Waiting for Spring

January. Traditionally the most boring month of the year.

Here, the days are short, dark and cold and Bucharest is coated in ice and slush. On the weekends, The History Boy and I have been incredibly anti-social – staying in bed 'til late, drinking tea whilst listening to the radio and watching every episode of 'Gavin and Stacey' from the box set that he bought me for Christmas. We have discovered an old-fashioned cinema across the road and have spent a few evenings there, watching the latest film to have made it to the Romanian screen. I love the quaintness of the place, the fact that the cinema still has an old-fashioned facade, one of those white ones where the letters are slotted in, and that the beige carpet is stained with black marks made from dried up, Ceaucescu-era chewing gum. The two old ladies who run the enterprise are suitably brusque and impatient, and snap at me as they invariably fail to understand my poor, badly accented Romanian. It's almost like stepping back to the 1970s.

After the high energy sparkle of Christmas has faded away, January can be a grim month. But in a strange kind of way, I like it. I must admit, the frantic materialism of the festive season did grate on me on my arrival back to the UK, and it was the first Christmas that I didn't put on a little sparkly number and heels and go out in my home town on Christmas Eve, preferring instead to lie by the fire and chat with my Nana and Grandad. I was exhausted. I was kind of glad when the forced gaiety of Christmas and New Year was over, and I began to feel a deep homesickness for Romania. And for The History Boy.

After a manic weekend with F in London, I arrived back to Bucharest to chaos at the luggage carousel, an argument (in Romanian) with a couple of thieving taxi drivers who wanted to charge me five times the fare to get back from the airport, and part of my flat reduced to rubble where my landlord had decided to rip the bathroom out. Welcome to Romania. Happy New Year.

At least January is an honest month. It's difficult, and it wears it's unpleasantness openly. Here in Bucharest, where the grey concrete buildings loom over the wide boulevards and flakes of snow whirl down from the sky, it is particularly bleak. The red tail lights of the traffic on the road create a multi-coloured picture against the darkness, as if blurrily painted in watercolour. Gypsy flower sellers dressed in brightly coloured skirts under their winter coats shout out their wares and stray dogs trot across the icy crossings, after waiting patiently at the side of the road with the pedestrians. Sometimes, walking home from the Metro, I pause, and realise, in a cold disjointed moment of clarity, that I am living the crazy, colourful, slightly surreal life that I wanted when, back in Oxfordshire, I craved travel and freedom and adventure.

But I don't pause for too long. Because I know that The History Boy is at home, waiting for me. He makes Bucharest the place that I want to be.

Maybe that's why I'm enjoying January this year – having him around makes every the most mundane activity much more enjoyable. Being content with him also means that I'm becoming less impatient. This January, I know that spring is on its way. I am confident of longer days and warmth and sunshine, where before, I could see only winter darkness ahead.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Me and my Nose Clip

I'm in love with The History Boy. You guys know that, right? But there are other things going on in my life. I don't want to turn into one of those smug women who only ever talk about their boyfriends/ husbands and 'we' all the time. This week, I have decided to write about something other than my relationship (which is blissful) sorry.... and fill you in on another remarkable discovery that I have made. Bear with me....


For me, Thursday mornings at Primary School were never good. That was because it was Swimming Day. A day that struck fear into the heart of every primary age child in the North East Wales area. It was an event that I always regarded with the same kind of nervous apprehension that I now reserve for the lesson with bottom set Year 9 – that if I can just get through it then I won't have to do it again for another week....

Actually, I liked swimming. It was, in fact, the only sport that I was passably good at. It wasn't the actual swimming that worried me but the whole unpleasant process, from piling onto the cold, draughty old bus, to being forced to strip off in freezing, dirty changing rooms and then being made to swim five lengths before the rest of the students in the lower classes got into the pool. To make matters worse, one would always get kicked in the face by an over-zealous class mate who wanted to beat you at the end of lesson race. Being a fairly sensitive child who was prone to worrying about things going wrong, I was always slightly scared of drowning because I'd had my head under the water for too long. But the thing I hated most of all was getting water in my eyes and nose. For this reason, I never mastered the front crawl, even though I was perfectly competent at both back stroke and breast stroke.

Living here in Bucharest, I have been lucky enough to join a fairly swanky health club where there is a lovely pool and sauna. When I arrived here, I began swimming regularly and to my surprise found that a) the fear of drowning had almost gone and b) compared to many other people in the pool, I'm actually quite a strong swimmer. One day, I plucked up enough courage to put my head under water, and found that I still can't stand getting water in my eyes and nose. In order to become a serious swimmer, I realised, I was going to have to take some serious steps.

Like buy a pair of goggles. Maybe.


At my primary school, goggles were regarded with suspicion, as if they were some kind of pansy swimming apparatus that only wimpy kids or serious swimmers used. Donning a pair of goggles, I decided, might make people think that I think that I'm a good swimmer. They might think that I'm up myself, or that I have thoughts above my station...

Siani, stop being stupid, I said to myself. It's only a pair of goggles - so what if I look enthusiastic? So what if I look like I care? You're not in Standard Six any more! You're thirty two years old! No one's going to point and laugh at you!

So I bought a pair of goggles (pink, naturally) and slunk back to the pool. In I got and tried, over and over again to do a length of front crawl. Again and again I put my head under and came back up, coughing and spluttering with water up my nose and down my throat. I could feel the fear of drowning coming back. I was regressing into my ten year old self. Clearly the goggles weren't enough. I was going to have to invest in some heavy duty machinery. I was going to have to invest in a ….

nose clip...

Back I went to the shop, bought the offending item (pink) and headed home. I tried it on in the privacy of my own bathroom before taking it to the pool and was slightly disturbed to find that it made me look like some kind of bizarre Kling-on. But at least no one'll be laughing when I'm doing streaking up and down the pool doing front crawl, I told myself, letting competitive primary school Siani take over for one second.

The next day, at the pool, all suited and booted (so to speak) and looking a little like a professional swimmer (so I thought), I got into the pool. Checking that no one was watching, I cautiously put my head under and pushed off, trying a few experimental strokes.

Suddenly, I could do front crawl! It was easy! Well, easier than it had been before. I still kept crashing into the lane dividers and whilst flailing around in the deep end, mistakenly hit an elderly woman on the left buttock. But I persevered and an hour later could swim in a reasonably straight line. I had also cleared the pool and coming up for air, realised that the lifeguard was staring at me, obviously wondering if he should blow his whistle at me and order me out of the pool before I could do any more damage.

Anyway, to cut a long and not very interesting story short, I can now do front crawl. It took me a long time to get there - twenty years, a pair of goggles, and a nose clip - and it has taken me on a journey of self discovery. In order to conquer my fears I had to work out what was making it so hard in the first place. Maybe now that I'm thirty two, I have the ability to work backward more logically. It took me a really long time to realise that the solution to not getting water up your nose is to buy a nose clip. Simple.

I think my nose clip has changed my life.

Now, however, I really want a swimming cap. It would have to be pink though, to match the rest of my gear. Otherwise, I'd look like an amateur.

My Knight in Shining Armour

The other night, I read poetry to The History Boy...

Yes, I know. Yuck, yuck, yuck!

Pass the sick bag, pur-lease!

We also lay in bed this morning staring mushily into each other's eyes. Last night, he even used the L word. So did I. Then we both started laughing at how ridiculously sloppy we were being. But even whilst we were laughing, I felt as if something had shifted. Something momentous had happened.

Part of me is struggling against this new, mushy Siani. How can it be that I've gone from a cynical, independent person who would have been happy with Fuck Buddy status with Hot FB Guy to somebody's girlfriend? Somebody who stares dreamily out of the window at work thinking about him while her bottom set Year 9 boys rampage around the room throwing bits of chewed up paper and hitting each other with rulers?

Recently, I was reading an article in 'Marie Claire' about Dolly Parton. She has been married to the same guy since she was eighteen. That surprised me. Then I started considering why I should find this so strange. After all, what is so unusual about living happily ever after?

We live in a strange duality, an uncomfortable contradiction. As children we're read fairy stories about princesses who are rescued by their prince (dashing, manly and with piercingly rugged good looks) and then ride off into the sunset. We're conditioned to believe in that perfect ending. Then, as we get older, we realise that things aren't that easy. That the knight may have issues, or huge personal problems. That people disappoint us. And more often than not, we disappoint ourselves and make huge mistakes which we are prone to repeating over and over again.

Recently, I've realised that I consider divorce and unhappy, broken relationships to be the norm. In the media, and in real life, we are surrounded with images of stress and angst and stories of couple who are going through awful break ups. Much of my time with my girlfriends is spent discussing how unhappy we are and how hard it is to find a bloke who doesn't have issues, some kind of fatal flaw, or is in love with someone else. At every turn, I'm expecting something to go horribly, disastrously wrong with The History Boy. I know it's only been three weeks and there is still plenty of time for that. I also know that I'm projecting all my anxieties from past relationships onto him, especially the trauma that I went through with my ex-husband who disappointed me so badly that I find it hard to trust anyone any more.

But I have this feeling that I'm done with all that. I have this feeling that I've finished with one part of my life and I can never go back to how I was before. Granted, The History Boy doesn't have a white charger. I don't have long golden hair (It's kind of ginger at the moment after a traumatic visit to a hairdressers where they didn't speak English, but that's another story). And there are no evil dwarves or dragons to slay. But sitting in bed with someone on a Saturday morning wearing one of his T-shirts, drinking a cup of tea and just being quiet is more romantic to me than all that. It's more romantic than a Hollywood kiss under a waterfall. It's more romantic than a man in chain mail rescuing me from a tower where I've been held captive by the Black Knight.....

Actually, come to think of it, it's almost as if The History Boy has rescued me. He's done this by being honest, and kind, and straightforward about his feelings. It's as if he's held that castle door open and allowed me to step outside, shaking off all the restricting anxieties and issues that I had, and the persistent belief that I was totally unlovable and destined to die alone. I feel like I've just woken up from a hundred year sleep caused by pricking my finger on a large spindle of disappointment, confusion and unhappiness.

We've discussed what we're going to do in the future. We've discussed our feelings on babies, marriage and the kind of life we want to have. All hypothetical, of course. I'm still undecided on the baby front. I don't even know how I would cope with sacrificing my life as it is now to squeezing out a couple of kids and devoting the rest of my life to raising them. But it does look like I might not end my days in a grotty flat, surrounded by gin bottles and old copies of 'The Lady'. My future looks a bit different now.

Come to think of it, I think The History Boy would look hot in a suit of armour. I wonder if Ann Summers stocks chain mail?

Who Knew?

I'm happy.

What? Surely not....

Something pretty amazing has happened, something that I really didn't anticipate. Last week, I had an epiphany of the kind that doesn't really happen very often. Well, they don't happen to me much anyway. Not in my hectic, muddled, confused existence where, as you know, I pretty much seem to lurch from one disaster to another, stumbling in heels that are uncomfortable and more suited to someone who possesses natural grace and self-assurance.

My epiphany was like being whacked in the face with a sledge hammer. Like someone shaking me really hard and telling me to wake up and get a grip. It was like a voice beaming down from the sky and telling me that actually, I'm crazy about The History Boy and have been for quite some time.

Last Friday, I was over spending the weekend at the Nice Romanian's house. Things were OK. He really tried every seduction technique known to man – wine, dinner, candles and all that. The History Boy had been away for the whole week travelling and I had been missing him in a way that surprised even me. I woke up on the Sunday morning and suddenly knew that I had to see him, then, that instant. Like it was a matter of life or death. I wanted to see him, hold him and.... kiss him? No, I thought, this can't be right. A perfectly nice man has just made you a Sunday morning omelette and coffee and all you can do is think about a boy who you're just friends with. A boy who, last week, you definitely did not even fancy.

One taxi ride later, and I was in his arms. We were cuddling on the sofa and as I raised my head to look at him, he kissed me, shyly, as if he thought I would pull away. It was like everything suddenly fell into place. I could almost hear myself sighing with contentment.

Hours later, as he held me in bed, we started laughing, unable to believe that something so momentous had been going on for so long and that we hadn't realised.

The History Boy has now been at my house for a week. No change there then. He's always at my house. But now his stuff is in my bathroom and his school shirt is hanging in my wardrobe. We did say that we would take it slow and give each other space. But I think I've had enough space to last me a lifetime. I feel like up until now all I've had is space, a lifetime of emptiness and confusion, mixed messages and misunderstanding. Now everything is crystal clear. A mere fortnight ago, I wrote that I didn't fancy The History Boy. Turns out that fancying someone doesn't have to be the same thing as being tortured by them. I've learnt that lesson this week.

But now I'm worried. I can't lose him. I'm really afraid that, in typical Siani style, I'm going to fuck everything up and then it will get ruined. That I will repeat the same behaviour that has ruined every relationship I've ever had. That I will be bossy, demanding, and demand impossibly high standards that no human being can possibly achieve. But at least I've now gained some self awareness as to how I've messed things up in the past. At least I know what I need to look out for now.

I want to say thank you to one of my followers 'You Mean There's More?' She very articulately suggested that I should give The History Boy a go. She was absolutely right.

Life's Too Short

Recently I've been reflecting on the things that really make me happy. I've been consciously attempting to make my life as pleasurable as possible and the phrase 'Life's Too Short' comes up again and again.

1. Life is too short to spend all day at work
2. Life is too short to run after unavailable men
3. Life is too short to set ourselves unrealistic, unattainable targets.

No, I haven't suddenly turned into the Dalai Lama. It's just that this week I've been on half term holiday and had time to think, which is always dangerous. I also had two friends staying and one of them (who works at my old school) has had the same realisation that I had six months ago. School is making her, and many of her colleagues, miserable. The pressure is just too much and she is feeling anxious all the time. This anxiety is manifesting itself in many different ways, but the upshot of it is that she doesn't feel that she can enjoy anything. She commented on how happy I seemed and I think it was perhaps a bit of a wake up call for her – that she could also change her situation if she chooses. But seeing her unhappiness suddenly brought everything into sharp focus and made me realise that actually, I am so much happier here and that moving here to Bucharest was the right decision for me. It was as if she was the reflection of the way I used to be – exhausted and burnt out. Of course, it's been hard adjusting and things still aren't perfect. But at the end of the day, I wasn't enjoying the stresses of the job I was in and so I changed it. Life is too short to be miserable. It's common sense really, isn't it?

Talking of misery, I also realised this week that I had to let Hot FB Guy go. At last minute, he started back-peddling on his offer to come over and visit this week and asked if he could come at Christmas instead. Something inside me just snapped. I realised that the Skype sessions and all contact with him had to stop. Torturing myself over a man who doesn't feel the same way about me as I do about him was just making me feel wretched. He was the last tie I had to cut with the UK, the last thing holding me back. He was actually making me enjoy my time here less. So, last night, I wrote him an email in which I said that he couldn't come and see me because I am seeing someone else. And it wasn't a lie. I am seeing someone else, a very nice Romanian man with a wicked sense of humour who really makes me laugh. This guy likes me. He calls and texts all the time. He brings me flowers and tells me I'm beautiful. Hot FB Guy being in my head is not an option right now – he would only mess things up for me. It's definitely time to move on. Life is too short to run after unavailable men. It's common sense really, isn't it?

Unattainable goals are the last thing that I needed to get rid of in my life. The main manifestation of my new positive attitude is the fact that I've given up my diet and I'm back on the bread. Yes, I was skinnier last year. But I was also really unhappy. And when I first moved here, after a summer of eating big dinners with friends and having little time to exercise there were a few moments where, desperately trying to squeeze into my clothes from last year, I would vow to cut back on what I was eating and swear off bread, desserts, wine and pasta. In essence, all the things that make me happy. I stuck to this regime for a couple of weeks but I still felt rubbish about myself. The turning point, however was on a weekend up in Transylvania. Our mountain guide, saying that we would get us lunch, took us to a bakery and returned from the counter with a large piece of what can only be described as a savoury doughnut topped with sour cream, garlic and cheese. The old, on-a-diet Siani hesitated. But only for a second. Unsurprisingly, considering the ingredients, it was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.

From that moment on, my viewpoint on food changed. Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, I'm living in a country where the local dishes consist of polenta, doughnuts, stew and sausages. I figure if I try to slim down to a size six, I'm fighting a losing battle. So I packed the diet in and relegated my old clothes to the back of the wardrobe. I'm swimming three times a week (something I now have time to do and which I really enjoy) and walking to the Metro every day so the weight should come off soon. But if it doesn't, so what? Being a bit curvier is no bad thing. People on FB have even complimented me on my new figure (including the size of my boobs, bizarrely) and said that I look nicer now I look like I've eaten a few pies. Off course, I'm not advocating binge eating, merely not starving yourself as I was doing last year. Yes, I was thin. But I also had really bad skin, caused, I'm sure by the no dairy, no wheat diet I was on. And probably the stress of my job. The way I see it, there is too much delicious food in the world to deny yourself. Living on no-cheese omelettes and steamed vegetables was no fun at all. Now that's definitely something I should have realised before.

I'm sorry if all this sounds trite and happy-clappy. It's just that this week I've had time to think, get some sleep and figure stuff out. I'm sure my next post will be less upbeat. My new found serenity, I'm sure, will soon disappear. It might all go tits-up with the Romanian after all, and I'll be back to square one. I'm sure I'll soon be binge eating doughnuts with jam and sour cream and crying into my glass of local wine.

But maybe, just maybe, I'm finally learning to walk in heels...

The History Boy

I've met an amazing man. We spend pretty much all day every day together, and we laugh and laugh. He takes me out for dinner and we have long conversations about the meaning of life. I adore him. He adores me. The other night he stayed over. But he's just a friend. For the purposes of this blog I will call him The History Boy.

The History Boy is my perfect match. He's a history teacher (hence the name) at my school and we share a passion for historical literature. We have mutual nerd-gasms poking around the old city together, exclaiming at the architecture and discussing what it must have been like in it's belle-epoque hey day. He's smart, funny and considerate and makes me laugh. We have the exact sense of humour. Unfortunately, I just don't fancy him. Well, sometimes after a few glasses of wine I have the overwhelming urge to cuddle him, but I often feel this same emotion with my girlfriends.

There's a really big problem, however, with this chaste, quasi-marriage style relationship. We are inadvertently blocking each other when it comes to meeting members of the opposite sex. Take last Saturday. At the gym, I had gone for a swim and he had gone running. He met me at the Jacuzzi and as we got in, I noticed there was a very cute guy in there already. Tanned and dark with a gorgeous muscular body. Well, nice shoulders anyway. It would have been the perfect time to strike up a conversation – we were sitting exactly opposite each other – but the The History Boy's presence effectively made it impossible. To an outsider, we must have appeared, to all intents and purposes, like boyfriend and girlfriend. After a couple of non too gentle kicks from me, THB departed sheepishly, leaving me in the tub with the handsome dark stranger, who it turned out, was called Lucian, worked as a trainer at one of the local banks and was Romanian. We chatted for a good twenty minutes, but unfortunately I couldn't work out how to drop the information that THB was not my boyfriend into the conversation without seeming desperate. I doubt, however, that anything would have happened. I know this because I was wearing my black BHS swimsuit with the saggy arse where the elastic has gone and had trails of mascara smeared down my cheeks. I didn't realise about the mascara until afterwards.

The History Boy went to London for a couple of days last week. I missed him acutely, almost as one might miss a boyfriend or girlfriend. As we stood on the escalator in the Metro on the night he returned, he spontaneously put his arms around me and laid his cheek on top of my head.

“You and me,” he said contemplatively, “Could never go out with each other. We get on too well.”

And that's it. There's no tension, no sexual tension, come to think of it. The History Boy has seen me running around my house in a skirt and strapless bra, trying to work out what top to wear before a night out. He's seen me in my glasses and pyjamas with morning breath and a deathly grey pallor caused by one too many drinks the night before. He's heard me utter the most un-sexy sentence in the history of man: “ I'd leave it a couple of minutes before going in there if I were you,” as I emerge sheepishly from the bathroom. And he still wants to hang out with me.

Yesterday we had a long, lazy lunch at the Italian down the road and then browsed the English language bookshop, recommending books for each other. He came away with 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin', I came away with 'Disgrace' by JJ Coetzee. In the evening, we went to see 'One Day' and I stole all his nachos before laying my head on his shoulder and weeping throughout the last third of the film. Textbook girlfriend behaviour with a boy friend who is definitely not my boyfriend.

Sometimes I do feel a bit like I'm using him for cuddles when I'm lonely. Or when am feeling rubbish about Hot FB Guy who is, as ever, elusive, unreliable and still on my mind pretty much every minute of every day. But spending time with THB makes me happy. It means that so far, I haven't had the dreaded moment that I was worried about before coming here. You know, the moment when you're on your own and you feel that nobody loves you and that you made a HUGE mistake by moving overseas. When we do have those, THB and I are always together and one of us will manage to diffuse the melancholy with a well-timed fanny fart joke or something equally as high-brow. At these times of melancholy (usually when we're both tired and hungover) we remember the promise we made to each other walking home after a night out a few weeks ago. The promise is: if we get to fifty and still there's no sniff of a spouse for either of us, we will get married.

I could see myself growing old with The History Boy. In fact, I'm thinking that this might turn into one of the most enduring and rewarding relationships I've ever had...

It's just a pity that I don't fancy him.

Some Things Stay the Same

So I've finally found the time to sit and write a post. Sorry that I didn't do it before. Time goes by so quickly here – yesterday I realised that I've been here a month.

So far, living here in Bucharest is as awesome as I thought. I've finally got the life I wanted, the life I dreamed about when I was back in ....shire, lying on the sofa reading Star magazine. I'm out pretty much every night, having drinks or dinner or swimming at the posh gym my work pays for. My quality of life is immeasurably better than it was in England. The city is huge, bustling and cosmopolitan and I live right in the centre. It makes a huge change to the sleepy market town where I was living before. It makes my life before look totally boring and routine.

Everything is all shiny and new - new friends, new job, new house. A new language, a new culture, and so many possibilities. One thing that isn't new, however is my relationship with Hot FB Guy. Yes. Unfortunately it's still going strong. I use the term 'relationship' loosely though. I know that Skyping does not a relationship make. I know that I'm heading for disaster.

You know all that stuff I wrote back in July about safe-guarding myself against him and not being open to getting hurt because I was moving to a different country? Not true. I've found that you can still be in love with someone even when they're a couple of thousand miles away. Oh God, I'm pathetic. I sound like something out of an old film, the kind they play on TCM (which I have been watching avidly since moving here, by the way, but with Romanian subtitles). I feel like there should be violin music in the background as I stand on my balcony and look down over central Bucharest and think about him. Godammit.

Last week I had a kind of mini crisis which involved me sitting in bed alone at half past ten on a Wednesday night staring dementedly and determinedly at the wall and giving myself a right talking-to. Out loud. The lecture went like this:

Now come on Siani. This is ridiculous. You're in Bucharest. You're having the time of your life (I am). So why are you still thinking about him? He's just a boy and a very unpredictable, emotional one at that. He's in another country and you like him way more that he likes you. Sort it out. Get him out of your mind. Find a nice Romanian man called Vlad or Gheorghe orAlexandru etc etc.

I had a bit of a nervous breakdown and called J crying. She told me to man up (in a nice way) that he wasn't right for me and that I needed to get over him. Oh, and that he's still in love with his ex, apparently. I know that. Of course I do.

Last night, he Skyped me.  For three hours. Now, I know what you're thinking but it wasn't that kind of Skype session. We were talking. About everything. I spent most of the three hours laughing but there were some moments when we were quiet and contemplative - just looking at each other. It was weird. You could almost hear the chemistry between us whooshing down the wires. The mood was broken, however, when he asked to see my boobs. Who said romance was dead?

He wants to come out for a visit. In my head I know that it's not a good idea. But I can't say no. We talked about some dates and it's probable that he will come here in about a month's time. I'm already playing out the fantasy in my head...us walking round the city, kicking autumn leaves, sightseeing, having romantic dinners. By that time I will obviously be fluent in Romanian and a stone lighter and everything will occur in black and white with the aforementioned violin music in the background. And then he'll miraculously fall in love with me. Yep. Right.

So what am I going to do about the situation? Well, what can I do? I'm probably going to carry on as before, sporadically having contact with him and obsessing about him in between. I just can't believe that I've changed my life so drastically but that he's still there. He's always there, hovering, making it impossible for me to forget him. Somehow he has the knack of keeping me hooked, for opening me up and making me tell him things that I haven't told anyone, ever. It's like he looks straight at me and when he does it cuts through everything else.

Blah blah blah....If you've made it to the end of this post, well done! To be honest, I'm even boring myself now. I'm sorry if you were expecting a gossip-filled missive about all the dates I've been on since moving here. Tell you what, next time I'm going to write about the hot Romanian man I've met. And I'll include some juicy details. I promise.