Happy thoughts

I fucking hate Valentine's Day.

Such was the sentiment with which I began my day last Thursday, but since it is neither original nor timely I shan’t go on about it. Except, good God all the noise and the couples and the balloon sellers and and the teenagers clutching their love tokens and the PEOPLE EVERYWHERE did not add much to my mood when I ventured out to buy food and run errands in the evening.

However, the crass, depressing commercialism of VD and its smug way of reminding you of your freakish unloveableness if single was not really enough to explain my vile headache on Thursday morning, and neither was the two thirds of a pisco sour I had drunk the night before at the party of some delightful, mostly only temporarily-resident, Peruvians. (Palatable, but with a weird yeasty smell, and the raw egg yolk is fundamentally disturbing. Licking limey sugar around the rim is the best part.) This headache had its main encampment in the bridge of my nose, but established some strong beachheads in my eyeballs and occasionally sent raiding parties to other bits of my head, and seemed to have rebel sympathisers in my gland. Subsequently, thanks to my lovely officemate talking me into going to the doctor, it transpired that my recently-permanent cold and/or sore throat and/or cough has amusingly turned into sinusitis (though I’m taking the pills now and feeling much better – at least, I’m back to just cold/sore throat/cough).

And then the technician who came and took away my sadly sick and broken computer finally phoned me. And told me that the motherboard was fucked and that fixing it (i.e. getting a new one) would cost about the same as a new computer. And I cried and cried. Which I know is a bit pathetic, but for the past few weeks of my computer being broken I have missed it like crazy and I cannot handle the prospect of being without it. My computer is my ability to listen to my music; read things on the internet; talk to people over skype and voipstunt and messenger; write emails; sink into the comforting cosiness of comedy and drama over BBC internet radio; look up recipes when I need them; upload and organize my photos; blog; record my thoughts.

As a result, I believe the words “I fucking hate today. I fucking hate everything” may have been spoken on Thursday, when my inner (maybe not so inner) petulant, foulmouthed fifteen-year-old took over for a while. She was around on Saturday too, when I wasted most of the day trying and failing to get tickets to see awesome Mexican rock band Maná and walking through a dark and strange neighbourhood trying and failing to find a shop that turned out not to be there.

So whinge whinge whinge, everything is rubbish. Except that somehow it isn’t, and somehow I seem to be coming out from the slough of despond that I have been in of late. So here are some of the things that have been cheering me up since Thursday:

• Brussels sprouts. Shut up. I like them.
• A work Valentine's party on Friday which ended up going pretty well - so well, in fact, that it was almost worth all the stress of organising it. Dancing. The amazing realisation that I can comfortably dance salsa or cumbia and carry on a conversation in Spanish at the same time (though admittedly neither at an especially complex level) - both things that required all my concentration not so long ago.
• My new favourite bar, introduced to me on Friday night after the party by a dear Mexican friend, when we went into town and everyone else was too tired/boring to come. It is smallish and cosy, with wood-panelled walls and lots of ceiling lamps. A boy with a ponytail and a guitar started playing songs, mostly trova (folky ballads in Spanish), but a with the odd one in English - Pretty Woman, a Beatles song, and, hilariously, the Banana Boat Song. His first song was the most utterly bizarre: the Mexican equivalent of Happy Birthday, with the words changed from "These are the morning verses that King David sang to the beautiful girls..." to "These are the morning verses that [musician's name] sang to the drunk boys/people...", set to a Pink Floyd tune! We laughed, talked, requested our favourite songs, and I was immensely, inexplicably happy. The musician shot me mischievous grins. Other people came up on stage, playing drums and guitars and singing, taking turns and wandering off - more boys with ponytails and the owner in a stylish black hat. Their friends and girlfriends sat at the front and joked and catcalled and sometimes joined in. One of the ponytailed boys tried to help his drunk and arrhythmic friend play the clave. The lights went out and everyone laughed and squealed and got out the lights on their mobile phones. We went when we were too tired to stay and the band got the whole room waving goodbye.
• Photography, specifically a visit to Mexico City’s photography museum, the Centro de la Imagen. It is a perfect hour or two’s wander, and the exhibitions by Graciela Iturbide and Ernesto Ramírez were both amazing and inspirational. I have come to the realisation over the last couple of weekends that photography and modern art (20th and 21st century) are the things I like to go and look at most of all, and find the most rewarding. It is nice to know this. Helps cut down the agonising.
• Perching on a bench in a square, watching people learn to dance Son next to the central fountain.
• Two little boys, brothers, on the Metro, playing scissors, paper, stone. (It is more fun to watch here – rather than bringing your shape out on the count of three, the contestants have to sway their hands from side to side while chanting and then make their shape as the chant ends on a triumphant little shout). A little girl, instantly bored on an escalator, holding a plastic bag with a ball in it up to her stomach and saying “look mummy, I’m pregnant”. Shrines to the Virgin of Guadalupe in quiet streets: fixed to a tree trunk and festooned with silver tinsel; a few candlelit tiles in a wall, flanked by two golden chrysanthemums; a grander statuette in her glass case. Handprints in the concrete pavement outside a little family-run store, with names written in next to them; a sun sketched into the concrete a little further along.
• The first line of Fluorescent Adolescent by the Arctic Monkeys, heard playing somewhere. “You used to get it in your fishnets, now you only get it in your nightdress…”
• The best chicken I have ever tasted, barbecued in the sunny, dusty square of a nearby small town. Wandering around the Sunday market, smelling of the leather of belts and saddles and cowboy boots. An ice lolly like a home-made strawberry split, with little yellow strawberry seeds sunk to the tip of the fruity part.
• Volleyball on Sunday afternoon. Sitting in a circle and bouncing the ball to each other until we were in a calm, giggly, zen-like state. Rolling on the grass in paroxysms of laughter. Feeling happy and relaxed in every muscle.
• The birth of a beautiful, healthy baby girl to a good friend and colleague and his lovely wife, their first child; his huge smile and running up and giving him a big hug. I saw the pictures of her first poo and her first feed, but I drew the line at the video of her birth!
• Black and grey stripey socks that made me feel like the Worst Witch.
• Affectionate teasing.

I guess it's the little things... except sometimes when it is the big things, and the medium-sized ones.