Ah, Spring, finally

It's sunny, life feels good, despite the fact that I am stuck at my desk (which often doubles as a dinner table) for the entire week with deadlines pressing at my temples (to be poetic). It feels good to at least be able to gaze up from the screen and see the blue stretching above the roof tops, and pretend that I am not feeling nervous about it disappearing within minutes, like any Londoner worth his salt might feel.
You know the anxiety, the tremour of the soul when you see the sun in London? The 'Shit, I'd better put on my bikini and get out there while it still lasts!' panic, which results in white, pasty bodies on weak, early-spring grass, still wet from the melted snow. My early England memories of this are always accompanied with 'now I understand', when I remember the family I was living with getting a paddling pool outside and sunbathing on a day I spent sitting in my jumper and waving my head in severe culture shock. They looked like those Siberians who crack the ice and snow with their shovel, and dive into the freezing water with a look of delight on their faces. It's good for the heart. Only my heart was broken then (in 1993) with the thoughts of the lovely Mediterranean spring that was happening in my homeland, while I had to settle for 10 degrees, a paddling pool and prickly grass strands. Anyway my dears, 15 years on, I am used to it all, and loving it. Spring is here.
Incidentally, that's what my name means in Russian, for those of you who don't know. Vesna = Spring. BECHA in cyrillic.
I am off to Seville this week, for the Easter parades. The blog should revive then, as it always does when I travel. Await those photos of the mad Sevillanos in ku klux klan-like attire, vowing to la Virgen that they will be good boys and girls.

An eventful month

Another month, another silence. But resurfacing in the face of March, on a starry evening after an eclipsed moon weekend, here's the summary of the month.

A TRIESTE WEEKEND
Wrote a piece for Ryanair's new inflight magazine, about James Joyce in Trieste. Was amazed by the number of ex-Yugoslavs, and the large Orthodox church (Serbian) from 186-something. The place itself was lovely, really, good food and nice people, save for the undercurrent of hatred btwn the Italians and Slavs, grasped from various comments and graffiti like "Slavi di merda" across walls. Felt great. Walked across the road and saw Slovene cigarette packets squashed on the asphalt and thought that some of the Triestines may hate the Slavs, but they still smoke our fags, and hey, that's what the world's all about. Demand and supply. Always plenty of demand for hate and fags. And supply of the same.

A FLAMENCO WEEKEND
Went for dinner in Moro, after years of dreaming of eating there (nose pressed on the glass as rich diners averted their gazes from my famished features), in the most bizarre of circumstances: not hungry (don't worry, I ate), 11 o'clock at night, with a flamenco band. Translated the menu from Spanish to the artists who, in their gypsy manner of couldn't-care-less-for-glitzy-food, ordered fried eggs and chips - so very much off the menu that it was practically in a king's + kebab shop, if you see my meaning. Rafa, embarrased, asked me what I think about asking Sam Clarke to ask his chef to fry eggs and chips on a Saturday night, and I, unperturbed for I am from Bosnia-Herzegovina, where this sort of thing may occur easily, said 'Hey, they're VIP, they can do this and still look hip.' And Sam Clarke, bemused, agreed and the flamenco guys got their eggs'n'chips, which they said were not necessarily better than those from their local taqueria. Anyway, such is the artistic world that one can never really predict what sorts of adventures may befall a young lady - or a high-class chef - in their company.

I really want the Spring to start now. Now.