Lakes of water

Satisfactory Saturday - watched Aussies burning to Ashes on TV in morning, caught train to watch Pompey get fried to a Gooner crisp in the afternoon, then caught another train to Cumbria in the evening.

Sodden Sunday - watched the rain come down. All day. Shopping at Lakeland and Booths was the inevitable activity for the day for the childless adults. Aliens in the Attic for the cousins with children.


Muckabout Monday - accompanied the senior generation down to the Lake to watch kids mucking about in the water in the morning, mass game of rounders in the park in the afternoon. Then the big event in the evening - celebration of the soixante-dizaine of le vieux oncle R. Forty guests for dinner at Glenridding, age range 12 months to 89 years. Highly enjoyable evening for one and all.

Trekking Tuesday - the sun deigned to put in an appearance. La bienheureuse, la belle-mère et moi took advantage of the good weather to venture out on a minor hike. Skelwith Force to Colwith Force and back to watch the water cascading over two sets of falls. Spectacular. Then a walk into Ambleside to purchase emergency dinner provisions and watch cousins and progeny hacking round the pitch and putt and on the tennis court.


Wet Wednesday - it's raining again...

Blabbering in Blighty

Another weekend, another visit from the good Doctors from Bexleyheath and their energetic offspring came and went. Halving their southbound journey time, they arrived in Lyon before lunchtime, and we all caught an air-conditioned bus to the park. Key detail, the climatisation - it was hot, too hot to traipse around the park and zoo in any comfort. But fun was had nonetheless, and then we went home to sweat in the kitchen cooking roast chicken. 

Our guests left early the next morning, and we followed them to Calais two days later. Uneventful journey, arrival in Cambridge in plenty of time for dinner chez J&C and a gratifying evening's football watching. Wednesday la bienheureuse went off to work, I fiddled and twiddled, and then we enjoyed an evening BBQ chez le grand dude to meet the strapping new arrival for the first time.  And to collect another delivery, my spanking new, spanking fast raincoat computer. 

Thursday the week deteriorated. La bienheureuse worked again, I fiddled and twiddled again, this time with my shiny new toy, and in the evening, Professor Margarita and the Caipirinha Kid came round for dinner for six, lovely lamb by the maître cuisinier himself, and a bouncing bean starter by his faithful sous-chef. Five bottles of wine, several shots of spirits and much drunken rambling later, even the dedicated JeB hit the sack. Or sofa in his case.

And so this morning, ma bien-aimée set off for parts north, leaving me to nurse a guele de bois, fiddle and twiddle some more, and wait for my first real football fix of the season tomorrow...

Squirting and screaming

Suckers for punishment, not having seen enough of the Doctors C and the mini-JeZoids the previous weekend, we set off towards the sun, sand and deep blue sea of the Côte d'Azur on Friday afternoon. Of sun, we saw plenty, but not a grain of sand nor a drop of sea. Two days spent sampling the delights of the French holiday tradition that is the Village de Vacances, venturing out of the security compound only once to visit nearby Fréjus and its Saturday market. Why bother with scratchy sand and salty sea when you've got two swimming pool complexes, complete with slides and safe swimming within three minutes walk?

And so, the weekend was enjoyably spent being regularly subjected to soakings by water pistol and drownings by water nymphs and urchins. As if two mini-JZs wasn't enough to cope with, the caravanning three goldilocks and parents added to the fun. The trip to the market equipped J-junior and Z-minor with weapons, and ensured that we stayed wet even when out of the water. In the piscine, I just about kept my head above water, even with three under-10s clinging to my back. Even an underwater forward roll couldn't dislodge the friendly middle-goldilock, a true water baby.

Mini-J Primus finally allowed us to escape Camp Delta early yesterday evening, once he was assured we were leaving a birthday present behind. We had an uneventful trip home until we neared Lyon, where we were witness to a mid-autoroute road rage incident. No serious consequences, but never cut up a Frenchman on the road...

This morning, we have a little bit of England in Lyon. It's cool, cloudy and damp.

The president and the crow

A mysterious writer of poison-pen letters is making the news in France at the moment. A series of letters has been sent to a number of senior politicians in France, including the most senior of all, Monsieur Le Président. Le corbeau (crow), as anonymous letter writers are known as in France, always signs the letters "Combattants du cellule 34", which always include a bullet.

The latest targets are Sarko and the mayor of Beziers, both for the second time. The letters are littered with choice phrases such as: "You have believed in fools, and now the time for liberation approaches. The king and his clan will disappear from the surface of the earth...", "Our first target will be the son of the king, with 3 senators, 4 deputies (MPs), a minister and a judge in the top ten, and frequent bomb scares in various shops. You will have fear..."

The police have no leads as yet...

The thunder of little feet...

Another quiet week and weekend, with a brief, somewhat noisier interlude on Friday evening and Saturday morning. The much anticipated visit of the Doctors C and the mini-JeZs took place overnight Friday. Stopping off in Lyon on their way from Calais to the sun and smoke further south, they arrived at about 8pm via an unscheduled detour through Paris. Satnavs are useful things, if you pay attention to them instead of getting wrapped up in a Dr Who adventure. Eight and a half hours cooped up in a car, albeit a rather large one, stores up plenty of energy in small five and seven year old boys. Cue much charging around, and a visit to the playground by the river, with only a brief pause to wolf down some food. Now I know why one ten year old sometimes sounds like a whole herd of elephants upstairs.

Exhaustion eventually took its toll and J-minor and Z dropped off to sleep after the minor problem of cuddly dinosaurs left in the car was solved by a fish and dolphin substitute respectively. They even let us lie in till after eight the next morning, and we waved our visitors goodbye just before midday, wishing them luck on the four hour journey that took more than six on the busiest traffic day of the year, on the busiest autoroute in the country. First day in August: half of France, and a quarter of Belgium, Holland and Germany climb into their vehicles and head towards the Med.

As for us we, erm, spent the rest of the day relaxing and recovering. Sunday, we took advantage of the blessedly cool weather to cycle down the river to Parc Gerland to watch steam rising from the ground where a new metro tunnel is being dug, then all the way back up to Parc de la Tete d'Or, then on to Parc Feyssine, then finally home to allow me to park my behind on the sofa and watch my second football fix of the weekend, a gratifying display by the much derided young Guns. Yes, the new season is nearly upon us, and optimism surges from somewhere once more...

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...

Strolling, swimming and sunning

From the hectic activity of the Côte d'Azur to the gentle pace of holiday life deep in the Ardèche mountains. Via a narrow, hairpin road, we finally reached the Mas de l'Elze late on Saturday afternoon. We took canapés and a glass of rosé wine on the terrace, gazing out as the sun shone down on an idyllic scene, bathing the old stone buildings and rolling, wooded mountains in soft light. Then we moved indoors for a rather tasty table d'hôte dinner, albeit without les hôtes. An auspicious start to a lovely relaxing week.


The days that followed melded into one, following much the same pattern. Rise late, light breakfast, gentle morning/early afternoon amble along one of the multitude of footpaths that criss-cross the area, late lunch back at the mas, afternoon spent lazing and reading by the pool, interrupted only for a quick dip and cool-down, and a display by dog-fighting jets overhead. Finally, dinner on the terrace, sipping wine and gazing at the view. Only minor black mark - a failed barbecue on Wednesday evening. I blame the equipment. Still, the beef and lamb kebabs tasted just as good grilled in the oven.

Deviations from the norm - a trip into l'Argentière on Tuesday to re-provision at the market - a 15km drive, which took more than half an hour due to being forced to follow a small herd of cattle at a safe distance down the single track road as they moved pastures, and a tour bus trying to squeeze along a hairpin road with parked cars on one side and an aged driver who refused to back up behind us: the joys of driving in deepest France; a short driving tour on Thursday, visiting la Tour de Brison for a panoramic view and a winding drive through the gorges de la Beaume; and a few gentle thundery showers today preventing the swimming and sunbathing.

And so a lazy week ends, and it's back to Lyon tomorrow and work next week. We may be back...