Parents, kangaroos, and whipped cream

Uh-oh. Parents have hit again. They arrived on Monday in a week where I was already recording for a cd and trying to watch as much of the Weltmeisterschaft as possible. Perhaps not hugely surprising, then, that Timberblog hasn't seen any entries for a bit.

The band spent the whole of Monday and most of Tuesday in the studios recording the instruments for an albumy sort of thing. Result: nine songs done, and parents wondering whether they were actually going to see me at all. So I appeased them on Wednesday by taking them on an exciting trip to the Oise region.

In the morning, after another ticket-inspector-based near miss (cf. "A countryside adventure" from the June 2005 archives), but luckily happening upon the cheeriest SNCF employee I have met yet, who totally ignored the fact I was travelling on the wrong ticket, we took in Senlis, a town that goes back to Roman times and has that whole cobbled streets and medieval architecture thing going on. This seemed to please the parents, who don't get so much of that kind of action by the Patchway Roundabout. And yes, it was good to get out of the big city for a bit.

From here we caught a bus to Chantilly and headed to the château. On the way we passed the Grandes Ecuries (Great Stables). The Prince of Condé had them built in 1719, apparently convinced that he would be reincarnated as a horse. Hence their ridiculous size and luxuriousness. You can just imagine his consternation when he came back as a bathroom sponge.* Anyway, his château was destroyed in the revolution. The present day building was finished in 1881 and looks alright. So we walked around it a bit, found the place where they invented whipped cream, and made friends with some kangaroos.

* Information not historically verified.

On Thursday morning it was time for a visit to the Musée Carnavalet, which has the twin benefits of being just up the road, and free. The permanent exhibition tracks the history of the city of Paris from prehistory up to the modern day. The several scale models of the city as it was in the ( x ) th century were impressive, as was the sheer variation in exhibits - helpfully pointed out to us by the incredibly dull curator bloke in the 19th C art gallery section.



Finally, on Friday morning we went to the end of line 10 and walked to the end of line 9. This was rendered more exciting than it sounds by taking a diversion into the Parc de St Cloud, where you can get views like this, and where I will be seeing Radiohead at the Rock En Seine festival on August bank holiday weekend (woo!).

Parents have now been successfully shipped off to Nice.

Pie update

The national pie deficit of France has been very well-documented. Or at least, I've talked about it a lot, which is more or less the same thing. So, being a man of action, I decided to do something about it, and wrote to one of Britain's leading pastry bakeries.

Clotilda the cow says: "Happy St Kevin's day!"
Note: this cow is not called Clotilda, and I think it's supposed to be a bull in any case.
Today is, however, St Kevin's day.

"I am an expat living since 2000 in Paris, a city of several thousand Britons, and a serious sausage roll deficit. [...] I wanted to know if your company has any plans to expand into Europe and of course particularly Paris. The French have recently cottoned on to the concept of the pasty but sadly they have adapted it, regarding it as little more than a snack. This has left me nonplussed. I'm convinced that there's a market gap just waiting to be filled by your products. The demand would be huge."

They were kind enough to reply very promptly.

"Thank you very much for your enquiry with regard to Shops in Europe.

"I am very sorry, but whilst we read your e-mail with great interest, we do not have any plans to open up shops in Paris .We are a vertically integrated company which means that... [blah, blah, blah, etc...] [oh, and a bit more blah] ...to set up in a new geographical location would require massive capital investment, due to the nature of our business operation, and as such we have no plans to locate in new geographical areas in the foreseeable future.

"We do intend to develop our business further in the forthcoming years, and hopefully may move to Paris, but as for the immediate future, I am sorry we have no plans.

"Thank you once again for your interest."

What can I say? The battle is lost but the war is far from over. And I will fight on!