:: holiday snaps

Who's that smoking a cigarette? A glamorous Frenchwoman in the Zen cafe, Rue de Seine. I smoked a few ciggies too - but they were menthol and that doesn't count. I still have the packet, in fact; Pinky was going to throw it out but I snaffled it. It has a great health warning in giant letters: "Fumer tue" - smoking kills. Yeah, whatever.  



Champagne in Les Deux Magots. At the next table, Aurelians discuss alien cloning techniques. Or something. 


Our Metro station. 


Pinky at Notre Dame de Paris. 


Segway! Segway! Everybody Segway!   The Segway tour was mega-fun, even better fun than I'd imagined. Everyone should do it.



The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step... 




Daniella keeps Pinky on the straight and, like, totally narrow. 



Concentrate, concentrate. 


We passed all our tests! We are good to go! 


Too much Segway fun is bad for your health, apparently. 


Pausing for thought. 


Brmmmm, brmmm ... bonjour Paree! 


Happy face is good. To start, press the round metal thingie on the yellow plastic thingie on to the round black thingie on the left. And then just lean forward... 


Brrrmmmm, brrmmmmm -- you have to make your own noises; Segway is silent running.  


Daniella tells us some history. "So, like, the Vikings were totally harrassing the Pareezhans..." 


"Stop stunt-riding! You'll run your batteries down!" Nah, Daniella was way kewl. 



Here we are out on the road, waiting for a recycling bin to be emptied. 


Another Segway pic.  


Pinky en bateau.  


French traffic from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The man in the white coat is a police officer. He wandered out into the traffic blowing his whistle and singled out the car apparently at random. The driver of the little blue car and the bigger car round the corner had previously been stopped and interrogated at length. Note lack of road markings. Scary. 


Pere Lachaise cemetery. 


Pinky joins other mourners at Oscar Wilde's graveside. People were writing quite elaborate notes.  Unfortunately some of the madder fans have kind of ruined it for everyone else - the ugly fence is there to stop people getting lipstick on the angel sculpture (an Epstein, which has famously been castrated - a crabby note posted by the cemetery officials says it's not true that the director keeps the genitals on his desk as a paperweight).


It was a poignant moment for our Pinks.  


I like cemeteries, and this one was a doozy. My favourite tomb: dead man suddenly remembers he forgot to turn off the stove. 



After Paris we got the train to Bordeaux, where we hired a car and drove out into the gorgeous countryside. We had a pique-nique at this idyllic spot. 



Les Eyzies, a lovely riverside town with fabulous cliffs and home to the museum of prehistory.  


Conduirant a droite. C'est facile! 


The farm we stayed on had a sweeping view of the surrounding hills, valleys and forests. And the chicken run. 


Sarlat. I think. Lovely, anyway. 


The farm again. It was a great place.  


This was in Montignac, yet another lovely little town. We had a delicious lunch, followed by cakes from the local bakery. YUM. 


Back in Les Eyzies. 


A view of Les Eyzies from the museum, which was a strikingly modern building. 


Pinky takes in the view at Les Eyzies. 


Le Cro-Mignon! The only French pun I saw, and quite a good one too. Les Eyzies. 


Baby geese, soon to become foie gras. We stopped at this farm to buy pate etc, and ended up getting quite a bit of stuff. As the woman was taking my money and bagging my rillettes and walnut oil, Pinky discovered a book of photos of foie gras production. They really do force-feed the geese with funnels. And oh, who would have guessed their innards look like that! I'm ashamed to say I didn't fling my purchases down and demand a refund. We snuck out and drove away, leaving the cute little goslings to their fate.  


Umm... chateau en route to Rocamadur. Not sure.  


Rocamadur -- Templar stronghold. Also where we noticed the wing mirror/indicator was broken. Spent the rest of the holiday with an 800 euro excess hanging over our heads. Weeks later the car hire firm finally got around to getting it fixed and charged me just under £14.  


Lourdes from the church. 


The miraculous grotto, where Bernadette had her visions of the virgin. Pinky is at the extreme left, queueing to go in.  


Snack break for the faithful at Lourdes. 


Tat-tastic at Lourdes.  


Pinky checks out the story of Bernadette at a Lourdes gift shop. 


People heading for the basilica. Lourdes is a model of wheelchair accessible town planning. 


The church at Lourdes. 


Biarritz. We have breakfast with Lakme, the French bulldog, who has her own seat at the cafe. 


The seafront at Biarritz. It looks chilly but it wasn't, it was balmy.  


Biarritz is a surfer town. 


I loved Biarritz, I'd like to go back there for a week. Beautiful coastline, nice ambience. 


The little cove around the corner from the main beach. Yes, people were swimming in the sea in October.  


Pinky and Puppy at the Guggenheim, Bilbao. How we got there and back is a long story - see the next post. Bilbao is in another country.  


Inside the Guggenheim. What a fantastic building. 


A holographic cube outside the gallery. 


The Guggenheim, Bilbao. 


The coast between Biarritz and Bordeaux. Two guys are kite-surfing. 


We ride the Belle Epoque bus in Bordeaux. A great city. 


The Belle Epoque bus, Bordeaux. 


After Bordeaux, Paris. After Paris, Oxford. It was raining. 


Blenheim Palace. 


A little train! Blenheim was fun. 


"Take a picture of me cooking on an Aga!" said Pinky. So I did. Our first B&B. 


This is for Pinky's friend of the same name. 


Our Oxford walking tour was conducted by scatty Ursula, from Chermany. "Vell, that's a werry goot qvestion, and I vill answer it in a few minutes..."  


Sisters reunited in Oxford. 


Stuffing our faces with an excellent meal at the Loch Fyne Restaurant in Henley on Thames. Thanks very much, Mum! 

biarritzy

We're having a bit of a breather in Biarritz, right near the border with Spain. We were going to drive to San Sebastian and stay there, but were put off by the thought of driving - we had a couple of days of long-distance driving & found it quite tiring. So, tomorrow we're going to Bilbao on the train. We had planned to go to San Sebastian today, but by the time we'd had breakfast (at a terrace cafe by the beach), found the railway station and made our way there by bus it was getting on; and then the next train wasn't for another three hours! You have to get the French train to the border, then change to a Spanish train. In the end we weren't going to get there until nearly 4pm. So instead we're doing laundry and internetting and generally lounging around.

Yesterday we went to Lourdes -- what a bizarre place. Fascinating to see so many faithful there, all looking for a miracle. The church etc is very beautiful and impressive, and the town has the most souvenir shops I've ever see anywhere.

We loved the Dordogne, it's lovely -- winding rivers, cliffs pocked with caves, lush valleys. We visited Lascaux II, a copy of the famous Lascaux caves, now closed because of damage to the paintings from tourists' breath. My favourite though was the Grotte de Font de Gaume, which has the most breathtaking paintings of bison. We also went to the Museum of Prehistory, which was excellent.

OK, I'd better go and relieve Pinky at the laundrimat.

:: zut alors

Doesn't time fly, etc. Here we are on our last day in Paris, already! Well, not quite our last - we come back for one night before flying to London.

The undoubted highlight was the Segway tour: man that was so much fun! It's a machine designed to make you look like a pure dork, but in fact they are great to ride. To go forward you just lean forward - and suddenly you're gliding along with a very quiet hum. Lean back and you stop, and then go backwards. Twist the little control and you spin round on the spot.

There were nine of us on the tour, I think, plus the two guides. First we did some training, then we headed off down the street. Not only was it cool fun riding the things, but it was lots of fun watching people's reactions. Mostly it was gob-smacked amazement, amusement and envy: what is that thing? Where can I get one? There was a little bit of scorn, but not much, considering what idiots we looked. Pinky and I were great at marketing the Segway, passing out brochures and urging everyone to take a tour.

The guides were a hoot too: the firm that does the tours is based in Texas, and most of its employees are young Texan dudes. (There was a bumper sticker in the office saying "Texas is bigger than France".) I say "dudes" because they all talked exactly like Bob and Ted, and their sense of history was pretty Bob and Ted too. The French Revolution was like, awesome? They like, cut the king's head totally off? Right here where we're standing? They were such cute guides though. Explaining that the Louvre was originally a fort built to protect the city against the Vikings, Daniela said: "Before I came here I didn't even realise the Vikings like, actually existed? But they did, and they were like, totally hassling the Pareeshuns?" Dude.

We've also been to the Pere Lachaise cemetary (where I fell over and cut my hand, wah!), Sacre Coeure and Montmartre, Musee d'Orsay (pinky), Arc de Triomphe (me) and have eaten huge quantities of excellent french bread and cheese, and plenty of cakes. Pinky has bought TWO handbags, really classy ones.

We're off to Bordeaux on the train tomorrow, then heading out into the French countryside in a hired voiture. We may or may not go to Spain; we'll see how we feel. Then back to Paris on 10 October and to London on the 11th.

It's been lovely having this flat, we will really miss it. It's on Rue de Seine in St Germaine des Pres, quite a snooty and artistic area - lots of galleries and chic shops - but also interesting and quirky.

:: bye-bye, ozzy

He's gone! Hurrah. Bertie is mightily relieved and has allowed his previously immaculately good behaviour to slip back to pre-Ozzy levels. I don't care, I'm happy to be able to sleep all night for a change.

Here are some cute photos of the pair of them:


I have no idea how much either of them ate during the week, because they kept eating each other's food. I put Bertie's dishes up on a box, but Ozzy didn't find that much of a challenge.


They look similar in size in that shot, but this one shows the difference better: Ozzy can walk underneath Bertie without touching. This was taken on a walk at Blackness (Blackness Castle is in the background).


Ozzy is much smarter than Bertie: he still set off down to the water for a drink, but quickly turned back when he found the seaweed was all slippery and nasty-smelling.

:: double trouble

Memo to self: Don't even think about getting another dog. One is plenty.

Actually Ozzy's been pretty good: he sleeps late and hasn't barked too much. But every expedition is fraught with complications: try keeping two excited dogs calm while you're trying to pick up poo! Also there's a problem at feeding time. Ozzy prefers Bertie's food and Bertie prefers Ozzy's, so we have a wee terrier eating out of a giant bowl and a big greyhound stooping to empty a tiny saucer. Today Ozzy brazenly stole Bertie's treasured Jumbone literally from under his nose: he nipped in and snatched it away. Bertie just looked glum, he didn't even growl, bless him.

One night we had high drama: as a treat on the late-night walk, I let Bertie off the lead in the big field under the bridge. Fine. But then I fumbled Ozzy's lead and dropped it. And he vanished. Trailing the big plastic lead reel. Aieee! Bertie's easy to see at night, being large and white. But Ozzy's small and dark, invisible at night. It was half an hour and much calling and whistling before I heard a little whimper from the thicket. I had to crawl under hawthorns and through brambles to reach him, and then untangle the lead. All doubled over, in the pitch dark. I was terrified I'd lost him - imagine that.

More dog news: I found Bertie's entry on the greyhound data website. He came second in two races! Awwww. And then second last, and finally - last. Oops.

Work's very busy, as per usual. I can't wait for my holidays! It'll be great to get away.

:: countdown

Only a couple of weeks to go before I'm on holiday! Wheee!

Tomorrow I collect Oz, who's staying with me for a week while his people are on holiday. I'm slightly nervous about what he and Bertie might get up to while I'm at work. Bertie just sleeps the whole time I'm away, but Oz is a busy little chap. Hmm.

:: Fizzling

Every now and then I go through a patch where Things Break Down. I've been in such a patch for a while now. First there was the car -- new ignition, new starter motor, and not too long after I'd spent a few hundred pounds getting it through its MoT (WoF). Then there's the garden tap -- sudden total failure of the washer, something I must get seen to before I go on holiday (in case there's an early frost and a repeat of the Great Flood of 2000/2001).

In the study things are not going well either. My printer's ink tank ran dry not long after being installed. Reconditioned and bought on the cheap, a classic case of false economy. I got a new one by mail order. The firm sent the wrong one. Cue long battle to get a replacement. Eventually it transpired that they're out of stock. Sigh. Cue long battle to get my money back.

Meanwhile, I succumbed to temptation and bought a portable digital radio. It arrived quickly, it was fabulous! One slight problem -- the volume went up to maximum at random. Alarming with earphones and probably dangerous. Cue long battle to get replacement. Eventually it transpired that they're out of stock. Sigh. Cue long battle to get my money back.

Now it's my computer. I bought a new printer -- which is fabulous and more importantly works -- but for some mysterious reason my computer now "hangs" during bootup for five minutes or more. It goes all right once it's booted, but something's wrong somewhere.

In other news, I've just had four days off in a row. Very relaxing and enjoyable. Yesterday the weather was stunning so I threw Bertie in the car and drove to Tentsmuir Forest. Lots of people were there walking and picnicking and sunbathing (no-one was swimming -- it's the North Sea, after all!) but it's such a big area it didn't feel crowded at all.

Back to work today. I also have a meeting with the boss to talk about my pay rise. Wish me luck!