And the Beat Goes On

Reason to be cheerful part infinity. 

I’ve had my moments of feeling glum. Days on end of metallic grey skies don’t help. I endeavour-not entirely successfully- to avoid going into meltdown over the current grim state of British politics. Towards the end of January, it’s a real challenge. The deadline for Brexit is at hand.  A trusted family friend makes an insensitive and over-simplistic comment along the lines that it's an unquestionable gain.

I lose great respect for him. It puts me into an oppressive funk during the whole of Exit day. It takes me to the evening and a brief meditation session for it to lift.

Whilst Brexiteers jubilate in the streets, Remainers resign to the new reality; some more philosophical than others.

Living in France with a British passport, I have the very real consideration of my as now ambiguous citizenship weighing on my mind.

I’ve applied for a short term residence permit and await the results. The Consulate is no doubt snowed under.

And the beat goes on. Despite my anxiety, mercifully I have not had the bout of consuming S.A.D I’ve been expecting. I literally can’t afford to sit around moping. There are jobs to find, blogs to update, places to go and people to see.

January has not been the slow and quiet return to business as normal that I thought it would be. A myriad of self-imposed tasks and distractions eat into the time I set aside for self-development. A musical retrospective of the 2010s on which I’ve been working for months. A worthy and stimulating interview arranged with a restaurateur chum.

Nevertheless, I persevere with my routine as much as I can.

On the 1 February, the first official day of being a non-EU citizen, I attend the 40th birthday celebrations of church friend, Celina.  It's an 8pm start, according to the slick invitations. I give myself half an hour grace, not wanting to be rattling around an empty hall waiting for other guests to show up.

I spot Celina's husband, Angelo, outside the venue on arrival. I'm assuming it's fully underway. How naive. The hall is still all but deserted. I gravitate towards Raymond, the first familiar face I see. He's in full conversation with an unknown guest. I feel self-conscious. I notice some other church acquaintances across the hall. Raymond mentions he's based at this other table. I take the hint with gratitude and switch. The DJ is spinning some choice R&B and Hip-Hop from yesteryear. I bounce along without compunction. It's a shame there's hardly anyone around to dance. The birthday girl isn't even on the scene.

She won't rock up for almost another couple of hours. She'll make a carefully choreographed entrance, flanked by her lovely teenage daughter and a few others; moving in simple yet funky Afrobeat step. By then the room will be full. This would leave enough time for the hors d'oeuvres to get cold and for me to cast a disapproving eye at all the evident skin-bleaching. Having not eaten for most of the day, I'm hungry and irritable. I feel the necessity to apologise to Raymond and others for this especially sorry perpetuation of the 'African time' stereotype.

Oh, I'm used to it. Raymond brushes off my concern.

I'm not, even now.

It's coming up to 11pm.  Another church acquaintance, Eva and I have infrequent buses to catch. We consider leaving without any grub.

After a brief speech (in which Celina admits the party was more her husband's idea), dinner is finally served. It's dished out by slack-jawed and half-attentive adolescents. To the amusement of my fellow guests,  I pack my plate. It smells better than it tastes. Whether or not this is an accurate representation of traditional Lusophone African cuisine, I can't say. I hope not. Everything is either bland or seems to be suffused with fish, even when it's not compatible. I feel like gagging part way through. I cut my losses after unsuccessfully trying to minimise the waste. Another guest helps herself to an uneaten kebab. No objection from me.

Eva and I make our exit, not before another group photo is taken.

Soundtrack: The Free Nationals + Soulgliding compiled by Trueby Rainer.

Bonne Continuation

Between Brexit May-hem and The Organisation’s financial problems, I have the impression that those of us with Brit connection are being pressed on all sides. Honorary Londoner, Claudia tells me the atmosphere during recent trips to Blighty has been demoralising to say the least. Everything is in suspended animation. Brexit and all its uncertainty only aggravate existing socio-economic problems. She’s seriously considering moving back to Sicily.  My Labour International branch have heated discussions about strategy and possible outcomes via video conference or email. British colleagues and acquaintances with the opportunity of acquiring another nationality are doing so sharp-ish.

The putative effects of a hard or No Deal-Brexit are indirectly being felt in The Organisation. Not that they don’t already have their own difficulties.  With two major donors pulling out, the belt is going to be tightened. It looks as if the last-in-first-out policy will be applied, signifying the potential loss of hundreds of jobs.

I attend my first Union meeting since I (belatedly to my shame) joined a TU. I’ve been invited by a former French classmate.  The speaker has one of the best French accents I’ve heard on an Anglophone. She switches effortlessly between the two, giving us the latest feedback from the higher echelons on how to navigate the crisis. Not surprisingly, there’s much opaque management-speak on their end. Over free grub we discuss possible future action including a demo. Colleagues speak of eye-watering financial waste within the organisation; the cumulative effect of which would be the equivalent at least of several salaries. I can’t say I’ve witnessed anything so profligate yet in my own department, I’ve observed where sacrifices could comfortably be made.  Boss Man for instance, gives me a rollicking –more than once-for reserving a seat in a second class train carriage for a mission to Zurich. He waxes indignant over the need for leg room (diminutive man that he is), noisy children and wishing to work in transit. Always having travelled by second class on principle, I can attest it’s perfectly possible to be productive without the need for total silence and capacious surroundings. Hmm. Here am I thinking that I was saving The Organisation money. I’m learning that it doesn’t always pay round these parts to show initiative.

Lucia, one of his deputies, is proving to be a challenge with her disjointed instructions, gauche manner and underestimation of my abilities. She isn’t vindictive. I can tell when she’s making a special effort to be friendly. She just isn’t the most socially adept of managers. I’ve noticed on both sides of the Channel that such skills aren’t valued nearly enough when considering candidates for promotion.

Lucia’s management style and I aren’t gelling. It’s having a counter-productive effect and I find myself making silly errors more often than usual. I attempt to own up to my mistakes whilst being diplomatically forthright about my reservations. There's a limit to how much this can be done. She’s also responsible for my appraisals. It’s stressing me out. As a coping mechanism, I try to reframe the situation as yet another opportunity to adapt to different ways of working and show patience and compassion towards Lucia. 

All this anxiety exacerbates my already grim outlook on Strasbourg. I feel the absence of the moral support of family and close friends. On that note, one or two of my friendships back home are in a state of flux. My stubborn Love Jones for my former heartache wants to make a resurgence. The slowness of my linguistic progress brings me low more than most things. Trying times.

Never say die. I persist. I’m doing my best to simplify my life and, where I can, eliminate unnecessary aggro. I’ve discovered some helpful French grammar channels on YouTube. I decide to re-enrol on a different advanced French class at work, having already had my fill of the tutor's dismissiveness, passive-aggression, mordant humour and the suspect political views of one of my classmates. I miss my old class.

I know I’ve made a good decision when, having used a refined French idiom, the tutor Léa condescendingly declares before my fellow students that I must have looked it up in a dictionary.

As ever, keeping active is a good remedy for navel-gazing. Choir rehearsals are slowly returning to life as more members get back into the swing. I’m invited by erstwhile contralto, Yvette to watch her perform with her reggae band; a swan song of sorts before she relocates to Brittany in March. We’ve met up a couple of times since she announced she was leaving.  A few weeks earlier I have an unexpected melt-down over my linguistic frustration when we meet up at a bar in Krutenau. Yvette is most sympathetic, recounting her own experience of moving overseas (albeit, much further afield in Mali). Tears dried, the conversation turns to the global political situation, her lovely singing voice and great musical taste. 

For the reggae gig, I take my little church sister Stacee along. It’s a school night and the band is last on the bill. Alas, I can’t stay for the show but it’s a good opportunity to bid Yvette farewell before she moves on.

A couple of days before the gig, I attend a matinee of THRO Theatre Company’s long-awaited Lewis Carroll/Brexit-related musical parody.  The show is a hit; sold out performances almost every night of its brief run.  It’s as topical as satires come, casting a scathing eye at the whole post-referendum debacle.  The show has evolved quite a bit since I sat in on the first reading. There’s still a cast of thousands. You can tell the experienced from the ingénues and the kids’ performances are more wooden than anticipated. Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage and David Cameron are given too easy a ride.  Nevertheless it’s still a pretty sophisticated affair, poking fun at Britain’s lost empire-complex and the illegitimate offspring of national identity; racism and xenophobia.  As is often the case, the bit-part actors steal the show once again (Doris Schaal's Cheshire Cat, Mihail Stojanoski's myriad roles, Paula Hinchy's Cook...). Stanislavski was right.

Soundtrack: Outer Peace by Toro Y Moi