Blog 1
1st September 2006
You’ll be back at work now in the frying heat. Many of you have endured what my sources describe as new levels of absurdity and ‘grotesquery’ at the HCT Conference which cheered me up no end. It’s still technically summer here…. So this is probably our last chance to feel very pleased with ourselves. We made it to September without having leaped onto a plane to Dubai in panic. The thought of reapplication still seems ridiculous and appalling so I thought I’d better start this ‘blog’ thing before being back in Britain seems totally normal - and not as one friend has described her vacation experience as like ‘wandering around the set of Little Britain’.
Actually its not a blog at all but an email to a group of friends. This is because the blog sites were doing my head in – it seems difficult to post pictures easily, there were stupid adverts and I realised I don’t want anyone else reading this drivel except you lucky peeps. (OK so I just changed my mind on that one - this site looks idiot proof enough even for me).
Also sitting down at a computer for nine hours a day and sending jokes and surfing the net and chatting about the price of oil and property investment opportunities in Tajikistan seem like a distant and slightly weird alternative reality. Time here instead has been taken up by the mundane realities of unpacking and, ..ahem, cleaning, cooking and keeping an eagle eye on the skies to rush out at the first sight of rain to take washing in (1). Washing is almost always damp so our next expenditure is a clothes drier, except, er, we have nearly spent all our gratuity..
The other reason for the delay is that we’ve been poncing around the filthiest abandoned sawmill in the whole of France throughout August with a mop bucket and duster so far from civilisation that wind up gramophones were still a novelty. The nearest ‘Internet Café’ was a village bar in Eglisol 2km from our ruin – a village with an unusually high proportion of drunks with snot running down their moustaches. The bar which had magnificent 1950s patterned wallpaper was run by a very nice man called Jean Francois or ‘Jeff’ who had to endure these troglodytes every day. So trying to parry the conversational gambits of a burping French alcoholic wasn’t the perfect environment to gather your thoughts at the ancient PC with infuriating French keyboard (which was located next to a worryingly large woodburning stove).
So that’s my other excuse for not starting this ‘blog’ thing earlier. That and the 4,000 bottles of cheap wine (1 Euro 60 cents!) that kept us warm and inebriated every night and made the thought of writing anything vaguely coherent an impossible task.
France was great and despite 8 hours hard labour a day – including cement mixing, masonry and other dark arts of housebuilding – we managed to put on weight due to the fabulous quality of the local goats cheeses, bread and high cholesterol French food. In the restaurants they give you five courses without stopping to ask if you can manage five. Ahhhhhh hh (loosens belt another notch). So we now look more ‘burly’ than ever, although that is likely to end just as soon as we can no longer withdraw cash from the cash machine to buy food (maybe November). This is all part of our cunning crash diet plan. One big surprise in France was – after a couple of weeks of hot sun, a substance called rain fell from the sky. That and at the end of the month the air was cold in the morning. It was then that we discovered our house which is 950 metres above sea level is under 13 foot of snow for seven months of the year so I hope you’ll bring your skis and crampons when you come to visit us at Christmas in years to come.
But we’re back in Blighty again. To continue the weather talk (essential British survival skill) tonight’s sky has that slightly wintery/autumnal half light look about it that taps into primeval memories of something big approaching – like our forefathers who stared up at the sky in fear and wonder at comets with that nasty feeling in their stomachs which was, ‘Erm, doesn’t that mean the approach of mass extinction or something?’ ..But just now it has a lovely cosy fresh look about it.
The other good news is that I got the research post I was praying for – so I will shortly be applying myself to the task of becoming Dr of Daytime Television and Drinking Coffee Studies at Bournemouth University. This involves lots of (1) and a bit of time watching old Panorama episodes and picking up the kids from school and listening to radio 4 while looking out at the uncut grass in the backgarden. Excellent!
This is a tad unreal in fact. Westwood is kind of picture postcard 1950s rural, white, middle-class leafy England. You walk along the road and you can only hear birdsong. It’s all a bit Twilight Zone and I’m scared I’ll wake up and find myself in my Pod asleep amongst the rubbish on my desk with Jaweed giving bad stock market investment advice to anyone in earshot.
Right, I must get back to (1). Apologies for the mass mailing. In my next posting I’ll try and give some basic advice about the bureaucracy and cost of moving and any questions or topics you’d like me to cover about life on Mars I’ll answer in the order asked. Missing you all and hope to see you here for a pint, or in France for goats cheese, wild forest mushrooms and fine wines.
By the way, I’m still on dial-up, (there’s a war on don’t you know), and this laptop doesn’t seem to have a picture editor to reduce the size of pics so I’ll try and send some photos next time. Toodlepip!
Cheers,
Dave
You’ll be back at work now in the frying heat. Many of you have endured what my sources describe as new levels of absurdity and ‘grotesquery’ at the HCT Conference which cheered me up no end. It’s still technically summer here…. So this is probably our last chance to feel very pleased with ourselves. We made it to September without having leaped onto a plane to Dubai in panic. The thought of reapplication still seems ridiculous and appalling so I thought I’d better start this ‘blog’ thing before being back in Britain seems totally normal - and not as one friend has described her vacation experience as like ‘wandering around the set of Little Britain’.
Actually its not a blog at all but an email to a group of friends. This is because the blog sites were doing my head in – it seems difficult to post pictures easily, there were stupid adverts and I realised I don’t want anyone else reading this drivel except you lucky peeps. (OK so I just changed my mind on that one - this site looks idiot proof enough even for me).
Also sitting down at a computer for nine hours a day and sending jokes and surfing the net and chatting about the price of oil and property investment opportunities in Tajikistan seem like a distant and slightly weird alternative reality. Time here instead has been taken up by the mundane realities of unpacking and, ..ahem, cleaning, cooking and keeping an eagle eye on the skies to rush out at the first sight of rain to take washing in (1). Washing is almost always damp so our next expenditure is a clothes drier, except, er, we have nearly spent all our gratuity..
The other reason for the delay is that we’ve been poncing around the filthiest abandoned sawmill in the whole of France throughout August with a mop bucket and duster so far from civilisation that wind up gramophones were still a novelty. The nearest ‘Internet Café’ was a village bar in Eglisol 2km from our ruin – a village with an unusually high proportion of drunks with snot running down their moustaches. The bar which had magnificent 1950s patterned wallpaper was run by a very nice man called Jean Francois or ‘Jeff’ who had to endure these troglodytes every day. So trying to parry the conversational gambits of a burping French alcoholic wasn’t the perfect environment to gather your thoughts at the ancient PC with infuriating French keyboard (which was located next to a worryingly large woodburning stove).
So that’s my other excuse for not starting this ‘blog’ thing earlier. That and the 4,000 bottles of cheap wine (1 Euro 60 cents!) that kept us warm and inebriated every night and made the thought of writing anything vaguely coherent an impossible task.
France was great and despite 8 hours hard labour a day – including cement mixing, masonry and other dark arts of housebuilding – we managed to put on weight due to the fabulous quality of the local goats cheeses, bread and high cholesterol French food. In the restaurants they give you five courses without stopping to ask if you can manage five. Ahhhhhh hh (loosens belt another notch). So we now look more ‘burly’ than ever, although that is likely to end just as soon as we can no longer withdraw cash from the cash machine to buy food (maybe November). This is all part of our cunning crash diet plan. One big surprise in France was – after a couple of weeks of hot sun, a substance called rain fell from the sky. That and at the end of the month the air was cold in the morning. It was then that we discovered our house which is 950 metres above sea level is under 13 foot of snow for seven months of the year so I hope you’ll bring your skis and crampons when you come to visit us at Christmas in years to come.
But we’re back in Blighty again. To continue the weather talk (essential British survival skill) tonight’s sky has that slightly wintery/autumnal half light look about it that taps into primeval memories of something big approaching – like our forefathers who stared up at the sky in fear and wonder at comets with that nasty feeling in their stomachs which was, ‘Erm, doesn’t that mean the approach of mass extinction or something?’ ..But just now it has a lovely cosy fresh look about it.
The other good news is that I got the research post I was praying for – so I will shortly be applying myself to the task of becoming Dr of Daytime Television and Drinking Coffee Studies at Bournemouth University. This involves lots of (1) and a bit of time watching old Panorama episodes and picking up the kids from school and listening to radio 4 while looking out at the uncut grass in the backgarden. Excellent!
This is a tad unreal in fact. Westwood is kind of picture postcard 1950s rural, white, middle-class leafy England. You walk along the road and you can only hear birdsong. It’s all a bit Twilight Zone and I’m scared I’ll wake up and find myself in my Pod asleep amongst the rubbish on my desk with Jaweed giving bad stock market investment advice to anyone in earshot.
Right, I must get back to (1). Apologies for the mass mailing. In my next posting I’ll try and give some basic advice about the bureaucracy and cost of moving and any questions or topics you’d like me to cover about life on Mars I’ll answer in the order asked. Missing you all and hope to see you here for a pint, or in France for goats cheese, wild forest mushrooms and fine wines.
By the way, I’m still on dial-up, (there’s a war on don’t you know), and this laptop doesn’t seem to have a picture editor to reduce the size of pics so I’ll try and send some photos next time. Toodlepip!
Cheers,
Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment