Miffed parents ahoy

Parents are an awkward prospect, even if you live in a different country. These are the people that moaned that I didn't have a proper job in summer 2002 (because of course freelance translating for a French publishing house isn't proper work) then, on finding I had taken work in a TV company for summer 2003 and was looking at, at most, a couple of weeks off in September, enquired "are you sure that will be enough holiday?".

They booked a break in Paris from 13-18 June this summer. It turns out that I'll be working every day they are here, and they have the cheek to be miffed by this: "we could have gone to Skegness after all."

Meanwhile the French have voted "non". Seems like internal affairs messed up what otherwise could have been a "oui". The referendum came at a bad time for the oui campaign, which was, d'ailleurs, run by incompetent gimps. Anyway, nice to see that the European Union has, er, split Europe. And here's a picture of Sarko to be getting on with.

Lollipops and bubblewrap

What more could you want for a 21st birthday? Apart from alcohol, but that's ok because we had that in plentious volumes.

For all your immediate bubblewrap needs, go here. No-one actually sells bubblewrap, you just have to find someone who's chucking it out after installing a new shelving unit. As for the lollipops, find a fifty-odd blonde from eastern Europe, there are plenty around. She will be happy to give you anything in her shop.

So there was great imbibage of hard drinks, before dawn threatened to appear and a general decision was made to sleep. Following the discovery of a significant mattress-per-person deficit, and that no-one wanted to get in a bed with David, your intrepid blogger ended up sharing the lounge floor with the birthday girl while Olly nicked the sofa.

I want this.

Over the last 5 years, I have (as any self-respecting early 20s person should do) passed many a spectacularly uncomfortable night, whether it be borrowing other people's floors, or sharing beds that really weren't designed for so many people, or one particularly memorably aching occasion where we found upon arrival that all the inns of Montpellier were booked up, and slept instead in the luggage rack of an overnight train to Italy. Also not recommended are: night flights in economy class on Nigeria Airways, and aisle seats on packed cross-channel coach trips. But at the same time, beds are overrated. Beds lull you into a comfort zone where you think you can just turn up and you will go to sleep. Floors, coach seats, and the like, make you work at it, and are hence far more efficient.

Last night, or let's be precise, this morning, was what I have realised is Just About Right. Carpeted floors are comfortable enough to get to sleep on, but uncomfortable enough that you wake up after a sensible sort of time and don't feel particuarly like kipping again. Sharing aforementioned floor does not make it any more comfortable in a purely materialistic sense, but mutual participation in the experience makes it infinitely more life-affirming, convivial, and uplifting in a raw and instinctive caveman manner. And that can only be A Good Thing.

Do these things occasionally, but not too often, and you shall feel fulfilled:
* Share a sleeping space.
* Go on a journey with friends.
* Pop bubblewrap.
* Fry bacon in the morning.

However, always buy shampoo, ketchup, and other liquid produce of similar viscosity, in bottles that can be stood upside down on their lid. This will save you immeasurable squeezing time when it comes to the business end of the bottle.

Igor Biscan, Champions League winner 2005

European Champions 2005 (photo nicked from AP)

Sadly couldn't find a photo of Igor himself, who was inexplicably overlooked by the post-match journalistic photographing jamboree. Anyway, due to my mother flicking on the FA Cup final in 1986 and sitting down with a cuppa, I am a Liverpool fan. One year later and it would have been Coventry - two years Wimbledon (shudder) - so I guess I'm fortunate there.

(Yes, I have been to Anfield, and yes, I have seen them play, although not on the same occasion. And mum lived in Liverpool for a bit, although that argument falls down on the fact that she supports Aldershot.)

How the hell Liverpool won it, I don't know. The Best Team in Europe lost to Burnley in the cup, and saw Birmingham take away 6 points in the league. Some luck was definitely ridden (Eidur? Andrii?) but if you see off Juve, Mourinho's Chelsea, and Milan, then you probably deserve a medal or two.

So: Forza Liverpool! Allez les rouges! Das beste Fussballmannschaftweltmeisterpokalgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzungnationalelf der Welt! and Champions League winners 2005.

UEFA Champions League features for next season:
* Not a league!
* Access available for teams who are not champions!
* NEW 2005! Team who actually are champions not admitted!

I am increasingly poorly adjusted

So, partyage on a boat occured. The round trip cruise from Pont d'Issy up to the Ile St Louis was delayed and hence cut a little shorter than originally intended, but that had one happy side-effect: we passed the Eiffel Tower - both ways - exactly on the hour, so it looked like it was sparkling specially for us. When you are 90 drunk students, that kind of thing is naturally just unmentionably brilliant. Woo!, we all said.

Olly searches in vain for the Eiffel Tower. Where could it have gone?

Anyway, it transpires that having end-of-year parties on river cruises, in elegant dresses (Wimmin) and suits+ties (Dudes), is all rather swish and frankly class. However, it has to be said that the numerous people who became drunk enough to fall over didn't really need the extra help from a moving floor. But overall, nice.

Surveys suggest 1 in 2 Wimmin find Timber's "I have a dirty mop on my head" joke funny.

The others don't think it's a joke.

Unfortunately I came to realise that I really am becoming increasingly maladjusted. I had already decided that this was absolutely the last college event I must ever go to. But that probably isn't a decent enough excuse for fobbing off anyone who wasn't in third year. I concede that some relationships will always remain vacuous - not my fault nor the other person's, you simply don't have enough in common, and if you expect to get on with everybody then you're setting yourself up for failure. But certain doubtlessly lovely people, whom I could potentially have a lot of time for if it wasn't for the fact that doing so would mean risking further college mingling, made honest attempts to be nice to me. At which point the more destructive parts of my frankly stupid personality come to the fore and meant I was short with them when I could at least have made the effort to be polite if nothing else. I blame it on the beer. And also the fact that I am increasingly maladjusted.

No-one told Lady Franchester that it wasn't a fancy dress party, and she came as a geeeeek.

So, moral of the story. If I have been rude to you, and you don't know me that well, I probably think you're lovely.

If I've been rude to you, and I do know you (so, everyone reading this blog then), I probably think you're a complete gimp. Har.

You shall go to the ball!

You shall go to the ball!
(Thank you, yahoo image search)

I had been wanting to avoid this evening's university leaving party. This is not because I don't like the people that are going, but largely because I've already left the place twice, and a third time seemed excessive. Plus, after initially negotiating several months of successful abstention from anything collegey after graduation last summer, I was dismayed to find myself sucked back into university life (largely due to its desperate-for-a-pianist jazz band). Frequenting my old haunts, like going back to your school when you're 47, felt vaguely pederastic. And you don't want to hang around like a bad smell.

So, upon discovering that this year's leaving party was going to be a posh do on a boat, and that you will be paying thirty of your crisp sterling euros for the pleasure thank you mister, I elected to give it a miss, on the basis that: 1. I'm not particularly fussed about big social occasions, 2. I'll see anyone I want to see before they leave France anyhow, and 3. you know, I've been on boats before, they're not as great as all that.

Of course, Lady Franchester (making a second appearance in these pages) phones up at noon today and says she has struck a dodgy underhand deal with tonight's bouncer to let me in for a Drastically Reduced Price. I'll say nothing more than that the bouncer in question is a female of medium height with long dark hair and possibly of mediterranean origin. So, all-night open bar? Evening cruise down the Seine? Tipsyfied nubiletastic wenchorama?* I'll be on my way.

* I didn't say that. Did I say that? Oh.

Living on another planet for a bit would be nice

I would just like to say that whoever was responsible for the decision upon Earth's internationally agreed 24-hour day was a bloody incompetent. It simply isn't sufficient. The moment they sort out intergalactic travel (NASA dudes - please hurry up) I will be on the first flight out to a more sensible planet. In an infinite universe, Shirley there must be a globe somewhere in our relative vicinity which is equally suited to human life but where days last, say, 28 hours or so. If so I will move there as soon as possible. I am fed up of staying up until 5 in the morning, then trying to catch some sleep, then waking up only to discover that half the day has already gone, meaning I have to scrap half the things I was supposed to do, and then almost inevitably have to deal with someone somewhere who is pissed off for some unknown reason. It's just an unsatisfactory state of affairs and I intend to put an end to it if at all possible. I would be a much more efficient person if I could work all night then still have enough time to sleep before the morning.

Can I just point out to anyone who has ever been annoyed at me for being lazy - getting up at noon is not lazy if you only got to sleep at 7.

On a not completely unrelated subject, I do not recommend starting your Wednesday with four hours of champagne, vodka, and various beers followed by a walk from Montmartre across Paris to your home in the twentieth (where you promptly find your kitties fighting. ) As an upstanding citizen, I have put myself through this situation and tried these things out with you, the reader, in mind. And I can say: don't do it, kids!

Kitties have now curled up together in a picture of horrific cuteness which I absolutely refuse to post.

Your own personal sofa

The phone rang earlier this evening. My ever entertaining flatmate picked it up, and started to say "Salut" but only got half-way through before changing her mind and saying "Allo" instead. This was an error, because she thus greeted her poor friend Christophe with "Salaud".

I expect that kind of thing happens all the time.

Meanwhile, I had a bath today, and in doing so made the mistake of reading Christian propaganda that Mutti had "accidentally" left lying around. Last time she did this, it was a book arguing the case for the Easter story, which was so well constructed and argued that I had to go to the rather extreme measure of reading a 300-page book entitled "Et l'homme créa les dieux" before returning to normal. This time, it was a small booklet bearing the legend, "Christianity: Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant?"

I assume the title was intended to be rhetorical. Suffice to say that I was expecting a rather better argument than:

"Christianity is far from boring, it is not untrue and it is not irrelevant. On the contrary, it is exciting, true, and relevant."

You may think that I'm taking a quote out of context to make it look silly. I guess you'll either have to read it yourself, or just believe me when I say I'm Really Really Not. Anyway, that's not the main point. We continue:

"Men and women were created to live in a relationship with God. Without that relationship there will always be a hunger, an emptiness, a feeling that something is missing."

So, let's see how he backs this up.

The author goes on to quote various people (Prince Charles, Bernard Levin, Tolstoy) explaining how, despite having fulfilled many material and earthly desires, there still is some kind of feeling of lack. It finishes with Freddy Mercury's quote "success has ... prevented me from having the one thing we all need - a loving, ongoing relationship." Our intrepid author continues:

"He was right to speak of an 'ongoing relationship' as the one thing we all need. Yet no human relationship will satisfy entirely, nor can it be completely ongoing. There will always be something missing. That is because we were created to live in a relationship with God."

Woah! Wild assumptions and sweeping generalisations have never been so on target.

(Tragically for the author, statements do not become more convincing each time you repeat them.)

Let me propose an illustration. Imagine that one day I sit down in a tired and collapsing manner, but have neglected to ensure that there is a sofa below my arse, which could easily happen as I'm pretty stupid like that. In this case, my arse desperately needed an ongoing relationship with a solid surface at an appropriate height. Unfortunately, such a relationship did not come to fruition, and the arse subsequently develops an acute sense that a solid surface was missing. That is because the arse was created to live in a relationship with the Sofa. But that doesn't mean the Sofa exists. The Sofa was never there, and the fact you can feel its absence does not imply its existence. Yes.

Sodomy in Refomation Germany and Switzerland 1400-1600 by Helmut Puff: still far and away the greatest single Christian bookstore item in all history

One final argument. Get a cuppa and take your time reading it. The author is comparing the "intellectual acceptance of the Truth" to the "knowledge that Jesus Christ... IS the Truth".

"Suppose that before I met my wife Pippa I had read a book about her. Then, after reading the book, I thought, 'This sounds like a wonderful woman. This is the person I want to marry.' There would be a big difference in my state of mind then - intellectually convinced that she was a wonderful person - and my state of mind now after the experience of many years of marriage from which I can say, 'I know she is a wonderful person.' "

Quite apart from resenting the rather smug implication, "I am a person capable of maintaining a functional relationship" (no, your esteemed blogger hasn't figured how to do that quite yet) I have some other issues with this. The idea seems to be that a Christian has intellectually accepted Jesus as the Truth, as well as experiencing the knowledge that Jesus is the Truth, in the same way that a dude intellectually accepts his wife is the One, as well as experiencing the knowledge that she is the One. Again this seems a totally alien concept to me, but let's leave me out of this for a bit and assume some dudes feel like that about their Wummun. Let us venture that it would be completely ludicrous to suggest all dudes should feel like this about the same Wummun. After all, everyone knows that there are 50% dudes and 50% Wimmin in this world and so everyone has one perfect soulmate!!!!! Dudes are all different and a Wummun who could become the One for Gerald or Juan might be a complete turn-off for Peter and Frederick. In the same way, I feel it is completely ludicrous to suggest that the same Jesus is right for everyone. And, going out on a controversial limb here, I don't even think that all Christians believe in the same Jesus. Look at, er, Northern Ireland frog sample.

Mmm I can feel some Depeche Mode coming on.

In an interesting development, "Tim-meh!" now signs in as "I am not acting like a freeeeak!!!". Well, that remains open to debate my dear, but the First Degree Bintery charges have been dropped. Enjoy your exams, and that goes to anyone else reading this who is currently doing finals.

Don't read this entry! It's really dull!

So life has returned to normal, if rather hectic and up in the air (i.e. normal), after Mutti's visit. On Friday, my future ex-flatmate finally produced her thesis for me to translate. I use the word "finally" not without a certain gravity.

Let us do a quick flashback to November, when ye Wummun said to me "I'd like you to stop babysitting the kid, and pay rent instead. However, for the next month, while you're looking for a job, you can translate my thesis instead."

Given the length of the thesis, I negotiated her up from one to two months, on the basis that she was frankly having a laugh if I was going to translate the whole thing for one month's rent. She agreed, and said that she should finish it by the weekend, and would like me to get on with translating as quickly as possible afterwards.
So I left December free, and planned on getting work in January.

Now it turns out that she may have slightly underestimated things when she announced "I'll have it done by the weekend." I remind you that I received the thesis yesterday, and that it is now May. Which kind of makes you wonder what the hell she has been doing for the last six months. And means I wasted December.

Meanwhile, I haven't posted a blog entry for a whole three days, largely because of having plenty of work on, but also due to going out last night for a pint followed by cooking dinner round at friends'. I am Not A Particularly Good Cook and have absolutely no idea why it was generally assumed that, the moment "meal at our place" was mentioned, I would be cooking. When I did it before, there was a rice incident, and I was henceforth banned from using the household seive. It all seems Very Wrong. But no-one died this time, so it was a relative success.

And finally, an official notice from Timberblog headquarters:
In a further example of unacceptable Wummunish behaviour, a Certain Young Lady (and you know who you are) has taken to signing into MSN as "Tim-meh!". That is my name, not yours. Nonchalently signing in with my name, then slapping on "busy" status (yeahright! you forget I know what you're like) and ignoring me when I complain, is not something I will stand for. If the situation continues, you will be summoned to Timbercourt on the charge of First Degree Bintery.

The title, by the way, was a subtle but rather nifty piece of reverse psychology.

Really poor claims to fame

Can anyone beat the sheer weakness of these five claims to fame?

1. My uncle was gardener to the rich and famous in London. He used to clip Richard Branson's hedges among others.

2. I am the reason why British Youth Hostels installed bars on their top bunks to stop people rolling over and falling out during sleep. This is because one night in the early nineties at Borth hostel in Wales, I... join the dots.

3. I am the anglophone voice of SDV International Logistics.

4. I have had my music played on local radio in Hull and Kent.

5. I appeared in "Making a Difference", a video about voluntary work, which was sent to schools across Britain in 1999.

If you've been lurking reading Timberblog without commenting, now is the time to make yourself known, I feel...

Mutti returns to England

Mother's stay in Paris has ended with a short farewell ceremony at Gare du Nord. Following a weekend in which I contrived to be busy nearly the whole time, except when Mutti herself was busy, we did manage to get out on Monday and do that whole mother-son quality time nonsense. This manifested itself in a Long Walk Looking at Things.

We walked to an arty shop at Bastille. Then embarked upon the viaduc des arts, which I hadn't done before. It's an old railway viaduct; instead of letting it run derelict, they filled the arches with boutiques and restaurants, and then topped it off with a promenade plantée, thusly:



Le viaduc des arts

We got off and crossed the river to the Jardin des Plantes (again, something I'd not properly visited before - I should have people over more often). Disastrously, mother happened upon a hut where they were selling warm beverages, which resulted in this horrific spectacle:


Mother enjoys afternoon tea in the park

The walk then meandered down via Boul'Mich to Gobelins (which I hadn't seen before) and eventually Place d'Italie. So that was a day of various achievements.

The perils of older Wimmin

It is well documented that Timber has a strange effect on certain Wimmin of middle age. The most damning body of evidence, which can be confirmed by an independent witness, occured in the autumn of 2001 while your heroic blogger was making tracks down eastern Europe with the legendary Chakkers of Royal Ascot. Upon entering a bank in central Bucharest, just down the road from my chum Nicolae's humble abode, I approached a cashier-wench and asked her, in fluent and impeccable Rumanian*, where the foreign exchange desk was. Now what you would expect is a wearisome hand waving you vaguely in the right direction accompanied by a fake smile (UK bank) or the Universal Grunt of Reason (French bank).

* English.

What I got was a cashier-wench who stood up, came out of her booth and into the corridor, and invited me to follow by holding out her hand as if I were to take it. This may only seem minor to you, reader, but it disconcerted both Chakkers and I, and has remained inexplicable to this day.

Secondly, on departing Bucharest, we climbed upon a train that would cross Bulgaria and carry us to the gateway of the East, Istanbul. Shortly after crossing into Bulgaria, the train took a turn that we weren't expecting, seeming to head for the Black Sea coast. I unfolded out trusty European Rail Map and asked the ticket inspector wench, in fluent and impeccable Bulgarian**, whether she could confirm the route that the train was taking, just to reassure us.

She looked at the map, and then looked at it a little longer, as if seeing what Europe looked like for the first time, which on reflection is entirely possible. She pondered a while, then took out an impressively red finger nail and traced some lines in apparent Brownian motion, before triumphantly ending up in Bosnia. What?, I said. Hmm, said the wench, and put the map down before opening her wallet and showing me her daughter.

** Swahili. Oh, ok, English.

Now both these Wimmin were of middle age, perhaps around 50. Which is about the same age as my old English teacher, who had a reputation as something of a dragon, but who could be trusted as totally unable to tell me off from the moment I made eye contact. And which, incidentally, is the age of one of my piano students, who is possibly the most horrifically nice person I have ever met. I'm all for people being nice to me, but it gets to a stage where you just feel persecuted with niceness. Today she made tea and cake for Mutti and I, took photos (I increasingly hate photos), and offered me the keys to her flat for what must be the ninety-fifth time this year.

I'm sure I cannot be the only person that this kind of thing happens to.

Hier kommt Mutti

Mutti hits Paris at 16h56 CET today, so ye may have to wait for the next thrilling installment in the adventures of Timberblog until Tuesday when she hath parted. Meanwhile I have two hours of English to teach before then so I had better be off.

The joys of not existing

There's a bit of fuss going on in Britain today what with the election and all that. Like the boat race and sex, the UK election is something that doesn't happen very often, and then when it does it is largely about someone coming first and the other one coming second and everyone being generally dissatisfied at the relatively poor levels of excitement involved. For what it's worth I would have voted yellow, for the entirely mature reason that I think the other two parties smell. Having said that, I wish the Lib Dems weren't yellow. They would have a lot more credibility with a more masculine colour. And it's just asking for trouble when your party leader is a ginger.

However, due to leaving Britain in 2000, a year before the census, and arriving in France in 2000, after the French census, I have contrived to fail to exist. I quite enjoy this status, so applying for the vote never really appealed. It's not as if I'm untraceable in any case. But being an anomaly is quite fun so la.

Je déteste les pharmacies

Je suis en train de me demander comment ça se fait qu'une simple boîte de 7 comprimés anti-histamines puisse me coûter 5€90. De plus, la boîte est au moins trente fois plus grande que son contenu. Vraisemblablement, on paie pour que ses comprimés aient, pendant leur vie oh tellement courte, du luxe et de l'espace, avant de se faire avaler.


Ce n'est qu'en France que les pharmacies sont fêtées par de jolies lumières néons telles que celle-ci

Ma conclusion - les pharmacies sont Une Mauvaise Chose.

Et je souffre en ce moment, soyez gentil avec moi, j'ai le rhume des foins et ça me zappe le moral.

The great moral debate of today

The great moral debate of today is whether, if Liverpool win the Champions League but finish outside the top four, they should be given England's fourth Champions League ticket for next year's competition. If you are a random Timberblog visitor and don't understand what I'm talking about here, I suggest you skip to another entry as it's not going to get any more understandable and/or interesting.

I have a feeling that this story is going to "do a Millennium Bug" - i.e. generate plenty of debate and press coverage in a purely speculative form, and then singularly fail to even happen. The whole debate could well be completely dead by this time on Tuesday night. But I guess the situation could happen again, so I will outline ye olde argument here as a precedent for further referral.

Everton, Liverpool's oldest rivals, are currently in pole position for that famous fourth place. They claim it is logical they should get the CL birth for next year as they have outperformed Liverpool in the league. It is criminal to whisk away the reward that they have worked for and deserved over an entire season. If I supported Everton, I would find this a completely arse concept and would be up in arms. After all, I supported Reading in 1995 when, due to a reduction in the size of the Premiership that year, they became the only team in history to finish second in the second tier of English football, but not be promoted to the top flight. That too was arse, but you cannot argue with the rule book. Well, you can, but you can't do anything about it. And in Everton's case, luckily for them, it would appear the rulebook, or at least the authorities, point in their favour.

However, I believe that if the CL winners finish outside the qualifying positions, but only by a margin of 2 or 3 places, then it is they who should be allowed to enter the following season. If Liverpool finish fifth or sixth, as is very likely, Shirley they have a legitimate claim to retain their CL trophy if they win it? There are a number of reasons I would give for this:

1. It is obvious that Liverpool have underperformed in post-European league games. They have been obliged to sacrifice league form for their CL adventure. If they did not have this distraction, you could argue that they would be above Everton, as at most there is a matter of 3-6 points in it. This argument has no weight if they were languishing in 14th, for example, but it seems harsh to take away the CL ticket when you would have probably acheived the fourth qualifying berth if you weren't busy winning the thing.

2. There is only one precedent - in 2000, Real Madrid finished fifth in their league, but were allowed to defend their trophy at the expense of the fourth-placed team by the Spanish authorities. Admittedly you can also argue that Real Madrid have enormous political influence and basically get whatever they want, and any rule-bending goes in their favour. But it is still the one and only precedent.

3. Why does England have as many as four CL places when other countries have 3, 2, or only 1? It is because English sides have done better than most other countries' in European competition, and have thus earnt the extra qualification spots. They also have more TV money, granted, but England only nicked that fourth place off Germany a few years ago because of UEFA coefficients - Premiership sides consistantly outperformed Bundesliga ones. Who is to thank for this? Everton? Er, don't think so. Liverpool, the last English side to win a European trophy? Champions league quarter finalists in 2002, and semi-finalists this year helping to ensure the Premiership keeps that fourth spot?

My first conclusion: on the basis of the rulebook, Everton deserve the CL place. But on pretty much everything else, Liverpool do.

My second conclusion: watch Chelsea go through on Tuesday night, and remember that this entire debate is completely pointless.