Ich spiele gern im Schnee

Earlier it snowed, so I decided to bring forward one of my new year's resolutions and went out to buy a digital camera. Unfortunately by the time I'd got it, the good snow had finished, and it had started to rain, producing that monged dirty sludge that no-one is particularly fond of. But I took some pictures anyway, because I had a new digital camera, and I wanted to use it.

First new year's resolution: 5.2Megapixels. (Har. I'm so funny.)
Piccy = looking back at the Rive Droite from the Île St Louis.

Experts project that, now I can add my own pictures to this site, Timberblog will become approximately 37% more interesting.

Meanwhile my second, and more valid, new year's resolution (I've never even made one before, and now I'm making two... it must be the pollution... and I've decided 2006 is going to be an auspicious year) is to find somewhere, anywhere, where I can play cricket in the Paris region. I really need to play cricket. The other night I dreamt about delivering leg breaks in the nets, which excited me so much that I promptly woke up in the small hours and couldn't go back to sleep again without finding information on the internet about cricket clubs in France and sending emails off to them.

Hôtel de Sens and snowy garden

No, I'm not jumping on the Ashes bandwagon. In fact, this is more a result of the recent poor showing in Pakistan. England desperately need a leg-spinner, who unlike our current incompetents can actually get some turn on the ball. The solution I am suggesting here is me. Cricket is the one sport I was ever not terrible at. I regularly bamboozled the opposition batsmen in my youth, and once achieved figures of 4 for 3 in a glorious 100-run defeat of Sonning C of E in the East Reading Primary School 16-over league when I was 10. With a fair amount of application and a proper training schedule I expect I could get on the next tour to the subcontinent.

A Tasty Yule Blog

I made the mistake of buying Eddy his first pint yesterday evening. This pushed the poor lad into a near-pathological frenzy of trying to pay for me for the rest of the night. Starting with an ill-advised second pint (it was still only about half six and I hadn't properly eaten yet), this was followed by a surreptitious attempt to cover my filet de canard (a plan which I bravely foiled) and paying for a taxi up to Montmartre (well if you insist on taking a taxi then yes you bloody well can pay for it). We had a very left-field taxi driver; as we came up to Barbès, he suddenly commented "à votre place, j'irai pas à la Gare de Lyon". Thanks for that. Just concentrate on the road.


So we found the Soleil de la Butte, which is a typical Parisian bar at the foot of some very typical steps going up to the Sacré Coeur. If you've ever seen a film set in Paris, you will have seen somewhere exactly like it. It's also on rue Muller, which will excite at least one Timberblog reader. As it happens, the bar has a small but very cosy and frankly quite cool live music venue downstairs. Sophie, a friend of Eddy's, was showcasing her own brand of mad French trip-hop. Definitely a bit different. Click to hear her song Oh Lou. I nearly stayed on for the second act, but left when I heard the first few chords of "comedy" oompah-chanson coming from the guitar. There are few worse things in the world than a French musician trying to be funny. I strongly advise you against clicking here.

Anyway. Fröhliche Weihnachten und alle guten Wünsche zum Neuen Jahr. Eat turkey. Drink alcohol. (Listen not to Slade and Wham!, but to some Sigur Ros instead.) Be Merry. Timberblog will be back before new year with some resolutions.

Yellow Devil Duckie. Yes.

Devil duckie, you're the one, you make bathtime lots of fun, Devil duckie, I'm awfully dirty today (woh, woh, bee day!)

Devil duckie, when you float, it's like I'm bathing in a flaming moat! Devil duckie, you're my very best friend, hurray! (doo, doo, doo, dee day!)


Every day when I make my way to be clean I find a little fella who's red and yellow and mean (Rub-a-dub-keen!)

Devil duckie you're so swell, you guide me on my path to hell, Devil duckie, I'm awfully dirty - Devil duckie, you're a naughty birdy - Devil duckie, I'm awfully dirty today.

See what I mean about secret santa presents? Thanks Caspar. Shame I, er, don't have a bath.

The blog paradox

If you do lots of interesting things, you'll have plenty to write about your life.
However.
If you do lots of interesting things, the last thing you'll have time for is writing about it.

This is why most autobiographies are ghost written. And yes, lucky Timberblog readers, it so happens that I live in a 400-year-old building. I was able to get today's blog entry written by a genuine 17th-century poltergeist who lives in the downstairs toilet and goes by the name of Pauline.

"Andrew came over for his yearly visit to Paris last week. For those of you who don't know, Andrew is an old schoolmate, known for playing a lot of Championship Manager, singing like a deflated walrus, and being completely teetotal. We recorded a terrible cover of Maroon 5's already dire song, She Will Be Loved, on Wednesday; strolled round to Faybo's and experienced her unorthodox interpretation of "crepes" on Friday; and then went to the football on Saturday. Perhaps there will be a few photos of the latter up on here soon.

"Timber also bought a shiny new computer last week. On loading it up for the first time, it asked me to give it a name. This disturbs me. There are only a few more steps from here to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and Genuine People Personalities. It's bad enough people name their fish, let alone a laptop. On which subject, my boss' 11-year-old daughter, who like 20% of all the girls I know is called Sarah, won two goldfish at the funfair. In true goldfish style, one of them died before it had even been given a name. The other one got lumbered with "Nemo". And they say children are full of imagination. One day I will buy a cat and call it "Thursday" just for the hell of it (and because I secretly think this would be a cool name for a cat). Meanwhile if you have strong feelings as to what my new computer should be called, leave a comment.

"Things are getting busy with shows in the run-up to Christmas. Three gigs this week, one of which is appended to a random person's birthday party, which will almost certainly result in fun debauchery, alcohol-fuelled carnage, and so on. Then there's what would be the office christmas party, except that I don't work in an office, I work with improvising comedy actors. So you can imagine what that's like. And the oh-so-funny gifts you sometimes pull out of the secret santa bag.

"Yip, evenings are basically ending in beer+friends again.

Hi, Timber here briefly. I'll be back to writing my own entries maybe next week. Thanks Pauline, I reckon you imitated my style pretty well. What do you mean you're not dead? You're the cleaning lady?

Major news of the enormously huge variety

A topic that I may have already touched upon - it, er, escapes my mind - is France's abject lack of pastry-orientated savoury face-stuffing paraphenalia, or more specifically, the great British pies and pasties. It is a terrific cause of concern for many of us furreners living in Paris. Indeed, one of the best-loved journalists of the now sadly defunct British Institute Newsletter, David Amazinglish, once wrote in its pages that he would offer a significant reward to any person offering information on where to procure a Cornish Pasty in Paris. The fact that no-one did, and that David has now left Paris to study in London for a year, speaks volumes, I feel, about the harrowing effect that a lack of pasties can produce on an otherwise healthy young man.

This afternoon I went to buy a new laptop from a dodgy but cheap shop in the 13th. Unfortunately this plan was dramatically foiled when the shop was found to be closed on Sundays. Like most shops in Paris. I would say "never mind, it was a jolly little jaunt", but anyone who's ever had to go to the 13th will see that this is nonsense.

Caught the métro back and got off at Bastille. On the side of a small boutique inside the station was a large poster saying "pasty". I walked past it. Pasty, I thought. The word went through my mind in search of something to connect to.* Then, suddenly, it hit. Wait. That poster just said pasty??? My word. I turned heel and rushed back to the poster, upsetting several commuters in the process. There it was, the glorious five letters of the word "Pasty", all in the correct order, followed by pictures of four different varieties of aforementioned foodstuff available at the counter, and - best of all - a small paragraph explaining in French what exactly a pasty actually is.

*This is a reference.

Anyway, you the Timberblog reader, like I, are probably thinking this is all rather too good to be true. I bemoan the lack of pie in this country and suddenly a shop opens at my local metro stop selling the concept of pasties to the French. But, justement, this is precisely the problem. They've gone and frenchified pasties. Result - they have created something almost but not quite entirely unlike pasties.* The ingredients, besides the pastry, have little to do with the true upstanding and morally correct pasty of yore. There's a bacon and cheese one, for example, or another with horrific vegetarian faff. They're served cold, not warm-from-the-oven like they should be. And this being the land of nouvelle cuisine, they were of course of a size that would hardly feed a small gibbon.

*This is also a reference.

Tomorrow I am going to try the chicken+spinach one, as this is the closest I could get to anything resembling a proper pasty, and of course they'd sold out of it.

In other news, my music is apparently interesting Sony.