NYC

Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
And make a brand new start of it
New York, New York
I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York.
I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York.

Addiction

Being currently wrapped up in series 4 of Desperate Housewives and seeing one of the characters struggle with an addiction (no spoilers I promise), it got me thinking about how much time I spend being addicted to things. Not dangerous things, I'm not that exciting, but certainly little everyday things that notch up the minutes as they eat away at your life. I don't want to think of the amount of hours frittered away on the internet that could be spent doing something useful like knitting, needlework or scrapbooking.

Like Facebook. I've just spent more than an hour surfing on facebook. OK so yesterday night I had my choir practice and I've been working far too much today, so I've been using my time resourcefully up to now, but my evening has just been swallowed up by reading amusing comments and watching funny but time-wasting video posts.

Like text messaging. Not the actual typing of the messages but the checking of the phone - I must do that twenty times a day. Fumbling around in my handbag to fish it out, checking the screen and putting it back must gnaw off a good half hour from every day of my life.

Like email. In my job I have an email in the office and one which is online with a password. Typing in the login and password must take up another half an hour every day. Let alone checking gmail and hotmail when I get home.

Like vente-privee - a French online shopping site which offers brand name products at discount prices for short periods. I check the site perhaps twice a week but always end up staying on it for twenty or so minutes.

I know living alone during the week is probably the reason for all this, and also the undeniable geekiness which flows through my veins.

I would like to go cold turkey for a day, but I just don't know if I could stand being out of contact with cyberland that long. Am I sick? I'm sure there will soon be facebook anonymous groups where people can go who are totally addicted. I'm just glad it's blocked on work computers, funny that I never miss it there. Ooo, just a minute, I've got a new text message...

Tinsel time

Today is the 1st December and things are hotting up in the shops. Kids are screaming, mums are tearing out their hair, dads are starting to ask themselves why everyone is crazy. Christmas shopping has begun in earnest in Paris and you can't buy so much as a T-shirt without waiting in a queue for ten minutes or more.

Of course I haven't experienced any of that, because this year I decided to do all my shopping online. I know that "it's not the same" - yes, it's better. No carrying anything, no waiting in a queue and no pushing through throngs of people with no idea what they want or where they're going. Being a fairly organised person in my professional life means that in my private life I'm a bit of a mess, and usually the warning lights of Christmas shopping don't arrive in my radar until at least mid-December.

Maybe I'm getting on a bit, or maybe I use up so much patience with my students during the week, but I just can't stand the thought of traipsing round Galeries Lafayette (as nice as it sounds on paper) with a million Parisians and two million tourists. The tourists are annoying because they don't know where they're going and the Parisians are annoying because they push past everyone at any opportunity.

So, I've probably accrued a delivery bill of more than 50€ in total, but at least I haven't left the privacy of my nice warm slippers.

Gospel Dreaming

I've just got home from an extremely boosting evening at the Eglise St Roch in Paris. No, nothing to do with Alpha; this was musical boosting, curtesy of Gospel Dream. They are a small choir of around 20 people with voices to raise even the heavy stone roof of St. Roch and the heavy stone hearts of the Parisians listening.
Their songs were upbeat, their style so clear and confident that I smiled and clapped along throughout the whole thing. For the encore, they performed a version of O, Happy Day, a classic, and I've been singing it ever since. Enjoy.

Strike two

We in the city of lights are currently experiencing the second strike period of the autumn. It started out in nice sunny, crisp weather with people rallying round and organising car-pools, cheerfully hopping on Vélibs and there generally being an air of acceptance, not agreement, but acceptance of the situation. In 1995 when Paris and the rest of France lived through 3 weeks of much tougher strike action (there was literally no métro), the general feeling was that the strikers were right and they should support them. This time, with the private sector dealing with retirement at 60 or 65, the public sector with its mid-life retirement age of 50 or 55, sympathy is much less readily available.

It's true that working on the railways was tough work with dangerous conditions and rail workers suffered much more than those snugly warm in offices. When the retirement age for these workers was being defined, it was a very different job from what it is today. Forgive me for my ignorance, but from what I've seen in the Paris underground, driving a métro train is little more than pushing a button or two. I can't speak with any kind of authority, but it seems to be not incredibly taxing.

So, whether they are right or wrong, the strike goes on. This week the weather forecast is rain and more rain, so I fear the cheery Vélibbers are not going to be quite so eager to get out on their bikes this week. I was going to be among them, but I'm counting on the driverless (so therefore not on strike) line 14 to get me nearer to where I want to go. However, I have the feeling the rest of Paris will do the same. Vive la différence....

Dumb Dog II

This morning I was hurrying along my street and I saw in the distance the dreadful mutt that had bitten me a couple of weeks ago.

I actually had my camera with me and it was only a few metres away, but I was late for work and I rushed on to the metro to get there on time.

Now I regret it, but I'm determined to run into that scoundrel again, and when I do I'll be camera at the ready.

A Weekend in the Country

I'm still alive and the bruise is gone, so the dog bite didn't turn out to be such a big deal. It has however given me lots of opportunities to tell a story and people are generally extremely shocked, not by the dog bite itself, but by the attitude of the owner, which to me is a source of continuing frustration.

Anyway, it's in the past now. Paris and the rest of France are enjoying a long weekend at the moment, it was All Saints' Day on Thursday, so most people took the 'pont' or bridge, which means taking the day between the bank holiday and the weekend off as well, to make a four-day break.

I went scooting off to Chablis on Thursday morning to see G and his family, which was lovely. Thursday brought blue sky and sunshine and even though Friday was a bit grey, it didn't rain. On Thursday lunchtime we went to a gorgeous restaurant called L'hostellerie des Clos, a Michelin starred restaurant famous in Chablis for its fine food and enormous wine list. We ate delicious scallops with Burgundy truffles, then pigeon in Pinot Noir sauce with puréed potatoes and finally a pastry with hot fruits and ice cream. It was all washed down with a delicious white wine from Burgundy and a red from the south of France. Living in France really does have its advantages....

Dumb Dog

On Strike Day last week (Thursday 18th) I decided to work from home. We have a rather flashy new system which allows distance training, so I can be in Paris and my student can be in Grenoble or Nepal, and it doesn't make any difference. It was a great opportunity to spend a day testing it out and things were running smoothly until I mistakenly put my foot outside my front door.

I'd been invited to a meeting not far away, so I decided to be cunning and use my own bike to get there, instead of taking a Vélib, which I'd heard would be far too in demand for anyone to be able to get their hands on one. So, I wheeled out my Décathlon powder blue bike and got it outside the cellar, locked the cellar, and then realised it had a flat tyre. No problem, I thought, I'll chance a Vélib, and still be on time.

What I hadn't factored into my timing was the dog attack.

Walking along the street near my apartment towards our local Vélib station, I was enjoying the fresh breeze and the bright sunshine when I saw an extremely mangy looking waist-high dog a few metres in the distance, held on a leash by a slightly less mangy-looking owner, but nevertheless urinating all over the pavement (the dog, not the owner, although I wouldn't have put it past him).

I continued walking along and considered that the pavement was wide enough for a grumpy old man, a scruffy dog and myself. Obviously I was mistaken because just as I passed the dog it went crazy and yelped in anger, somehow managing to engage my (fake-leather-clad) arm between its slobbery jaws.

I screamed like a little girl and yanked my arm away from the dog. Thankfully no damage was done and my jacket, limbs and circulation remained intact. I was shaken nonetheless, and quite surprised to hear the dog's owner yelling, "What do you expect if you walk like that, approaching a dog from behind...?"

Now, he may have a point that dogs shouldn't be surprised, especially when eating, but to say that his mutt's attack on me was my own fault is nothing short of ridiculous. I tried to reply intelligently through my heart palpitations and tears, but all I managed was, "I expect nothing at all, Monsieur, when I walk in the street, especially not be attacked by a dog for no reason, sob..."

Later that evening I would think of several much more effective rebuttals, but in the moment that's all I could manage.

I finally got to the Vélib station and took out a bike, only to find that it too had a flat tyre. It was this that pushed me over the edge and I called my boss in floods of tears explaining what had happened. His main reply was, "What just happened?!" and reassured me that they would wait until I could arrive.

Finally I managed to get another bike, pedal to the meeting and arrive just five minutes late. Thank goodness for the lovely promenade plantée.

A friend said to me today that I should have called the police or at least reported the dog incident, but I am not hurt, so I thought it wasn't necessary, but then she asked what if it had been a child? Of course she's right, so I'm going to report it.

Rather an eventful day all in all. I just hope the strikes are well and truly over now or I'm going to have to invest in a puncture kit.

Swing low

Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home!
Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home!
I looked over Jordan and what did I see,
Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home.

If you get there before I do,
Comin' for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I'm comin' too,
Comin' for to carry me home.

Spinning Around

It's never easy trying to decide what to do when the parent wagon rolls into town, especially with grandmother in tow. Obviously walking is pretty restricted as grandmother is now 86, so in the no-no category you also have to add dancing, climbing, being in crowds, cobblestones, dark interiors (eyesight problems), so rather a large portion of improvising is required.

It is nice to spend time with family of course, and we did have a rather pleasant weekend in the sunshine. We managed to improvise with a red bus tour, a bateau mouche and another red bus tour; the highlight of which, for me, was seeing the Tongan rugby team licking ice-creams dejectedly near the Eiffel Tower the day after losing to England.

We enjoyed two rather tasty dinners at Au Chein Qui Fume and La Tourelle. The second one, being near to my apartment, I always consider as basic with nothing particularly special to offer. On Sunday evening I couldn't have been more wrong. They brought out plates of mouth-watering, melt in your mouth steak, crispy gratin dauphinois and beautifully cooked cod. The dinner at the smoking dog was good too, but for almost twice the price... but that's Châtelet as opposed to Vincennes.

I had wanted to go to the new aquarium in Trocadéro, but the interior would probably have been too dark for my gran. Fair enough, we have to consider everyone but I think my mum would have loved it. That will have to be a feature of one of G's future Parisian weekends.

We did manage a mother-daughter bonding moment after dinner on Saturday. With my dad and his mum safely ensconced in a taxi back to the Citadines, my mum and I headed down the rue de rivoli towards Concorde. For the first time in the weekend we walked briskly; laughing and chatting all the way to the big wheel. The view was stunning, so stunning that I was in fact a little stunned and spent the first (painfully slow) rotation with my hands glued to the central pole, praying that the tiny metal half-cage we were in would withstand the wind (or what actually was a rather pleasant evening breeze, but everything is yanked out of perspective at a height of 50m). By the second rotation I was fine, and the delighted grin on my mum's face made me relax and enjoy the rest of the trip. Sometimes it really is nice to be a tourist again.

So now it is back to the grindstone once more, with the nights drawing in and G still spending Monday to Friday in Chablis. Maybe I'll pop out again for another spin on the wheel...