I've seen some good films recently #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updated to correct some shocking typos.

Project 365: March/April

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

365 - a set on Flickr via kwout

News from Stockholm

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

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

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

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

Widow's Story - sort of

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decisions, decisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for giving a good lecture

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

A day on the Bassin with Materfamilias

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



Come back soon les Familias!

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

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

Project 365: Feb+

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

365 - a set on Flickr via kwout

Fuerteventura: Bonsoir, have a good evening, gracias.

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


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


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


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


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

I've seen some good films recently

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Project 365: January

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

365 - a set on Flickr via kwout

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

Self Absorption

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to write about Bordeaux

...or old wine in a new bottle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Winter's Walk

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

Books, books, books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

True Detectives, Jonathan Kellerman
Forgettable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Best of 2010

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

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

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

Here's to 2011

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

Where does the time go?

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

Getting round to it

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

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