RLS

I haven't got much for you at the moment apart from the fact that Bordeaux was struck by storms and extremely high winds over the weekend — and in an unrelated but far more serious incident — our dishwasher broke down.

But rather than regale you with stories of my disrupted life, I'll tell you about a little group I created on Flickr — The Robert Louis Stevenson group. I was looking for photographs related to RLS for a paper I gave a couple of months ago and found a few on everyone's favourite photo-sharing site, Flickr. But they were scattered all over the place, some were tagged with the author's full name, some with just RLS and some with some wild misspellings such as Robert Lewis Stephenson. So I created the group, then started inviting people to contribute their photos and the pool has now grown to include 255 items. It's not a scholarly enterprise of course - the photographs are disparate to say the least. There are lots of quite ordinary images, snapshots really, of places that RLS once lived: Heriot Row in Edinburgh and Vailima in Samoa notably; scanned pages from his books; photographs of monuments to his memory; portraits and statues of his slender figure. But these photographs are often very personal - showing what it's really like to visit the house at Vailima and then slog up the hill in tropical heat to RLS's burial site or what the front door of the house in Heriot Row looks like from the open top of a tour bus. Some of the photographs too have wildly inaccurate descriptions eg. "Robert Louis Stevenson was born in California...." but that's interesting as well. And then there are the contemporary black-and-white photographs, most of which are held in public collections (eg. at the National Library of Scotland), bodies which more and more often are sharing their old photographs on Flickr. Then the worn old books and the often beautiful illustrations inside them, and the lurid covers and intriguing titles of some foreign editions.

Now, to keep the group going, all I have to do is carry out a quick search on Flickr about once a week for any photographs that might be related to Stevenson, then invite the owners to join the group using a handy little drop-down menu that appears automatically under photographs for group administrators, and it's a strangely addictive and satisfying exercise. I'd thoroughly recommend creating a group if there's anything photographic you're particularly interested in: orange sweaters, cracked teapots, characters from your home village, anything goes. I'm thinking of setting up another one devoted just to pictures of piles of unwashed dinner dishes.

Here are the most recent additions to the group pool:

Flickr: Robert Louis Stevenson via kwout

Show me your online lifestream and I will tell you who you are

An obscure French periodical recently published a piece about Marc L*** which to their feigned dismay has been widely picked up by the mainstream media. (They say they are surprised that the media are more interested in Marc than they are in the article they published in the same issue about the fate of twelve million European Rrom).

The author of the article chose some poor guy at random via his Flickr photstream and made him the subject of what he calls a Google portrait. He culled as much information as possible from the photos about what Marc looks like, his string of relationships, his trips for work and for pleasure, what he does at the weekend etc. From there, he followed him to Facebook and made a friend request. Not everyone realises that if somebody makes a friend request on Facebook and you respond to it —which is exactly what the unsuspecting Marc did — the requestor gains access to your profile for the next month. Bingo: the hack could now find out all about his job (just outside Bordeaux as it happens), his nights out, his friends. He even got Marc's address and his mobile phone number and checked it out. Then he looked him up in the archives of the local newpaper and found out about his past life as a guitarist in a punk band.

The point of the article seems to be to show just how much of an ordinary person's biography can be pieced together from the information that person voluntarily offers up on social networking sites and how much more cogent the information given out sparingly here and there becomes when it is all brought together and synthesised. And don't forget this is a guy who is only on Flickr and Facebook - think of how much more could be found out about the rest of us who blog and twitter and last.fm and generally sprawl out comfortably across the internets.

The next step is presumably to wonder about what somebody malicious might do with that information. Well, they might write a two page biography of you and publish it in a magazine I suppose, then act surprised when you discover the article and immediately ask for all the names to be changed. "You only have yourself to blame, Marc", the journalist protests at the beginning of the article, "you should have been more careful".

I think I'm relatively careful about the information I bandy about when it's related to other people. You can only see photographs of people's faces on my Flickr photostream if I consider you a friend, I don't usually use real names on this blog and just how harmful can it be for Big Bro to know that I used to watch Blue Peter and what I had for dinner. I do run my mouth off frequently on Twitter though - and I think I might protect my updates there (although Gordon reckons Twitter has jumped the shark, so maybe we'll all be stopping that soon anyway).

Ultimately, it's a choice freely made. We choose to leave traces of who we are here and there but we're not so naïve that we don't realise that if anyone was interested enought to piece it all together they'd get quite a big bit of the picture. But so what? In any case, I'll bet I know an awful lot more about people I only have a passing acquaintance with at work, in my street, at my kids' school, than I do about random people on t'internet.

This is how old I am

When I watched Blue Peter, the presenters were called John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves.... and Shep was a puppy.

You had to get up out of your chair and fiddle with knobs to change channels.

I remember when getting money out of an ATM felt like engaging in a futuristic act.

Dials on telephones were the norm, buttons were new-fangled.

The first time I ever saw someone using a (gigantic) mobile phone — outside Marks & Spencers in Edinburgh — I did a triple take.

I wrote my MA dissertation on a typewriter.

I spent the first part of my life being driven around in cars with no seatbelts.

I remember when only people who wore Jesus sandals bought yoghurt - and it was all called Ski and came in waxed cardboard cartons.

In my young day, a packet of crips cost two and a half pence

I saw Jungle Book in the cinema when it first came out.

Our method of illegally copying music was to make copies of LPs on cassettes.

Pageboy haircuts were the height of chic when I was at school.

Everything was "magic" - as in "I've got a magic new pair of wedges".

I spent all night listening to Radio Luxembourg under my pillow the night Elvis Presley died.

How old are you?

(Thanks to Belgian Waffle for inspiration)

The times they are a-changin'

Obamicon.me

Locavorism

While I was unwell and wallowing in lack of appetite, I read Animal, Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It recounts a year that she and her family spent eating only local - growing their own fruit and vegetables, raising their own chickens and turkeys, and shopping at the local farmers' market in southwest Virginia. I'm a great admirer of Kingsolver's fiction and of her essays but this book struck me as overlong and a bit preachy, and, despite the praise on the cover, somewhat lacking in humour.

The problem with books like this I suppose is that they are bought, or given to, people like me — bobos who are already convinced in principle at least of the need to eat locally and in season, within reason, and we end up feeling that we're being ranted at. If I have the choice between tomatoes grown somewhere in SW France and tomatoes from the other end of Morocco, I'll go for the local ones every time. Super/markets in France rarely offer out of season fruit and veg in any case unlike many British supermarkets which seem to stock strawberries, cherries and aparagus from January to December.

What about you? Are you a locavore or do you think you have a RIGHT to those bananas?

Agley

Oh dear. the best laid schemes for regular snippets are sometimes nipped in the bud by galloping flu. Never fear, I shall return to snip another day.

Happy New Year

Not a very original title, I know, but I really do wish you all the very best of new years.

I have a feeling that for me 2009 is going to be the year of the snippet. If I can, I'm going to post some little snippet here most days (I'm hedging my bets and anticipating my inconsistency already. That sentences originally read "I promise that I will post something here every day").

I was also tempted to make a rash resolution about taking some sort of exercise most days too. I started out quite well today with a bit of swimming, fencing, hammer throwing and athletics, some motor racing and a little light trampolining (oh all right, it was all on the new Wii, but that's still quite tiring for a lazy git like me). I'm not going to make any promises on that front but rest assured I'll keep you posted on any massive increase in my fitness level.

Anyway, today's snippet is a photo from last week in Scotland. This is Kirk Loch in Lochmaben at dusk.


We had a lovely Christmas week in Scotland, with lots of eating drinking and making merry, helped along by the fact that Britain is currently a veritable bargain basement for anyone with euros in their pocket. Long may it continue, I say.

Wordless Wednesday: Best of 2008

A Year of Reading

Here is the annual list of books wot I have read. I've been good at adding books to LibraryThing as I read them, so if you've been an attentive reader you'll have noticed all of these appearing in the sidebar. As usual, the ones I loved are the top, those I didn't are at the bottom and the middling ones are in the ... middle. I'm not providing links this year since due to the recession and because I know you're just as capable of googling as I am.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy (pure desolate brilliance)
Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger, Nigel Slater (funny, sad and satisfying)
Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H.Lawrence, Geoff Dyer (alternative auto/biography)
A Lie about My Father, John Burnside (a (mostly) bad man)
Fall on Your Knees, Anne Marie MacDonald (vast story set in provinical Canda and another bad father)
Fascination, William Boyd (16 brilllant short stories. Boyd is a master of all things fiction)
Skating To Antarctica, Jenny Diski (memoir and travelogue)
The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald (childhood Canadian detective fiction)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell (Scottish story of old age and deception)
Crow Lake, Mary Lawson (I seemed to read a lot of Canadian fiction this year and this was another good one)
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson (provincial Canada ....again)
Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, Sofka Zinovieff (one of the best "living abroad" books I've read, recommended by Mike of Fevered Mutterings)
The Accidental, Ali Smith (I loved some of the wordy riffs in this book)
Paris Trance, Geoff Dyer (I'm glad I discovered Geoff Dyer this year)
Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered, Geoff Dyer
Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters (homeless but not completely hopeless)
The Smoking Diaries, Simon Gray (He died just after I read this)
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, Bill Bryson (he still makes me laugh)
The Patience of the Spider, Andrea Camilleri (I read about one of these Inspector Montalbano a year - for the Italian food rather than the intrigue)
Quartier lointain : L'intégrale, Jirô Taniguchi (this graphic novel was a present and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it)
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt (poponomics)
Saint Maybe, Anne Tyler (one from the back catalogue, as reliable and comforting as ever)
Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Across Europe, Nicholas Crane (he walks from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul, with just his two legs!)
The View from Castle Rock, Alice Munro (Another Candaina one. Short, sometimes autobiographical, pieces about the past)
The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards (twisty)
Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace (I'd like to rad more DFW)
Rosengarten, Janice Galloway (a quirky exhibition tie-in about midwifery)
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (not his best IMHO)
The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton (bits and pieces of non-fiction)
Michael Tolliver Lives, Armistead Maupin (old friends)
Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus (I’m still dipping into this 19th C diary)
The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett (mildly amusing)
The Sea, John Banville (I think I liked this, but I can't remember very much about it)
The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, Shauna Reid (gaun yersel Shona)
Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones (good if you love Dickens. I don't think I love him enough)
Echo Park, Michael Connelly (beach reading)
Arlington Park: A Novel, Rachel Cusk (mildly depressing novel about women in London suburbia)
The Missing, Thomas Eidson (the film is good too)
The Cone-Gatherers, Robin Jenkins (I thought I was going to like Robin Jenkins, but I didn't)
The Pearl-fishers, Robin Jenkins
Something to Declare, Julian Barnes (only for Flaubertophiles)
The Pilot's Wife, Anita Shreve (I think that this might have been the second time I had read this novel, but it didn't make much of a mark the first time)
Chasing Mammon: Travels in the Pursuit of Money, Douglas Kennedy ( a little dated now)
Sorbonne Confidential, Laurel Zuckerman (cf. last post)
Blood, Sweat and Tea: Real Life Adventures in an Inner-city Ambulance, Tom Reynolds (read the blog, shouldn't have bought the book)
Petite Anglaise, Catherine Sanderson (ditto)
Bananas in Bordeaux: Self-sufficiency for Dreamers, Louise Franklin (a blog that wasn't)
Burning Bright, Tracy Chevalier (I've enjoyed some of Chevalier's other novels but I never got to the end of this one)
Longitude, Dava Sobel (I like popular science but I just couldn't get into this)
Treasure Islands: Sailing the South Seas in the Wake of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson, Pamela Stephenson Connolly (some people have too much money)

The vast majority of these books were provided by Bookmooch and most of the rest by my Mum - thank you both!

Suck it up at the Sorbonne

A few weeks ago I received an advance review copy of Sorbonne Confidential by Laurel Zuckerman from LibraryThing. Sorbonne Confidential is the story of an American woman in her mid-forties who finds herself laid off from a job in business in Paris, hits on the idea of teaching English as the perfect solution to her unemployment woes and duly signs up for the prestigious agrégation exam to secure entry into the state education system. She then discovers just what a difficult exam the agrégation is and just how French it is.

I did not like this book. I found the carping complaints about the whole system irritating, especially after the discovery that the candidate had failed the exam. I sympathise with a native English speaker who finds the competitive exam route to teaching in France élitist, fastidious and archaic, I really do. I am willing to accept, however, that it is a profoundly French institution respected by the vast majority of those who have taken and passed it and that if you want to be part of the system you have to accept that. Neither do I agree that as native English speakers we are all automatically qualified to do the job of teaching our language.

It's a little unsettling that Zuckerman give no reason for wanting to be a teacher other than the financial stability it would offer her. She seems to believe that her American origins and her voracious reading habits are qualification enough for the job. What she fails to recognize is that education is culture; that language teaching is deeply ideological; that loving to read is not the same as teaching literature. She also makes the wrong choice - the agrégation is a prestigious qualification requiring a robust literary or linguistic background — her background suited her for the more modest Capes. Had she been properly advised, she could have prepared for both, would probably have passed the Capes and ended up with the job security she craved.

I'm not sure about the trajectory this book followed to publication. It appeared in French last year (to mainly positive autocritical reviews) but won't be published in English until next year. Did the author write the original in French? I'm not sure, but some clumsier passages certainly ring like English badly translated from French and there are a few grammar mistakes that would make an agrég jury shudder (eg. "there are no less than six pharmacies") and a piece of jewellery is twice somewhat bizarrely referred to as a "broach". And let's not get into the red-rag question of why "pigs trotters" is not some obscure term unknown to the entire English-speaking world.

I was curious about what Laurel Zuckerman had become since failing the agrégation and writing this book, so I googled her name. I have no idea what she is doing now, other than giving interviews, but I did discover that she is on Facebook and listed as a fan of Valérie Pécresse the minister for higher education who is currently engaged in trying to scrap the concours system - to massive outcry from university teachers throughout France.

Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens

I nicked this one from Ms Mac. A hundred things I love in no particular order. I tried to make this into a scrolling text but my first version got eaten up so these are really my second hundred.

1. good wine 2. mediocre wine 3. sausage rolls 4. chubby cheeks and dimples 5. Guerlain perfume 6. BBC Radio 4 7. Bookmooch 8. giggling in the staff room 9. the Dordogne in autumn 10. twinkly lights 11. Dr Gregory House 12. fresh sheets 13. thoughtful blogs 14. verbena 15. "I love you Mummy" 16. new words 17. long lies 18. purple velvet 19. bagpipes 20. Taratata 21. a wood fire in our hearth 22. the shape of my iPhone 23. slideshows 24. Bordeax trams 25. interpreting 26 tapas 27. fishing boats 28. silver 29. antiquarian book shops 30. mysterious parcels 31. Frankie Boyle 32. the smell of bracken 33. long walks 34. mulled wine 35. Lebanese restaurants 36.coriander 37. Sunday markets 38. Carl Larsson prints 39. Homes & Gardens 40. sleepy children 41. Talisker 42. cookery books 43. Mastermind 44. speculos 45. travelogues 46. steaming pots 47. attics 48. Devendra Branhart 49. white walls 50. railway stations 51. Hayao Miyazaki 52. Pompom's polar bear 53. long dinners al fresco 54. tablet 55. The Broons 56. chintz 57. peony roses 58. botanic gardens 59. wool shops 60. very old pubs 61. Daniel Mermet 62. Kenneth White 63. black labradors 64. watercolours 65. Spanish villages 66. islands 67. Nespresso 68. very bright scarves 69. squeaky hair 70. reminiscing 71. smoked salmon 72. wooden floors and kilims 73. Indian head massages 74. Highland cows 75. maps 76. hot showers 77. hearing Italian 78. vast open spaces 79. department stores at Christmas 80. collages 81. interested students 82. going off the beaten track 83. libraries 84. black patent shoes 85. Crocs 86. old postcards 87. new places 88. office supplies 89. pizza in front of the telly 90. home movies (but not other people's) 91. babies 92. Richard Scarry picture books 93. hummus 94. RLS 95. biographies 96. Le Zapping 97. windy beaches 98. San Sebastian 99. attics 100. old-fashioned campsites

Sub-total immersion

Until last weekend, we had an eighteen year-old staying in our spare bedroom. Charlotte is the daughter of my best friend in Scotland and her plans for a gap year in Nepal fell through at the last minute due to that pesky Marxist coup. I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive about a teenage girl we hardly know staying with us for a whole month. However, I needn't have worried because she turned out to be the ideal house guest — she was in class studying French all day and out most evenings doing whatever it is that eighteen-year-olds do nowadays. When she was here she was a pleasure to have around.

I was constantly reminded of how much things have moved on since I was eighteen and came to work in France for the first time. In those days (can you hear my voice going reedy and see my body leaning lower over my walking stick?) I used to save up five-franc pieces for my weekly call home from a draughty phone box. Our broadband provider gives us free calls to just about anywhere in the world so Charlotte could call home any time she liked. Apart from the occasional letter, I was out of touch with my friends back home for almost all of the time that I was in France; Charlotte kept in touch with her friends through Facebook and text messages. I used to save up and buy the occasional English-language newspaper, Charlotte could have read any newspaper she liked on the internet. I went home after three months to discover that there were lots of new adverts and series on TV, Charlotte could have watched English-language television to her heart's delight via satellite (had we a satellite dish, hint, hint), cable (had she wanted to suffer through reruns of Dad's Army and The Good Life) and of course copious downloading.

I'll stop there before I get to the "well we lived in a shoebox in a cess pit" line from Monty Python. I suppose that what I'm saying is that it's actually much more difficult nowadays to achieve the total immersion effect in a foreign language.

Charlotte is off to New Zealand next month — I suppose the Maoris have broadband too.

Spot on?

Typalayzer tells you what you're really like......maybe.

The analysis indicates that the author of http://lezzles.blogspot.com is of the type:

The Artists

The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of.

They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

Well, I suppose the "not friends of many words" part is correct.

Cartoon

Papilles et Pupilles via kwout

Commenters

This is a good meme that was passed on to me by the Teuchter (what a lovely word Teuchter is). I have to provide a list of the last ten commenters on this blog and then answer some questions about them. They should then do the same thing.

1. Rosie: A Bitch About Brittany
2. Ms Mac
3. Engelsk
4. Lucy : Box Elder
5. Neil: Neil Writes the Blog
6. Deborah (independent commenter!)
7. Le Laquet
8. Anne : Belgian Waffle
9. Frankofile
10. Dick of Dick Jones' Patteran Pages

1. What is your favourite post from number 3’s blog?

I quite like this one - there was a similar one last year I think.

2. Has number 10 taken any pictures that have moved you?

Dick's blog is about words more than pictures. His poems have certainly moved me.

3. Does number 6 reply to comments on their blog?

Deborah still doesn't have a blog but her daughter Lucie who is an extremely talented artist started a trilingual one recently. I give you Lucie Geffré.

4. Which part of blogland is number 2 from?

Ms Mac lives in the Village of the Damned in deepest Switzerland but as I know only too well you can take the girl out of Scotland but you can't .........

5. If you could give one piece of advice to number 7 what would it be?

I'd praise her rather than give her advice - well done lightweight!

6. Have you ever tried something from number 9’s blog?

I'm sure I've nicked something at some time from almost all of the blogs I read - and I'd quite like to borrow Sky, Frankofile's black lab.

7. Has number 1 blogged something that inspired you?

Rosie's posts about teaching music to autistic children are more than inspiring, they are life-enhancing.

8. How often do you comment on number 4’s blog?

I comment on Lucy's blog quite often - usually to say nothing more interesting than that I love a photograph or agree with a beautifully expressed observation.

9. Do you wait for number 8 to post excitedly?

I have to be honest and say that I don't exactly wait excitedly for anyone to post, but when I see a new post from Belgian Waffle in Google Reader my cursor does tend to go straight to it.

10. How did number 5’s blog change your life?

Ha! I could write a book about how Neil's blog changed my life. ......... it would be a very short book.

11. Do you know any of the 10 bloggers in person?

I've known Deborah for a very long time. I have never met any of the others, I would definitely recognise a few of them if they passed me in the street (Ms Mac, bespectacled Neil, Rosie...) and would respond enthusiastically to a dinner invitation from any of the ten!

12. Do any of your 10 bloggers know each other in person?

Rosie and Lucy are friends. Ms Mac comments on Rosie's blog. Lucy and Dick link to each other. Le Laquet and Ms Mac link to each other. Does Ms Mac know Anne? Maybe because her friend Heather definitely does. (Does anyone else miss Heather's blog? Come back Heather.) I'm not sure about Frankofile. Engelsk and Neil are the wild cards in this group.

13. Out of the 10, which updates more frequently?

Ms Mac, I think. (although I miss the daily dose of her 365 photos on Flickr).

14. Which of the 10 keep you laughing?

Neil mostly (who wouldn't laugh at these photos?)

15. Which of the 10 has made you cry (good or bad tears)?

I can't say that any of them have made me cry. Smile. Worry. Frown. But not cry.

Maspalomas

When you book the cheapest all-inclusive holiday ever at the very, very last minute you don't really expect luxurious accommodation, fluffy white bath towels and the best upper sets as fellow holiday-makers. And sure enough, we didn't get any of that in Gran Canaria. But we did get sun. And we did get a perfectly acceptable apartment, a nice pool, edible food, lashings of alcohol on tap and the dunes of Maspalomas. So as I lay on a sunbed reading David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster, thinking that many of the characters around me sounded a lot like people I had seen in Eastenders (there were even two Frank Butchers) — and feeling not a little superior (mostly because of my reading matter rather than any innate class) — I came upon this passage on vulgarity:

But of course we should keep in mind that vulgar has many dictionary definitions and that only a couple of these have to do with lewdness and bad taste [DFW is writing about the porn industry]. At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over.

So , there you have it — I am proud to have been a vulgar tourist and here is my vulgar slideshow.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

MsMac has awarded me the I *heart* your blog award. I know I don't deserve it because I've been a very irregular blogger for a long time now, but I'm chuffed. Oh, and all I have to do is this eeny weeny meemey thing.

Where is your mobile phone? recharging
Where is your significant other? on a ladder
Your hair colour? a bit like Jilly Cooper's (yeuch)
Your mother? homemaker extraordinaire
Your father? was wonderful
Your favourite thing? a glass of wine at the end of the day
Your dream last night? blank screen
Your dream goal? not to have any goals
The room you're in? study/guest room (madly tidying up for guest)
Your hobby? surfing
Your fear? failure
Where do you want to be in 6 years? France
Where were you last night? here, watching Taratata on TV
What you're not? mean
One of your wish-list items? new Macbook
Where you grew up? Penicuik
The last thing you did? tidy up (sigh)
What are you wearing? old clothes (better ones packed for hols)
Your TV? I think I can hear rugby noises
Your pets? I used to have a cat called Piseag but he's been dead for over 20 years
Your computer? yes, my computer
Your mood? mildly excited
Missing someone? not at the moment
Your car? clapped out
Something you're not wearing? my usual contacts (trying out bifocal contact lenses)
Favourite shop? antiquarian bookshops
Your summer? cool
Love someone? yes
Your favourite colour? blue
When is the last time you laughed? a few moments ago
Last time you cried? honestly can't remember

And I, in turn, nominate Box Elder, Belgianwaffle, and Neil because I love their blogs.

I'm off on my hols tomorrow but I'm going to try to put my iPhone to good use and send you a few photies while I'm away.

Is that you out there?

A few ideas have fleetingly tickled my blogging muscle over the past few days, and then evaporated. Today I saw the ophthalmologist and he told me that no, I was not a good candidate for surgery because visually it's downhill all the way from now on.
He prescribed variable lenses - granny glasses. He also said that I should wear my specs as much as possible and reserve my lenses for when I want to look smart (I think "pour quand vous sortez danser" was his exact phrase).
Also, did you know that there have been no scientific studies into the long term effects of wearing soft contact lenses 16 hours a day for twenty years? I am a guinea pig.
Anyway, I briefly thought about turning those little gems into a far-reaching meditation on the niggling inevitability of the march of time. But I'm feeling a bit too decrepit tonight.

"If you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough"

I've been reading Freakonomics and am fascinated by the chapter on cheating among Chicago schoolteachers who, it seems, have had a tendency in the past to correct their pupils wrong answers before sending their tests in to the exam board. The idea of teacher fraud was new to me, but I'm familiar with that of rampant student cheating.

In fact, anyone who has spent any time in a French university knows that students here generally* have a completely different attitude to cheating in exams to anything one might have come across at one's alma mater. Over the years, I've had many discussions about this with my students and it seems impossible to communicate satisfactorily to them the stigma associated with cheating in universities in the English-speaking world. They laugh and argue that cheating is simply a game played out knowingly between examinee and examiner; that passing notes during an exam is a sign of "student solidarity"; that cribs (antisèches) are legitimate reference tools; and that only losers don't at least try to cheat. It makes exam invigilation a tiresome game of cat and mouse.

So we all agree that cheating is bad and certainly not at all comparable to telling tiny fibs through omission to the telephone people in order to secure a new phone. Good, I'm glad we got that straight.

*I'm not suggesting, of course, that every single student in France cheats all of the time. Many students are scrupulously honest.

Pride comes before having to plunge your hand down the toilet

We hadn't been together for very long but he had already become an important part of my life. In fact I depended on him for a lot of things, perhaps too many things. He knew so much, was open to the world and kept me informed of all the latest news, encouraged me to keep in touch with my friends and family, played me beautiful music, kept me constant entertaining company. It got to be that I just couldn't get through the day without consulting him at regular intervals. At night, he was a comforting sleek black presence as he slept beside me. I had shown him off to all of my friends and colleagues and bored my on-line friends silly with talk of his beauty and performance. And then suddenly I felt him slipping away............. slipping away down the toilet as he dropped out of my pocket and into the yellow water.
Bye bye darling iPhone. It was lovely knowing you — and if you want to miraculously come back to life, I'll be here waiting for you.