Its been a busy week for the headline writers in France. Almost too many attention grabbing stories for them to cope with. La rentrée of schools last week was mainly characterised by information about how to cope with le grippe A as they more accurately refer to swine flu here. Then this week it has now officially reached epidemic proportions in France - more than 50,000 new cases per week. Still only 3 deaths so far though.
Elsewhere we've had another escape from prison - this time of the accused in the highly publicised murder of a well known actor's daughter and her friend 5 years ago, plenty of polemic about the proposed carbon tax, a political storm about the interior minister's alleged racist comments during the summer party conference, and more media frenzy about Les Bleus' struggle to qualify for the World Cup and Thierry Henry allegedly (since denied) telling coach Domemech that training was boring and the team had no idea what it was doing. Two draws were a poor return for what were actually two half-decent performances, particularly in the match in Belgrade where France outplayed Serbia for eighty minutes with only ten men.
On the home front, after a lazy weekend (a cycle ride and lunch in the sunshine on the banks of the river the limit of energetic activity) it's also been a relatively busy week. La bienheureuse is in Blighty working too hard trying to finish a Europe-wide blueprint for product registration documents, while I've been fiddling about at home getting the hang of the new toy to get more pitches to agents sent out.
Score so far: five sent three weeks ago, two rejection slips, one form rejection letter, and one rejection letter which at least looks as though it was composed personally:
"while the storyline offers much to entertain, I didn't feel sufficiently in tune with the narrative style to represent your interests...", "...didn't strike the right chord... doesn't mean another agent won't feel differently...", blah, blah, etc, etc.
On second thoughts, it probably is another form letter, just one that's been more carefully and tactfully composed. Undaunted I press on. Another four sent out this week...
