Overheating...

It's been a quiet couple of weeks on the home and personal work front. While I've struggled unenthusiastically with synopses and query letters to agents, la bienheureuse has really been overworked. A couple of inactive weekends were thus something of a welcome change.

The hot spell was thankfully broken briefly by a three day cooler period in the middle of last week, but over the weekend the heat and sunshine returned, bringing with them the inevitable forest fires, threatening Marseille and Corsican villages. Two volunteer firemen are among the suspected arsonists.

This week, fires and pyromaniacs were pushed off the front pages by Monsieur le Président's little turn. Never in the history of human health has so much newsprint and TV coverage been generated by one little fainting fit. You'd have thought a man in his fifties, who happens also to be in charge of a country, would have more common sense than to go jogging at lunchtime in the middle of a heatwave. But then, moderation is not a word in Sarko's vocabulary.

Other, somewhat fitter men overworking in the heat of the day were also in the news over the weekend. The three week circus that is the Tour de France reached its climax on Saturday and Sunday. After the first two weeks that had commentators grumbling about the lack of excitement, the final week exploded into action as soon as the race reached the Alps, and the general mood at the end was a mix of self-congratulation and anticipation of the next one. At last we a Tour without positive drug tests. Yet...
The Contador/Armstrong rivalry didn't do any harm either, and there's much excitement about the potential battle next year.

There are still plenty of sceptical voices about. A sports scientist (who also happens to have been Festina's sporting director, so he would know), writing in Libération, calculated that during the ascent towards Verbier last week Contador's VO2 (oxygen consumption) was 99.5 ml/min/kg, a figure the writer classified as humanly impossible. Or to put it in more understandable numbers, he covered 8.5km with an average slope of 7.5% in just under 21 minutes - average speed, more than 24 km/h. Greg Lemond, writing in Le Monde (where else?), said as far as he was aware, no athlete in any sport had ever achieved such a feat. The writer in Libération also calculated the power production of Contador and the Schlecks in the three big climbs towards Grand Bornand at 440 watts. He said it was established that doping could produce 410 watts, 430 watts was 'miraculous', and 450 watts 'mutant'...

Plunging gorges, needle stalactites and damp squibs

For the quartorze juillet long weekend, we decided to introduce la belle-mère to more of the beautiful countryside within easy reach of Lyon. So Sunday morning we fled the steaming city and headed east, to the mountains of the Vercors. After much frustrated googling earlier in the week, we'd finally found a nice hotel with rooms. Le Marronnier in Rencurel turned out to be an inspired choice. Perfectly situated just north of the Gorges de la Bourne, it had that vital facility, a swimming pool. And the perfect place for dinner - an outdoor terrace with views of the mountains.


We arrived late on Sunday afternoon, stopping off for a lunchtime picnic by the water at Pont en Royans, a lovely village notable for its houses perched on the rocks high above the river, and then winding our way along the twisting road through the spectacular Gorges de la Bourne. Quick dip in the pool, a bit of sunbathing, apéritif, then dinner watching the sun go down. Not a bad start.

Monday was another hot, sunny day. Following our friendly hotel proprietor's advice, we drove up into the hills above Rencurel and went for a gentle amble along a path, which took us through the woods to a ruined farmstead, and then onward to a viewpoint with yet another stunning view of the gorges. Afterwards, more narrow, winding roads, more spectacular views, then a late lunch in the restaurant at the Grottes de Choranche. Then we visited the impressive caves, which are notable for their unusually long, needle-like stalactites. Best of all, it was 20 degrees cooler underground.


Back at the hotel, a cool dip in the pool brought blessed relief from the heat. The views and the food at dinner were just as tasty.

The following morning, alas, we headed home. Via the scenic route of course. One of the scenic routes. We stopped off at St Agnan, on the upper Vercors plateau for another gentle stroll through the woods and along a quiet valley, then took another winding round up and over the ridge towards Vassieux en Vercors. The village is notable for being the landing point for SS paratroopers who perpetrated a massacre there during the course of the German repression of the Vercors Resistance during the months after D-day. We visited the memorial to the Resistance at the Col de la Chau before heading back towards Lyon.

The route home featured possibly the most spectacular road of all, cut into the sheer cliff face of the Cirque du Combe Laval. Drivers suffering from vertigo are advised to take a detour.


Lyon was hot and humid when we got home, and thunderstorm duly cleared the air soon afterwards, and caused the annual fireworks display to be cancelled. Since, it's been back to the grindstone. I did accompany la belle-mère on a bit of touristing yesterday afternoon, with a visit to the newly renovated Gadagne museum, and then met up with la bienheureuse afterwards for the ritual drink in a café in Vieux Lyon. Tomorrow, it's completely back to normality, with la belle-mère returning home to deal with her own belle-mère and the attendant problems...

La belle-mère and the transvestite knight

Les Nuits de Fourvière are upon us. The annual summer long program of open air concerts in the Roman amphitheatre up the hill with a view down over Lyon is always worth at least one visit. Not that we get round to going every year, but with la belle-mère currently visiting, we took the funicular up last night to watch Eonnagata, a dance spectacle featuring superstar ballerina Sylvie Guillem. Being a committed headbanger in my youth, I'd probably admit to being a little dubious about how much I'd enjoy it, but it turned out to be a very well done and entertaining story of the life of an 18th century French nobleman who was sent to Russia dressed as a woman to spy on the Tsar, subsequently fell out with the French ambassador to London and was only allowed to return to France on condition that he was disguised as a woman.

The first few days of la belle-mère's visit were sedate. With la bienheureuse working, and me also working in my particular fashion (including a day spent trying to get our upgraded super-fast 100Mb fibre optic broadband working), she was left largely to amuse herself during the day. Gentle strolls along nearby shopping streets were the main order of the week. Come the weekend it was all change, as we headed up into the hills...

Home swelter

A quiet week since our return from holiday further south, which continued in a way on Saturday evening as we went straight to a 50th birthday party for the husband of a work colleague of la bienheureuse. We almost skipped it through tiredness and the desire to avoid the need to figure out a word play on cinquante ans, a task which the host had set all his guests and involved a public performance. Fortunately we avoided the latter as ma bien-aimée was chosen to sit on the 'judges bench'.

Then Monday rolled round and it was back to work for both of us, this week ending for la bienheureuse with a day trip to Monheim today, and for me with getting book two off to be nicely printed out. Now all I have to do is try and find someone to sell it for me...

The weather has been too hot to do much else, sunshine most of the week and temperatures in the low 30s. A slightly cooler weekend is predicted. Meanwhile, a minor sporting earthquake in Lyon occurred earlier in the week with the transfer of young star striker Karim Benzema to Unreal Madrid. First the title is lost, then Le Phénomène. OL fans are up in arms, and demonstrating their discontent.

Another more welcome change here, hopefully, is the reduction of VAT on restaurant food, which in theory should reduce the cost of eating out by more than 10%. Though reading between the lines, in practice prices are unlikely to come down by that much. Restaurants are free to not pass on the reduction to customers, using it for other things, like staff wages, new equipment, etc, etc. On verra...
And unfortunately, the reduction doesn't apply to alcoholic drinks...