An Indian wedding weekend

An action-packed weekend back in the land of chips and curry. We caught a flight late on Thursday afternoon which should have got us to Cambridge in good time for a cordon bleu meal and a convivial evening chez J&C. A delay of nearly two hours meant the conviviality didn't begin till 10pm. Never mind, we got the sumptuous dinner anyway, cooked by la petite chefeuse as le maitre cuisinier was away on business.

A late night ensued, and thus we weren't up quite as early as intended for a shopping expedition into town. Wedding accessorizing was on the agenda, and a fashionable pink cardigan and a new pair of shoes did the trick for both of us, respectively. I also splashed out 16 quid on my first pair of spectacles. Now I can read what I'm writing, so no further excuse for churning out rubbish...

A quick drive down the M11 later, and we were effecting a perfectly timed rendezvous in our Ilford hotel with la belle-mère (la mienne that is, not the bride or groom's). Early evening, the groom arrived. His job for the evening - chauffeur. He drove us to the bride's house but obviously wasn't allowed in. In the back garden we rubbed turmeric on the bride, a Punjabi tradition that wouldn't go amiss in Western culture, ate, drank and watched as the assembled guests danced the night away.

A taxi got us back to the hotel by midnight and we were up early the next morning, waiting for our next chauffeur to arrive at eight-fifteen. He duly arrived just before nine, the time the wedding ceremony was due to start. It seems lateness is a Punjabi tradition much like the French. We eventually got to the gurdwara forty minutes later via an abortive detour to find a traditional veil for the groom. Half an hour later, the ceremonies finally began. First, milni, where the senior male relatives greet and welcome each other into the respective families. Then tea, samosas and sweets.

Then, head covered and feet shoeless, everybody eventually wandered into the temple and the wedding ceremony proper began, culminating in the "I pronounce you man & wife" moment, the passing of the happy couple four times round the guru granth sahib.

Our chauffeur for the day was also the organiser of the reception, so we left early for the venue and made an early start on the wine while he checked on arrangements. Other invitees soon started drifting in, and once all 500 odd guests were in place and making use of the free bar, the bride and groom made their entrance. They cut the cake, then we were served starters at table. Dancing entertainment followed, and then to the lively strains of Banghra, the bride and groom took to the floor for their first dance.

Then everyone else followed. Five hundred people on a dance floor the size of half a tennis court was quite a squeeze. Then again, perhaps I'm exaggerating, but it was hectic. In between times we squeezed in a delicious buffet curry main meal and the party eventually broke up soon after six-thirty. Seemed early, but there's something to be said for getting the hangover over and done with before you go to bed.

The following morning, wedding over except for the close family event of seeing the bride off from the parental home, we checked out of the hotel and were forced to organise our own transport for the first time in the weekend. The Tube into London it was, where la bienheureuse et la belle-mère spent a pleasant few hours at Camden Lock market, while I peeled off to rendezvous with JW in the pub before watching the heroes in red and white stroll to a comfortable victory in the spring sunshine.

Thence it was back to Cambridge for a Turkish dinner with most of the Meribel mob and special added ingredient, Miss H. Very nice it was too, but most were too tired to take up JeB's suggestion of jazz and half-pints of whisky afterwards in the Bun Shop. A mid-morning Monday flight got us back home the next day. The end of a lovely weekend.

Un déjeuner trop loin

Last week saw the end of a much-treasured French tradition - the inclusion of the département number in new vehicle registration numbers. It was going to disappear from registration plates entirely, but the announcement of the introduction of the new style numbers last year invoked such a furore that the government backtracked slightly. The style of the new numbers remains unchanged - a rather boring 2 letters, 3 digits, 2 letters, compared to the old style 3/4 digits, 2/3 letters, followed by the 2 digit numéro du département - but the new plates will now also contain an optional department number (and regional logo) which isn't part of the immatriculation, and can be changed.

There is quite a strongly developed sense of regional identity in France (no different to anywhere else, no doubt), and the numéro du département on number plates was something people seemed extraordinarily fond of. For instance, the Rhône and thus Lyon is 69 (to which I have to admit to a certain naughty attachment myself), so spot another 69 registered car on the autoroute, and you know 'ah, there's a fellow lyonnais', or as 75-registered car roars past being driven without regard for other road users, you know it's a Parisian.

Elsewhere, Sarkozy was doing his usual bull in a china shop impression last week. At a lunch with an all-party group of MPs, he treated his fellow diners to his opinions on fellow world-leaders. Ranging from 'lacks experience' on Obama, 'she came round to my opinion' on Merkel, to 'perhaps not very intelligent' on Zapatero, the Spanish PM. Not surprisingly, as members of the opposition were present, news soon leaked out. Initially government spokesmen denied any such comments, but in the face of an overwhelming number of witnesses, the tune soon changed to 'the comments were misinterpreted'. Suprisingly, the news initially received rather low-key coverage here, at least until Ségolène Royal's recent apology to Spain 'on behalf of the French people', which has created an significantly large storm than le Président's comments in the first place. The Ségo-Sarko show rolls on...

Giant pink mice and handbags

And a floating armchair. Actually, only one of each, and all floating in the Rhône over the weekend. Not quite sure what it was all in aid of, closest guess, an exhibition to inform and 'sensibilise' the population about flooding on the river.


The rest of the weekend was largely forgettable, or rather hopefully will be forgettable, with reference to a certain football game on Saturday evening. At least I got to watch and wail in the privacy of my own home, and la bienheureuse cooked a delicious meal in recompense...

Elsewhere, Sarko has been upsetting the rest of the world, and OL lost last night to Bordeaux, one of their rivals for the title, and now are back in an unaccustomed third place in the league. The eighth championship in a row is starting to look rather unlikely...

Slush fun

Easter in the Alps, spring skiing, sunshine. What more could you ask? Slightly cooler temperatures, perhaps. Our couple of nights in La Plagne turned out to be enjoyable, sunny and warm. Very warm. I hesitate to say too warm, but at times it was closer to water skiing than the alpine variety. We drove up on Saturday morning to find blazing sunshine and temperatures in the upper mid-teens. I set off for three hours of skiing on slush while la bienheureuse, nursing a knee, settled for a short walk and late lunch in a café. I found some decent runs higher up and then found my beloved for a drink before the final few splashes down the pistes. In the evening we decided on a pierrade (self-cooked meat selection on a hot stone) dinner in the local restaurant, which turned out to be delicious and enormous.

Sunday, still digesting protein, la bienheureuse decided not to risk her knee in the heavy snow and left me to seek out higher snow on my own. Not an easy task when the glacier was closed due to high winds, but I found one lovely run on snow of the normal, frozen variety. Meanwhile ma bien-aimée set off without planks of wood on her feet, hiking towards higher ground herself. We eventually made rendezvous in a mountain side restaurant, where hardy locals in shirt-sleeves braved the stiff breeze to sunbathe.


An early finish allowed plenty of recovery time (read 'siesta'), a hot bath and a delicious dinner, beautifully cooked (read 'heated in the microwave') by la bienheureuse, in our little studio apartment. The following morning, I gave the slush-skiing a miss and we both went for a lovely little walk through the woods on a snow-covered path and along a pretty mountain stream, followed by another restaurant lunch outdoors in the sunshine.

Thence back to Lyon and work the following morning. Not for long in my case, as I yielded to deep urges on Wednesday and caught a morning flight across the Channel, where I spent a few hours enjoying the sunshine in London, and then two hours enjoying football played as it was meant to be played. Yesterday I returned home to be treated to the first éclairs of the summer. Not cakes of the chocolate and cream variety, but bolts from the sky. Yes, a thunderstorm in April. At least it wasn't accompanied by hail which covered the ground 10cm thick, as occurred in the Cevennes last night...

Sunshine and melting snow?

The abnormally warm weather in Lyon has continued most of this week, though the sun only really reappeared yesterday. It's forecast to continue most of the holiday weekend too, which is mildly concerning as we're off up into the mountains for a couple of days. Fortunately, this winter has been one of the best ever in terms of snow, so there should still be some left when we get there...

Meanwhile, the city is quiet as people head off for their Easter holidays. Elsewhere, today sees the appearance of the 20000th edition of L'Equipe. A daily sports newspaper with high quality journalism is something sadly lacking in Blighty.

21-15, vingt-millième edition

Highly amusing incident in l'Assemblée Nationale yesterday, where opposition deputés ambushed the government to defeat a law which would have criminalised illicit downloading. The parliament chamber was virtually empty during the debate on the law (an indication of a certain lack of enthusiasm for the law amongst the government's own rank and file), but the UMP majority saw that they outnumbered the opposition by two to one, so called for the vote. Whereupon, a dozen or so opposition MPs, who had been lurking outside, suddenly rushed into the chamber, giving them a 21-15 majority. The law was duly rejected. This morning the opposition are gloating over inflicting a bloody nose on the government, Sarkozy has denounced the 'derisory manoeuvre', and internet users throughout France are rejoicing. The glee will be short-lived, as the unpopular law has already been put on the parliamentary agenda for later in the year.

Today sees the appearance of the 20000th edition of L'Equipe, the venerable French sports newspaper. Founded in 1946, the paper remains among the most widely read daily papers in France, and maintains a consistently high quality of sports journalism that the media in the UK could learn from. Pity its like has never been established across La Manche...

Seems like summer

Another weekend, another visit to the garden centre. Which may seem a little strange for the inhabitants of an apartment several floors up, but we were so pleased with our forked flowerpot purchase last week, we had to go back for more. Is that late middle-aged bourgeoisie I see catching up fast as I look over my shoulder?
However, as I sit looking out of the window at the 22C sunshine, with the scent of lavender wafting in from our newly acquired mini-gardens, I reflect that maybe middle-age ain't so bad after all...

While Strasbourg went up in flames, you may perceive that the week just past was another uneventful one in Lyon. I even managed to more or less finish a second rewrite of the third draft of book 3. Work (and play) on the computer has been aided by a 15 euro investment in extra memory off ebay. Now the ageing machine boots and starts windows in less than five minutes, instead of the ten previously, and certain memory-hungry applications have become infinitely more usable. Marvellous.

101 departements et 1 ville en état de siège

La France gained its 101st departement a few days ago, when the population of Mayotte voted overwhelmingly to change from a collectivité d'outre-mer to a fully fledged departement. In fact, officially it doesn't happen until 2011, but the news was received here with underwhelming apathy. Which is a little surprising, given that it will cost the French tax payer, and that the Indian Ocean island's population is mostly Muslim (the Arab League has already rejected the French 'occupation' of the island). Mayotte is part of the Comoros Islands, but when the rest of the archipelago declared independence in 1974, Mayotte voted to remain French.

Elsewhere in le metropole, la crise continues, discontent still rumbles and Monsieur le Président did his usual grandstanding at the G20, exaggerating differences before the meeting so that he could claim victory afterwards. Meanwhile the spotlight is now on Strasbourg where the NATO meeting is taking place. France fully rejoining NATA has not been universally welcomed here, where some still cling to the notion of complete independence from the 'imperialist' US, and now the city in Alsace has been described as being under siege for the past week. Car parks, public services and some autoroutes are closed, and public transport restricted and strictly controlled. The local population is only allowed into the city if in possession of a resident's badge, and can only park their cars out of town.

Not surprisingly les Strasbourgeois are complaining vociferously. One of the local newspapers advises its readers not to fall ill because pharmacies can't be stocked, nurses and doctors can't visit, and hospitals are being reserved for NATO dignitaries, the forces of law and order, and... demonstrators. The anarchists are in town and there had already been over 300 arrests before any heads of state had even arrived...