London, Lunches and Losers

Finally my copy of Urban Junkies is going to come in handy next week, as I get to go home and hang out in a city where people make eye-contact (unless you're on the tube), the most exciting thing to happen all year is not a slanging match between two dog walkers, curries get delivered and bacon sandwiches are derigeur. I can't wait! I may also manage conversations that are more meaningful than the drivel dished out at the stepford lunch on Friday.

The lunch was really nothing to write home about, but sod it I have to get this off my chest. I had been mentally prepared for the grieving one, the moving one and the over-bearing one, but they had sadly not been prepared for the "caustic I hate this country one." As each and every one of them proceeded to tell me that they hated it too, had only recently stopped hating it, or were leaving soon....well great that was just what I needed, lunch with a bunch of women who confirmed for me that you need to be here for a significantly long period of time (like long enough to forget anywhere else) to be happy here. Added to this the rest of the conversation was banal diary checking and shopping tips, believe you me none of them is likely to become brain of anywhere in any great hurry. Plus if company later on is anything to go by they are all far too practiced in the art of back-stabbing to survive long as they must all be haemorraghing at an alarming rate from the stab wounds. Will I go along again? I don't think so I really can't be bothered to be a target for bored housewives to hurl daggers at the moment I leave the room.


More bad news was that we're staying in this god-forsaken cultural desert for another six months! I am not holding out much hope of remaining a sane or balanced person by the end of the stint, at least not without regular trips back to the UK and I mean far more regular than once every 3 to 4 months! My mother, bless her, suggested that I should do a course while I'm here in something that I couldn't do anywhere else.....perhaps the making of cuckoo clocks? or holey cheese? nah...think I can cope without those skills! They should perhaps even be classed as non-life skills.

Happily though the Swiss government decided the other day (after about 5 years of deliberation) that it is an acceptable behaviour to resort to beating army recruits as a way to vent one's frustration at the Swiss state...now, where did I see them hanging out?

The only fairly decent thing about staying is we get to move from this appartment to another one, which if I have anything to do with it is going to have to meet with a few basic requirements...a tv that has working scart sockets, and the clever little button that allows you to watch some swiss television in English, a washing machine that is not only located inside the apartment, but that functions at all hours of the day, oh and an oven that works too! At least the smug and stupid landlady has finally admitted that "swiss" is not another word for efficent.

Right well I'm off to start planning my assualt on the capital to ensure maximum enjoyment and the greatest number of bacon sandwiches.