The Plan

I'm getting a little bit edgy about leaving for Belgium. All I have is five euro in my pocket and the massive Visa bill I racked up sipping rum by a pool in New Orleans like a billionaire might have done. What? Why are you not feeling sorry for me?

My plan for Monday looks like this:
1. Arrive in Belgium
2. Find job immediately
3. Ask for sub til payday

Well, I'm not entirely sure they'll agree to a sub straight off. So I kind-of sort-of asked my dad but he just made a strange grunting noise that meant: "I've already bought your train ticket to London and 'The Rough Guide to Ghent', what more could you possibly need? Just go busking once you get over there — you know three songs now, don't you? That's more than enough. Now hush because Newsnight is on."

Um. Busking it is then.

It's like we're an actual band standing in front of an actual garage, right?

I want to thank my new (old?) friends Chris and Curly for bringing the joy of music to my good-riddance party at the weekend. Even though I'd never met them before, they very kindly gave me a mug with a picture of Cardiff on it and then they wrote a song for me too. It's the best song I've ever heard and I'm honestly not just saying that because it's about me.

Y'know, I didn't even know what 'emasculated' meant until I met these guys.

Thank you!

I hear I missed a good time at the Irish Bloggies in Cork last night. Thank you so much for my prize for Most Personal Blog, um, I mean Best Personal Blog. They tell me that when my name was called out the crowd went absolutely mental: people were jumping up on their chairs and throwing their bowler-hats in the air and then Stephen Fry tried to start a Mexican wave but it didn't quite catch on — which is always embarrassing but there we go.

Well, I'm touched, and it just makes me look forward to getting back to Dublin all the more. It's like I have a home there and that feels great — thank you.

Special thanks and congrats to Fiona who went up on stage on my behalf. She was going to pretend to be me, but that was out of the window when she won in the Arts & Culture category and it all seemed a bit bloody complicated all of a sudden.

Ursula

This is Ursula from Switzerland, who is visiting this weekend in Wales.

I won't be able to make the Bloggies in Cork as I'm stranded in Snowdonia with a fiver to my name, but thanks for the shortlisting and I hope you all have a brilliant, brilliant time without me.

The other song I know

There is no weekend picture; I left my camera in Dublin by mistake. Let's have 'the weekend classical guitar piece' instead. This is by Mauro Giuliani and my fingertips are bleeding.

Trapped in a box on Veldstraat

I'm taking my guitar with me to Belgium. It'll look good next to me on the Eurostar, I expect, and also when I'm walking the ancient streets of Ghent, looking up at the crooked buildings against the starry sky and wondering which little attic room is mine.

"Isn't a guitar a bit of a cumbersome item to carry all that way, considering you only know one song?" asks Dilwyn, an old schoolmate of mine.

"Two songs actually, Dil," I remind him, crossly. "And anyway, I'll learn more once I'm over there, I'm sure."

Well, if I have the time, that is, between all the other things I'm going to do sur le continent. By day I'll be an artist, of course — or an artiste, as I sometimes call it when I'm being particularly annoying. I've been invited by Getty Images to be a 'contributing photographer', which sounds very exciting but basically means they have some of my pictures in their catalogue; it doesn't necessarily mean that anybody is going to buy them. So by night I'll work in a bar in order to actually, like, eat and stuff. A smokey bar, most likely, with a sullen Frenchman called Claude propping up the counter day in day out, blowing smoke-rings in my face and falling in love with me despite himself. But it is no good, Claude, no; for I am in love with another: a street performer by the name of Klaas who spends his days trapped in a box down on Veldstraat.

Yes, this is exactly what living in Belgium will be like, I've decided.

"Well," says Dilwyn, who has had enough of this rather one-sided conversation by now. "At least if this Klaas guy is trapped in a box then he won't be able to get away."

My friend Wies

When I lived in Reykjavik (yes, yes, 'when I lived in Reykjavik,' blah blah blah, etc) my co-workers were all dead impressed with how brilliant I was at Icelandic. They said it was great that after only three years in the country I could both order a beer and recite lists of 'things you can buy in the supermarket' — just like genuine Icelandic people could do.

But then one day some Belgian guy called Wies turned up in the office and learnt proper hardcore Icelandic in about a week and all of a sudden everybody lost interest in me.

Somehow, though, I managed to find it in my heart to forgive him, and now we're the best of friends and I'm going to live right around the corner from him in Ghent. And he is going to teach me how to recite lists of 'things you can buy in the supermarket' in Flemish just like genuine Belgian people can do. Hopefully in under a week.

The Kraken Awakes

I spent the last 30 quid on my Visa on a one-way ticket to Belgium and now next month I'm moving to Belgium. I couldn't blog about it because I didn't want my mum and dad finding out. I just knew they'd give me a row. "What are you doing running away to Belgium, what about your career, what about money, you don't even have any money how are you going to eat..." etc etc. So I decided I'd just sneak off one evening while they were watching their favourite magazine programme 'The One Show' on the telly.

Well, I suppose I also didn't want to tell them because I knew they'd be quite sad to see me go; they like having me around the place again, really. When I get up in the mornings (well, afternoons sometimes) I hear my dad say to my mum: "Look out Mary, the kraken awakes!" and then they start laughing hysterically. What's a kraken, I asked them once. "Oh, hello," they said. "A kraken is a cute little baby bird." Aw. Yes, they do like having me back in the nest.

But then I got a call from a woman in Ghent and my mum had answered the phone. "There's a woman on the phone for you Annie," she said, looking confused as she passed me the receiver. "From Belgium!"

Oh. Um, right. I'll explain later, mum, I said, quickly taking the phone and trying to leave the room in an unsuspicious manner.

After that I couldn't really hide it anymore. "I'm moving to Belgium," I told them later, breaking it to them as gently as I could.

And you know what they did? They reached out their hands to each other and danced what can only be described as 'a happy jig'.

I thought you'd be upset, I said, flabbergasted. "Oh for goodness sake Annie," said my mother. "You're 29 years old, you need to get back out there." And then my dad said twenty-nine, is that all, blimey o'reilly, she looks older.

Hmmph. So much for having to sneak out during 'The One Show'.

And anyway, that night I looked up 'kraken' in the dictionary and you know what, it's not a cute little baby bird. In fact, the dictionary says it's 'a lethargic Scandinavian sea monster, often represented as resembling an immense black octopus.'

Itchy Feet

I have itchy feet. I think I might have caught something awful because I'm scratching at them all day and all night and last night it was so bad that I woke up with my fingernails dug between my toes. If my mother catches me she'll slap my hand away: Don't be picking at your feet like that.

I've been back in Wales for some weeks now. Needless to say, most of my other friends have moved away. Last week two Russians turned up in the village pub. It's always big news when strangers turn up in the village pub, especially if they look Russian and lost and confused. Who's this then, who's this? people hiss.

Not me though, I don't hiss. Who are you then? I asked them. They were lost, they said, looking for Caernarfon. They had wanted to visit the castle.

But we have a castle right here in Dolwyddelan! I said. It's your lucky day, gentlemen.

Now, we all know that Dolwyddelan castle isn't really as good as Caernarfon castle, but the Russians didn't know that, and by the end of the night I had taken them home with me; promising them sleeping-bags and a dog and a log fire and a cooked breakfast. Please stay, I was thinking. Please just stay here forever and ever.

Who are those men asleep in the living room? my dad asked me the next morning.

The Russians, I mumbled, still half asleep in my bed. The Russians are coming.

But the Russians were going. They left later that morning on their long, slow journey to Canada, and now my feet are itching. It's like I have some kind of awful wasting disease.

Well, you have, says the voice in my head. You're wasting your life away, it says.