Snapshot: Sarko & Ségo

With the second round for the French presidential election almost upon us, the strictly controlled campaign publicity is now reduced to just two candidates. I don’t have a vote, but if I did I know which camp would get mine. Any similarity between my thoughts on the candidates and the graffiti on these posters is purely coincidental.

Canada nostalgia: Taxi 0-22

In the last few weeks, it’s been a real pleasure to rediscover the Québecois tongue. In attempting to explain this special variety of the French language to my Strasborgeois and foreign friends, I’ve frequently turned to Québecois TV. In this clip, from the TVA series Taxi 0-22, the actor and comedian Patrick Huard plays brings a long running stage character - the politically incorrect and talkative cab driver - to the TV screen. The series features a number of special guests who ride the cab as if they were regular fares. On board today (and playing himself) is another Québecois comedian and actor, Louis-Josée Houde. Huard’s character starts the banter by complimenting Houde on his rôle in the film Bon Cop Bad Cop… the in-joke being that Huard himself played one of the two lead roles in that film. If you speak French but aren’t familiar with the Québecois joual I’d be interested to hear how much of this conversation you catch…

Ecoutez pour voir

Earlier this year, I blogged about the French television newscasts that I watch to keep my hand in on what’s going on in the world. Now that I have less time for visual distractions, my model-making and drawing (er) drawing sessions are usually accompanied by one of the following superb radio stations, all available online. Click on the stream URLs to load the stations straight into iTunes.

FIP website / stream URL (funky jazz and lounge music)

Radio en Construction website / stream URL (just about anything)

CBC Radio 3 website / stream URL (new Canadian music)

BBC 6Music website (anything and everything except top 40 or R’n'B crap)

How on earth did you find me?

The WordPress software that powers this blog allows me to see the exact search terms used by people who clicked onto this blog through a search engine. And it makes for some strange reading. In the last few days, people have found this blog by typing the following search terms into Google, Yahoo or other search engines:

ryan halun

sncf photography forbidden

norfolk coastal towns location filming

familiprix

watch oz and james’ big wine adventure

sheffield town hall

sterilise french

busy tea for upset stomach

j’ai pleure

how many kilometers to Toronto from London

‘Horse To Water’ (H2W

New York Diamond Rush in icy Canada

concrete skyscraper

eurostar expensive

fiat, body work, montreal

sheffield strasbourg architect James brown

freezing rain in Ottawa December 2005

coldest place on earth where lorries drive

inishfree festival

VertiGo glass tubes

bentley flying sparrow

green green grass of home you tube

“changing trains in lille”

+574.8km/h

etc etc etc. I’m presuming that by blogging these terms, Google will know find me even more quickly for all of the above search terms.

I have a dream, and it involves Ségolène Royal

At 04h37 this morning, my mobile phone woke me up with a text message from a certain nocturnal student of architecture:

Only going2bed now,so gonna get up in 3hours n stay2work here til 10am or so, or until u get here?lemme no how u gettin on… Safe journey!

What can I say, she just likes working nights. Both of us had a deadline less than twelve hours later, when the first draft chapter of our dissertation was due to be submitted. I rolled over and tried not to think of the hour and a half that remained until my phone’s alarm would twitter once more to get me out of bed. I had set myself a 06h start in order to drive the van back to Sheffield without incurring another day’s rental fees.

I turned over, and buried myself under the duvet one more time, and eventually slipped back beneath the gently lapping waves of a warm sea of sleep. Before I knew it, I was floating along a city street, moving smoothly in that way that pedestrians can only move in dreams. I knew I was on my way to meeting… a meeting with my dissertation tutor to discuss my first dissertation draft. I turned the corner of a terraced street of houses and was drawn instinctively to a park bench. This must be the place. And when I turned to sit down, I found my dissertation tutor there - waiting for me.

I frequently have dreams that take place ‘at home’, but in houses or buildings that bear no resemblance to my actual home. These dreams, however, come with the absolute unquestionable certainty that, no matter how bizarre they are, these places are indeed my real home. I experienced this same certainty during the subsequent conversation. While I might possibly have acknowledged that she was not the dissertation supervisor that I remembered having been assigned, I was in no doubt whatsoever that Ségolène Royal was now my tutor. The intense media coverage of the French election the day before had polluted my dreams, and had somehow metamorphosed with the very real deadline of my draft dissertation submission the next day.

I don’t recall the exact conversation that we had, but I do remember expressing understanding when Mme Royal told me that she was likely to be very busy for the next fortnight, and that she might not be able to read, let along mark, my dissertation. I was a bit upset, but consoled myself that she needed to concentrate on a much more important job. I probably embarassed myself even further by offering my personal congratulations on her nomination for the second round of the presidential elections, and expressed my best wishes for her success.

I woke up a little while later, feeling very confused as the bright pink early morning sky illuminated my bedroom.

Addendum: a few hours later, Boris Yeltsin died. I will let you know if tonight’s dreams feature him.