Forget Thorpe Park, Skype's where the scares are really at

For those who read regularly, it will be unnecessary to remind you that I had an interview yesterday. For those who've just arrived; welcome. I had an interview yesterday (backstory here) and I'm pretty confident. I'll be doing a breakdown later, purely for my own enjoyment (read: horror), but if you're interested it'll be appearing over on my PR blog later.

In brief: I think it went very well, but as there'll be a more in-depth look later, I'm going to focus on the fun stuff that happened later, as my interview is hardly interesting to you. I will mention, however, that Skype behaved perfectly almost all the way through, allowing me to explain myself and my ideas in two languages with no problem.

However - and I suspect gremlins, because it is the only possible explanation - at the point when my interviewers said "Okay, this is what we'd like you to do next..." Skype just lost it. No sound, frozen picture, and my heart did its best to escape through my throat. Thankfully Skype recovered after that slight wobble, which meant only a minute of repeating "Hello?" at different volumes and pitches. I say "only" a minute, but it seemed longer, in the same way that touching a red hot stove for "only" five seconds feels like a whole lot longer.

That thought courtesy of Einstein, by the way.

So: the first stage is complete. Now to demonstrate my style. Elsewhere. Onwards to Thursday.

The day was filled with strolling around the school, shaking hands and making sure there were no problems in translation. It was great to see all of my students looking slick and suited, although there were certainly some who looked uncomfortably constrained.

Lunch was excellent, as I was invited to sit with the companies in the dining hall on the third floor. There were waiters. There was wine. There were three courses and coffee. It was delicious, although the starter took some getting used to - it seemed to be a mix of pistachios, salmon, cream, balsamic vinegar all served in a champagne coupette. Weirdly it worked, but I don't know if I'd have ordered it given the choice.

After lunch we waddled back to work, and I spent the afternoon emailing fielding requests from students and polishing off the translation I started earlier this week. After that, a little more prep for the interview and then there was nothing left to do but sit nervously.

So that's what I did. At two minutes to six I was added, with a short message to tell me that the interview would be pushed back by ten minutes. No problem.

Ten minutes passed. Then two more.

"We don't seem to be able to call you," my interviewer typed.

Oh excellent. 

I tried ringing them and got through immediately. Apparently the internet here blocks incoming calls. Useful to know.

The interview continued from there, for the most part in English but with French interspersed. I'm confident and, as I said, I've now got a piece to write for Monday to show my style.

The rest of Thursday evening was spent in Chatêlet Les Halles, at a wonderfully Parisian little wine bar (La Trinquette, Rue des Gravilliers, 75003). I've talked about the the particular way in which the French run their bars and restaurants, and this was cheerfully, wonderfully stereotypical. We seized a bottle of well-priced red (honestly, I'm yet to find anywhere in Britain where a £20 bottle of wine could be as complex and wonderful as it is here) and - there is no other word for it - crushed ourselves into seats.

Before long (3 hours later, there's that pesky relativity again) we wobbled our way out, squeezing past patrons and serving staff, and parted ways. The RER A rushed me home and the cold air on the twenty minute walk home served to sober me up a little. A dish of pasta and pesto later I fell asleep.

You're not a real student until you wake up hugging an empty bowl of pesto pasta.

Suddenly, love!

This morning I played the clown for my colleague, acting the parts of the older members of last night's trip to the exposition. Even if I say it myself, I'm a hoot, though I imagine that no small part of that is down to my accent. Foolishness over with, I went to greet my supervisor and find out what I'd missed yesterday evening.

Yesterday evening I missed a meeting for those volunteering with the huge careers day/forum event happening at the university. This will be its 7th iteration, and no drill sergeant in Her Majesty's Armed Forces has been so fiercely punctual of timekeeping as the event's organiser. She has given me the role of bad cop, with the responsibility of going around the rooms and essentially cutting people off when it's time for lunch. People who refuse to leave will be locked in their rooms and will have no lunch and, having already spoken about lunches here in France, you can understand why that would be seen as a Bad Thing.

The rest of my day passed uneventfully; the last few stragglers are signing up for tests, I have a brief translation to complete for "whenever" (Oh, how I love vague deadlines, how I adore them, how pleasing it is to be suddenly told 'I need that translation now') and, of course, hanging in the horizon like a star is my interview for -

I want to tell you all who the interview is with. I really do, because it's exciting and if I get it then I think it will realistically change the whole direction of my career and life. And this blog has readers who, despite the inanity of my life, keep coming back, and I should dearly like to reward those good and patient people with something exciting.

I assure you this sudden dip into seriousness will be temporary, but for the moment do bear with me.

Taken from
http://www.docnews.fr/data/classes/actualite/actu_7844_vignette.jpg

So: I have an interview with Agence ELAN, a French PR firm which opened an office in London in 2011. They've directed PR for companies like Moët Chandon, L'Oréal, and Eurostar. They are the essence of where I want to be; fast moving, European - my immediate supervisor will speak three languages fluently and has three degrees - and working with a broad range of clients. This would only be an internship, of course, but even the first inch of a toe in the door is sufficient for me.

Okay. So that's happening on Thursday and I'm fizzing with excitement, but I'll try to bottle it for the moment. I shall likely pop a little on Friday, but I will do my best to keep it off your lovely clothes.

I rounded the day off with a French film, which was incredibly good fun. L'Arnacoeur is formulaic and even features a frame-by-frame reproduction of the dance sequence from Dirty Dancing - 

You know which one. Don't make me -

I hope you're satisfied.

But it still had some great, laugh out loud moments, and I'd recommend it to most anyone, although it does see this poor guy get stood up by the girl he adores.

Aw.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time this has happened. See also: Love Actually 

Awww.

That's a hell of a thing to be typecast as, isn't it. The guy who gets his heart broken.

What a blog. And it's only Tuesday. Here's to the rest of the week.

Oh man. Friday

First up and because I can't wait to share it with you, here's a video about what happened after those Happily Every Afters:

On the one hand this guy is just fantastic, and the lyrics are intelligent and sharp. I'm sure he only did it because it scans, but BP hasn't been British for quite some time. So, you know. Not our deal.

Secondly: onwards to Friday. Fridays are when the whole school winds down in preparation for the weekend. That's great for the school, who look forward to quitting at half four and escaping to their homes and loving families.

Me, I have more private lessons to teach. Teaching puts me in a great mood, and I love it, but kicking about while other people breeze past singing "au revoir, bonne weekend !" is absolutely no fun at all. In addition, for one reason or another, work is thin on the ground at the moment. Nothing drives me barmy like immobility, but I asked all around me and rien. So I started planning my interview and realised that I was being a crazy person and stopped.

However, having this time will allow me to work on some sort of project to invigorate the new Language Hub. I'm actually considering some sort of one question - fifty people thing. You know, like:  It's long, but totally worth it. 

My question - for those students of mine who read this, you'll have a head start - I think the question will be:

No, thinking about it, I want it to be a surprise. 

Speaking of which, my friends Kate and Mary got tattoos. She blogged about it, but don't tell me what they have if you read it. I haven't, and I intend to be pleasantly surprised tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I need to get stuff ready for tomorrow. I'm going to Versailles tomorrow, and the weather currently looks foreboding.

P.S: The blog about my flowers mix-up got retweeted by +Arena Flowers and I've got hundreds of views, so a huge thank you to the social media team there for making my ego practically unbearable today. It's appreciated, and your flowers are brilliant.

Versailles tomorrow. Pictures to follow, though possibly not that evening, as I can see myself going straight to bed. So there should be a blog on Sunday. 

There's something wonderful about snow

Yesterday, as I strolled home and spoke to my smallest sister, it started to snow. Great big clumps. This morning when I awoke it was to find that the snow had not, and everywhere was covered in a thin blanket of sparkling snow. I say sparkling because, despite its whiteness, there was a sparkle that lay just below the powder. In any case, as I scurried across the car park (I can run from my bedroom to my office in thirty seconds) those thoughts were the ones that struck me with the greatest force. Snow adds an ethereal beauty to anything, and anything already beautiful merely has its beauty magnified - be it a town or a person.

Enough proselytizing. You love snow, and I'm sure I need not convince you of how wonderful it is.

This morning was spent completing the task I started yesterday, a task for which I was rewarded with a bottle of something novel and exciting. It's an apéritif, and not one I'm familiar with. Normally I'd put a picture of it here but, in the dash to get home and do shopping, it's still in the office. However, I promise if you check back after 11am GMT there'll be a photo of the gift in place of my grinning face.

See? Looks exciting, non?


Having delivered the goods, completed the assignment, and been incredibly surprised by the kind gesture of my colleague - perhaps I'm cynical, but every time a colleague gives me a thank-you gift for some work I've done I'm completely bowled over and stammer thanks in two different languages.

That's how you know you're getting better at second languages. You use it to thank people because it provides useful filler while you try to get your brain back in gear.

The only other thing that happened today was that I called up my interviewer to fix a time and date for the aforementioned interview, time being a bit weird between here and London. She answered the phone with the distinctive "'Allo?" of almost all French people. My resolution, which had been to speak exclusively in English, went swiftly out the window. Hearing that "Allo?" at work has become a signal, for me, to speak in French rather than English. Like a Pavlovian dog, I switched into French. (The following has been translated:)

- 'Allo?
- Ah hello, am I speaking to --
- Yes, speaking.
- Hi, we spoke yesterday via email, I'm just calling to confirm the interview time and date.

And so on, as you would expect that call to go. Except it was totally in French, and at no point did either of us suggest switching to English. It just seemed completely natural, and that pretty much made my day. A genuine French person who's never met me felt more at east speaking French than English. Joy.

The afternoon was absolutely full of work, which was also really pleasing. After lunch my colleague and I did a coaching session with the same colleague who'd gifted me the scrumptious looking bottle above, and ten minutes from the end my supervisor rang me on my mobile.

-Tu es où, Jonathan? Where are you, Jonathan?
-Je suis à l'école, Madame. I'm in school, Miss. Bear in mind that the coaching session we were conducting took place not more than 100 meters from my supervisor's office.
- But why aren't you picking up your phone?
I walked into her office.

It was a good moment. She looked completely nonplussed, stared at her own phone for a good ten seconds, and then looked at me. I apologised and explained why I'd (apparently) spontaneously materialised outside her office. She told me that the marketing and press department were looking for me, hoping to utilise my knowledge of English. A press release was ready to go out, following an interview with a CEO and alumnus of the School. All that remained was for me to okay it.

You can imagine how my ego swelled. Coming on the heels of the interview that I confirmed this morning this fresh massage of my ego (well recovered from its bruising descent yesterday) and so I stormed up to the department and spent a comfortable hour discussing very tiny variations in language. English is so rich but also so very sensitive to change; anyone who has looked up the difference between get on and get off knows what I mean.

Now, at this point I'd love to talk about how my evening was interesting, how the French lesson was brilliant, and how I trudged through snow that crunched underfoot.

Instead, I'm somewhere between elation and terror, so I'm going to close this blog here, take a dram, and prepare for my interview.

If you're slightly perturbed by the abruptness with which this blog has finished, permit me to recommend you a blog by a schoolmate, Sophy - who's in Vienna - and another German assistant +Joanna Ford, who I don't know personally but writes with the elegance and easy wit that is so often lacking from this blog.

I'll see you all tomorrow.

EDIT: Sophy, not Sophie. I'm an awful person.

I'm going on an adventure!

Planning tomorrow's jaunt, for which I shall be leaving at the unnatural hour of 7 ante meridiem, has got me terribly excited. I've looked up places to go and things to see, been bitterly disappointed by the fact that my favourite looks like it'll be closed and found myself once again confounded by the French fondness for just shutting everything for two hours at lunchtime.

Still, there also seem to be plenty of good eateries, so I'm looking forward to a delectable lunch. The early morning will be interesting and hopefully I'll get the chance to take an early breakfast when I arrive. There seems to be an awful lot to see there including big clocks, various museums, and a cathedral or three. There will probably be lots of pictures, although I can't promise a post - I know I shall be absolutely dog-tired.

Anyhow; that's tomorrow. Today was a slow news day - at least in the morning. In the afternoon, this tweet appeared in my timeline:

I like PR; I'd like to see myself in it one day before long. It's storytelling by any other name and, like a rose, is still as sweet. I like to portray myself as cool, calm and collected. I like you all to think of me as the pinnacle of effortless charm, poise and grace, un maestro di sprezzatura if you like. So it will benefit me nothing to tell you that upon reading this tweet I jumped out of my chair and said a word that my mother told me oftentimes not to say.

Nota bene - For British readers, don't forget that Mothering Sunday is this weekend, and if you've not got anything yet there's probably still some sad looking flowers or a dog-eared card at the petrol station. It's far too late for me. But you still have a tiny chance. Go. Go now!

So having fired off an email to the man in question and received a full job description in reply, it turns out that the company is looking for an intern whom they hope to turn into a full time employee, and at this point in my life I can't really drop out of university and hope all turns out for the best. There was a time when I did exactly that, but I'm older and just a little wiser now - in part because when I did, it didn't, if you see what I mean.

However; I am nothing if not tenacious, and I've sent emails in French and English asking for the company to consider me for an internship of fixed duration. I don't know if I'll get it - that advert will have been answered by a minimum of 200 actually graduated francophones, some of whom will be naturally bilingual, but nonetheless - nothing is gained by doing nothing.

As I sent the email last thing on a Friday night I don't imagine I'll get anything back before Monday, but  I'm going on an epic trip tomorrow and planning lessons all day Sunday so I'm not going to have any time to worry. That's the plan, but I daresay I'll find half an hour to chew on my fingernails. Even in the depths of panic, I know how to schedule my time.

As I packed my things away to go for the weekend, my neighbour popped his head round the door to mention he'd be gone for a week. I asked if he was going anywhere nice, and he pretended to think about it.

- Cap-Vert, he said at last, grinning.

Cap-Vert is a string of islands just off the coast of Senegal, 14 degrees above the equator.

Rouen suddenly looks less awesome.

In case I don't do a blog tomorrow please accept my apologies in advance, and have a picture of a man who looks like Ant and Dec at the same time. 

Can't be unseen.

The same tired old refrain (Some swearing)

PR is a fast-moving, forward-thinking industry. In my opinion it simply has to be; you cannot stand about waiting for stories to break or a friendly journalist to take a sudden interest in your story.

Politics (I thought) was similarly fast-moving and forward-thinking; indeed, there shouldn't be many people thinking further forward than politicians.

And yet today I feel like both of these opinions have been utterly squashed. The first was by a PR firm for whom I otherwise have great respect for and the second was by the Conservative party, who are apparently trying to out-shit even their own bloated caricatures.

Firstly, the PR firm. I understand the argument that is suggested, to whit: you are getting an education, and as a result, you should pay towards the cost. I disagree with this idea for a couple of reasons: first, I'm producing content. I will grudgingly accept that I ought to put some cost towards my university fees, although £9,000 (I know, technically I pay only a fifth of that, but I am speaking generally) goes a little past ridiculous and into the realm of the truly ridiculous. All three of my students today, one French and two Russian, expressed utter disbelief that we had such an insane system. Mind you, the Russians also needed convincing I was British because I was, in their words, "Too animated."

It's nice to see the stereotypes of Britain as a nation of stick-up-arse, stiff-upper-lip, what-ho-Jeevesing chaps and chappesses has absolutely not gone anywhere. In any case, the education I receive at university is entirely linear; I am taught, I produce content, but none of it is going to add to the prestige of the university - the books on which we write our essays have already been examined in minute detail, which I imagine is the point. It gives us, the students, more data on which to base our conclusions, thus ensuring our essays have at least the semblance of a well-researched piece of work.

An internship is entirely a two way street. I am still receiving an education, except this time the work I produce will go to directly padding the bottom line of the company who have interviewed me and decided that I am good enough to work for them. They have, presumably, satisfied themselves that I am not going to defecate into an envelope and mail it to their clients. They have faith, I suppose, that I am not going to take photographs of my genitals and post them to the official twitter feed. And while these are extreme examples I also hope that they understand that they are taking on someone who has no more skill or ability than a graduate in this area - and that occasionally they will need to go over my work, as they would the graduate's, because nothing will be perfect first time.

The only difference seems to be that the graduate would be paid his wage, and I would receive £100 per week as expenses. A monthly ticket to the office from my rent-free parent's house would set me back £440. The minimum wage would mean paying interns just under a thousand pounds a month, and increase of £600. That's at minimum wage.

He has a point.

So come on PR firms. Be forward-thinking and awesome like I know you are, and pay your interns what you think they're worth.

And if you really think they're worth £2.50 an hour, then I suggest you fire whoever's recruiting them.

I've nothing to say about the Conservative party, save to share this little nugget where the guy in charge of collecting tax explains how to avoid paying tax.

It should be noted that of course this is young Osbourne. He may have radically changed his ways and not done any of those cheeky things like, say, flipped his house for £400,000 of profit.

Depressing day.

The road flows like a river

Which at the moment, in the UK, is not a metaphor. On the way home today we passed two canoeists and a frigate. Still, I am now warmly ensconced in the jolly old bosom of the family home, replete with Christmas tree that is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

I shall try to give some idea of its magnitude. In Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey II starts tiny and grows until he takes up an entire corner of the room.

The Christmas tree from which I am cowering would eat Audrey II and still have room for Audrey III. I'm stunned there are still presents under the tree. Perhaps the tree is only carnivorous. Perhaps it is cannibalistic. I fear discovering it making its insidious, arboreal way into my room in the dead of night, departing silently and leaving only a pile of needles that are incredibly hard to pick up.

So: yesterday I finished off the last of the food in my fridge, and knocked together a carbonara. The recipe is quite simple; 25g parmesan, 25g pecorino, 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk all combined with a very decent helping of pepper. Like seriously decent, it's called carbonara, so let's see plenty of black pepper in there. You can use the egg white to make almost any cocktail better, binding the ingredients and giving a thicker, creamer finish and a lovely foam. Start cooking some pasta, up to you how much and what kind. While that's happening, fry off about 75g of bacon - I use lardons, because they have some nice fatty bits that render down really well - with a glove of garlic. Get rid of the garlic with a slotted spoon. Mix the egg-cheese-pepper mixture together gently. Drain the pasta, chuck it over the bacon, get it coated in grease, and then throw on mixture. Stir it around, coating the pasta in that tasty goodness. Chuck it all in a dish. Eat it. Crush your enemies. Don't forget to wash up.

Now, I had no garlic. Most people would ask their neighbours for some garlic, or possibly just miss it out.

I doused my lardons in Zubrowka, a Polish bison-grass vodka, and then set it on fire.

It was awesome.

If you flambé in wine, you get a reddy-orange flame, which is awesome. Vodka, by comparison, burns blue - bright blue - with a yellow edge. It gives one a massive rush, especially if one realises far too late that one has left the damnable spoon in the ban and consequently set fire to that as well. Puffs out very easily, though, so no problems. It also gives the bacon a lovely, light, almost woody, almost citrussy taste and goes incredibly well with everything else in the mix. Highly recommend what I discovered by accident.

This morning, however, did not go so well. Having left all of my presents at the flat, I found myself queueing for the Eurostar behind the most nightmarish, upper-class twit-of-the-year couple in the world. Oh, how they nattered in nasal towns about if he knew "Biffy" Jones who's a Westminster man, and if she knows Sheikh Al-Banier because he played cricket with him at Eton, don't you know, and before very long the temptation to unhinge my jaw and attempt to swallow them like a snake.

Bizarrely, it got worse, when they started talking about their internships. He is at the Assemblée Générale, because "Uncle David at the Ministry had a little word, you know" and she's at Vogue, because "Mummy knows the editor or something." Both agreed, however, that absolutely nobody gets a job through the normal methods.

To every entitled twatting toff who's ever got an internship or a job through family ties, not because they're qualified, but because Uncle David is at the Ministry or Mummy knows the editor or because your grandmother is the Queen - don't trumpet it. Especially not in France, because there is a long history of revolutions here against upper-class twits.

Still; it's easy to take a step back and laugh at them. Their lives sounded utterly dull, and their chatter as inane as its contents. I've learnt this year, in just three months, that it's really an excellent idea to take a step back when one's instinct is to explode. Or swallow people with your dislocated jaw.

On the other hand, when it comes to the NRA, just feel free to get absolutely furious.

I cannot, I can not believe that there are still people who think that making more guns available is a suitable strategy, that armed guards in schools is not madness, and that a press conference in which you announce such a bizarre position but refuse to take questions is going to do any good at all.

It's the start of a new era, people. The Mayans were right. We just read it wrong.

Instagram

By now everyone in the Western hemisphere is probably sick of two stories: first, the supposed end of the world which, despite being quashed by everyone who's had even the most fleeting of contacts with scientific though, still has hundreds of proponents.

I'm not going to go into why the world isn't going to end - it's been done before by people with a greater handle on science than me - but I will say that if it does, it's been an absolute pleasure knowing each and every one of you. And I'm gutted that I turned down that credit card I was offered.

The other story is Instagram, and their stupidity in trying to grab away their users' content in such a brazen fashion. On a social network, where everyone shares images, to imagine that your ToS would stay subtly hidden for any more than five minutes is laughably naive. The fact that it was done in a fairly underhand way has simply worsened the effect.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. It's as true now as it has ever been, and the fact remains that if you are using a free service then somewhere along the line you're going to pay for it. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn - they all sell your information to advertisers. If you're being given something for free, consider that perhaps you are the product.

The problem Instagram also faces is that there are an awful lot of competitors snapping at its heels. A social network which is mostly mobile and based around taking pictures is fairly easy to replicate, more so now than ever. Facebook, which has had a long time to entrench itself in the market, is almost unassailable - even if Google+'s claims that it has 400 million users is true, it simply doesn't measure up to the 1 billion that Facebook passed in late September this year.

However, Instagram have at least responded smartly. They wrote a blog explaining what was going on and have stated that they will revert to the old ToS on January 19. The response is strong, well set out and clear - with a lovely little compliment at the end to soften the anger of these online campaigners. It's a beautiful piece of writing, and should hopefully smooth the feathers of certain users.

Looking ahead, though, it would still have been better to have not done it in the first place. Your users need to trust you, and things like this - no matter how quickly and how well they are managed - chip away at that trust. Winning it back is going to be an uphill struggle.

Telling the truth with lies - PR

First up: my cousin is getting married in January. Both my father and my brother will be in Dubai, so I will be escorting my sisters and my mother to a wedding. If I escape with my sanity intact, there may indeed be a God, and a merciful one at that. It sounds like it's going to be rushed and hectic, which I suspect all weddings are whether preparations started a year or a month ago.
It's also a very romantic story, and romantic stories - really, any stories - make me very happy. Weddings especially though. Love is a tricky thing to pin down, and if two people can find it with each other, then celebrations are certainly in order. Though I'm still not sure about the (agreed, symbolic) "giving away" of the bride, harkening back to a time when girls were so useless that you had to literally give them away, along with a gift of money. We certainly don't make the bride's father pay a huge sum of money so that we can take her off his hands.

By, say, making him pay for the wedding itself.

That definitely does not happen any more.

The problem with changing this idea is that it's a tradition, and tradition just means "story that people have told for a long time." Stories have power; we learn that from the cradle. There are thousands of fantastic articles detailing the power stories have and, although I'd cheerfully advocate reading all of them, why not start with a story about the power of stories. It's complex, but trust me. Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett, is brilliant and although it's fictional, so are a lot of stories. It doesn't make them less real, just less true.

Not untrue, though. All stories need a kernel of truth. You can wrap that kernel in so many lies that it takes another form - racism is the truth "I'm scared of change" wrapped up in social, economic and political language until it becomes almost acceptable. The message of the story is formed of the lies with which you wrap your truth.

And yes, of course you can tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but the fact is that's boring. Any omission might be considered a lie, and a story with no omissions is dull. As an example, 24 is well-known for the fact that Jack Bauer has never, ever gone to the toilet. Ever. Why? Because that's dull. It's a necessary lie to tell the truth that we really like Jack Bauer being Jack Bauer, and he loses a portion of that character when he has to take a toilet break. It's one of the few times when dynamic action is really frowned upon.

I mean you don't actually look and frown, because that might be weirder. Etiquette in the gents' is a hydra of potential slip-ups. (Pun intended and immediately regretted.)

In short, if you're telling a story, first you need to find your truth. And if you want to tell the world something true, then you might need to find yourself a storyteller.

Winter is coming. Look busy.

A soirée last night and a housewarming tonight; life is hard but someone has to live it. The champagne flowed like the conversation; it was French and everyone was holding one. Including me, which stunned me most of all. Hosting was enormous fun; I can see why my sister is into it. Introducing people, circulating, sipping bubbly and talking about n’importe quoi, which I wish had an English translation. It’s sort of everything and nothing. I hope somebody who speaks French can enlighten me if there is, in fact, an actual translation.

Of course this morning was something of a comedown; no hangover, but a return to the office. To a certain extent it’s because I want to wear a tux every day, and when you look like I do in a tux :

You’ll understand why I’m keen to break it out more often. But such is life; unless I become a jazz singer (unlikely), the next James Bond (more unlikely), or a penguin photographer (actually...) I shall not wear it very often. Goodnight sweet prince. Back to the armoire you go.

You’ll notice I said armoire there and not wardrobe. That’s because I momentarily forgot that the word wardrobe existed. I don’t know if this is a good sign or not; I fear that when I come back I shall cut an odd figure, wandering round my house and shouting

“What do you call this? A placard?”

“Describe it.”

“It’s got cups in it.”

“That’s a cupboard.”

“Oh. So what do you call...”

And so on ad nauseam. I actually suspect this may be symptomatic of something more serious; I managed to buy some chocolate biscuits from a vending machine and then walk away with my change but without the calorific goodness. Honestly. I’ve started to lose it completely.

I’m still trying to work out a topic for my year abroad paper; it has to be ethnocentric - some difference or similarity between the UK and France. I wanted to do it on linguistic markers used in lying speech, but that’s getting more and more complex - and since I’ve just posted it, I’m not even sure if I can still use it. If you have any ideas, do let me know, because I’m currently scraping the very bottom of the barrel.

One final thought as I go - I’m looking for an internship and a flat for next year. Finding either is proving immensely difficult, so if you know of anything going in either field, do please let me know.

I will show appreciation in all sorts of exciting ways.

Tomorrow is Champs d’Elysee and the Christmas Markets, so be ready for a veritable avalanche of photographs. I will also be going to Cartier to laugh in their faces.

Although at this rate I’ll buy something and then leave it in the shop.