Glad I’m not in Sheffield

Following the massive floods that swamped Sheffield earlier this week, here’s an email sent by the University of Sheffield Safety Services department. The damage to electricity lines and substations means that in the second paragraph there’s a particularly vague warning for anyone in university buildings, including the (20 storey) Arts Tower…

Date:       Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:53:25 BST
From:      D G Thomas
To:      Multiple recipients of list STUDENTS
Subject:      Temporary Power outages to University buildings

Dear staff and students

Yorkshire Electricity have issued a warning that areas of Sheffield may be subject to 2 hour power cuts during the next 2 days, S1, S3 and S10 are likely to be affected.

In view of the fact that it is not clear at the moment whether we will receive any prior warning of a cut, please minimise the use of lifts during the next two days to minimise the chance you may get stuck in one for a couple of hours.

Similarly, if you are undertaking work which will be lost in the event of a power cut it may be prudent to postpone it.

If Yorkshire Electricity inform us of planned times for cuts to the University I will update you by e-mail.

Dewi Thomas

Head of Safety Services

No word from Sheffield as to whether anyone got trapped in the lifts. The Arts Tower elevators and paternoster have now been shut down until the electricity supplies return to normal.

Snapshot: another portrait at l’Épicerie, Strasbourg

Still the best place in Strasbourg for breakfast… this photo will be going of the jacket of my first published book, just because I’d like to imagine some deep hidden meaning in the still life of cake, tram ticket, cigarillos, rough unpainted wall and old black and white school photo. Interpret as you will…

An open message to the internet fraudster…

…who tried to lift £2100 from my bank account.

You thought you were pretty smart getting hold of my Paypal details, didn’t ya? I bet you thought that a quietly dormant account like mine with a direct debit link to my bank account would make a neat and vulnerable target for some burglarising?

But you didn’t count on the special and highly personalised security feature of my bank account, did you? Ha! Yes! Foiled! Because I don’t actually have any money in my bank account… do you imagine I’d actually have anything left over after funding this crazy international jet set life of mine?

Sucker…

Like a car crash in the night time

As if it were an alarm clock piercing my skull, I was awoken the other night by the roaring sound of a highly tuned car accelerating away down the street below. Through the open windows of the hot early summer night, the gentle cooling breeze wafted over my skin and brought to my suddenly open senses the sound of the car as it hurled itself away from me.

Seconds later, my ears received another sound: the horrific high-pitch squeal of brakes being slammed into action by the driver of the same car. All four wheels scrabbled to grip the tarmac, probably leaving four fine strips of their rubber on the cooling road surface. I closed my eyes, and fought images of that terrible moment six years ago when I lost control of my parent’s car and collided with another, just a month after passing my driving test. The expensive sound of metal, glass and plastic meeting with metal, glass and plastic was burned permanently into my cerebral cortex, and as I lie there in the sweltering Strasbourg night, I predicted in my head the sound that would surely follow.

The car, by this time, out of sight from window, failed to stop in time. The chorus of four squealing tyres was halted abruptly by that unforgettable sound as the car collided violently with another.

Suddenly there was silence. Not even the sound of car doors being opened or closed. No sirens, no crunching glass, no voices.

Awakened, I got up and walked through the apartment to the windows that look down onto the street. Craning my neck as far as I could see in both directions, there was no sign of any traffic, and no sign of the accident I had just heard. A humid sky was dispersing in the dark early hours, and it seemed that I was the only one who had been woken by the sound and subsequent uncontrollable surge of adrenaline. I stood half naked at the window waiting for confirmation that this was not a particularly lucid dream that had torn me from my already fitful sleep. Nothing came to the assistance of my confused mind.

I returned to bed, and did not sleep.

Paris: I’ll have a Pschitt on the rocks please

Ah, how the child in me laughed. After another long day of meandering through the streets of Paris, what could be a better refreshment than a nice, long, cold Pschitt?

There being little more than three weeks left until the end of term, last weekend seemed as inconvenient as any a time to go to Paris. I was determined to survive this trip without the food poisoning and drunken tourists that turned my last trip into a twenty-four hour disaster. To help with this, I watched what I ate and avoided all youth hostels without fire escapes. Luckily for me I was able to call upon the unwavering hospitality of friends-of-friends just outside the city.

So instead of the disastrous hostel experience I had near Gare du nord last time, I stayed here. Well, not this exact building, but near-by, in the surreal banlieu of Cérgy. What you see above is a particularly bizarre social housing complex. It might look like a crass commercial development on the outskirts of some small town, but those are, in fact, four storey low income council apartments, wrapped in a glass and stone skin. They were designed by Ricardo Bofill in the mid-eighties, presumably as a drunken monument to Versailles, which is not far away.

Señor Bofill obviously believes that all social ills can be cured with a bit of architectural façadism, and maybe a meaningless phallic monument as well. So he built this giant semi-circular monstosity, slapped on some misinterpreted classical decoration and slammed a giant f— off white marble column in the middle, which (wait for it) shines a laser beam towards Paris at night.

No seriously, it does. It would have been laughing out loud if I had not been accompanied by the proud local resident with whom I stayed (who, incidentally, lives in a much nicer part of Cérgy… a part that looks more like Milton Keynes than the backdrop of Clockwork Orange). If you stand where I took this photo and turn through 180º, you’ll see a continuous white footpath that descends a gentle hill and then drops into a large public park, all green and lush around the shores of a big lake. And on a clear day, you can see the grand arch of La Défense in Paris, about 40km away.

If you want to go and see this wondrous piece of architectural madness, ride the RER-A train to the terminus at Cergy-le-Haut. Just be sure not to go after dark, because this area has (like many of Paris’ low income suburbs) had some problems. So much so that the police have had to turn one of the buildings just of shot into a small station.

The ‘heart’ of Cérgy is around and directly above the third last RER station at Cérgy-Préfecture, where you’ll find the usual big bad concrete French suburb from the sixties. Think of lots of interconnected tower blocks, vast pedestrianised plazas on stilts and plentiful weeds growing through cracked pavement. The French embraced the dream of modern suburban living with open arms, and you’ll find these decripit suburbs all around the outskirts of Paris. To give you an idea of how hard it is to find your way around this pedestrianised complex of walkways, bridges and plazas, here’s the map we printed off to help us find the apartment when we arrived on the train.

One of the town planners must have fancied himself as a bit of an M.C. Escher fan.

My hosts proudly showed me the locally-produced guidebook to Cérgy. This building (above right) is one of particular pride as an architectural monument. It’s an upside down pyramid, you see, which probably means something - especially as it’s the home of the town hall and council offices.

I also saw the Villa Savoye, not far away from Cérgy in the slightly less intimidating suburb of Poissy. It marked the fifth installment on my le Corbusier tour of France. But after the joyous wierdness of Cérgy, it was rather underwhelming. For those of you who know the building from architecture books, lectures, magazines etc, let me reassure you that it comes across much better in those media than in reality. To pierce the dream of all those architectural fans who’ve only ever seen carefully staged pictures of the villa floating in a meadow surrounded by trees, let me show you this view (above). Don’t be fooled by the impression that the villa is a white box floating above the countryside: it is, in fact, directly adjacent to and overlooked by a large secondary college.