Some strangely laid out pictures!

Here are the pictures that match my previous blog. For some reason unknown to me or B.T, my wireless only works if I'm above the "hub" thing sitting on my own upstairs. So publishing on here sometimes gets hard andyou just had to click an hope for the best, but you'll be glad to see this is a veiny leg...

Czech Please

I thought I would actually sit down and type something in my blog because I haven’t done for a long time. I kept making the excuse to people that I hadn’t done anything interesting enough to write about for ages but I’m boring even myself now with that reason, plus I have actually done lots of stuff, it’s just laziness and TV preventing me from writing! So I’m going to have a bit of hardcore Intense Mint Lindt chocolate and tell you about my visit to Prague…

SO, Dobrey-Den!- that mean’s Hello in Prague-ish. I have been back a week now from a trip to Prague with my Aunty under the guise of reckying possible locations for her business clients to do conferences. I don’t think she has any intention, or reason, to use Prague for this, but by having a brief tour around a 5* Spa Hotel and convincing the manager that it was definitely a place “we’d” (cos I was OBVIOULSY a business partner duh) seriously consider, we got to stay in spa luxury for 5 days for FREE.

So we took full advantage of the spa facilities and I have never felt so pampered before. After having a treatment on some part of body DAILY, I feel somewhat neglected in the week I’ve been back. Rubbing on some Boots own exfoliater in a small luke-warm bath under the glare of an energy saving bulb just doesn’t feel quite the same.
My aunt and I had a dual body exfoliation at the spa, which meant we were being scrubbed at the same time in a shared room. There was massive giggle potential, especially after being presented with some awfully large paper thongs to wear during the treatment, but we managed to keep it together. I had a very charming young man who could not speak a single word of English but had very nicely manicured toe-nails (I spent a LOT of time looking at his feet through the hole in the massage bed) and VERY large strong hands- God, I sound like a horny old lady, he was very u-hem good at his trade, talking as a professional myself errr…
So after being scrubbed, all the grit was wiped off with warm towels and then this honey stuff was smoothed on all over (I spent a lot of time subtly manoeuvring myself to stop the paper(probably now translucent)thong from exposing my pubes) We were then wrapped in cling film and left to bake for 20 minutes gas mark 4.
I didn’t favour the cling film effect personally, not being too much of a fan of enclosed spaces at the best of times. It was made worse, I think, by being convinced that it was a “treat” and that I should be the most relaxed I’d ever felt… It was just a little warm and greasy for my liking. Anyway, after being unable to scratch my face for 20 minutes because my arms were pinned to my side, the strong- hands boy told us to shower all the honey stuff off and then have an all over body massage for another hour ughghg luxury this is making me sick writing this now… Boo Hoo for being back in shitty old Seaford.
Just to rub the sickness in I also had a facial and a pedicure, plus at least twice daily usage of the sauna, steam room, Jacuzzi and swimming pool. One day I got a little carried away and stayed in the sauna sweating out for so long that all the veins in my knees dilated and came to the surface, obviously fucking desperate to lose some heat! I was genuinely scared for a while that I had permanently scarred my legs with a red web of old lady veins. I have a picture but it was taken a while after the initial fright so most of the redness has worn off…
We had Italian on the first day in the newer part of the town. I nearly had my bag stolen by some guy pretending to do up his shoe lace, but really scoping out the contents of my hand bag which was blatantly open. I’m not very good at the city thing. In my local pub you can leave anything anywhere- bags of shopping, fags, sunglasses, money on the table and nothing ever happens to it. I wouldn’t say I was naïve; it just takes me a while to adjust to more edgy city surroundings nowadays.
There are sausages everywhere in Prague, literally I’d say there is one sausage outlet every ten minutes along a street. You never need be without a sausage in your hand. I wonder if you did the tourist trail eating a sausage at every stand and shop, how many sausages it would take to see the sights of Prague… just a thought. We purchased a top-class cured and peppered sausage from a local deli as a present for my step dad. Regrettably, when we left we forgot it was wrapped up in a paper bag and stuffed into the top of the mini-bar in the hotel room. By the time we came back to pick our bags up and go to the airport, the whole thing had got out of proportion and I just couldn’t bring myself to ask them at reception if they had found my sausage!
We went to see a few modern art galleries but I have to say that just walking around Prague is better than any gallery. I did seem to be looking UP for most of the time. The hotel and shop fronts are so beautiful and individual, plus there are spires and domed ornate structures EVERYWHERE. The sky line, especially from the castle, is just pure fairy-tale. I sound like an excerpt from the Timeout guide to Prague, but it is actually true- I’m really looking forward to visiting again and taking my friends there, I know they would all just love it. Anyway, the Timeout guide did prove useful on the last night when we were in desperate need of a curry. Apparently there’s only one curry house in the whole of Prague, which I found hard to believe, but could have explained how this shit-hole we went to managed to stay open! It was called “Himalaya” and was in the hippyish bit of the city. We were alone on the lower level of the restaurant, joined by two very loud inane American girls upstairs. I think they were literally sitting ON TOP of us and there was some weird balcony arrangement going on which meant we were practically IN their conversation. There wasn’t much to hear, although I was mildly amused when after about half an hour of deliberation and discussion over the intricacies of the various delights on the menu, they finally settled on “2 chicken currys”. Bland.
Anyway, I had to show the waitress what tonic water was from the fridge, but it wasn’t her fault as the Indian, English and Czech language mix was pretty fucked up and I was getting confused trying to communicate myself. We had a starter and were then presented with a solo poppadum as the next course. It was all a bit strange and the poppadum has been microwaved for too long or something, but we went along with it. Next was the ridiculously large oval plate of chicken biriani (which was just for me but could have fed 4 people) and my Aunts dahl and orange microwaved rice and the BLANDEST vegetable curry known to man. Nursing home special, it wasn’t a Dansak that’s for sure YA YA. Anyway, we ate it and it didn’t really make the cold go away and I swear I got the shits from it, but I guess that’s what you get for being so fucking western and DEMANDING food from exotic continents at least once a week…
The good thing about going away with my aunt and not my friends or Luke was that I got nicely pressured into doing things I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. We spent a really long day hiking around parks, crossing bridges and walking round the entire castle-which is enormous. We were walking back to the hotel feeling ratty and tired, and came across a concern of Mozart’s Requiem performed by the Prague national choir (or something equally impressive?!) in St Nicholas’s church. My aunt apparently loves this piece of music so we just paid and went it. It was a bit of a sudden culture attack, as I have never really been to anything classical or serious like that and wasn’t sure how to behave. I’ve always thought that sort of classical thing is quite sombre and I’m in constant fear of needing to make a loud noise or laugh or do something disruptive. The church was massively impressive- Baroque design- so really garish, very gold, cherubs everywhere, very extreme but good. I’ll put in a picture. It was fantastic anyway, it sounds cheesy but the hair on my neck was standing up at times. It so good I couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that the choir were ACTUALLY singing it… I guess I’m just not used to hearing that kind of stuff live, it was a brilliant experience.
I got a really bad cold on the last day so spent the time before the airport feeling like my head was stuffed with foliage and just wanting to sit down and stare a lot. I have been to the doctors since I came back and have been given steroids to give me strength to hack up the shit sitting on my chest, so it turns out I was actually REALLY ill. I felt a bit bad about making it shit for my aunt, but I don’t think she minded. We had a 3 hour long lunch on the last day at the Kampa Modern Art museum restaurant which is on a balcony overlooking the river. It was a lovely day and we had creative modern art salads which were delicious. We had Mojitos and good pudding and espresso and sat on a soft settee- it was a really nice time.
Anyway, I feel like I could drivel on for ages about my time but I have been writing for so long now that I feel like I can’t differentiate between what actually might be of interest to anyone else and what’s just a stream of stoned consciousness- which this may well all be anyway! What about if I just say this… Other main highlight’s included having a Pork Escalope topped with a perfectly square bit of ham, buying a hand carved Marionette puppet, a boat ride down the river at night and a weird midnight feast in our room involving Saucrout (?) and cheese triangles. It was a good time-it made me happy and inspired.
I’m going to spend the rest of this evening sitting and not thinking of food, as I’m on a diet and I am determined to make temptation my bitch. I’m all about sensations it seems and The Lindt intense mint just wasn’t enough.

I went to Prague, which I will write about at a later date. I brought back some Czech speciality cured sausages to give as presents. Unfortunately there is now only one pack left as Luke and I got too tempted (also, being the only thing in the fridge apart from off milk and wilted celery) and just ate a whole one. It als0 had this logo on the pack which pleased me greatly.

Procrastination

Yes,well here we are again, another titillating excerpt from the wonderful world of Luci!.... I have been so so busy recently, what with going back to university and struggling to re-engage with the academic part of my brain to bash out a 3000 word essay... it's tiring stuff you know, so I haven't had time for the blog thing. (Much to every one's disappointment I should think!)

Anyway, I am currently feeling:

Enlightened

Inspired

Frenzied

Passionate

Intelligent

Creative

Alive

Human

..which are all good things.

I just wish I could actually SIT down and write this damn essay though. I whinged about my concentration 'problem' to a friend, who passed on some advice they had received from a psychotherapist- She suggested it was probably my inner child making it hard to focus,wanting to PLAY, and therefore hindering my concentration. The method for dealing with this blasted inner child was supposedly to get a spare chair, place it next to yours, physically place the 'child' on the chair, give it a packet of maltesers and every time that child piped up and demanded attention (for example... "oooh, i'll just have a little check on facebook, ya never know-someone might have messaged me back in the last 5 minutes...I'll juuust...") you tell it that you know it's there and it will get some attention later on, but right now the ADULT (that's me!) has something to do. Then I guess you, uh I mean the child, gets to have a malteser. Its a great theory... I tried it out- I went to get some chocolate, sat down, couldn't concentrate and realised that I'd left the child in the sweetie isle of the Co-Op....

Here's some things I've done instead of doing my essay:

Hoovered in between every single floor board in the bedrooms.

Brought 2 diaries and spent hours meticulously filling in the "details" part
Facebook- lots, this one goes without saying.

Made sure all the bracelets, earrings and necklaces are all in Separate containers.

Enlarged a picture of a rasta on a photocopier to A1 size purely for my own amusement.

Cleaned all door handles

Organised the contents of my wardrobe- all skirts one side etc etc

grown my nails

Chewed off my nails

Got very drunk.

Written this blog.... and on that note ********

Newhaven

Newhaven... place of beauty...

Quit and Burn

Today I quit my job. There isn't really too much to say about it, except for the enormous feeling of liberation i'm experiencing.

It was a silly idea really because I still need money, but I just could not bring myself to get on that bus AGAIN and sit in that stinking office (orifice) AGAIN and spend MORE hours from my life talking to wankers about bull-shit that neither I or they give a fuck about. God, I just want some WORTH back in my life, that surely isn't too much to ask is it?! I decided, maybe just to justify my extremely rash actions, that working at that place is the last bit left of the disaster my life became over the last year.

That was all actually written last week, but I've been so damn busy having a nice time and spending money i dont have on things i don't need, i haven't had time to finish it off. I also mad a cake for the first time for years. It was a bit of a disaster to be honest. I didn't have a whisk and thought I could use a food blender thing, but it all just jammed up in the blade and flour flew out of the bowl all over the place. So i did it with a spoon. It was lumpy. AND I didn't have proper cake tins, they were too shallow, so as the sponge rose it kind of flopped out and made a cake 'brim'. It was all a bit crooked and I couldn't afford icing sugar so it was very plain, just THIN SCRAGGY SPONGE LAYER-CHEAP SUGAR BASED JAM LAYER-THIN BURNT SCRAGGY SPONE LAYER- oh yeah, because on of the sponges got burnt as well. There's a picture- As you can tell I am very proud of my efforts!

I started a new job today at a retreat on the South Downs. What an experience! Get up at 6, there for 7, make mega health orientated breakfast for 20 people padding around in socks, clean up their mess, clean their loo's, put out their fart vegetarian lunch. It's all very nice though really. There are some people there at the moment who are all emotonal wrecks and have come away to build some survival life coursey type skills. I found it bit harsh as there were a lot of people sitting around crying. I got told not to interact with thm as it might make it worse- fair enough I suppose...

Any way, I'm much happier now. Well, except for it being Saturday night and having to go to bed early seeing as I have to be there at 7am again tomorrow.. social life? hello? Nevermind...

POVA=OVER

I would just to make it known how fucking relieved I am. I got a letter this morning from the Department of Health, Secretary of state to be precise, informing me that i would NOT be included on the (abusers) PoVA and PoCA list. I've spent almost a year tryin to justify my integrity as a worthwhile person, and finally its over..., so I guess I must be a worth while person! Yay for me.

I went for a walk on the beach with my friends to celebrate. It was all peaceful and various "nature" was abundant. For the first time in a long while I felt as if i could exhale and allow myself to be happy.

I should be going back to uni very soon and have already arranged to see my tutor tomorrow to arrange it- things seem to be moving a million miles an hour right now but it's brilliant, it's all i've wanted.

I had so many lovely supportive texts from everyone who i told the good news to and my friends met me for drinks to celebrate. It made me realise how many people really care and that felt really special.

POVA=OVER. FINALLY.

I have framed the letter already, just so if I ever think i'm having a hard time I can look at it and remember that if I managed to get through this bullshit, I can get through most other things!!