Sleep/Reflection/Recovery

I think the secret to 'successful' blogging, if such a concept exists, is to write when you have something to say. I would prescribe whatever the opposite of 'little and often' would be: 'lots and infrequently' has none of the same poetry to it but the point is clear.

I can scarcely, however, leave things as they were when last I wrote.

The evening following my last blog entry turned out to be a little bleak. I genuinely can't think of a time when I've felt more... more what actually? I think the word is empty. Like all the juice of my Rob-ness had been used up and I just had this big unwieldy body to drag about the place. I foolishly decided that the way to solve the spinning head and sick stomach I had after receiving the news that the last concrete opportunity I had lined up for finding a job had gone down the toilet of French indifference was to go and get drunk.

For those amongst you who have ever get drunk on an empty stomach and found it to be an unpleasant idea, I suggest you stay away from the drunk-on-an-empty-soul experience I had that night. It was not pretty. I sort of thought I was going to cry I one point but when I started, it turns out I was just on the verge of being sick. This is the least fun you can have with bodily fluids.

I've always thought the expression 'tomorrow is another day' was an expression for the feeble-minded or the original-thought-deprived but it turns out that it's virtually impossible to go to bed drunk, blue and nighttime-minded and wake up to a bright november day and feel the same as you did the night before.

In the same way that drunken exploits which seemed like a great idea at the time come back to you in horrifying technicolor as the actions of a different person, my mood of the previous night seemed like something unfortunate that had happened to someone else.

True, I was still in the same luckless, hopeless, hapless situation but it somehow didn't matter as much.

So the search goes on. The life of nothing-to-do continues but so does the social life that I've worked at building here. I have a regular French squeeze (she expressly told me I'm not allowed to use the word 'girlfriend' so I use the word squeeze out of pure spite!) and at the pub quiz we went to last night, my current housemate and I managed to muster up three genuine french friends without have pull them off the street.

To make matters Frencher, at the end of this week I shall be moving out of Jonny's spangly riverside appartment and into something altogether dingier, further out and much more french. I'll be living with two french girls called (disappointingly enough for those fans, like me, of sexy french names like Aurélie or Aurianne) Sophie and Claire.

They're both really nice but I've recently found out (had she been hiding it up until I signed the dotted line?!) that Claire is a heavily involved Christian. No problem with that of course, but I hope my lifestyle of sin and idleness doesn't upset her too much.

Maybe by the next time I write in this blog, I'll be redeemed, chaste and bound for the kingdom of heaven.

Or, much less feasibly, maybe I'll be in work.

Much remains to be seen.

Your newly re-juiced french correspondant,

Rob