while a frustrated coworker is shouting the name of that particular devil over and over in the next room.

a grey day and treasure

A lazy day, and a very grey day. A slow walk along the seafront.

Everything wrapped in fog, dripping trees, the muted murmur of tiny waves lapping at the shore, in the distance voices of other walkers and joggers. The air was almost warm against my skin. And the fragrance of sea and spring was like a caress.

I even found a shipwreck.

stockholm syndrome

Went to the cottage, my summer paradise. Mostly because my mother forced me to.

It was the first time this year. The family spends most of the summer there but in the winter we never go because there is no heating and no running water, and the roads are usually buried in snow. So in the spring, there is a lot to do: clean out a cottage that's been empty and unused for months, not to mention tidy up the enormous garden. My mother is a firm believer in raking up all the old leaves covering the lawn, preferably every single one.

So I went, grumbling, to rake leaves for more than four hours with my mother ( only half the lawn was done by then, hadn't even started on cleaning the house ). On our way there, I thought of a million things I would rather be doing on my precious day off. Maybe I could buy my mother off with this one day of forced labour, and then not have to come back for another month at least.

When we arrived, we started by stretching out on the sunny porch for a leisurely cup of coffee. It was warm, it was definitely spring, birds were singing, the sea was glittering, peace was everywhere, and dreams of a lovely summer ahead were swirling in the air. After all the raking, I was sitting in the sun again, having a lazy picnic, and I felt my normally busy, stressed-out nerves be hypnotized into a calmness never experienced in the city.

I heard myself saying to my mother: "Let's come here next weekend, finish the cleaning and stay overnight. And then every weekend until September."

widows, babies, students and the mysterious Mr. H

It's been seven years since I moved into the  House of the Seven Widows  (described in this post and this one). Unbelievable.

There are not seven widows anymore, only about four or five. But the lovely one next door still smiles brightly at me over the balcony railing on sunny afternoons, and on cold winter days I sometimes invite myself into her flat for coffee. The other chatty one died tragically after a fall in her flat last year, and I miss having to hold the door for her every time I go through the main entrance. The suspicious-minded one on the second floor is still the busybody of the building. The other day I found her staring in disbelief at the board by the entrance door, where all the residents are listed. Somebody had taken great pains to pick out almost all the letters from the names, leaving only a few random ones. The rest lay in a neat pile on the floor. I found it rather funny, but the widow was trying to decide whether the guilty party was the student boys, a non-resident, or perhaps Mr. H on the second floor. At the last suggestion, the widow was hurriedly shushed by one of the lesser-known widows on the first floor, who had come to see what the fuss was about, but I gathered that all is not quite right with Mr. H. 

There are some new residents as well, and two young couples in the building actually agreed to switch flats. There is a baby one floor down, who has screaming fits at night. A strong-willed two-year-old next door who likes to shout in the stairwell because of the nice echo effect. A female student in the flat below mine with an incredibly shrill giggle on Saturday nights when she has her girlfriends over for drinks. A secondary school principal.

The three male students in one of the big flats are still there, only their faces and the names on the door seem to change every couple of years. They are all tall and athletic, go clubbing on the weekends and probably spend the rest of the week in the gym.

But the soft-spoken divorced man on the top floor is still there and shyly discusses the weather with me whenever we run into each other. And the sweet old couple who  "Sunday mornings go for a ride"  in their car, like in the Beatles' song. The mysterious individual/couple/family who owns a luxurious flat on the third floor but doesn't use it or bother renting it out. The chairman of the residents' association who once suspected me of breaking a window. The bearded bohemian who publishes explicit poetry. And the dentist and his wife who smile at me like we are old friends although we have never spoken.

Funny how you get to know people you never say more than "hello" to.

dachshunds, perch and other wildlife

1st of May, and the almost-traditional hike on the Island.

Meaning bright sunshine and icy winds, and the bliss of finding a picnic spot in a sheltered, sunny spot. Add to that the excitement of going to that little creek to watch the spectacle of spawning perch, and the magnificent views from the lookout tower.

The company: a good friend, a guy who dumped me, his new girlfriend, a pregnant Chinese woman, a couple I have never met before, a slightly mad man, a true Islander (strong, silent) and a fat Dachshund.