Will's Lullaby

Reading Edvard Munch's biography again. Makes me miserable. 

I'm getting thoughtful in weird ways. I look at people and wonder if they're happy. I feel like there's too much death around at the moment. 

I'm afraid. 

There's a gap, and it can't really be bridged, it's distant past or future, and I'm starting to wish there'd been more in between so I didn't feel so awkward when talking about the past. 

"and I hope everything is going to be alright"

So afraid.

Led to the Sea

Oh. I know it's been so long. But I finally posted my Paris stuff.

I got a job. It's okay. Slightly painful. I feel horribly inadequate and useless, and I don't think I'll ever be good at it. But there you go. Such is life. I need it, I need the money, so I'll carry on as long as I have to. On my first day I thought "I'd much rather be at JET" - now there's a thought I'd never have. I would start ranting, but it's pointless and just makes me feel like crap, so I won't. 

Other news. I've moved the hi-fi which used to be the 'family' one, from my brother's room where it's been gathering dust for a few years, to mine. It's really exciting cos I like having good, big speakers, and I've just been listening to music all day going "omg that sounds so much better!". It's pretty great. 

Wisdom teeth are killing me. Not happy. Don't need more teeth thanks. 

Went for walks with Cat around Wandlebury. We found this awesome sort of teepee that someone had made out of sticks. It was cool. 

What else? Hazards of Love is out now, and I really like it. Not as much as The Crane Wife, but it's still awesome. It made me laugh though that one reviewer called Colin Meloy "donkey-voiced"... kinda harsh. Seriously looking forward to seeing them when they come over here though. Yayz. 

Jenny Owen Youngs new single has come out = more excitement. Different, but good, and I've been listening to it all week. Doves new album out tomorrow. And going to see Bat for Lashes in a couple of weeks at the Junction :)

Pheasant in the garden the other day. Randomly. So I took some photos of it ^

OU stuff is going alright, this stuff is more interesting than the last stuff, so it's all good. 

That's all for now I think. I'll try and update more often. It's not like I'm even so stupidly busy that I don't have time to write. Bla.

bai.x.

Paris is Burning

Got up stupidly early on Sunday morning to catch a train to London at 8:30. Got to St Pancras. Eurostar is actually amazing. I was laughing with Smem about how it takes longer to get to Oxford from Cambridge by bus than it does to get to Paris from London by train. It took 2hrs 15, which went really quickly. Slept through most of it, ate my Boots meal deal (woop!). Forgot to practise any French.

Benefits of choosing a hotel near to the station = practically impossible to get lost. This made me quite happy, as it literally took us less than 10 mins to find. Panicked a lot when we got there as I couldn't remember to say anything in French, so just asked the guy on reception if he spoke English. Luckily he did, so it was all good. Generally nice place. Tiny tiny tiny lift - we barely fitted in it with our stuff.

Walked up to Montmartre, there were lots of weird people that kept trying to tie things to Cat's finger... didn't really get it, but she managed to make them go away. Went up to the Sacre Coeur, it was all like Amelie, someone had even spray-painted blue arrows on the wall, like the bit where he follows the trail. It was pretty cool. 

The Sacre Coeur was beautiful inside, wasn't allowed to take photos (slightly gutted) and felt quite awkward as Mass was going on whilst we were walking round. Sun was starting to set, and so we walked around some of the back streets of Montmartre, past the Moulin de la Galette (yay), and then back to the main street in search of food. Had no idea where to go, and so we walked along just trying to find a place that didn't look too scary or had garish neon lights outside. After a bit of a walk we found a place that had the menu in French and English... of course we had to eat there. Went in, couldn't remember how to ask for a table in French, so the waitress just said "eat or drink?" to me and I was like "...eat". Had steak, chips and beer. Om nom nom. 

Next day we went to the Louvre in the morning. Walked there, was quite a long way, and should've really taken the metro. Oh well. Got there eventually. Walked down by the river, and went through one of the side entrances into the place where the pyramids are. Amazing building. Luckily it wasn't disgustingly busy. 

Managed to restrict the stuff we (I) wanted to see to one wing, started looking at the Greek/Roman sculpture, then Renaissance painting, and some sculpture, and 18th/19th century French painting, and at the end we walked through the Egyptian section. It was good to see some of the stuff I spent time studying at college, like Canova's Cupid and Psyche which I'd been convinced was fairly small, I guess when you look at pictures of stuff and don't look at the measurements for it... well, it's easy to be misled. Anyway, it was a lot bigger than I expected, a bit smaller than life size. 

Having stupidly not drunk anything, and having only eaten a croissant, I managed to get a massive headache, and then stubbornly refused to drink any water because we were in the gallery. Probably would've spent a bit longer in there if I hadn't ended up being really grumpy from lack of food. So we came out and went to Starbucks to buy lunch. Sat outside and ate in the Tuileries - it was really really windy. There were lots of sparrows about, and Cat fed them bits of her sandwich. She managed to get them to fly up and eat out of her hand, it was really cute :) but then pigeons started coming and so we stopped feeding them. 

Walked through the Tuileries, had a freak rain shower, where even though there weren't any clouds overhead it was just pouring for a few minutes, but there was a rainbow, which was cool. Crossed the river to get to the Musee d'Orsay, only to find that it was shut on Mondays. So we walked up to the Ile de la Cite to see St Chapelle and Notre Dame.

We'd been able to see Notre Dame from near the Louvre, but as we got closer it seemed to disappear, and we couldn't find it (which seems ridiculous when it's massive), so we went to St Chapelle first. St Chapelle is hidden away, there's no proper street entrance, you have to go through another entrance, and then through a courtyard. It's really quite small, but possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been. The sun was starting to go down, so it was shining through the stained glass on the right side, and it was really amazing. I took loads of photos, and we spent quite a long time in there, just staring. 

Managed to find Notre Dame after a little bit of wandering. It wasn't quite as spectacular as St Chapelle, but still pretty amazing. We walked around and I lit a candle. No hunchbacks to be seen. Decided to eat early, and found another place with the menu in French and English, so we went in. Still failing to speak even barely passable French, I think the waiter thought we were slightly retarded, or just very annoying. Had burger and chips... more of the same, but only because they'd sold out of lasagne. 

Took the metro back to the hotel, as we really couldn't be bothered to walk anymore. Hung out for a bit, went to Leader Price and bought crisps and jaffa cakes to eat later in case we were hungry, and then set out for the Eiffel Tower. Metro again. There was a horrible woman on the platform who I wanted to kick the shit out of. I don't think I've ever been that angry at a stranger. She was talking about us, and I looked at her, and she said to her friend to move away a bit cos I was looking, but they were still only about 6 ft away from us, and it was easy enough to translate bits of what she was saying and realise she was a complete bitch. Then she started talking to us and laughing at Cat and trying to work out what language we spoke because we clearly didn't speak French. If the train hadn't turned up at that point I don't know what would've happened, but it took me about an hour to calm down. 

Arrived at the Eiffel Tower, it was dark, so it was all illuminated and pretty :). It was still really windy, and I was feeling quite scared about going up. The lift was scary. Like, I had to stare at the floor because I couldn't cope with being able to see us going up that fast. It's okay when you're in solid structures and lifts without windows, because you can't see how high up you are. But the Eiffel Tower just gave me vertigo, and by the time we got to the top it was so windy that I was practically being blown backwards. Once I got over my fear a bit, it was an awesome view, could see the Sacre Coeur and the Arc de Triomphe. 

Caught the metro back to the Gare du Nord, which seems to have about a million different entrances, so we found ourselves on the wrong side of the station and didn't really know which way to go to get back to the hotel, and this weird guy came up to us and started talking to us, luckily we managed to get away and quite soon after we found which way to go. Ate jaffa cakes and crisps on the way back. 

Checked out in the morning, and left our luggage at the station. Then we walked down to the Moulin Rouge, and down the street with the most sex shops I have ever seen. A lot of them said "cabins automatiques" outside, and we were trying to work out what the hell that might involve...

Then we walked all the way back down to the river, to the Musee d'Orsay. Definitely preferred it to the Louvre, as it had more of the art I actually like, as opposed to stuff I just studied. Monet, Courbet, Renoir, Manet etc. Was massively disappointed as the floor plan said there was Munch in one of the rooms, but none of his paintings were anywhere to be seen. But the rest of it was really good. Ate in the cafe there, and then began our wander down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

As we were coming up to the Arc de Triomphe there were lots of army-type people, and they were parading up to it. We sat and watched, along with loads of other people, they were there for ages, we didn't really know what else to do though. I was looking up at the Arc when I realised there were people on the top of it. I had no idea you could actually go up it, but there's an underpass which takes you to it and then you go up an almost never-ending spiral staircase (my legs were just about to collapse by the time we got up there), there's a room with a shop and some displays and then there's another (much shorter) staircase to the top. It was a really good view, and much less scary than the Eiffel Tower.

We came back down, took the metro to the Gare du Nord, ate at Quick, because I refused to go to McDonalds, although to be honest, the food was pretty rank. Was quite relieved that that was the last time I was going to have an awkward conversation with someone in Franglais. Went back to the station, picked up our luggage and got on the train. 

Fin. 

The Window is a Door

"I'm not your way out"

Feeling quite messed up. That woman on the metro is still getting to me. It's been years since a stranger has said stuff like that to me completely unprovoked. Of course, I don't know exactly what she was saying, which is probably why it bothers me so much more. But I could work out some of it, enough to realise she was a malicious bitch and was being horrible to Cat. I've never wanted to hurt a stranger so much. It took me hours to calm down, literally, before I could think about it without wanting to kick things. 

I just can't get over it. It's like she's managed to unleash a giant pile of insecurities that I can't make go away.

So I just feel like sitting around and moping. Can't concentrate on one thing. 

Proper Paris posts soon...

Contender

I should be finishing my essay right now. But I've been neglectful again. So...

I've spent most of this week procrastinating and/or panicking about doing my essay. It's... one of those ones I kind of know I can do but choose to leave it til the last minute to do. I think I'm finally coming to the conclusion that I will never ever get out of this habit, however much I try. I spent a significant amount of time sitting in Starbucks working on Weds, and actually got more done in that time than any other time this week, but when you're sitting downstairs by yourself and you're thirsty and hungry and the only way you can rectify the situation is by leaving your laptop by itself or sacrificing your table, it's easy to give up and go home. Which is what I did. 

Been listening to the Joy Formidable quite a lot. Liking them. And the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who I'm apparently going to see at the Soul Tree with Fi in June. Also very good. 

In my hours of procrastination I've been geeking around with Google Maps, looking for places to go in Paris, and I didn't realise before but they have quite extensive street-view maps, so I've learnt how to get from the station to the hotel already, like I'll actually be able to say "oh, and we're meant to turn right at that McDonalds" or whatever. It's probably sad that this makes me quite excited, and when I told Cat about it, she was like "well, why are we going? You could just look at it all on Google...". Hmph. 

Talking of being a geek... I've read Watchmen, and I'm going to see it tonight with peoples from Fopp. If someone had told me this time last year that I'd be reading comic books and Terry Pratchett, I would've laughed in their face. I'm starting to feel the need for a bit of Orwell or something to tear me away from this weird geekiness. 

I got this grass head thing from my secret santa person (who turned out to be Mostyn) when I was at Fopp, and it's finally grown loooads of "hair" so it looks pretty cool, but now I'm meant to give it a haircut, which I'm a bit reluctant to do in case I mess it up. 

Feel like I've got loads to do today, so I'll be going now. Going to Paris on Sunday, back on Tues, so I'll return with adventure stories and photos at some point. Exciting times. 

bai.x.