Free

Schoolteachers were on strike today along with most other French public sector workers. I didn't have any classes so I didn't have to decide whether or not to down tools. This meant, however, that when the postman rang the doorbell this morning and thrust an intriguing cardboard box into my hands, three pairs of curious eyes sized it up. Yes, the kids were spending the day at home. It turned out to be the Freebox I had ordered last week. Four eyes wandered away to get up to other mischief. Mine perused the instructions.

You try configuring a Freebox (I'm sorry, I have no idea what the equivalent is in English, someone please help me) while two unsupervised under-fives run wild finding new and exciting things to do in/to the house, whilst beating each other up at five-minute intervals.

Anyway, it works. My PowerBook now has an internet connection. My phonecalls within France are completely free and I have a load of free TV channels many in languages I do not recognise. The number of English-speaking channels has been multiplied by five or six depending on whether you count God TV or Bloomberg, but hey I also get BBC World (hoorah) and SKY News (shudder). Unfortunately we also seem to get a whole swathe of sports channels. I wonder if I could hide them somehow.

That was the good news. The bad news is that using the Freebox means that I can no longer use the modem connection on my other computer. The telephone doesn't actually work yet, apparently that takes up to 72 hours. And when it does we'll have two different lines which seems a bit confusing. Also, the images on the TV are what can only be described as staccato. Or jerky if you prefer. Oh yes, and I'm getting incoming mail but I can't send any. I have no idea why.

So, all in all, I think we can say that this constitutes another resounding success in our series of home improvement projects. Oh, and just wait until next week when I get the Wifi card.

Category: Freebox

Annular Solar Eclipse

DSCN2126.JPG
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Sorry folks but this was the best I could do. I did try taking the photo through an old x-ray but the spark from the flash melted the cellulose in a rather frightening way.

Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation: I discovered this site ages ago and have just found it again in my Furl archive. (Why did I choose Furl and not Del-icio-us, by the way?)

"What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? "

Today I fed it what I take to be the take-home message from "Broken Flowers", the latest Jim Jarmusch film and it came up with this:

"The experience more, must come the future propping therefore very those that we are the gift that we have."

Can you guess what the original sentence was before it was mashed up through five sequential translations? (I can feel a classroom application coming on here...)

Let me tell you why I don’t like Wednesdays

A very long time ago, somebody thought that it would be a good idea to give all little French children a day off school on a Thursday. This, so that the week would be cut in two and the little "têtes blondes" wouldn’t become overtired. At some point, perhaps in the seventies, for some reason, Thursday off became Wednesday off. Then, gradually, as more and more parents started to spend weekends at home rather than at work and wanted to spend some of that leisure time with their children, Saturday also became a non-school day and "la semaine de quatre jours" was born. Theoretically, the children who don’t go to school an a Saturday morning have slightly shorter holidays than those who do and nobody seems to mind this. What nobody, ever ever calls into question, however, is the sacrosanct "jour des enfants" - a day originally intended to be spent chilling out at home in a post-second-world-war sort of way. Only it is no longert a relaxing day of rest at all, at least not in our house, and I don't think we're particulalry atypical. For us, it’s more of a running-around-like-chickens-with-their-heads-cut-off sort of day.

If you both work, you obviously have to find some sort of alternative childcare solution for a Wednesday, a complicated task if you don't have grandparents on the doorstep. This is how, a couple of weeks ago, I came to spend over three hours queuing to sign my four-year-old up for a kids’ club with a really good reputation and a very long waiting list. I got him in. He then sobbed inconsolably when I left him on the first two Wednesdays he had to spend there. His little sister, meanwhile goes to her old childminder’s since we felt starting nursery and doing something unfamiliar on a Wednesday all in the same month would be a bit much for a three-year-old to cope with. Neither of these arrangements is free, far from it.

“Aha” I hear you say, “but if you didn’t work, your children would be happy little bunnies playing contentedly at home all day on a Wednesday with you, their paragon stay-at-home mum devising on-tap creative activities and leading occasional cultural outings.” Perhaps. But I don’t think so. Some working mums I know do manage not to work on a Wednesday. From what I see, Wednesdays are the days that mums (why is it almost always the mums?) spend ferrying children from music lessons to judo, from fencing classes to soft play, from ballet to swimming. It’s also the day to which all medical appointments and the like are relegated and some of the hothoused kids are even treated to extra maths lessons.

Since Wednesday is a no-school day it is also birthday party day which is how I came to organise my schedule today so that I could rush back from work at lunchtime to pick Z up, drive him across town, drop him off at a birthday party, kill two hours while he worked on his sugar high, pick him up and drive him and his little friend back into town and arrive just in time to pick little sister up from the childminder’s.

This evening, we’re definitely not refreshed. Roll on Thursday.

Category: Mercredi

Extraordinarily famous blogger

That's me. We were at a party last night (actually, we were at the prolongation of a birthday party our children had been to bacause that's the only sort of party we get invited to nowadays), a couple we know asked, "Hey, Lesley, est-ce que tu as un blog?" Turns out they'd arrived at this here humble blog via a search that threw up a photo I'd posted of oyster beds at Cap Ferret. I'll have to watch what I say in future.

And now for something completely different. Here, via Marco (again) is another political chart. You've got to pretend you're American to do this one. Perhaps unsursprisingly, my profile is very like Marco's and that of all the other people I've seen post this on their blogs. So, next time someone asks me about my politics, I'll tell them I'm somewhere near the bottom right-hand corner.

You are a Social Liberal (68% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (10% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Three Things

I. Make your own stamps. Another amusing thing to do with your flickr photos.This photograph is of a place called Hostens, south of Bordeaux.

Do it at Framer
Via SoWeirdProductions
____________________

II. And here's a quote P. pointed out to me yesterday:
"Selon Pierre Sansot, le pérégrination serait une forme de sagesse. Celle de l'effort, de la modestie et de la rencontre."
("According to Pierre Sansot, peregrination is a sort of wisdom — the wisdom of effort, modesty ad meetings.")
____________________

III And finally, here via Profgrrrl is the fifth sentence meme:
"Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to)
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions."

So here's mine: ".....they all have lives outside of the English classroom."

Must try to remember this. Wish I'd added "interesting" before lives.

PowerBookBaby

2.1 kg of loveliness. We're bonding. Please come back later
Category: PowerBook

If

If:

1) your little boy had sobbed his heart out and clung to you like a koala would you have left him at the kids' club anyway?

2) your Powerbook had been dispatched on Saturday, wouldn't you expect to be cuddling up with it by now?

3) you were putting a drier in the garage, would you get the sort that pumps damp air out into the garage or one that costs more but condensates that moist air?

4) you had watched twelve episodes of Six Feet Under over three evenings, would you expect to be in a slightly morbid state of mind for the rest of the week?

5) overnight, your pink i-pod mini suddenly became yesterday's big thing, would you feel totally untrendy in every compartment of your life?

6) a bloggers' apéritif was being planned in the town where you live, would you be tempted to go along, even if you didn't know anyone?

Category: questions

Gender Genie

Does my voice sound husky to you? Do I talk like a man? Is my tone anything less than feminine? Have you ever been in any doubt as to my sex? No, no, no, I hear you cry. Well, not so the Gender Genie whose algorithms obviously have a major hormone problem. On the evidence of two recent blog posts which I fed into it in my usual womanly way, it concludes that there is a very high chance that I am male.

"Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine,
The Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author"

Try it for yourselves, then reassure me (because we girls need lots of reassurance).

Via: Allan Jenkins

Spend, spend, spend

I'm on a spending high. This week several goodies have arrived in the post, namely:

Lost In Translation : watched last night and now back on sale on Ebay.fr.

Six Feet Under - The Fourth Season: Please, please go to sleep children so that we can watch at least two episodes tonight.

A couple of books on:National Identity Perhaps goodies isn't quite the right word for them (and to be absolutely honest I can't actually remember ordering the second one which came from a little bookseller in Springfield, USA) but they will be useful, I hope. And, wait for it....

Yesterday, I ordered a 12'' Powerbook from Apple, as well as a washing machine and a drier (unfortunately not from Apple). I'd like to linger lustfully over the words at the beginning of that sentence and just mumble the rest. Guess which I enjoyed putting in my basket most.
Don't you just love spending money online? No fighting through Saturday afternoon shoppers to see the display model. No unwelcome advice from incompetent sales staff. No queuing at the cash desk. No hard sell for the extended warranty. And you can do it late at night after a few glasses of wine, when values in Euros and Francs meld into one, and budget priorities seem trivial (I'm justifying the Powerbook here, not the washing machine by the way). And after all that's not real money they take, is it?
Is it?

Category: online buying

Chestnuts

Chestnuts
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Borrowed three CDs from our excellent médiathèque his evening:

Al Stewart: Year of the Cat
Bob Dylan : Blonde on Blonde
Simon & Garfunkel : The Graduate

How did my musical taste get stuck quite so far in the distant past? What should I borrow next time to get me out of this time warp?


Category: music

Low resolution

Making new year's resolutions in September may seem a little strange, as Sarah* points out but, believe me, when your life is organised according to the academic year, it really is the only time that anything is ever going to change. After October, we're caught up in a demented rush of teaching, class preparation, meetings, conferences etc. so there's no time for innovation or change. Anyway, here, for what it's worth, is my non-exhaustive list of things that need improvement:

I will not
write down what I did in class on scraps of paper which then disappear and only turn up as screwed up paper mâché at the bottom of my bag weeks later.
I will
buy a(nother) nice new exercise book and keep accurate records of class activities so that I don't have to keep asking students: "Are you sure we haven't already done this?", "As I may already have told you..." etc. ( I may have to think about a similar system for dinner party conversations)

I will not
spend ten minutes in the middle of each class scrabbling around at the bottom of aforementioned bag looking for a marker pen that works so that I can write a vital item of vocab on the board.
I will
lobby for the purchase of new interactive whiteboards for our department (and pigs will hit the stratosphere around about the same time they actually appear.

I will not
take the car to work a) because there is a perfectly good tram line that we are currently paying for, apparently singlehandedly, through our local taxes b) parking is now prohibitively expensive c) because it will do me good to walk a bit d) I now take the children to one place not two and it's on my way to work, so that excuse has been blown**.
I will
therefore be consistently late for any important rendez-vous such as the exam I was administering yesterday — it took me fifty minutes to get from one part of the universtiy to another by tram and bus, a journey that would have taken twelve or so minutes by car.

I will never, ever
consult my Bloglines account while at work, not even at lunchtime.
I will
only read online articles from scholarly journals, and preferably only articles with titles I don't understand (and will therefore spend all free time at home reading blogs without feeling guilty.)

How much more time do you have?............

* I've just discovered that I can't link to my own comments box so you'll have to look for what Sarah said, all on your own. Sorry
** Update on the playpiece dilemma. It turns out that mid-morning snacks are now forbidden in shools as part of France's fight against childhood obesity. It is considered far healthier for a three-year-old child to go for five hours with nothing to eat.

Category: resolutions

False Pretences

I spent yesterday evening wandering around Bergerac looking for a place to eat and wondering where all of the English people had come from. There were noisy families with kids on all of the café terraces, couples aimlessly pushing buggies around the old town, old biddies collapsed on stone benches, young couples looking at restaurant menus and beer bellies queuing for baguette sandwiches. Then it dawned on me: low cost flights from Stansted to Bergerac. Ryanair has a lot to answer for.

I wonder how many hits the last couple of sentences will lead to. I feel a little guilty about the Google search that seems to bring most people to this site. It is "w*ords per m*inute t*est". I've added the asterisks so as not to disappoint even more budding secretaries. I imagine their dismay when they end up on this drivelling blog site instead of the efficient gauge of dactylographical skills they were looking for. Needless to say, they don't hang around for long.

On the drivel front, it seems that the academic year has started. The children have just finished their FIRST week of nursery which has been a great success ie. we managed to get them there on time every day. No seriously, they both had a great time and no tears. I went into work for the FIRST time to prepare for my FIRST class on Monday morning (almost tears). I've done my FIRST interpreting job since the holiday, hence the unfettered visit to Bergerac. And I've made my FIRST list of resolutions for the new year. Bring it on, I'm ready.

Category: google hits

Disorientation

Have you noticed that more and more blog sites recognise who you are and greet you with cosy messages in the side bar?
"Welcome Ashley Megral, You can help the marketing drive/ war effort / eliminate poverty, click here to donate."
The other day I clicked on a blog that not only knew my name but also told me how I could meet other singles in Pessac-sur-Dordogne.
Pessac-sur-Dordogne? I have no idea where that is, probably not very far from here because I'm quite near Pessac and I'm not too far from the Dordogne (river and département). I'm sure the village must exist.... Oh, okay then hold on and I'll google it. .............
Just as I thought. Village about 75km from here with a population of 475. ( I suspect that most single people in Pessac-sur-Dordogne are octogenarians and certainly nothing like the fictitious, nubile young things in the photographs I was invited to click on, but that's another issue.)
My question is: how did the blog get the idea that that is where I live? My computer is obviously sending out the wrong message, and the wrong longitude and latitude to boot. To check this, I went to someone else's sitemeter and looked for myself. Yup, the rest of the blogging world thinks I live in a village I had never heard of until yesterday. Can anyone tell me how to rectify this? Is this info set by my ISP or by me?
If you'd like to know whether or not your computer is disoriented too, click on the N° of visitors in my sidebar, then click on details and then click on the first in the list (that should be you).


"You can help Category: longitude and latitude

The end is nigh.

Monkey boy, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

This is our last weekend of relative freedom. The children go back to nursery school, or in E's case start nursery school, next week. I don't think I'm ready.

How on earth will we manage to get two comatose bodies up washed and dressed at 7H30 when they wake up naturally at 9H30? I can't find the indelible pen I need to write their names in their clothes. I haven't bought anything to give them for their mid-morning snack - what they call their goüter and what kids in Scotland call (used to call?) their playpiece.

My own Mum was pretty health conscious for her time and our playpiece was often a couple of digestive bisuits or a piece of bread spread with some Dairylea cheese, or maybe a shiny apple. My brother and I ate these wholesome offerings surreptitiously in a corner while our luckier classmates scoffed packets of crips and curly wurlies (remember them?) washed down with cremola foam. So now, for my own children, I try to go for the healthy, but not conspiciously healthy, snack - not an easy task.

In France, nursery school is called "La Maternelle", undoubtedly because getting little children there in a presentable state is so much work and worry for their mummies.

Secret reading

Conversation at the park.

S: Did you do any reading over the summer?
Me: Yes, loads.
[My mind goes completely blank and I can't remember the titles or authors of any of the many books I've read over the past couple of months. All I can remember is the title of a book I vaguely remember reading last year]
Me: I read "Le Secret" by that author, you know...... it's the story of a Jewish boy growing up during the war, and there's a secret in his past.
[I realise that I can't remember a single thing about the plot or the characters in "Le Secret"].
Me: Maybe the author's name was Levy. Not Marc Levy but another Levy.
S: Maybe.
Silence.
S. returns to reading the latest Le Clézio.

The book I was grasping for is actually entitled "Un Secret" and it was written by Philippe Grimbert. I thoroughly recommend it but I have no recollection of why, as unfortunately although Amazon.fr was able to provide the title and author, it doesn't provide a synopsis that might similarly jog my memory.

Category: books

Alter Ego

If ...when...I change the url of this blog I'm going to call myself Ashely Megral. Why? Because it's an anagram of my real name. If you'd like to create your own nom de plume, pop over to Jean Véronis' Technologies du Langage: Récré: Générez vos noms de plume. On second thoughts, maybe Hally Greesam is more me, or should that be less me? What about Sheryl Lagame then?

Another nifty thing to do with Flickr

magazine-image, originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Make your own Magazine Cover

PS. I lied about the "to do" list. I can do that because I am still on holiday.

Category: fun tools

Done, doing, to do.

My brain is still in holiday mode so you're not going to get anything more than a glorified list for this post (who am I kidding, my brain is always in holiday mode). Okay then, maybe two glorified lists.

Things I forgot to tell you I'd done on holiday:
1. Went to Gretna Green for the very first time - a bit like Las Vegas but with pipers and tartan and without the fun.
2. Happened upon the Gala Day in Gatehouse of Fleet and listened to a one-man band play some rocking Proclaimers, Status Quo etc. covers
3. Went to Edinburgh for the day ON MY OWN to consult a 19th Century manuscript for a paper I'm giving in October. Phoned the library the day before to make sure it would be open and they didn't need advance notice for the MS. No problem on either count said the wee man who answered. Arrived at the library around 12H30 the next day to discover that the librarian was just leaving: she only works mornings and yes, you do need to give advance notice to consult MSs. It felt just like being back in France.
4. Spent the rest of the day wandering around Edinburgh through Fringe acts handing out fliers (am I getting old or are they getting more puerile?), saw the Scottish Parliament for the first time and was impressed. Popped into the gift shop at Holyrood Palace and was nauseated by the array of oh-so-tasteful royal memorabilia with names like "The Clarence House Collection". Walked up the Royal Mile and past the High Church of St Giles
5. Watched the TV coverage of Robin Cook's funeral in St Giles two days later. Another good one gone.

Things I've done since we got back:
1. Been to Ikea twice. Once to buy a new "princess" bed for E. and once for the obligatory taking back and waiting in long queue to change the bit that was the wrong size.
2. Had a "family menu" in MacDonald’s. That's a Big Mac meal for Daddy, a salad and a diet coke for Mummy, and two Happy meals for the children. Have you ever felt demographically bog standard?
3. Shivered on the beach at Sanguinet: it turned out to be not such a beautiful day.
4. Caught up on a lot of blogs and left several comments. Why isn't there a blog tool for following comments one has left elsewhere?
5. Had friends round to dinner and made Thai chicken in coconut sauce.
6. Cut back drastically on alcohol consumption in a desperate bid to shake off the 4kg (yes 4kg) I put on over the holidays. Have also foregone all chocolate.
7. Took Z. to the ENT specialist who now recommends surgically inserting permanent grommets for his chronic glue ear. He's only four but has already had three minor ops for the same thing over the past 18 months. The only problem is that the permanent grommets have to be surgically removed in 2/3 years' time and that there is a 20% risk of the ear drum not healing spontaneously after this. What a dilemma. I kind of lost faith in the ENT man when, in the next breath, he recommended a 3-week stay in a health spa in the Pyrenees as also being very effective (this just after he had re-explained that it's basically an anatomical problem involving immature Eustachian tubes not working properly). Oh yes, and he's not only the specialist, he's the surgeon too and he picks up the cheque after each operation. Paradoxically, despite living in a country with reputedly the world's best public health care system but I think we're going to do what the cash-strapped NHS recommends — watchful waiting.
8. Watched the Magic Roundabout on DVD with the children. When I was wee, I lived on an island in the Inner Hebrides where we only got one TV channel (BBC1) and it was all snowy and in black and white. One of my favourite programmes then was the Magic Roundabout with Dougal, Zebedee, Dylan and all their little puppet friends whose threads you could clearly see even through the interference. Well even in those conditions, I can honestly say that the old version was a thousand times better than this new digital travesty. The characters all look as if they've had face lifts and the actual content beggars belief, with three characters coming back from the dead and skeletons with purple laser eyes being blasted to smithereens. Perfect nightmare material. (And the French names aren't nearly as nice as the English a names, Dougal is Pollux, Florence is Margot, Dylan is Floppy and Ermentrude is something I can't even remember and certainly a lot less apt than Ermentrude)
9. Went to the town hall with several official papers to sign the children up for the nursery school canteen and after-school "garderie". E. starts nursery on 30th August. Another milestone.

Tomorrow you get the to-do list.

Category: minutiae

Beginning of the end?

Oh no, I've just received my first spam comment (see last post). Help! Does anyone have any solutions?

On a brighter note, it's a beautiful day here and we're off to the beach.

Category: spam

Flowers

There's a lot of Great Willow Herb in the Scottish countryside. But there are some more delicate wild flowers too. What's this one called, I wonder?



Category: flowers

Dumfries and Galloway

Castle loch
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

10 things we did on holiday in Dumfries and Galloway



1. Fed the ducks (and geese and swans) on the lochs in and around Lochmaben
2. Visited Caerlaverock Castle — great for aspiring knights
3. Spent time with family
4. Went to Dumfries Agricultural Show
5. Saw the Monet Exhibition in Kirkudbright
6. Discoverd Wigtown, Scotland's book village
7. Ate (a lot, thanks to Mum)
8. Relaxed (a lot, thanks to Mum)
9. Filmed the children, took tons of photos. (See more at Scotland Aug 2005 - a photoset on Flickr)
10. Did a bit of shopping (got a nifty suede jacket)


So now it's home to "auld claes and porridge". While we were on holiday I read in the Scotsman that research show the beneficial effects of a holiday have worn off withing 24 hours of coming home.

Home

Thistle
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

Just back from Scotland. We had a wonderful time. Sunny Scottish weather (yes, yes) and lots of fresh air. More soon.

Photos not taken

Back from ten dozy days in the Dordogne. I forgot to take the recharger for the camera battery but here are some of the photos I might have shown you:

A ruby red bottle of Pécharmant on the table of a little restuarant in Périgueux.

Magret brochettes on the barbecue.

Masses of basil and some purslane in the vegetable garden at Périgord Evasion

A gaggle of butterflies on various buddleia bushes dotted around the garden at Pomerède.

Z wobbling as he learns to ride his red bike with no stabilizers.

My legs in a horizontal position as I lie reading on the famous swing (more on the books in a later post perhaps).

Green walnuts as far as the eye can see.

And various conviviality pictures of people raising glasses and chatting during dinner.

The children running around outside in the moonlight.

Meanwhile....... We returned to the house expecting to find all work finished so we were somewhat surprised to discover that the rewiring is still at the evisceration stage upstairs, we have no hot water and the windows seem to be in the right places but some of them are unsealed. Here we go again.

Category: holidays

Ecrire sa biographie quotidienne

The Kenneth White books arrive. I open one at random and read this:

C'est dimanche, le vingt et quelque chose octobre, et je suis en exil, et j'écris un livre. Il n'y a que cela à faire en exil. C'est, du moins, ma conclusion. Le rêve, l'amour, le monde spirituel ne m'inspirent pas, ni comme réalités ni comme possibilités. La seule façon de rester en vie est d'écrire sa biographie quotidienne. Au sens large, le plus large possible.
De détail en détail nous atteindrons — la fin.
(Kenneth White, "A la Lisière du monde" in Les Lettres Nouvelles, janvier - février 1965.)

Category: literature

Desultory Notes

Weather :— a little close but temperatures definitely bearable (25°C ish)

What I'm doing :— last day at work for several weeks —tying up loose ends.

Thinking about:— a good place for lunch with my man P. (Le Casse Museau perhaps?)

Still to do: — Go to bank to sign document I forgot to sign yesterday to get lolly to pay for new windows.

People in my house: — two electricians and a family of window fitters (Portugeuse).

What the children are doing :— Probably sleeping because they were up to high jinx until very late last night. It's their last full day at the childminder's house.

Last thing I listened to on my Ipod : Took the tram to work and listened to Ben Curtis's podcast "Notes From Spain". Very atmospheric. makes me wish I was going to Spain for the holidays.

Last thing I bought: A couple of books by Kenneth White on Ebay : they haven't arrived yet. Kenneth White is a Scottish poet who lives in Brittany. Wanted to show you photos but Safari crashes every time I try to upload them.

Other Ebay news : Last week sold an expensive toy that E has grown out of for......... 1€. Once I had paid the Paypal commission etc. I actually made a loss. Brother tells me he is trying to flog some Bank of Scotland £5 notes featuring Jack Nicklaus.

Last major disaster : Trestle table collapsed yesterday evening as we were having dinner. Dinner ended up on floor and red wine splashed across newly painted walls. Glasses broke, children screamed, telephone rang at exactly that moment.

Plans for tomorrow: Drive to P's parents' place in the Dordogne. Allow children to run wild. Lie down on swing for the rest of the week.


Category: misc

Windows

Window
Originally uploaded by Lezzles.

The men are coming on Monday to change every single window in the house. So bye bye old wooden windows that require much banging and pushing and grunting to get open, hello new smooth, double-glazing.

Pantry

Look! Tidy, well-filled shelves in the new kitchen. Now, if only I could organise my paperwork that easily.

Category: kitchen

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.