I’ll never be a woman - ugh!

My son said to me as I helped him on with his tights

Let me explain. Today is the ‘Percent’(père cent). One hundred days before the start of the baccalaureate exams. The tradition is that the lycéens in their final year dress up and roam the streets asking for money. They used to throw eggs and flour but that has died out mainly, I hope. One town has banned the practise. Everywhere the hundred days is marked in some special way. You may ask what they do with all the money they collect. They go out and have a good time. Tomorrow serious revision starts – some hopes.

Olivier has gone out dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. (The same costume Dom had for her Percent – I have a sneaking suspicion that he hasn’t asked if he can borrow it yet). He went out and bought a lovely blonde wig with plaits and has borrowed a pair of tights to complete the outfit. I just checked, he forgot his lipstick.

Anyway there we were at 6.30 this morning struggling to put on a pair of tights; he hates them. Rob and I took him to his destination. A certain set of traffic lights. Very popular, some groups camp out all night to bag the busiest lights. There were already some young people out and we gave a few coins to two groups. The costumes are always very well done, in the past I’ve seen chickens, cows, Where’s Wally, ladybirds, clowns and so on. Operating scrubs are very popular. They are all very polite, if you haven’t got any change to give they thank you nicely and wish you good day.

He received his voting card today ‘sniff’.

A friend in need

One of Olivier’s friends is very shy and stutters quite a lot. He has been bullied by his older sister for most of his life. This week he and Olivier discovered that she had created a Facebook account in his name and was chatting to people using it, goodness knows what she was saying on his behalf. The friend was quite upset about this, so when she went out leaving her computer on Olivier changed her password. He came home to eat and dashed back to his friends in order to be there when she came home as he knew that his friend wouldn’t be able to cope with her temper. (Parents had gone away for a few days)

She went berserk and started to insult Olivier. He just walked out on her so she chased him down the road and eventually calmed down enough to ask nicely for her password. Olivier was highly amused at her insult which really showed her true character. ‘All you ever think about is helping your friends’

That’s my boy!

BlogExplosion: Time for action

A letter has been composed for everyone to send out to the company that owns Blogexplosion on 20th February, you can copy the letter from here.

Or you might prefer to go here for more instructions and access to a rich text format of the letter. I think anyone outside the US would probably like to send their letters a little earlier. The addresses are supplied. Just pick who you would like to address your letter to.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t compose your own letter if you want to. Please be polite. A lot of effort has gone into this project by people who care about the blogging community. If you belong to BlogExplosion, please help.

And yes, you will be seeing this post on all of my blogs

Thanks to thewatchlist, MJTaylor Spicybugz, bokonon, kelson, SelinaKimsey, sightlydrunk, bluegrassBloggo, McSpazz, lando411 and others I have surely missed for keeping the forums looking like forums. A special thanks to thewatchlist and MJTaylor who have put in all of the work for the letter.

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is very hard to define; everyone is okay with it – until someone says something that perhaps doesn’t quite fit. It’s important to be able to say what we want, worship how we want, have access to the information we want, go where we choose, live our lives in the way we want. If we agree with free speech have we got the right to prevent someone from saying things we know to be wrong?

I remember there was a book with the lines, that I can’t quote exactly and I can’t find online, so if you know them please put me straight:

“This is a free country, you can't stop me. This is a free country, I can try.”

We've got so much

Things Russian

A bit of a Russian post today. At the moment I’m rereading ‘We the Living’ by Ayn (rhymes with mine) Rand. I recommend it. I haven’t read ‘The Fountainhead’ yet.


This is a postcard illustrating part of the poem ‘The Demon’ by a Russian poet, Michael Lermontov. I was struck by the movement of the painting by
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel. The unused postcard is Russian, from the Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow dated 1965. How did it get to France? Someone had collected several cards of paintings by Vrubel and one or two other artists. The Vrubel cards were the only ones translated into Western European languages. I found the part of the poem the painting represents quite easily:

“Two figures - then a shot - ahead
What was it? Rising in his stirrups
Cramming his high hat on his brow
The gallant lover, at the gallop,
Plunged like a hawk upon his foe!
No word he spoke, his whip cracked once
And once blazed forth his Turkish gun....
Another shot. Wild cries. The Prince
Goes thundering on. The groans behind
Long echoes in the valley find....
Not long the fight. Of timorous mind,
The Georgians turn and run!”

Here is the complete poem if you’ve got a few minutes to spare (You'll have to scroll down a bit).

There is still a packet of Russian soup in the cupboard – perhaps not…

John Updike

John Updike died from cancer this week. He’s someone I always meant to read more of. I remember him being the castaway on Desert Island Discs where he mentioned wondering where his love beads (remember them?) had gone to. I identified with that remark. If you look him up in Google images you’ll see lots of photos of him smiling

I’ve read several of his short stories and I have a copy of Couples which I’ve read four times. I also know someone else who has read Couples several times. I was interested to observe how my attitude to the main character Piet Hanema changed over the years. When I was young, he was exciting and could do no wrong. The last time I read the book a year ago, he’d become a cheat and an egoist, his wife, Angela was much better off without him - the rat! The background to all of this is the assassination of JFK. The book captures that moment when the world held its breath.

He was at the Hay-on-Wye festival in 2004

More from others.