martedì, aprile 21, 2009

Bundle of nerves and nerves and bone and hair

For someone who spends so much time whining on a keyboard every morning, it's astonishing how much I had to drum up my moxy to express myself to my employers, and say "I'm not happy," and have a go at explaining why. At the end I was so keyed up and so overwrought that my practice driving session later that evening was nearly disastrous for the entire city of Brussels. I think, however, the work confrontation went well, in the sense that I think I'll get what I want, or at least am much more likely to get what I want than I was before the confrontation. Now the F-word and I have to be quite, quite clear on what we want - and this morning, that's keying me up. Will the dust never fucking settle? Or does that have to wait until senility?

My driving exam is in two weeks. Less. A week and a half. After last night, I am not oozing confidence. It looks like being angry makes me a better driver, and being nervous, overwrought and preoccupied makes me a much worse driver. Go fucking figure.

But let's have a go at accentuating the calm and positive: my peas and lemon cucumbers have sprouted and the tomatoes/tomatilloes are going gangbusters. It has been a lovely sunny spring so far, very uncharacteristically so for Brussels, and that's been helping them along beautifully. I'm willing to dedicate my life to fighting climate change and it's going to be one of the greatest disasters our planet has ever known, but honestly, it can only do this fucking shithole of a city I live in favours.

Oh well done, Spliffe, that was some marvellous accentuation of the positive. I think I'm a little extra pissy about Brussels today because Bordeaux was also lovely and sunny, but despite being of a comparable sort of size, the air was clear - here things get hazy after a city block because of the miasma of car exhaust, industrial emissions, spores and pollen. Bordeaux has taken a lot of measures to get cars of the streets, and it's next to mountains and seas and farms, and Brussels subsidizes the criminal overuse of cars, and it's next to Germany's farting industrial asshole, which due to prevailing winds actually has better air quality than here.

3 commenti:

Hilts ha detto...

funny - in america, or chicago, @ least - basically all one has to do to get a licence is to be 16 and not crash the car on the drivers test. It's been strange following yr driving deal in belgium

Baywatch ha detto...

ditto. and you would think it would result in better drivers, but that wasn't my experience.

Dread Pirate Jessica ha detto...

Hells no, these people can't drive for shit. 1/3 of the words that come out of my instructors are 'See what that guy did? Don't do that.'