Penultimatum

I couldn't feel less like writing tonight but I am aware that if I don't, then tomorrow I will have to write my last LLFF of the Noughties and it will all be a bit of a hideous rush, so I thought maybe if I am grown up now then I will feel the benefit tomorrow. There is certainly a fair amount to write about today, or not very much at all, depending on how you look at it. I am choosing to take the median option. We couldn't possibly get out of bed on time this morning and ended up missing breakfast, which was a disappointment as we were both looking forward to a traditional selection of cholesterol-boosting foodstuffs, and instead were reduced to drinking free tea in the hotel lobby while using the wifi to book the JAZZBOAT and eating the last of my mother's banana bread and my final mince pie, which I'd wrapped in tinfoil and carried here in my suitcase, because I am clearly an octogenarian hiding in the body of a 32 year old. And then we went to book tickets for the ballet tomorrow; we had been told that it was the story of the girl with the flaxen hair, and we thought it must be Rapunzel, which was fine, and then when the woman came to the ticket window to help us, she had just taken a gargantuan bite of cake, and we said we wanted to see the ballet tomorrow, and she said 'Goh-GOH-goh' or something, with bits of pastry flying everywhere, and Nick started nodding and I thought we were buying tickets for a ballet called Godzilla and then I realised she had said Goldilocks. Quite how a story about three bears going on a daytrip and leaving their breakfast on the table, and a girl coming and eating it, and them coming back and complaining, is going to take up a 2 hour ballet, I have no idea, but I'll keep you updated.

Then we crossed over the river and I very nearly spent approx. £150 on a bottle green fox fur muff but then didn't, and we took a funicular up a hill and then went into a mirror maze which was very kitsch and good but not QUITE as funny as everyone else in there thought it was, largely because the mirrors had steamed up due to the cold and there were snowy footprints on the wooden floor so you would have had to have been one mascara short of a make-up bag not to work out which was the correct path almost immediately. Then we walked down a hill, past a macabre human statue of a jester, to a monastery, which didn't make a massive impression on me, and from there we went to the Loretta, which I was keen on because it was so absurd - basically, there is this place in Italy where there is a little house and rumour has it that it is the exact house where the Angel Gabriel first appeared to Mary to tell her she was up the duff with God's baby - obviously this house wasn't in Italy to start with, but the Italians claim that angels flew it there. Anyway, the Bohemians love this idea, and built a replica of this Loretta house in Prague - it's one of forty such replicas in the Czech Republic. And basically it's just a really nice, small, red brick barn, about the size of an average room in a Hotel du Vin. But without the eight foot bed, obv. And around the barn they've built this massively ornate ivory-coloured casing, covered in reliefs of saints, so from the outside it looks like a gigantic Arc of the Covenant, and inside it looks like an intimate gastropub waiting to happen.

So from thence to the castle complex, and neither of us do art, so we missed out the galleries and went to the gorgeous, gorgeous St. Vitus or Vilnius o.n.o.'s Cathedral, which had the most breathtaking stained glass and a lot of people. And then to Golden Lane, where there are all these tiny houses that have now been turned into extortionate tourist shops, mostly containing puppets. And then to a concert in a lovely church, where a small chamber orchestra including a very flat second violinist played some Grieg and some Mozart and some Sibelius and some Tchiakovsky, while we sat there turning slowly to stone. It was far, far colder in there than it had been outside. Then we down a lot of steps and then to a pub for a warming beverage and some overpriced pistachios, and then over the deliciously spooky and atmospheric Charles Bridge, where my lifelong scaffolding blight continued, and then for further wanderings round the Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square (where we found a Debenhams and a Tesco) and to dinner at a lovely secret restaurant that no-one knows about except us and the people who were there tonight.

And tomorrow we have a lot more to do, and the same on Friday, and I simply cannot believe that this year is at an end. I feel as though it has flown by, but when I think back to waking up on 1st January, it does seem like an awfully long time ago. I don't think I was truly happy in my life until 2009, if I'm honest. It's been a long and magical journey up to this point, but tough too, and I finally feel as though I am Good Enough. I used to have a permanent feeling that things could be better, and at some undefined point in the past twelve months, something shifted, and now I pretty much continually feel aware of how much worse things could be. The glass is exactly the same, but where it was once half empty, it's now half full, and I couldn't be happier about it. Half full glass FTW. I have wonderful parents and some truly entertaining friends, but ultimately I'm me, on my own, and I'm grateful and content. 2009: I salute you for your part in my story. It's been a joy and I can't wait to see what's next. Butterflies in my tummy, ants in my pants and Czechoslovakian chicken fricassee in my small intestine.

My Noughties (recalled semi-drunkenly, late at night, after a long day's sightseeing, with no access to any memory-jogging apparatus save an iTunes library and a digital photo library begun in 2005 and some computerised diaries from 2001-04 that talk about nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING, except boys): Went out with Henry, lived in Shepherd's Bush, went to Cuba, did a car boot sale on a site which is now the Westfield centre, went to LA, interviewed Justin Timberlake, interviewed Britney, went to Bruges for an emergency summit with Henry, went to Frankfurt for the MTV Awards, broke up with Henry, moved back home, wrote off my Fiesta, got made redundant, was obsessed with several unsuitable boys, drove through Spain with Bee, met Luke, loved The Rolling Stones, started going out with Luke, went to Paris for Easter, joined the choir, went to Marseilles and Cassis in the summer, loved Elvis, was bridesmaid at Lucy and Jake's wedding, went to Tanzania and Zanzibar, loved early Elton John, went to visit my family in the States with my mum, broke up with Luke, was single for a year, had a Vespa, wrote a cafe book, started my MA, met Simon, tutored my favourite ever student called Lola, got my best-ever score in Scrabble ('quixotic' on a triple word square), loved Rufus Wainwright and Gorillaz, learned about Marxism and post-colonialism and feminism, wrote my dissertation in the British Library, graduated from my MA, loved The Clientele, went to India for two months, loved Nick Drake, started LLFF, started working at a bank, walked the Thames Path, loved M. Ward, went to Croatia and Montenegro, went to New York, broke up with Simon, loved Amy Winehouse, Sondre Lerche, Martha Wainwright, Tom Malmquist and Fionn Regan, bought my flat, went to Amsterdam, met Paul, loved Tosca and Monteverdi, moved out of my parents' house, loved Elbow, went to Vegas and Seattle, went to Latvia with choir, broke up with Paul, went to Paris with my parents, loved Bon Iver, fell for the gardener, did a politics course, went to Egypt, went to Glastonbury, fell for the Glastocrush, went to France with choir, recovered from Glastocrush, became comprehensively selfish, had several months of independent bliss, took up the ukulele, and here we are, in Prague on a minibreak, with crow's feet aplenty and a smile as wide as a mile. Happy New Year.