it is time

for a break

organisation

one of my favourite things about the french remains their capacity, willingness and even desire to organise events, demonstrations, fund-raisers, parties, entertainments, surprises, clubs, trifles, barbecues, outings, picnics, trips, rehearsals, transport, gifts, big things and small things. among all the clichés about the french being complaining this, bolshy that or arrogant t'other... - let me add my remarks: having spent nearly seven years near, around, through, within and with these people i can only take off my hat to the un-flinching, devoted way that they can make a lot of stuff happen; especially for each other. vivent les froggies!

bluegrass to greengrass

24 little hours it took.
magick.

astrology

you know how sometimes you're reading your horoscope and it promises things like "a turbulent love affair" or "a new professional opportunity" and you sigh and you say to yourself "fat chance!!"????
well i haven't looked at my horoscope for months.
stuff, my dears, is happening here. i'm so inside i can't remember what bored is, but i promise i hanker after it.
well, a bit anyway.
the grass, as they say here, is greener at your neighbours....

scrambled head

what do you do when you can't sleep, think straight, or remember what the will to live feels like?
apparently a cup of tea helps.
especially when it has been preceded by a gong fu ceremony, a sort of mystic exercise mixing tai-chi with the most pedantic way of making tea i've ever witnessed.
life seems at least bearable, and quite pleasant knowing that it's only gonna get easier.

and i'd like to congratulate antoine, for finishing what he had to finish.

and thanks to all my friends, for your inexorable indulgence. it staggers me. you overwhelm me.

pub quiz

sometimes life finds a way to let me know just how useful i am.
last night i needed to escape all the noise of the flat.
for the first time since i've been in france, i drove to "the smoking dog" a pub i've frequented on -and-off for the last few years.
sitting at the bar was an old drinking buddy, and ex teacher/barman, Mark.
with a shaking of hands as i sat on the stool next to him, we formed the beginnings of a team.
three other blokes arrived and suddenly we were somewhere near ready to start.
the first half went ok, but we didn't know that "phasmaphobia" was a fear of ghosts, nor that it was Lindsay Davenport who described playing against Amélie Moresmo was like playing against a man.
i was also surprised to discover that a Norwegian prince gave the final speech in "Hamlet".
when the second half started i decided to start putting together my "fantasy football team" for the competition in the pub.
you have 50 million (pounds?) to spend and you need to buy a keeper, four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers. you get points for goals, clean-sheets etc.
while i was busy doing this the rest of the team got on with the rest of the quiz.
apart from jumping in to give the occasional wrong answer, i was about as useful as a bunch of flowers in a life-boat.
the team, "our" team won. thanks mainly to Mark.
Mark also managed to choose the hand that Clare was holding the coin in (the final challenge) and so we took away 200 euros.
the first time i've walked out of a pub richer than when i walked in.
which was nice.
and possibly the lowest i've ever contributed to a quiz team.
which is, i believe, a fair reflection.

bubble

stephen soderbergh.
a low-budget, low-acting naturalistic work which manages to hold a mirror up to american nature and tell a cracking wee story at the same time.
if you can, see it, as there's not much else worth the entrance money at the moment.

girl in polka dots

with a profile smile 

i have no talent for certainty

In "Ronin" the film, the Robert de Niro character says "If there is a doubt, there is no doubt". Jesus suggested it were easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Lao tseu said this, Crowley wrote that, blah blah and blah

If I have managed to do anything these last few days, it is to realise what a mish-mash, cobbled-up, mongrel bastard parson's egg of a scrambled association of dictons, maxims, citations, quotes, pet-theories, east-west cornucopias of various seeds of thoughts et cetera
my head is awash with
awash with crap.
bundles upon piles upon bouquets within rashes over scatterings of adulterated, half-digested bollocks.

But then again, après la pluie....
oh shut up!

marie antoinette

a real disappointment.
i suppose the film was supposed to cross genres, to break ground, to poke a finger in the eyes of some sacred cows.
it just looks messy.
the crowning moment was the return of the modern sountrack (slipped in front of us at the outset, then withdrawn, bizarrely) and the sequence where our eponymous hero lets her hair down (and has it stacked up in a beehive) and has a bit of a girlie session with her mates.
i found the few ounces of empathy drain out through the champagne fountain.
a dire film.
real purgatory.
and the worst of it is that it's sophia coppola who made it.
so you have some sort of expectation.
in the end you get a sort of mish-mash of all the worst bits from the musico/mexico "romeo and juliet" and "my best friends wedding" in period costume.
a real composite bastard cast with rip torn, jason whocares and kirsten dunst being americans playing french.
marie antoinette has a daughter who, interestingly, is french.
there's matthieu almarick, or whatever he's called, who has such a small rôle he hardly deserves a credit, and steve coogan is flat. flat like old beer.

either there's something i don't get, or this film is the worst pile of tosh ever to go near the coppola name.

shame, real mongrel shame with knobs on.
it lasts in the memory about as long as a big mac