Back to normal

Normal here means my normal style; less "blue". My girlfriend assigns colours to my blog, but she also leaves out the u in colour so we'll take what she says with a pinch of salt. (She's coming back tomorrow, and I react to the reappearance in my life of those I've missed by being sarcastic and mean.) In any case, today began with a bang as I had an hour-long meeting five minutes after I got in. It was a great meeting, with lots of positive actions coming out of it, but all the same - that much French a mere 90 minutes after I'd woken up and blearily switched on +France24 is too much, even for someone with my staggering intellect and endless reserves of modesty.

In any case, I understood everything, and have now been commissioned to record myself giving one presentation about mind maps as well as film a series of clips for a secret project. Secret for the moment, in any case. There'll be more about it once I have more details for sharing. In any case, that brought me to 10, when I went to work for the Association, sorting out figures from last year. The accounts seem to be a bit of a mess, but I was reassured by my colleague that the figures I'd worked with last year were all wrong, and the ones I know held in my hands were the "good" ones.

(To all French students of English:  le bon is "the right one", and not "the good one. We can't make moral judgements about numbers.)

I had to fortify myself with coffee to bite back the quick response, which was why on earth was I not given the right figures in the first place, and as I waited for the dark nectar to fill my cup I realised that they probably thought they were the right figures in the first place. It is far too easy to leap to the conclusion that everyone had the information then that they do now, and it's simply untrue. I took a deep breath, a deep draught of coffee, squared my shoulders, and wrote lovely formulas to make numbers jump across pages and add up in neat little columns.

I darted back and forth between the Association and the mediatheque for the rest of the morning as students dropped in for books and DVDs. I have been dong that a lot recently, as I'm yet to work out how to automatically transfer calls. It seems that whenever I am in the Association nobody calls but the world wants to get in touch with the mediatheque, while when I'm in the mediatheque the world and his brother are both calling my Association phone. Sometimes, just for fun, they'll ring together, and I'll get so confused I run into a wall.

I have a fitness machine disguised as a pair of phones and it is a sadistic son of a gun.

I am also only now discovering the joys of endless e-mail threads, where you read something and then write your reply and send to all, because your opinion is so damn important that everyone must read it. Not just the project leader. Everyone on the project. This guy, who did a little picture montage and then nothing else this morning came into an inbox full of e-mail tennis about the correct wording of the French text in the e-mail that accompanied the montage.

And right at the bottom, after scrolling through for twenty minutes and trying to decipher the semantic battle waging, I find: "The montage is fine."

Road rage is a picnic with Winne the Pooh compared to the sensation coursing through a fellow's bloodstream on having read every line of this silliness in hope of any sort of feedback on one's work and finding it consists of four words.

No matter. I quit the business at midday, and threw myself into mediatheque work. The first part of the dual projects I have going on require a translation in which I have - and gods, I love my colleague for saying this - I have white card.

You've never seen anyone look so blank in your life. He repeated.

"Tu as white card pour faire ce que tu veux"

Understanding crept over me like moss creeps over a boulder. Slowly.

"Carte blanche?" I asked.

He beamed. "Oui!"

I almost bit through my lip trying not to laugh. What are the odds that he would pick that exact phrase to translate? Marvelous. A moment of pure comedy.

So I've broken down some of the heavier phrases and pages into more manageable chunks, like a bar of 95% chocolate recommended by the mother of an ex-girlfriend. I've played with the phrasing but, reading back what I've written, I'm realising that I may need to tone down the "me-ness" in it for those who don't speak my particular brand of English.

All of this, by the way, and it wasn't even lunchtime. I love working this hard, the time absolutely flows. I also love Fridays, because I get served this after lunch:

Pictured: why you want to work in France.

Second coffee of the day and this time with chocolate. There's just too much dark deliciousness there.

Straight after lunch I had a meeting with M, who's in charge of social media at the School. She's also charming, smart, and my co-collaborator on my third current project. She'll be interviewing a senior member of staff about an exciting new relationship that the School is developing, and she wants me to help her film and then subsequently edit the footage. We'll be adding in watermarks and doing our best to make the whole thing look as professional as possible.

Exciting times!

The rest of the afternoon was then given over to Chapter 4 of the book, which I didn't even realise I'd not seen yet. While I'll be losing marks for, you know, noticing stuff, I think it should be well noted that I then promptly busted my ass for another 90 minutes before throwing everything in a bag and running off to teach my private students.

Their lessons went well, though it's interesting to see that B, while more confident, is still a lot shakier on grammar than C - but C would rather carve her own arms off than say more than a sentence at a time. I need some way to meld them into one super-student and then divide them in two.

Crashed home, bought a kebab on the way - immigration is amazing for so many reasons, but the spread of spectacular food is the one I love best - and now, at twenty past ten, I'm considering going to bed. I had a lucky escape today; I was offered the last ticket to a party happening tonight in the Tour Montparnasse, the 2nd highest point in Paris. I was more than tempted; despite the long day, this was one of those occasions that will never come again.

But when I dug into my pockets I found nothing; not even a bit of fluff. Not even a moth to comically flutter out to denote my total lack of cash. The opportunity passed me by.

Let's be honest - after last time, that's probably just as well.

The day of rest

Yea, right. I can understand taking a day off if you've created a universe and everything in it from scratch in six days but since I haven't, I've been busy today. I got up early enough to go for a run, have breakfast and walk up to my student's house. The hill was less surprising today, but on the other hand I probably shouldn't have run before hand. Rookie mistake.

I took my camera because, as I said, I had planned to go museum-hunting. I left my card at home because I have a curious love of souvenirs, a remainder from a childhood desire to buy the cheap rubbers and pencils on offer at Hever Castle. We always went to Hever Castle.

In any case, that meant I had only the cash from my tutoring that morning to last me through the day. After that I would be stranded, and the walk home is a long one, so the first thing I did was buy my all day ticket. Young people - thank you, French state, for still believing in my youth - can get a three-zone day pass, valid on all forms of transport, for 3.65€ on the weekends and on bank holidays (jours fériés). During the week it's a lot pricier.

So I headed in, armed with my camera and 3.65€ lighter. In Paris you can pretty much throw a stone and hit a museum, and although I'd planned certain locations, I threw that plan to the winds and picked the first one I walked past. It was the Musée Guimet (site in French only), and good lord, was it beautiful.

Nearly completely Asian sculpture with heavy emphasis on religious icons, the heavy mass of stone really reflecting the solidity of the Buddha. Christianity has a frail icon, and that's the point - Christ broken and reborn is the root of Christianity. Buddha, on the other hand, is the solid antithesis of all that's bad in the world - he attained enlightenment through meditation and a middle path between self-indulgence and self-mortification. He seems kind of a solid dude.

There were also plenty of Hindu deities, with their many heads and arms, cast in bronze or gold. Unlike the Buddha they had sustained some damage over time, but the carving is still exquisite - though still nowhere near the utter mastery attained by Michelangelo. I mean, look at this:

Look at the folds of cloth, at the ribs, at the freaking veins. Two years. I couldn't do that in two lifetimes.

But I digress. There were two floors of incredible art and I highly recommend it. There are no pictures, because it felt strangely disrespectful. There was also a Cambodian Buddha who looked frighteningly human, despite being cast in bronze. Very unsettling.

I was heading towards Notre Dame when another museum caught my eye. The quai Branly is a very different sort of museum to the Guiment, very darkly lit, but also more interactive. I have to say that the at first the lack of light irritated me, but once my eyes adjusted to the gloom I found it really helped focus on the exhibits. It also highlighted the arrogant people who read the "no flash" sign in three languages, with a symbol, and decided it didn't apply to them. I have no time for that sort of person and so I shall move swiftly on.

There were artifacts from every ancient culture in the building, and after a while I started getting museum fatigue, All of this information wore me down, and the knowledge that we wiped out most of these civilisations because at the time we thought it the right thing to do got me down. I took a couple of photos, and I wanted to share this one with you.

Because he scared the bejeesus out of me, and I like to share. Look into his eyes.

 Deeper.

Oh yes. There are eyes there. There's a cross on the crown, but it's like the light of the angler fish. Luring you in before gobbling you up. Once you've looked, it's all over. Helpless. Drowning.

I tore my eyes away at the last moment. It may just have been one of the French cub scouts - boy, is it weird that they have cub scouts - but I'm sure I heard a scream of rage and frustration. Suddenly revitalised by my brush with Satan up there, I quit the building and my stomach growled - I always get hungry after brushing with Satan - so I turned my feet towards a friendly looking ristorante. 

The first impression was not good. I sat down and asked for a coffee and the waitress looked at me very cooly. 

"We're not a café, you know. We only do food."

I was astonished. I was astonished because the couple sitting next to me were drinking coffee.

"I am going to order something later," I said. "I just need a coffee for the moment."

Clearly my good looks and easy charm convinced her, as she gave me a sunny grin and whisked herself away to get my coffee. The menu looked inviting and reasonably priced for the area in which I found myself and, having been without an oven for four months now, saw pizza and craved it immediately. Calzone is one of my favourites, and I ordered it without hesitation. I also got a carafe (50cl) of red wine to go with it.

My calzone arrived. Nice dough, tasty cheese and ham and WOAH, WHAT THE WHAT.

Orange goo had started leaking from my delicious calzone. An egg yolk had been popped into my calzone before it had been sealed. Why? Why would anyone add egg to a calzone? I like eggs, don't get me wrong. I was planning on having some for breakfast tomorrow. But on a pizza?

So did I complain? Did I stand up, throw down my napkin and roar "This is unacceptable! Eggs do not belong in calzones! Scramble this guy, poach his brother and fry his sister and I shall munch them all the live-long day but in my calzone? You go too far, sir!"

Of course I didn't. I'm English. I'm polite and besides, like I said: I like eggs. It wasn't bad. My dessert, however, was on another plane. Aside from the pronunciation issue - why did I assume anyone but us would read c-o-l-o-n-e-l  as kernel? Very awkward two minutes, but it arrived. A delicious, light and refreshing lime sorbet that had then been liberally doused with vodka.

We're talking pretty much equal volumes here.

I also got a straw, because that way it's easier to suck up the melted sorbet/vodka mix at the end.

I'm pretty sure there are nightclubs in the UK where sucking 30ml of ice cold vodka through a straw is considered an end-of-night-thing. I was having lunch. 

The reason why the French don't do much after lunch is becoming clearer.

With the bill paid I made my way homeward, my jollity increased by my excellent lunch. The whole meal came in at 28.50€ and so I recommend Dell Angelo, 6 avenue Rapp, as somewhere to take a date or have lunch. Fantastic. Have a Colonel.

Just one, though.

If you'd like to see the rest of the pictures from today's jaunt, click here.

Oh. I also saw two policemen on inline skates. Weirdly intimidating.