Playing Catch-Up

I’ve neglected the blog somewhat lately; it's been five weeks since I last posted anything.  The last time I left such a gap was when I was ill last year and felt too lethargic to write.  This time it’s down to a combination of factors, but mainly because I’ve been working at the call centre for the past five weeks.  If the work here was permanent we would earn enough to enable us to stay in Berlin permanently but as things are our German isn’t up to conducting surveys in anything other than English so we only get work when English speakers are needed.  We have another week to go but I have heard that more English studies are planned for the summer. I do hope so because each month that we work earns us enough to stay another month here.

We should be returning to the UK at the end of December but after the General Election result I’m dreading having to go back.  I’m genuinely concerned about the direction things seem to be going in under the vicious venal Cameron government.  In the immediate aftermath of the election I sent off a fresh round of applications to various language schools which attracted depressingly predictable replies.

As part of my ongoing project to improve my German (and thus my employment prospects) I have acquired another tandem partner.  Annett is very politically aware, she likes The Smiths and Joy Division and she writes so we have plenty in common. 

As ever, I’ve kept myself busy writing.  I’ve finished the job of proofreading and editing the children’s book but I have been asked if I’d like to do some further proofreading later in the year which of course I’ve said yes to but again it’s nothing permanent.

I’ve been doing more unpaid writing too.  Several weeks ago I approached Paul Sullivan of Slow Travel Berlin about writing an article on Topics bookshop (whose owner Doron wrote the kid’s book I’ve been editing) and was asked to put together a few paragraphs on this and two more of the city’s newest bookshops that would be used to update an existing post.  For this I interviewed staff in Soda, a magazine and bookshop in Weinbergsweg with a focus on design, and Bildband in Immanuelkirchstrasse which deals predominantly in photo books but also has a section devoted to art, architecture and design. 

I’ve made more (albeit halting) progress with my main writing project which now stands at 92,000 words, and I’ve also been practicing writing shorter fiction, something I’m not particularly comfortable with but I’m imposing the challenge on myself because it can only help.