Monday, July 16, 2012

my two year anniversary



OK, am close to wanting to leave now. The UK, I mean.

We are having the worst summer in the history of summers in Britain. They say this every summer - 'they' being this ever-hopeful nation - but this time it's really true. When I think of last summer, I remember endless barbeques, wearing dresses without tights, sun. General lightness.

Fifty shades of grey isn't just a book dude.

I'm close to just fucking off and never coming back.

Why is it so bad this year? According to the Daily Mail and various other highly intellectual outlets (bah!), the jet stream around the Earth has shifted. As the Earth turns, it creates a jet stream, which mostly is meant to shield the UK from all the colossal Arctic shit happening up north.

Instead, the polar caps are melting and sending the jet stream off in numerous other directions, and now we have floods and the wettest summer ever. Which are only supposed to get worse, as the polar caps aren't exactly refreezing themselves are they.

I have officially been here two years yesterday. Only two years? It definitely feels like more. It seems like a lifetime ago, I stepped off the plane to a beaming Brit, clutching my one way ticket and with a bag full of all of my most worldly possessions. (Like my favourite shoes and my work visa).

I had made it to the UK, set to leave indefinitely. My time here was never going to be finite. All Saffas could get a two year working visa at one stage, that allowed them to random work, but not stay on.

So just as they were getting nicely settled, they were kicked out the country. That would've been me, had I come here five years ago. But here I am, living on, in the wettest fucking country on the planet.

The Brit got a free week's leave from work (!), and has gone to Mallorca with his bezzy mate. Where it's 33 degrees, and the sea is the same colour as the sky: blue, mate.

Staying in an all-inclusive resort thingie on the edge of Shagaluf, where they'll be meeting people called Barry from Basildon and Duncan from Doncaster, wearing football shirts and getting raped by the sun's rays on the beach.
But frankly, I'd swap that for the grey, shitty rain outside, even if it's just an hour. It's not cold, it's just wet.

It's literally relentless.

As some kind of recompense, the Brit has actually bought me 50 Shades of Grey as a distraction in his absence.
It's a strange irony that the weather outside is also fifty shades of grey. And that the greyest, wettest summer is when the book is doing so well. Coincidence?

I am on Chapter 7 and while it is appallingly written, and you literally feel like you're reading a teenager's diary, n'thless I'm pushing on with it. The protagonist, in my mind, is Christian Bale, and this is his American Psycho sequel. Hell, I was distracted enough to spend my Saturday night reading and polishing off half a bottle of pinot grigio while doing so.

(Looked up from the pages at one point, put down my wine glass and thought: "Shit. I'm drunk.")
Was meant to force myself out on the lash, and instead ended up curled on the couch reading porn and drinking wine.

Just a bit disconcerting when my mother said she's already read it and that it's rubbish. On Facebook.

1 comment:

countesskaz said...

I hate wet, never ending summers. P.S I think one has to be half pie-ssed to read 50 shades.