May Week Culture Shock

Last week was (for those who aren't in the know…) "May Week" in Cambridge, a week set aside after exams during which everyone spends their days lazing around in the gardens, punting in the sunshine, drinking pimms or champagne and eating strawberries at multiple garden parties, playing in under-rehearsed but very lively may week concerts, and, most importantly, going to May Balls. Given that this is rather a lot of fun, and, especially, that most of my friends had just finished their finals and so were celebrating the very end of their degrees and their last may week, I decided to return to Cambridge for a few days.
Of course, this also meant I could take half of my stuff (perhaps slightly more than half in reality) back home from France. So on Saturday morning I left the flat in Lyon, with an enormous suitcase weighing a good 30kg and my violin over my shoulder and caught the TGV to Lille. For the two hours from Lyon to Paris Charles de Gaulle I was sat next to a (French) soldier who was on his way to Iraq for three months, and who was looking forward (if somewhat apprehensively) to his 'retirement' in six months' time and wondering what life was going to be like for him back in the real world. He also told me about his weight allowance (35kg) that meant that after his gun (25kg) he could live from 10kg plus his hand luggage. That's a lot less than my 30 (ish) I was taking home!
After that the journey got slightly more boring. I had an hour and a half to waste in Lille Europe waiting for my eurostar, and then sat next to a german lady who was reading her newspaper (in german). Crossing London was hard work, though people were very helpful in giving me a hand getting my case back up the steps out of the underground. All went to plan and at 4pm I was back home just in time to have a brief breather before heading out to the week's first party, which was a bbq (under a makeshift gazebo) for Alastair's birthday. It felt bizarre to be back but lovely to see everyone, in particular Caroline who I hadn't seen for a whole 11 months!
Next morning, church, of course, followed by drinks at the Vicarage where I met Clare, a lovely girl who happens to have sung with Greg (the world is small), and to whom I was able to explain the mystery of the green and red shoes… In the afternoon, Cripps Court garden party, before collecting Mylene from the bus station and eating a quick dinner. We then ventured out again to the Selwyn May Week Concert: typically underrehearsed but sounding excellent for it!
The rest of the week flew by, as expected, in a haze of garden parties, fireworks, choir vegetarian feast, and so forth. On Tuesday evening I went to work at St John's may ball, in the rain, which proved great fun, the highlight undoubtedly being eating chocolate cake at a "birthday party" for Isobel and me in the middle of the night. Thursday came round remarkably soon and I left Mylène to find her friend Katie, and ran off to Stansted with hand luggage only, to arrive in Lyon just in time to go to one of my schools and attend their 'reporting back' evening on our trip to England: the children had clearly missed me so it was a nice welcome 'home'.
The funny thing was, it really did feel like returning home. May week, although endless fun and a great moment to see friends, was the most bizarre culture shock experience I'd had in a long time. I'm sure getting back in the "bubble" long-term will be less strange, but getting back into it, sort of, for a few days, was definitely an odd experience.

Une soirée franco-anglaise

Yesterday I was very kindly invited to dinner with Danielle and Denise, two of the lovely teachers with whom I survived a week of school trip to England, and Denise's family. It's something they'd been hoping to do ever since I finished teaching, and finally we found a good day. The meal included sausage à la Lyonnaise, and a very impressive trifle that Denise had had fun creating , but perhaps the most exciting part was the starter: snails! Despite the slimy reports I'd heard about them…they were actually okay! Just like mussels, without the fishy taste and with lots of garlic and parsley and butter. Mmm. Delicious…as long as you don't think about where they came from!
Here's a pic of me eating them:

It's already June 10th?

Today Claire flew to Mauritius, accompanied (amongst others) by her big new rucksack, and by a friend with a broken rib. Meanwhile, Rebecca, Antonia and I went to Grenoble. Neither so exotic nor so risqué…but very very hot (it felt like we were inside a fan oven in the middle of the afternoon) and thundery. And France-on-a-Sunday-ish. After a wild goose chase to find the tourist office, coffee in a nice café, and a discussion as to how fast the trams went and whether or not a town like Grenoble might have a metro (this was the Parisian point of view…), we went to have a picnic lunch by the museum. After some tasty nibbling, we visited said museum, which was full of fascinating (if poorly explained) art, especially of the C20th variety, and which itself was incredibly well-built with a good layout and excellent natural lighting.
From here, we proceeded a short way back along the Isère as far as the "telephérique": it was at this point that we realised that within the next half hour it would be thundering and chucking it down…so we ascended the hill in our little bubble and had a quick look (and joke) at the 'little' alps we could see around the town (almost all of them higher than snowdon…). We then sheltered in a rather nice café/restaurant for a drink while the rain fell…looked around a rather disappointing astronomical exhibition, and then walked down the hill while the thunder continued to growl menacingly, mid a discussion involving astronauts and priests (!). At the bottom of the hill, after a little looking, we found what we were looking for: the "musée dauphinoise" which is a sociological museum about the area…the first exhibition we looked at (entitled "Les êtres fantastiques") was not particularly spectacular, but the second ("les gens des Alpes") was rather interesting and nicely set out.
Antonia left at this point as she needed to get back to Lyon, while Rebecca and I began our search for somewhere not too crummy, nor too expensive, open and serving food on a Sunday evening. This proved harder than we had initially imagined, but we did in the end find one which served us some nice crêpes.
Our verdict on Grenoble was…nice, but not very special.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of the day came after this though, as on the train home Rebecca was writing some notes ready for a piece she's writing about Lyon (it's to do with a job application, but I won't say more for now…). At this point she was looking for 5 words that sum up Lyon (in English). This was tricky, and so we were thinking out loud about it. The guy who was sitting next to us in the train decided to join in: he lived in Grenoble, but had studied in Lyon so knew it reasonably well. It turned out, during the course of our 1 1/2 hour conversation with him (not *all* about 5 words for Lyon!) that he is a "secouriste en montagne", in other words a mountain rescuer, super-skier, first aider, helicopter dude. We thought for a moment we might be on the way to an invitation to Chamonix…alas, it didn't quite materialise, but it was lots of fun hearing about his job and entertaining him with my crazy theories and rebecca's travel writing. And, as she said afterwards, at least we now know for sure that we'd be in safe hands on the mountains now!

A 7th flatmate…

I forgot to mention that we have a 7th flatmate…that's the kind of thing that happens here!
Rhiannon came to stay last week, it was lovely to see her and to help her discover a bit of Lyon (although what with her french course and the rain we didn't see everything…). Just at the moment she left, we gained a scottish girl. She's a qualified lawyer and teacher in the UK but has dropped everything to come to France, with the intention of learning French and probably staying here permanently. She was working on a boat but that went a bit badly so we're putting her up while she does the job-search and flat-search. Crazy things happen at number 6!

Les Chansons d'Amour

Yesterday we went to see a film. A French film. Entitled Les Chansons d'Amour. It had good reviews and someone (although I can't remember who) was telling me it was good the other day. The verdict was mixed: Mylène liked it, but was a little put off by the "bobo" parisian setting and thought the storyline lacked oomph and the music was too samey. Jeremie seemed a little more enthusiastic although maintained that he'd enjoyed Spiderman more…and I thought it was really Very Good. Perhaps because the fact that it was "very french" didn't put me off!
The film is set in Paris, in the 10eme arrondissement. It follows a young man named Ismael in his relationships, before, and largely after, a very tragic event (telling you more would spoil the effect). It's organised into 3 sections: Le départ, L'absence, Le retour. It is described, in official terms as a "comédie musicale" (a musical) but this is utterly misleading.
The only resemblance it bears to "musical" is the fact that the characters sing at various moments during the film. But there's none of the cheesy clichéd breaking into song that we automatically associate with "musical". The music is, as Mylène pointed out, very samey, but I thought this was part of the beauty of the film.
Enough waffle, I think. Suffice it to say that I thought this an excellent film. Poignant, sad, but very well made. The bad point? Very poor dubbing at the beginning (possibly intentional but it annoyed me anyway).
Watch it! Then tell me what you think…

A wave goodbye

The end of May brought with it the second wave of goodbyes here in Lyon, as Victoria, Claire and Chiara packed their suitcases and headed off back home. It's the end of an era, in many ways, but I know that they'll all be having fun and it won't be long before I see two of them…hopefully all three!
Meanwhile, I have just under a month left here in Lyon, which seems incredibly short! It's hard to believe the year has flown by so quickly, and these last months seem to be by far the quickest. Lots of people keep asking me what I'm up to now that I've finished my teaching job…well, to be honest, it's hard to say! A few cultural things: recent highlights have included the Fabric Museum, the Rake's Progress (Stravinsky) at the Opéra, and a few trips to the cinema. A fair bit of work: my translation project is plodding along, and I need to think about next year as well as prepare my oral exam topic…and a paid translation got in the way of all that last week! A fair bit of time also spent with my friends and flatmates to make the most of our last month in Lyon…and finally, all the faff that is involved with actually being able to leave this country at the end of the month: clearing the flat, changing addresses, etc.
Plenty of my friends back home have been sitting finals–good luck those of you who've not yet finished! It might still seem like I've been doing nothing in comparison…but then at least you don't have to do them next year :p

May: the lucky month

Antonia believes that this month is this year's lucky month. This is largely because she's had her first two articles published, her exhibition opened and visited by lots of people, and her dissertation is making good progress. Pretty good going, it's true!
Until Tuesday I was a little sceptical about this lucky business. For a start, it only seemed to affect Antonia, and secondly it appeared more like the successful end of several big projects than 'luck'.
However, on Tuesday morning I sat down with my dissertation and just as I began to work, my phone rang. I didn't recognise the number, but when I picked up it turned out to be Isabelle, a lovely girl who I happened to meet at a party earlier in the year, who did an Art History degree at the Courthauld, has a boyfriend as English as they come, and is currently working on a master's here in Lyon. When I met her she was looking for a viola player (what a surprise) because she wanted to form a quartet…and it so happened that I knew Rebecca, so I put them in touch with each other and they've been quartetting every week since!
In whatever time she has spare, it turns out that Isabelle also works for a company that make audio- and video-guides for museums. On Tuesday she desperately needed to find someone with the time to translate 70 minutes (14000 words) of French audio-commentary into English…by next Friday! The place in question is a Roman archaeological site in the North of France.
Now, as most of you know, at the end of April and beginning of May I 'deposited' (as the French like to say) 8 or 9 copies of my CV, carefully translated into French, together with wonderfully phrased covering letters (thanks to my flatmates) in various shops and cafés that were advertising job vacancies. Apart from a letter from the tourist office several weeks later simply informing me that they had no job available, I heard not a squeak from anywhere. This is not very surprising, as the French are very insistent on one having a) very specific vocational qualifications b) experience (i.e. 101 internships) and c) lots and lots and lots of motivation that will make you want to go back and nag the place every day for a week until they give you the job, oh and d) perfect 'presentation' which is their way of saying you must be beautiful.
I had pretty much given up, then, on the idea of making my rent money for June and July, or of working in a real French job…but then this came along, out of the blue, from somewhere I'd not even waved my CV past (because I didn't realise it existed…) and it is far more interesting, far better paid, and far more useful to me than any of those other jobs would have been. Hooray!
No sooner had I accepted the job, than I told Antonia. First of all she says, see: May is the lucky month. Then she says, hang on a sec, what's the company's name? And yes, it turns out that the world really is tiny, because the company is run by her Godfather.

In France, as elsewhere, it's not what you know that counts, it's who you know!
(I may disappear for a few days now: 14000 is a lot of words!)

A second 22nd

On Monday I was treated to an official birthday, as if (says she), I were the queen. Well, perhaps not quite that extravagant…but almost! Because my birthday fell in the week when Mymy and Jéjé had their exams, my flatmates decided that we would simply move my birthday to a suitable date later in the year: and that day happened to be last Monday. Unfortunately Max couldn't be there as he was on a 24hr stint at the hospital, but as he made my cake on my real birthday I forgave him ;-). The rest of us went to the Theatre des Celestins to a concert entitled "musique et poésie francaises" given by two Solistes de Lyon (the same singers I had worked with on and off during the year) and musicians from the Orchestre National de Lyon. The programme was very daddy-friendly, and included some wonderful Ravel and Poulenc. It was a lovely concert, although they didn't make as much of the "poésie" side as they could have: it was mentioned in the programme notes, which one can of course read in one's own time, but we weren't even given the printed text of the poems and no-one explained at the time what was interesting about the way they had been chosen/set to music.
After this little cultural morsel we went to get a totally different kind of cultural morsel which came as a total surprise for me. The place? Les Chats Siamois, a little Thai restaurant hidden behind place de la Comédie. Very calm atmosphere without intrusive music, excellent service and most of all absolutely exquisite cuisine. It's expensive as french restaurants go, but it is definitely worth it. We were very impressed. Strongly recommended! Oh and I didn't mention the dessert, hot chocolate and ginger cake…mmm.

Les Berges du Rhône

When I arrived in Lyon at the beginning of the year, the area on the other side of the Pont de la Guillotière, on the East side of the Rhône, was an enormous building site. What I didn't quite grasp when my flatmates were explaining that this was in aid of smartening the area up, was that previously, the banks of the Rhône had just been one big car park, and that now they were making a big effort to transform them into something nice (which, incidentally, Lyon badly needed as it lacks recreational green space in the centre). Ten days ago the work all finished and the Berges officially re-opened to the public, with two weekends of entertainment to get the people enjoying themselves along the river. And they're great. Each section of the river bank is named after an important woman (the nearest to my house is Marie Curie), and there are pretty boats, lawns, flowers, a stream-cum-paddling-area, climbing frames for children, roller-blading/bike paths, pretty lights in the evening, sitting space and so forth. Yesterday we went and sat on an area of decking and had a picnic. Very pleasant indeed. Well done Lyon.

Les Nuits Sonores et La Nuit des Musées

The last few days have been full of the crazy kind of event that I have only encountered in Lyon. The first of these (which is also the reason for a mass bike exodus late last night), is called the "nuits sonores", and involved about four nights of electro music all over the town. And not in particular venues: just in the street, dotted around the place all over Lyon, there were little temporary stages, and the whole place was taken over by a hoard of festival-groupies. Crazy, but fun!
The second is called "La nuit des Musées". It happens once a year. All (or rather, several) of the bigger museums in Lyon stay open all evening and, furthermore, are free (for a change). We went for a wander round the Musée des Beaux Arts, it was full of people and a lovely atmosphere, and there were students wandering round explaining various of the paintings, and I think also a few pieces of student artwork dotted around here and there. A very good idea!
While we're on the topic of "les nuits…", there will be "Les nuits de Fourvière" starting in June and going through til August I believe, which is a music festival taking place up on the hill. We'll see what that brings in the way of fun…

Les Velo'v

At the beginning of the month my bicycle plans were proving difficult because of the rain. Now everyone is using the bikes, which is proving almost equally difficult. This morning I went to seven stations on the way to church all of which were empty (so I walked all the way), and I went to five empty stations (different ones) on the way home, so ended up walking back too. ALL the bikes had gone from the centre of Lyon. Now I know why that is (post thereupon to follow…) but that doesn't make it any less annoying!

Commerce Equitable

For the uninitiated, that's the French for fair trade. This week I went for the first time to volunteer as a waitress at a café in the 7eme, that is a tiny fair trade place. Great fun: will be doing more of that. Meanwhile I learnt that although France has lots of (ex-) colonies in Africa from which it ought to be sourcing lots of lovely fair trade things, all of these are under the monopoly of fat French companies who don't allow fair trade a look-in and so all that is fair trade comes only from the english half of Africa. As a result, fair trade is not nearly as big or as popular here as chez nous, and these kinds of places have to fight really hard to exist.
How silly.

Didon et Enee

I've mentioned to some of you that I was helping out with my lycée's production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas this year, at first by singing (and attempting to correct the choir's awful English), and later by playing the violin (and attempting to introduce some concept of 'baroque' to their playing). The performance, with dancers, costumes, 'thunder' sound effects and all, was on Wednesday. It was okay. The soloists, especially Dido, the sailor and the two witches, were fantastic. The dancing was good. The choir was decent if a little lacking in oomph at times, the orchestra got the right notes in the right places and the continuo put on a good show, so all in all, everything was very good standard for what was, after all, a school production. Comments were flowing in very favourably at the end. *Phew*.

Further than beyond…

Yesterday I went on a choir jolly. Well, not quite just a jolly because it did involve a concert. Anyway, it was at Banne, which is a little village lost in what is apparently actually the middle of nowhere (if what we saw on the way was anything to go by). In the last village we went through before arriving, the three old men sitting in the village square looked like they hadn't seen a coach for at least 25 years.
Although Banne is in Ardeche, which is a region that begins not far south of here, it is in the south of Ardeche and there are no good roads, in fact, there is nothing in Ardeche except vineyards and campsites, so it took us 4 hours to get there in our coach. This was rather dull, especially as Keegan, whom I was sitting next to, has a strong dislike for being cooped up in a bus, and as a result commentates the passing of the minutes…aaah, it was joyous. That said, the countryside was very pretty and the place where we arrived, that being the Château de Bannes, or at least its stables, which are most of what's left of it (it was destroyed apres the revolution on the grounds that it was a kind of royalist idea), was magnificent. The stable block had been temporarily re-fitted into concert venue, although no-one had de-cobwebbed, de-stalactited, or even made an effort to even out the floor. After a very delicious buffet supper (someone in the organising team for that choir gets a good deal for us every time!) we gave our concert, which was a collection of spanish polyphony including the 14th century Livre Vermeil de Monserrat, a Victoria magnificat, some silly spanish songs from the 15th cent, and various other bits and bobs. It was a lovely collection of music, and we were accompanied rather spectacularly by an early music ensemble who also gave a wee explanation of their instruments–fascinating :-) That said, we sang most of the programme far too loud (perennial problem of almost all choirs I've been in, but also this was not the right music for a 50-strong choir…), and it's a good job my sister wasn't there, as there were bats in the stables.
Some snapshots of the pretty countryside, along with the obligatory choir-on-the-bus photos can be found at The back end of nowhere
And with that, the end of my year singing with the Choeurs de Lyon Bernard Tetu/Choeur d'Oratorio de Lyon, as I'm missing out on their last concert, Poulenc Stabat Mater, in order to be back in Cambridge for May Week. It's been a good year. I've sung lots of lovely music, visited some places I certainly wouldn't have otherwise, sung in the Lyon Auditorium, learnt lots of things about France, music in France, etc, eaten lots of good French food, met lots of interesting people and made some lovely friends. It's gone very quickly, but it certainly made a good interlude in my Selwyn career.

Amandine

Here's a story I forgot to write up here. It was very movingly told by a young father who goes to lyon anglican church, when i was there with Mymy on Easter Sunday. His name is David and he works in a village outside Lyon (there are a few details that I don't know–like what he does there–but they are not important for the story).
In this village lives a family with a young daughter (age 4 if I remember rightly) named Amandine. One day in March, Amandine was hit by a car (more details missing) and suffered head injuries. She was taken into intensive care, where she remained in a coma. Two weeks later, the doctors at the hospital took her parents aside and explained that it was time to consider switching off the machine: Amandine was brain-dead, she wasn't going to wake up. And yet her parents kept hoping, and everyone kept praying for little Amandine.
In week 3, in her coma, Amandine shed a tear.
The doctors said this was impossible: the part of the brain that controls the tear glands was long since utterly inactive. But Amandine proved them wrong. She woke up, she can now walk and talk a little and is on the way to making as full a recovery as one could hope.

Is that a miracle, or does it just demonstrate the limitations of modern medical science?

After three weeks, where did that tear come from? Why a single tear? What made Amandine capable of 'resurrection'?
These are questions I want to ask–we all do– but I think (those who were in the Ignatian group with me a few years back will understand the formulation I use!) that the question we should ask first and foremost is Where were God in this?
Some, including many of the people who were following Amandine's condition and praying for her recovery, explain it as entirely God's healing. They can't all explain all the why and the how– but they know that this time, their prayer was answered, and they trust that God has a why and a wherefore, that's part of their faith in Him.
Others believe God has no part in Amandine's recovery, and that we can't put scientific anomalies or dilemmas down to faith or miracle. Perhaps you believe that in a number of years medicine will be advanced enough to explain Amandine's case, and perhaps even to repeat it?
Some, of course, aren't quite sure what to think.

Fair enough–but put yourself in Amandine's shoes in a few years' time, and give it some thought. None of us have all the answers, but I'd be interested to hear what you think.

The hazards of Lyon

Today I encountered the worst case this year of one of Lyon's speciality hazards: pollen. It's a very windy day and the horse chestnut trees that grow all over the city, especially along the banks of the Rhone, are just at the right moment to be losing ALL their fluff. This fluff is not at all soft and fluffy when it is flying into your face, and quite apart from ensuring that you arrive at your destination utterly streaming with hayfever, it also prevents you from being able to see where you're going on a bike, which is sort of dangerous. If only I hadn't already sent my ski goggles back home…

and continue?

Tonight all is calm in Bellecour, but Jeremie and I just went to the kitchen to get a drink and happened to look out of the window. There were six minibuses of CRS and one unmarked police car, the men themselves were mostly just standing around doing nothing. At a certain moment, the boss gave the thumbs up and they all jumped into their buses and raced off with sirens blaring and lights flashing. My judgement is that they were lurking here for a reason: problems in Place des Terreaux methinks.

And continue…

I haven't yet got the pics Jérémie took this evening but will post one or two when I do. Second day, he's not even officially the president yet…but this lunchtime I went to school for a rehearsal and a bunch of students were making enough fuss in the road outside that it had been closed off. And this evening about 150 people were causing a certain amount of havoc (less than yesterday, however) in the form of a protest up our road, and the riot police arrive and chuck their bombs at the crowd who all run away very fast, like lemmings (hilarious to watch and very effective: we understood why when it came in through our windows…). Road closed for about an hour afterwards but nothing very dramatic. That said, we're sat here with the windows open now to get some fresh air in as our flat is still full of tear gas (we had the windows open to watch what was going on at the moment they let the bombs off…)!
This France is exciting, but what kind of chaos will ensue when something actually changes?!

And the riots begin…

Here are the photos I took from our flat window last night: unfortunately you can only see police and not much of the actual action. For that, you'll get a better idea at video of bellecour manif

According to the papers 367 cars were set alight and over 150 people arrested in France (as a whole) last night. And Sarkozy doesn't even become president until May 16th…

Update

My road is closed, and occupied by numerous police vans and an army of riot police. The riots to which they refer are in Bellecour. It is exciting and involves tear gas and gunshots. Jeremy is home safely and we are celebrating his birthday!
Photographic reportage to follow…

The Sark Ages are born

Today the French people went to the vote for a new president. They chose between chalk and cheese, right and left, man and woman.
Today 53% of the French people elected chalk/right/man, who goes by the name of Nicholas Sarkozy.
This was, if disappointing for many, not particularly surprising. That said, the vast proportion of the French people I know, including all of the students I've met here in Lyon and many of the people I sing with, were all voting Segolene and were all despairing of those 53%. Although it's irrelevant, all the other English students who are in France this year also seemed to be crossing their fingers for Mme Royal.
Preferences aside, if one thing is sure, it's that over these next five years France will change. The change will be dramatic. The reaction will be dramatic. There will be strikes. There will be riots. There will be good things, and bad.
"Welcome" to what I have named the Sark Ages. It'll be interesting to see what happens next–let's explore them together!
(and thank goodness we don't have to vote for the Queen)

A velo'v month

Now that it is May and I am no longer working (yes, I finished my job at the schools on Monday!), I no longer need to be at the top of a big hill every day, so I no longer need my metro/bus/tram subscription. So this month I have decided to try going everywhere by bike. Unfortunately, so far this has not been a very pleasant experience as it keeps raining. But I am being persistent on the grounds that the rain will, I hope, eventually go away.

What else is new this May? Well, may is full of bank holidays so even those who are working this month have a four-day week every week…and the presidential elections are on Sunday so things are all very heated and exciting out here at the moment. Essentially we're choosing between him (right wing, big ego, rather scary man but who has some very specific ideas of what he will change and how) and her (left wing, more human, sensible ideas but less clear about how she will make it happen). On Wednesday they were face to face in a two hour televised interview-cum-battle, which was fascinating and scary. It is still looking, despite all our best efforts, like he (Sarkozy) will win, which could even mean we get some strikes and riots quite soon. OOOH. Of course, it also means all sorts of other important things that we won't go into right now. Keeping our fingers crossed at the moment for a Royal revolution!

There are a couple of things I may have failed to mention in previous posts. Before going to England for the week I did two fairly successful big Beethoven concerts at Vaise with my choir, and claire, hattie, rebecca, max, mylene and antonia all came, so that was great! And this week, amongst sorting my life out post-teaching and getting ready for another mammoth choir weekend, I was contacted by a TV company who want to make a documentary about some lyon schools…more on that perhaps later, if it starts going places! Enough is enough for today, and tomorrow is Spanish Polyphony from 2pm to 8pm. :-)

The day the French don't work

Oh, oops, that's every day…

On May 1st, like most countries (but unlike our own), the French celebrate what the Americans like to call Labour Day and the French like to call La fête du travail (The work party). It is, possibly ironically, a holiday to celebrate working. As a result, it is one of only a few days in the year (Christmas day comes to mind) when nobody works. And by nobody, I really mean nobody. On tuesday, there were no metros or buses in Lyon–not even the automatic metro line that runs during strikes was on. In fact, as far as I could tell the only things working on tuesday were main-line trains, the hospital and the cinema!

The last I know because we went to see a film called "Ensemble, c'est tout". I recommend it!

Broadening my teacher rôle

On Thursday of the first week back after the Easter holidays, after quite some deliberation and discussion, the Lycée finally decided to let me go on a school trip with the class I take at the collège down the road. Unfortunately, this meant that my teacher-in-charge was in a rather grumpy mood all week as she didn't want to let me go…but the go-ahead was given anyway and so it was that I had a rather out of the ordinary week that looked something like this:

Sunday: 5am –left 'home' and took the usual two metros up to the school, where were gathered 47 13-year-olds with their parents. Ticked pupils on list, reminded that they mustn't have forgotten their ID cards (one or two had). Waited. Waited some more. Bus "delayed by an accident". Eventually left just after 7.30am. Caught the shuttle anyway. Arrived at supermarket car park, Walderslade, only a quarter of an hour later than scheduled. Met Ana, our host-family coordinator was waiting. Matched children with host families. Went home with host (and other three teachers). Marvelled at tacky decor of house. Laughed at twee water feature in garden. Ate spaghetti bolognese. Wrote emails to relevant persons saying had arrived, and in Denise's case that she'd left the alarm clock on 04:30.

Monday: 07:00 got up, had breakfast (the tea, when a pot requested, came in a cafetiere), took packed lunches, filled water bottles (at tap, to disgust of french teachers).
08.15 ticked students off list. All happy with families. Onto bus. To Brighton. Misty. Cold.
10.30 Brighton Pavilion
12.15 Picnic in the drizzle
13.00 Discover museum shut, is Monday. Go straight to Sea Life centre.
15.00 Leave Sea Life centre for The Lanes. "Free time" shopping, in my case with Olivia, who didn't want to be with the other boys and girls.
16.00 Rendez-vous and walk to the Pier. Three girls fail to report in, but later return having taken no notice of the meeting time.
17.00 Bus. Takes us round the houses. Gets lost down a country road. Takes the wrong exit off the motorway. Fails to identify "Dover" as the appropriate direction. Eventually return to car park half an hour late. Begin to wonder whether to take bus drivers seriously, given incapability with map.
21.00 Teachers and bus drivers go out to pub in Walderslade (not the world's best, but not as bad a place as hosts gave us to believe). Discover bus driver who can't read a map is actually a Boulanger-Patissier and knows all about custard…

Tuesday to London. First problems with families: two boys not only sharing a bed but also left at car park (alone) at 7.30 am. Otherwise, all fine and we're straight up the A2 so we can't get lost (also have borrowed decent, if out of date, road atlas from Steve). Hit traffic (no surprises there). 11am arrive at Natural History Museum. Fab! Not enough time to explore it properly though, picnic and out again by 13.15.
14.00 Visit Cabinet War rooms. Second girl declares she has lost her camera. One boy (a wonderful little genius nicknamed "king Arthur") is on the verge of tears because, once again, we don't have time to see everything.
15.30 Walk (via Whitehall, where they find a mouse and we almost manage to lose several students. Lots of "keep moving!" "Don't go in the road!") to Covent Garden. Free time (=tea and Ben's cookies) until 16.45
16.55 All 51 of us ready and waiting on the Strand. Coach has been parked on parallel embankment road for past two and a half hours and is due to come past here at 17.00 to collect us.
17.10 ring coach. Are at Charing Cross (c. 300 yards)
17.20 still no sign of coach. Ring again. "Can see Nelson's Column." "Lots of traffic". Begin to smell a rat.
17.30 Exasperated, ring again. "Can't get out of Trafalgar Square." Cannot believe it. Begin to wonder whether we should give up and take the train!
17.40 Coach finally turns up. No sooner have we sat down than it takes a left turn. I open the map, find where we are and am dismayed to discover they have this time chosen to head North. Twenty minutes later, we are back on the right road. *Phew*. Phone to say we will be late, again.

Wednesday to Cambridge. Bus driver tries to convince me he wants to take "the bridge not the tunnel". Explain patiently that we will be taking one in each direction. Eventually understands. Good journey. Arrive at 10.30 am, do my bit of guiding up Silver Street to market, free time until 12.15 (stop by Pa's office to dump a few bits and bobs I no longer need in France). Picnic on Launderess Green where we admire the black swan and put up with a little rain.
14.00 Guided tour with blue badge guides begins. I am with Danielle and the european class, who are having their tour in English. Mélanie forgot to take her medicine that morning and is about to be sick. By Trinity she can't go on, so we go to the warm cosiness of King's coffee shop where she recovers.
15.30 Free time again, until 16.45. Back to coach. Only then do I think I should have been pro-active and organised to take them inside a college. Never mind, they liked the place so they are bound to come back. And at least I made sure they understood what a college is, which is more than can be said for most tourists.
19.00 arrive, half an hour early. Last families don't turn up until nearly 8pm, *then* teachers want to go to supermarket to purchase English goodies. End up arriving at house rather late. Dinner has been waiting. Naughty us. (Not that the family ate with us, so no real problem).

Thursday to Greenwich. A good day, but pity about the weather and shortness of time.
10.45 Free time to explore Greenwich 'village'. Hand out punishment of 50 lines "I must not spit" to silly little boy who has already written 100 such for Danielle.
11.15 Boat from Greenwich to the Tower. Picnic in St Katharine's Dock.
12.45 Visit Tower of London.
14.00 Leave Tower, half the group is bored the other half upset that they have not nearly seen everything yet.
14.20 Boat back to Greenwich. Punishment by now has reached 150 lines.
15.00 Greenwich Maritime Museum (=teachers' tea time). An exciting museum well worth a visit another time!
16.00 Walk to the Observatory, examine the Meridian. Explain concept of meridian countless times.
17.00 Coach. Don't think about timing. Should have had extra time in Greenwich Park! Arrive back at Walderslade an hour early. Take half the group to play football in local park with local chavs.
19.45 Last families turn up to collect kids. Home for dinner
21.00 Pub with Ana (a different pub this time).

Friday journey home. A few students express particular sadness at having to leave. Onto coach at 8.30 am, supposedly with two picnics but we, and some of the kids, only have one. Boat at 11am. Bad boy steals other boy's wallet just as we get onto ferry. Waste whole trip trying to sort out this mess, and eat lunch. Very unimpressed teachers. Mark competition I had set on the journey out and hand out prizes. Is hot in France. Bus drivers are stressed, especially once they manage to go the wrong way even on a French motorway! Wallet thankfully is returned. Return exhausted students to their teachers at 23.30. End of fun but shattering week! Sad to leave students and great bunch of teachers–but will see them again before I leave– the teachers have promised they are going to introduce me to snails…

The beginnings of summer

The weather in Lyon has not ceased to amaze for the last three weeks: an almost constant mid-summer feeling, with temperatures between 20 and 30C, and plenty of sunshine. And it's only April!
The day after my last post, Claire, Hattie, Chiara and I wandered around the Monts d'Or again: we had a beautifully sunny day, didn't get lost at all, and found a wonderful orchard full of blossom in which to eat our picnics, as well as meeting two lovely horses and a totally crazy donkey along the way. Much fun!
The weekend brought lots of choir rehearsals for me, but also a couple of hours in the park as it was too nice not to be outdoors. Monday was my birthday: a whole day of teaching at school, not too exciting…but then a lovely evening on the banks of the Rhône at a boat-pub with my Lyon friends (two or three of whom have now already left Lyon!). The rest of my news is all to follow in the next post…

Holiday time

Despite the fact that two of my flatmates are, only next week, about to undergo what is possibly the hardest academic ordeal in France, the Agrégation, involving 7 hour written literature exams and tests that demand them to be walking dictionaries in the etymology of the French language, these last couple of weeks have seemed very nice and relaxed. Partly this is because at no point have all six of us been in the flat (until tonight), but also it has felt rather like holiday time because they are revising (and I am, in fact, on holiday). So we have been watching several episodes of Friends together, going out roller-blading in the sunshine, and so forth.
Yesterday, Claire and I went to Annecy. The train in the morning turned out to be a bus (the French think they can trick you by painting the bus the same colour as the train and writing ter on the side but no, it was definitely a bus. However, it didn't go round the houses as I originally feared, but took us straight to Annecy so was really quite efficient. Once we got there we found the Office de Tourisme (NB this is the correct term and not syndicat d'initiative as, for some reason, the textbooks always told us!), where a lovely lady gave us maps and little booklets with "itineraires pedestres" for seeing the town. We wandered around, found lots of weird sculptures, admired the quaint old town, walked up the hill to a not very exciting château, then had a picnic in the park and (oh yes) took a pedalo out on the lake! It was beautifully sunny and warm, the water was sparkling and the scenery was magnificent. I was also very excited because the pedalo stations reminded me of punt companies, and the people running them were just like punters, and the girl at the place we got ours from was even in the middle of writing the rota that looked remarkably like a CCP rota…aaah. Pedalos are cool, but I think punts are better. The train went a weird route on the way back and ended up 40 minutes late because of "actes de malveillance" on the line, but this was not a problem really, as we'd had a very nice day.
This afternoon we have been for a Velo'v ride, up almost to Miribel (a heowge park north-west of Lyon). We didn't go all the way today, but maybe one day we will. In the meantime, cycling up by the river was lovely and even reminded us of Cambridge (and Oxford in fact) at times. Tomorrow we are once more heading to the Monts d'Or for a walking adventure: indeed, I should go and consult the map!

A long awaited expostulation

Talking, as I was in my "Easter" post a few minutes ago, of "decent" music. One element of "decent" music in church is properly sung plainsong (=gregorian chant).

Those of you who know me, know that. You know that I am a stickler for things to be done properly the "traditional" way. You know that I think it funny that my choir director believes I learned my plainsong skills at LSM, whereas in fact I was learning them from the day I was born (not alone, of course), and at the age of 13 was giving a presentation to my school class on how plainsong works.

Between about this age and my A level year, I spent moments of "spare" time helping my mother who was (and is?) setting all of the Common Worship modern psalm words to their traditional plainsong chants, in an attempt to restore plainsong to churches using the (oh dear) responsorial settings. And therefore, I know a little bit (if not as much as the monks of mirfield) about how such things work.

Those of you who have sung with me will also know that if there's one thing I particularly detest, it's plainsong melodies written out in modern notation. It makes me seethe.

A recent discussion relating to this topic can be found in this post and its comments: Come faithful people

Now I thought I would need to write reams and reams in this post, explaining exactly what is so awful about the fact that we, in general, don't bother learning to read plainsong notation these days, and instead do this heinous thing of writing the nice melodies out in "equivalent" modern notation (which is not, and could not ever be, equivalent). Ages explaining the nuances of the little black blobs. And why, in fact, it would be better not to translate the words either.
I thought I would need to add to my list of projects the writing of a website that would explain all this AND teach you the basics of plainsong. It only takes the time it took me for a year 8 class presentation, seriously!
Perhaps I still will, one day, so as to have said it my own way.

However, thanks to some unknown Catholics, I need not set about that right now, as I have found a wonderful article that does exactly that, and in my opinion does it rather nicely.
It is here: Musica Sacra then click on the document entitled "An idiot's guide to square notes" in the right hand column ("teaching aids"). Facebook users can find it attached to my profile.

Enough said for now, methinks! I'll let you read…

Incidentally

My flatmates' destinations for next year are currently:
Jé: Oxford (or Paris)
My: Oxford or Dublin (advice on this choice currently very welcome!)
Anto: Beijing or Shanghai
Gareth: Lyon
Max: Heidelberg
Annie: Cambridge

As a result, and because Gareth doesn't want to find five new flatmates and would like a more stable place to live as of next year, this wonderful flat is going back to the agency. Shout now if you want it!!

Paris

Somewhere in the midst of all that and more, I seem to have failed to write anything about my five day jaunt to Paris. Where, incidentally, the weather was also very beautiful.
After a substantial panic on Friday night owing to having too many tickets and needing to cancel some very fast, Antonia and I set off on our TGV from Perrache on Saturday morning, arriving early afternoon in Paris where the very fast metro number 14 took us straight to chez elle (very convenient, I must say). There, I met her elder sister Agathe, and we did some shopping but nothing very exciting as it was raining a lot (okay, the weather was *mostly* beautiful). On saturday evening we had a "soirée" for Antonia's paris friends, some of whom I'd already met in Lyon and others not: very nice. On Sunday morning her parents arrived back from a week in the Maldives (lucky them!) so we had a family breakfast together and in the afternoon went for a wander into the centre of Paris with Antonia and her best friend Constance. Delicious ice cream was also consumed. Mmm. This became the pattern of my few days: Antonia had various meetings to do with her conference and the fact that she is now going to China next year to learn Chinese (another of those wacky last-minute schemes that seem to spring up in this flat) and so I discovered Paris variously with and without her company, and managed to meet up with almost everyone who is currently spending their year there: lots of them (Emily and Jérome in particular) I hadn't seen for years, and it was really lovely to see them all and discover their various Parisian lives. I also ate in a Crêperie with Sacha and another lawyer friend of his, and we calculated that if one ate a different crêpe every day, it would take two years (which is what he's got) to try all the crêpes on offer on that street. Wow. And on tuesday evening, we went to a soirée with Laura, a spanish friend of Anto's who is now working in Paris. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon I thought I really couldn't leave Paris without seeing one of the big museums, and as I'd already once upon a time been to the Louvre, it was the Centre Pompidou that won this time, where there was an interesting exhibition about Samuel Beckett (particularly relevant for Anto, who is fascinated by exhibitions about authors) although it would have been more interesting with a little explanation here and there! All round fun, and my feet took me toddling round many different 'quartiers'-the quaint, chic, impressive, etc, and even the Peripherie (we got there by accident when going for a walk on a "sentier planté" with Jérome and Anto). I felt like I knew Paris much better by the end, and I was very grateful for the comfy and very central hospitality chez the Dubrulle family!

Easter

It's nearly 8pm on Easter Sunday, and I am sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with Hattie, who is reading Glamour in both French and English (observing the different content of each is a very intriguing occupation!)
I, on the other hand am writing my blog. It has been a lovely day–but we must, of course, start where we left off which was, I believe, after Good Friday.
Holy Saturday was much like any other Saturday during the holidays. I got up, taught my private student Marine, went to the market where I bought lots and lots of fruit and veg, came back, went for a walk with Mylène along the banks of the Rhône, made the apple sauce for today's lunch (of which more later…) and then got ready to go out. Yes, I have to admit there will be no insight into just how boringly or excitingly St Nizier might have done their Easter Vigil service, because I was invited to dinner chez Mathieu, a friend from the choir (19, gay, training to be a midwife), and this was a more interesting prospect. The reason for it being last night was that the bar just below his house was celebrating a year since its opening with free drinks for regulars, and so we were to go along to that, along with Keegan (second gay friend from choir; Texan, aspiring to be singer and/or restaurant manager) and his boyfriend Greg. Mathieu made a very nice turkey and pine nut salad, and updated me on all the latest gossip from Mathieu land, and then we joined the others downstairs and it was a lot of fun!!
So that was Saturday. This morning, having got up in time to peel the potatoes and get them (and the roast) into the oven, Mylène and I did Easter the Anglican way. It was a big contrast to the rulebook version of Good Friday we'd had, and Mylène enjoyed it more (while I maintained that the two were good but both had lacked decent music!). She was also surprised to discover real bread at communion (okay, that is quite rare) and that everyone got wine (unlike in Catholic establishments where this is unheard of…can anyone explain this to me? I've always thought it illogical).
We walked back from church, it being another beautiful day, and finished preparing roast dinner (Pork, apple sauce, roast potatoes, broccoli, leeks; plum crumble; Chateauneuf du Pape) for which 'we' were Mymy, Jéjé, Gareth, Mathieu, Hattie and I. (I even got away with putting on some proper Easter music as sung by Kings, in the background). It was all a success and after dinner Hattie Mathieu and I went for a wander in the parc de la Tête d'Or, where we made some daisy chains and observed how many toddlers there are in Lyon, before returning to eat the last hot cross bun (and a couple of kinder eggs) with our tea.
Not quite like the Dawn+champagne+family affair I've been used to these past few years, nor especially French, but a jolly Easter nonetheless. Alleluia!

What do you get if you pour boiling water down a rabbit hole?

…yes, you got it. Hot cross bunnies.

Yesterday I made hot cross buns. I know the rest of you will be bored of them by now as they've been in the shops since Christmas, in rather inappropriate cohabitation with the creme eggs, but here they are no-where to be seen. I used a Delia recipe which appears to be the only one available online. However, my google search having thrown up a few iffy comments on said recipe and in particular its idea of how to make paste for the crosses, I invented my own version. It was rather a success. Hooray. I also used fresh yeast (I don't believe in the dried sort), which I procured at the rate of 1 cent per gram at a local (as far as they come local in the middle of town) boulangerie.

Tomorrow I am cooking roast lunch for my flatmates and Hattie. This could be an interesting task in our miniscule electric box that believes itself to be an oven, especially as I shall be out at church at certain crucial moments…but we shall try our best.

On the subject of church, Mylène and I went to St Nizier's once more yesterday evening for their "Office de Vendredi Saint". It was "the proper thing" in as far as there was veneration of the cross and pre-consecrated communion and so forth (Mylène noted afterwards that despite having been brought up a good French catholic, she had never done so much genuflecting in her life), but there was NO nice music, just some unaccompanied waffling (pah, what happened to Tallis lamentations and the Victoria Passion?), and it was generally rather dull and not very moving. We'll see what they do at their Vigil this evening.

Those of you going to vigil and first mass at dawn tomorrow morning, enjoy! I've not found anywhere here doing such, although I think there's some sort of ecumenical affair up on the hill at 7am…

And they forsook him and fled

This evening, being Jeudi Saint (or Maundy Thursday to us lot), I decided (in the apparent absence of any observance thereof at Lyon Anglican Church) to go to St Nizier down the road, where they do things "properly". The church was utterly packed out, which was fun. And the service was generally good and much as expected, with not a bad sermon from their young priest.
At the end, they processed the sacrament to the chapel of repose, where there was to be a watch until midnight. All very proper.
But. (Yes, you knew there'd be a but!) There was no "AND THEY FORSOOK HIM AND FLED". This was not a great surprise but I always find it a bit of a disappointment these days. I should probably take to going to Mirfield or Canterbury for holy week.
More surprising (shocking, perhaps even) was that there was no Psalm 22, and no stripping of the altars. I like psalm 22. I'm not sure it quite feels like holy week without it. And I'm sure they will have stripped the altars after most of us left, but I think doing it during the service is somewhat more poignant.


Meanwhile, I have a new student who I've been helping this week with her prépa work, and I've been in Paris for five days. Lots of fun, of which more to come soon!

Only the French…(part 3)

…would send you two forms to fill in in separate email attachments, which subsequently turn out to be word for word IDENTICAL except for the header that tells you where to send it. They could have just left the header off and told us in the email to send it to both places. Sigh.

Urges

From time to time we all get strange new urges. Mylène's cabaret urge being an extreme example. And years out/abroad are prime urge time, as they get us out of our bubble, broaden our horizons, introduce us to new people, places and ideas, and make us rethink who we are, who we want to be, where, why and how. None of that is new, but sometimes those urges take us rather by surprise. Just like my craving for chicken nuggets did when I was in Italy.
This year has been no exception, I've had plenty of new urges this year. Like wanting to work in a flower shop, or suddenly feeling the need to make scones. Here are two of the urges I've had this last week:
•An urge to cook stuffed courgettes. I had never made such things before, but I saw round courgettes on the market and decided to experiment. It was good! Definitely repeatable.
•Today I saw a small ad for short courses in professional make-up. Surprisingly, for some unknown reason this seriously appealed! Perhaps I am almost as crazy as Mylène after all.

…more to come soon I'm sure!

The countdown

I have four weeks of teaching left. Two pre-holiday, two post-holiday. This means several things.

1. The Good
•I will no longer have to worry about what to talk about with my next class of unimaginative students. Already, I have vague plans for all my remaining lessons, which means more free time and less panic.
•I will no longer have to take the metro at 7.30 am to get to school by 8, in fact I only need to do this eight more times.
•I will have completed my obligatory time abroad and will therefore be "free" to go home/elsewhere as and when I wish, although in reality I shall be staying in Lyon another two months or so.
•I can do more new things (including, perhaps, some travelling around France), and actually get on with my dissertation (this will be a Very Good Thing).
•In only two months I will return to the land of friends, family, short skirts and common sense.

2. The Bad
•Several of my friends will disappear off home/to other exciting places.
•I will no longer be paid a salary
•I will no longer have any excuse not to be working on aforementioned dissertation
•My year abroad is nearly over. But it only just began!
•Because of the aforementioned lack of salary, I need to finish writing my CV and lettres de motivation in order to make some attempt at getting job of some description for some/all of May and June.
•I will shortly be 22––and 21 already seemed grown up!
•I need to think about The. Dreaded. Oral. Exam. (and other similar academic nasties)

3. The Indifferent
All in all, not a lot will change vis à vis normal life (except the removal of teaching)–unless, that is, I do something totally wacky à la Mylène, on the topic of which…more soon!

What this "end is nigh" feeling, coupled with the arrival of some pretty spring weather, also means is that we are beginning to make more of an effort to go and see all the places we intended to see this year and haven't yet got round to. With Saturdays no longer dedicated to lesson planning, last week a bunch of us English, German and Italian assistants, went on a very windy daytrip to Avignon, and just today I went (despite missing two trains this morning, oops. What a spectacular achievement!) to a tiny place between St Etienne and Puy en Velay…it's called Monistrol sur Loire, and it's where Lucy is an assistante. Very cute, very French–the rugby club were celebrating St Patrick's day in one of the town (village?) squares in a somewhat continental fashion (french folk music, waffles and crêpes and dancey people in regional dress). We had lunch in a crêperie (yum) with her friend Maggie who is a primary assistant from Georgia, and then went on a wander into the countryside where we met some very friendly, rather beautiful horses whose legs were puzzlingly short. All in all, it was a lovely day.
Next on the list for visiting are Paris (during the Easter Vac), Annecy, potentially Annemasse and Geneva, and Le Puy en Velay itself, which I am told is a lovely place. Oh and Montpellier once Lucy has moved there in May. Oh and Dijon. Think that's enough to be going on with!

Le son de Lyon

This evening we (being Laura, Victoria, Emma, Chiara and I) were ambling towards the Epicerie for a drink and some pudding (yummy) when we were accosted by a girl who turned out to be Austrian. She was doing a project for her theatre studies in Frankfurt which is called "Le Son de Lyon". It involves her recording live extracts from the streets of Lyon, first of all of people singing, and later on (good luck to her) of people dancing. After this she will compose a medley-type symphony of all the songs she's recorded, and it will be accompanied by the video of danse, to make some sort of a spectacle at an exhibition in the summer along with her fellow students' other Lyon-based projects. So, she wanted us to sing. Now the problem is, what to sing, when one is accosted in the street, and is not a group of drunken football fans right ready to sing "we are the champions" or the national anthem, or somesuch. So it took us quite a while to find something, especially as we weren't even all British! Ideally we'd have sung in French but we didn't know all of the words to the Marseillaise (quel honte) and Frere Jacques only occurred to me later. So we decided the simplest thing was to sing a nursery rhyme, and we gave a beautiful rendition of Ring a ring o' Roses. The girl was very pleased with it. And then, so as to include Chiara and show off Lyon's multiculturalism, she and I gave a somewhat dubious rendition of "Volare…". Who knows, maybe we could be famous! (Or then again…)

Only the French…(part 2)

On Sunday, as one does, we were playing football in the park. There were fourteen of us, so we could afford to play on a fairly sizeable pitch. It was also fairly obvious that we were playing, and where we were playing. Yet there were two surprising things about the French park-goers reactions.
Firstly, several small groups of French who were sat around the edge of our pitch continued to sit there despite occasionally getting the ball in their laps and/or getting run around. This is not particularly bizarre if they were enjoying watching us play, I suppose.
Secondly and far more bizarrely several groups of people fearlessly and apparently obliviously walked (and not in a hurry) across our pitch, variously with bicycles and/or babies. It might just be me, but I think most people in the UK would try to avoid entering a football pitch upon which 14 students were in the middle of a fast game of football…?

In other news you'll notice a new link to a new Hewitt-Jones brothers venture. May be of interest to some.

Omission

I knew there was someone I'd missed out of my recent post about how small the world is. The first time I went to the Lyon Anglican Church I sat just behind Rebecca Jeffries, who turns out to be on the same UCL course as my friend Sarah, and to have shared a room at boarding school with Cecily. In addition, her boyfriend Ben, who was visiting that weekend, is an assistant in Amiens, but is also on the French/Politics course at UCL, and comes from Oxford, went to MCS and played in Oxford Concerto Orchestra, although we think we must have only coincided in that for one term. Bizarre eh!

J'ai craqué!

Today Mylène, Jéjé and I decided to go all out and buy rollerblades. Lyon is a very rollerblading city, and Antonia and Max, who already have them, were getting frustrated at us not being able to go with them. Plus now that it's spring, it's a good way of getting around the place or stretching one's legs…so there we are. We were lucky too, as we got them at half price in the sale :) So then we went out on them all together, on the banks of the Rhône where they've put in lots of roller-friendly paths and pretty patches of grass and flowers. Lovely.
Then, when Anto and I were on our way home a young boy stopped me, "excuse moi, madame!" Slightly puzzled, I stop…"did you work in Cambridge" asks the boy, so I says yes…but why? And it turns out that he was in my punt sometime last summer! Am impressed that he recognised me in the middle of Lyon on roller blades…unfortunately he may have been a little disappointed that I didn't remember him personally, but such is life! He was very sweet and asked what I was doing this year and seemed rather pleased with himself for having recognised me, so hopefully he has good memories of his punt outing!
In other news, I have a new private conversation student. How exciting.

A small world

Recently, Jack wrote on his blog (which is linked from this one) about how he seems to run into people in bizarre ways, either because they're people he knows but in bizarre places, or because he thinks he doesn't know them and promptly discovers they know some of his friends.
Now I know people are always pointing out that I know too many people (this might, partly, come of having been at school in both cambridge and oxford), and my sister maintains that whatever the usual degrees-of-separation theory is, in my case you only need one or at the very most two people to link me to someone else. I'm not sure I'd quite agree with that, but I certainly seem to know a lot of people–sometimes I just think it's because I have a better memory for people I met only once and/or a very long time ago. Anyhow, I thought I'd entertain you with a few coincidental rencontres this year. The world is *very* small.

Firstly, there's Claire. I may already have told you this story…you've certainly heard about her a fair bit. Claire is an assistante just like me but in a different school. I first met her, with Chiara (an Italian assistant) in a pub in vieux lyon where I had gone with my flatmate Gareth. This was about a week or two before our induction day so we met up again then, and with a couple of other assistants we went and drank tea at the Epicerie. It was very lovely, and absolutely hilarious, because Nick (an american assistant) who was absolutely convinced that Britain was so small that all British people must know each other had his theory spectacularly well proved. Claire lives in Cambridge. So do I. Her mother is a Classics teacher. My parents are both classicists. Her mother teaches at one of the schools I nearly went to, in fact, she interviewed me for a place there. Claire went to school with several people who I went to sixth form with, and also with a few of my university friends. Meanwhile, she is now at Oxford for university where she is good friends with several people I know through either music or school. She is now on her year out in the same place as me doing the same job. I've a feeling there's another link I've missed…but you get the general idea.
Secondly there's Laura. Laura was a good friend of mine all the way through primary school, but we both left for different schools when we were 11 and lost touch. One day Victoria (who's at Selwyn with me and also in Lyon this year) said she'd met a lovely girl called Laura, and I happened to notice on her facebook wall a few days later that this girl was called Laura Brodetsky. Well, thinks I, there can surely only be a very few Laura Brodetskys my age around…and sure enough, it's her! Amazing!
The third coincidence of the year also involves Victoria. When I was going home for Christmas and my plane was delayed by two hours I got chatting to a lovely girl called Fiona, who is bilingual, studying hotellerie in Lyon and was on her way to visit her boyfriend who is a designer in London. At the other end of the christmas holiday, Victoria ended up sitting next to Fiona as they travelled back to Lyon. Coincidence or what?!
Incidentally, that same night when my plane was delayed, I hitched a lift back to Cambridge. The lovely people who drove me home were a couple fetching their sister who was just back from the first term of her year abroad in Bilbao, as she's studying french & spanish at manchester, but she'd been at hills road in the year below me. Her big sister teaches English at Melbourn village college.
Is there a fifth? Doubtless there is even if I can't think of it right now. As Jack said, if these are all the people I have met, how many more people are there out there who I pass in the street without realising I know them? Far too many methinks!

1968

Yesterday I discovered that my lovely "prof responsable" at the lycée took her bac in 1968. Today I mentioned that to Claire and she said "1968? what's special about 1968?". Now I know we English believe the French are always going on strike (and they are), but in 1968 they *really* went on strike. Even more than in spring 2005. That wondrous fount of knowledge wikipedia introduces the topic thus:
"May 1968 (in this context usually spelled May '68) is the name given to a series of events that started with a student strike in France. It turned into a general strike which paralyzed parts of the country and caused the collapse of the de Gaulle government. Most of the protesters espoused left-wing causes, communism or anarchism. Many saw the events as an opportunity to shake up the "old society" in many social aspects, including methods of education, sexual freedom and free love. "May '68" was a failure from a political point-of-view; however, it can be argued that it had an important impact on French society and its values."
It goes on to tell one a lot more about the events, and even includes many of the slogans used by campaigners. I feel it's something one ought to know about, and it might tell us something about why the French think strikes are so normal…

Either way, my 'prof responsable' was taking her bac in Lyon and she didn't take part in the demonstrations because she needed to work, as she wanted to pass her exams. As it is, ironically, she'll never know if she passed because she deserved to or because it was 1968…though we can suppose the former!
This week my terminale students are taking their mock exams, known as "le bac blanc" (why a mock is white I am not entirely sure). At Claire's lycée, which is the biggest and best in Lyon, the teachers have boycotted the bac blanc and so the students are not having mocks this year. I feel there are two things to remark on here: firstly, it seems a stupid way for the teachers to campaign, as it is not the students' fault that the education system is changing, nor will anyone except the students really notice the absence of the bac blanc. Poor things.
Secondly, on the other hand, I can understand that the students need the practice and that in the long run they would regret not having done a mock but I know for sure that we'd have been over the moon if someone had cancelled our mocks…yet these french students seem upset about it. I think that's a bit odd.

Following the yellow blob path

On Friday Claire, Rebecca and I went on an adventure. The adventure began with buying mini brioche at the Brioche Dorée, and taking the metro to Vaise, but managing to leave Rebecca stranded on the platform at Bellecour (it was okay, she took the next metro). At Vaise, we took bus number 84 to Poleymieux aux Monts d'Or. Bus number 84 turned out to be a minibus with 8 seats and a bit of standing room. The card bleeper was broken, but in any case they didn't seem to care whether one had a ticket or not. The journey was about 15 minutes, given that the distance is not that great and the minibus bombed along the tiny windy country roads at a rate of knots. Amazingly, we managed to get off said bus at the right stop, just next to the church in Poleymieux, where we were pleased to find a noticeboard telling us about walking in the Monts d'Or…after all, that's what we'd come to do but since none of us had been before and my map was a bit stupid (more on this in a moment), we'd have been a bit stumped without any signs. From a little home research I had already discovered that the Monts d'Or (which are not mountains, in case any of you were wondering, but rather diminutive–but pretty–hills) have many many walking/mountain biking paths but these are organised into circular routes most of which are about 6km long (a nice sunday afternoon stroll but not a day's adventure), and two of which are more like 30km (a day's adventure, but sounded like a lot to us, we'll do this next time). There is nothing in between, and most importantly, there is no map which has them all marked on, so deciding to do part of one walk and part of another is a fairly complex affair. Actully, it's more complex than that: the mont d'or maps themselves never cover the whole area but do mark separate circuits and tell you in what colour they are "balisé" (signed). I managed to find an OS map (well not OS but you know what I mean) which had the whole area and all the paths on it, but ALL the signed paths were marked in dark pink. So when you saw "red route this way, yellow route right" you had no idea which was the one you were following, or indeed what would happen if you took the red one instead. However, with some map-reading and a little common sense, and a few real signposts telling you where each path was headed, we managed to do exactly what we'd planned. It was about 10km, so pretty short but as a result we had time to take it at a most leisurely pace, and even to stop for a drink in a mid-way village where we found a very french village bar in a square where the old men were playing boules, and which had tables outside in the sunshine. Aaaah. It was very sunny and very pretty. A good adventure.

Poems #2 (words from my wall)

Here in Lyon I have a medley of things on my wall, including a selection of my favourite photos, my PACE flag (yes, that's Peace with a missing E, and not because I can't spell but because it's in Italian), a couple of posters for this and that, a calendar, lots of reminder notes and all the postcards I've been sent this year. In amongst all of this I also have three poems stuck to my wall. Well, two poems and a not-quite-poem.

Poem 1. is a poem that my sister has had pinned to her pinboard (which now resides in her little kitchen) for several years now, and which she herself wrote out in lovely silver calligraphy on a black card, presumably just for fun because she liked the poem. Mine is not silver on black, however. It's by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and it goes like this:

What if you slept,
And what if, in your sleep,
You dreamed,
And what if, in your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if, when you awoke,
You had that flower in your hand,
Ah, what then?

The second is a poem that makes me happy and sad all at once, if that is possible. It's beautiful. If I was good at composing I would write music for it. As I'm not, it's just on my wall. It's by Robert Bridges and it goes like this:

Thou didst delight my eyes:
Yet who am I? nor first
Nor last nor best, that durst
Once dream of thee for prize;
Nor this the only time
Thou shalt set love to rhyme.
Thou didst delight my ear:
Ah! little praise; thy voice
Makes other hearts rejoice
Makes all ears glad that hear;
And short my joy: but yet,
O song, do not forget.
For what wert thou to me?
How shall I say? The moon,
That pour’d her midnight noon
Upon his wrecking sea;—
A sail, that for a day
Has cheer’d the castaway.

The not-quite-poem is a christmas-time 'dedica' that my wonderful friend Laura sent me a year or two back. For those who read Italian, here it is:

A

chi

ama

dormire

ma si sveglia

sempre di buon

umore. A chi saluta

ancora con un bacio. A

chi lavora molto e si diverte di

più. A chi va in fretta in auto, ma

non suona ai semafori. A chi arriva

in ritardo ma non cerca scuse. A chi spegne

la televisione per fare due chiacchiere. A chi è

felice il doppio quando fa a metà. A chi si alza presto

per aiutare un amico. A chi ha l' entusiasmo di un bambino

ma pensieri da adulto. A chi vede nero solo quando è buio.

A chi non aspetta Natale

per essere più buono.

Poems #1 (reminiscences of English Lit GSCE)

I thought it would be quite fun to put some poems on my blog from time to time. So here are two to begin with.
The first (which is kind of relevant for this time of year) is a valentine's poem by Carol Ann Duffy that was part of our set texts anthology at English Literature GCSE. In general, I didn't get along very well with English at GCSE. But this one was fun–thanks to Miss O'Neill–and I even wrote a poem based on it, which must be the most successful poem I ever wrote. It was (unsurprisingly, for those who know me) not about an onion, but a button. Sadly, although I believe it was rather good, I can't remember how it went and I never managed to retrieve my english coursework folder, so I suspect it is lost forever in a sea of shredded paper somewhere in the recycling archives of Oxford High School (or perhaps now part of an oxfordshire wormery). In any case, here is the original poem:

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

As far as I can remember, the only other poem I really enjoyed studying at GCSE was Auden's 'Stop All the Clocks'. I even taught two lessons on it to one of my classes this year! Today is Auden's centenery. So I suppose I should include it:


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A busy week

I'm now back in Lyon after my week at home in Cambridge (and not back before May Week, if then). It was a great week, though it felt very odd being back in term time–a little like I had graduated…but didn't. Très bizarre. Lovely to see everyone though, and nothing has changed in Cambridge while I've been away! The only difference is there are a few freshers around.
I spent my week dashing from place to place seeing people left, right and centre, rehearsing (and then giving) my recital, and even (shock, horror) doing a little academic work. I even fitted in giving a punt tour on Friday! Even then I didn't manage to see all the people I would have liked to…but then, a week is not really that long! Thankfully my recital went rather well and lots of lovely people came to listen, so the week ended on a very good note.
I returned to find the flat without any French people in it for the first time this year–Antonia and Jérémie have gone home for the holiday, and Mylène has run off to Paris to be a cabaret dancer (yes, really!), so just Max, Gareth and I are here (and Alex, who's staying for a few days). It feels quite different, but lots of fun. Last night we played Lyon monopoly with a huge bunch of Germans. Unfortunately, the French had also left us to deal with a significant plumbing problem that had resulted in everything that went down the kitchen sink returning in the bath. Mmmmm. So the plumbers came at 8 this morning and (fingers crossed) they've done their job properly. Still need to clean the bathroom though…
Today many exciting things are happening. Claire is back from Prague, the photos for decorating our kitchen and living room are finally printed, and I've heard from Antonia that we might even get a contract for our flat next week (pigs might fly).

Skiing

On Thursday there was a teacher strike. On Friday all the kids were dressed up in carnival outfits, as it was the last day of school before a half term. And in February, French children get not one but *two* weeks of half term, because it is skiing time. So on Saturday, we went skiing!
"We" were me, Rebecca, Hattie, Elsa (a French friend from choir) and Thomas (her Belgian boyfriend)–Hattie had never skiied before, Rebecca had done one week with the ENS a couple of weeks ago, Elsa and Thomas are pretty seasoned skiiers. We went (on Elsa's recommendation) to Arêches-Beaufort. The coach left Bellecour at 6am, rather too early for our liking, but with the advantage of depositing us in the ski station at 9 so that by 10 we were all set with skis and (in my case) snowboard, and could head onto the pistes. Hattie took 2 hours with an instructor, while the rest of us trundled along a long flat snowy path to the other side of the station where there were a more suitable selection of slopes. There we re-discovered what it was like to ski not only with loads of snow on the ground and a decent angle of slope, but also with snow falling-at times in great quantity-for the rest of the day! Hattie joined us for lunch (mmm sausage) and we did a big blue slope together (it was so white we thought the chair lift was taking us to the end of the world) before taking the long red back to the bus at the end of the day (an annoying piste that was flat, then very steep, then flat again. Grr I don't like flat). All in all the day was muchly fun, and it was lovely to get to know Elsa and Thomas better, and good fun to tease Thomas with tales of mint chocolate (the belgians can't stand even the idea of it…)
Photos of the day can be found in the second half of this photo album (the first half is previous ski-day in january): Snowy fun

A recital, and half term

I mentioned a while back that I would be home in February in order to be able to give a lunchtime recital at the Fitzwilliam museum. Well, I am now back–for a week–and looking forward to catching up on all the news from the last 6 months.
The recital itself is on Sunday 18th (that's next Sunday) at 1.15 in the red gallery that is straight up the stairs as you enter the Fitzwilliam. It's free, will be over by 2pm and the programme, which is attempting somehow to be a musical picture of my year abroad, will range from Purcell and Vivaldi to Debussy and Poulenc. It would be nice to see some of you there, if you can make it.

Doorbells and letter boxes

In Britain, if you want to send something to someone who lives less than 15 minutes away from your house, you generally don't bother posting it. Even though you know that if you did, by first class it would definitely get there the next day. So you pop on your bike or your own two feet, and slip it through the letterbox of the house they live in. If they live in a block of flats, there is still, usually, some kind of general letterbox that gets sorted later, or at the most awkward, a doorbell marked "traders" or "postman".
In Italy, people often had their letter boxes outside, and if they didn't, there was some kind of general hole through which you could put things, for the whole building.
In France, despite the fact that the postal service is useless and won't get your letter there the next day unless you pay them €30 at least, people don't ever seem to deliver by hand, or at least, if they do, I'm flummoxed as to how. Letter boxes are in the main hallway, inside the main entrance door. Usually the postman has a key, or knows the code to each building. If not, as here, he has to ring the bell for every flat until he finds someone in who can open the door for him. But an individual wanting to deliver something is stuck–there is no "let me in please" bell, and often not even named bells but just some numbered bells or worse still, just a number pad for an entrance code you don't know. So you end up standing around outside wondering when someone will turn up and open the door for you–hence my conclusion that they must just never deliver things! How odd.

Colour burst

As you will have noticed, my blog has gone colourful. Alex said the previous colour scheme made his eyes go funny. So I'm hoping this will be a change for the better–do let me know whether you like it!

New ventures and doing Good Things

This year in general, and especially recently, I have been doing new things. After all, what is the fun of having a new life, new friends, new places, new jobs, etc, if you don't take it as an opportunity to change how you do things. So far in my new things list (in no particular order):

1) I play football most Sunday afternoons, with "the girls", who are mostly English or German.
Most of you will know that I am *not* a football fan and probably never will be but it's great fun to play.

2) I go to student parties to meet random French people (see a few posts back).
Not just that, I have also learned to drink beer and we have been to a 'peniche'.

3) I went rowing.
Once. Who knows if I'll go again, but it was jolly good fun!

4) I'm improving my snowboarding
(this is not entirely new but doesn't happen in Britain)

5) I've been to see both Snow Patrol and Razorlight live, in little French venues, which was fantastic. I probably ought to go to an entirely French gig at some point!

6) I go running with Claire (and sometimes Hattie)…
and the two of us are going to do a 10Km charity run in April!

7) I am expanding my knowledge of French music, gradually
with the help of Jérémie's enthusiasm

8) I am trying, for the second time in my life, to learn solfège (stupid foreign system of music notation)

oh and not least
9) I am teaching.
I have never wanted to become a teacher.

Number 10 in the new things list has got to be about doing voluntary work. Since Christmas on Bellecour there has been a colony of Quechua tents. And yes, it's been very cold. These are not some kind of freak tent-lovers, but homeless people that the state can't house, including a number of young people around our age. There was a lot of press about this at new year and so the colony has gradually got smaller as the city made an effort to house some of them, but the rest are now stuck there, and people have generally lost interest in them. The other day I was in Carrefour and realised that a single duvet cost only €10. A moment's thought told me that split between 6 of us, the cost of this was nothing, and so we could replace the old one we use for guests with a new one, and donate the old one to the tent people. So I got it, and last night Mylene and I popped over with the old one, and met a young couple. She was called Vanessa, I forget his name, and they were nice, normal people, to start with I even thought that he was helping out rather than living there! Intelligent, polite, really very normal. They've been homeless for two months (we didn't discover why–maybe we will next time), and in the tents for one, but they're not mad, or alcoholic, or dirty like a lot of the older tramps they live with. They were very grateful for the duvet and chatted to us for a while about life in the tents and how people were gradually losing interest and stopping bringing them food etc. Mylene and I, on our way back, wondered just how it was that they came to be there, but it certainly makes you think about how comfortably you're living, just two minutes away. We won't be wasting any food in this flat now! Interestingly, this venture came just a day after Claire and I had been talking about voluntary work and decided to investigate whether there was something we could help out with just one or two hours a week. Of course, we have dissertations to write, but if you're keen to do something new, as we all are this year, then this is a good way to go about it.

Absence (and presence)

Le Rochefoucauld once said that absence diminishes minor passions like wind to a candle, and increases big ones like air to a fire. (I paraphrase, clearly, his phrase was much more eloquent). This is my second year 'away' from home, in the sense of 'far away'. The second year in which I've, effectively, left behind an old life and created a new one. Actually it's the third if you count moving towns, the fourth if you also count university as a new life.
The first was in 2001-2002, when I left behind everything and everyone I knew apart from family, and built a new life in Cambridge (the difference with this one, is that I wasn't going back to the previous life afterwards). The second was 2003-2004 during which I escaped to Italy, and here I am in France doing something similar. And what these years all have in common (apart from the usual–learning, new experiences, new places, new people) is that they allow you not only to discover who you are, and what and who matters most to you, but also to discover a lot about the people you already know, most of whom are people you would generally call "friends".
Now this is going to make a lot of you laugh because "friends" is something I have lots of, in part precisely because of all these 'building a new life' moments, and I sometimes joke about how I should try to get rid of some as I have too many.
But anyway, recently I've been noticing something I noticed on my gap year, but that is perhaps even more pronounced this year owing to the fact that most of my uni friends are not themselves making new starts this year, and that is that even in the world of instant messaging and emails and so on, the people who keep in touch –by which I mean at all, even intermittently, whether by phone, email, msn or snail mail, are not those you most expected. Of course, some people you hear from you knew you would. And some people you don't hear from, you knew you wouldn't. But often, there are surprises: people you thought you'd hear from occasionally by email who write long letters regularly, and people you thought would stay in good touch who you never hear from.
In my gap year it was the first situation that struck me most–who it was who sent letters, or emailed often, or replied to yours. Surprises about who did, more than who didn't.
This year, it's the other way. The surprises are most about who I don't hear from. I suppose I had an illusion of university, whereby it is there that you make your 'friends for life', there that you meet people who you really click with, "like-minded" people, people who, being adults, are mature and developed individuals with whom you can build lasting relationships. An illusion of college whereby the close-knit community would help you to make close friendship groups and share all sorts of fun experiences. Apart from a few people who've been out to visit Lucy, I've not seen any Selwynites for over 6 months. I keep up to date with their lives by reading their facebook photo albums, and some of them at least keep up to date with mine by reading this! On the other hand, I can count the people (from college) who've actually been in touch either to talk to me, or by writing letter/email/facebook message here and there, on my ten fingers. A lot of them I fully understand why–and know it's not been deliberate. But it's still surprising, to me, that the people who take the time either to reply to me, however briefly, or even to write to me when I've not had time to write to them, are mostly people who I saw less often, and a lot of the people I spent nearly every day with for the past two so called 'formative' years seem to have turned out to be those 'minor passions' of Rochefoucauld.
At least the people who think I have too many friends will be happy!
And no, this isn't a rant against my friends–and I'm sure I've not kept in as good touch as I should have either– just an observation on how being away from home affects your views of friendship. For those of you reading this, I am really looking forward to being back next week and seeing you all EVEN if I've not heard from you all year!!

Theories

I don't know whether I had theories when I was little. I suppose I probably did, though perhaps not so much theories about the world, the universe and everything as theories about earthworms and goldfish and other little things that fascinated me. However it was, these days I have Annie Theories (with a capital T). Other people also have Theories, although not everyone. Recently, some of the theories I've been talking about with friends and acquaintances have been about the environment (as it seems to be a 'hot topic' at the moment).
Last Thursday, when I returned from singing Mahler in the Auditorium, it so happened that I was chatting to Jérémie in the kitchen of our flat (I think he was doing the washing up, which needs doing a lot here!). Jérémie also has theories, and I forget where the conversation started, though I know mad cows came into it somewhere. Either way, he expressed an interest in hearing more about my theories, so I decided he should hear what is probably my most extreme Theory, which is about how we should take drastic action to save the planet, and stop faffing about reducing carbon emissions by some piddling percentage in the next goodness knows how long. I don't think Jérémie was expecting it to be quite so drastic, but it made for a good discussion (although when Mylene came in she thought we were having an argument, rather than a theoretical debate).
In a recent "silly thing" that I posted on my facebook profile I wrote "I hate…the way we are consciously destroying the world". This is what my Theory is about. It's not a practical theory, in the sense that modern society being what it is, there is no way it could become practice. BUT my theory says:
1) We are destroying the world
2) We KNOW we are destroying the world
3) We all think it would be nice if we weren't destroying the world

and proposes
1) That we simply remove cars and aeroplanes from our world. Totally. Utterly. Altogether. Buses, trains, trams, bicycles and boats can remain.
2) That every house be fitted with solar panels to its roof, every floodplain not with houses but with windmills, etc.
3) That we stop putting food in ridiculous amounts of packaging and content ourselves with making that little extra effort, for example, to shop more often or to wash up a few bottles and tupperwares.
4) (a little aside) that Playstations and suchlike cause unnecessary production of useless equipment and should be removed. If babies can play with cotton reels then big boys can play with a football or table tennis ball, read books, play cards…
5) That if we can produce clothes and food within 100km of our house, then we shouldn't buy stuff from 3000km away.
6) In other words, NOT that we should return to the middle ages but that we should remove the aspects of modern life that are made ONLY for our superficial comfort and ease, and that achieve something we could just as well achieve by another means.

Of course, I expounded (what a nice word) this Theory to Jérémie and he said "but you can't do that!" where he in fact agreed entirely with my 'ideals' but, like 99.9% of this world, believed it to be impractical and therefore no point even considering it. Well, says I, it's clear that if everyone takes that line, then there is no point.
Amongst his other thoughts were "but what do I do if I want to go to America?" and "never mind if we ruin the world, it's ours to ruin and we'll go and live on the moon". Obviously the latter is as radical as my theory to start with, and I won't report on our whole discussion here, but perhaps it will make someone think anyway.

Two further things to say in this post:
Firstly, part of the reason why this became and Annie theory and why few other people feel they can adopt it must be that I grew up with no car (for which, see also recent post on "how to be green"). And so yes, I honestly do think that it would be possible to run a country in which there were NO cars. Incidentally, I worked on a french island with no cars two years ago and (although it's small and has a tiny population) they managed just fine. Obviously one would hope to have a better public transport service, but if everyone were using it that would be much easier to put into effect.
Secondly, on Friday, I met up with Richard Van Noorden, who went to nursery with me way back when, at St Anne's College Oxford (to which, incidentally, I went by bike). These days he is a reporter for Chemistry World, and he had popped over to Lyon for the weekend to visit another friend, also a teaching assistant. We went to the Epicerie for lunch and had a great time talking about all sorts of things…including Theories. Apart from the big theory hereaforementioned, I also mentioned my Soya theory–that, not only is soya a big mistake, but is probably the cause of CJD and all sorts of other modern health problems, and is an example of how modern science throws itself into "new solutions" without properly pausing to think of long term potential consequences. Suffice it to say, it interested him so I shall be intrigued to find out whether he discovers anything more about it in "real" science.

I have another theory that has emerged this year, which is that a lot of people, especially the French, don't seem to realise that medicines are not always either good for you or a solution to a problem.