Writer's block, or how to eat an elephant

It's been two weeks since I arrived in Seattle and perched at my desk overlooking the Space Needle, Puget Sound and, weather permitting, the Olympics. In that time, I've developed a passable poker face, got really good at Carcassone (once we'd added two expansion packs and I was allowed to create The Leper tile), pranced about in unseasonably heavy snowfall, roasted my first Thanksgiving turkey and spent the next week trying to get rid of the evidence (by hiding it in turkey toasties, turkey kievs, Silesian potato dumplings in turkey and tomato sauce, and turkey quiche... no more turkey for at least a year for me, please). The one thing I haven't done is WRITE THAT DARN ARTICLE.

Every day, I sit at the table, look out at the sunny/snowy/rainy/misty Seattle, and balk. My SPSS is up and running, all the reference articles I've spent a year collecting are right in front of me, and I've even managed to write the first paragraph of the introduction. The first sentence will knock your socks off, guaranteed. But since then, nil, nada, zilch.

I sit at the table and stare outside. It's morning, it's noon, it's night. I read the paragraph, go through my notes, then balk.

All I've done today is colour-code the reference articles. Heck, it's a start. In fact, I was so proud of myself that I went on facebook to brag about it... only to be faced with a deluge of ads. My choices were simple: get help getting pregnant, find divorce attorneys near me, or buy discount Hunter wellies. I've been married for six months. Six! So just because my Wall isn't chock-full of baby news, my marriage must be on the rocks?! It's a brave new world out there, fb, and I've only just moved countries, so cut me some slack.

I clicked 'uninterested' and thought that would be that. But no, fb has it all worked out. No offspring, not interested in a little help siring one, and won't consider a divorce? But of course! Here's a new ad for me: local churches. Figures. I sat there staring at it, and actually thought it did make some sense. I'm a childless, faithless hag, and I need new shoes.

I need to write an article. The future of my nascent research career depends on it.

(Or I could start pushing pins through condoms... If only the thought of pregnancy didn't make me think of baby aliens breaking out...)

The way to eat an elephant is to start by eating the tail. With the colour-coding done, it's onto the trunk. If I only knew for which actual piece of article-writing that metaphor was supposed to stand.

30 things to do at 30

Well, that was a non-starter, you might say. A whole year since I posted here! Not for the lack of things to talk about, but time has been scarce. I got my degree (not too shabby, actually), and stumbled into a job right away. From then on, it's all been work, house-hunting, and wedding-planning. The work's been fab, the house never happened, but the wedding did. So here you are, all up to speed!


(photo by Ben Langdon)

Now, let's get to the point: I've just turned 30. Tintin's in States for a while, and I'm a somewhat recalcitrant lady of leisure (which moniker I do prefer over grass widow, thank you very much). As such, I've decided to actually flaunt my age and get up to all sorts of mischief. Some that I should have tried long before, some I'm only old enough to try now.

Since the fashion at the moment is for bucket lists, and my art teacher always used to say that humans tend to see symmetry as beauty, here's my 30/30 list (on a shoestring):


1. Learn to surf

2. Visit Disneyland

3. Go blond

4. Learn French

5. Drive an Aston Martin

6. Become a citizen of another country

7. Join the circus

8. Go on a Night Hike of London

9. Learn a martial art

10. Learn to take better photos

11. Write a novel (and do your damnest to get it published)

12. Watch Bonfire Night fireworks at a theme park

13. See 30 operas or ballet performances

* Agon - Igor Stravinsky, George Balanchine (ballet, 1957) - impressive but forgettable
* Un ballo in maschera - Giuseppe Verdi (opera, 1859) - great
* La Bayadère - Ludwig Minkus, Marius Petipa (ballet, 1877) - very good
* Castle Nowhere - Arvo Pärt, Matjash Mrozewski (ballet, 2006) - beautiful, with superb set design by Yannik Larivee
* Don Pasquale - Gaetano Donizetti (opera, 1843) - good fun
* Giselle - Adolphe Charles Adam, ch: Jules Perrot, Jean Coralli, Marius Petipa (ballet, 1884) - very good
* Invitus Invitam - François Couperin (arranged by Thomas Adès), Kim Brandstrup (ballet, 2010) - odd, but hauntingly beautiful
* Limen - Kaija Saariaho, Wayne McGregor (ballet, 2009) - weird
* Nabucco (Nabucodonosor) - Giuseppe Verdi (opera, 1842) - mind-blowing
* Niobe, regina di Tebe - Agostino Steffani (opera, 1688) - great (and Jacek Laszczkowski as Anfione was sublime)
* Onegin - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (orchestrated and arranged by Kurt-Heinz Stolze), John Cranko (ballet, 1965) - good
* Polyphonia - György Ligeti, Christopher Wheeldon (ballet, 2001) - forgettable
* Requiem - Gabriel Fauré, Kenneth MacMillan (ballet, 1976) - forgettable
* Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) - Richard Wagner (opera, 1869) - very good
* Romeo and Juliet - Sergey Prokofiev, Kenneth MacMillan (ballet, 1965) - great (and Tamara Rojo as Juliet was ethereal, heart-breaking, stunning, poignant, marvellous... I could carry on like this all day)
* Roméo et Juliette - Charles-François Gounod (opera, 1867) - no (halfway through, I was already thinking "oh, die already!" and Juliette's grating voice and appalling lack of acting skills were painful to witness)
* Rigoletto - Giuseppe Verdi (opera, 1851) - perfect, best performance to date with the sensational Dmitri Hvorostovsky (and Michael Vale's sets and Tanya McCallin's costumes, lovingly lit by Paule Constable, were extraordinary)
* Sphinx - Bahuslav Martinu, Glen Tetley (ballet, 1977) - very good
* Swan Lake - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, ch: Marius Petipa & Lev Ivanov (ballet, 1895) - absolutely fabulous
* Sylvia - Léo Delibes, Frederick Ashton (ballet, 1952) - there's no crowbarring a plot into this one, so unless you're a stalwart fan of endless silent-movie-style harem follies, this one is borderline tiresome
* Theme and Variations - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, George Balanchine (ballet, 1947) - impressive, again
* The Tsarina's Slippers (Cherevichki) - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (opera, 1887) - absolutely fabulous
* Turandot - Giacomo Puccini (opera, 1926) - very good
* La Valse - Joseph Maurice Ravel, Frederick Ashton (ballet, 1958) - like watching ballet through a kaleidoscope
* Winter Dreams - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (arranged by Phillip Gammon), Kenneth MacMillan (ballet, 1991) - very good

Total: 25

14. Climb an active volcano

15. Visit Pompeii

16. See aurora borealis

17. See the fjords

18. Go on a road trip in the USA

19. Learn sign language

20. Become an extra

21. Find out who killed Laura Palmer

22. Learn to ski

23. Learn to read sewing patterns properly

24. Do Hawaii

25. See roller derby live

26. Knit an heirloom shawl

----------------
And here I've run out of ideas. The rest, therefore, is comprised of all the things I didn't know I wanted to do when I started this post, but ended up doing anyway.

27. Visit New York

28. See a Broadway musical

29. Take an oil painting class

30. Start a family

You'll never guess how those two met.

Tintin (popping his head into the bedroom before he leaves for work): You do remember that the parents are coming today?
Me (rolling in bed): The house... Argh... Can we hire a cleaner? Just for today?
He: Yes, of course. An unemployed Polish girl who needs the money to finish her studies.
Me (after a second's stunned pause): I'm such a cliché!

Then, we both fell over laughing. I am sooo not going to clean the house today. I've got a dissertation to write! And a blog, obviously...

But apparently he didn't think of me when he said it. And frankly, some days I forget where I was born myself. It's been a long time, I've lived many places since, and ever called home only the UK.

Tintin and I have been together for over five years now. We're getting married next June. Another cliché, certainly. But just wait till we have children and start doing social experiments on them.

Meanwhile, we're doing our best to make it into the Guinness Book of Records as the most boring couple that ever lived. We don't do drama, or grand romantic gestures, and we have never been on a date.

We have lived together from the day we met. We were both working for a charity over the summer, and the job came with a house in a sleepy northern town. The house came with a backyard, and the day Tintin arrived in it was a sweltering Sunday. Sweltering. Honestly. You may not believe that about the English weather, but those days do happen.

It was too hot to work, so my friend (who paid her way through uni being a lap dancer) and I decided to cut the fundraising short and get back to the house, change into our bikinis and spend the rest of the day chilling in the backyard.

I had only just come back from a couple of months in Thailand, where I did my best Lara Croft impression rock-climbing, got a tan thrashing in the ocean, and learned to cook Pad Thai from the best. By then, I'd been single for about two years, and I was on my way to India, where I was accepted to a nursing college. I was not looking for a relationship. I was in love already - with Africa. I used to work in an HIV/AIDS prevention project in Mozambique, and I was damned if I didn't go back. This time, however, not as a volunteer, but with a useful skill that would hopefully convince Médecins Sans Frontières to take me in. That was the plan. You know what they say about plans. And mine weren't even that well laid.

(Nadin, my drop-dead-gorgeous, lap-dancing friend, would start to snigger right about now, and tell you that I wasn't that well-laid either. Let her. She's the master embellisher of tall tales, but there's a grain of truth in everything she says.)

Back to the story. It wasn't just the tan I got in Thailand. I was also a happy owner of a tie-dye double hammock. And by Ra, I was going to use it. Yes, in England. Yes, I know it rains a lot here. But from time to time, we do get a truly glorious summer day. And that Sunday... it was one of them.

Nadin and I burst into the house laughing, greeted the slightly bewildered-looking ginger boy on the sofa in the lounge, and pounded up the stairs to change.

When we came down, she headed for the kitchen to make some burgers for late lunch, and I stepped out into the backyard. I looked up at the pole to which I wanted to attach one end of the hammock, then at the fabric in my hands. The boy came to the door. I looked the pole up and down again, and turned to him.
I didn't know what got into me. I'd single-handedly built a gazebo in Africa, but now I couldn't resist batting my eyelashes just a bit.

"Help?" I said, handing the hammock to him. I decided to call him Tintin partly because of his hair, but there was an air of a boy adventurer about him, too.

While he tied the straps to the pole, I sauntered to the kitchen and got us a couple of beers. When I came back, the hammock was up. So I climbed in, and said, handing him a can:
"It's a double. Why don't you get in?"

He did. As he now tells it, he couldn't resist. There was that girl in a bikini, who asked him to get into a hammock with her and handed him a beer. He was 21, I was 24. He didn't stand a chance. The rest, as they say, is history.

I stayed in England. He asked, I agreed. I applied to the External System and got accepted into BSc Sociology. Last year, I graduated with a few awards and a first. I'm about to complete my MSc Sociology (Research) at the LSE. That may not be that spectacular a finish. I've simply had too much fun, running a student magazine (The Muse), two websites (for the LSESU Drama and LSESU Brazilian societies), and starring in plays (Annajanska). Between one and the other, I haven't done much studying. But I've had a whale of a time. And let's not forget that little distraction either: I'm getting married!

We didn't go to Paris. He didn't drop down on one knee. There was no ring. I simply woke up one Saturday morning not long before my final BSc exams and didn't feel like studying. At all. It was March, the weather outside was abysmal, and I decided I wanted to go to Brighton rather than the British Library. I was lying in bed, chipping pink varnish off my fingernails. I usually only get French manicure, but at the time I was working for a media company, and the previous evening got a little tipsy out with the girls. One of them had just bought some nail varnish in the hottest pink. We all had to try it.
"I want to go to Brighton," I said, when Tintin opened his eyes.
"Let's."
We caught a train out of London and were there within an hour. It started to rain. The wind was howling down the streets, and some bus lines were cancelled in case the buses got pushed into the sea. The waves were crashing onto the shore. The sound was deafening. I stood on the rocky beach and screamed my lungs out at the churning waters. We got drenched, took lunch at an eat-as-much-as-you-can Chinese, went to a couple of museums. I'd never been to Brighton before. I liked it.

In the afternoon, cold and wet, we came back to the station, but missed the train by a minute. There was nowhere to sit down, so we went to a nearby pub to wait. We had a couple of beers by the fireplace, watching football and finding the experience strangely comforting - neither one of us has any interest in it. I'm a cricket girl, Tintin used to play rugby. We're both doers rather than watchers. Still, the beer was good.

We sat in that pub for hours. When we finally made it home, it was dark. In London, the Brighton gale turned to drizzle. We pulled the curtains shut and curled up on the sofa.
"Would you marry me?" asked Tintin after a while.
"Of course," I shrugged, thinking he was asking hypothetically, along the lines of: "If I actually one day asked you to marry me, would you agree then?" I was too busy warming up my nose on his chest to pay much attention to anything else. I rubbed my cold cheeks against his jumper and waited for the next part of the conversation. It never came. Finally, it dawned on me.
"Wait!" I said, raising my head. "Was that the question?"
He looked positively giddy, so I took that as a 'yes'.
"Of course," I said again, this time grinning. Neither one of us moved a finger. We were still cuddled up on the sofa in a hushed flat, with just the rain tapping on the windows. And just like that, we were engaged.

Next day, we went to Hatton Garden and got the ring. Then we told the family. When Tintin's sister heard the 'how', all she had to say was:
"That's soooo you, guys."

You know what else is? Silly banter. And that's mostly what this blog is going to be about. Tintin and me, and what we get up to. No drama.

I've studied wars, genocides, collapsing societies. I've worked with the disabled and the dying. I've been hurt and I have hurt others. There's enough pain out there already, and enough people talking about it. So although I do have a few high horses of my own, I am not going to get on any one of them here.

Instead, I'm going to do my very best to be happy. And maybe to make you laugh, if I can, and if you feel like it as well.