Paris, Le pont Alexandre III, 8pm

Jeanne Moreau - Le Tourbillon de la vie

Le tourbillon de la vie

Elle avait des bagues à chaque doigt,
Des tas de bracelets autour des poignets,
Et puis elle chantait avec une voix
Qui, sitôt, m'enjôla

Elle avait des yeux, des yeux d'opale,
Qui m'fascinaient, qui m'fascinaient
Y avait l'ovale de son visage pâle
De femme fatale qui m'fut fatal

On s'est connus, on s'est reconnus,
On s'est perdus de vue, on s'est r'perdus d'vue
On s'est retrouvés, on s'est réchauffés,
Puis on s'est séparés

Chacun pour soi est reparti.
Dans l'tourbillon de la vie
Je l'ai revue un soir, aïe, aïe, aïe !
Ça fait déjà un fameux bail

Au son des banjos je l'ai reconnu
Ce curieux sourire qui m'avait tant plu
Sa voix si fatale, son beau visage pâle
M'émurent plus que jamais

Je me suis soûlé en l'écoutant
L'alcool fait oublier le temps
Je me suis réveillé en sentant
Des baisers sur mon front brûlant

On s'est connus, on s'est reconnus,
On s'est perdus de vue, on s'est r'perdus de vue,
On s'est retrouvés, on s'est séparés,
Puis on s'est réchauffés

Chacun pour soi est reparti.
Dans l'tourbillon de la vie.
Je l'ai revue un soir ah là là
Elle est retombée dans mes bras

Quand on s'est connus,
Quand on s'est reconnus,
Pourquoi s'perdre de vue,
Se reperdre de vue ?
Quand on s'est retrouvés,
Quand on s'est réchauffés,
Pourquoi se séparer ?

Alors tous deux, on est repartis
Dans l'tourbillon de la vie
On a continué à tourner
Tous les deux enlacés

Todays joke

A pastor concluded that his church was getting into serious financial troubles.

While checking the church storeroom, he discovered several cartons of new bibles that had never been opened and distributed.

At his Sunday sermon, he asked for three volunteers from the congregation who would be willing to sell the bibles door-to-door for $10 each to raise the desperately needed money for the church.

Jack, Paul and Louie all raised their hands to volunteer for the task. The minister knew that Jack and Paul earned their living as salesmen and were likely capable of selling some bibles. But he had serious doubts about Louie who was a local farmer, who had always kept to himself because he was embarrassed by his speech impediment.

Poor Louie stuttered badly. But, not wanting to discourage Louie, the minister decided to let him try anyway.


He sent the three of them away with the back seat of their cars stacked with bibles.

The following Sunday all three came back to report on their sales.

Straight away the minister spoke to Jack, "Well, Jack, how did you make out selling our bibles last week?"

Proudly handing the reverend an envelope, Jack replied, "Using my sales prowess, I was able to sell 20 bibles, and here's the $200 I collected on behalf of the church."

"Fine job, Jack!" The minister said, vigorously shaking his hand. "You are indeed a fine salesman and the Church is indebted to you."

Turning to Paul, "And Paul, how many bibles did you sell for the church last week?"

Paul, smiling and sticking out his chest, confidently replied,"I am a professional salesman. I sold 28 bibles on behalf of the church, and here's $280 I collected."

The minister responded, "That's absolutely splendid, Paul. You are truly a professional salesman and the church is also indebted to you."

Apprehensively, the minister turned to Louie and said, "And Louie, did you manage to sell any bibles last week?" Louie silently offered the minister a large envelope.

The minister opened it and counted the contents. "What is this?" the minister exclaimed. "Louie, there's $3,200 in here! Are you suggesting that you sold 320 bibles for the church, door to door, in just one week?"

Louie just nodded. "That's impossible!" both Jack and Paul said in unison. "We are professional salesmen, yet you claim to have sold 10 times as many bibles as we could".

"Yes, this does seem unlikely," the minister agreed. "I think you'd better explain how you managed to accomplish this, Louie."

Louie shrugged. "I-I-I re-re-really do-do-d on't kn-kn-know f-f-f-for sh-sh-sh-sure," he stammered.

Impatiently, Paul interrupted. "For crying out loud, Louie, just tell us what you said to them when they answered the door!"

"A-a-a-all I-I-I s-s-said wa-wa-was, W-w-w-w-would y-y-y-you l-l-l-l-l-like t-t-to b-b-b-buy th-th-th-this b-b-b-b-bible f-f-for t-t-ten b-b-b-bucks ---o-o-o-or--- wo-wo-would yo-you j-j-j-just l-l-l-like m-m-me t-t-to st-st-stand h-h-here and r-r-r-r-r-read it t- to y-y-you??"

Paris seen from the park at Belleville, 4pm

I've just realised that i've had no time off since the last summer holidays, way back in August.

That's eight months ago ... a very long time to be blotting out the accumulated fatigue and stress.

The month of May here is traditionally dotted with bank holidays where the country grinds to a periodic standstill - there's little point in trying to phone companies because nobody will be there.

The next four weeks are going to be exceptional what with 'la fête de travail' (labour day), 'la victoire de '45' (V.E day) and the ascension ...

... all of which happen to fall on a Tuesday this year...

... which equals mondays also becoming unofficial days off ....

... boy, are we going to be in for long, lazy, four day, weekends ...


The first of which started for me at 2.30 this afternoon ;@)

Le Métro, ligne 1, 8am

The temperature in Paris so far this week has been in the high twenties and it's hard to believe that we're only at the end of April.

Typically, people are starting to obsess about the summer that's so obviously going to be a wash out.

People are also now starting to get fractious and snappy with each other.

As for me ... weeeeelll i'm still hobbling around with my dodgy foot and although i've swapped my big stomping boots for my running shoes, i continue going into work in jeans and casual stuff - luckily i don't have any important interviews, but even so i just don't feel as though i'm 'at work'.

MissusBossWoman has been in a state of high hysteria and dramatics : it's the end of our first accounting period and she's been checking out the unpaid invoices.

I've been given a six page list to go through ...

... between now and tomorrow night.

Hand painting

Joke of the day

Little Mary Margaret was not the best student in Catholic school.

Usually she slept through the class.

One day her teacher, a Nun, called on her while she was sleeping.

Tell me Mary Margaret, who created the universe?"

When Mary Margaret didn't stir, little Paulie who was her friend sitting behind her, took his pencil and jabbed her in the rear.

"God Almighty!" shouted Mary Margaret.

"Very good" the nun said and continued teaching her class.

A little later the Nun asked Mary Margaret, "Who is our Lord and Savior?"

But Mary didn't stir from her slumber.

Once again, Paulie came to the rescue and stuck Mary Margaret in the butt.

"Jesus Christ!!!" shouted Mary Margaret and the Nun once again said,

"Very good," and Mary Margaret fell back asleep.

The Nun asked her a third question...

"What did Eve say to Adam after she had her twenty-third child?"

Again, Paulie came to the rescue.

This time Mary Margaret jumped up and shouted, "If you stick that damn thing in me one more time, I'll break it in half!"

The nun fainted...........

Les Champs Elysées, 1pm

D!oh!

Last night i almost broke my foot ...

In the safety of my own home ...

With no high jinks involved ...

All on my own ...

I'd spent the afternoon out and rushed back at about seven as i really wanted to follow the election results live as they were coming through.

Like most people, on sunday nights i have to do tons of simple, banal stuff, y'know, like ironing and getting something to eat.There's never enough time and so i tend to whizz around doing things one after the other, in a kind of non-thinking, labotomised robot mode.

At about seven thirty i thought i'd make a quick dive *shock horror* under the shower and as i was drying off i heard the presenter saying along the lines of "two minutes to go until ..."

As it is sometimes in life, prudence pays and you really and truly should listen to that little voice saying "Watch out dude, there's soapy water on them thar tiles".

The upshot is that i came skidding out of the bathroom, sideways and arse first, into the living room and THWACK ... there was a major sofa + left foot coincidence in the fabric of time.

Yeahyeahyeah v.v funny i'm sure

Much manful howling and whimpering later i discovered that the Sarko/Ségo duel is game on and my foot was starting to swell up.

This morning i couldn't put any weight on it and very seriously thought about not going in.

However, being a macho idiot, i thought i'd butch it out and go in wearing 'civies', i.e : no suit and tie, just jeans, casual shirt and ... great big ... fuck off and die big ... hefty boots ...

Evidently, to say that i had a dumbass 'bathroom incident' does not do wonders for the street cred, so i nonchalantly 'suggested' to BoyIdiot that i'd been indulging in some very extremely high risk acrobatics of the bedroom varity *extreeeeeme shaggin'* .... of the sort not to be tried by mere mortals ... and that i'd only just managed to come through it by the skin of my teeth.

BI being the kind of bloke/plonker/twat that he is did the rest ...

Les Champs Elysées, 1pm

Sunday, sunday

Sunday wouldn't be sunday without a stroll and a laze around to make the most of the unseasonally warm weather.

A park that everyone's told me to visit is the park Monceau.

(if you really want to you can click on the photos to see them in a new window, only bigger).

I know very little about it, other than the things that i read as i was walking around : originally constructed at the end of the 1700's by the Duke of Chartres, the park was subsequently reduced by half of its original size once it had been acquired by the state in 1852.

Of the park as it was at the start of the 1800's, pretty much only the Naumachie (the weeping willow surrounded by water) remains in its natural state.

This is the first thing we see on entering the park : steps leading to a grotto which is a favorite for newlyweds' photo shoots...



From there we come across the 'petit pont' - i love the way that it almost surges out of the dense undergrowth as we walk around it ...





From there we finally come upon what i guess is the centerpiece of the park : the Naumachie which was inspired by the ancient roman penchant for re-enacting naval battles.

The weeping willow is at least two hundred years old ...





Dotted around the park are numerous statues, broken collumns and stone archways and gates that just pop up out of nowhere ...



Finally on leaving the park there is theRotunde de Ledoux - constructed as a watchtower for the old duke ...

In the Métro

Going back to yesterdays post about the Get-out-to-vote guerillas, they would seem to have been back in action over night ...

This time however, the slogans are aimed against the consumerist society that we've all become.

I find some of the slogans a bit trite and others are quite thought provoking ...


"Sack your boss before he fires you (and work less to piss Sarkosy off)"
"Be afraid of one another"


"Productivism + consumersim = everything becomes painful"


" I am not a number, I am not DNA, I am not an RFID chip, I am not a Sarkosyist ... I am ... as I am ... I was made like that"


"Lose ones life whilst meaning to win it"


"Live our dreams instead of dreaming our lives"


"Objects isolate you from the others"


"Look after our own shit, long live the dry toilets"


"There's enough of everything for everyone"


"How can i dream my dreams with all of these telephones ?"


"The consummerist society is a damned society that knocks us all out"

I'm working again tomorrow :(

I'm starting to get a bit worried about BoyIdiot - i've discovered another mania.

I was sitting in the computer room, not surfing but doing some real work *yes, yes, yes it does happen* when BI came in with a sandwich and can of Minutemaid.

He sat down at another computer.

"phsst"went the can and he poured out a very precise mouthful, took the most minimalist of sips and let out the loudest self satisfied sigh "ahhhhh".

So far so good; i'm used to that one.

He tucked his little napkin into his collar, then studiously unwrapped the sandwich on his lap... then, for whatever reason, he opened out the sandwich and proceeded to rearrange the contents into what seemed to be a very organised arrangement - tomato first, then the cheese ... and so on.

Maybe it's me, but y'know.....

Don't vote

The anti-vote guerillas have been out over night : in the corridors of the métro i use in the mornings, all of the publicity boards have been removed and replaced with home made signs....

"Vote well, vote for nothing"

"We'll all come to understand that life and industry can't live together"

"Be realistic; insist , demand , take the impossible"

Billboard

The leaving 'do'

Phouarrr what a day ...

... with all my time spent playing card games i almost had no time bill people.

A few weeks ago i had to take the French for international communication. It's simply a listening and reading comprehension test using multiple choice answers.

Boy Idiot had to do one in English and was chuffed to bits to recieve a special *gold* certificate which is reserved for those who reach 900 points out of 990.

The other plebs get a scummy grey coloured one.

Imagine Boys face then, when MissusBossWoman also recieved a *gold* certificate for attaining 845 points : "Bahhhh it denatures the whole thing ... " he harumphed.

My score was 935 :)

la france vue par ...

... les creuseois

From the in-box

Incroyable histoire ...

Michael Cooper, Australien d'une vingtaine d'années avait fait dans les années 80, un voyage au Kenya à la fin de ses études.

Lors d'un safari, alors qu'il s'était éloigné de son groupe au moment d'un arrêt, il se trouva face à face avec un éléphanteau qui semblait blessé à sa patte avant gauche qu'il maintenait levée.

Cooper réalisait que l'animal pourrait le charger, mais comme il ne semblait pas agressif, il s'en est approché prudemment et il a pu constater qu'en effet, l'éléphanteau avait une énorme écharde plantée à la base de sa patte.

Très calmement, Cooper a posé un genou à terre et à l'aide de son couteau, a retiré l'écharde de la patte.

Dès que l'animal a été soigné, il a pu reposer sa patte au sol, il a longuement regardé Cooper, puis il a barri bruyamment et s'en est allé.

Jamais, Cooper ne s'est senti menacé par l'éléphanteau et il a conservé toute sa vie le souvenir magique de ce moment rare.

Presque 20 ans plus tard, Cooper s'est rendu avec son fils âgé de 11 ans, à un zoo de la banlieue de Sidney.

Lorsqu'ils sont passés tous les deux devant l'enclos des éléphants, l'un des éléphants s'est brusquement mis à taper le sol avec sa patte avant gauche.

Cooper s'est mis à douter, pouvait-il s'agir du même éléphant que celui qu'il avait soigné 20 ans auparavant ?

Il s'approcha un peu plus de l'enclos, et l'animal continuait de frapper le sol de plus belle.

Alors, Cooper enjamba le mur d'enceinte et se dirigea vers l'éléphant.
Ce dernier le souleva en l'attrapant par la taille avec sa trompe, ensuite il le fracassa contre le mur.

Ce ne devait pas être le même éléphant...

.... Il est con ce Cooper.

The Raconteurs - Broken boy soldiers

It feels as if summer has arrived early in Paris.

We've been having pleasant temperatures in the mid twenties already and it's difficult to believe that we're only in april.

There's still no sign of 'Tit Monday' though ... which could feasably fall on a Tuesday or a Wednesday .. or a Thursday .. or a ... pffft

Mondays are always a drag after a weekend spent out and today was no exception what with invoicing, interviewing (complete with the old chestnut "are you married ...") and BoyIdiot mooning around.

Perhaps Boy Idiot's been turned down .... perhaps he's depressed ... perhaps he needs a b.j ...

I just dunno.

I told him that he should go on a blind speed dating thing in one of the local bars that organises things like that ( i should do one of those things mesel') .... his face was a picture as he made an *eek* noise and scuttled off to rearrange his orderly looking pile of files, all neatly arranged on his scupulously tidy desk.

Ho hum

Le Panthéon, 2pm

Sunday

I finally found some time to relax a bit today and so i thought i'd go mad and do some extreme chilling out.

In a nice cemetary !

I'm not yet contemplating doing my wrists, swallowing razor blades or putting my head in the oven - it's a teensy weensy oven and is a bit on the electric side of things.

I wanted to go for a jaunt to a very atypical, non run of the mill cemetary ... the mother of all cemetaries, if you will.

I spent the afternoon at Le Père-Lachaise, where the dead, rich and famous people (DRAFP) are all just dying to get in.

If you click on an image it will open in a new page, only bigger and 'better'








Very briefly : the cemetary is named after a jesuit priest (François d'Aix) who was Louis XIV's confessor from 1675 until his death in 1709.

A hundred years later, the modest civilian cemetary around the jesuit's country house, which up until that time had been called the eastern cemetary, was rebatised La cimitère de La Père Lachaise.

I didn't quite know what to expect on arriving, y'know, cemeteries = glauque

....................... rats

.................. crows

............... worms

................ rats

.......... worms

dead people.





My immediate impression was of some kind of gothic looking shanty town with squillions of tombs crammed side to side, all almost obscenly heaped up, on top of one another



In a spirit of égalité, everyone has the right to 2m4 of turf.

Height though, is not a problem



I got the idea, that even in the last throws of various famillies' dynasties , people are still trying to out do each other in the after-life-one-up-manship-stakes and some of the stonework could grace any public building without shame



Like any self respecting tourist, i wanted to see the eternel resting place of Jimmy Doug Morrison.

I didn't buy the dead people's grave stones map - it really does exist, as crass as it seems ('cos i'm way too cool for that stuff) and wandered aimlessly around listening and looking for indicators (héhéhé).

I finally tuned into the waft of finest Afghan black (there was indeed, somewhat prosaically, a gothic chick having a spliff whilst looking dreamily at the head stone) which led me to the hallowed ground.



From there, in a flash of "let me just demonstrate to y'all my solidarity-with-my-feminist-side-of-things" i thought i'd check out Colette's grave.

I walked on for a bit and saw a group of people all congregating : this must be it, i thought.

I was at that point where you sort of surreptitiously edge along to the focal point of things, camera at the ready ..

... but just in time ... i held back ... i realised that it was a real burial sevice - priest in white frock ... handfulls of dirt... gravediggers checking their watches and calculating their overtime rate ... chicks in little black dresses (couldn't but help and notice that one) ... burying the last vestiges of some familly member.

I pursued upon my little way and stumbled onto another DRAFP



Finally, i doubled back and came upon what was probably my fave tomb (as if we can have a 'favorite' tomb).



The story is this : Victor Noir, twenty two, a young journalist, was called upon to act as a witness to a duel between Pierre Bonaparte (cousin of 'The' Bonaparte) who felt slighted by an article written by a fellow journaliste.

In the ensuing argument, a shot rang out and Victor fell to the ground d.e.a.d

Bonaparte couldn't be prosecuted, for obvious reasons, but the prime minister arrested him anyway in a show of good will (a revolution would've kicked off big time and the seconde republique'd've fell soon afterwards).

Wait .. but .. that's not all ...

Twenty years later (after the fall of the empire) the body of Noir, who by this time had been proclaimed as a symbol of the republic, was moved and a cast of his body was made : exactly as it had been at the moment of his untimely demise.

The story goes that he was due to marry the day after his death and was in a state of extreme, let's say "anticipative" exitation(!!) ... which goes to explain the 'protuberance' in the bronze cast ...

From that point onwards, Victor Noir's tomb has become famous for the lustre on certain parts of his efigy ...

... burnished by the hands of many's a young woman because it's said that caressing the feet and the ... heuuuumm ... 'manly bits' ...allows young ladies to find luuuuuuuuuuurve ! *yeah baby yeah*

Sunday, Sunday

So then ...

... after this mornings little escapade i thought i'd hot-foot it up to Montmarte.

I've not been there since last summer and i would like to get some photos as the sun is going down or coming up, just to see the way that the light plays on the bleached white walls. It's still too early in the year, so that'll be for when summer arrives proper.

The place was, as usual, crawling with people all lazing on a sunny afternoon.







The whole point of going to Montmartre is letting your mind wander back to a period when 'shopping' and consumerism didn't exist in our lexicon ... a bit difficult to do in any tourist trap with it's little authentic boutiques.

I do think that if you can just tune out, go with the flow and indulge yourself in the street entertainment there's plenty to see.

The portrait painters ....


The mime artists ...


The singers ....
I just love all that stuff ... really ... there's so much going on if you allow yourself to drift.

I did try looking for the "Amélie Poulain" bar and corner shop .. but, well, the truth be told, i only half looked because i was absolutely parched and my priority was finding a not too crowded bar for a richly deserved a beer - i've been walking for miles today, me :P

In the event, i had a quick swifty and decided to head on back home as the sun was dipping and a bit of a chill was setting in ...