Snapshots from my week

• 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

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 a supermarket car-park; swirling and darting like a flock of starlings.

• As the yoga teacher talks, she rubs her eye, touches her cheek, runs her finger along her lip, pushes her hair behind her ear. Choreography.

365 more or less

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.

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

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

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

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

Displacement activity

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.

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

Last Saturday I got up at the crack of dawn and drove some friends to Pauillac to run in the Marathon du Médoc, 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

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.