Belgian taxis...

Note: this was an assignment for my fantastic Gotham Writers course, in which I had to write about something I hate. Hence the negativity.

I know I should be grateful that the company where I teach twice a week pays for a taxi home. And I am. Really I am. There’d be no other way of getting there otherwise – public transport in these parts being what it is – and I’d be missing out on a lot of easyish money.

But oh, Belgian taxis. Firstly, they are never on time. Well, not never, not exactly, but when they are late, they are properly late. And there is never an apology. We Brits are compulsive apologisers, and it grates to live in a country where saying you’re sorry is optional at best. Like the woman at the taxi firm’s office who stated that she took no responsibility for the mix-up which had caused her to cancel a taxi which we had not asked for her to cancel. That it was actually her fault entirely is almost insignificant: in England I like to think she would have said “I’m sorry about the inconvenience” or at least “I’m sorry, but it really isn’t my fault”, even if she hadn’t meant it. And not hearing “sorry” makes me cross, even crosser than I already am when I’ve waited forty-five minutes for a taxi.

And then when it arrives, you ought to be grateful, or at least relieved, and you try to be, you try to tell yourself that you are imagining the smell of stale cigarettes impregnating every fibre of the car. But you are not imagining it: it is every bit as real as the no smoking stickers on every door. At least today they haven’t sprayed the odour-eating chemical which only serves to increase the nausea and headache brought on by residual cigarette smoke.

But even without all that, you’d still feel nauseous: there’s the stop-start driving, the swerving round corners, the fear when the driver keeps turns most of his attention to the form he is filling in. (“Don’t be so nervous, Madam, I do this all the time,” he says when you ask him if he wouldn’t mind waiting until the car has stopped.) There’s the screeching to an abrupt stop a few metres past the red traffic light then reversing back up the main road to rectify his position. (Again, of course, no apology; no acknowledgement that any of this is anything other than a mundane everyday occurrence.)

It’s only a ten-minute drive, but it’s the most stressful minutes of my week, and it takes a little while to shake off the nausea. I’d complain if I thought it would make any difference. Instead, I update my Facebook status accordingly and vow to blog about it someday.

3BT: encouragement, taxi drivers, and friendship

1. I wake up still smiling from all the encouragement I got from my writers's group yesterday.

2. A different taxi driver picks me up. He hasn't smoked in his car and he doesn't drive jerkily, and this plus the sunshine puts me in a good mood. We chat, and he tells me he's not a true 'aclo' - the word for a purebread Nivellian. He was born in this town and one of his parents is from here, but that's not enough to count. When I tell him I'm Enlish, he says I have no accent (which I don't, being half-French, but Belgians often like to tell me they can hear one). If every taxi driver were like him, I'd have chosen a different topic for my Gotham Writers Workshop assignment on 'something I hate'.

3. A friend is having a tough day, and I'm there for her at just the right time.


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3BT: an early Saturday, writing, and reading

1. I make it out of bed well before 9 am on a Saturday, and discover it's actually quite a nice time of day to be out.

2. It would be too hard to choose one moment of the "One Day I Wrote" workshop - the reason for my early departure from home - so here is a sample: discovering a fab new place to hang out in Brussels, meeting great new people, writing a story in 45 minutes, talking to a Real Live Author, and hearing nice comments about it ("you can tell you're a professional", says one new friend when I tell her I do some journalism).

3. Part of the day is a book swap. Since I took two along, I come away with "Nocturnes" and "Bel Canto", both of which have been on my to-read list for a very long time. "Nocturnes" will be next - i needed a shortish book to counterbalance the long, long reads I've embarked on lately.

3BT: geekery, writing, and newish friends

1. Tomorrow's first lesson is cancelled. Not only does this mean a lie-in, it means I can watch the numbers change on Authonomy at the stroke of midnight - a momentous monthly event. And if that weren't enough, there's also a by-election to geek out over.

2. I sit down to do my fifteen minute daily writing prompt exercise, and thirty minutes later I'm still writing what might turn out to be a short story; better yet, it even ends with a line that has inexplicably been in my head for the last year or so.

3. I'm walking back from the station, and a car pulls up alongside me: it's a friend from the Saturday Bible studies. She gives me lift home, with her two daughters, whom it's a pleasure to meet. I feel good about my little town and the people I am getting to know here.

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3BT: time, stories, and a refreshing breeze

1. I'm told that over the summer there will be no Tuesday or Friday lessons. I have been given the gift of time, and I don't intend to squander it.

2. At my writers' group, inspiration strikes for stories and novels: I want my friends to hurry up and write them so I can read them. Marie mentions a photocopier, and this, for some reason, is the trigger. I begin to write. It seems my worries about life post-Inevitable were unfounded. There are stories in me yet.

3. The oppressive heat breaks at last, and I watch the rain flow down the train windows. If I'd caught the one before, as I wanted to, I would have had to walk home from the station in the downpour. Instead of which, I let a welcome breeze refresh me and read The Grapes of Wrath as the occasional lightning bolt lights up the sky.

Please allow me a tiny bit of bragging...

I've been kicking around the addictive world of Authonomy for a couple of months now, and my book is currently hovering at number 101. People seem to like it, even guys, and here's an eloquent, thoughtful and positive comment I got today, from someone whose book is highly ranked, and deservedly so.

Pretty chuffed!

What initially attracted me to this was the languages aspect, and the teaching thereof. Being a language teacher myself and an avid learner, I have a soft spot for any book that deals with foreign tongues. Inevitable certainly doesn’t disappoint on that front. Not only is there an entertaining representation of the language learning process but there is also an exploration of that sometimes strangely intimate relationship that develops between teacher and student during one to one lessons, where the teacher veers unexpectedly into the waters of friend and psychologist. It’s an idea I’ve often thought about exploring in a novel myself so it’s both interesting and satisfying to see it so well realized here with Kate and Brad.

That being said, this is not something I would necessarily read were I to find it in a book shop, the chick lit tag marking it as something outside of my usual comfort zone. That I enjoyed reading this as much as I did then speaks to the quality of the writing and the story. This is very ambitious storytelling, moving as it does from past to future, from relative obscurity in Belgium to the corridors of power in Washington. From the pitch, I might have thought this too ambitious but any such fears are quickly allayed by the very authentic feel that the future political aspect has. The relationships between Kate the politician and her aides feels well researched yet natural and her recounting of her political career is incredibly interesting. And I very much enjoyed the idea of looking back from the future to the present. It gives an interesting slant to the POV. Given that The West Wing features in the story I had to wonder whether another US TV show, How I met Your Mother, was at all an influence in this particular regard.

What else? This very up-to-date in a way that I can’t remember many other books feeling. Ipods, The West Wing, Obama etc. This definitely struck me as a keen use of observation. It may not seem a particularly remarkable achievement at first but I’m often irritated by TV shows and books that seem to ignore the contemporary world to suit their storylines, e.g., a set of characters tries desperately to get hold of another character but not a one of them has a mobile phone for some reason. So the contemporary observations were something I enjoyed. My only slight worry for the book as a whole, however, stems from the same issue. Will setting a lot of it so much in the here and now, with contemporary references, make it date quicker than most books? I hope not and it’s certainly not a major fear since so much of the story takes place in the future. This is more just me thinking aloud and nitpicking at something since there seems nothing else for me to crit.
Hmm, so not much useful in this here comment I imagine. If this is chick-lit then the sometimes snidey pronunciation utilized when invoking the genre should be removed for Inevitable is a very classy, innovative and mature piece of work.

Snapshots of Starbucks

The muffins taste the same, the coffee tastes the same. A little piece of America, or London, depending on my mood. No purple sofas, but the chairs are so comfortable, the décor so tasteful with its as yet untarnished wood flooring, that I can let that go.

American kids take pictures of themselves and their frappuccinos, high-fiving each other, exclaiming loudly about how great it all is.

Good-looking guys who would not look out of place in DC have what I presume to be an intelligent conversation, just within my eyesight.

The barista thanks me for being a good customer when I don't express the depths of my disappointment at the lack of wifi. (It helps that I've been prewarned.)

My friend Kyle and his wife Amy come over and say hi. "I'll be spending some time here," he says, and I wonder if I'll be bumping into him a lot, if I will become friends with "regulars", if it might be time to bring out the "I <3 Democrat Boys" tshirt, just in case one of those regulars turns out to be a Josh Lyman far away from home.

The staff are polite, smiling, efficient. They greet each of us in three languages, including British English: I'm asked if I want my coffee "to take away". It's the little things.

At 9.25 they cheer together at a job well done, the first successful day over.

They kick us out, still polite, still smiling, at 9.30.