Let it go

He walked past without even noticing me, clutching her hand as if it was the only thing that was enabling him to get up those stairs. Off they went to the end of year lunch so that everyone could say their goodbyes and wish them well. In my imagination, in my wildest hopes, someone told him to fuck off and die, but if it came from my imagination and my hopes it’s because the person who would have said it would have been me. That’s why I didn’t go. That’s really why I didn’t go. If I told people that it was because they are leaving and let them have their day, it’s because I wasn’t adding the ending. The bit where I smash a bottle and shove it in his neck or her face or... but if I didn’t add that bit, it’s because I didn’t know that I was still so fucking angry. I only realised that as I flipped them the finger.

Still one lunch, and a bit of alcohol later I’m laughing at myself. Somewhere in all this mess there’s still hope. I’m going to find a cute little bachelorette pad, I’m going to have a fucking fantastic holiday and maybe even write a fabulous story or two or three. And then... at some point in the future I’m going to have to let this anger go.

Life is Sweet

Reports are finished, England are through, flat is sold, holiday is booked, four more days to the end of term; life is sweet.

Une Petite Annonce

Professional Woman seeks a deux piece in Paris. No smaller than 30m2 as it appears she has a lot of accumulated crap. Oh and just in case, if it can have a cave that would be really handy because then if she doesn’t get her act together and sell some of the furniture she’s not going to need she can store them.

She would really like to live in pretty much the same area, across the road, the building next door, anywhere around the Montmartre area, but obviously at the bottom of the hill because she can’t afford to live at the top of the hill. Alternatively she wouldn’t mind going back to the 14th as she already knows of a hairdresser there and wouldn’t have to go through that terrifying ordeal of bad haircuts again. Another alternative is somewhere near a really good Indian restaurant.

She doesn’t want to live in the 19th or 20th because it’s just too damn far away. She’s not really into the 12th either and if it’s the 13th it has to be before Place d’Italie. She doesn’t really like the 15th as most of it is too residential and boring and the 16th should be bombed out of existence along with all the fur coated, poodle bearing, white haired ladies who think that just because of their very existence they should be first for everything. The majority of the 17th, (where she doesn’t live) is a bit like that too but not quite as bad. So that leaves the 1st (ha ha like she's ever gonna find anything in her price range), 2nd (ditto), 3rd (ditto), 4th (ditto), 5th (ditto), 6th (ditto), 7th (ditto), 8th (pushing it), 9th (pushing it) 10th (mmm, would have to do some serious reconnaissance there before I could say for sure), 11th (ditto).

Right that should do it don't you think? I love flat hunting and just to make things really difficult I’m pissing off on holiday right in the middle of it all. Still inadvertently I have done the right thing as the city will be empty July 15th – August 15th whereas I would be here contemplating homelessness and not being able to contact anyone. Meanwhile I need to get my dossier ready, three of this and three of that and this and that and blurgh, blurgh, blurgh, blurgh...

The Longest Day of the Year

I know I should be writing reports, but I’m on that kind of adrenalin up/down whatever and I just can’t think about whether Joey has been a communicator or risk-taker right now. So I’ll get this out and then maybe I’ll settle down.

When I began this blog (isn’t that two posts I’ve started like this now!) all I wanted was to book my summer holiday. A combination of extreme weather, natural disasters, terrorist threats and indecision meant that nothing ever got booked. That was until yesterday, the longest day of the year and Fete de la Musique all over France and that is really what I should be writing about except… Well I’ll cut to the chase.

Up until about 1.37 pm yesterday I was doing fine, I was connected to the music, I was in front of my screen with relevant bits of paper on a roll writing reports, water and phone at the ready. No, no the phone thing had already happened by then, but I’m digressing.

OK the phone thing is that a certain unnamed phone company cold called me and told me that I had been selected to get a brand new spanking beautiful phone which did everything except copulate with you and I got a bit excited. Still before getting completely carried away with myself I did haggle them down to the ‘forfait’ (I can’t remember or maybe I never knew the word in English) I wanted, 120 text messages, international calls option, 2 hours, blah de blah de blah and all less than my current forfait. Fantastic! My arse… when the fabulous beauty arrived I wasn’t even allowed to get a sniff of it, first I had to be talked through the forfait options again and that’s when there was a catch. The 120 text messages had shrunk to a mere 20 and I had to pay 10€ extra to get my beloved thumb exercising communication method back. The salesman tried to convince me that he knew of no better forfait and that I couldn’t possibly pay cheaper elsewhere, but I sent him packing cradling my poor physically challenged (the 5 key is very temperamental) cheapo Nokia. Perhaps that should have been a sign that I shouldn’t be doing anything too challenging apart from listening to the music and writing reports.

Except Kimberly arrived telling me that there were NO FLIGHTS WHATSOEVER TO BALI. Strictly speaking that wasn’t true, there were some, they were expensive and they were being booked quick. After texting, phoning and generally causing Estrella to have a stress attack we got her card details off her and trekked off to my pad to do the booking. It was a very complicated affair, I was on the phone to Estrella, Estrella was in her purple spangly belly dancing outfit and Kimberly was doing the booking. She had three web pages opened at the same time and she graciously typed in all the details and everything while Estrella jingled down the phone to me. And then Kimberly pressed Go, go, go. Estrella and I began prematurely singing down the phone: “We’re going to Bali, we’re going to Bali” and meanwhile everything was very quiet from the front room.

“This is a bit weird.” Kimberly said “This has never happened before.”

“What?”

Kimberly laughed, she actually laughed when she told me this. “Well Estrella’s ticket is booked, but on your credit card.”

“WHAT!” That’s the tame version. There was lots of actual real swearing involved and it never stopped, so feel free to insert ‘FUCK’ randomly into the text from now on.

After lots of frantic checking it became apparent that one ticket was booked but on my credit card. So after the last mess up we booked the remaining two tickets ONE AT A TIME. Firstly booking my ticket on Estrella’s credit card; “That’s funny, that flight is cheaper than the last one.” Kimberly said. Then booking Kimberly’s ticket; “Oh, that’s the same price as the second flight. And then we checked all three confirmations and realised that Estrella was going on the 25th and we were going on the 26th. Now would be a good time to insert a FUCK.

We did try calling the airline straight away but of course everyone goes home for tea at FIVE O’CLOCK in the UK. So it was Fete de la Musique after all. We traipsed up the hill, veering from hysterical laughter to glum faces to streams of swearing that would put a trooper to shame. We wandered past the jazz band outside the Mauritian restaurant. We wandered past another jazz band outside another bar. “Oh great,” I grumbled as we came up to the bar where we were meeting Colleen and Siobhan. “We get the shitty percussion band that can’t even play in time.” And I sat down and then it began to rain.

We wandered into the bar and sat at the back and scanned the photos. I kept telling Kimberly that she would see things like that purple flower, that blue God, that huge wood carving in Bali and she could tell me what it was like when she got back. And then I looked and they were all photos of Bali, was this as much as I was doomed to see?

Estrella called after her belly dancing concert and little by little the whole extent of the fuck up slipped out as I wandered past a woman singing the blues on a squealing microphone, a horn band tuning up and finally arrived back at the jazz band who weren’t trusting the brief respite in the rain and were hiding in the Mauritian restaurant instruments firmly packed away.

So Kimberly and I called the airline this morning and within two minutes of trying to explain what had happened the (god damn what do you call a conseilleur in English?) was confused. “Not as confused as we are.” I mumbled.

But the long and the short of it is: WE’RE GOING TO BALI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yipee!!!!!!!!!! Hip Hip Hurrah.

We’re still going on different days, but we’re going.

Alternative Entertainment

This week Shakespeare and Company have been running their second literary festival entitled: Travel in Words. It started on Thursday, but as I had to go and watch the football I didn’t make it then and last night was the Flamenco Evening organised by Anne, so I didn’t make it yesterday either, but today I got there. You could say that all in all it’s been quite a cultural few days!

Anyway, Claire and I went to see Tim Parks talk about Travelling and Settling, Different Visions of the Same Country. I chose his talk as I felt it was an issue that I have been wrestling with for a while, but then after I read his little blurb in the programme I realised I had actually read one of his novels: Europa. He raised quite a few issues about travel writers and the difference with those who settle in one place. He didn’t answer any questions that I have been asking myself, rather posed more questions, but I would certainly like to read more of his stuff and that’s partly why I won’t tell you anymore about his talk, go read it yourself. He’ll tell you a good few tales and obviously can do it better than me.

So I’m not really a person who has the attention span for lectures, so I spent a lot of the time staring out at the Park Rene Viviani planning pictures I would like to take afterwards and gazing at Notre Dame until the SDF (Sans domicile fixe) arrived announcing he had a drink.

There’s something about Shakespeare and Company talks and readings that attract the SDF. A few years ago on a humid summer evening, in conjunction with Ambit a few Writer’s came over to Paris to read their work. During one particularly bad reading, a lanky dreadlocked bearded drunk ambled over to see what we were all sitting intently looking at. I have to admit at this stage I was looking intently at the drunk and his hilarious method of rolling about from side to side looking as if he was about to topple over before miraculously righting himself. The twee middle-class accent droned on and on about this lurid scene in a Laundrette and little by little I realised that the new hush that had descended over the audience was due to the drunk’s antics in the background. His next trick involved cupping his hand under the drinking fountain so that the water sprayed over the authors waiting to read. A wave of repressed smiles spread over the audience who could see this and those who had their back to the drunk looked up bemused at this sudden downpour. But still the voice droned on. Eventually after a few minutes of spraying the organiser spotted the drunk and hurriedly marched off to deal with him. The drunk realising that he was caught did a slapstick jump and scuttled off to the little park, but not for long. Next he came back with his rucksack; perhaps he was interested in the story. He dumped it by the fountain and did a few comedy leans where he missed the fountain, catching himself before he fell over. By now the organiser was practically apoplectic that he was getting more attention than the writer. The drunk scuttled away again and this time came back with a can of beer. He did a rather debonair two footed leap over the chains linking two bollards but this time his timing was askew, one foot caught on the chain and he came lurching forward his beer hand stopping him from crashing to the floor. A gasp emanated from the crowd. Unfortunately his can had not come off so well and a stream of beer shot up into the air drenching the reading writer. This time we couldn’t suppress the giggles and no amount of waving from the organiser could rid us of the drunk, he was desperately trying to catch the stream of beer before it all gushed away.

This year’s heckler didn’t get so much audience time. Well not until Parks was trying to explain the rivalry between Verona and Vincentia (hope the spelling is right) football clubs and let forth a stream of Italian obscenities which spread far and wide over the little garden. This was too much for the heckler; he stalked back with his bottle in hand and chastised Parks and his foul mouth very loudly from the back of the tent.

Paranoia

Do you ever get that slightly paranoid feeling that people take one look at you and think you are completely bonkers?

Today was one of those rare moments when I felt like ignoring my usual casual sloppy look and dressing up. The white and black flowery Zara skirt came out the wardrobe, I put on a necklace and bracelet and then to finish it off I shunned the clod hopper DM sandals and went for my extremely impractical high heel wedges. I bought them last year in a fit of madness; I discovered that while they were great for getting me up the hill for those late evening summer drinks getting back down the hill was hugely problematic. I had to do it barefoot once (dodging all the dog poo – niiice) and there after I shoved my flip flops in my bag for the journey home. But I can never quite finish it off, I couldn’t be bothered to wash my hair so I braided them into a pair of pig tails and off I tottered extremely slowly.

After coming back from lunch –safe in the knowledge that I had now learned to walk in these damn shoes – I discovered that as promised Derek had brought in a Basil plant for me. I took it upstairs terrified that I might drop it and deposited it safely on my desk then e mailed Derek to ask for specific notes on how to care for the thing. He had grown it from a seed so I don’t want to kill it straight away do I?

As I left work I fully intended to look for a plastic bag to put the plant in, but I got distracted by Colleen who was looking through photos of last week’s trip and then Derek turned up and began repeating the care tips for the plant and before I knew it I was tottering away with the plant carefully cradled in my hand.

Then as I was changing lines there was a bit of a wait so I sat on a bench still lovingly cradling the plant and out of the corner of my eye I saw an elderly gentleman surveying me with a bemused look on his face. He was trying to hide it, but he was looking very carefully; from the tree tattoo on my ankle to the flowery skirt, the flowery handbag and then the plant clutched in my hand. All of a sudden the image of that woman who walked around cradling her log in Twin Peaks flashed into my mind. Am I being paranoid?

Lines of thought

When I started this blog about a month ago I was going to India for my summer hols. Then my pal got scared off by the monsoons and we hit on Bali. A couple of weeks ago there was an earthquake in Jakarta and that idea got put on hold too. I never used to be scared.

Ten years ago as I prepared to leave England and I was finally allowed to let people know I was leaving I remember more clearly than anything that one of my students told me that he knew exactly when I was got my new job. “You left early one day and the next day you came back and you were happy.” After that there would be spontaneous Spanish lessons and geography lessons got more exciting than studying rivers. “Miss, look at this page.” Another kid waved an atlas under my nose. “What’s this?” I enquired. “It’s earthquake and volcanic zones.” Both fault lines and volcanoes converged on Mexico City. I don’t remember feeling anything about it other than resigned. I had decided I wanted to go to South America and the whole of South America seemed to be one gigantic fault and volcano. Anyway what were the chances of another earthquake like ’85?

On arrival in Mexico I discovered two things, firstly it was in North America and secondly no one was laid back about earthquakes. Not even a week after arrival we had our first earthquake drill. Ninety seconds; the epicentre starts in Acapulco and it would take ninety seconds to reach Mexico City, that’s how long you had to get out the building. If we did it Antonio the PE coach would praise us and tell us how we would be safe, if we were two seconds over he would get out pictures of a school in the north where the top floor had collapsed onto the ground floor killing hundreds. He wasn’t the only one who instilled in me the need to get out of the building quickly. For Los Reyes we went to Carlos’ house for Rosca de Reyes, like a giant sickly sweet doughnut where if you were lucky you would pull out the little plaster Jesus in his cradle. In the middle of his lounge was the hugest stone sphere you had ever seen in a home. Why he wanted it, we couldn’t fathom, neither could he. He had just driven past it one day and decided he wanted it. It had taken four men to carry it up to his apartment, but during the ’85 quake it had rolled from side to side of the apartment. Ignacio had found it quite amusing balancing his huge six foot plus frame against the earthquake watching his dog sliding across the kitchen floor desperately trying to get some purchase on the tiled floor; that was until he realised that the city was crumbling around him. Andres had seen the city fall around him, he had been on his way to school and when he got there it was a ruined mass of rubble. He was amongst the first to start helping the rescue effort. At fifteen he had pulled many of his classmates out of the wreckage. Eleven years later he was sensitive to the smallest tremor and would wake up in the middle of the night and scream at everyone to get out the building.

I learnt that it was not something to be nonchalant about, but it didn’t scare me, not yet. Perversely there was a part of me that wanted to feel what an earthquake was like, wanted to know what it would be like if the volcano Popocatepetl blew. It gave off a tremendous puff one evening and coated the city in grey ash. All around the base of the huge volcano emergency plans sprang into action. The small buses called peseros would ferry inhabitants to the nearest safe zone, while peseros from the north of the city would ferry out supplies.

It was History Day. The whole of the school, plus scores of parents had converged on the smaller secondary site of the school. There were re-enactments of the Spanish Conquest, and some hilarious word for word scenes of Star Wars when they thought no one was watching. There were quizzes and historical games. It was a perfect sunny day and I wandered aimlessly from room to room. At the end of all these festivities we were going to shave Elizabeth’s hair off for charity and the money would go to a children’s home in the north of the city. And then Ian turned up in my path. “There’s going to be an earthquake drill in ten minutes.”

“You have got to be joking.” I laughed a huge grin on my face.

“No, seriously round up as many kids as possible, there is going to be an earthquake drill in ten minutes.”

“Whose bloody stupid idea is it to have an earthquake drill today? There are well over a thousand people here and...” Ian grabbed my wrist and shook me.

“A volcanologist has his nephew here. He phoned up and said that there is 99.9% chance that Popocatepetl is going to blow. When it does it will cause an earthquake bigger than ’85. We don’t have 90 seconds we have to get all the kids out now.”

“You’re not joking are you?” The grin was frozen on my terrified face.

“No.” And he went on his way and I began to shake like a leaf. For about three of the ten minutes I quailed in a corner until Susie my co-teacher found me and asked me what was wrong. I almost burst into tears telling her. “I don’t even know where all the fucking kids are. There are just too many people about.”

A few minutes later Danny came and grabbed me. “We’re going to start on Elizabeth’s head shave now, get on the microphone and announce it, that’ll get everyone in the right place for when the drill goes off.”

Now that I had a purpose I managed to pull a relatively calm face and I pushed, cajoled and just physically pulled as many kids as possible along with me as I headed to the microphone. I don’t wear a watch, but I knew as I began the preamble for the head shave that the alarm should be going off any second now. As I looked out over the sea of heads I knew that we had somehow got everyone to safety and a real smile crossed my face. Whatever happened now we were all together and hopefully if we didn’t choke to death we’d be alright. Elizabeth’s ginger locks fell to the floor without incident and the 0.1% chance smiled on us. Popocatepetl didn’t blow, we weren’t covered in ash and there was no earthquake and I no longer wanted to know what it was like. We had prevented a panic and we had saved the day, and that was plenty enough experience for me.

8.43 am

Last year as I walked the last few steps to work I decided to keep a photographic record of what I saw everday at 8.43 am. The original idea had been to do it throughout the year, but eventually as the winter months began to bite food replaced my camera; my experiment lasted all of six weeks. During those six weeks I had hoped to catch at least once the cyclist who I had almost cannoned into one morning as I wandered along planning this exercise. Towards the end of the six weeks I realised that he was purposefully stopping out of shot to let me take the pictures.

A Palette of Blues

If I timed my throws just right
I would hear the shush and gurgle of the sea as it lapped over my feet
followed by the ploop, doomp and putush of my pebbles.



And then I looked at the palette of blues before me
and I tried to name them all.
The sea laughed at my folly and splashed at my page
creating a water colour of its own.

England flags and Spicy Bean Burgers

Yesterday afternoon the only sounds I could hear was the sound of the sea lapping over my feet and the occasional ‘ploop’ of pebbles landing in the water. I sat on a virtually deserted Dorset beach surveying the cliffs that are gradually slipping back into the sea and wondered about what made this beach ‘English’. Was it the white cliffs I could see just poking around the corner behind the lush green hills? Was it the pebbly beach? Was it the yachts and liners or buoys?

Ever since I had emerged from the tunnel at Ashford International it had been on my mind. I sat on the coach heading into deepest darkest Dorset watching the cars glide past me, longing for a spicy bean burger. Every now and again a car would whoosh past with an England flag straining against the slipstream and occasionally the flag lost its will and slipped off its pole in resignation and fluttered to a rest in the central reservation. Although I grew up in London, there was something homely about the countryside surrounding me, its greenness, the sheep were familiar, the pubs, the road signs and yet I felt so alien being ‘home’.

There is always that moment when I get back to England when I don’t quite know which language to speak. This was further compounded by the fact that everyone I had to deal with at Ashford was not English, but did they feel more at home then I did? The things that I consider homely are all so set in the past; the spicy bean burgers that I used to live on ten years ago. Question of Sport used to be tea-time viewing for my family and I watched it with a big smile announcing with glee to my Irish colleague that every round was the same; but different. And we had Angel Delight, something I haven’t been able to eat since I was five or six and dropped it on the floor and was so upset that my Mum scooped it back up and it was full of grey carpet fibre.

And then back to the language; English. We sat in awe in front of Big Brother that same evening listening to some blonde women with frighteningly huge boobs make her nomination. Her sentences were peppered with ‘fucking this, fucking that’ and I will freely admit that I swear like a trooper, but it was the words around it. What was she actually saying? Have verbs and adverbs and adjectives become unnecessary in modern Britain? We laughed about it all week. Here we were dragging a bunch of kids to be immersed in English and what were these instructors actually saying? Have I become a language snob I wondered as one of the instructors announced that when you let go of the rope ‘You don’t go nowhere, do you? You don’t go nowhere.’ ‘Anywhere.’ I found myself muttering. ‘You don’t go anywhere.’ Later, sitting on the beach I decided that I wasn’t a language snob; it was just that words were important to me. The way they are used and framed can mean so much, create a picture or change your ideas.

What I was really wondering about was what made me English. Living here in Paris it’s easy to say ‘Je suis Anglaise’. The differences between the French and me are so apparent, in the way we dress, the way we think, our customs, the way I behave, but being in England throws all that into confusion. Was (is) it England that I so detested, or was it something in me that craved more?

I know now that what I craved more than anything was time to shape the words. I have that time now (and sometimes I fritter it away), but do I need to be home somewhere to ground these words? Do I need a home to make these words real? That is the question I am still unable to answer.

Christian LeCow

He he!

Sleep Deprivation

This is going to have to be a quick one because I’m off on a cow hunt this afternoon and then I need to pack and find my passport and then I really need some sleep; spent yesterday craving it. You know when you are so tired that you can’t sleep, although in my case it was because the Estate Agent brought round an extremely unsuitable couple to view my tiny flat. Something about being half asleep and unable to find my glasses made my hearing acute and I could hear the middle-aged sow wondering around shaking her head at how tiny everything was. With every word she uttered I felt like slamming something hard and fatal into the Estate Agent's face for having denied me precious minutes sleep.

The second they left my head fell onto the pillow with a thud and moments later my phone started beeping. Although I was tempted to lob the thing across the room I did restrain myself and blearily saw that Jane had found her lost voice and after two days of silence wanted some stimulation other than her kids. She also wanted me to fill in all the gaps around the 160 characters you are allowed to send in a text message. I did my duty as a loyal friend, I was already beginning to feel sleep slip away and called back. “Oh sorry!” She said. “I’ve got to go I’ve just had a call on the other phone.” Tears were beginning to prick the back of my eyes.

My head flopped onto the pillow again and a few minutes later the phone rang again. “Hello.” I answered grumpily.

“Sorry did I wake you up?”

She knew she had woken me up, I had just been on the phone to her a minute ago. Ah, but this wasn’t Jane I now realised; it was Anne. “No, you’re not the first to wake me up.”

“I’ve got some bad news for you.” That was like the adrenalin shot I needed to wake up every fibre of my body.

“What?”

“I’ve just had Mr. Hadaka on the phone and he says his daughter hasn’t got her passport.” I relaxed and felt waves of fatigue wash over me again. I had thought Anne was going to tell me that she was sick or her son was sick, that she was going to abandon me again.

“I didn’t want to wake you up, but he doesn’t know what to do.” I wasn’t really paying attention to the rest of the conversation, but I did think about Mr. Hadaka’s daughter as I tried to slip into sleep again. Mr. Hadaka’s daughter and how I had put her passport in her bag because I didn’t really trust her to do it herself. And then the phone rang again.

“Jesus wept.” I snapped as I poked at the green button. It was Mr. Hadaka himself. I tried to explain, I really did, but I was tired and I kept getting wrapped up in the intricacies of my mother tongue using the past tense, conditionals and subjunctives and when I put down the phone I had the impression that he had not understood a word I had said. All I needed to say was that the passport was in the red and grey bag, instead I had tried to explain my thoughts and feelings about his daughter, the whole chain of events leading up to me putting the passport in the bag and I had not described the bag. The one sentence he probably would have understood without problem.

With this failure of communication forefront in my mind I knew there would be no sleep until I had sorted this out. I called Mrs. Tarawa, explained the whole sorry tale to her and asked her to intervene. Five minutes later she called back. “What happens if he doesn’t find the passport?”

“IT’S IN THE FUCKING BAG!” I felt like screaming, but fortunately an automatic alarm system in my brain sprung into action preventing me getting sacked even though my job was impinging on a Saturday morning and I managed to describe calmly and in detail the size, colour, shape and where in the bag I had put the passport.

Finally at peace with myself, my head lolled back onto the pillow. And the phone rang again. Mr. Hadaka again. He had found the passport. Thank you. My temper was more than a little frayed by now and I just about managed to say politely; “My pleasure, see you Monday.” I sagged onto my pillow.

And the phone rang again. I answered it was Jane. She announced that a friend that was engaged. “Are you crying?” she asked.

“No,” I answered wearily, but christ I wanted to.

About two thirty pm I could no longer keep my eyes open. I keeled over on my sofa and curled into a tight, sweet little sleep filled ball. Aaah, I felt my body relax. Bing Bong Bing Bong Bing Bonng Bing Bonng, I heard emanating from somewhere in the building. An eye popped open. The bonging continued, and continued, and continued until another neighbour equally pissed off with the bing bonging started playing piano!

I love Paris, have I mentioned that before? But sometimes, just sometimes, the thought of a desert island, me and my laptop and some books. The idea is heavenly.

It's Official!

I'm a GIRL!

Your Brain is 73% Female, 27% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

And apparently my Blog should be green.

Find me the words

Extract from an e mail written by Claire:

Dear Sir
I am flattered by your attention and clearly honourable intentions toward me and sincerely wish I could return your affection. However, I must inform you that, although I esteem you as a friend, I am not currently experiencing tender feelings for you.
I hope that this is not too great a disappointment to you and that we can continue our amicable relationship.
Sincerely,
Miss V