Smart Alec(ette)

Just as I like to read English-speaking bloggers living abroad, I am attracted to books by English-speaking people living over here. Yes, I read « A Year in Provence » and thought it was patronisingly awful. I much preferred Tim Parks' books about Italy. A couple of summers ago I read two good ones about Tuscany (one with superb recipes none of which I actually tried needless to say). And an excellent one by an English woman living in Cérét. She never actually names the town but it’s quite easy to work out where it is and it’s also quite easy to work out who her temperamental French lover is because he’s a dentist and an artist. (Still don’t get it? You’re obviously not stalker sleuth material. You look up all the dentists in Cérét in the yellow pages, there are only a couple and then you Google their names and find out which one has had exhibitions of modern art. A pointless exercise, I know, but strangely satisfying.)
It’s so easy to be a smart alec when reading the “Year in “Somewhere (preferably little-known) in France” “ books because I’ve go a twenty odd year start on them. In fact, I suspect that’s why I read them; they make me feel clever. Here, then, are a few corrections for Celia Brayfield author of “Deep France: A Writer’s Year in the Béarn”.

• The word “trocante is not a mixture of truc and brocante but of troc and brocante (much more logical)
• Cousteau does not mean strong and burly, costaud does. Jacques Cousteau could not, therefore, be translated as “Jack Burly”
• The presenter of “La Grande Dictée” is not a professor. He’s Bernard Pivot, a t.v. personality

I could go on but it would be tedious. What strikes me is that these mistakes are due to sloppiness, they could have been corrected by ANY French person. But the year in France didn’t seem to include very many of those.

I’m also drawn to books by Scottish women. Imagine my joy then, when I came across a mistake about France in an otherwise excellent book by a Scotswoman; Jennie Erdal’s “Ghosting”. She describes the regular trips she made from Bordeaux airport to the “heart of the Dordogne” and how her heart would lift when she saw the gates bearing the names Château d’Yquem, Château Margaux.* Didn’t she have a map?
But now I feel churlish criticising these people who may not know France as well as I do but who do seem to have a real affection for the place, especially when others, like this creep, hate France and the French so much**.

* For the few of you who don’t live in the Bordeaux area, these châteaux are nowhere near the road to the Dordogne.
** Via Blethers.com - Stuart Mudie's weblog

Category: books about France

Unconscious Mutterings

This is a free association memey thing which "is supposed to help bring forth repressed thoughts and feelings". Give it a go yourself, the words change every week.

1. Do-it-yourself:: hammers, nails, Ian Dury
   
2. Pickpocket:: Walking through a flea market in Paris putting my hand in the pocket of my overcoat (which incidentally I'd bought in an Amsterdam flea market the year before) and finding that someone else's hand was already in there
   
3. Ballet:: tutu
   
4. Resumé:: American job applications
   
5. Phenom:: Place in Thailand? beaches, danger,
   
6. Love/Hate:: tattoes that burly men in England sometimes have on their fingers
   
7. Unusual:: The way a friend described my taste in shoes
   
8. Intense:: A person I know who always takes things very very seriously and gives thoughtful answers to my flippant questions. Slightly irritating
   
9. Interruption:: coitus interruptus also known as "getting off at Haymarket" in Edinburgh
   
10. Not enough:: Food.
    

Category: meme

I need a holiday

Category: schedule

Two Rules

Still thinking about the difficulties of bringing up children and although mu children don't need them quite yet, the following two absolute rules sound about right:

"Never have unprotected sex" [...] "And never, ever get into a car with a driver who's been drinking, including yourself"

Wise words. I read them in Anita Shreve's novel "Light on Snow" this weekend while rocking in a swing in the Dordogne.

Category: parenting

Surfastination

I'm at it again. I have a paper to write up and I hate rereading stuff I wrote last year because I'm sick of it and because it's so prosaic. So I'm procrastinating, and for me procrastinating means surfing. So here are three things I came across today and that seem to me to be linked in some way in that they all say something up bringing up children. First there are these lyrics (their punctuation, not mine, by the way).

maybe it's scotland that i hate. i know i hate so many things about it. i hate the way punishment's at the heart of everything. i hate the way parents speak to their children. i hate the way everything always has to be someone's fault even though some things just happen.

some things just happen...

i hate the way people bring up their children to be exactly the same as they are just so they can justify the way they've lived their lives. i hate the way that we expect to fail. and then we fail. and then we get bitter because we've failed.

maybe it's scotland that i hate... *

The song’s by a group called Ballboy, by the way, and you can listen to it on their site ballboy online.* I like the song but I don’t quite get the bringing-up-children-to-be-like-us bit. How else are you going to bring up your children? All I can say is, see you in ten-fifteen years matey when you've got a couple of sprogs yourself, then we'll see who you're bringing them up to be like and how you're speaking to them. (Oh, and by the way nobody likes to be bunched in with everybody else and referred to by the generic "people") Oh, yes, and do unto your parents as you would have your children do unto you. mr. nice guy knows what i'm talking about:

"we all found ourselves sitting around the table talking about how the crazy is strong with our parents. and then, slowly, we looked over at the baby who, with a little sparkle in our eye, made it perfectly clear that in 30 years she would be having exactly the same conversation with her friends."

and what about this from Scott Adams @ Arkansas Tech:

"The day after 9/11, I tried to write a piece about how it was an attack against what we stand for as professional educators, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I think that David Weinberger has. Educators here were liberally and courageously guiding our children into %u201Ctheir%u201D future by creating and crafting engaging and potent learning experiences. %u2026While the fundamentalists want us to go back to a world under control."

USA = liberal and courageous. USA's enemies = control freaks. I don't think so.

So to summarise today's lessons — my parenting skills require honing. I have to avoid trying to bring the little monsters up to be like me, I have to remember that whatever I do it will be wrong in the long run and I must strive to attain benevolent educating skills à la USA. Maybe licking that paper into shape would have been more fun after all.

* I'm sorry I can't materialise the quote in any way with eg. a frame, or indentation or italics. Blogger is still decidedly mac-unfriendly
** I found the Ballboy site via Said the Gramophone"a daily sampler of really good songs", which I found via pointblog.com : Craintes chez les audioblogs


Category: parenting

Ooops

I did two stupid things today.

1. I locked myself and the children out of the house in the early evening while temperatures were still in the 30s and had to ask a neighbour to wade through his overgrown garden, perform acrobatics on a stepladder and jump over into our garden and then walk into our house through the conveniently unlocked back door.

2. I then took the children to an air-conditioned shopping centre and after an hour or so noticed that it had gone ominously dark outside and that the wind was howling through the glass concourse. I hurried them back to the car, holding their hands firmly just in case they blew away, and drove thorough horizontal rain dodging overturned dustbins and water gushing from drains to the house where, of course, I had left the upstairs windows wide open.

The temperature has dropped dramatically so perhaps I'll get my brain back tomorrow.

Category: absentmindedness

Summer in the City

• I hate getting electric shocks from newly installed kitchen appliances.
• I hate being so sweaty that bits of skin stick together.
• I hate having to close the shutters until at least 8 p.m.
• I hate it when the weather forecast says it’s going to be 39°C (102°F ) tomorrow
• I hate having to wear clothes to go out.
• I hate it when I’m so hot I don’t even feel hungry.
• I hate putting the children to bed in rooms that feel more like saunas.
• I hate still having workmen in the house.
• I hate it when I have to mark dozens of exam papers.
• I hate not having a swimming pool (and not being ridiculously rich).
• I hate having to spend 20 minutess of my Sunday morning in a check-out queue.
• I hate not living in a house traversed by sea breezes.
• I hate not being able to find an « I love … » item to finish this list off.

Category: summer

Sundries

- E. celebrated her 3rd birthday on Monday. Where has my baby gone? Spent the day in Cap Ferret doing what she likes most, eating and jumping in water.
- The air outside has now cooled after seven torrid days and the whole of southern Europe breathes a sigh of relief.
- I have conjunctivitis in both eyes, apparently heat-related. Consequently, I am not allowed to wear my contact lenses, consequently children run away screaming at the sight of my bespectacled face.
- I've been doing some conference interpreting notably at Vinexpo — the world's biggest wine fair. It really is massive, more wine than you could possibly imagine. Now I have experienced the height of frustration: translating a slurping wine expert as he describes the "velvety" / "explosive" / "extraordinary" / taste of a couple of dozen expensive wines as they caress his taste-buds. Not a single drop passed the door of the translation booth.
- Have just done my bit for the future of blogging mankind by answering a few questions:



- One of the questions asked how much longer I thought I would blog. I wasn't quite sure how to answer. What would you have said?

Category: misc

50 Questions

It's sooo hot in Bordeaux and I have no blogspiration. So here's one of those questionnaires. Please feel free to zap if you hate these things. My only excuse is that I think I might use the same questionnaire (with a couple of changes) for new groups of students next semester — I got a bit fed up of The Proust Questions after reading fifty of them..

1. What time did you get up this morning? 7H50
2. Diamonds or pearls? Neither
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? The one about Che Guevara riding a motorbike through South America
4. What is your favourite TV show? Six Feet Under
5. What is your middle name? I don't have one.
6. What is your favorite cuisine? French
7. What foods do you dislike? Offal
8. What is your favourite crisp/chip flavour? Prawn Cocktail
9. What is your favourite CD at the moment? Adam Green
10. What kind of vehicle do you drive? Renault Scenic
11. What is your Favourite sandwich? Egg mayonnaise
12. What characteristics do you despise? Dishonesty
13. What is your Favourite item of clothing? Flip-flops
14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Mongolia
15. What colour is your bathroom? That's a very sore point, thanks for asking. It's yeucchy beige
16. What colour pants are you wearing? No idea and I'm not looking.
17. Where would you retire to? - Somewhere near the sea (Arcachon? Crinan? )
18. What is your Favourite time of the day? Early evening (apéritif time!)
19. What was your most memorable birthday? None stick out in my memory
20. What's the last thing you ate? a piece of toast
21. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? very deep purple
22. What is your Favorite flower? sweet pea
23. What Fabric detergent do you use? I've tried them all and am faithful to none
24. Coke or Pepsi? Diet coke
25. Do you wish on stars? No
26. What is your shoe size? 39/40
27. Do you have any pets? No
28. Last person you talked to on the phone? Mum when she got back to Scotland late last night
29. What did you want to be when you were little? Anything but a teacher
30. What are you meant to be doing now? Marking exams
31. What do you first notice about someone? How fat/thin they are
32. What was your favourite toy as a child? Lego
33. Summer or winter? Spring
34. Hugs or Kisses? How do you choose?
35. Chocolate or vanilla? Vanilla
36. Who is most likely to respond? Deborah
37. Who is least likely to respond? Those who hate navel-gazing and are looking for intellectual stimulation
38. Living arrangements? Sin
39. When was the last time you cried? I honestly can't remember
40. What is under your bed? Nothing at the moment because the bedroom is being rewired
41. How many countries have you visited? Most of Europe, + SW USA + Nepal
42. In how many cities have you lived? 2 (Edinburgh and Bordeaux)
43. Favourite movie of all time? Betty Blue (or 37.2° le Matin)
44. Mountains or beach? Both
45. The current friend you have known the longest? Douglas / Susan
46. Full names of your potential kids? My fully realised kids are called Zachary Hugh and Eloïse Iona
47. What is your Usual bedtime? Around midnight
It turns out there is only 47 questions, ask me another if you like, or suggest questions that the studes might enjoy answering.......


Category: me, me, me

Reclaimed living room

living room
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

The home improvements project is almost finished. All we need is rewiring upstairs, windows throughout and a new central heating boiler. I'm so sick of the whole thing.

Uncanny

That's it, I'm not playing this game any more, it's just too eerie. We played five games of twenty questions and it won four times (it got snail, washing-up liquid, television arial and credit card but it didn't get foie gras). I'm going to use it with my students too: a good exercise for understanding questions Try it for yourself in English, French, Spanish or German at 20Q.net

Outwith

The other day I had to translate the following phrase from French to English: "en dehors de ces paramètres..." The solution that immediately sprang to mind was "outwith these parameters" which is probably not the first possibility that springs to your mind unless you're from my part of the world, as I quickly discovered when Word did its squiggly red underlining thing. After a quick google it transpired that "outwith" is a typically Scottish term. I can't imagine how the rest of you manage without such a useful word. And there are so many more: where would my vocabulary be without wee and pinkie and burn and brae ... Over at Blethers, Stuart Mudie has not only given his blog a Scottish title but his derrière is still Scottish too. You can take the laddie out of Scotland but you can't purge him of all those wonderful scotticisms.

Category: Scots

Concert tickets

concert tickets
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

I found some of them in a yellowed envelope. I'd completely forgotten about Rory Gallagher and the Boomtown Rats and 10CC. And Elton John was in 1976 not 1979. I started going to concerts VERY young, okay.

Concert meme

As Profgrrrrrl remarks, there's a concert meme going around, so here's my contribution with a list of concerts I've seen more or less in chronological order listed under the place I saw them. You won't find anything even vaguely up to date here because it has been many years since I last clutched an overpriced ticket and stood in line to be frisked.

Penicuik
The Corries (of Flower of Scotland fame)

Edinburgh
Elton John (this was circa 1979 and I think it was touted as his farewell tour. He sang "Don't go Breaking My Heart" without Kiki Dee)
Police (Fanastic concert. Sting wore a boiler suit)
Thin Lizzy (At that time my very favourite band. I loved Phil Lynott. I probably still would if he wasn't dead)
Ultravox (Vienna had just come out and Midge Ure had played with Thin Lizzy, but I still didn't enjoy it)
Gary Glitter (A Freshers' week freebie)
The Who (Brilliant)
Uriah Heep (hardly anyone there)
Elvis Costello (in a village hall somewhere outside Edinburgh (Wast Calder?), a massive loudspeaker fell on the audience)
Bruce Springsteen (a very long concert)

Périgueux
Silly Wizard (My first year in France and this Scottish folk group turned up in my provinical town.)
Hubert Felix Thiefaine (first French concert, I'd never heard of him)
Charlelie Couture (second French concert, I'd never heard of him either)

Metz
Luther Allison (first Blues concert)

Nancy
Marillion (another Scottish group seen in France)

Bordeaux and environs
Eurythmics (loved Annie Lennox's attitude (yes, another Scot))
Celtas Cortas (loud and Spanish!)
Magma (crap)
Jagger (Mick's brother) (can' t remember his first name, says it all)
Sting (brilliant, especially his rendering of "Ne me Quitte pas")
Buckwheat Zydeco (first zydeco concert)
Paul Personne (free on the Place Saint-Michel)
Paul Young (also free on the Place Saint-Michel)
Fabulous Troubadours (fast and furious rapping in French with a Toulouse accent. I left before the main band, Massilia Sound System, came on)
Jacques Dutronc (I remember a song about sleeping pills and an interview with a journalist in the middle)
Al Jarreau (outside at Fort Medoc, dodgy sound system)
G. Love and Special Sauce (can't remember a thing about it)
Kevin Coyne (laconic Englishman)
Marva Wright and the BMWs (one of many great blues concerts experienced at the now defunct "Cricketers")
Leon Redbone (he asked everyone to stop smoking)
Jean-Jacques Milteau (brillaint harmonicist)
Linton Kwesi Johnson (frankly better listened to at home)
Jacques Higelin X2 ( first time in La Rochelle someone set fire to my cotton blouse by mistake)
Miles Davies (at the Andernos Jazz Festival. The bench I was standing on collapsed.)

I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of "gigs" as we used to call them in our incredibly hip and trendy way. I wonder what happened to my ticket collection. I wonder what happened to my youth.

In the privacy of my own blog

The question of privacy has popped up a few times in my activities over the past couple of days.

1. Someone just knocked on the door (literally — still no doorbell). I rushed downstairs to find two smiley people on the doorstep who immediately addressed me in English, a rather unexpected event in France. Of course, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses – you probably worked that out a couple of lines ago but it took me a few minutes.
Me: How did you know I spoke English?
Her: Well, we look up English names in the phone book and then come round.
Talk about sophisticated marketing techniques. I really must learn to be more assertive. Why didn’t I just say “Go away”? Instead of that, I ended up with the “Watchtower” in my hand and they left promising to come back. Oh no.
It also occurs to me that if they found my name in the phone book, they could also google my name and this blog would be first on the list. Oh yes, and before you tell me, the third hit on the Google list informs you that “really shag me” is an anagram of my name which is always useful to know. I can just imagine the crossword puzzle clue,
1 across “Really shag me” says this unknown blogger confusedly.

2. Still on the subject of phonebooks, and I’m going to have to be a bit hedgey on this one because I don’t want to invade an apparently nice man’s privacy à la Jehovah’s Witness. Yesterday, I read an article quoting another article in a major British newspaper which reported that a very famous Scottish author had said he used to “pore over phonebooks” when he first lived in London, looking up famous authors and marking them in his A-Z. Now, I learned last year that this self-same author has a house in a village not far from my French family. By some strange coincidence I suffer from the same virtual stalking instinct as said (or actually unsaid) author and immediately looked him up in the French telephone book and there he was. No, I didn’t phone him up and no I didn’t go and have a look at his house but my curiosity was satisfied.

3. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an unhappy experience when I left a comment on another blog that went against the flow of other comments. It appears that the majority of readers of this sort of tell-all blog consider themselves as supportive, understanding friends rather than bolshy, questioning pseudo-acquaintances and quickly shout down any dissenting voices. What strikes me is that as I continue to read the blog, I increasingly wonder what motivates someone to share such an experience (separation) à chaud with a bunch of curious onlookers. The words laundry and public come to mind and I feel a little guilty about being a passive part of it, for without readers there would be no point in spilling all the poignant, and sometimes sordid details, out into a blog.

Category: privacy

I heart my Ipod mini

ipod mini
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

My new toy has arrived and it is pink. So far I've listened to a mixture of Capercaille, Ben Harper, Christophe and Adam Green. I love it, I love it, I love it. How did I ever thnk I could live without one? Any suggestions for sources of podcasts or new music? Tomorrow I will be striding down the promenade in Arcachon with my little pink friend in my pocket.

Unfinished bathroom

Unfinished bathroom
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

As you can see, the bathroom isn't quite finished. It's only been about two months since the renovation work started. Roll on the "after" photos.

Self-dissipation

People who don't own a self-help book on principle shouldn't read personal development blogs, but I just have and it's official, I have a self-discipline problem. Have a look at Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog and the list of questions "you " should be asking yourself. Here are a few choice snippets (there are many, many more):

- Do you get up at the same time every morning? Including weekends?
- Do you have any addictions (caffeine, nicotine, sugar, etc.) you’d like to break but haven’t?
- Is your email inbox empty right now?
- Is your office neat and well organized?
- Is your home neat and well organized?
- How much time do you waste in a typical day? On a weekend?
- Could you fast for one day?
- Do you have clear, written goals? Do you have written plans to achieve them?
- How do you look right now? What does your appearance say about your level of discipline (clothes, grooming, etc)?
- Do you primarily select foods to eat based on health considerations or on taste/satiety?

And here are my answers.
- Are you joking?
- Yes, yes, yes and many others.
- It has never been empty
- No
- No
- The entire weekend
- I couldn't fast for two hours
- I repeat, are you joking?
- It says I'm a busy working mother. Get off my case.
- Oh, health of course, not.

Conclusion. I'm a lost cause (but at least I don't seem to be in "a state of denial" about my level of discipline). It has to be said though, this Steve guy himself does not sound like a bundle of fun.

"I get up at 5am each morning. I exercise six days a week. I eat a purely vegan diet with lots of fresh vegetables. My home office is well organized. My physical inbox and my email inbox are both empty. [...] A binder sits on my desk with my written goals and detailed plans to achieve them, and several of my 2005 goals have already been accomplished."

Quite.

Weekend waffle

Well, the thousand mark has been passed. I know it's fairly puny compared to the number of hits a lot of other blogs get, but I was pleased anyway. Here are a few more events from my weekend in no particular order.

Went to an incongruous "Country Festival" in the middle of the French countryside where people did line dancing and ate chilli con carne. Listened to someone called Leslie Ryan sing. Okay, so it was kitch, but it was enjoyable kitch.

Lost my purse with all of my credit cards in it. This happened somewhere between the laundromat (washing machine still not plumbed in) the médiathèque and the supermarket. A nice man found it in the middle of a roundabout, took it home and looked me up in the internet telephone directory. He tells me that there are two people with my name in France. I offered to come round and pick it up but he insisted on bringing it over. This confirms my faith in human nature. (Things like this often happen to me)

Visited some friends who have a new baby. Did a lot of cooing and cuddling. Almost made me feel like pushing back the limits of medical science and having another one. I said almost. (I also read mr. nice guy's hilarious blog about new babies which makes me glad I've been there and done that)

Hope you had a good one too.


Category: misc

1000

If you come and visit in the next twenty-four hours or so, you might be the thousandth visitor to my blog. Look at the counter in the sidebar, about half way down. Wow!

Category: statistics

Appropriated Words [sic]

Here are some excerpts from my students' blogs summing up their reactions to the blogexperience. Some of the English is pretty atrocious, so please be indulgent. Phil B. asked about error correction in the Blogstreams Salon last week and I have to admit that, for me, this is a thorny problem. I simply don't have time to correct written productions every week and I'm not at all sure that student posts would be as spontaneous and authentic if they felt they were writing for correction rather than reaction. I'm going to have to think more about this before next academic year.

Shablog: "First, the blogs were on original way to make us reflex. Indeed, it was an exellent exercise since we had to write a sensefull text with built sentences and with the appropriated words. We could work to exprime ourselves in a quiet good english in order to make us understand by the others. Moreover, the blogs were a bright alternative to make us 'speak' when we weren't in class."

madikera: "Moreover, the blog is a very good idea in my view because it has permitted us to know things about the others but it was very difficult to talk about myself."

Suck the marrow out of life: "I found the idea of the blog excellent. We should start it at the beginning of the year to be used to going there. It was really convenient to go on the computer to do your homework (grammar exercises or litlle essay)"

moonlight: ".and it is probably very interesting because each one talked about what happens to him, what he thinks so he could compare his opinion, his experiences...with the others' ones."

My english: " The blogs are a very good idea as homeworks, it's an original work to learn english but, for me, it wasn't "work" so it's a way to progress easily in english and in the same time to enjoy what we do."

Stories: "Other thing,the idea of doing a blog is very good:if I can,I think I would keep mine because it's like a kind of diary!And I like this very much!"

the chicken blog: "I enjoyed the blogs because it was a way to practice english without being too much conscious of it...(hey ! am I writing in english ? no, I can't believe it !)"

tiziozio: "About the blogs: first, I was a little pessimistic. the fact to write things about you that 'everybody' could be able to read didn't pleased me a lot... But when you accept this principle and play the game, you become 'hoocked'!!"

britneyfornever: "Overall, now I know what a blog is and what a blog could be; because when the teacher said ' you're going to create a blog'...I thought : a WHAT!!...I've never heard about this before!!But now, if somebody talk about blog I could say 'oh, yes...I know what it is and I've even created one!...'It's sure that at first I wasn't very, very enthusiastic because I don't really like talking about me and expose this on the web...even if it's about small personal things but I 've to admited that , lessons after lessons, I was more and more interested and at last I found that very funny to learn some details on people, like the five original things that people has done.The proust questions make me discover details on people life and It's always interesting to see how people react towards some questions or situations.To end, I think it was a good way to learn and 'play' with English and a good idea for people who have difficulties with oral...because it's easier to talk throw a computer!!..."

english option: "But nothing is perfect. What I really disliked was : - the day chosen in the week : many persons are off duty on Wednesday afternoon- the constant use of computers. I must admit that new technologies offer a lot of possibilities for the exercises. But everyone doesn't have an easy access to a computer and even less persons to the Internet ( when it works )."

Books (and house renovations and insomniac children)

I didn't realise quite how many books I have until I started sorting through them in preparation for the ongoing house facelift which is turning out to be more like a nose job and a boob job and liposuction plus a lot of nipping and tucking all at the same time but not all of it entirely successful. I came to the conclusion that I had a lot of paperbacks taking up a lot of bookshelf space (that's a lie, they're mostly in cardboard boxes taking up floor space) and that I would never read them again. First of all I took a bundle into work and tried to flog them to colleagues for 2€ a piece (because that's the sort of friend I am) but only sold about half of them. Then I spent ages registering them on Amazon and sold a grand total of one — a very common sense book about helping babies to sleep to a paediatrician in Paris. (Remind me to tell you some time about the numerous failsafe techniques for getting children to sleep that I've tried and that simply do not work. Also remind me to tell you about all of the mundane common-sense advice the paediatrician has given me at a rate of 35€ per ten minutes). Then I tried to sell some on E-bay, also a resounding failure. Eventually, I took them into a second-hand bookstore near the university where the grubby owner bought the lot for a quarter of the price marked on the back — a great deal since some of them had originally been bought at discount prices. I've been back a few times now bearing carrier bags stuffed with novels, but my little bouquiniste is becoming increasingly picky. Recently, he refused "Colorado" by Philippe Labro because the style is too "lisse". He's absolutely right about that one but I often find myself having to defend the books I'm trying to offload, until in the end I persaude even myself that it's really an excellent piece of litererature and wonder why I decided to get rid of it in the first place. And of course as I'm walking out the door with the cash in my pocket, I always catch sight of a really interesting book and have to go back and buy it which rather defeats the whole point of the exercise. (Yesterday it was Foucault's "Les Mots et les Choses")
I suppose I could always just bin the books I don't want. It had never occured to me that this was a possibility until I read Helene Hanff's "84 Charing Cross Road" in which she declares that there is absolutely no reason to be sentimental about books and treat them like sacred objects. She gaily turfs them out with the New York garbage. Now if only I could find the the dust-covered box that contains the book, I could give you the exact quote.

Category: books

On holiday ha ha

It happens all the time. Another Mum at the park this evening said "Ah, but of course you're a university teacher, you're on holiday now.". Most people think that being a teacher (or a lecturer if you prefer, I don't because I don't believe in lecturing) involves just teaching. My classes have finished but here are some of the other things I'll be doing at work this week :
- writing two exams on Medical English (reading comprehension, listening comprehension, grammar, vocabulary etc.)
- attending a looooong meeting to plan timetables for next year
- reading, responding to, and correcting blog posts by one of my classes
- rewriting and submitting an article I presented at a conference last year (I'm a little behind)
- reading a dissertation project by a Masters student
- correcting a couple of scientific articles (I got one last week that had been machine translated but that's another post)
- administering oral exams
- thinking about a presentation I'm going to be doing on didactics next month

I'm absolutely not complaining. I love my job. But, no, I'm definitely not on holiday.

Category: teaching

I'll do it later

I think I'll write this post tomorrow. Why don't you have a look at this film instead.
Procrastination

Postmodernist

Bee did it and then Nate did it, so now it's my turn. They were both "culturally creative" but I'm "postmodern" (she said puffing out her chest). I especially like the bit about even language being subject to analysis (shock, horror, whatever next).

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Materialist 75% Existentialist 69% Modernist 63% Cultural Creative 56% Romanticist 44% Idealist 31% Fundamentalist 25% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Category: quiz

Mon oeil, mon oeil

I realised during the Blogstreams Salon at Tapped In last Sunday that most people (okay the two people who read this blog*) probably think the eye photo I have up there on the right was actually my eye. It wasn't, I had borrowed it from a photo sharing site. Too late, you can't see it any more because I've just changed it for a photo of my real eye. It's a bit droopier than the last one but it still works quite well. Can you see the contacts? I've managed to crop most of the wrinkles. So now you have a window to my real soul, behold the gaping chasm.

Mon oeil
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

I suppose that this post should really lead into a discussion of our duty to be honest (or not) in our blogging, the various facets of self-representation discernable in the blogosphere, the disproportionate number of people who have chosen an eye as their profile image etc. etc. But I'm too tired. This blog seems to be slipping ineluctably towards the frivolous.
Update on work on house : workmen arrived at 7H15am this morning and left at 10H15 pm but still no electricity in the kitchen.
Update on weather: 34°C today. That's hot.
Update on work at work: loads and loads of rereading scientific research articles to correct the English. Tedious.
Update on children: both have just fallen asleep. It's 11H43pm.

* Since I added the "people online" counter a couple of days ago, I've NEVER been online with someone else. "1 online" looks a bit sad somehow.

Category: images

Mess

The new terrace
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

This is our new terrace. Like it?

kitchen tiles
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

And here are the kitchen tiles. I know you've been dying to see them.

Texts from a different angle

This is a great idea:

Dracula Blogged: About this blog project:
"Draculablog launches. This blog will publish Bram Stoker's Dracula for the next six months. Individual pieces of the novel will appear on the calendar dates indicated in the text, starting with Jonathan Harker's May 3rd Bistriz journal entry, and finishing up with November 6 and the final Note. "

I'm trying to think of other novels that would lend themselves to daily presentation. "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" perhaps or "The Color Purple".
And here's another way of presenting texts has taken my fancy (James Farmer linked to it yesterday). It's a bit in-you-face, so if you're feeling fragile, have a stiff drink first.


Category: literature

Fixing the cyber curtains

Way back in January Graham left me a comment saying he liked the way I was adding to the blog:

"it's part of the fun, isn't it - fixing the cyber curtains and rearranging and adding virtual furniture, making it more like home :)"

My real bricks, mortar and stone house renovation is not coming along as fast as I'd like. I know, I know I'm boring you all to death with this never-ending leitmotif. I won't go on, but I think I made a mega mistake today when I chose the new bathroom tiles (too pink). So I've displaced my home-making instinct to this virtual abode and tweaked it a little to make it cosier. I added a people-online-counter to the sidebar. Look! Admire! (I surreptitiously omitted the "dating online" link they warned me not to remove though. Wonder if they'll notice.)

Another thing I almost added to the sidebar was my Bloglines blogroll but decided in the end that it was too much of a temporary thing. Some of the subscriptions I'm trying out and may delete in a couple of weeks. Other haven't been active for ages but I keep hoping. Gordon McLean posted about this a few days ago having just removed the blogroll from his sidebar and observes that nobody even seemed to notice.

Remember I said ages and ages ago that I would like to have archives by tags as well as by dates? Well, Jean Véronis (great blog) has done it. But he had to do the spade work himself. I wonder how?

Oops, real housework calls, must go and fix my little girl's non-cyber lamp. She just poured cold water on the hot bulb and it exploded. (And that's not just a fitting end to this post but also true).

Category: metablogging

The Miniature Earth

Have a look at this if you haven't already seen it: The Miniature Earth. It's packed with humbling facts and I'm sure I could didactise it to make a video comprehension exercise for my students of medicine. All I need is a couple of hours.......
PS Still no electricity in the kitchen. Picnic dinners are no longer fun, but still a lot more nutritious than the meals most of the people-statistics in "The Miniature Earth" are getting. It helps to get things into perspective occasionally.

Category: teaching material

All I said was.....

On the dangers of commenting...

Came back from a rainy weekend in Pau to discover that a couple of people had criticised a comment I left at Petite Anglaise�'s blog so I'm feeling a little bruised. She had made a rather sad post suggesting that she was splitting up from the French father of her little girl (whose blog psudonym is Tadpole). A Brit living in France with a Frenchman and a child about the same age as mine — this obviously struck a chord. I left a comment saying

"Are you really, really, really, really sure? She’s such a tiny tadpole and it’s so difficult growing up with your parents apart"

Later someone wrote "Please ignore comments like Lesley’s above. Only you know what is best for you, not anyone else. My parents divorced when I was five and I turned out just fine.", and then someone added: "I just saw Lesley’s comment. Tadpole won’t even remember when you were together and so many kids’ parents live apart that she won’t feel like the odd one out. If anyone makes any comments like that again just remember that they’re speaking from the experience of a different generation."

This first of all made me feel a little guilty for voicing my gut reaction. Then I thought, shit, you're allowed to comment even if you're not saying the same thing as everyone else. I don't know this person from Adam, I only read her blog, and I don't know her bloke either. Perhaps he's awful and she's really nice. Perhaps it's the other way around. Perhaps they're totally incompatible. Perhaps they were made for each other. But then none of the other commenters know them either. I simply got the impression that she sounded a little nostalgic about the failing relationship. Now if you feel nostalgic, that means to me that you're not entirely sure about your decision. And I'm sorry but children do regret it when their parents live separately. It's a momentous decision.
I decided that I had learned my lesson and that I would no longer leave comments on private and personal posts made by people I don't know. So why did I leave a comment this evening after a further post confirming the break-up wishing la Petite Anglaise good luck in her new life?

GRRRRRRRRR

I'm writing this post for the second time. Not Blogger's fault but mine for stupidly closing the win... oh what does it matter. Here we go again.

Does anyone know of a cheap and cheerful hotel in Montreal for my friend Deborah? She's not a blogger (yet) so I can't point you in the direction of her blog, but she is my most regular commenter and for this I am most grateful.

House update: Downstairs is almsot finished. Kitchen fitted, floor down, walls sanded, plastered and painted. All we need now is electricity.

Car update: Both in the garage today by coincidence one for elective surgery the other for emergency treatment. Total damage 740 Euros. Eeek!

Children update: Both royal pains in the ass due to lack of sleep and house upheaval. Much encouraged by comparing Antipodéesse's blog about her kids now and the one about their babyhood. It seems that naughty little children can turn out quite nice.

Work update: Spent entire day collating exam and continuous assessment marks for 450 students. Can't help thinking that this is a waste of time (read "my precious time and talent").

Travel update : Going to Pau for the weekend. 6th weekend in a row away from home. No wonder the poor kids are unbearable, they've lost their bearings.

Category: misc

Ipod or not ipod?

I have 100€ (a birthday prezzie) burning a hole in my pocket. I originally planned to put it towards an ipod. Now, kottke, the professional blogger, has a post on 50 things to do with your ipod but this is a little too advanced for me. I'm still at the do-I-really-need-one? stage. What do you think? Do I really, really need one? And if so which one? What do you do with yours?
Or maybe I'll just leave the dosh at the bottom of my underwear drawer and hope it makes babies so that I can buy a Powerbook.
[Note for potential burglars: that's not really where I keep it. We're talking virtual banknotes here.]
Category: ipods

Chain of thoughts

It's really hard to get back into blogging mode when you've been away for a while (or if you're feeling a bit down in the dumps like Nate or Andre.) I've had a blogging break for a few days while I went to that conference in Toulouse — massive anti-climax. Makes me wonder why I bother with these things. It would be easier just to write an article and send it off to a journal. Of course the theory is that you get lots of feedback and stimulation from other conference participants. (See Jill on the preparation of what sounds like a fantastic conference: Hypertext 05.) The conference I went to last week, or at least the workshop I spent most of my time in, was not at all like that. I wish I could say more about the plodding pedestrianism of most of what I listened to but the transparency of my URL prevents this (how could I have been so stupid to choose my REAL name as a URL?). By all accounts (well, J says anyway) the best thing was Michael Swan on good paedagogical rules but unfortunately I was trapped in another workshop while he was speaking. I didn't get to see Widdowson either. I did go to the plenary given by Iain Pears though and found it very entertaining - particularly his reference to his own "slash and burn" approach to French grammar. I bought one of his books afterwards and finished it on the train on the way to Brive to spend the end of the weekend in the Dordogne. The book turned out to be a bit of a disappointment (all plot and no style, not at all like his plenary). Back at the disembowled ranch, things are coming along, not exactly nicely but they're coming along. We now have a kitchen, but no electricity so we can't actually use any of those gleaming appliances. They're now putting the hardwood floor down in the living area. Must rush, I'm going to a seminar on cognitive linguistics in a moment. Roll on the intellectual stimulation because otherwise I'm going to spend the afternoon mentally planning where I'm going to put the furniture in my beautiful new house. Cognitive furniture moving.


Category: Misc

Nude cedars

nude cedars, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Definitely no time for a blog tonight but here's a photo instead. It's of nude cedars, or maybe naked cedars, I'm translating from the French. They're trees that don't actually have any leaves and apparently they're pretty rare. (If anyone knows how they do photosynthesis, please tell me) We saw some last week during our holidays. That was a terrible lie. I didn't actually see them because I stayed in the car with E who had fallen asleep. Oh and since you ask, no the article is not coming along nicely and the beautiful Ikea kitchen is still in bits on the floor.

is it that time already?

I have never, ever, ever been this badly prepared for giving a conference paper. Things have been ganging up against me:
1) The work in the house. We came back on Sunday to no electricity, no gas, no hot water. (Beautiful terracotta tiles in the empty kitchen though)
2) Holidays. I took a laptop with me to Moliets and never actually got round to taking it out of the bag. It was too sunny, the pool was too lovely, the wine was too plentiful, the company was too genial.
3) Children. Refuse to go to sleep at night. Can still be found prancing round their bedrooms at 11pm when they were tucked in two hours earlier.
4) Motivation. Lack thereof.
5) Other people’s blogs. I’m spending too much time catching up on all those interesting posts that have accumulated in my Bloglines account. Five minutes “before I get down to work” soon turns into “an hour and a half. Oops too late to do any work.”
So I’ll no doubt be scribbling a conclusion to my paper in the train to Toulouse on Friday morning. Here is the title “Scientific Biography: Text Revealing Context”. If you could all just write a page and send it to me, I could add an introduction about the postmodern way of writing articles collaboratively and in a trendy destructured non-narrative fashion……..

Category: conferences

Farniente

Farninete, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

A lot of time was spent by the pool with my brother and family fresh from Scotland drinking up the sun.

House in Moliets

House in Moliets, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Some of the houses in the Landes are quaint like this.

Atlantic coast

DSCN1638, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Just back from our holiday in the Landes: a region of endless sandy beaches and shady pine forests . Here is a photo of the Atlantic coast near Moliets.

It's Easter!

We have our Easter holiday late here in Bordeaux, and I'm going to be away for the next ten days or so. I don't think I'll be doing any blogging from where I'll be in the Landes département of France. The area is home to Europe's largest pine forest and miles nd miles of Atlantic coastline but I don't think you can get a mobile phone signal in a lot of places. So while you await my return why not try popping some bubblewrap, it's very therapeutic.

A successful failure

Would you cedit it? My very first ever blogging class (2nd year students of medicine, remember ?) had their last English class last week. With the vast majority of these students, blogging was a success and they made multiple posts over the 14-week course. Some of the posts were reponses to fairly directive assignments and some were spontaneous. So what did one student, Charlie: do this weekend ? Yes, he blogged, but the blighter blogged in French, proudly announcing :

"Jour historique : ce blog sera dé�sormais r�édig�é dans la langue de Moliè�re."

Do I count this as a success because he’s continuing to blog even after the end of the course or a failure because he no longer sees it as a means of improving his English ? Perhaps he never saw it as a means of improving his English. Perhaps he’s right.

PS. I left him a commet saying I would be taking 2 points off his continuous assessment mark. Hee hee.

PPS. That was a joke by the way.

Category: student blogging

OSX and Safari

I've had OSX and Safari on my computer for three days now and I've just realised how grotty this blog looks with that combination. With my old set-up I had nice regular-looking posts with photos on the right; the text had orderly straight left-hand margins. My archives, links, Furl menu etc. were marshalled down the right in a side bar. Now the text is centred (why?!) and the items from the sidebar have all fallen to the bottom of the page (why?!) with bullet points beside them (why?!) . Does everybody else see my blog that way too? Why are there such big differences in the ways different browsers present things? It's like buying a new mirror and realising, aghast, that the comfortable old face you felt quite happy about presenting to the world is actually lop-sided, covered in wrinkles and warts and sags to boot. This will probably really happen when we get our new bathroom but that's another story....

Category: blogging

Rive d'Arcins

Rive d'Arcins
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Yesterday, we went shopping at our local mega shopping centre Rive d'Arcins. The river Garonne runs along the back of the centre and is a nice quiet place to get away from the hordes of Saturday shoppers. As for the photo, well you can get down to the river, just not down this path.

The day the hard disk died

Yesterday evening my computer wouldn't boot up and started making those clunky-grinding noises again. Yikes....... I tried again, and again and again. All I was getting was that really irritating little box computer with the smiley face. Yikes, yikes, double yikes. I started to think about all the things that I had on the hard disk that I hadn't been able to save (CD burner malfunction) / had been too lazy to save. A whole year's worth of photos, mostly of the children. Could I ask them to put on last year's clothes again and pretend to be two and three year-olds? A load of marks that other teachers have sent me by e-mail and that I haven't got round to putting into Excel and handing in yet. Zillions of e-mails that I want to keep or still have to reply to etc. etc. etc; Slept badly. Brought it in to the friendly technicians at work today. It booted up immediately. I was torn between immeasurable relief and slight pique. The verdict however, is that the hard disk is very unwell and should be put out of its misery. So I've bought a new one and I'm also moving on to Mac OS X at last. Every cloud.
Other good news today : the very kind and generous Clair Mcmullen has given me one of her two free Flickr pro accounts. (She's got another to give away, so hurry on over there). So from now on I can snap and upload to my heart's delight. As soon as I get my heart-transplanted computer back that is.
Oh yes, other good news today, I've ordered a new kitchen from IKEA. Since I couldn't decide between contemporary and country I went for oak and stainless steel. Expect multiple photos of it on Flickr in the next month or so. Come back builders all is forgiven.

A Category: computing

Things I'd like to able to do to this blog

1. Put quotes into the framed boxes I see on some other blogs
2. Ping the blogs I refer to automatically
3. Have an archive by tag/category instead of date
4. Change the URL which is a little eh, non semi-privacy friendly (without losing the people who subscribe to me)



Category: TAG

Disenfranchised

I've just taken the ALL NEW! Political Survey which tells me where I stand in relation to the "rest" of the British population in terms of my political opinions. Depressingly, over 90% of Brits seem to be to my right. The results are probably skewed because not having lived in GB for many, many years, I don't really care about British taxes or the British rail system because they don't have any direct impact on my life. Stuart Mudie is in the same situation as me and has a post on this at Blethers.com. We're not qualified to vote in Britain because we haven't lived there for yonks and we can't vote here because we're not French citizens:

"In my case, I can vote in certain local elections in France (and was very excited to receive my first French polling card) but I cannot decide, for instance, whether or not Nicolas Sarkozy will be the next Président de la République."

Being able to vote in French elections is the only reason I would ever apply for French citizenship: I just can't see any other valid reason. It's not as if it would make me feel any more French or look like a born-and-bred Bordelaise or instantly lose my Scottish accent. Well, okay, I suppose it might be useful to have two passports just in case I mislaid one of them, or if I happened to be in a plane that was hijacked and the hijackers announced "Right, we're going to kill all the British passengers" at which point I would whip out my French passport and speak without a trace of an accent à la wide-mouthed frog. Anyway, here for what it's worth is what my political profile would be if I lived in Britain and if I was allowed to vote there:

Essendiéras

Essendiéras
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Had a refreshing weekend in the pure air of the Dordogne. We stayed in a chambre d'hôte on the Domaine d'Essendiéras near Excideuil. Especially enjoyed breakfast in the château. It's owned by Dutch people so you get that chocolate vermicelli they like to put on their bread in the morning.

Living on a building site

Living on a building site
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

There's dust on the camera lens, dust in the bed, dust in the kitchen, dust on my keyboard, dust in the upstairs toilet (not downstairs though because they've ripped that one out), dust in my morning coffee, dust liberally sprinkled over my clothes (people are too polite to mention it). I hope there's no dust in the childrens' lungs.

Impetus

I'm not too keen on the word "motivation" because it seems to me that we teachers use it lazily to cover a multitude of classroom woes without really knowing what we mean. But it seems that, like me, some of my old chums have been grappling with the whole problem of initiating and then maintaining blogging impetus (okay then, motivation by any other name).

Via Graham comes this link to the highly motivated hipteacher: "I love and adore using blogs with my students. In my experience, writing, revising and peer editing within the blog structure has particularly helped their writing skills. [...] Teenagers are so self-conscious, I find the lack of face-to-face contact adds dramatically to the strength and effectiveness of peer editing and review.

But Sarolta has had a somewhat different experience: "Unfortunately, I'm not very successful at making students blog. I took them to the computing lab three times, and they seemed to like it. The majority was proud of their blogs. However, the number of posts in their blogs is really small. I know that I should have demanded that they respected the deadlines for the individual posts. Instead I tried to attract them to writing by giving them a reason to write. Obviously, this wasn't a good idea. It's difficult to motivate students if they are not motivated themselves."

And Rita Zeinstejer thinks about teacher impetus "I found that, even when the members in this group had joined it out of their own will to learn about blogging, it was my duty to keep the ball rolling [...] above all, it was me who needed to stay motivated !!"

I think I've been through all three of these phases. Wildly enthusiastic about blogging to begin with, which I must have communicated to my first class of students because they're still blogging away madly. Then, I got a new group with a more sluggish dynamic and they're not so motiv.....eh regular in their blogging, and this overlapped with a dip in my own blogging zippiness. I have no answers. You can't MAKE students write enthusiastic posts and you can't force yourself to post when you don't think you've got anything interesting to say. (You can, however, drivel on for hours on end on other days when you really don't have anything interesting to say. Nuff said?)

Brick Wall

Despite comments (and I still get a massive kick out of seeing a comment on this blog) sometimes blogging feels like talking to a brick wall. It's been ages now since the EVO weblogging course came to an end and somehow I miss the camaraderie of learning about the same things at the same time. I still follow all my ex-classmates blogs almost daily (although I have weeded out a few of the inactive ones) but it's not quite the same. We have all branched out and are talking about the things we're really interested in, not the common problems and discoveries. The upheaval of the past few weeks — due to real brick walls being demolished in the house — has meant that I haven't actually been at home to participate in the Sunday evening sessions and I miss that synchronous contact too. It has made me realise how motivating it is for my students to do the same task on their blogs at the same time and then visit each other's blogs to provide that all-important feedback. More on my students blogs in the next post if I haven't drowned under all of that (non-metaphorical) brick dust by then.
Category: blogging

Ominous Clunking

I haven't had time to blog recently. A lot of last week was spent under my quilt sweating out the flu.(Do people still call them continental quilts?) Apparently the epidemic is now eleven weeks old and most epidemics run for twelve weeks. I got the tail end and so did the kids but we're all out of our sick beds now. I went straight from bed to translation booth for a conference on fish which was mildly interesting. Unfortunately my voice sounded as if I had scales on the inside of my throat. Then home to catch up on some work that had been accumulating on the computer. Some weeks ago one of my angelic children inserted something metallic into the CD-drive of my i-mac. This has happened before and just means I can't use the CD-drive until said object is removed. However, this weekend the computer started making some extremely ominous clunking, grinding, gnashing sounds and slooooowed down considerably. So I rushed it in to work this morning where the kind technician performed the extraction (a 20 cent coin). Greatly relieved I brought it home this evening. Ah, yes, home. Home had in the space of a day and a surprise visit from the builders become a pathetic shell. Two walls pulled down, all the furniture stuffed away in unlikely places, no telly, dust everywhere and wet plaster on the walls. It's going to be like this for at least six weeks. The children wandered around the "site" asking "where are the sofas, where can we sit down?" Oh well, I thought, we may not have a living room but at least there'll be no distractions and I'll be able to get on top of that backlog of work this evening. So I turned my precious i-mac on and clunk, click, grind, glink. It looks as if, just like the builders, the noise is here for the foreseeable future. Category: life

10 Things meme

I saw this on SaneScientist and he saw it on The Kaptain Kobold Blog
The idea is that I tell you ten things that I've done and that I don't think any of the people who read this blog will have done. If I'm wrong, you leave me a comment to correct me and I have to delete the item in question and add another one to replace it. It's taken me absolutely ages to think of these ten things and they become increasingly pathetic as the list goes on. Unfortunately, some of them come across as boastful because one tends not to mention the events in one's life that were excrutiatingly cringe-inducing (but I have anyway). Nevertheless, I think it might be a good way to get some of my students blogging interactively. Here we go:
1. I have lived on an island in the Inner Hebrides.
2. I have dislocated my knee on a hockey field and on a volleyball court.
3. I have been simultaneous interpreter for two ex-prime-ministers of France
4. I have had an extremely painful massage from a wrestler in a Turkish hammam.
5. I have been trekking in Nepal.... and developed a dental abcess half-way up a mountain.
6. I have tasted sanguette: that's blood poured straight into the frying pan from a chicken's severed neck.
7. I have been finalist in the Scottish schools public speaking contest.
8. I have driven 200 km on the motorway with one of those roofracky boxes on the wrong way round.
9. I have spent a night on a bench in Waterloo station because I missed my train.(Deleted: Alan Saunders did same in Euston)
10.I have been on a plane that returned to its point of departure because...the windscreen wipers weren't working.

11. I have seen the other side of the Lascaux 2 cave paintings (ie. raw fibreglass)

Category: meme

70

I couldn't let the day go by without saying that my Dad would have been seventy today. He died in 1994 when he was 59 and there was so much living left to do.

Category: life

I'm Gandhi. Who are you?

Here's another quiz: "Which Movie Hero Are You?" Frankly, I'm a little disappointed to discover I'm Gandhi, I was going for someone a little more rock n' roll.



(In the name of research for my English for Medicine classes, I also tried the "Have you got Syphilis?" quiz on the same site, modesty, however, prevents me from recommending it.)

Category: tests

Time (Mis)management

I'm rubbish at managing my time. Today my Mum arrived for a short stay and I spent over six hours (SIX HOURS!!!!) cleaning the house before she saw it. Of course it took that long because I (=we) had let it get out of hand. So now it's mostly clean and the piles of papers that were in the living room are now piles of papers behind the closed door of my study (along with piles of baby clothes that I hesitate between keeping for ever and ever and e-baying mercilessly for a quick euro). The question of time management has come up on a couple of other blogs I've been reading. First of all chez jill/txt � who has a great list of suggestions which I have shamelessly pasted below with a couple of omissions:

1. At start of week, write down what needs to be done before next Monday
2. Prioritise ruthlessly. Absolute necessities get done first. Accept that many things won’t get done. Learn difference between what must be done and what doesn’t really need to be done.
3. Own research is an absolute necessity, but should get carved into blocks of time that probably don’t coincide with teaching.
4. Only check email once a day.
5. Learn to be realistic about how much time things actually take.
6. Prep next Monday’s lecture before Friday
7. Never complain about having too much to do. Just say no to new tasks.

And then on incorporated subversion » Knowledge Workers - academia and the Google 20% there was this:

"us in ol’ academia have been working on the 40:40:20 rule for some time now where 40% is teaching, 40% research and 20% admin… "

Ha-ha-ha. That sounds like a man rule. If only it were as simple as that. And what happens on weeks like this when you have a sick child at home, or the weeks when you just can't be bothered with the admin stuff, or the months when you just have so much teaching that it's hard enough to find time to go to the boulangerie and buy some bread never mind think about research? Time management is impossible because time is slippery and tasks slither through the interstices of timetables.

Toulouse

Back from the GERAS (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherche en Anglais de Spécialité) congress in Toulouse. I didn't take these photos but this is more or less how the "ville rose" looked at the end of last week.

Sunny evening in Toulouse
A good time was had by all. The Friday evening banquet took place not on the Garonne as planned (too high due to snow melting in the Pyrenees) but on the Canal du Midi. At one point we passed over the autoroute.
I saw the following:
*Maurizio Gotti on "Legal Discourse in Multilingual, Multicultural Contexts"
*David Little on "Learner Autonomy and ESP"
*A round table discussion on "Quelle Place pour l'anglais en France dans l'espace européen d'enseignement supérieur."
*Paul Seabright on "The English language Dominance of Economics : issues for pedagogy and public policy"
*Bernard Cotnoir on "Le e-Portfolio (ou cyberfolio) en tant qu'outil d'apprentissage des langues."
*Anne-Marie Methy on "L'Utilisation du Portfolio Européen des langues"
*Jean Soubrier on "Langue de spécialité et cultures nationales"
*John Humbley on "Termes techniques et marqueurs d'argumentation: pour débusquer l'argumentation dans les articles de recherche"


The old tobacco factory, now the law and social sciences faculty where the conference took place.


Category: ESP

Memory

I worry about my memory. A post on Medical Humanities about a lecture by Bill Bryson at the Royal Society mentioned his most recent book 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' Ah yes, I thought, I read that last year. Very interesting. Lots of fascinating information about the origin of the planet, astronomy, the animal world, nearly everything in fact. Things like..... em, well you know, facts and amusing anecdotes. The thing is I can't remember a single one. The book is a good 300 pages long and took me a couple of weeks to read and I can't remember a single factoid. Except one, that is that the blue whale has a tongue that weighs as much as an elephant, a heart as big as a small car and blood vessels that we could stand up in*. I'm pretty sure the reason I remember this useless, but you must agree astounding, information is that I regurgitated it verbatim at a dinner party while it was still in my short/medium term memory. (I can't quite remember who was at the dinner party nor where it was, but that's probably alcohol-related rather than neuron-degeneration-related). This confirms a lot of the theory on language learning which holds that it's not enough just to teach a language point, lexical item, grammatical structure etc, you must then create the conditions for the learner to use it and recycle it. Teaching is all about spiralling.
Two other memory related events yesterday and today. The first was listening to Leila Shahid talk on France Inter about her mother's memoir of Jerusalem in the 20s and 30s in which she writes "Il est important, me semble-t-il, de préserver la mémoire de ces jours disparus; en effet, l'espoir d'un avenir meilleur ne peut se nourrir que d'une vraie connaissance du passé." The irony is that Sirine Husseini Shahid now suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. Which brings me to event number two. In class, one of my "students",Pascale, a lecturer in epidemiology, today presented research demonstrating the protective effect of eating fish against developing AD. Of course, the consumption of fish is associated with a lot of other confounding factors such as higher socio-economic status etc. I wonder if blue whale counts as fish?

*That was a lie. I didn't actually remember the exact information, just that bits of a blue whale are as big as some very big things. I obviously don't do enough recycling at dinner parties. Fortunately, my intellectual capacities still run to looking "whale" up in an index.

Category: memory

Typing Test

If this doesn't work (there's java script), just click on the title of this post to go to the site. I made 46 w.p.m. What about you?

typing test (c) CalculatorCat.com

Category: tests

Birthday Prezzies

I was born on 14th March, the same day as Albert Einstein.

My lovely presents

Silver earrings
CD: Adam Green : Gemstones
CD: Luz Casal : Sencilla
Book: : Richard Wolheim - Germs
Book: Jennie Erdal - Ghosting
Book: Karen Joy Fowler - The Jane Austen Book Club
And some €s, maybe to buy that Ipod? Excuse me while I peruse the Apple site.

Category: life

Oyster beds at Cap Ferret

Oyster beds at Cap Ferret
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

A warmish sunny day — the first for weeks, or at least that's how it feels. We escaped from home where workmen are busy banging away in the attic and went to Cap Ferret. And now it's back to dust and disruption but there's a new floor in the attic.

Better brains to process mundane minutiae

First the good news : Zack in Blogging Begets Better Brains reports on an neurolearning blog written by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide who recently posted a piece on the Brain of the Blogger. He summarises the key points)

"1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction."

And now here's the bad news. A recent article in the TLS reproduced by Grumpy Old Bookman comments on the relationship between blogs and writing printed on that stuff, what's it called again? oh yes, paper :

"it is notable that, while literary blogs feed off print culture, print culture is barely nourished by blogs ... Bloggers have the advantage of universality, but are casulaties of transience. The signs are that they pine for the permanence of print."

While TalkLeft reports that anti-bloggers think it's just a passing phase we're going through.

"Critics, though, view all the fuss about blogs as the latest bout of Internet hyperbole, one that will eventually fade away once readers realize they are rife with inaccuracies and mundane minutiae."

Personally it's the mundane minutiae I read for.

Category: metablogging

Sharing .... or then again not

jill/txt enthuses over CiteULike:

"CiteULike is like del.icio.us except for academic papers. You create an account (free), drag a bookmarklet to your toolbar and henceforth, every time you encounter an interesting looking paper online you click your CiteULike bookmark instead of (or as well as) your del.icio.us bookmark."

I can see the possibilities of this but I can't see how one can possibly share everything with everyone. My pointer still hovers over all those little bookmarklets each time I come across something interesting. Blog it? Furl it? Technorati it? del.icio.us it? or Flickr it (if it's a photo I want to "recycle"?)

Music is easier. I can't remember where I read about this but the blogger in question thought it was woooonderful. I can't imagine anything worse than other people knowing what sort of music I'm listening to, and I certainly don't want to contact any of the people who are listening to the same things: I like my friends to have taste. But some of you more discerning listeners might like it: Audioscrobbler

"Audioscrobbler is a computer system that builds up a detailed profile of your musical taste. After installing an Audioscrobbler Plugin, your computer sends the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler Server. With this information, the Audioscrobbler server builds you a 'Musical Profile'. Statistics from your Musical Profile are shown on your Audioscrobbler User Page, available for everyone to view."

Moleskines

For many years I thought that the word moleskine referred only to the sort of trousers my brother wore for outdoor sporting pursuits made from a soft, downy material. Then, like the rest of the world, I discovered that the word also refers to the very specific sort of notebook used to the exclusion of all others by Bruce Chatwin. These notebooks are no longer manufactured by the original French maker but by Italians. Still, no discerning/pretentious traveller would leave home without one. I seem to have come across a lot of writing about moleskines recently. First there was Izzy's admission in Undisclosed Location: It's all about love: that she rearranges them in shops

"I spent a minute or two yesterday organizing the Moleskine display at Barnes & Noble. Just like I still do with Macs whenever I see them in stores, I made sure everything was in the right place. Instead of cleaning up desktops and getting demos running again, however, I was making sure all of the different varieties were clearly visible and grouped together."

Then I came across Le Moleskine à Beleg a blog published by a student in Bordeaux with extracts from his moleskine. He participates in the Wandering Moleskine Project weblog. But best of all was a crit in the TLS which quotes Michael Bywater in his book "Lost Worlds: :

"Let us get this straight", says Bywater
1: The Moleskine of Chatwi is lost.
2: The new Moleskine is a different thing, its autheniticity fatally compromised by its insistence on authenticity.
3: The original Moleskine was not a carefully marketed designer brand. "Moleskine was just a generic waterproof cover.
4: And anyway, it was just a fucking notebook. Ça va?

I'd like to see some good digital Moleskines though. Not the scanned paper ones which you'd rather touch anyway, but original "carnets de route" type collages with some writing and photos and authentic web-scavenged artefacts.

Category: travel

This is a Service Announcement

I've just uninstalled Haloscan. I discovered that not only had it "hidden" all of the old Blogger comments but that it was also going to "hide" all of the Haloscan comments in four months' time unless I take out premium membership. It just wasn't worth it for the clunky trackback feature. So I stuck the original template back in (Haloscan had kept it saved it for me, that was nice) and have laboriously pasted all (ten!) Haloscan comments into the Blogger comments, but had to post them as "anonymous". So, apologies to Aaron, Sarolta, Vivi, et al. However, if you want to see the original comments for the last post with the original signatures just click on the title of this post.
Category: Blog tools

TEFL Priorities

At some point over the past few weeks I stumbled across a cluster of blogs written by young English-speakers in France (they mostly call themselves expats, but don't get me started on that). There's one that I particularly like called Dispatches from France I think it probably vaguely reminds me of my own first few months in France discovering and adapting to all the idiosyncracies of French life that now seem almost normal. Anyway, Vivi, the American who writes this blog hopes she's going to get a job as an English trainer in a language school. She's had an interview but the language-school owner has told her she will :

"absolutely have to brush up on English grammar. [...] He pointed out the in the states and UK, English grammar isn't taught in the same way that it is when it's taught as a second language. Because these students have studied English intensively, they understand the basics of English grammar better than many Americans or any other Anglophones do - because we take it for granted. Sure, we know that 'If I knew, I wouldn't have come' is not as good as 'If I had known, I wouldn't have come,' but can you explain why? Herein lies the problem."

This makes my hair stand on end: dispensing grammar explanations is not what teaching English is all about My own teaching career (did I just say that?) started in a now defunct private school here in Bordeaux, and although in my experience most private language schools are run by crooks, I have to admit that working for them is often the only way for a young English-speaker to get a first job in France. However, it's also a good way to be exploited mercilessly — dodgy contracts, unpaid salaries, off-the-wall paedagogical practices. Now if you had a prospective English teacher come and see you, what would you advise them to do? Order a few grammar textbooks? I deal every day with dozens of students who've had English grammar drummed into them for years and years and they still can't use the language in any meaningful way. There are many effective and creative ways of helping learners get to grips with English, none of which involve the ingurgitation of whole grammar books. One of the most important principles is to help the student become an autonomous learner. If someone asks you why you say 'If I had known, I wouldn't have come,' (which they won't here because it's exactly the same structure in French), the best response is to show them how to look the structure up in a good grammar book, or even better how to use the web as a concordancer, or search for an explanation on one of the many English learning sites (very like showing a hungry man how to fish..) I suspect I sound insufferably pompous and patronising (not to mention old)and I don't want to finish on that tetchy note. Vivi, I'm sure that your web savvy, your writing skills (respect on both counts!) and your drama experience will be much more useful to you in teaching EFL than memorizing a grammar book. There's a great big wonderful world of creative EFL paedagogy and didactics out there, it's just that lots of private language schools don't even know it exists. Hey, lots of us are even exploring the possibilities of BALL (Blog Assisted Language Learning).
Category: TEFL

Metablogging?

I thought I'd write a post on blogging about blogging and how it's all right for perhaps eight weeks or so (is it already eight weeks since I started the EVO weblogging course?) and in an anticipated moment of real insight I was going to point out that the exercise becomes a little stale and circular after that (probably well before that). I thought I'd be clever and instead of entitling the post "Blogging about Blogging" decided I'd call it "Metablogging" which I quickly googled to find out whether or not I'd just coined a new word and maybe even a whole new philosophical concept. It turns out, as you no doubt already know (in fact the chances are that you have already blogged about it yourself) that there are thousands and thousands of blog posts on metablogging. This, I suppose, is really just blogging about blogging about blogging. As I sifted through all those google hits it quickly became clear that a lot of the old hands at blogging are a little impatient with this recurrent introspection. Here for example is Alexander Payne on the subject: "Can I just say that if I want to know why you blog that I’ll go to your “about” page, which you should have so I don’t have to read daily why you blog? And that if you’re frequently writing about why you blog that it becomes abundantly clear that you blog because you have too much free time?" I can see his point, imagine if all novels were about writing a novel, or all television programmes about making television programmes. Although to be fair (to myself) my own metablogging wasn't so much about why I blog as about how I blog (added this feature, tried blogging with this browser, changed this and that). So my resolution is stop metablogging and start some real contentblogging (mmm, let me just google that).
Category: metablogging

Furling

I've finally got round to adding a Furl list to the sidebar (look to the right, it's towards the bottom somewhere). I have been happily furling web pages for a few weeks now and hadn't quite realised what a heteroclitic collection I had accumulated. Some of the archived pages are articles on subjects on which I'm currently collecting information for future articles (scientific biography and Alison Cunningham), others link to tools that might be useful for translation purposes (I do some simultaneous interpreting), and others to web sites that might be useful in my teaching. I can see that this might become addictive. I could easily let the archived pages pile up out of control into an unreadable heap. A friend at work today told me about his mother who lives in a house that has fifteen tables in the living room, piles and piles of newspapers everywhere, junk from jumble sales covering every available surface and cats stumbling from one feeding station to the next gobbling up morsels of pig's kidney. Oh well, at least my furl archive doesn't actually take up any physical space and it doesn't need feeding either (not until they make it a paying service that is).

Unreal

Isn't this great!
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

I "created" the message on this photo at www.letterjames.de then e-mailed it to my flickr account.

PowerPoint v blogging

I'm interested in the ways in which the use of PowerPoint orients and modifies the rhetoric of scientific oral communication. There was an excellent programme about this on BBC Radio 4 recently in which they did a spoof of Churchill's "We will fight them on the beaches" speech. "We will fight them on [hits the keyboard and bullet point n° one whooshes in] beaches. We will also be fighting them on the [hits keyboard again, second bullet point appears] landing grounds." etc. (If anyone has a recording of the programme please let me know, it's disappeared from the BBC's online archive). Anyway, here is a business blogger's take on blogging v. PowerPoint Brand Autopsy: "I’ve been blogging for just over a year now and besides keeping my marketing mind sharp, blogging has helped me sharpen my writing skills. (Or so I think.) The years of writing in succinct bullet-points for PowerPoint decks adversely impacted my writing. Blogging, albeit informal in nature, has helped me to improve my writing skills. And as a result of writing more, I’m finding myself using PowerPoint less and less in business situations."