Springtime creeps along

It’s spring. I’ve been saying that for the last month without believing it myself in a desperate attempt to drag my brain out of the doldrums of the black Scandinavian winter and into the gladsome brightness of the Scandinavian sunrise (maybe, maybe this will be the year that summer doesn’t absolutely suck in Belgium – third time lucky – oh fuck, have I really been here that long?).

But now it’s true, for the moment at least . . . there are some flowers in the parks besides snowdrops now, and the waxy pink buds are swelling on the shrubs, and tiny baby leaves are slowly unfurling . . . the sun, she is a’shining, the birds, they are a’singing/fucking/nesting . . . sorry if my language is twee but it’s just so fucking great. There were a lot of reasons I moved to Europe, but a very big one was that it hurt to wait until April for the springtime. And now that it is here – now that there’s a new mildness and dirt-smell to the air, even in the middle of this fucking smoghole of a city – it’s such a relief. Soon the days will be so long . . . soon it will still be daytime for hours and hours and hours after work. Oh fuck, what a relief.

And now we’ve arranged for our Easter holiday too, something more to look forward to, in that it will be an escape from the city – sort of. We were thinking of Aachen and of the German/Belge national park next to it, but some people who we want to do that with couldn’t make it, so instead we’re heading to Bordeaux. I’ve just finished putting together an exhaustive feature on the storm there so we’ll be seeing less trees than we otherwise would have, but we did find a company that runs sea-kayaking even in April. Fuckin’ A.

I guess I’m clutching at such small things and small escapes at the moment. A couple of nights ago I was telling the F-word about how people spend a lot of time yelling at me at work – not colleagues – contacts. It doesn’t get my goat in the normal sense but I do come home rather fagged, and a little cranky, and much more tense than is healthy for our relationship or for me. I’ve been dropping weight – okay, I could have stood to lose a few pounds, but frankly I don’t wholly like losing weight; it makes me feel small and less powerful – I’m the colour of a dirty sink, and I’ve started crying when I see trees get cut down.

Anyways, I told the F-word people yell at me a lot. And he told me he wanted me to quit as soon as possible, and hearing that from him was just so nice – such a relief in itself. I won’t, at least not for awhile – I’m hoping to goodness they sack me in December so I get a payout – but it was so good to hear him say that was what he wanted me to do. And yesterday he learnt how to make Lebanese bread at home. Fuck, he’s great.