Peregrinations

Snapshots from my week

2012-01-22T22:28:00.001+01:00

Driving to Fronsac: an endless ribbon of orange on the skyline seen through rows of grey poplar trees.
The arrivals and departures board at the station is computerized and silent now, no more clickclickclickclicking as trains move up the list.
In a brasserie in Paris I wonder at the tourist woman who eats a meal with her hat on, all the while avoiding eye contact with her hard-faced companion.
A conference of surgeons mills around during the coffee break; purposeful, grey and almost exclusively male.

Words don't come easy

2012-01-13T16:54:00.001+01:00

I don't seem to be very good at words at the moment. I have a long article to completely overhaul before the end of the month and spend long periods fiddling with chunks of text then drifting off, virtually, to look at something less taxing on my brain. I had thought that perhaps in 2012, instead of taking a photograph each day, I might offer up a snapshot in words. In the thirteen days that have already gone by, I have only come up with two. Perhaps it gets easier.

Fine rain lit up by the lamp of asupermarket car-park; swirling and darting like a flock of starlings.

As the yoga teacher talks, she rubsher eye, touches her cheek, runs her finger along her lip, pushes her hairbehind her ear. Choreography.

365 more or less

2012-01-12T22:16:00.000+01:00

I started off 2011 intending to take a photo every day and I managed it ..... more or less. There are still a few photographs floating around that I've forgotten to add to the photoset below and a few days came and went without me noticing, and then some have been misnumbered. I've enjoyed looking back at them. 2011 was a good year!

Eye, eye.

2011-12-02T16:42:00.001+01:00

For some reason my profile picture — the black and white eye — disappeared from the sidebar. It might have something to do with Blogger and Flickr hating each other, I don't know. I had to retrieve it from my hard disk and re-upload it. That was when I realised that it dates back to January 2005, when I first started blogging.

[On a side note, what should we call what I do now? It certainly isn't blogging because that would entail some semblance of regularity. It's more of a start-stop dribble now. Bli-bli-bbling might be a more appropriate term then.]

January 2005 was nearly seven years ago. My eyes are a bit more crinkly round the edges now. That tell-tale line around my iris has also disappeared. I now wear glasses most of the time because; well because I'm ancient and contact lenses just weren't up to the job any more. In another seven years my profile photo may well feature a zimmer.

Impressionable

2011-11-06T19:19:00.000+01:00

I am the sort of person who is overwhelmed by an irresistible craving for crisps if someone opens a packet in a film; or for a drink if I catch sight of someone in a bar on tv.

That's why it was more or less inevitable that after watching Fat, Sick and Almost Dead the other evening — a film by and about an Australian who lives off blitzed fruit and vegetables for two months, turning his weight and health around dramatically — I would rush out an buy a juicer the very next day.

For the past twenty-four hours we have been enjoying surprisingly delicious juices made from unlikely fruit and veg combinations. I hope it doesn't end up abandoned in the garage beside the bread machine.

I've seen some good films recently #3

2011-11-02T23:14:00.000+01:00

Michou d'Auber (2007) This is a sadder version of Neuilly Sa Mère with a young Muslim boy (same actor) being sent to live with a family in small town France (Gérard Depardieu is the foster father) during the Algerian War. Worth watching.

No Strings Attached (2011) I think this is what is commonly known as a romp. And very rompy it is.

Genova (2008) A lovely film with some beautiful footage of Genoa (beautiful if you like peeling paint and crumbling stonework, that is, which I do). Just don't expect anything very much to happen. Colin Firth looks good.

Bolt (2008) The children had seen this at the cinema when it first came out and wanted to see it again. I made them watch it in English.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) A Woody Allen film set in England. Not his best.

Louise-Michel (2008) A very strange French film, but sometimes in a good way. I like Yolande Moreau the main actress and her offbeat social-realism.

From Prada to Nada (2011) Silly, silly, silly.

Death at a Funeral (2007) One of those British comedies where a family gets together and hilarious chaos with pseudo-meaningful undertones ensues.

La première étoile (2009) Comedy about a black family from a housing scheme going on its first skiing holiday. A bit better than it sounds.

That's What I Am (2011) Another strange film about not fitting in at high school. The red-headed boy is memorably gangly.

Billy Elliot (2000) I didn't see this when it first came out. I was underwhelmed both by the dancing and the underdeveloped storyline.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011) I watched this with Z who has read all of the books. He tells me that the book was better. That's ma boy.

Mars Needs Moms (2011) This is a terrible film. They used some sort of experimental animation technique and it's rubbish.

Juno (2007) Great film. I loved everything about it, especially the quirkiness of Juno herself.

..... to be continued

Doors and Windows of Mallorca

2011-11-02T00:00:00.001+01:00

We had a sneaky extra week of summer in Mallorca last week and very relaxing it was too.

Displacement activity

2011-10-09T19:38:00.004+02:00

As always when I have a charette as the French say (an urgent piece of work to do before an impending deadline) I find myself irresistibly attracted to the idea of a blog post.

Things on my mind:

I went to vote in the presidential primaries today and was knocked back. The cheek of it! (Apparently us furriners had to register online in July)

I'm reading Franzen's Freedom at the moment. It's very long and I don't don't really care about what happens to any of the protagonists to be honest.

I bought an iPad a couple of weeks ago at the Apple Store in Bordeaux (very sleek, very intimidating). I'm in love with the iPad of course, but so is the rest of the family, so a multi-user interface would have been a useful feature.

I'm going to Saint-Etienne at the end of next week and I'll be in Lyon on Saturday night. On my own. (Anyone live in Lyon? or Lyons if you're British ... very British).

I loved the last series of The Big C, and Weeds wasn't bad either. I can't be bothered watching Grey's Anatomy any more, or Dexter. House is still good though.

Rugby.

365, well sort of anyway.

2011-09-18T16:38:00.001+02:00

I'm still plugging away at the 365 Photo-a-Day project. There are some missing from the latest batch below (May - mid-Sept), mainly because I can't be bothered to work out which days are missing and add them, and other days I just forgot. I started using Instagram for these photos on 1st May because it seemed more interesting and creative somehow — okay, in fact, it was because every one else was doing it. If you look carefully you should be able to see the children's goldfish Sammy and Danny (they're still alive), my bike, the London Review Bookshop, an memorial to American nurses in Bordeaux, Robert Louis Stevenson's house in Edinburgh, the walkway over the lake for Vinexpo, a few beaches, a Nordic walking expedition (my new pseudo sport), e tutti quanti.

(Post updated with a more limited selection of photographs because the original attempt went completely wonky)

Le Marathon du Médoc

2011-09-15T23:20:00.000+02:00

Last Saturday I got up at the crack of dawn and drove some friends to Pauillac to run in the Marathon du Mé doc, also known as the world's longest marathon.

Now, if you're mad enough to slog your guts out running a marathon, there probably isn't anywhere better to do it than in the Médoc because this is a run with a twist or two.

The route takes the runners through the vineyards and courtyards of twenty-three chateaux where, naturally, the refreshments tables groan under hundreds, nay thousands, of glasses of excellent Médoc wine along with oysters, and cured ham, and ice cream and all sorts of other local gastronomic goodies.

And as if that wasn't enough, the whole thing is done in fancy dress. Almost everyone makes some sort of effort except for the odd party pooper in boring old lycra shorts and a running vest. This year the theme was animals so we cheered on cows, ladybirds, zebras, bunnies, pigs —and the odd man defiantly dressed as a woman — as they hirpled, sprinted and staggered their way back to the quays in Pauillac. The ears were a bit droopy and the tails were sometimes a little less than bushy by the time they got to the finishing line.

My friends Steve and Jim had come all the way from Fife for this, with Alexia to cheer them on. We met others who'd come from even further afield including a mother and her son who had come from Philadelphia just for the weekend, some Swedes, loads of boozy Brits, and a surprising number of Japanese people. There were 8500 very sweaty participants in all.

Despite the very high temperatures, which had just about reached a sweltering 30°C by the end, the Scots didn't give in and take off their kilted cow outfits and, of course, felt duty bound to taste each and every wine. In fact, when they realised they were in danger of coming in under the five-hour mark, they sat down, enjoyed the view, and had a second glass at the last chateau.

Mad, mad, mad. And no I won't be doing it myself next year.

Tiree

2011-09-13T23:52:00.000+02:00

As usual we split the rest of the summer between the Dordogne and Scotland.

For the Scotland trip this year we spent a week on the island of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides. I lived on the island for five years when I was a child but I had never been back. I can't think why. Every spartan township; every seaweedy smell; every wheeling bird brought back happy memories of a carefree childhood.

Tiree is heaven on earth when it's sunny - endless white beaches, big skies, rock pools to explore, flat machair to walk across. And when the weather is bad — as it was on the last day of our holiday — it's really bad, excitingly bad, with howling gales and horizontal rain. It's a wonderful, other-worldly sort of place. Here are some photos:

More here.

Bye-bye Summer

2011-08-29T22:33:00.002+02:00

Well I suppose that must be summer nearly over. It's been a good one, apart from a couple of minor mishaps like LOSING MY FLIPPING PASSPORT just before a flight to London. I was heading off to a conference at Saint Mary and the bloody thing (GB passports are the colour of blood, have you noticed?) just disappeared into thin air — pouf! I ended up missing my flight, getting an emergency passport from the nice ladies at the consulate and buying a replacement Easyjet ticket. The conference was worth it though -two days of stimulating talk on the subject of the literary essay from some very clever people. Unfortunately I had to leave just before the end and missed the speaker I most wanted to see, Geoff Dyer. I love Geoff Dyer's writing and if you've never read any of his books, you really should.

The upside of losing my passport was that I then found myself stuck in Edinburgh for a week while E had her course of total immersion in English a.k.a. being spoilt rotten by Grandma. The stay in Edinburgh gave me a chance to do some work in the National Library and, even better, to catch up with old and new friends.

This was a stay I hadn't budgeted for so I stayed in the cheapest place possible - the student residence at Pollock Halls. If you're not too bothered about fancy sheets and chocolates on your pillow, you can't really do much better than Pollock Halls. For a start it's only £28 a night and that includes a massive breakfast - square sausage, black pudding, potato scones, the lot. And then ... well that's it really. You're near city centre and you're right next to Arthur's Seat but it's still a student residence with single beds, shared bathrooms, carpets that have probably been vomited on by countless generations of students, and the lonely studenty feeling of waiting for something better to happen.

That Edinburgh studenty feeling was conjured up again, later in the summer, by the novel One Day which you have no doubt read since I saw it in the hands of at least a dozen people I crossed over with during the summer. (Has anyone seen the film yet?) The passport debâcle turned out to be book-related too - almost as soon as we landed in Edinburgh, I found it in my luggage. I had apparently been using it as a bookmark in a tedious book I had reluctantly brought along to review. Gah.

The non-Sartorialist

2011-07-10T22:32:00.003+02:00

Do you read The Sartorialist blog? I do. I like the quirky clothes although I suspect that the photographs of women are more about the uniformly spindly body shape than the clothes. I particularly like the vintage photos that readers send in mostly of their grandparents or parents kicking back on holiday.

It's a bit splotchy, and probably not up to Sartorialist standards, but this is a photograph of my grandfather Thomas Long. At the time this photograph was taken, probably in the mid 1930s, he was working as a builder's labourer in and around Hamilton in Scotland. He would later own his own building contractor's business. I love the nonchalant pose and the effortless elegance just for a day out at the seaside.

Campus grafitti

2011-07-09T15:39:00.004+02:00

I'm not a great fan of urban grafitti generally — I find it mildly threatening — but I have to admit that there's something funky and fascinating about this ribbon of grafitti around the bottom of a shoebox building on the campus in Pessac.

TEDx

2011-05-30T01:30:00.006+02:00

When I discovered that there was going to be a TEDx event in Bordeaux, I thought hell, yeah, I'd like to be there so I duly signed up and bought my 40€ ticket.

However, I hadn't really thought about why I was interested in the event. Like everyone else I've watched a lot of TED presentations on the internet. I find the format snappy and the content (almost) unfailingly interesting. But I hadn't thought about what the added value of actually being there would be as opposed to viewing later on a screen.

I spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon in the lecture theatre at Bordeaux's Museum of Modern Art, the CAPC, but to be honest it turns out that there isn't actually a lot of added value in being there. The organisers probably realise this and attempt to compensate by promoting the hour-long break as an opportunity to "network" with speakers and other participants. I'm useless at networking and I didn't make any new friends during the break but I did take the photo above of people mingling on the roof terrace of the CAPC at one end of that very long work of art.

The speakers aren't announced before the event so it's something of a pig in a poke, you just have to trust the local organisers to come up with a varied selection of good communicators with something interesting to say in no more than 18 minutes. In Bordeaux there were several excellent talks - slick presentations, well delivered with a clear and meaningful message, there was one truly dreadful presentation and the rest were middling. We heard about copyright and creation, the internet in Africa, a new type of physiotherapy centred on the pelvis, Montessori and the child's need for independence, Dead drops, Opensource software, new tools for NGOs, as well as musings on the future of the internet.

There were also two musical sets. One by a group called Sun Seven and another by a double bassist. I heard a little embarrassed sniggering during the latter - perhaps unsurprisingly free impro contemporary double bass doesn't seem to be everyone's cup of tea. Fadhila Brahimi later got us all to stand up and sing together. More used to being on the giving-orders side of happy-clappiness, I tend to get a little panicky when press-ganged into any group activities and was more than relieved when it was time to sit back down again once the rather facile lesson that companies should make people work together more had been made explicit.

Other lessons that I gleaned from the afternoon:

Simply saying the work "geek" to a French audience guarantees laughter whatever the context. Fair enough.
Over-rehearsal often comes across as ham acting but under-rehearsal is cringily worse.
No amount of coaching can compete with innate showmanship.
The bare legs look is not a good look under spotlights, I must remember that.

The theme was "Ensemble" , and most speakers paid lip service to that idea in some way. After the intermission, a young man asked me if I would mind moving back a row so that he and his friends could have six seats all together — "puisque le thème, c'est ensemble" he added without the slightest hint of irony.

(I'll add a link to the presentations as soon as they become available.)

A Stroll in the Jardin Botanique

2011-05-22T16:48:00.005+02:00

Not this weekend but a couple of weekends ago, and really just an excuse to play around with Picasa which mosaic-maestro Lucy pointed me to.
The Linnaeus bust in the bottom right-hand corner is the work of the talented Lucie Geffré - I think he's aging well. As indeed is the Jardin Botanique itself. A few years ago it was brand new: a flat, mineral wasteland in the then unpopular Bastide quartier. Now, it is a watery, green place busy with families picnicking on travel rugs, babies napping in prams under trees, and elderly people peering at unfamiliar plants.

Recent Reading

2011-05-15T14:58:00.003+02:00

The Slap by Christos Tolkias 2011. Recounts, person by person, the repercussions in an extended Greek-Australian family of a father slapping someone else's unbearable child. Tails off into tedious psycho-drama in the second half. Would make a good film.
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, 2010. I can't help feeling that Kate Atkison underuses her talent in this series of books. They all hinge of on the coalescence of unbelieveable coincidences, a device that I think undermines her fabulous sense of character and narrative. Still a great read though. Best line - "ladies who lurch".
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, 2006. I enjoyed this account of the mechanisms and effects of instant decisions and intuitions. I'm highly sceptical though about the theory that says that certain Americans are more impulsive because their forefathers hailed from the Scottish-English Borders where cattle rustling was rife and aggression the only means of survival. We are generally quite a peace loving nation, honest. Anyway, I enjoyed it enough to download "Outliers" and I'm in the process of finishing that.
A Widow's Story: A Memoir by J. C. Oates 2011. Blogged my reaction to this a few weeks ago.
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, 2011. A friend recommended this authobiographical narrative in terms that were more incandescent than glowing and I was blown away by the writing which was quite unlike anything I have ever read before. Despite some reservations about aspects of the story (especially the complete absence of any self-criticism ) and its delivery - I object to being collared by authors as a singular "you" who probably doesn't "get it", I recommend this book wholeheartedly.
Solar by Ian McEwan, 2011. Extremely funny - I frequently guffawed at McEwan's portrayal of this puffed-up middle-aged man. I especially liked the bit where he "only half ran back to his car" after an altercation with a burly builder because "he had his dignity".
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, 2001. American journalist lives in Paris, writes articles about life there than realeases them all as a book. And it's a good one, if slightly dated now.
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell, 2010. I loved this venture into literary popularization that cleverly intertwines a biography of Montaigne with readings of the essays. By half way through I was itching to read the essays themselves.
The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel by Joyce Carole Oates, 2008. A slightly tedious historical novel. I'm not quite sure what the point was.
Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing by Tim Parks, 2010. I blogged my rather self-indulgent reaction to this quite brilliant book a while ago.
The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend, 1998. I had never read this and thought it was about time I filled this gap in my popular culture reference system. I read The Cappuccino Years too, but that's enough.

I've seen some good films recently #2

2011-04-23T18:09:00.007+02:00

My Own Love Song (2010)
It's difficult to understand how a film starring Renée Zellweger and Forest Whitaker, with a decent storyline and some fantastic Louisiana landscapes ended up as such a messy dog's dinner, but it did. (Forest Whitaker plays a character reminiscent of Lennie in Of Mice and Men, or Benny in Crossroads, depending on your frame of reference).

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
I thought this would be the perfect film to keep both children happy since it combines sport for the boy and some chaste kissing for the girl. Neither of them liked it very much though. I thought it was all right.

Invictus (2009)
I'd seen this before and Z has watched it at least ten times. Still holding up.

The Last Song (2010)
My daughter E loved this Miley Cyrus film. She's eight and that's the age you'd have to be to get anything out of it I suspect.

Martian Child (2007)
We all really enjoyed this story of a child who thinks he's from Mars and the man (John Cusak) who adopts him.

Last Night (2010)
A film about sexual and emotional fidelity / infidelity. Keira Knightley and Guillaume Canet aren't too shabby in it. The real star for me though was the wooden flooring in the NY apartment.

Neuilly sa mère! (2009)
This is the kids' favourite film at the moment. It's the story of a boy who moves from a cité to live with his rich relatives in the priviliged Paris suburb of Neuilly. His cousin is a big fan of the French president and some of the Sarko jokes are really quite good. Recommended.

Made in Dagenham (2010)
Saw this one in the cinema. Like Mad Men, it's one of those productions in which we get to laugh at how unenlightened we were in the '60s. And like so many of these enjoyable British social comedies with a message, the message is so diluted that it doesn't come across with any force.

Inception (2010)
I bought the DVD for P for Christmas. We were both enormously disappointed with it - big budget nothingness.

Precious (2009)
Loved this film about being born to the most evil mother ever, being deprived of almost everything but turning out all right really. I liked Gabourey Sidibe in The Big C too.

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)
I liked this one too, but Ewan MacGregor's American accent isn't up to much, is it?

Le Mac (2010)
Pitiful French comedy starring the usually-better José Garcia.

A Single Man (2009)
Fabulous, aesthetically pleasing film. Colin Firth is excellent as usual.

De zeven van Daran, de strijd om Pareo Rots (2008)
Dutch film for kids. Apparently it's one in a projected series of seven. I won't be watching the others.

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
I'd like to avoid the hackneyed term "epic tale" to describe this one but no other will do really. So, I enjoyed this epic tale of a group of friends who grow up together in New York. Not only had I never seen the film before, I had never even heard of it. Robert de Niro is great throughout.

Passengers (2008)
Strange film about the aftermath of a plane accident. Watchable.

The Merry Gentleman (2008)
Man invites village to his funeral but he isn't dead yet. I seem to remember that this was also the plotline of an episode of Little House on the Prairie.

Updated to correct some shocking typos.

Project 365: March/April

2011-04-23T12:08:00.004+02:00

This lot includes an advert for horse manure, some bluebells, a Japanese restaurant, a Kindle, some paperbacks, at least two bedrooms, and a few bottles of wine.
I did forget one day in this batch and I had to make do with an extra photo from the day before. That's another project buggered then I suppose, but I shall plough on regardless.

365 - a set on Flickr via kwout

News from Stockholm

2011-04-13T09:59:00.006+02:00

Last week, I had a drink with long-time blogger friend Ksam who was in Bordeaux on business. One of the things we talked about, on a balmy evening, was cultural differences in approaches to customer service. Basically, in most English-speaking countries the customer is always right whereas in France, the customer is very often a bothersome inconvenience.

The next day was a wonderful, hot sunny Saturday and I broke out a new pair of bright pink trousers that I'd bought in Zara about a month previously in preparation for the first days of summer. After the usual moment of mirror-mediated doubt (pink on those thighs, really?) and the grateful acceptance of totally-objective fashion advice from an eight-year-old ("t'es troooooop belle"), I noticed that one of the outside seams was completely wonky.

Unfortunately I couldn't find the receipt, but that's no problem with faulty goods is it? Off I set for Zara to exchange them for a pair without a seam hernia, anticipating apologies on their part and gracious acceptance on mine. Mistake! A manager who looked as if she hadn't eaten anything since 1998 stonewalled for a while, asked how she was to know I hadn't stolen the trousers; said they looked as if they had been worn; gave me a condescending lecture on how important it is to keep all receipts; grudgingly agreed to exchange them just this once as a gesture of goodwill; then flounced off with one last glare from her dead-fish eyes.

I can't stand the whining about France that fills many expat Twitter timelines, but I also think that when you've lived in another country for a long time, a sort of Stockholm syndrome sets in and you begin to accept the blatant failings of that country as quite acceptable, noble even. I'm going to have to get me some hostage assertiveness training.

Widow's Story - sort of

2011-04-10T20:41:00.004+02:00

I've read my first book on the new Kindle: Joyce Carol Oates' A Widow's Story. About half way through this memoir — the story of JCO losing her husband in 2008 — I got a little bored. I could understand the relief that she got out of writing about her grief, the minutiae of insomnia, thoughts of suicide, and her impatience with thoughtless condoleance gifts, but I couldn't quite see what I was supposed to gain from reading about it. Actually it wasn't half-way through, it was exactly 64% into the book, you can tell those things on a Kindle.

Taking a break from the book, I remembered having seen photographs of JCO and her husband in the New Yorker a while ago and Googled to find them. As I typed the query into the box, Google auto-complete came up with "Joyce Carol Oates remarriage". Surely not?

But yes, here I was reading about and sympathising with the detail of the writer's apparently insurmountable grief at the loss of her partner of forty-five years, when in fact she was engaged to another man just eleven months after husband's death, and remarried shortly after that. She had moved on long before the book came out yet invited me to wallow in her unhappiness a little longer.

It seems to me that there is something profoundly dishonest about that; a betrayal almost. I ploughed (okay, clicked) my way through the rest of the book in a decidedly more critical sprit. The photographs had shown an emaciated cross between Sissy Spacek and Tim Burton's Alice, a face it was more difficult to warm to than facelessness. I grew impatient with her toying with the non-starter idea of suicide, and entertained a growing suspicion that this book was no more than a working up of the notes this prolific author had taken in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death along with some name-dropping e-mail exchanges.

Finally, but perhaps this is an American thing, it seems to me that it's a terrible mistake not to attend one's own husband's cremation.

If this was a real paper book, I would have listed it on BookMooch by now. But what do you do with an e-book you don't want?

Decisions, decisions

2011-04-04T21:20:00.005+02:00

Kids here go to high school (or collège) early — Z will only be ten when he leaves the safe, comfortable environment of the primary school he's been at since he was just out of nappies.

Almost all of his bosom buddies will be going to the collège in our quartier, a short walk from our street. It's a nice school with just 440 pupils, and a friendly atmosphere. Another advantage is that they have a "section européenne" that specialises in German. So Z could just do German for the first two years and start English later; not a bad idea for a boy who's already pretty good at English.

Basically, we'd be quite happy for him to continue his education at the school for our catchment area and of course he's very keen to stay with his pals, to perfect his mucking-about-in-the-playground skills. However, there is another possibility.

A ten-minute walk in the opposite direction from our house takes you to another, much bigger collège with 900 pupils. This one has a very special international programme just for bilingual children and families come from hundreds of kilometres away to get into it. There's a written and spoken English test to get into the class and the children that do get in are worked hard with extra classes in English language and literature. History is taught in English too. It's a small, tight-knit class and a very enthusiastic American teacher gives them lots of personal attention and encourages high achievement.

Is this the right environment for Z ? Could he take the extra pressure? Is he "academic" enough? Is his English good enough to pass the test (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa)? I think that if we can get him on our side on this, he might thrive. But then I think he'll also thrive in the regular collège.

This is a first-world, middle-class dilemma, I'm keenly aware of that. We're wonderfully lucky to live in a country that still believes in a public education system in which we have the luxury of choosing between two perfectly good options. But God, I hate making decisions, and I hate contemplating pushing our wee boy out of his (and our) comfort zone and into what might turn out to be a bit of a hot-house.

(PS. If you read French, Caroline had a really funny post the other day about the social politics of choosing a collège, even for those who don't have to deal with the language question)

Tips for giving a good lecture

2011-04-04T21:14:00.003+02:00

3D! Why didn't I think of that? If only I'd seen this before those lectures in February.
(From A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor)

A day on the Bassin with Materfamilias

2011-03-28T21:02:00.005+02:00

I haven't met many blogger friends - only two actually; Sarah and Stella. This weekend made three when Materfamilias and her husband came down to Bordeaux on a side trip from their vacation in Paris and we spent an evening and an afternoon together. It's nice to finally meet people when you have been reading them for years and you already feel (perhaps erroneously) that you know lots about them. You can skip a lot of the awkward niceties, and finally put a voice to the words. Of course, they were lovely, just as I knew they would be.
We spent Sunday afternoon on the Bassin d'Arcachon and I had fun showing off some of my favourite places. My glutei maximi are feeling rather delicate today since they dragged me to the top of the Dune to Pyla then stopped me tumbling all the way back down again. The children applied no such braking mechanisms. A good time was had by all.
(By the way that first photograph in the mosaic below may be a sandy colour but it certainly didn't taste like sand. It's my dessert from Saturday evening at La Table du Vieux Saint Pierre, une bonne adresse).

Come back soon les Familias!

It's my Birthday and I'll Cry if I Want To

2011-03-14T10:38:00.004+01:00

Yes, it's my birthday today but this afternoon we're going to our friend Marie's funeral. She was only forty-five, a lovely person and a great mum to two super children. She died after a long and painful batte against cancer. So today I'm not going to complain about aging, I'm going to reflect on the fact that it is a privilege to grow older.

Project 365: Feb+

2011-03-11T14:33:00.003+01:00

I'm still taking a photo every day. I have sometimes only remembered when I'm in bed and then I just took a photograph of whatever was on my bedside table. And I did forget completely one day, but luckily I'd accidentally taken a short video with my phone so I was able to use a still from that.

365 - a set on Flickr via kwout

Fuerteventura: Bonsoir, have a good evening, gracias.

2011-03-06T23:04:00.009+01:00

As you know, we like to head south during one of the shorter school holidays. It's never something that we plan a long time in advance, but last week's February holiday was an exceptionally last minute affair. Dismayed by the weather forecast for Bordeaux, I found cheap tickets to Fuerteventura online on Thursday, then booked accommodation on Friday, threw some shorts and t-shirts in a bag on Saturday and headed off on Sunday.

We opted for an all-inclusive hotel thing this time, mainly because villas on Fuerteventura turned out to be so much more expensive than on the neighbouring island Lanzarote, and much more difficult to come by. At least the children will be happy, we thought, with other kids to play with and a "mini club" and all of those other exciting things that go on in hotels that boring old parents are no good at providing. (I secretly hoped that they might even become chummy with some British children and brush up on their English at the same time)

This plan backfired a little because, of course, once they'd made (exclusively French) friends the children certainly didn't want to go off and explore any boring old museums or unspoiled fishing villages, or volcanic landscapes. So we negotiated ..... every single trip outside of the hotel compound.

Happy children notwithstanding, next time, it will definitely be a villa. Not least because although the food was delicious; the rooms spacious and impeccably clean; the tropical gardens lush and the staff irreproachably smiley: the muzak drove us up the wall and the multilingual commentaries from the entertainment team reminded P of nothing so much as the daftie in The Name of the Rose (although I don't think there was any Latin involved). Unsurprisingly when you use four different languages in one high-speed sentence it comes out as meaningless Eurobabble even if all of the words are correct.

However, a bit of winter sun, as the brochures say, never did anyone any harm and Fuerteventura is a superb island. I'd like to go back sometime to explore further afield. More photos here, if you think you can take it.

I've seen some good films recently

2011-02-07T12:20:00.005+01:00

For various reasons — a new television, a new Freebox, fewer scruples — I've seen quite a few films recently. Some excellent and some beyond bad. I started keeping a list on IMDb, just in case I started to forget.

Never Let Me Go (2010)
I liked this film much more than the book. It was visually soothing: I especially liked the greys and the taupes of the children's hand-knitted cardigans and the peeling walls of their school.

The Stepfather (2009)
Dreadful, dreadful film. Everything I hate: murder, shallow characters, Patrick Swayze lookalikes.

D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)
I watched this one with the children who asked if the colours in all films were dull like that back in the day when I was young. Well, yes I suppose they were.

Away We Go (2009)
Thoroughly enjoyed this story of a young couple expecting their first baby, and travelling from city to city to find the perfect place to settle down. The ending is rubbish but the rest is a great exploration of modern stereotypes we're all annoyed by, and I laughed a lot.

Get Low (2009)
This story of a reclusive old man who arranges his own funeral was good but it could have been much much better. Occasional whiffs of Little House on the Prairie.

Main Street (2010)
Colin Firth with a Texan accent. Hmmm. But Orlando Bloom wasn't too shabby.

Bright Star (2009)
I really liked this rather whimsical story Keats's last love affair. The costumes were lucious if a little too modern to be entirely believable.

Copie conforme (2010)
I've mentioned this one already. Juliette Binoche and an unknown (to me) English baritone act out a strange aftermath to their relationship (or maybe not) in gorgeous Tuscany. Definitely made me want to see more by the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

The King's Speech (2010)
I enjoyed this, but who didn't? I particularly liked the scenes in the speech-therpist's Harley Street basement with peeling paint, the patina of grubbiness, faded carpets.

Somewhere (2010)
The story of an actor and his relationship with his young daughter. Nothing really happens but it is all rather diverting.

The Social Network (2010)
Yes, not bad but I thought the beginning was much stronger than the end.

Welcome to the Rileys (2010)
I like James Gandolfini and I loved this story of a couple in late middle age coping with loss.

Fargo (1996)
Hard to believe that this film is already fifteeen years old. I don't think I enjoyed it quite as much the second time round, but it's still classic cinema.

Finding Forrester (2000)
A film with lots of good intentions. Sean Connery plays an aging, reclusive author befriended by a young black kid who wants to write. There are some good lines. Like "The first key to writing is... to write, not to think! "

I Love You, Man (2009)
Amusing film. Starring Chandler.

It's Complicated (2009)
Silly story about a divorced couple that gets back together again. Meryl Streep and Alex Baldwin 's talents are underused.

L'homme de chevet (2009)
I abhor the simpering Sophie Marceau, but Christophe Lambert plays an interesting character in this story of a disabled woman who needs someone to look after her.

Burn After Reading (2008)
I totally missed the point of this film. I mean what was it about exactly?

Quiz Show (1994)
I quite enjoyed this story of corrupt morals - what about you?

There's a function on the IMDb My Movies page where I can create a ballot and you can go and rate the films on my list. Go on, humour me.

Project 365: January

2011-01-30T22:24:00.005+01:00

I've managed to take a photograph every day in January. I know there's one day left but 31 is such an inconvenient number for making even-sided squares.
It hasn't been too difficult but I have occasionally forgotten until the very last minute hence the photographs of bedtime reading, and dirty dishes and tv screens. Other than that, there's a bit of everything, sausages and skulls, House (Dr.) and hearth, supermarkets and soup.
It's been fun, so I'm going to continue, and who knows perhaps there will be a little more sun in February.

365 - a set on Flickr via kwout

(Individual photos are clickable. Isn't that clever?)

Self Absorption

2011-01-24T11:32:00.006+01:00

Teach us to Sit Still, Tim Parks's most recent book is not a self-help book but it is a book about self-help that says some very helpful things — about mindfulness and connections between the body and one's background and cultural references, and about standing up straight. It is also a strikingly honest book. It is honest about pissing, the perineum, and weary-looking tackle — but women who have gone through the business of having babies are usually inured to that sort of honest detail. It is also, and more impressively, honest about the discreditable thoughts that go on in Tim Parks's head: that never-ending inner monologue that we (all?) indulge in, made up of the obsessive composition of self-aggrandizing declarations; mental manoeuvering and negotiation; infuriated silent shouting. None of it very worthy and the very opposite of the helpful and healing Noble Silence.

It is then a book about the author's self-help but the self that imposes itself on the experience is my own self; the book engages my own inner hubris. I read the memoir in a night and a morning. When I take a break during the morning for a shower, I find myself putting words together that I might work up into a review of the book: a review that will show me in the best possible light; an unusually insightful review that might even attract the attention of the author who will, of course, be impressed by the connections I have made; my comprehension of his work; my underexercised talent. He will think well of me. I know that this is woefully like Parks's own mental composition of his modest — and in the end unnecessary — Booker acceptance speech: subtly calculated to impress without seeming to do so. It is an unworthy mental exercise but it chimes with me, because this is all still all about me and my incessant, rarely aired, calculated inner monologue. I recognise too his need to be of interest: the most knowledgeable and articulate patient a doctor has ever had; the most composed family member an undertaker has ever met; the most accommodating caller a customer helpline has ever had to deal with.

There are some real, if tenuous, connections. Parks's life is lived out in two languages - like mine. The words that come to me in the shower are sometimes French words that just seem more apt. I remember snippets from the other books by Parks that I have read and the word that comes to me is bribes (snatches). I knew before reading this book that Parks was supersensitive to noise, he told us so in an essay I read a couple of years ago. Goodness know which essay, goodness know in what context he offered this information, goodness know why my memory has chosen to give it space. This in turn calls up a bribe of information from a biography of Carlyle (or was it Jane Carlyle?) that I must have read more than twenty years ago: his sensitivity to and fury at the noise made by the hens in somebody else's back garden behind their house in Chelsea. Poor Jane had to deal with it.

Families. I become distracted by the life rather than the work which is perhaps not so surprising given the autobiographical nature of much of Parks's writing. Thinking about my own relationship with French, I call to mind a factoid from one of the earliest books, An Italian Education I think, which I must have read a good fifteen years ago. Parks laments that although he speaks English to his little son, however fluent his son is, he still has that giveaway Italian pronounciation at the end of words. I identify with and retrospectively share his disappointment. I'm intrigued too by his wife, a graceful but waning presence in all of his books, until this one in which she seems to regain some importance. "How we have hurt each other", he says in this towards the end of Teach Us to Sit Still. Perhaps the decline set in with the novel Destiny which with hindsight I think was probably about the impossibility of an entirely happy marriage when two people are thinking in different languages.

Connections continue to tumble around as I shower and I think of a film I have just seen, Copie Conforme. It is the story of a French woman (Juliette Binoche) and an Englishman in Tuscany and their impossible relationship. "Multilayered" is a word that is used often in internet reviews of the film (that and "pretentious"). Multilayered like the layers of glistening tissue the surgeon would like to cut through to get to the possible nexus of Parks's pain. Perhaps the Italian ex-mistress in Europa could be played by Binoche. Europa tells the story of a group of university teachers who travel to Brussels to deliver a petition — the background story was told to me by one of the real-life protagonists long before the book appeared: a Scot who wore a linen jacket rather like that worn by the erudite Englishman in Copie Conforme, and by Tim Parks on the inside cover of this book. See, more connections .... to me.

And even when there is no real connection between my own experience and that of Parks, I like to think that there might be one.His problem is pelvic pain, probably the result of long periods of sitting. I sit for long periods in front of a computer too, so surely I too will develop pelvic pain. For the moment, however, it seems that the site of my own incipient dis-ease is my neck where I am sure can feel the tension dissolve as I shadow the relaxation exercises described in the book. Similarly, I can only relate to Parks's discovery of meditaton through my own experience of Xi Gong classes. Every Friday evening I sit in a dojo with around thirty other people and feel superior to them even as we execute the same movements. I am better than them because only I am canny enough to take the benefit of the soothing physical experience while filtering out the ridiculous pseudo-Oriental mumbo jumbo. The difference is that Parks learned to stop the derisive internal monologue and gained relief from shutting it up.

The key is clearly to be absorbed in something that is not oneself, something that is not words, in nothingness even. Be still my self-centred attention-seeking mind!

How to write about Bordeaux

2011-01-17T16:43:00.002+01:00

...or old wine in a new bottle.

The past few years have seen a slew of articles in the travel sections of newspapers describing the "renaissance" of the city of Bordeaux. Since their offerings all seem to come out sounding more than a little formulaic in any case, I'd like to save future visiting journalists the trouble of actually leaving their hotel rooms before dusk, by providing this short guide to writing an article about Bordeaux.

1. Think of as many wine puns as possible and attempt to include them all — there should be at least one in your title. Here are a few that have already been used : "Bordeaux uncorks itself", "a richer Bordeaux", "Tasting Notes", "Bordeaux is smooth and elegant", "an intoxicating mix".

2. Get in at least one mention of Bordeaux's moniker la belle endormie. Then suggest that the city has now been awoken.

3. Exaggerate the rags to riches angle out of all proportion. Persuade some "anonymous residents" to describe a nightmarish past with phrases such as "I remember [when] ... nobody would go out after dark. We all stayed among ourselves. But now ...." or "Not long ago, such public joie de vivre would have been unthinkable here." Don't raise the possibility that this might be utter bollocks.

4. You don't have to go looking for any hidden signs of urban renewal - just use the tram system as a symbol of the new Bordeaux. Say it's clean, sleek, and modern. If you like you can even add some spurious comment about it being a great social leveller.

5. Suggested adjectives for the Bordeaux of old: seedy, dowdy, staid, grimy, lifeless, bland. Suggested adjectives for new improved Bordeaux: stellar, futuristic, upscale, sparkling, elegant, transformed.

6. Refer liberally to "les Bordelais" but only really mean the richest 2% who come from old wine money.

7. Portray the mayor of Bordeaux as a man with a driving vision. Do not under any circumstances mention his political purgatory or the fact that he was rewarded for his visionary town-planning by not being elected as the Bordeaux constituency MP.

8. Illustration: use a subtly symbolic image of young people frolicking in the miroir d'eau with the tram whizzing towards a promising future in the background.

9. Spend all of your travelling expenses on food and wine in Bordeaux's excellent restaurants and pad the rest of the article out with your tasting notes.

10. For variations on the theme see: The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Independent, The Guardian, le Courrier International (translated from the Sunday Times).

A Winter's Walk

2011-01-11T15:49:00.005+01:00

Last Sunday we went for a walk around a wetlands site not far south of Bordeaux called la Lagune du Gât Mort. After weeks of relative festive inactivity, it was lovely to stretch our legs on a brisk stroll round the site and expose our faces to some winter sun. Unfortunately there were no birds to be seen from the very handsome hides, but I amused myself by taking copious photographs of luminous silver birch bark, the patterns made by interesting twigs, assorted pine cones, and sundry sticks. Apparently the lagoon is a paradise for dragonflies so we must go back in the spring.

Books, books, books

2011-01-09T12:18:00.001+01:00

This is what I read this year. I suspect that the list is a little bit shorter than last year: that's what happens when you take your Macbook to bed on a regular basis..

A Quiet Belief in Angels, R.J. Ellory. I'm reading this at the moment. The writing is generally good, but I think that there's something slightly disturbing, perhaps even obscene, about making the deaths of little girls into something interesting enought to hold a reader's attention for a whole novel.

La carte et le territoire, Michel Houellebecq
My first Houllebecq and I was expecting something a bit more provocative. As someone says on p. 142: "Je m'attendais en vous rencontrant à quelque chose... enfin, disons, de plus difficile."

Noah's Compass, Anne Tyler
Not her best but still very readable. The main character is a man cheerful in the face of disappointment.

The Romantic Poets and Their Circle, Richard Holmes
Good for one page character sketches. What a dysfunctional lot they were.

Little Bird of Heaven, Joyce Carol Oates
Takes place in '80s America but there's a definite '50s feel about it.

Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon. This was a gift and I thought it would make better viewing than reading.

Outside in: Selected Prose, Alastair Reid
Inside Out: Selected Poetry and Translations Alastair Reid
I bought these two because I love Alastair Reid but unfortunately it turned out that I had read most of the contents already in other publications. Here's a wee taster of his poetry. This is originally a translation of a poem by the Mexican José Emilio Pachedo, but it's such a good rendering that it is Reid's voice one hears, and Scotland one imagines as the country.

I do not love my country. Its abstract lustre
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).

Walnut Wine and Truffle Groves: Culinary Adventures in the Dordogne , Kimberley Lovato. I was very pleased to get a copy of this book via This French Life. Beautifully illustrated with photographs of food, people and places in the Dordogne.

Doors Open, Ian Rankin. This was not an Edinburgh that I recognized

Queen Amang the Heather: The Life of Belle Stewart, Sheila Stewart. Fascinating peep into the lives of the tinkers — Scotland's travelling people — and their music. I really wished the book had come with a CD but there are online videos of Belle Stewart's singing.

The State of Me, Nasim Marie Jafry. I wrote about Nasim's book here. One of the best things I read this year.

Mother's Milk, Edward St Aubyn. A strange book in which the characters make strange decisions. Maybe I didn't get it because I didn't realise it was a sequel to a trilogy.

Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart - Tragedy in Many Acts, F.J. McLynn. I wrote about this book here.

Adultery and Other Diversions, Tim Parks. I love almost everything that Tim Parks writes (I must read the latest, Teach Us to Sit Still, this year) and this is a great book of essays.

This is How, M.J. Hyland. I might not have chosen to buy this had I not received it as an early review copy from LibraryThing. I enjoyed it, despite its bleakness. It's a bit like Albert Camus' The Outsider only set in contemporary GB.

Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby
Forgettable story of a man who adulates a reclusive rock star and his much cleverer wife.

Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Sharon Osbourne.
I'm not proud of having read this, not proud at all. It was in the bookcase in the villa we rented in Lanzarote and once I'd started reading it I just carried on in dreadful fascination. She really is a throughly unlikable person.

The Children's Book , A.S. Byatt
I haven't finished this yet. I lost interest about a third of the way through.

True Detectives, Jonathan Kellerman
Forgettable.

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
You've probably all read this too. I enjoyed it, but not enough I don't think to read the sequel when it comes out.

Kafka sur le Rivage , Haruki Murakami
I loved the beginning of this novel and immediately raved about it to friends. Unfortunately, at around the halfway mark it went all Japanese magickyrealismy.

Shutter Island , Dennis Lehane
Haven't seen the film, but the book is worth reading, especially if you're thick enough not to suspect the denouement - which I am.

The Piano Teacher , Janice Y. K. Lee. About life in Hong Kong for an expat wife during turbulent times.

J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan , Andrew Birkin. Fascinating biography of the wee man.

(To reduce the boredom quotient, I've taken out all of the works read for professsional purposes - mostly criticism and biographies of RLS)

So that was the reading year that was. I'd love to hear if you agree or disagree with me.

The Best of 2010

2011-01-02T21:48:00.005+01:00

I quite enjoy the self-imposed task of looking back through the year's photos and selecting the best. It gives me a chance to remember just how many good times were had and reminds me that, not all that long ago, there was sun and warmth and so it will be again. This year we have a couple of photos from Lanzarote which I half thought was going to be a tourist hellhole but turned out to be weirdly volcanic and bleak and wonderful. There's a door in Eauze taken during a very wet Easter weekend in the Gers, and a lovely evening sky from a week in Moliets in the Landes. In the second row there are a couple of photos taken during weekend trips with family and friends - one for a niece's confirmationthingy. I took the new Ryanair flight from Bordeaux to Edinburgh three times during the summer and there's a picture of Z looking out the window somehere over the Charente I think. The double rainbow was taken by P. up a hill by Lochmaben. Then there are three or four photographs taken during a coolish August holiday in the Dordogne. It was much sunnier when we went back to Sarlat for the last week of the summer holiday and spent a lovely day in Corrèze. The children had good times on the beach in Le Moulleau and Sanguinet. The last row shows a view of the quadrangle at the fac during a conference I helped to organise in September. Then there's a street in Alicante. We took a quick break on the Costa Blanca during the Toussaint holiday — I forgot to tell you about that. Then there's our lopsided Christmas tree - this was our first Christmas in France for five years. We round things off with a big bit of sky taken on Boxing Day in Mayac. Yes, all in all it was a busy year full of memorable images.

This year I'm going to try to do the 365 photo-a-day thing and I'll put them on my Flickr photostream. So if you're not already a Flickr contact, roll up, roll up).

(Unfortunately the online photo mosaic maker I use has decapitated the confirmation girl and debottomated the final big sky photo. I'm not sure why. If you could suggest anything more reliable, I would be very grateful.)

Here's to 2011

2011-01-02T01:18:00.002+01:00

2010 was an excellent year for me - here's to 2011! I wish you all health, happiness and lots of fun.

Where does the time go?

2010-11-24T18:05:00.004+01:00

I mean really, where does time go as you get older? I seem to remember great swathes of free time — bored time — when I was youthful: long gaping holes in the day that were impossible to fill up. Time to lie around musing. Now, no sooner have I finished one task than the next looms large, demanding attention, strumming its fingers with impatience. Work, leisure, being a parent: they're all overwhelming in their appetites for time. Books lie unread, films come and go at the cinema unseen, desultory thoughts go unthought. Is the internet the time-aspirating culprit?

Getting round to it

2010-10-17T15:15:00.004+02:00

Belgianwaffle linked to this fascinating article on procrastination in The New Yorker. Despite my initial impulse to bookmark it for later, I managed to read the whole thing with only a few pauses to look at pages in other tabs; to get a cup of coffee; to check my e-mail; to update my facebook status; to make a move in Words .... I particularly identified with the paragraph below.

Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author’s own problems with finishing the piece. (This article will be no exception.) But the academic buzz around the subject isn’t just a case of eggheads rationalizing their slothfulness. As various scholars argue in “The Thief of Time,” edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White (Oxford; $65)—a collection of essays on procrastination, ranging from the resolutely theoretical to the surprisingly practical—the tendency raises fundamental philosophical and psychological issues. You may have thought, the last time you blew off work on a presentation to watch “How I Met Your Mother,” that you were just slacking. But from another angle you were actually engaging in a practice that illuminates the fluidity of human identity and the complicated relationship human beings have to time. Indeed, one essay, by the economist George Ainslie, a central figure in the study of procrastination, argues that dragging our heels is “as fundamental as the shape of time and could well be called the basic impulse.”

Dregs of Summer

2010-09-17T09:57:00.003+02:00

These were taken the weekend before last at our favourite beach on the lake at Sanguinet. It was still very very hot. The sort of hot that is uncomfortable and makes you sweatily grumpy. Since then, autumn, redolent of fresh starts, has crept into the morning air.

Putting my faffing around skills to work

2010-09-08T11:31:00.007+02:00

For the rest of this week I'll be mostly running around like a chicken with its head cut off at Eurocall 2010. I'm chairing sessions and organising all of the social networking for the conference via Twitter, Facebook and Flickr and a blog. So finally my endless hours of faffing around on the internet have become workplace skills. Result!

I'm also giving a paper on Saturday morning on the presentation software Prezi (aka the PowerPoint killer) so I'm in the middle — yes, I stupidly left this until the very last minute — of preparing that. It's a great tool - here's one I made in June for the RLS conference in Stirling.

Selfless: The Shifting Reputation of Alison Cunningham in Biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson. on Prezi

PIP

2010-08-29T00:14:00.001+02:00

Visited the PIP (Pole International de la Préhistoire) in Les Eyzies today. Extraordinary building - white and filled with light, great exhibits and a sunny terrace at the ecofriendly café.

Poolside

2010-08-26T16:35:00.001+02:00

It's a swelteringoony 38°C in the shade of this pine tree. Even the wind, although unusually strong, is hot.

So far this Summer

2010-08-18T10:12:00.003+02:00

The weather has oscillated between dreich and sweltering. Yesterday we spent a lovely sunny day at the Lac de Lacanau, today we've cancelled an outing to Le Moulleau because it's grey and raining. In fact weather-wise it's sometimes difficult to remember if we're in Scotland or in France.Stop Press: now it's hothothot again and we're beach-bound for the second day in a row.

Most singular experience in Scotland was a bluegrass concert in a church in Moffat with Craig Duncan and friends all the way from Nashville, Tennessee folks.

It was a good for wasps — I suppose I really mean a bad year — in both Scotland and France. In the Dordogne there was an influx of those nasty Asian hornets. They seemed quite partial to the quince jelly in my trap improvised from a butter dish.

In completely unrelated news, we spent an hour or two in Thiviers last week and P. reminded me that as a boy Jean-Paul Sartre spent his holidays there. This rang a distinct bell and I remembered reading (or perhaps being told in Mr Walker's "Politics and the Novel" class?) that J-P's favourite boyhood pastime while there was performing enemas on a little girl. Can this possibly be true? And why is this useless trivia taking up valuable brain-space when I can remember so little of the Sartre I've read?

Essendiéras

2010-08-12T20:52:00.000+02:00

E had a riding lesson here this morning.

Le Potager

2010-08-11T19:21:00.001+02:00

Lots of tomatoes this year.

In the Lake

2010-08-10T18:32:00.000+02:00

At Le Camping du Lac, Plazac.

Tourtoirac

2010-08-09T17:51:00.000+02:00

Visited the Grotte de Tourtoirac. Incredible stalagmites and stalactites. Took this before the guide said that photography was forbidden. Ooops.

Méchoui

2010-08-08T18:06:00.000+02:00

Down by the river for the village méchoui.

Périgueux

2010-08-07T16:28:00.001+02:00

Last day of Mimos, the festival of mime and street theatre.

Au supermarché

2010-08-06T18:27:00.001+02:00

The Carrefour Market in Saint-Martial-d'Alabarède has a special section for British tourists. They seem to hanker after Coleman's mustard, mushy peas, and Vegemite.

Skimming stones

2010-08-05T18:23:00.000+02:00

On the river Isle at Les Chambrettes.

A Rainy Day

2010-08-04T19:03:00.000+02:00

Visited Saint-Robert in the neighbouring département of Correze. A very pretty village, even in the rain.

By the walnut tree

2010-08-03T17:33:00.001+02:00

This is the walnut tree that we look on to from the terrace of the house. The walnuts are still green. Yesterday I received a book that I won on the This French Life site, it's all about truffles and walnuts and the cuisine of the Dordogne in general. It's at the top of the LibraryThing list in the sidebar.
Gotta go, MsMac has just texted to say she's only five minutes away!

En route for the Dordogne

2010-08-02T19:08:00.001+02:00

It's a lovely sunny day and having arrived back in Bordeaux last night after our Scottish holidays, we're now on our way to the Dordogne If this works and I can blog via email from my phone, then I may treat you to a photo a day in August. But don't hold your breath.

The State of Me

2010-07-30T15:03:00.007+02:00

In a very lopsided book swap, I ended up with a lovely new copy of Nasim Marie Jafry's The State of Me, and she got and old yellowed copy of Le Scaphandre et le Papillon.

I've been reading Nasim's blog for a while now, but I hadn't got round to reading her book. The State of Me tells the story of Helen Fleet, a young Scottish woman (like me!) who studies French at university (like me!) in the early eighties (like me!). Helen comes to France to do her year abroad (like me!) and develops ME (like Nasim herself).

You may (like me) be afraid of reading illness narratives because you suspect you are going to embark on an unhappy medical self-pity fest. Have no fear, there is no self-pity in The State of Me but there is lots of humour and lots of acute observation. Nasim writes in spare, measured sentences. The effort is contained and elegant as if the author had to calculate each word, the length of each paragraph before attempting it. The admirable style is underpinned by an indominitable sense of humour and an unfailing eye for the ridiculous. I smiled a lot, both at the wittiness and at the recognition of idiosyncratic places and practices in 80s Scotland. And there is romance too.

I obviously learned a lot about the illness ME, because although not exactly a non-believer, I simply didn't understand how debilitating it is or how much more complicated it is than simple chronic fatigue. The dialogues with the ignorant stranger were enlightening and perhaps they'll help me to be more sensitive and avoid trite comments next time I speak to someone with ME.

I write like ..

2010-07-18T00:24:00.001+02:00

All you have to do is paste in a blog post and hey presto. I'm sure I don't write like DFL - not enough footnotes for a start.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Hot and Haunting

2010-07-03T18:57:00.005+02:00

Last Tuesday I got to tick an item off my "things to do before I die" list. I saw Bob Dylan in concert.

I was exceptionally excited but there were several considerations dampening my enthusisam. First the heatwave: it was absolutely boiling hot outside and a bit like a steamy pit of writhing animals inside the Patinoire de Mérideck, especially in the standing area where we were. (Aside - remember that post about Charles Edward Stuart's daughter's lover the Archbishop of Bordeaux? Well, one of his names was Mériadeck). Then there was the fact that Z was still running a high temperature and that I'd had to take him to see the doctor at the end of the afternoon - but luckily we had enlisted the services of a responsible adult babysitter (in other words, one of our televisionless friends was interested in coming round to our house to watch a match). Finally, there was the fact that Bob Dylan's recent concerts haven't really had a great press. He is accused of perfunctory performances and a lack of engagement with his audience.
I needn't have feared - it was everything I had hoped for. It was loud and raw; a reminder of the power of his lyrics (although the acoustics at the Patinoire are appalling), and a chance to commune (honestly, it was a quasi-spiritual experience) with the voice. That voice. And all of its associations.

If you're a Dylan fan, you might be interested in the set list. My favourites were Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat, Just Like a Woman and Like a Rolling Stone.

Who do you want to see in concert before you (or they) die?

Catch up

2010-07-01T23:00:00.000+02:00

So it turns out that I'm not even very good at regular drivel. But I've actually been quite busy doing stuff n'at since the last time I drivelled here.

First I spent a day at arc en reve, Bordeaux's architecture centre, for an exhibition and a lecture by Bjark Ingals of BIG. Interesting.

Then there was E's eighth birthday. Eight's a good age, I think. She had her ears pierced. A couple of days before we had this done, that is after I had already promised that yes, now she was old enough to have holes in her ears, my friend Deborah told me that she thought it was a terrible thing to do. A bit like giving her a tattoo. What is the general feeling on this?

I wrote a paper and then went off to present it at a conference in Glasgow. I took that new direct Ryanair flight from Bordeaux to Edinburgh. It was on time but, my God, what a horrendous experience the new low-cost terminal at Bordeaux is. They've called it Billi. Basically it's an enormous cattle shed - a massive metal structure with no internal cladding and no air-conditioning when I was there. Passengers are basically herded into pens then left to stand for long periods. There were exactly three seats in our pen and you're probaby only allowed to use them if you've booked priority boarding and ten bags.

I stayed with friends in the West End. They like to eat out and we had some excellent meals. We had a great tapas style Indian meal at Mother India's Café on the Thursday evening - I love tapas and I love Indian food so this was doubly delicious especially the garlic mushroom pakora. On Saturday my Mum joined us for lunch at Fratelli Sarti - a Glasgow institution. And for lunch on Sunday we went to Chinatown for a mountain of dim sum. We were practically the only non-Chinese-looking people in a very busy restaurant - although when I tuned into the conversation at the neighbouring tables, the accents were mostly very Glaswegian with some Australian.

The weather was lovely in Scotland. Much more civilized than the 35°C we had here today.

Charlotte Stuart

2010-06-13T21:22:00.005+02:00

I've been reading Frank McLynn's biography of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and discovered the story of his daughter, Charlotte, which I hadn't ever come across before.

Charlotte (1753-1789) was the illegitimate daughter of Charles and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. However the Jacobite prince battered Clementina and she left him taking her seven-year-old daughter with her. Because of her illegitimate status, Charlotte spent a good part of her life in various convents unable to marry and estranged from her father. He didn't recognize her until 1784 by which time he was an sick old alcoholic. She nursed him tenderly until he died.

A couple of years later she died too. She had never married.

However — and this is the interesting bit — Charlotte had a secret which she managed to keep from everyone including her father. She had had a relationship with the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Ferdinand Maximilien Mériadec de Rohan, and borne him three children - the third having been born just a few days before she rushed to Italy to be by her father's side. The children were brought up in secrecy by her mother mostly in Switzerland. The secret wasn't discovered by historians until, get this, the 1950s.

Baguettes to Bordeaux?

2010-06-10T21:49:00.003+02:00

There was a bit of a discussion going on on Twitter yesterday sparked by this article in the Guardian which claims that increasing numbers of Britons living in France are having all of their grocery shopping, including wine and baguettes, sent over from in vans from Asda. Then l'Anglais à Paris reacted to the article with a blog post entitled: "Why the hell did you move to France in the first place then?"

You'd think I'd have learned by now not to read the comments on any piece of writing on the internet that is even vaguely polemical: no good can ever come of it. But I did. I had to stop, however, when I reached the comment that argued that many people had come to live in France because they felt their national heritage was being drowned under Polish and halal goods in British supermarkets. The whole thing was just getting too strange.

I do still bring stuff back from Scotland but less than I used to — paracetamol and vitamins are cheaper; Heinz beans are just better; and the children used to love Ribena — and I have occasionally ordered household items from British companies over the internet. I also used to take French things back to Scotland, but my Mum says not to bother anymore because she can get a perfectly good piece of camembert in Tesco thank you very much. However, I wouldn't ever think of doing a virtual weekly shop in Asda. I mean why would I? To save a few euros? And who would I complain to when the wine shop, the chocolate shop, the boulangerie in my quartier closed down due to my withdrawing my custom? Je n'aurai que mes yeux pour pleurer.

And if you haven't had enough reading for one day, here's another bit from the Guardian on the evils of Tesco.

Rocking and Rolling

2010-06-06T22:41:00.004+02:00

Summer started for the third or fourth time this year on Friday, with temperatures shooting up into the thirties only to tumble back down to barely twenty this afternoon.

Anyway, the weekend kicked off well when I met up with the lovely Anne from Papilles & Pupilles for lunch in the sun on the Place des Chartrons. It was nice to finally get to chat with someone whose blog I've been reading for years. Anne's is one of the most widely read blogs in France and if you're ever looking for a recipe in French, the chances are that you'll end up on one of her delicious pages.

The rest of the weekend was all about Z. He's been having electric guitar lessons since the beginning of the year, and the time had now come for the end-of-year concert which was even bigger than usual because the school was celebrating its 25th anniversary. This had meant three consecutive evenings of rehearsals until much later than he's usually allowed to stay up on a school night. Saturday night was the big night.

But before that, there was Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon which were to be spent at La Fête du Rugby: fun and games and a tournament with all of the other rugby teams from the départment. It is a source of perpetual amazement to me that in France they often cancel rugby practice because it's raining yet, on days like yesterday, maintain fixtures in temperatures of 32°C!

Unfortunately Z was carried off the pitch after a badly executed tackle and arrived home on his father's arm still a bit woozy with a bloody nose, a mangled lip and a swollen cheek. Every mother's dream.

By mid-evening when he went off to the concert he was feeling better though. And I think you'll agree (if you can make him out in the front row of the guitarists in the video below) that he definitely has the makings of a rock and roll star.

Drivelling

2010-06-03T18:00:00.005+02:00

On the principle that the more you eat, the more you want to eat and that the more you have sex — actually that one may only work under a certain age — I have decided to force myself to write here a little more regularly and see what happens. It might be just a few lines of drivel, or even just a photo with a brief description, but at least I will be writing. Right? Righting. Write?
So what's been happening since I last wrote in April (yikes!)? Classes have slowly wound down and we're now into exam marking and boards and things but any spare time has been more than filled up with meetings and a big new research project.
We spent a great weekend in the Dordogne for P's niece's First Communion, although to be honest I wriggled out of the actual ceremony. The family own a lovely campsite in Plazac near Montignac, so we were able to spend the whole weekend together consuming massive amounts of Périgordian specialities. The children guddled in the lake. It was the only sunny weekend we have had for ages. The weather has quite frankly been unrelenting cloudiness for much of the last two months — so much for la dolce vita in South-West France.

Moliets again

2010-04-27T21:36:00.005+02:00

Since I started this blog, I think we've been to Moliets on the Atlantic coast three or four times. It's a great seaside resort, perfect for a quick getaway with kilometres and kilometres of pristine sandy beaches, pine forests criss-crossed with walking and cycling paths, a few laid-back bars and restaurants, and a golf course, le Courant d'Huchet and even cypress knees. Oh, and villas with pools available for a tiny fraction of the extortionate high-season rate if you can go in springtime.
Actually the only thing we wanted but didn't get was perfect weather all the time, it was only hot and sunny about half the time, which isn't really so bad.

Water

2010-04-06T17:46:00.003+02:00

So we went off to the Gers for the weekend with my Mum and it rained and rained and rained. And then I found a dead mouse in amongst the pots and pans, and so we came home.

In other watery news, it was nice to see my blog reviewed by Keith on A Taste of Garlic, although I was a little dismayed to have confirmation that that iPhone in the toilet story is never going to die. A friend recently told me he thinks of me every time he goes to the toilet, and grips his own iPhone a little tighter on those occasions. And Keith, IT WAS JUST YELLOW WATER, honest!

Little Boxes

2010-03-22T13:19:00.006+01:00

Last week I accompanied Z's class on a school trip to the Cité Frugès in Pessac.

This housing development was designed by Le Corbusier and built in 1926. It was a visionary project for the era - individual modern housing for the workers from the local steelworks, and it is hard to believe that such a contemporary look was possible over eighty years ago. It seems, however, that the first inhabitants were far from overwhelemed by the look and practicality of their new homes. The houses were among the first to be made of concrete, a cold material in comparison to the local honey-coloured stone. They all had garages on the ground floor although almost none of the occupants actually had cars; the interiors are full of straight lines and cubic spaces which probably drove the housewives mad in a period during which fussy wallpaper, carpets and copious knick-knacks were the norm. Perhaps they were mollified by the indoor toilets and the central heating.

Unsurprisingly, the people who live in the houses have added their own touches here and there often kitch-ing away Le Corbusier's original pure lines.

Nature Writing

2010-03-15T09:04:00.006+01:00

I wanted to tell you a little bit more about that amazing sea of lava in Lanzarote - the tumultuous impression of jaggedness you experience as you survey its massive extent; that chaos of lava rocks straining towards the sea. I would have added something more perhaps about the variety of colours highlighted on the volcanoes' flanks, as cloud shadows scudded/glided/slid/oozed over their surfaces. But it just won't do.
I read a piece by Andrew Greig in the Scottish Review of Books last weekend in which he observes that : "In the attempt to get across the immediacy and power of one’s experience, Nature Writing too often leads to this over-emphatic, over-adjectival, overly figurative striving." He's right.

Lanzarote

2010-03-10T15:26:00.006+01:00

This time last week we were enjoying summer temperatures in Lanzarote. On our return, it was quite a shock to discover that Bordeaux is still plunged in the chilly depth of an inhabitually bleak winter.

Several people had warned us that Lanzarote is a volcanic island meaning that the landscape is grey and arid while I associated the word Lanzarote with the worst of shudder-inducing British tourism. There was none of that and we loved it. The hues of the volcanic landscape actually range from a dull black through fruity purple to burning ochre. The volcano-sides are dotted with semi-circular hollows dug out to protect the vines planted deep in the dark ashes. Perhaps there are some horrible tourist holes but we didn't see any: Lanzarote was lucky enough to be home to an artist names César Manrique and he did much to protect the coastline and limit development to low-rise villages of white casas.

Fully intending to do some hiking while we were there, we had squashed our walking boots into our suitcases, but didn't get as far as actually putting them on. I think that if we'd had two weeks, we would have got round to it, but we only had one and there were so many other interesting things to do and see, and of course eat. So we spent the days visiting the cactus garden, the Mirador del Rio, the Manrique cultural centre, and Timanfaya national park where we ate meat barbecued with the natural heat of a volcano.

It is taking me ages to cull, organise and upload all of our photographs. Here's a selection — the rest will be here.

Like a cat

2010-02-16T09:10:00.003+01:00

I feel like a cat in one of those cruel sixties experiments you learn about in Psychology. You know, the cat that was placed on a tiny platform in the middle of a swimming pool and every time it went into a deep sleep its muscles relaxed and it fell into the pool.

For the past two nights, it feels as if every time I have entered that sleep phase, I have been awoken by a little voice shouting "I've been sick!" or "I'm going to be sick!", and last night, "I feel awful", "I've had a terrible, sob, nightmare" and then at 2.30 a.m. "Mummy, can you rub my brow?".

The cat was completely crazy by the end of the experiment.

Random thoughts on lecturing

2010-02-03T09:46:00.004+01:00

A lecture theatre filled with a three or four hundred students is a scary thing to look up at from the podium.
A good PowerPoint presentation can look awesome on a gigantic screen. Unfortunately, tiny mistakes look correspondingly gigantic.
Next time, I'm using Prezi.
You cannot over-prepare and it's not a good idea to leave the "finishing touches" until an hour before the lecture because you'll have gone all skittery by that point.
Talking non-stop alone for an hour-and-a-half is actually very difficult. Who knew?
Today's students are really well equipped and seem to constantly be taking photographs of the slides (or maybe they just liked my outfit?)
They also record every single word you say and transcribe them later for distribution to class members who weren't present. Unfortunately, they even transcribe the feeble jokes.
You've got to be bit of a show-off to get any pleasure from this particular exercise in performance.
Although I have no plans to take up a stage career any time soon, I could get used to that warm feeling when they clap at the end, and the natural high that comes with the knowledge that it's all over and I managed not to trip and fall on my face or do the whole thing with my skirt tucked into my pants.

Fun and Games at the Opera

2010-01-29T09:24:00.008+01:00

This could have been a nice cosy post about how much Z and I enjoyed the Opéra de Bordeaux's unusual production of the Magic Flute last night. It takes place in a ski resort with lots of kitchy decor and sixties style hairdos and anoraks. Great fun.

However, Z was going with a group from his music school and I had to make him a picnic dinner to eat on the bus. While I was sticking the ham in his sandwich, with only twenty minutes to go before we had to leave, I got a phone call to say that there was an extra ticket and would I like to go? Yes!

P. works late on a Thursday though, so I would have to ask our friendly young neighbors if they would look after E until he got home. "I'm just going to run next door and ask them" I said to the children. They followed me out and Z pulled the door behind him and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggh locked us all outside.

And that is how Z's first visit to the opera involved some muted shouting, a borrowed car, no dinner, no coats, and no money.

But lots of fake snow.

At the park

2010-01-05T14:05:00.007+01:00

We have taken the children to the park to run off all of that pent up energy. Our local post office is situated in the middle of the park.

An elderly woman — old but not that old — studies the notice on the door. She is well dressed but her face wears a fixed miserable expression. She asks me if I can tell her how to get to the main post office — this one is closed. I tell her that it's closed because it's the first of January and that the other one will be closed too.

"Ah, c'est le premier janvier?" she repeats, surprised. "Bonne année".

She doesn't live far from here. It's just that she needs some money - will the other post office be open tomorrow? I say yes and explain in great detail how to get there - it's not difficult. She looks at me in an anguished, vacant way. Could I possibly go with her? Well, no not really. Could I write the directions down?

She fumbles in her near-empty handbag and finds a pen. I find a piece of paper and write the instructions down. She re-reads them several times and at the bottom of the page she adds that the objective is to go to the post office to get some money. She seems to know that she will have forgotten that part by tomorrow. She frowns, says again how lost she feels and explains that she hasn't had this maladie for long so she is still getting used to it.

She squeezes my arm. "Merci de votre gentillesse" she says. Somehow, I don't feel at all kind.

2o1o

2010-01-02T17:59:00.003+01:00

Happy New Year! The end of the holidays is approching and this tree is coming down tomorrow.

It's been an eventful two weeks. First there was the Eurostar fiasco which we got round by forking out cash for air tickets. Then a snowy Christmas in Scotland. 15 hours of train journey on the way back - almost compromised by a points failure at the very beginning. Then P's family descended on us for a festival of eating and drinking over New Year. I'm really looking forward to 2010 and I hope you are too!

2009 in Books #3

2009-12-12T15:47:00.006+01:00

In this third and final instalment, I was going to list the books that I had aquired for work purposes this year. However, I found that I had nothing to say about them that I hadn't already done to death elsewhere. I'll just mention this one because Chapter Five, c'est moi: European Stevenson Richard Ambrosini & Richard Dury (eds), 2009

2009 in Books #2

2009-12-12T15:45:00.002+01:00

Non-fiction. The theme this year seems to have been expatriates.

Greene on Capri: A Memoir, by Shirley Hazzard
The past really was a different world for some people: this memoir chronicles the Hazzard's friendship with Graeme Greene during prolonged residences in pre-tourist Capri.

The Smell of the Continent: The British Discover Europe, Richard Mullen & James Munson
I haven't finished this one yet.

The Scottish World: A Journey Into the Scottish Diaspora, Billy Kay, 2009
Scots are everywhere.

And the Judges Said...: Essays, James Kelman, 2008
Mostly political. Kelman is definitely not an expat.

The Secret Life of France, Lucy Wadham, 2009
I really meant to blog about this book when I first read it. On one hand, it was a great relief to read a book by a Brit on France that went further than the usual "aren't the tradesmen slow, aren't the locals colourful?" tropes. On the other hand, there was a lot to disagree with, especially the remarks on French sexual politics. Stimulating and intelligent nonetheless.

The Year Of No Money In Tokyo Wayne Lionel Aponte 2009
I blogged about this book here.

Shakespeare: The World as a Stage (Eminent Lives) Bill Bryson 2008
I like Bryson.

Lettre à D : Histoire d'un amour André Gorz 2009
This was an impulse buy in a bookshop. André Gorz was a French philosopher and his wife was originally from England. This is the story of their lifelong romance. They committed suicide together when she became ill.

A Castle in Spain, Matthew Parris, 2006
I can't remember how this book came into my possession. I don't think I would have chosen to spend money on a book by a Conservative MP. It's actually a wonderful account of his buying an ancient house in Spain (not far from where his parents and siblings had lived for many years) and painstakingly renovating it.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating Barbara Kingsolver 2008
Blogged here.

2009 in Books

2009-12-09T23:17:00.000+01:00

This year I'm splitting my reading list up into three parts to get maximum blog mileage out of it. Today, I give you fiction

The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale, Robert Louis Stevenson

I'm reading this at the moment in preparation for a conference on Jacobitism. I know absolutely nothing about Jacobitism.

The Secret Mandarin, Sara Sheridan, 2009

I skim read this book. I didn't feel it deserved more.

The Help, Kathryn Stockett, 2009

A great novel about the humiliations endured and victories won by black servants in the American south.

Temptation Douglas Kennedy, 2007

One of his less interesting novels. The characters all needed a good slap.

The Careful Use of Compliments (Sunday Philosophy Club), Alexander McCall Smith, 2008

I really don't like McCall Smith any more. He's more smug and less avuncular now, I feel.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer, 2009

Excellent story of a book club in the Channel Islands during WWII

When Will There be Good News? Kate Atkinson, 2009

Ms Mac sent me this one and I enjoyed it just as much as the last two. About lives that fit into and around each other. Read Ms Mac's take on it here.

Electric Brae: A Modern Romance Andrew Greig, 1998

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get round to reading this. About the sometimes tortured relationships of a young man in Scotland.

Deaf Sentence, David Lodge, 2009

Funny, but also acutely observant (what is the auditory equivalent of observant?) and recognizable if you are — or if you interact with anyone who is —hard of hearing.

The Red Book, Delahunt, Meaghan, 2009

Excellent - somehow manages to knit together Bhopal and Cowdenbeath. Chapters begin with a description of a photograph - a flagging but effective device.

Dreams of Rivers and Seas Tim Parks, 2009

One of my favourite novelists Tim Parks. I'm always surprised by how completely different each of his books is.

The Neon Rain, James Lee Burke, 2000

Read this during the summer holiday, and that's all I can remember about it.

The Black Album, Hanif Kureishi, 2003

I've enjoyed all of Kureishi's writing until now, but I gave up on this one early on.

The Man Who Walks, Alan Warner, 2007

Best novel I read this year. Takes place in Highland Scotland. A modern version of Kidnapped in parts.

Bruno, Chief of Police, Martin Walker, 2009

Bruno is a policeman in the Dordogne and he likes rugby. Not bad. That's about it.

The Rain Before it Falls, Jonathan Coe, 2008

This one also uses the photograph device. Enjoyable.

A Million Little Pieces, James Frey, 2004

You may remember the controversy that surrounded this book when it was revealed that it wasn't actually a memoir but mostly fiction. I thought the writing was good anyway.

We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates, 1996

A family saga set in a time before sexual liberation for which the main character pays the price. Thoroughly enjoyable.

The Gathering, Anne Enright, 2007

I thought I might not like this because I don't always agree with Enright's non-fiction writing. But I found it exquisite, in all senses of the word.

A Most Wanted Man John le Carré, 2008

Le Carré, dependable as ever.

Rounding the Mark, Andrea Camilleri, 2008

My annual fix of Montalbano intrigue and descriptions of Sicilian cooking

Channelling

2009-12-09T19:13:00.006+01:00

According to a survey carried out by The Baby Website, today's mothers use the same old expressions their parents used over and over again. This is true. I have recently caught myself saying:

If you don't stop that immediately I'll knock your two heads together.
In the name of the wee man!
Were you born in a field?
Do you think those clothes wash and iron themselves?
I'll give you your head in your hands to play with.
Oh, oh. here comes trouble.

We are decidedly not the people our parents warned us against.

[I'm surprised by how aggressive some of these expressions sound when written down. I do say loving things to them too on occasion]

Physionomiste..... not

2009-12-03T23:27:00.005+01:00

Tonight I was at a film festival interpreting for a Swedish director. The festival is called Cinema Sciences and the film was about heroin addiciton - I liked it. The "heroine" reminded me of the woman in Man Ray's Solarisation.

After the screening (see, I revised some film buff vocabulary), a man approached the director and started up a conversation. I immediately recognized him as a professor from the university. Then, it became clear that he knew a lot about film-making so I rapidly revised my first impression. It dawned on me that he must be the director of Amélie Poulain whose name I couldn't remember (Jean Pierre Jeunet). It's a good job I didn't make some smart-arse comment about Amélie because it turned out that he was actually Jean-Jacques Beneix, the director of Diva and La Lune dans le Caniveau and my favourite film 37°2 le Matin / Betty Blue.

As I was leaving, I shook his hand and told him how much I liked Betty Blue. I don't think he believed me - but look it's true, I wrote it on my blog.

Rainy Sunday afternoon

2009-11-29T20:38:00.003+01:00

It seems to have rained every single Sunday for months now. Today, we decided to go to the Christmas market on the Allées de Tourny. Christmas markets are crap, especially when they make your shoes muddy. So we did a quick detour into a big toy store, then back down to the quayside via the Foire d'Automne and its antique stalls, before walking over the bridge that Tadashi Kawamata designed for Evento, an arts festival in Bordeaux. It's made from windfall maritime pine. The authorities don't seem to be able to bring themselves to have it dismantled.

(All photos taken with my iPhone)

Vacuous

2009-11-29T11:41:00.002+01:00

It used to be that if I had a seed of a thought, I'd take some time and work it up into a couple of paragraphs to blog. Now I just pare it down to the bare minimum and burp it out in a tweet. The words I've tweeted most over the past two years are apparently: time, Bordeaux and kids. I'm not proud of that. Oh no.

cloud - lesley graham | tweet cloud via kwout

Climbing Everest. In a day. With no coat on.

2009-11-20T09:11:00.002+01:00

I, in turn, have interviewed Leadia from Breeder's Digest. Her answers really made me laugh.

1. You have five children (I bow down to you!), and I have a friend who is expecting her fifth child. What advice would you give her about organising a large family?

Um….good luck??? LOL! Honestly, I don’t know that I’m the best person to give advice since I muddle through life searching for the answer to this question myself. But here goes. You either have to be anal or indifferent. There is no in between – seriously. You have to fully commit to being one or the other. There are tons of domestic goddesses out there who run their families like a Fortune 50 company, but I’m not one of them. I’ve tried out myriad scheduling/organizing/planning methods but ultimately I still get caught with my pants down…. it’s 4:30 and you have no idea what’s for dinner and you have 2 kids to get to soccer practices on 2 different sides of town and ultimately that’s when you get that humiliating phone call where the secretary from your child’s elementary school is calling to tell you that the Girl Scout meeting ended 30 minutes ago and where the hell are you? Indifference allows for more success because if you’re always on time and put-together, the one time you are late and disorganized it’s devastating. When you routinely miss deadlines, forget appointments and are constantly driving forgotten lunches/sports equipment/homework to their rightful owners, the one time that you show up on time or with your shit together it’s like you climbed Everest. In less than a day. With no coat on. For real. It’s that amazing.

2. You live in the American Midwest. What would you say are the advantages and disadvantages of living in that part of the USA?

Well, the Midwest is great if you like flat land, crooked politics, mediocrity, and fattening foods. Seriously, it’s quite possible that I live in the most generic area of the universe. Around these parts “Olive Garden” is considered an ethnic restaurant. Illinois, in particular, is famous for its cruel lack of seasons. We have only two: insanely hot and freaking cold. Winter lasts 17 months on average.

On the up side, the Midwest is home to some of the most genuine and incredibly friendly people you’ll ever meet. I live less than an hour outside Chicago and it truly is the best city in the world. Oh, and since we are less than 30 minutes from the Wisconsin border we are also less than 30 minutes from the largest concentration of indoor water parks in the world, which if you have five kids, is kind of a bonus. And OPRAH! How I could I forget Oprah? If you live in Illinois and don’t mention her you get kicked out of the state. Immediately.

2. In the midst of all of this child-rearing, you somehow manage to find time to study too. I wonder how you do that, and what you see yourself doing in, let's say, five years' time. Will you be a full-time mother or a full-time mother with a job?

((SIGH)) good question. To be honest, I don’t sleep very much. The baby is up by 6:00 a.m. and it’s 9:00 p.m. by the time the older ones go to bed so the hours between 9:30 and 1:00 a.m. are my personal “office hours” if you will. I am totally Type A and I have a need to do everything well all at once which leads to a lot of anxiety and multiple refills on a Zoloft prescription. I always feel like I’m doing 90 things 30% well when I’d rather do one or two things 90% well so I’m trying to streamline. I still can’t decide what I want to be when I grow up. In 5 years, who knows? I might be training to be a vet. The one thing I do try to do is carve out time for me. I adore my family, but it’s so important for them to see that I have an identity that is separate from them and that I have my own interests too. Thankfully my husband is a very patient man.

4. You are a very funny woman - who are your comedy heroes?

Thank you! I tend to love anyone who is witty rather than hilarious and who has a bit of intellect behind their comedy. I also appreciate people whose wit is a little offbeat. And sarcasm -- I adore sarcasm. I love Larry David and most of the cast of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. Same for Christopher Guest and his regular cast of improv players – especially Jane Lynch who is brilliant on “Glee”. My husband and I recently watched Wanda Sykes’ comedy special on HBO and I seriously wet my pants. We were both gasping for air. I worked in a comedy club in college as a cocktail waitress and I gave terrible service because I was way too invested in watching the talent! My mother is also accidentally hilarious which I also think is one of the best kinds of funny.

5. You husband manages to get some me-time when he goes off on hunting trips. If you could take a trip too, where would you go, what would you do and who would you go with?

Oh, those hunting trips! How I wish I’d married a stamp collector!

I fantasize about all kinds of vacation scenarios but honestly, it’s hard to get a group of girlfriends together because there’s the husband/children/babysitting matrix to complete and ultimately stars never align. I love to read and that’s a passion that’s had to take a heavy hit thanks to the kids. I’m pretty much reduced to skimming the pages of US Weekly when I’m on the toilet. So…my idea of heaven would be a quiet hotel room, no traveling companions, a stack of good books and absolutely no schedule at all.

6. Tell me one quirky fact about each of your five children.

Oooh, good question. Let me think.

Well of course they are all fabulously cultured, brilliant and attractive!

My oldest, Hayden was nearly 10 lbs. at birth but you’d never know by looking at him now. He subsists on a diet of cold cereal, Hot Cheetos, mac & cheese, and hot dogs. It’s a miracle he’s alive at all. We hope he’ll be back up to his birth-weight by puberty ;)

Weston is my 2nd son. He was such a sweet baby that I nicknamed him my “muffin top”. He’s a massively intense kid now, but the name stuck so now he goes by “Topper” . Weston’s real name resulted from a stalemate between my husband and I over 2 different names. I happened to have read in “People” the week before that Nicholas Cage had a son named Weston and it kind of stuck with me and we went with it as the tiebreaker. So even though I think Nic Cage is kind of a tool, he had a part in naming my son.

My eldest daughter, Eliza talks more than anyone I know. She even talks in her sleep. She also lives in a state of constant bliss. In her world, everyone rides a unicorn, has candy for dinner, and enjoys affordable universal healthcare. We envy her.

When I was pregnant with my youngest son Kellan, I got hit with a massive case of pre-partum depression. It landed me a stint in a 12-week outpatient mental health facility. That kid is the happiest, most content child in the universe. I’m convinced it was all the Zoloft.

My baby girl, Larissa is a miracle. Her odds of surviving to birth and being born “normal” were only 15%. 14 weeks into my pregnancy she was diagnosed with a massive (11mm) fetal cystic hygroma (Google it and get depressed). It’s almost always fatal and if not, it’s a harbinger of devastating chromosomal abnormalities. She’s perfect except for the fact that she still has my DNA…which might actually negate the whole “normal” thing.

Expermimentation

2009-11-16T23:31:00.003+01:00

Andy from Blaiser Blog interviewed me for Neil's Great Interview Experiment 2009. I enjoyed answering his questions. Go and have a look if you like that sort of thing.

Le marketing

2009-11-11T18:20:00.004+01:00

I recently did a two-day interpreting job on the subject of marketing and brands. For some reason —perhaps post-traumatic avoidance of cerebral overload — after I've done one of these jobs I have usually erased all memory of the content within a couple of days.

The only things I remember about this one are:

a) that marketeting people really admire Apple and will refer to the company's success at least once every half hour.
b) that marketing people like to talk about a "company's DNA" which becomes really, really annoying after two days.
c) that French marketing people like to use English words. I kept this list of some of the terms I translated from English back into English: le story-telling, le buzz, le hypermarketing, le supply-chain, le empowerment, leverager, mainstream, focusser sur, le sourcing, le user-generated content, le slow-wear, l'urban-wear, les malls, un peu hype, la peoplisation, les community brands, challenger, du display, le push, le pull, le crowd-sourcing, votre page rank, l'insight, le storyboard, le couponing, les early adopters, les user labs, and last but not least my favourite: il faut shifter les choses.

Bad plane, good plane

2009-11-04T22:11:00.006+01:00

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on this blog complaining about airline companies (eg. here and here and here) ... and here I go again.

My Mum has been over visiting us for the past week or so. As usual, I booked her ticket over the internet and she provided the credit card details. All quite simple really. Isn't the internet wonderful? Except that amateur travel agents like myself should at least read the whole travel itinerary instead of just skimming through it as I did.

48 hours before she left, my Mum looked over her e-ticket and gasped - "but I'm flying from Bordeaux to Orly and then on from Roissy!" Ooops.

I spent most of the following morning trying to get Air France to change the flight to Orly to a flight to Roissy which actually left 40 minutes later, would have avoided my old Mum collectiing her suitcase, lugging it out to the concourse and into a bus then enduring a long, unnecessary bus journey right across Paris while she worried about whether or not she would get off at the right terminal before checking her bags in again. I mean you don't exactly need a degree in logistics to work out which is the most efficient solution, do you?

But no, Air France didn't want her to fly to the airport she was leaving from:
"Le billet est non modifiable et non remboursable Madame."
"And what if I bought a new ticket from Bordeaux to Roissy?"
"Ah non, you can't do that. You would have to buy a new ticket all the way to Edinburgh"

It all turned out all right in the end. My Mum made it across Paris this afternoon, but it did make the end of her stay stressful. And I just can't help feeling that the Air France people actually got some pleasure out of punishing her for my not reading the itinerary properly: much more gratifying for them, I'm sure, than that silly old customer satisfaction thing.

But now for the good airline story. Ryanair announced yesterday that it is introducing a new route from Edinburgh to Bordeaux next March. Woohoo. For the first time in my twenty-something years here I will be be able to fly straight to Scotland without passing through Paris, London, Brussels (remember SABENA?) or Amsterdam. Okay, it may not be flying in comfort, it is Ryanair after all, but it will be cheap and I'm very excited about the prospect of popping over for a weekend and even better, having friends and family pop over to see us. What could possibly go wrong?

Weekend in San Sebastien

2009-11-01T23:52:00.002+01:00

Weekend in San Sebastien, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

San Sebastien is only a couple of hours south of Bordeaux, but it's a whole different world down there. I love the vibrancy of the place.

Les P'tits Cageots

2009-10-12T21:17:00.006+02:00

Although I enjoy cooking, I don't enjoy the weekly drudgery of supermarket shopping. I find something soul-destroying about walking up and down the same aisles week after week varying the brands I buy just to buck the routine of always putting the same old products in the same old trolley. In fact, I quite often vary supermarkets just to spice up the housewifely routine: one week Simply Market, the next Casino.... I don't even really enjoy going to the market any more: same old stall holders in the same old places.

Readers, I have been freed from this drudgery. A few weeks ago a friend launched a new service called Les Ptits Cageots that bobos of my ilk were crying out for - organic / farm-produced /fair-trade products ordered over the internet delivered to our door at the time we want for no extra charge!

We've used the service three times now and I'm still wallowing in the liberation of it! No more whizzing round boring supermarkets; no more flaccid meat in polystyrene trays; no more impossibly shiny fruit and veg. This stuff comes from small producers in towns and villages around Bordeaux, the Charente and the Dordogne. It's all good.

We feel virtuous because we know we're eating well, giving our kids healthy stuff and supporting a good cause to boot — Les P'tits Cageots is what is known as une association d'insertion which means that it is a non-profit-making organisation that creates jobs for people who really need them and helps them (re-)adapt to the work place. I realise just how self-satisfied that sounds, but sometimes it can be good to be self-satisfied, can't it?

A cageot is one of those wooden crates for fruit and vegetables and that's exactly what our order comes in. If we're short of time and inspiration, we can choose to have that week's pre-selected crate. Perhaps it comes from watching to much Ready, Steady Cook on BBC Prime during my two pregnancies but I actually quite like having set seasonal ingredients imposed on me for the week and making what I can from them. Recently, I've made potimarron soup, oriental lentil salad (recipe from fellow Bordelaise Papilles and Pupilles' site), rougail de saucisses de boeuf (a dish we discovered in La Réunion), pears in red wine and pears in white wine with aniseed. We've had two evenings with friends fuelled by excellent organic wines and the tenderest faux-filet possible on the barbecue — until this week, the evenings were still mild enough for us to dine outside, believe it or not.

If you live in or around Bordeaux, give it a try. I'm sure you won't regret it. And if you do, I'll eat my cageot.

Les Ptits Cageots

Blue is the colour

2009-10-01T00:04:00.006+02:00

My favourite colour is, and always has been, blue so I was pleased when Pascale from Paris-Glasgow tagged me to post seven blue things from around my house. Much more pleased than if it had been yellow, or green. Here they are:

I bought this print from Julien Merrow-Smith on his Postcard from Provence site. I love the powder blue sky.

This cornflower blue tunic has been one of the items I've worn most this summer.

The walls in our bathroom are blue (with a worrying grey mould detail in one corner). I bought this clock just the other day.

I have two of these soap dishes. They were a present from friends in the Dordogne. I keep a fine tooth comb in this one.

I bought this book in that second-hand shop in Saint Andrews but haven't started it yet. I'm a great admirer of Jenni Calder's biography of RLS.

This is my keyring, often to be found in odd places around the house. I bought it in Greece at Easter.

We have this patchwork on the wall in our bedroom.

So what's blue in your houses Materfamilias, Mausi, Andy, NMJ, and Princesse Ecossaise?

If we'd had Facebook ...

2009-09-25T16:53:00.010+02:00

Thinking about possible status updates if we'd had Facebook circa 1980.

Lesley :

is listening to the new Thin Lizzy LP - it's beezer.
is eating a walnut whip.
is typing this on an electric typewriter - isn't new technology great?
has a perfect flick in her hair today à la Farrah Fawcett Majors.
just finished "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull". Deep.
is going to the Scout Disco tonight. Hope they play A Whiter Shade of Pale for the last slow dance.
feels sick - had a few too many Martini bianco and lemonades last night at the Mexican Bar in Roslin.

Saint Andrews

2009-09-25T13:39:00.008+02:00

I almost forgot to tell you about my weekend in Saint Andrews a fortnight ago. For some reason the only photographs I took over the four days I spent there were all of whisky glasses - which perhaps explains why I almost forgot to tell you about it. Saint Andrews is a fabulous place - all town and no gown at the moment because the students are still on vacation, and we had warm, sunny summer weather on all four days.

I was there for a conference - a great success with plenty of familiar faces and interesting papers. My own paper wasn't booed off the stage so I'm counting it as a success too. Highlights of the conference social programme were a wine tasting with Billy Kay (the author of Knee Deep in Claret, a book I still find fascinating) and that whisky tasting - 5 malts. I also enjoyed a fruitful half-hour rummage through the shelves of a second-hand book store.

We were all accommodated in Halls of Residence which made me feel as if I was eighteen again - those halcyon days when all of my worldly possessions fitted comfortably into one small room; when I could eat what I liked without getting fat. In memory of those days, I partook heartily of the black pudding and eggs and hash browns and bacon, and lorne sausage on offer in halls every morning. Continental breakfasts could do with a bit of beefing up really, couldn't they?

It just so happens that a couple of my old flatmates live in Saint Andrews so I stayed on for an extra day to spend some time and drink some wine with them. Although we've kept up over the past years, and met up for lunch quite often, I hadn't seen their children for a very long time - turns out they're fully grown adults with responsible jobs and cars and deep voices, which was a little disorienting because I half-remembered them in pushchairs. Good job I didn't take them any presents because they've obviously passed the tube of smarties stage.

Bouncing along in my Skecher Shape Ups

2009-09-17T00:04:00.010+02:00

This is my first foray into the area of reviews for free stuff, so forgive me if you think I've gone over to the dark side - but hey, free stuff!

Anyway, I got a pair of Skecher Shape Ups in August, just in time for all that walking through the pleasant Scottish countryside we had planned to do. It turned out that the countryside was mostly under three feet of water so I can exclusively reveal that Skecher Shape Ups do not help you walk on water, but they do keep your feet dry as you wade through puddles.

The shoes are described as "stylish". This, it seems, is a matter of opinion and age. My Mum thought they were very "Californian", P. thought they looked comfortable, the children thought they were hilarious and my 15-year-old nephew just shook his head in embarrassed disbelief.

When you first put the shoes on, the initial sensation is one of added height - a bit like wearing platform shoes in the seventies but without the accompanying Bay City Rollers soundtrack. You really do feel as if you're walking on spongy ground.

Off I went to try them out and nobody laughed in the street at my ginormous trainers, proving if proof were needed that 15-year-olds know nothing about style for the elegant aunt about town. They come with a booklet and a DVD which explains that you shouldn't wear them for any more than 45 mins the first time you go out with them. So I bounced along country lanes with the recommended rolling movement from heel to toe for exactly three-quarters of an hour. And I have to say that by the time I got home, I really did feel as if my calves and buttocks had had a really good work-out.

As the days went by, I got more and more used to walking on several layers of sole, and whenever I wasn't wearing them, I felt somewhat diminished and frankly flat-footed.

I'm not sure if Bordeaux city centre is ready yet for Skechers Shape Ups, but I'm ready to try them out on dry land.

Insider

2009-09-07T23:08:00.003+02:00

Have you flown with BmiBaby lately? Did you by any chance read the destination guide at the back of the in-flight magazine? Did you notice the name of the "The Insider" for Bordeaux? (scroll down, way down).

Admire my self-control as I resist regaling you with tales the extra money I had to shell out to BmiBaby at Manchester airport twice this summer, despite having provided them with that highly confidential and precious info for free.

I'm hoping to develop an alternative career as an "amateur photographer" (?) and tourist tipster.

Scotland Summer '09

2009-09-01T23:30:00.007+02:00

We're back. It was the wettest August on record in south-west Scotland. Really. Flooding, torrential unrelenting rain, lochs turning into seas.

Och well, we had a good time anyway. And it was 35°C here in Bordeaux yesterday, which in my opinion is just as unpleasant as a bit of rain.

16.16 #14-16

2009-08-14T19:31:00.008+02:00

This was the first dull day we'd had and P. and I went into Périgueux to buy a few things at Leclerc - notably mugs. Drinking coffee out of bowls for a few days is all very well but after a couple of weeks the novelty value wears off.

This is me working on a 19th C book for an upcoming conference.

This was my last full day in the Dordogne - the day of the village méchoui. Usually this big sheep roast takes place in an idyllic spot beside the river Isle, but this year it was raining so we all crowded into the old school yard.

And tomorrow (well, later today actually) we're off to Scotland for further adventures.

I'm going to try to keep the 16.16 photo thing up for a bit longer but I'm moving it over to my tumblr blog Desultory Notes which I've really only used as an intermittent link dump until now.

16.16 #10 - 13

2009-08-14T12:54:00.005+02:00

On day 10, we were waiting for P's four aunts to arrive for crèpes and drinks on the terrasse. E. had put on her best skirt.

These are P's golfing shoes. We'd been to the Domaine de Essendiéras in the morning and he'd done a bit of putting while E had a riding lesson. Most of the kids on the domaine are Dutch and E was the only French-speaker at the lesson but that didn't seem to phase her at all.

Here we are visiting our friend Dominique and his family at their absolutely gorgeous village of stone gîtes, Le Hameau du Sentier des Sources, not far from Sarlat. We'd just had a delicious lunch of cou d'oie farci, which sounds a lot better in French than in English. All of the other photos really were taken at exactly 16.16 but this one was taken a little later because I was actually swimming up and down that pool at the allotted time.

This is Zac in the garden of a little house that his grandparents rent out in Jaillac. We were there to take better photographs for the new, improved website that I'm trying to make them (link later).

16.16 #6-9

2009-08-12T00:30:00.003+02:00

This is day 6 and we're visiting one of P's sisters on the campsite that she and her in-laws own and run, Le Camping du Lac in Plazac. The children are spoilt for choice because there's a lake and a swimming pool to jump into. Decisions, decisions. I took this picture from a horizontal position, again.

We stopped in Corgnac to reserve places on the Vélorail for a couple of days later.

E and another aunt on their way up the hill to Château de Laxion. They were probably talking about the car crash we'd just witnessed on the road in. Actually the children only heard the massive bang of it, then P and I ran down the hill to see if any help was needed. Thankfully it wasn't, although there was a little boy in the back of one of the cars who rented the air with his screams of fright. The Château itself was interestingly delapidated and everybody enjoyed the medieval show.

On day 9, we were in Brive visiting my friend Célia and we hadn't quite finished lunch. I was Célia's witness at her wedding in 1987 - the children didn't recognise me in the photograph she'd dug out. Probably because I looked like a poodle.
Célia's son Alex gave Z an electric guitar and made him the happiest 8-year-old boy in the world.

Am I boring you yet?

16.16 #2-5

2009-08-11T12:13:00.002+02:00

By day 2 we had cracked out the barbecue and the Macbook.

Day 3 saw us at the Repetto factory shop then Le Jardin d'Hélys an outdoor/indoor art fantasy where I took the Into the Wildesque photo above.

Another day another barbecue.

On our way to the outdoor municipal pool in Excideuil.

16.16 #1

2009-08-11T00:45:00.004+02:00

16.16 #1, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

When we went to the Dordogne on holiday, I decided tht I would take a photograph every day at exactly 16H16 and post it to this blog. I stole this idea lock, stock and barrel from my friend Sarah who has been taking a photograph at 11H47 and posting them to her photo blog Eleven47 every day for years.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the Edge connection in our part of the Dordogne was just to weak for me to post anything more complicated than a tweet so I've saved them all up and I'll give them to you in instalments.

This first photograph is of the terrasse on one side of the house. We're lucky enough to be able to use the house next door to P's parents every summer so we're independent but close enough to eat together and the children can wander from one house to the other depending on where there's an open pot of Nutella. The house has this big terrasse which is actually the roof of the garage below, where we eat and watch the village go by - usually to the communal bins which are just across the road. I tend to spend a lot of time reading horizontally on the swing seat.

Dumping ground

2009-07-22T11:48:00.004+02:00

Since we last met, I have been to GB twice. Once to drop E off for a week at Grandma's and once to pick her up again. The going was eventful, involving an easyJet flight to Bristol that was two hours late which meant that we missed our "connecting" flight to Newcastle. Luckily there was another one later - but it was also running very late. We got there in the end but much sweat was sweated and much waiting was done at the other end. Thankfully, the coming back to get her was relatively smooth although sleazy BmiBaby did manage to grab £30 from my clenched fist for airport check-in.

Incidentally, while we were sitting on the carpet in the departure lounge in Bordeaux on the first of our long waits, I twittered "Plane delayed by 2 hours. Damn you easyJet" or words to that effect. Within a couple of minutes someone from easyJet had twittered back something about hoping they were keeping us informed. People are obviously being employed to palm disgruntled twitterers off with false concern.

Robots have also been looking out for me. Last week I desultorily searched Locasun for a gite rental in an obscure village in the Dordogne. Since then, my home page on social networking sites has featured a side bar with ads for rentals in said village. I don't find that helpful, I find it creepy.

How do you say?

2009-07-13T18:40:00.007+02:00

I've been clearing out my computer at work in a bid to start next term with a cleanish slate. I have only the vaguest of memories of recording this video which was hiding in an obscure folder, but it seems to be a response to a 2008 Flickr meme, Word Time. I hereby revive the meme and order you all to record yourselves pronouncing the following words:

Caramel
Touched
Bottle
Sensitivity
Salsa
There
Behind
Mother
Flower
Calendar
Barbiturate
Harvard
Chocolate
Darjeeling
Diaphragm
Stethoscope
Plaza
Macintosh
Spotted
What do you call the lace up shoes you wear for working out, running etc?

Vinexpo

2009-06-27T14:23:00.007+02:00

I twittered a bit about working at Vinexpo last week. It occurs to me, however, that many of you probably have very little idea of what Vinexpo is all about.

What can I say? Vinexpo is the world's biggest wine fair. It's a professionals-only affair but I get to go along with an army of other interpreters to translate the conferences and the tastings for wine experts from every corner of the wine-loving globe.

This massive circus of all things wine takes place every two years in the Parc des Expositions at Bordeaux Lac. A floating walkway — orange this year — takes you across the lake to the main building which is over two kilometres long. This year's attendance was down 7% with only 47000 visitors due to the slump, but there was certainly no evidence of slumpiness in the ethanol-laden air. Inside the main building you could walk for hours and hours along alleys lined with stands from all over the world vying for attention. Bespoke besuited buyers and sellers gargled and spat.

There's a lot of money in wine and I'm quite sure that the cumulative value of just the shiny shoes on the attendees feet would match the GDP of a medium-sized country.

Laid-back and outgoing

2009-06-10T23:09:00.006+02:00

I'm currently reading The Year of No Money in Tokyo by Wayne Lionel Aponte (a book that would have made a perfectly good blog, now there's faint praise). I was intrigued by a passage that I can't find anymore (that wouldn't happen with a blog). It went something like this:

"The conversation started out along the usual lines, "What's your blood group? Where do you live? Are you single".

And that's it. There is no explanation of why "What's your blood group?" would be an acceptable, never mind a common, conversation starter in Japan.

I've been wondering about this for the past few days and finally got round to googling it tonight. Fortunately, this old Indepedent article explains all. It turns out that the Japanese believe that each blood group has a corresponding personality type. I'm O which means that in Japan I would be expected to be outgoing and laid-back. I could live with that.

The article doesn't say whether or not rhesus factor is important in Japan. For the record I'm O- so I am a universal donor. This is quite academic however since the Agence Française du Sang politely declines my blood. It believes that I have a high risk of developing Creutzfeld-Jakob disease having lived in Britian in the early eighties.

The downsides of being O- are
a) that I had to have injections throughout my pregnancies because P. is O+ (really a very minor inconvenience when one thinks of the problems that those tiny jabs might be solving).
b) that I can only receive blood from another O- donor, and there aren't that many of us (only 6% of the French population is O- ). So if you're one of us, what are you waiting for? Get down to your local blood transfusion place and fill up my stocks.

Update: Wayne kindly e-mailed me with the passage in his book that I had mangled beyond all recognition. It reads:

"Students spend most of the time asking me the kind of questions one might expect in Japan on the first meeting: What’s your blood type? Do you like sushi? Do you like natto? Are you married? How old are you? Can you speak Japanese? Where are you from? Does everyone have gun in America? (They tend to drop indefinite articles.)"

Port

2009-06-07T21:01:00.006+02:00

We had a walk round Bordeaux's port de plaisance this afternoon. I love old rusty, dilapidated boats and cars and there are certainly plenty of those in the port. There are none of the sleek yachts of Cannes here, just a motley mixture of sorry-looking barges and various other unseaworthy vessels.

In other news, I voted in the European elections this afternoon. I met our next-door neighbour on the way there. He's about eighty, I think. He started off by telling me not to vote for Danny le Rouge because he "put France in the shit" in 1968. The conversation then moved on to the sudden dip in the temperature and he told me about how May used to be the best month for weather in Bordeaux. It's the Virgin Mary's month and people would go out until late in the evening to, well I'm not quite sure what they were doing but something to do with Mary. "There are no more seasons", he concluded. And guess what - this is all due to motorways. Yes, apparently motorways aspirate all the warm air and create cold fronts. Who would have thought?