Catch up

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.